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

[Escalon]

Its honestly only here on the official forums where the hate seems to be more concentrated. Reddit, YouTube and every Facebook page I'm subscribed to seems to love it. Hell, it's still at 91% critical rating and 94% user rating on Metacritic (and one of the user scores is actually a mistake where he gave it a zero but praised the entire game).

The forums just seems to have a very vocal minority.

I'll just correct you on something, Reddit, Facebook and Metacritic are also minorities so is this forum as you say, The absolute majority of this game does not interact with any of those sites, at best they watch videos on YT.

The game has around 1200 ratings on Metacritic, that is such a ridiculous small portion of the 900k+ people who play, one has to take it with a grain of salt and so one has to take the forums as such. I dont liked EW, I explained why, but I wont go on Metacritic, Facebook, Reddit or any other site just to write about it, and so would the absolute majority.

Heck, I joined those forums not so long ago, even though I was playing the game on and off for 8 years, I was the part of the silent majority who make their judgements for them selves and dont vent it, we either just leave silently, keep playing silently or start to voice our opinions.

[Sathona]

Oh not again

[Rulakir]

The official forums is one of the few places I've seen others say they feel safe posting critical feedback and even here I see people are trying to shut down conversation. I've been PMed on Reddit by people telling me they didn't like EW and can't express themselves because they'll be downvoted into oblivion if they do. One person told me you'll get dog piled on if you say anything negative in the official discord. Frankly, if you don't want to read opinions about EW that aren't positive you have a lot of options. Let people who didn't like it discuss it.

Anyway, my main complaints revolve around time travel and Venat/Hydaelyn. The time loop resulting in a bootstrap paradox, the sundering being intentional, Venat keeping her memories, etc. The ending of Elpis (the best part of the expansion) was nonsensical, unsatisfying, and unfortunately soured the remaining story for me. We're supposed to believe Venat is this tragic heroine when she withheld information about the Final Days and destroyed her own people/civilization because they weren't dealing with their trauma and grief after an apocalypse to her liking. Additionally, she followed the roadmap to the future the WoL had gifted her, so now the player character is an accomplice to 12k years' worth of atrocities. The only people who have more blood on their hands are Hermes and Meteion.

They even go as far as to have Hydaelyn's primal model a literal angelic figure, in case you weren't browbeaten enough as to how benevolent and good she was, while Zodiark appears demonic despite that not befitting his summoners, his heart, or his purpose. As a player, your dialog options towards her are exclusively affirmative, you cannot express dislike for what she's done and all of the NPCs are on her side for that full gaslight effect.

I didn't care enough about the rest to have a strong opinion about it, but the stars of the Hydaelyn & Zodiark saga were so disappointing in how they were handled.

[Hanaya]

By and large I really enjoyed the endwalker story. It felt like a fitting end to the entire saga starting from arr until now, and also had the side effect of making me very existential. There were a fair number of things I did dislike about the story. loporrits in general, both for being generally annoying, and also absolutely killing any sense of urgency and emotional weight of the story multiple times. By the time I got to ultima thule, the entire saga of doing pointless stuff in labrynthos had deleted any story momentum for me and it took a while for me to actually become invested in the story again. my other main issue was the intense plot armor every important character had - the whole "resurrect every single scion right before the final fight" thing kind of removed the main emotional reason I had for wanting to fight the final boss.

The combo of labrynthos loporrit vibe-killer and having all the scions miraculously returned made the last fight feel like "well, I guess I do this now so I can finish the expac" instead of "I need to defeat this thing so that I can avenge the sacrifices my friends made to get me here/hopefully bring them back." also the intense plot armor certain scions had in previous expacs (y'shtola is the worst offender, how many times has she fake-died at this point?) also made most of the sacrifices feel kind of meaningless, because obviously they were all going to come back because that's what always happens. Though g'raha and the twins did get me pretty good; I knew they'd get verraised very soon, but their dialogue was really well-written and their loyalty and love for the wol felt really profound (and also the victorious culmination of alphi and alisaie's arc).

but really, overall, endwalker is my favorite expac. I felt like its lows were way lower than shb or heavensward (my other 2 fav expacs, though that's also like... almost all the expacs, story's just too good to choose), but its highs were so incredibly high that I really loved it. I loved the zodiark fake out, the beginning of the final days in thavnair (the kid getting turned into a beast and then immediately killed made me upset for an entire day lol), the garlemald solo instance, every single thing about elpis (especially getting to see emet/hythlo/venat in the past, and the meteion part at the end that kinda freaked me out), the latter half of ultima thule. honestly the most impressive thing was how they took fandaniel, a character I really didn't care about and mostly found annoying, and made me cry over him multiple times. started the expac by saying "there's absolutely no way they make me like fandaniel," and then ishikawa face slapped me.

but god, I hated the loporrits. though I generally dislike characters who mostly exist to provide 1-dimensional comedic relief and like... be cute, I guess? didn't help that I don't find them cute at all, probably.

