What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Theodric]

This is exceptionally condescending Theodric.

You're free to believe as much, though I merely wish for a return to meaningful consequences and actual stakes. Cheap and predictable emotionally manipulative tropes do very little to excite me and I shall not pretend as if they do.

How many times has Y'shtola 'died' by this point? It's clear to me that whenever the Scions are in danger, it is not going to amount to anything and as such the lengthy scenes pretending as if they are equates to the same style of busywork filler as the infamous banquet related errands back in the days of ARR.

[EaraGrace]

You're free to believe as much, though I merely wish for a return to meaningful consequences and actual stakes. Cheap and predictable emotionally manipulative tropes do very little to excite me and I shall not pretend as if they do.

How many times has Y'shtola 'died' by this point? It's clear to me that whenever the Scions are in danger, it is not going to amount to anything and as such the lengthy scenes pretending as if they are equates to the same style of busywork filler as the infamous banquet related errands back in the days of ARR.

You’re allowed your feelings, but the insults and denigrations were and will remain unnecessary.

[Theodric]

You’re allowed your feelings, but the insults and denigrations were and will remain unnecessary.

Again, each to their own - I certainly wouldn't consider the post in question to be riddled with insults. It was more of an observation of an established trend!

My posting style isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea though given that tone policing rarely leads to anything beyond perpetually moving goalposts and increasing double standards, I must confess to having very little interest partaking in it.

[ApolloGenX]

One thing I did like was fighting Hydaelyn. If nothing else it was a little different than Venat turning into just another mana goddess rolling around in her panties.... although there was plenty of that.

[OhNooo]

One thing I did like was fighting Hydaelyn...

So I was on discord the first run through that fight. The part where she says something like "Fly, my children, and never look back," I was like "Don't call me that. It's been years hearing your annoying hear feel think in my head and me having painful black outs from the echo. Time for you to go." Everybody was laughing so hard on voice when I said that lol. I was slightly joking but yeah, definitely glad we don't have to be anyone's "servant" anymore. I think my character is gonna go to Garlemald and hang out with Julius for a little while.

[Caurcas]

Zenos in the body of a Fem Ra was not very threatening. Smug face was on point though.

[van_arn]

I really enjoyed Graha as the exarch, so personally for me it was extremely sad to see him kind of…brought down to just fanservice and hero worship. Now he’s mainly just used as fodder for “cute” moments or super uber powerful move moment.

I enjoyed his Exarch scene in Radz during the start of the Final Days.

[Kozh]

It doesn’t help with all of the teasing they were doing with Zenos’ lines consisting of “You will come to me full of rage…” It definitely seems like there were a lot of last minute changes done for the story. I wouldn’t be surprised if originally he was meant to kill someone whilst in our body and that would send the WoL over the edge. But can’t have too much grit i guess during an end of days apocalypse

Lol this also reminds me of vythra's dialogue. "your friends will be dragged into your fate". They keep bringing it up like it's some kind of foreshadowing, and turns out it amount to nothing.

[Rise-chu]

Can confirm that Endwalker was pretty bad. It had its good moments for sure but they didn't last and for some reason the dev team really chickened out on doing anything that wasn't cute or fanservicey.

We're far away from Heavensward or Stormblood where actions had consequences. I am not one of those people that wanted deaths in the cast -- I'm fine with everyone surviving. But I don't like that the main cast was essentially Mary Sues that simpered their way through out the entire expansion without a scratch on them. This has been a consistent problem for years now where the dev team is absolutely terrified of doing something permanent to the main cast. And the thing is, I don't think the Scions are actually beloved enough to warrant that kind of fearfulness so I don't understand where it's coming from.

Really atrocious story quality and Ishikawa and Oda are supposed to be good at this. I'm really disappointed if this is the quality of story we can expect from them going forward, where the threats are pointlessly neutered before they even begin and we're supposed to be focusing on sitting around in Sharlayan having a tea party while the apocalypse is supposedly happening.

[ReynTime]

Can confirm that Endwalker was pretty bad. It had its good moments for sure but they didn't last and for some reason the dev team really chickened out on doing anything that wasn't cute or fanservicey.

We're far away from Heavensward or Stormblood where actions had consequences. I am not one of those people that wanted deaths in the cast -- I'm fine with everyone surviving. But I don't like that the main cast was essentially Mary Sues that simpered their way through out the entire expansion without a scratch on them. This has been a consistent problem for years now where the dev team is absolutely terrified of doing something permanent to the main cast. And the thing is, I don't think the Scions are actually beloved enough to warrant that kind of fearfulness so I don't understand where it's coming from.

Really atrocious story quality and Ishikawa and Oda are supposed to be good at this. I'm really disappointed if this is the quality of story we can expect from them going forward, where the threats are pointlessly neutered before they even begin and we're supposed to be focusing on sitting around in Sharlayan having a tea party while the apocalypse is supposedly happening.

Well, they lost the best writer in XIV for XVI to let someone who is apparently obsessed with trying to make people cry and power of friendship speeches... Yeah the old writer is still around but his involvement in ShB and EW is very minimal.