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

[Heroman3003]

I would love for that to be Zero's fate. Great way to get rid of her so a new, more interesting character can be introduced.

No new character will be 'interesting' from the getgo. Absolutely no matter what it will be, the moment new character is introduced as part of 'main group', there will be SOME loud people who will instantly start a bemoaning of how much they hate them and how boring and predictable/annoying and obnoxious/generic and unintereting the new character is and how they cant wait for them to die off to get replaced with a 'more interesting character'. All while in next paragraph complaining about scions always being there and relevant.

[Absimiliard]

No new character will be 'interesting' from the getgo. Absolutely no matter what it will be, the moment new character is introduced as part of 'main group', there will be SOME loud people who will instantly start a bemoaning of how much they hate them and how boring and predictable/annoying and obnoxious/generic and unintereting the new character is and how they cant wait for them to die off to get replaced with a 'more interesting character'. All while in next paragraph complaining about scions always being there and relevant.

No, but there are ways of making a character at least appealing enough at introduction to warrant some investment in where their story arc will go. Enough people dislike Zero that one should at least be willing to entertain the idea SE failed to do this. As well, one should acknowledge the possibility of the direction that character's development has gone in being something more than just a handful of players dislike.

Very seldom do video game characters that stick around for an excessive period of time not wind up overstaying their welcome. You can witness this in action with the myriad of Scion complaints from practically all of the different demographics playing this game. The Scions going their own separate ways after sadbird's defeat gave me a taste of something bitter: hope that SE had realized this. Unfortunately, that hope was dashed in the very next patch.

[Heroman3003]

No, but there are ways of making a character at least appealing enough at introduction to warrant some investment in where their story arc will go. Enough people dislike Zero that one should at least be willing to entertain the idea SE failed to do this. As well, one should acknowledge the possibility of the direction that character's development has gone in being something more than just as vocal minority some posters would like to represent nay-sayers as.

Very seldom do video game characters that stick around for an excessive period of time not wind up overstaying their welcome. You can witness this in action with the myriad of Scion complaints from practically all of the different demographics playing this game. The Scions going their own separate ways after sadbird's defeat gave me a taste of something bitter: hope. Unfortunately, these hopes were dashed in the very next patch.

Enough people will be loud about disliking any character to make a sweeping statement about writers' failure, won't make it any more true. Zero is by far the freshest breath of air in terms of new characters not overlapping too hard with old/pre-existing ones, IMO. And while her personality is 'bland', thats kinda the point. She's in a 'learn how to feel' character arc right now, and we haven't really had cold and distant allies since like... Heavensward I'd say, where that was only by virtue of Estinien and Ysayle being too at odds with one another to properly get closer to us. Her arc is nothing groundbreaking but absolutely nothing in entire history of FF14's writing really ever was, it was just good execution of existing tropes and subversions and that's what I like about it, nor do I expect anything groundbreaking either (and if there will be, I'll just be satisfied with a pleasant surprise). And of course, there's a big issue of introducing a whole cast of new characters to replace old ones - it will be even harder to give them all time and attention needed to be nearly as developed and likeable. Hell, even Scions were basically scattered after ARR and then slowly re-introduced few-by-few to try and salvage the fact that it was pretty hard to get invested into any scions except one(s) you meet in 1-15 MSQ. I'd say it was mostly successful for me. And I am definitely more a fan of cast being slowly altered over time rather than suddenly dumped and replaced with a bunch of literally whos. That definitely would kill investment for way more players than the few who are bored of existing characters.