Endwalker was "meh" (for reasons other than technical issues)

[Lauront]

Agree on this, especially the last part. Made a mistake of doing it on reddit, and ho boy, it's not pretty. So much "you just don't understand the point" or "you're missing things, are you a skipper". The nerve of some people smh.

It's unfortunate that the devs appear to treat it as a major feedback source. The downvote system makes it terrible for getting a breadth of opinions, because what is being upvoted or downvoted is less so reflective of the general userbase, but more so down to who is likely to be active at a given time, plus mass downvoting. All it does is form a hivemind that suppresses dissenting views. SE should put more effort into their own forum rather than relying on Twitter or Reddit, as well as player surveys, but I can understand why the option may seem easier and cost-efficient.

I found it very weak. The new quest mechanic was an immense annoyance, a lot of very important things were dismissed as mundane (I was especially taken aback from how it was just plain accepted we can go to the moon like that), Alphinaud returned to the annoying little gnat I hated in ARR, comic relief was unwelcome when tragedy struck just moments before, sacrifices felt cheapened and we literally beat Metei with the power of friendship.

All in all, just slightly above Stormblood in terms of quality in my opinion. Maybe equal. Which would peg both of them just above ARR. Doesn't even come close to ShB. I also take extreme umbrage with the many people here that think disliking the story means someone "missed the point" or "hasn't played the game." The former doesn't even matter because it's a writer's job to convey the point in a way that's clear, yet classy. The latter is an accusation born of a fanboy's tantrum. I'm very disappointed in how people are handling dissident opinions this expansion.

Definitely agree. And then if you do look closely at the story, and start scrutinising the plot holes in it, that too is met with consternation. Whatever you do, you will displease the more rabid fans.

Anyway, I will come back to post my full impressions of it at some point in the future, after we have seen some of Pandaemonium and in anticipation of some other stuff coming. As you say, it is on the writer to make sure the story is clear, and I believe they even took an extra 2 weeks to make sure the story was clear, so I can’t imagine what it was like before. Unfortunately, they often add further contextual info in interviews and the short stories, and there are also usually differences between localisations/the JP version, and the EN version. All quite a bit of work to put in, so I get why people don’t want to/don’t have the time to – the last of those I don’t really consider good practice, but it is what it is. I’d say SB was more consistent across the board, whereas this was a rollercoaster of highs and lows.

In all honesty, I’m on the fence about it, and it’s a shame there’s a lack of decent competitor MMOs to my tastes at the moment to take flight to... Spoiler tags to keep the post neat…

For now, I’ll say my main issue with it was the time travel plot device and their portrayal of Venat. The two connect closely together, because I think without the timeskip, her actions make little sense. As it is, she comes across as someone with a saviour/god complex coupled with Munchausen by proxy. The main reason that she didn’t tell any of the other ancients about what she saw is less that she wouldn’t be able to convince them – there were plenty of ways and opportunities for that. It’s that she didn’t want to alter the timeline, but it’s hard to believe she wouldn't end up doing that anyway. For some reason she thought this was all her Big Plan, but in reality, she was not the one who sent the WoL back; Elidibus was. She also did not conceive of that plan, conversation with the Scions and G’raha who had just happened to preserve him the tower did. I very much doubt she could’ve anticipated any of the events of the 8UC or the invention of time travel to be used in that way. Granted, she was acting on the knowledge was given by you, but even so, it’s a strange leap of logic to me when she tries to scrutinise her future self’s motives… and if they want to involve time paradoxes here, it’s not helping the case.

Besides the obvious inconsistencies with the 8UC timeline, it’s all handwaved with throwing the phrase “conjunction of timelines” at you enough times. I don’t care for her reasoning much, and them showing her approaching her people as their star was dying, to give them high handed lectures, shows me she didn’t even have as much insight as the twins were able to acquire through their time in Garlemald. By the point you leave her in Elpis, it’s also not very plausible that Hermes was going to be much use in the Convocation, if his discovery was not exposed. If she did not reveal the knowledge she had, her people had little reason to be swayed by her, and I have absolutely no doubt if she had approached the sundered in similar circumstances, they’d fob her off, too. All of this only makes sense through the desire to preserve a timeline she wanted to not alter but already had. So I am left thinking that maybe the original sundering was accidental or without a good justification, and the idea was to imbue it with new meaning once Venat understood what had happened. Y’shtola mentions something about giving her actions a brighter meaning even if they were neither kind nor just. In the end, I get why the developers did it – they would need to address huge changes in the world if she had done it, but it still comes across as tacked on and needlessly complex, no doubt because of their rush to tie matters up by the end of 6.0. I’m just sad that there wasn’t an option to say “thanks for the hostage ride, now good riddance” to her at the end. As someone who prefers the ancients, it’s just unsatisfactory and not very convincing. She left a sour taste in my mouth, and initially I went in liking her. Real culprit is the plot device, but the way it’s written they go hand in hand. What I think they were angling for was how to get a happy ending for all concerned (Ascians/ancients, Venat, Scions) in the least amount of time, thus the Elpis scene and the plot point about memory recovering from Kairos manipulation upon return to the Aetherial Sea, but it doesn't change my sentiment towards it. This poster has captured a lot of the problems I have with the story.

