Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[KizuyaKatogami]

That's not what I got from that. He already knew these questions and he wasn't being surprised on them. He even said while answering this one that he talked with Ishikawa on it.

But if you think that he hesitated and that there's a deeper meaning to how he answered it, then I'm probably not going to be able to convince you otherwise anyway. The way he worded it itself is weird, I'll give you that. But I don't think that he hesitated while answering it and that there's some deep secret going on and that the writers have it written down somewhere that the Ancients totally could have beaten Meteion by doing XYZ and they're keeping it from us for reasons.




There's a difference between "lore discussion" and "the same people on each side on a crusade to stop the other from thinking their fav is problematic" and just as my example above, everyone is reading the same stuff and getting different ideas from it. I see the same posters saying the same things over and over, doubling-down on their convictions, and continuing to believe what they want to believe with an attitude that anyone who doesn't believe the same way that they believe doesn't have the same grasp of the lore that they do while the serpent eats its own tail and the cycle continues. I stopped coming to this thread because it stopped being fun a long time ago.

I never said you should stop, I don't control you, I just personally think it's a wasted effort and I can't wait until new content comes out that has nothing to do with this and this forum will move on.

I think the fact that theres this much discourse just shows the writer's didnt do a good enough job answering questions. The QnA seems to further hammer in this point when yoshi p answered a pretty important lore question so nonchalantly and it wasnt shown whatsoever in the expansion itself. That being the unsundered escaping the sundering. Not to mention they seemed a bit surprised on people wondering what Azem was up to.The game has always had themes about defying fate and there being other ways to fix things or save the world, i dont see why it would be any different for the Ancients. I dont know if the forum will move on from this because this was a key example of the kind of writing,themes,and morality the writers seem to follow, and i think people who disagree with those will continue to show contempt for it. I will say though if you think its wasted effort why bother responding to it in the first place? Im not questioning or gatekeeping your right to comment of course, but i keep seeing these people comment why cant we just move on when... theyre in a thread about a specific topic. If they want to move on people are free to make their own thread about other things.

[MikkoAkure]

I think the fact that theres this much discourse just shows the writer's didnt do a good enough job answering questions.

I think that's one thing everyone can agree on.

I will say though if you think its wasted effort why bother responding to it in the first place? Im not questioning or gatekeeping your right to comment of course, but i keep seeing these people comment why cant we just move on when... theyre in a thread about a specific topic. If they want to move on people are free to make their own thread about other things.

I was lurking and saw a weird take I felt like commenting on without wanting to take part in the word vomit posts going on back and forth. And then I made an off-hand comment wondering why people are continuing to get super into it when I guess I should've known better. But I also guess a snide comment I made at the end of a post becoming a topic of discussion means that the greater conversation has turned stale for everyone else as well.

[KageTokage]

It continues to bug me that the initially suggested reasons for the Sundering happening (Preservation of the new lives, Zodiark being a flawed solution to the Final Days) ended up feeling like a fake-out at minimum and at worst excuses or embellishments from Venat to gain sympathizers for a cause more believable then the long game she had in mind.

Which again loops back to the time travel/causal loop being the origin of my dissatisfaction and feeling like a cop-out to avoid having to give deeper reasons for why things happened as they did.

I could go on forever about ways they could've handled things better and likely made it more satisfactory for me and everyone else, but as mentioned, what's done is done and hopefully we'll have better things to speculate about in the future that don't end up similarly disappointing.

[EaraGrace]

Brinne already fantastically explained what I thought as well about the whole "it's an ideologue". Besides, you also left the rest of the context, aren't you? Her view doesn't stop at "find joy in darkness", but also to "triumph over it", which as Brinne said, she view suffering as something to make someone stronger. Not only that how people see and deal with suffering is subjective, her ideologue also conveniently ignore needless suffering and could come across as elitist.

If the claim is that her ideology is to “triumph over suffering”, then awesome! Great, that’s a great ideology to have. That’s not really what we’ve been arguing over regarding what her ideology is but hey this has been going for a bit.

