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

[Thoosa]

Yes but you don’t know of them until you were level 87 or so, which feels a bit late in the game to introduce a big baddie which you’ve never previously interacted with or established any connection with.

If they had had introduced Meteion early in the expansion as your friend and they featured in many quests like Emet did and they did a twist at the end I think it would have sat much better for me, anyway.

[JanVanding]

Please don't drag the beloved villains like Kuja, Sephiroth and Kefka down just to make a point in favor of the most boring villain even inside of FFXIV. I mean, come on, we just came from Emet-Selch of all people.

Sephiroth? Big sword mommas boy who goes Nihilistic because Mommy was a space monster.

Sephiroth for me will always be FFs most over rated and over valued villain.

But that's the thing, you aren't going to like every villain, some people absolutely dislike Emperor Palmecia but I thought he was a damn good villain.

Different strokes for different folks.

[Tsukino]

Yes but you don’t know of them until you were level 87 or so, which feels a bit late in the game to introduce a big baddie which you’ve never previously interacted with or established any connection with.

If they had had introduced Meteion early in the expansion as your friend and they featured in many quests like Emet did and they did a twist at the end I think it would have sat much better for me, anyway.

Oh sure, yes. They were probably constrained by needing to take care of Zodiark and get the repeat calamity started to drive up urgency, plus the fact that you meet them 12,000 years ago and Elpis can only be one area. But I can't deny Emet-Selch was done better; Shadowbringers pacing is pretty much peerless here.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

ye i mostly think the same way here.

[KatsuraJun]

Yes but you don’t know of them until you were level 87 or so, which feels a bit late in the game to introduce a big baddie which you’ve never previously interacted with or established any connection with.

That's because Meteion isn't the villain. The "villain" is philosophical argument that corrupted her, and it certainly didn't come out of nowhere; it's been a part of the game since the beginning.

She's just a piece of said philosophical argument, which serves as the thematic center of not only EW, but XIV itself. In real life ー in the face of our increasingly secularized world, religious institutions argued that a loss of faith would lead to a loss of purpose in living and self-destructive nihilism. For the faithful, God provides meaning, and Meteion's creators are the closest things we have to gods in FFXIV, literally shaping their world as they see fit in paradise. But even here among the gods, Hermes could not find the answer for why we live. Thus, he looks to the stars for answers, but what Meteion finds is emptiness － nihilism, and as Hermes falls to despair, so does Meteion, when her god cannot provide her purpose.

But that is because the answer to living was always within ー internal, not external. The story is literally about exploring Nietzsche's concept of "God is dead," where we find that every one of the gods in our world, once examined, are not really gods at all, and thus it falls on us define the purpose of our existence.

• In ARR, we are questioned why we don't simply call down the Twelve in defense, if our gods are real. The entire casus belli of Garlemald is to force us at gunpoint to abandon our gods, after all.
  "For the world of man to have meaning, man must own the world!"
  
• In Heavensward, Ishgardians struggle with the fact that the Halonic Church that's literally defined their purpose for living for the past millennia is based on a lie.
  "You reject my divinity, yet what have you to offer my people in its stead? Bitter truth? Virtuous suffering?"
  
• In Stormblood, we meet Zenos, who represents the dark mirror half to the existentialism of the Scions, and what people feared existentialism would bring about ー uncaring humans who answer to no god, and thus are morally inculpable to whatever cruelty they desire.
  "We tower above the gods! You by your gift, I by my might! And before the Resonant the gods shall be made to kneel!"
  
• In Shadowbringers, the entire basis of our counterargument against Emet-Selch is an affirmation of existentialism; it is neither Gods nor Ancients that gives value to our lives, it is found within ourselves.
  "We define our worth, not the circumstances of our creation!"
  
• And finally, in Endwalker, we discover that even the benevolent mothercrystal that watched over and protected us ― the closest thing to a true god in the setting of XIV ― was nothing more than a construct crafted by humanity to end our own godhood, urging us to find our own strength and Answers within.

[1/2]

[DoH]

Neither of you played entirely through FFXIV from scratch to now... and or lack content severe... Endwalker is definately the best expansion to date, HW is not even coming close, nor SHB.... if you really have followed the story and not just claim to be having followed it, then you would know, you get a lot of the missing links to grand schemes finally solved and you get to work with it, also if you see the world our world Earth right now, alot of parallels weaved in as well, as was with all the other expansion, and as it is I do and did fancy seeing alot of the old crews again.... getting parts of the story revived inside my head and everything.