The way they had left it by SHB, I had hoped that what they would angle for is a third way forward to resolve the now ancient dispute between her faction and the Convocation (bearing in mind her original beliefs as to why Hydaelyn had to be summoned may have differed as her guy on the moon mentions they did not know the true cause either), and touch on Azem’s role in it all. I’d have liked to see that approach pursued instead, where it all amounted to a tragic misunderstanding, perhaps pushed by a third party agent like Hermes, in collaboration with a being like Jenova (there is some precedent in this setting for such beings via the High Seraph in the Ivalice quest lines), but perhaps originating from outside the star. I wasn’t too unhappy with Meteion being this madman’s creation gone mad, even if I find her obnoxious, but throw in the time travel, and dynamis, in an expansion that was already dragging with a lot of filler but still had to smoosh in loads of plot elements, and it was a mess, that some people are understandably confused by. It’s getting to the point that the lore feel similarly unsatisfying to me as it did in WoW. In any case, what’s done is done, and I’m just hoping the story takes a different turn in the future.

With the main issue out the way, the highlights for me were: Sharlayan and the city’s architecture, Garlemald (and the radio music) and highlighting the plight of the Garleans and their reasons for their deep distrust of their neighbours (Jullus and Quintus being stand outs, highlighting why they as a people revered Solus and Varis), Anima, Thavnair/Radz-at-Han, Mare Lamentorum and the chanting music (not so much the Loporrit stuff), the beautiful design and music of Aitiascope and Ktisis Hyperboreia, Ultima Thule as a zone on the whole plus learning of the fate of other stars, Zodiark/Hydaelyn fights (both felt a bit underwhelming but they were visually impressive; it was nice to finally gaze upon Zodiark’s chiselled form), Elpis as probably my fave zone after Ultima Thule plus getting to see more of Emet-Selch (learning more of him, why the unsundered struggled to see the sundered as alive in the same sense as they were, even though Y'shtola hints at a slight perspective shift in Emet, and that he even took up the role of Azem in addition to his own seat as an Ascian, plus the fact that he did not renounce his principles but entrusted his legacy and honoured his side of the deal)/Hyth (they made him quite the charmer), Elidibus (one of my fave characters in the game) and more of the ancients in general, and several of the character interactions with Y’shtola (probably the one Scion I ended up liking best), Estinien and Thancred, and to a lesser degree, Urianger.

Fandaniel as Amon was done well as an antagonist, IMO. The Zenos fight was handled about as well as they could. His main use was to fit into the philosophical themes they were exploring along with Fandaniel and yes play his "mirror" role; some of those themes were interesting, even if I did not agree with where they took them. Learning more of the ancients, who came across a lot like VII's, but more fleshed out - I thought they had a rather awesome outlook for such long-lived and potent beings, steering their creation powers for the star's benefit. I don't usually like hippy trippy planet worshipping tropes, but in this case it was done really well I felt - they really did act as custodians of the star while also having a very advanced civilisation centered around debate and enquiry. One other thing: they made clever use of the name "Sea of Stars", as it is the name of the Aetherial Sea in some other versions, and it allowed for it to be surreptitiously introduced in the trailer while being a new zone... a literal graveyard of souls and stars.

Lows: I have to admit, I didn’t like the Endsinger fight. By that point there’s too much repetition of the same talking points, too much fake drama and the totally over-the-top scale of it all (collective misery of countless stars), plus plot contrivances to get here, just ended up feeling comical and making it feel like a non-event, and we know we'll go onto fight other stuff in Pandaemonium etc. while she's left in the dust anyway, so meh. Beyond that, Labyrinthos pt2, quest construction in some cases (the quest that just drags on with all the objectives in Labyrinthos), the pacing issues caused by trying to resolve so many plot lines at once while at the same time accompanied by loads of filler, an overdose of attempted emotional baiting for characters I don’t really care about even by the end (subjective, I will grant), fan service for the same, too much meta/self-referential stuff, the non-event of the apocalypse (whether it detracts from the “point” or not), sense of disconnect with the character (yes yes, not my character really but even so I'd have liked more choices in some scenes), the asspulls, inconsistent but repetitious hammering of the same points, the time travel shenanigans, the repeated syropy speeches… the last dungeon and trial set up just felt like a repeat of SHB stylistically… Being told constantly about all the “suffering” the protags go through but really no real risk of death due to plot armour… I could go on. Reminds me of some of the stuff I started disliking about WoW's lore when I took my leave of it, but we'll see what 6.1 onwards entails...

