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

[Nebelheim]

And before the writers decided to write an actual backstory and motivations for the Ascians, Hydaelyn and Zodiark were basically just Altana and Promathia from FF11 with the serial numbers filed off and in some aspects, they still are. Speaking of FF11, Ishgard is San d'Oria from FF11 with just a few differences.

Now that you mentioned this Ishgard has a lot of san'doria vibes even down to being exclusively inhabited by elezen only and both cities having semi similar styles of music. I never thought about it until now even hilda looks pretty similar to Lilisette and referencing her as there both hald hyur and elezen.