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

[Vyrerus]

you'll find that the overwhelming majority of the playerbase

No, you won't. You'll find the subsection of the playerbase that posts on those sites. The majority of the playerbase doesn't care to discuss the game's writing or story direction. They're in FFXIV for the gameplay, aesthetics, and characters. The story, while widely praised as it has been since 2.0, is usually more or less window dressing / another positive they can comfortably acquiesce to, rather than think about.

It doesn't help to list sites like Twitter or Reddit, where there's an entire social dynamic/algorithmic dynamic etc. Where influencers will block you for any dissent, or you'll get downvoted into oblivion for even mild indifference. Or the algorithm is only showing things and people it'll think agree with you/you will like.

You can see the negative reactions here, because they are allowed to be here, and there's nothing that automatically hides them from you, unless you've expanded your personal blocklist to do so.

[Teraq]

It's okay to not like it, but to act as if your opinion is somehow representative of everyone when it isn't even close is bad form.

I know something that's even worse form: quoting someone then misrepresenting what they've said to build your little strawman.

At no point in that paragraph did Rulakir "act as if her opinion is somehow representative of everyone". She simply said "players", then "I've heard this has increasingly become a thing".

Try again.

Oh and by the way, we know. Why do you think dissent has congregated in this one specific place of the FFXIV social ecosystem? Do you think we are somehow unaware of what the vast majority thinks? How could we even be when the community exhibits this much toxic positivity? We've all been on Reddit and Twitter.

"She really was an Ancient, huh?"

I love how Endwalker does not merely tell without showing you – no, it is actively telling while showing you something else entirely on the side, then pretending you didn't just see that.

[Striker44]

So take these other sites representing a minority of the playerbase in their own right as licence be gaslit into the statement that a majority of the playerbase loves loves loves the MSQ? No, I think I won't.

You are using words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean. Ask anywhere. In game. Peruse the internet. FFXIV's story is overwhelmingly popular. You don't have to like the truth, but it doesn't make it any less true. At least using the same straw man arguments yourself that you and your buddies are claiming against me tells me all I need to know. It's sad some people desperately need justification and can't stand that their opinion is shared by very few. :\

[Lauront]

To be fair, while I can't say it inherently enthuses me as a concept, if they want to work with it to also showcase the downside of being more readily able to manipulate it, i.e. being more susceptible to it, and avoid retroactively using it to dunk on the ancients, I'd be cool with that, especially if it comes up as an issue in a more sundered shard. They did show this with how the revived Final Days were highly detrimental to the sundered as they directly affected them, but then it was over quite soon. So provided it's not just used to prop up the sundered further, it could be interesting.

[Teraq]

Honestly, at this point I kind of want them to do more with it so it feels less like something that was thrown in simply to create a threat that could actually bring down Ancient society.

This is the part that's always felt particularly bs to me. There is no reason why they couldn't have made the Final Days entirely based on empathic powers and overwhelming Ancients' self-control with pure emotion... other than cooking up a more plausible excuse for genocide.

[ReynTime]

I don't usually do this. I was enjoying reading the posts until you started blatantly derailing the discussion over a dozen pages ago. I'm not gonna say the name since this community is extremely ouchy-ouchy about anyone being rightfully pointed at but you know who you are.
If you want to contribute then quit trying to label people negatively based on their opinions or trying to compensate the lack of downvote button by lecturing them about what they dislike about the story. There are at least 2 large echo-chambers focused on kissing the ass of the division and how they have been handling the writing. If you think this comes across as an opposing echo-chamber, well that's what happens when you get essentially pushed away and forced to gather at the one place that lets you express yourself more freely.

[CrownySuccubus]

I don't usually do this. I was enjoying reading the posts until you started blatantly derailing the discussion over a dozen pages ago. I'm not gonna say the name since this community is extremely ouchy-ouchy about anyone being rightfully pointed at but you know who you are.
If you want to contribute then quit trying to label people negatively based on their opinions or trying to compensate the lack of downvote button by lecturing them about what they dislike about the story. There are at least 2 large echo-chambers focused on kissing the ass of the division and how they have been handling the writing. If you think this comes across as an opposing echo-chamber, well that's what happens when you get essentially pushed away and forced to gather at the one place that lets you express yourself more freely.