I’d put the expansion just about above SB, but not on the level of SHB. Too many inconsistencies for it and it felt rushed and poorly paced, while trying too hard at various points. Stylistically not my thing, so I might just do my best to pay less mind to the story. I continue to hate time travel and this expansion did little to change it...

This is pretty much what I thought about venat. If anything, this expac made her "the end justify the means" way more than the Ascians. And I certainly hates how she gave up on her own people that easily.
Now, someone might say "but dynamis though, the Ancients can't do anything about it", but respectfully I have to disagree. The only reason why things escalated so bad they had no choice to summon zodiark was because they didn't know about meteion. Had hydaelyn approach the convocation (minus hermes perhaps) and told them about it, they may have gone with another solution.
I understand that part of why she made hydaelyn was because how some of the Ancients want to reclaim their paradise, but her reaction to it is kinda "oh, you just lost your family last week, move in already smh". The Ancients were grieving, not unlike the sundered people during final days, yet instead of bringing people together like how the scions did, she gave up on them.

If the WoL never found out about meteion, like how the Ancients were, I believe the sundered would fell into despair too. Perhaps they will even summon their own version of zodiark.

I’m not even convinced they couldn’t – being naturally high in aether and unfamiliar with the concept, of course they had not been given the opportunity to. Due to how they’re constituted, I believe it takes very extreme emotional reactions from them to interact with the entelechies, but it’s clearly not impossible, and whatever the situation with LBs, they can use them. They had suppression fields like in Ktisis Hyperboreia, that they could use to suppress their innate powers for a time, and isolate and hone their dynamis. If it’s possible for relatively aether-rich sundered like those of the Source, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be for them. Moreover, they could devise arcane constructs like Meteion for that purpose – she had design flaws that worked against her, as Hades pointed out, but a better conceptualised version need not have.

You also have to wonder how a primal like Zodiark, suffused with so much prayer, might function with regard to that – perhaps they’ll touch on it later. In the end, the entire world’s hopes rest on eight characters (with plot armour for good measure), so I deem it scarcely credible to think the ancients could not devise a way to deal with this… if only they had the knowledge to do so. I think it’s less an attempt to justify the sundering on flimsy pretences, and more that they’re trying to wrap up all those plot elements while committing to the current timeline while satisfying fans of characters with conflicting aims, in a short amount of time, but obviously this approach comes at a cost.

Also strongly agree with that last sentence. Furthermore, the current Final Days had the potential to be even worse because they just outright devour the person’s soul. The sundered only survived this through a metric ton of plot devices, very few of which Hydaelyn herself could ever have predicted, whatever past Venat may have believed. She took a gamble. In the end, Zodiark bought them a lot of time, probably even more at his full power. I also agree with your characterisation of Venat. They had a timeline she didn’t want to change, but she was already changing it – so the plot device is really the only reason we’re given here to make sense of her actions.

The Ascians proved that there was plenty of fight in the ancients – so much so that the three unsundered gave up their bodies and toiled for 12k years to get their world back. Go to the ancients before Zodiark is summoned, or after, when things have settled a bit, and reveal what you know, and you would probably get a rather different reaction… while they desired a form of perfection, it was geared towards the star itself. If they were given a clear understanding of what had happened, they could then consider ways to address it and avoid the fate of other stars. It’s worth remembering not all societies that perished did so because they achieved an ideal state – the dragons lived in what was a blissful society and fell simply because of an invasion... mayhap even the sundered Source will succumb to such an event in the future, when there's naught but scribblings of all these events.

[…]
As you can tell, I'm a bit averse to dynamis and it's existence in the story. I feel like it was a plot device to explain how something so horrific and powerful could subvert masters of aether like the Ancients.
Excuse the tangent, this really took my goat. Haha.

If they introduced Dynamis in previous expansions, hinted it at it, or at least introduced it in a way that we could explore our WoL learning how to channel or identify it, I would be far more amical to the concept. I'm still not a fan, but it IS redeemable. However, in what I assume was a mad dash to tie up lots of loose ends in the story (which I'll admit is no small feat), it kind of feels like they wrote themselves into a corner by making the Ancients such bluntly superior users of Aether.

