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

[Vyrerus]

Papolymo I guess "died" when he very well could have just essentially casted "Flow" to dissipate his body into the Lifestream after attempting to recreate the Cocoon to slow down Shinryu.

Well, no, he couldn't have. It's rather explicit that successfully making the cocoon used all of his life and aether, which is why when the cocoon finally broke, Lyse's Archon tattoo, that Papalymo had aetherically put on her, faded away.

[Silverquick]

Well I finally made it up to the Meteion arc, and completed that. And I admit this doesn't really feel like the story they originally intended. While it certainly has its cool points too, it just doesn't feel like what the story was originally supposed to turn out like.

You know what I think happened here. They intended to go into the ascians, but entire Shadowbringers arc was so good it made you actually start to care about them and think they weren't such bad guys after all. That they were fighting for a world they'd lost and it was more of a case of two parties, you and them... fighting to preserve your own worlds. You couldn't think of them as the bad guys anymore.

SO they changed what the original story was supposed to be.

When I look back on ARR and Heavensward, especially the Alliance Raids which is where a lot of this stuff was filled out, we always knew about the Voidsent which were more like Demons, and that was what they Ascians were supposed to be. Some kind of corrupted ancients that had become demons. More that they shattered their own world and became the void, ie the real demons, the empty shells consuming life. The Void was the darkness and the shattered world. The Alliance Raids of Heavensward and ARR both bear this out. This was the Darkness they were talking about that was consuming the world.

So they came up with the Meteion arc to distance it from the Ascians being actual bad guys.

It doesn't suck... but it also feels... well... like it doesn't really belong. At least not if you were there in the beginning.

I wonder if this is what contributes to the general malaise of people just not really caring anymore. That they didn't get the story they thought they were playing.

[Theodric]

I think it just comes down to a lack of consistency. We always knew that Hydaelyn was responsible for the Sundering, which in itself was always an act of genocide. It was just a matter of whether it was an intentional act or an accident - and quite a few of us were more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt prior to Endwalker. As it happened, not only were her motives exceptionally dubious none of them hold up under even the slightest bit of scrutiny or would be accepted if they were instead aimed at the protagonists of the story. So I never got the impression that the story was ever going to be black or white even when we only knew some vague details.

I know a lot of people who only really started paying attention to the story during Heavensward and again in Shadowbringers due to the nuance that was present. Stories involving straight up 'good guys vs bad guys' only really work if the 'bad guys' are allowed to earn a victory from time to time. Sephiroth and Kefka are so memorable precisely because they 'won' to an extent. Yet the game's increasing aversion to anything resembling meaningful consequences for the main cast ensures that it's often difficult to care about anything that the Scions do. The game likes to not only clad them in ridiculous levels of plot armour but pretend as if their specific point of view is almost always correct.

Many other RPG's have more varied characters with different opinions, personalities, belief systems and goals. They may align with certain interests from time to time but it doesn't stop them from clashing every now and then. FFXIV is in dire need of more than that and although Dawntrail promises to go down that route, I'd be surprised if it didn't result in the Scions all coming to agree by the end of the base MSQ's.

A lot of people were also hoping for a more interesting cause behind the Final Days. Some sort of alien entity along the lines of Lavos, Jenova or Ultima would have been perfect - and arguably a lot more engaging than Meteion. Dynamis was also a rather grotesque element to add into the equation and one I suspect was only conjured up out of nowhere to try and justify Venat's actions as a 'necessity'. It's just a shame that the game spent a decade being exceptionally preachy and screechy only to fail to commit when it mattered most. It basically just revealed that the Scions have no real issue with the things they claim to fiercely oppose so long as the 'correct' targets are being wiped out.

[BRVV]

FFXIV is in dire need of more than that and although Dawntrail promises to go down that route, I'd be surprised if it didn't result in the Scions all coming to agree by the end of the base MSQ's.

It's gonna be a nothingburger just like that one

I hate how they "simplified" everything in trying to make us the "good guys" and now we are genocide excusers that protect the sacred timeline where Garlean falls. We are actually so evil we don't see our enemies as people anymore and pad ourselves on the back and smile like a five year old.

[ReynTime]

I think it just comes down to a lack of consistency. We always knew that Hydaelyn was responsible for the Sundering, which in itself was always an act of genocide. It was just a matter of whether it was an intentional act or an accident - and quite a few of us were more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt prior to Endwalker. As it happened, not only were her motives exceptionally dubious none of them hold up under even the slightest bit of scrutiny or would be accepted if they were instead aimed at the protagonists of the story. So I never got the impression that the story was ever going to be black or white even when we only knew some vague details.

