Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[Tehmon]

The main story quest is obviously not going to focus on lighthearted adventures, but there's something to be said about letting the story and the world breathe a little and not jump from one disaster to another. The state of urgency and impending doom has been present since 4.5, and there are very few moments afterwards where it has felt appropriate to slow down and enjoy the other stuff the game has to offer beyond MSQ.

But this is obviously more of a personal problem, as I feel really awkward and perhaps guilty leaving the MSQ at a point with a lot of tension and where the world is basically unraveling lol.

[Rannie]

The main story quest is obviously not going to focus on lighthearted adventures, but there's something to be said about letting the story and the world breathe a little and not jump from one disaster to another. The state of urgency and impending doom has been present since 4.5, and there are very few moments afterwards where it has felt appropriate to slow down and enjoy the other stuff the game has to offer beyond MSQ.

But this is obviously more of a personal problem, as I feel really awkward and perhaps guilty leaving the MSQ at a point with a lot of tension and where the world is basically unraveling lol.

Eh just remember the screw the world imma going fishing mentality can be very healthy!

Not to mention yummy if we go by wawalago and his drooling over the fish we catch....

Edit: ... yeah I'm at work with not much to do except this, play games on my tablet or sleep... sorry!

[MikkoAkure]

The funny thing is while listening to the tales of our Azem I thought, "Wow, they had a lot more fun than my WoL's ever had. I want to go on their adventures." Lighter moments in the MSQ are rather few and far between. All through HW & SB we were involved in wars. The First was essentially a post-apocalyptic world we were trying to save and nearly died in the process. I mean, Hell, if you were to ask me to share some of the funnier moments in FFXIV I'm honestly drawing a blank aside from the moogles in HW or the pixies in ShB.

Or like most mainline FF games, the plot is driven by world-shattering bad stuff happening and Azem lived in a time of peace until the very end. Plus, as an MMO, they need to keep the narrative and escalations going longer than they would in a stand-alone game. FFXI was the same way.

Moogles weren’t exactly the most loved part of HW either when it was relevant. Yoshi-P even said he hated one of the moogle quests and acknowledged that the playerbase as a whole started hating moogles in HW.

The EW equivalent of “breather moment” like the moogles and pixies would be the bunny mascot comedic-relief characters on the moon doing cute poses and being silly in the middle of an apocalypse.

[Cleretic]

My reading of Azem is that they were playing an open world game that isn't actually very engaging or interesting by the way the game developers actually intended the thing be played, but is extremely fun to break if you're smarter than the developers were.

Basically, they were playing Oblivion, including the part where they blew off the main quest. But unlike Oblivion, the apocalypse didn't wait for them.

[Rulakir]

I didn't mean to derail the thread with my comment about lack of amusement in the MSQ. :P It was more thinking about the idea of Venat liking the sound of the sundered world better than theirs. We've done nothing but fight wars, primals, and almost die in the process of saving a post-apocalyptic world. Were I an Ancient listening to the WoL I'd be like, "Sounds awful, you should stay here." :P

[Lucida3b]

Most of my thoughts have been layed out in this thread or a few others

But to give my two cents, I Feel like one issue that is not heavily been talked about (as far as I can see anyway) is that Shadowbringers as noted goes for that moral/philosophical ambiguity, vs Endwalker going for 'this is the correct answer' at times, which results In a disconnect. (Along with how Endwalker makes or renders some parts of Shadowbringers a tad 'iffy' to say the least)

The former feels far more what Ishikawa does than the latter, and even Endwalker goes back and forth on this like with Alisaei noting that what could break some people could barely phase others In Ultima Thule. All of which makes me somewhat lean towards multiple writing ideas for venat OR Covid issues making polishing the writing a lot harder.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Most of my thoughts have been layed out in this thread or a few others

But to give my two cents, I Feel like one issue that is not heavily been talked about (as far as I can see anyway) is that Shadowbringers as noted goes for that moral/philosophical ambiguity, vs Endwalker going for 'this is the correct answer' at times, which results In a disconnect. (Along with how Endwalker makes or renders some parts of Shadowbringers a tad 'iffy' to say the least)

The former feels far more what Ishikawa does than the latter, and even Endwalker goes back and forth on this like with Alisaei noting that what could break some people could barely phase others In Ultima Thule. All of which makes me somewhat lean towards multiple writing ideas for venat OR Covid issues making polishing the writing a lot harder.

Yeah it feels like they dropped a lot of that ambiguity in comparison to shadowbringers which is such a shame. I feel like it was some personal biases that got in the way honestly. Especially with the way Yoshi P emphasized how much time they supposedly spent on Venat/Hydaelyn and how she made him cry etc.

[Kyohei]

Might be, but I'm more of the mind that him wishing to "continue the hype of ShB" and thus deciding to wrap things up completely in 6.0 instead of 7.0 had a greater impact on how the story ended up.
When they had initially in mind to continue developing things and ending them in the span of two expansions then the final decision is to make everything in one...there is bound to be details left to be desired. Especially when working with tight deadlines, and covid issues impacting the team.

[Lucida3b]

Yeah it feels like they dropped a lot of that ambiguity in comparison to shadowbringers which is such a shame. I feel like it was some personal biases that got in the way honestly. Especially with the way Yoshi P emphasized how much time they supposedly spent on Venat/Hydaelyn and how she made him cry etc.

Yeah, Like shadowbringers with emet went with the whole 'you may be superior, but the moral cost of allowing your plan to go through is too high' from people like Alisaei or Y'shtola, so it honestly in some ways feels quite OOC for them to not be more critical of hydealyn/venat, not even including the stuff like the twins compassion for garlemald citizens as well.

I can also comment on her criticism on the whole dynamis and creation magic to be a bit funny, when as Ultima Thule shows that some basic creation magic can counteract the dynamis effect pretty hard, to the point where Meteoin seems to never even try again to delete them.