[xenahawk]

Well to each their own what they look for in a story but i loved how most of us figured oh zodiark the big baddie for the expansion and no he was just the halfway point averting the end of days is the real threat, i liked that it actually made more sense if you want to end the hydalyn/venat story, solve the problem she couldnt. now i grant you though not everything was a shock like figured somehow meteion and to a certain degree hermes played a part in the end of days shortly after meeting them. Its like really you give someone with the mentality of a child hypersensitive to emotions what harm can come from that. But it still worked and i liked it. Im not an emotional person but man this expansion had tears in my eyes a good many times, even when i thought i had no more to give. Maybe the could have stretch the story out more but even though im sad its over thought things were paced well.

[xenahawk]

Its honestly only here on the official forums where the hate seems to be more concentrated. Reddit, YouTube and every Facebook page I'm subscribed to seems to love it. Hell, it's still at 91% critical rating and 94% user rating on Metacritic (and one of the user scores is actually a mistake where he gave it a zero but praised the entire game).

The forums just seems to have a very vocal minority. Honestly, most posts on the forums seem to do nothing but criticize the game. The place is a ****show most of the time with very little in the way of productive discussion.

Its sad but unfortunately forums seem to be the breeding ground of negativity. For how loved in general this game is i was shocked to see that their forums are pretty much what i have seem on other game sights.

[Rhysati]

Its honestly only here on the official forums where the hate seems to be more concentrated. Reddit, YouTube and every Facebook page I'm subscribed to seems to love it. Hell, it's still at 91% critical rating and 94% user rating on Metacritic (and one of the user scores is actually a mistake where he gave it a zero but praised the entire game).

Just gonna point out that some of the worst MMOs and expansions in gaming history were wildly praised at release and then later listed as one of the worst things ever.

Case in point: WoW's Warlords of Draenor. At release people were raving about how it was the best expansion the game had yet had. A small portion of the playerbase disagreed and were generally ripped to shreds by those who adored it as the best MMO expansion in the history of the world.

And then reality eventually caught up with that expansion and it became known as the worst MMO expansion ever made.

[Misutoraru]

I'll just throw my 2 cents in here. And I would like to say, this is really my personal opinion, nothing else.

I liked the story for what it was meant to do, aka end the Zodiark/Hydaelyn saga.

But outside of that ? It really felt lackluster, rushed and average at best, the pacing was really all over the place. But what ever, I overall got what I paid for.
This has also a lot to do with me really getting tired of this world savior role and I hope that the implications from the story show true that we return to just being a "normal" (as a savior of the universe can be) adventurer.
I

It is quite average expansion in my taste.
It is good to finally put an end to Zodiark/Hydaelyn arc, and overall I am quite satisfied and enjoy the writing for this plot.

I enjoy the plot in Garlemald the most but feel very rush, I would prefer they put more content in Garlemald and left out thavnair for future expansion.

Sharlayan plot line feel very very slow pace and boring at the beginning with all the politic, but when we revisit it at higher level, the change of tone suddenly speed up so quickly. it feel like low level of Sharlayans plot is at a pace of reach 10 out of 100, and when we come back again it suddenly go from 10 to 100.

Zenos have a very good character development in EW, we could finally understand the “reason” behind his madness. Yet, Hermes feel very forced, being a head of testing facility he run a little project without prove testing it, without peer reviewing it, in a field with very little understanding and decide to send them out for one of the most demanding and challenging task.

Not to mention I really don’t like the idea of time traveling especially with all the paradox we have in FFXIV

[xenahawk]

I get why people get disappointed by the scions coming back but me personally i was overjoyed that they did. Me and an FC mate were within a couple quests of each other in the last zone and i remember telling him a few minutes after estinien that i dont know exactly how but im gonna dr who this shit and save all my friends, even if my toon gotta die to do it. Though i said that it was more wishful thinking then actually knowing but was still thrilled they came back. I was even a bit worried thinking i brought them back just to watch them die again... but the whole my toon hitting the teleporter button then dropping it like that i felt was a pretty boss moment. I understand that why some feel a bit cheated though.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I think i’d put it below stormblood for me, with shb being the best and HW coming after that. It’s a shame because i think the beginning portions of this expansion were great. Garlemald, thavnair, especially the second visit we’re very well done. Everything else was just a mess for me. The final days hardly felt like a threat when we’re having a lunch date in sharlayan with the skies nice and clear. No one important died or even faced any consequences. Numerous plot threads just dropped that might’ve actually put some stakes into the story(yshtola’s life draining from heavensward for example. Just completely dropped cuz can’t kill off any scions lul.) It all just felt very safe and bland at specific points. Feel like i’m playing more of a slice of life anime most of the time than i am an actual rpg, and it’s such a contrast from how ARR and HW and even SB was where we’re seeing this constant death around us, where even as the wol we lose things, there’s that feeling of no one is safe, that we need to try our hardest to survive but now that’s just gone. We have dynamis now to always be our asspull plot armor for everything in the future.