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

[KageTokage]

I was honestly expecting both Mare Lamentorum and Elpis would be dedicated to sorting out the loose threads surrounding the Hydaelyn/Zodiark conflict and the Sundering...but that largely ended up being an afterthought in the end.

I'll stand by my single biggest disappointment being that we never actually got to see Hydaelyn and Zodiark fight it out, but I would've liked if they had at least made it so the former's actions felt more justified and concrete in the reasoning involved instead of revolving mostly around flimsy ideology that feels extremely unconvincing between evidence and lack of context.

Has this thread fallen so far below that most of you are resorting to stroking egos with "I can totally write a better story than EW"?

You have a very narrow perspective if you think "most" people here are saying that...but then again, it's pretty obvious most of the naysayers haven't actually looked at more then a few of the pages of the thread and are likely fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the topic in any meaningful manner (As is evident from the tags people have been throwing on it...).

I'm also not sure what you mean by "fallen so far below" unless you're trying to insinuate that the people complaining are in fact, wrong, and EW is a spotless masterpiece undeserving of criticism.

People are complaining simply because it did not hold up under their scrutiny like the previous expansions did. I personally kept my expectations in check and didn't expect it to be better then ShB, but once the initial hype and emotions wore off, I was still left feeling sour about it in multiple ways when that wasn't the case for any of the prior expansions (Which I tended to actually appreciate more as time went on).

That is not to say I didn't still largely enjoy it, but I feel they mishandled key lore that has been central to the plot for years and the resolution was unsatisfying; especially when as has been stated ad infinitum, they doubled down on trying to push Venat/Hydaelyn as unquestionably good and the one with the moral high ground with little to actually support it after ShB had tried to add shades of gray to the conflict.