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

[PawPaw]

I'm leaning towards 6.1 being "confusing" by Yoshi's definition in that literally nothing bad is going to happen and we'll actually get to go do some casual adventuring without some kind of problem big or small warranting our presence...though it's probably going to end on an ominous cliffhanger regardless given suggestions that 6.x is going to have a proper Endwalker-related story arc of some sort, which I further suspect is going to involve a certain clingy individual who can't seem to stay out of our hair whether just in body alone or soul as well.

I am a little curious who our trusts are going to be if all the Scions are off doing their own thing, too.

I presume you're talking about a certain blondie? I feel as though we won't see him resurface for a good while. I doubt they'd bring him back as soon as 6.1 but hey, I'm happy to be proven wrong.

And that's a good question, assuming the Scions won't be with us (except for maybe G'raha?) maybe our Trust squads will be made up of those generic NPCs they were talking about for the lower level MSQ dungeons?

[Ixon]

And that's a good question, assuming the Scions won't be with us (except for maybe G'raha?) maybe our Trust squads will be made up of those generic NPCs they were talking about for the lower level MSQ dungeons?

Honestly, that's what I was thinking reading this. I actually think it would be pretty cool and "adventure-like" if in following dungeons we were just with other "random travelers" to get us back to those roots. Like if everyone is off doing there own thing, we get word of something somewhere and go investigate, and bump into some other random adventurers to do the next dungeon. It would do it well to scale down both our character and the story for a bit before the next big thing. Have us go back to "The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak"(one of the few dungeons without a hard mode) with some completely random travelers on word of a void-woken residing within and a wealthy person offering a bounty for "X" reason.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

And that's a good question, assuming the Scions won't be with us (except for maybe G'raha?)

I'm gonna be honest, I'd rather take all the same old faces with me again as long as that meant G'raha stays behind. Such egregious devolution I have never seen before. Instead of progressing with the character, they just doubled down on the worst parts. People may use "cringe" a little too often, but when one completely naturally does that when watching the same old wacky hijinks, I don't know what else I could say.

[Theodric]

I'm gonna be honest, I'd rather take all the same old faces with me again as long as that meant G'raha stays behind. Such egregious devolution I have never seen before. Instead of progressing with the character, they just doubled down on the worst parts. People may use "cringe" a little too often, but when one completely naturally does that when watching the same old wacky hijinks, I don't know what else I could say.

Yeah, it's pretty weird. Such characters work best when they're based around consent. If someone doesn't like Haurchefant or G'raha then having them fawn over their character at every possible turn becomes jarring and questionable. Most RPG's have the decency to give the player the opportunity to tell such characters to back off - yet we never get such a luxury in FFXIV.

Which, in itself, seems to be a major issue with the game's writing lately. It assumes that you like X, Y and Z and dislike A, B and C. Yet any reasonable person would come to the conclusion that personal tastes vary and certain characters can very quickly overstay their welcome if they're near constantly front and centre in the narrative.

That's probably why Heavensward was so loved - not only did it give us a break from the Scions for the most part, it was a largely coherent and self contained experience. It introduced new characters and allowed them to have their fair share of time in the spotlight and grow as characters.