Endwalker > ALL

This is why you don't use jump potions, unless you actually are into the story, which is the main reason for the entire expansions, whenever it get to it.

"Someone couldn't possibly have a different opinion than me about this game - they must just not have played the game. Surely that's it!"

lmao okay, buddy. Let's just ignore the fact that I've played through the game, doing not only every MSQ quest but also every single side quest, maxed out all of my character levels prior to Endwalker's launch, gotten 1st place in Ishgard Restoration multiple times, etc. But sure, I thought that Endwalker was mediocre because I haven't actually "played the game."

[KatsuraJun]

cont.

As a side note, notice how the specific statement that causes Zenos to rethink his approach is Alisae's assertion that he needs to start considering the needs and wants of others. In essence, she's arguing that existentialism still needs to be married with empathy, or else you become a caricature of it. Theologists in real life argue all the time that without a god to constrain our morality and define our purpose, we will devolve into bloodthirsty, selfish animals driven purely by our whims. Sound familiar at all?

Anyway, these themes definitely have been established since the very beginning of the game. Meteion is not and was not meant to be the final antagonist or even an antagonist at all in a thematic sense, she merely serves as the vessel through which the antagonist is actually delivered, because it's quite difficult to punch philosophical concepts in the face, you see, and this is still a game in the end. That's why her relatively late introduction does little to harm the narrative integrity of the story, because if anything, she's just another victim to the self-destructive nihilism that the Scions are, and have been trying to defeat all along through existential nihilism. And in the end, they emerge victorious ー they cast away gods and faith in a supreme being for faith in themselves, each other, and you, which is exactly how you as the WoL are able to reach Meteion at the end of the universe.

[2/2]

[The_Bp]

FOREWARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS



Huge Amounts of Pointless Time Sinks
Endwalker introduced a lot of mechanics that were completely pointless and did nothing to further the story but instead just dragged out the number of hours of "gameplay" in this expansion. These include the "guide this NPC around" quests, "stalk this NPC" quests, and "follow this NPC" quests. I realize that iterations of these mechanics have been present in quests in past expansions, but it felt like there were numerous of these quests in every single zone in Endwalker. Normally, you could just mount up and run over to the next spot, or even use the aetheryte. However, in Endwalker, you now have to stick with a slow NPC and walk/run across the map on foot as part of the MSQ. I think the best example of this is when you're body-swapped in Garlemald and, at the end of that quest, you literally have to crawl across part of the map before you finally trigger the cutscene. "Gameplay" like this was tedious, unnecessary, and not "fun" whatsoever (mainly because it was so easy that it was almost impossible to fail any of these quests). It didn't feel like I was playing a game, but rather doing a chore. I'm not sure why SE decided to suddenly add a bunch of crappy mechanics like this.

Endwalker also saw an increase of the Eulmore-type areas (e.g., the Garlean subway camp and Radz-at-Han) where you're annoyingly prevented from attuning to the aetheryte. This made a little bit of sense with the Garlean subway camp from a story perspective, but not Radz-at-Han, where you almost immediately come into the good graces of the folks in charge.

SE has also added new "achievements" like mounts and fashion pieces that effectively require you to do 4,000+ FATEs each. How about instead of creating rewards that incentivize people to do hundreds of hours of mind-numbingly boring content (which is what FATE grinding is), SE actually comes up with some fun, new content?

Strongly agree with all of this

[Kolaina]

The amount of escort missions. Don’t fly. Don’t teleport. Do not sprint. Walk, or start over. Drove me up the wall

[Ririta]

Sephiroth? Big sword mommas boy who goes Nihilistic because Mommy was a space monster.

Sephiroth for me will always be FFs most over rated and over valued villain.

But that's the thing, you aren't going to like every villain, some people absolutely dislike Emperor Palmecia but I thought he was a damn good villain.

Different strokes for different folks.

That's fine if you say it's a taste thing and if you don't like those super popular villains and I agree that different people like different things, but you did claim that the "generic doomsday villain" is a thing in every Final Fantasy which is not true at all.