Therefore, Dynamis. If the later patches where we kick off the new story begin to explain Dynamis in more detail, it might make it easier to coexist with later. Though I don't think I'll ever like how it was used here.

n' I agree. I'm mostly here for the mechanics, but the game sold me on it's story. Especially come Shadowbringers. Which is why I'm pretty critical since we have proof the writers could do so much better.

Similar sentiments here. People say it was hinted at with Omega, but he was a soulless construct, so it’s much of a muchness. You can, with hindsight, say it’s down to dynamis as some manner of “soul energy”; you can also say it’s the difference between a construct and a being with a soul. His people had forfeit their bodies and minds to mechanical forms, so they had lost what made them sentient beings, and that is what built him. Really, it’s open to all sorts of retrofitting. I’ve included the sources on LBs. People can dismiss it if they like, and of course the writers can always point to the Sharlayans’ knowledge being incomplete, or aether being just one of two ways to charge up LBs, but it is nonetheless what currently exists on them besides Endsinger's comments.

As you note, 8 scions (plus some plot armour) and a few hobos summoned from across the universe somehow sufficed to fell this beast. It’s laughable to think the “suffering” any of them endured could parallel what these worlds suffered in totality, or what the ancients suffered as their star was devoured, and that therefore the corresponding prayer infused into Zodiark would not have infused him with a mixture of dynamis and aether. As “antithetical” as these two energy sources are, even an aetherically dense soul like the WoL is capable of honing dynamis. So it seems less like they’re equal and opposite, and more that beings accustomed to using one are simply likely to be unaware of the other due to its surreptitious nature… but of course, it was still an ancient who first stumbled on this. Again, we'll see if this ever gets touched on.

[Rulakir]

Out of all the characters in EW, I am confident in saying that I actually hate Hermes the most. Can't stand stuck up characters like him who is so convinced about his self-righteousness that he is blinded to other things, a blindedness that in the end killed so many and almost destroyed everything.

Same. He went from empath to psychopath too quickly for me to believe he was ever truly a good person. Given the sheer amount of screen time Fandaniel had the lack of development excuse doesn't apply here either. He along with Venat were the two characters I felt like EW was trying to gaslight me on, with multiple NPCs telling me how wonderful they were while their actions spoke differently.

Agree on this, especially the last part. Made a mistake of doing it on reddit, and ho boy, it's not pretty. So much "you just don't understand the point" or "you're missing things, are you a skipper". The nerve of some people smh.

r/ffxiv is the worst place to go for objective views of the game, they are notoriously intolerant of criticism. Regulars know not to bother to post anything negative because they'll be downvoted into oblivion and first timers are quick to learn the lesson. r/ffxivdiscussion is much better, albeit smaller. I sincerely hope SE diversifies their social media viewing because if they're only looking at r/ffxiv and Twitter for feedback, gods help us.

By the point you leave her in Elpis, it’s also not very plausible that Hermes was going to be much use in the Convocation, if his discovery was not exposed.

It's not only not plausible, but Elidibus confirms as much before you leave for Elpis saying that, "Your understanding of what caused the Final Days is consistent with our own." Since the WoL had not learned about dynamis at that point, it would mean it was a subject Hermes never brought to the table and thus one of the main reasons Venat decided not to inform anyone was not even applicable.

The more I reflect upon the story the more I dislike her character, which makes it all the more galling that the writers decided to force this 12k year bond between her and the WoL without a single dialog option given to the player to disapprove. Quite the contrary, the game goes out of its way to portray her as a tragic hero with her actions (which I consider morally reprehensible) excused by the NPCs. (Her admitting she's a monster doesn't change the fact that she's still portrayed as having done the only right and just thing given the circumstances, which isn't even debatable it's just statistically false.) It's even worse if you consider that the writers may have gone with a bootstrap paradox, which would mean that the WoL is essentially responsible for all the atrocities following the end of Elpis because we gave her the playbook to follow.

I understand from a narrative perspective why they did what they did, but I don't like it. While I loved Elpis (the Ancients have the more compelling characters & story), it's difficult to not look on it as giving the WoL 'disposable' friends for emotional manipulation because the Scions are untouchable. I also think they liked this 'full circle' idea too much to the point that everything involving time travel is horribly contrived to the extent of being nonsensical. I had feared, but was not surprised, that they went all in on Hydaelyn being 'good' because otherwise players might be uncomfortable with the WoL having been manipulated since ARR - even though that's still ultimately what happened.

I just hope they stick to their ShB guns that Azem ghosted Venat. There's no way I would accept that Azem would be okay with what happened to their civilization and their friends, the WoL certainly wouldn't and hasn't been with their world and the Scions.