Gee, I don't know who you're talking about here, but I don't think whether or not a downvote button existed has anything to do with whether or not they reply or disagree with people. Or, as you put it "derail topics" which, apparently still means "replying to what people say".

Again, whoever this person is you're speaking about probably has the right to disagree with people as much as they have a right to state their opinions.

[Teraq]

I don't usually do this. I was enjoying reading the posts until you started blatantly derailing the discussion over a dozen pages ago. I'm not gonna say the name since this community is extremely ouchy-ouchy about anyone being rightfully pointed at but you know who you are.
If you want to contribute then quit trying to label people negatively based on their opinions or trying to compensate the lack of downvote button by lecturing them about what they dislike about the story. There are at least 2 large echo-chambers focused on kissing the ass of the division and how they have been handling the writing. If you think this comes across as an opposing echo-chamber, well that's what happens when you get essentially pushed away and forced to gather at the one place that lets you express yourself more freely.

I don't know who or what you're talking about. As far as I can see we are the only two posters currently on page 598... Curious!

That's fine I'll just post Alex Norris's little comic again. After all it's been... 56 pages since I originally posted it... and that was only 13 days ago... jesus.

[Rulakir]

Given how discussions have been going in other threads, I think it illustrates why this one is so appreciated.

As for dynamis, I hope they drop it. Meteion is the only reason we needed it and she's gone. There doesn't appear to be any other benefit to it aside from 'pushing limits', which is frankly only necessary due to being sundered. 'Authentic' mankind would be objectively more powerful. I'm still hoping the next 10 year arc is the WoL becoming progressively more whole (I need to have an unsundered Azem reunite with Emet & Hyth at the end of all this). I also think it's fully in line with Venat's mentality for everything to rejoin once Meteion had been defeated and mankind forced into her ideology. We'll see if Oda sticks to what he said about the sundering being "unstable", which was while Hydaelyn was alive. The situation should start to fall apart now unless, of course, this is her once again not experiencing any of the drawbacks that others do. Zodiark's magic disappearing with his demise but Hydaelyn's not would sadly be consistent with EW's writing.

[Teraq]

I'm still hoping the next 10 year arc is the WoL becoming progressively more whole (I need to have an unsundered Azem reunite with Emet & Hyth at the end of all this).

(inhales a long huff of copium)

We'll see if Oda sticks to what he said about the sundering being "unstable", which was while Hydaelyn was alive. The situation should start to fall apart now unless, of course, this is her once again not experiencing any of the drawbacks that others do. Zodiark's magic disappearing with his demise but Hydaelyn's not would sadly be consistent with EW's writing.

Of course. Only good magic stays. What is good magic, you ask? Well, Hydaelyn's, for starters, as the Mother Goddess of Light and Original Will of the Planet Made Manifest. Zodiark's, of course, evaporated as soon as he disappeared, as befits an ill-fated wish such as him. And, of course, Emet-Selch's Amaurot, which ... oh. His Amaurot stayed even though he literally died, but Elidibus's illusory star shower faded as soon as he was imprisoned in the Tower but he didn't actually die. Then we have Fandaniel's towers of the apocalypse, which... all disappeared as soon as we killed Anima? Crumbled? What about all the people inside? Was G'raha there to Break everyone's fall?? (I legitimately do not remember, that is how much gravity the first half of the plot was treated with) And that is just Aether-based magic, consider Dyn– Why am I asking this??? HOBBES HELP ME WE NEED TO REWRITE THOSE RULES

But yep. Dynamis has literally no reason to exist as it does, i.e. as some sort of "anti-Aether" which is inversely correlated to Aether density or whatever, other than giving us a very convenient excuse for wiping out the Ancients. The sole rule of Calvinball... Ancients can't win.