I know a lot of people who only really started paying attention to the story during Heavensward and again in Shadowbringers due to the nuance that was present. Stories involving straight up 'good guys vs bad guys' only really work if the 'bad guys' are allowed to earn a victory from time to time. Sephiroth and Kefka are so memorable precisely because they 'won' to an extent. Yet the game's increasing aversion to anything resembling meaningful consequences for the main cast ensures that it's often difficult to care about anything that the Scions do. The game likes to not only clad them in ridiculous levels of plot armour but pretend as if their specific point of view is almost always correct.

Many other RPG's have more varied characters with different opinions, personalities, belief systems and goals. They may align with certain interests from time to time but it doesn't stop them from clashing every now and then. FFXIV is in dire need of more than that and although Dawntrail promises to go down that route, I'd be surprised if it didn't result in the Scions all coming to agree by the end of the base MSQ's.

A lot of people were also hoping for a more interesting cause behind the Final Days. Some sort of alien entity along the lines of Lavos, Jenova or Ultima would have been perfect - and arguably a lot more engaging than Meteion. Dynamis was also a rather grotesque element to add into the equation and one I suspect was only conjured up out of nowhere to try and justify Venat's actions as a 'necessity'. It's just a shame that the game spent a decade being exceptionally preachy and screechy only to fail to commit when it mattered most. It basically just revealed that the Scions have no real issue with the things they claim to fiercely oppose so long as the 'correct' targets are being wiped out.

Agree with everything except Ultima.
He really shouldn't be compared to Lavos or Jenova. Those two are more akin forces of nature that barely look like something you can communicate at all with, which is part of the reason why they are scary. Ultima "looks" scary but is a monotome blabbermouth.
His motives are more stupid than Meteion's, and he literally comes out of nowhere even after the tedious exposition dump he gives.

[Theodric]

Agree with everything except Ultima.
He really shouldn't be compared to Lavos or Jenova. Those two are more akin forces of nature that barely look like something you can communicate at all with, which is part of the reason why they are scary. Ultima "looks" scary but is a monotome blabbermouth.
His motives are more stupid than Meteion's, and he literally comes out of nowhere even after the tedious exposition dump he gives.

I agree, though I was referring to the Ultima of Ivalice rather than the Ultima of FFXVI.

I wasn't a fan of how the antagonists were handled in FFXVI but it does match up with how unceremoniously some of FFXIV's antagonists are cast aside.

[ReynTime]

I agree, though I was referring to the Ultima of Ivalice rather than the Ultima of FFXVI.

I wasn't a fan of how the antagonists were handled in FFXVI but it does match up with how unceremoniously some of FFXIV's antagonists are cast aside.

Completely forgot that was a thing.
My only experiences with Ivalice are Vagrant Story and FFXII.

[ReynTime]

Watched someone play through the 6.4 and 6.5 MSQ.

If this writing style is how Dawntrail will roll, that expansion's MSQ is going to be complete shit. If I wasn't doing something else at the same time I would have fallen asleep in the middle of their livestream. Fanboys get angry people praise Emet-selch as a villain, but look at how they handled Meteion and Golbez FFS. Utterly boring.

[Supersnow845]

I have to admit the entire 6.x patch story fell completely flat to me

I never played 4 nor do I really intend to ever play 4, normally me not playing an older FF game doesn’t reduce my excitement of the game; I just don’t know what a particular boss calls back to, in this instance I feel like I was actively punished for not playing 4

Regardless I feel this story ultimately has the same problem eden does; I’d you are going to tackle world altering changes you have to actually follow through and see some change, the first kinda did this with removal of everlasting light but eden didn’t actually change the empty as it stands now, I know it’s waved away as “it’ll take many years for the changes made in eden to spread” but it ends up just feeling meaningless. The 13th was even worse, half a patch worth of story about cross world communication to punch a hole in the void veil and that’s it, I was legit expecting them to pour the light of the empty into the thirteenth and see some meaningful rebalancing of both

So now the void is lost as a potential future interesting plot point because if we go back it’s only going to be either “void restoration” that probably won’t actually go anywhere or more about the contramemoria which could just be any old war on the source and it also feels like we wasted 5 patches to achieve functionally nothing

We now have what half a patch to explain why we are going to the new world next expansion; heaven help if 7.0 is 6.x 2.0 because then the game loses it’s one massive selling point—- that of a halfway decent story in an MMO

[Theodric]

The Twelve were just wasted on something that ended up being wholly inconsequential. I was rolling my eyes and laughing at how they seriously pulled out the predictable 'ur so amazing and they luv mortals liek u' trope. It's telling that the game ignores that the player character and their allies are not actually acting as authentic mortals given that they're frequently empowered by third party sources.