And how people deal with suffering is on their own terms, yes completely agree.

But there are good ways and bad ways to do so.

Unending sacrifice, mindless all-consuming revenge, and willful ignorance are all ways people respond to suffering. But none of them are good. To call it elitism, or claim she simply ignores their suffering, is respectively ridiculous and indefensible as a claim. She weeped for those people, and bore witness to the consequences of her actions again and again.

And before it comes I already know the response will be “oh well that just makes up for everything.” But that’s not the point! She saw that Ancients had the strength and the capability to look away from the reality of the world they lived in. And so she sundered them, for that and many other reasons.

Speaking of facing suffering, if someone decided to avert their eyes from it and live in denial to keep them sane, what's our right to judge them?

If life is only bearable by looking away, by deciding to avert your eyes, then Hermes and Meteion are right. We can’t sustain the illusion forever and it will come crashing down on us eventually.

Because they only show us the end result and ask us to not think about it too much? The Dead Ends is pretty much moral messages condensed into 2-3 lines and crammed on a dungeon. Never mind the "how" and "what about". Not to mention that all the societies of those doomed worlds are just extreme caricature of all things we perceived as "bad". And I don't say this solely for defending the Ancients society, because if Yoshi-p said "yeah, the first/second world is definitely what the sundered world gonna be", then I would question it as well.

I don’t think the Plenty is a caricature, nor do I think the way the 1st or 2nd worlds were shown to be removed from reality. We are currently hurtling towards ecological collapse and humanity has been wrapped in a conflict that nearly brought Armageddon time after time for closing in on on a century now. What you call caricature I see as just the end of the path, simplistic in some respects yet still just as true.

So rebuilding their lives is a bad thing now? Sure, they might have get back those who had been sacrificed for Zodiark, but their experience and knowledge of Final Days will still be there. It's not like they want to literally turn back time to erase those event.

They literally do though, they want everything back the way it was. The people, the world, the lack of fear, all of it. They were willing to sacrifice new life for that purpose, entrust themselves to a god of their own creation, and bring back the “days of old.” The souls in Zodiark wail at the knowledge of death they gained from the Final Days, the fears that came forth. They wanted it all gone.

And yet it is for the benefit of the Sundered, just like the third sacrifice benefit the Ancients. If ShB follow the same timeloop rule as EW, those action would be seen the same as what the Ancients did when they ask to "reclaim their paradise", but even worse because they 100% erase those suffering and hardship from reality. Nobody to remember it and to learn from it. They're lucky it created new timeline, otherwise I think Hydaelyn would be very dissapointed in their choice.

The difference is clear, and it’s why this example is unimaginably frustrating. One was rooted in returning the world to a state for your own benefit, the other was done for the benefit of others. The moral difference is self evident, you literally have characters say it in the text!

You overused that term so much I started to think you're the one having bad faith argument. Could ask the same to you tbh. If you're going to be bad faith and cherry picking what yoshi-p said, why bother having this conversation? Or are you just trolling "the Ancient's stans"?

Oh don’t Kozh, this is a bad attempt to turn your mocking around on me. What did I cherry pick exactly? Post the whole quote and we’ll pick it apart if you’re confident, maybe then we’ll approach at least a hint of truth in our back and forth. To be quite frank I don’t see how anyone, whether you or anyone else, gets around Yoshi Ps statement on the matter of the Plenty and what it was envisioned to be for the Ancients. The parallels are clear. Combine that with Venats actions, her factions statements, Y’shtolas comments, and Emets line in Ultima Thule, and I think you have pretty good reason to think they wouldn’t best Meteion.

[Rulakir]

I can't wait until new content comes out that has nothing to do with this and this forum will move on.

Given that the next story is going to be a "conflict of values" I'm not sure lore discussions will change, they may become worse. I certainly don't have any confidence with the FFXIV team handling this theme after EW.

Regardless, this forum is usually kind of dead. It'd be mostly 'moving on' to inactivity until the next heated debate.

[KageTokage]

Given the next story is (Probably) going to be more grounded by necessity, I don't think whatever conflict is going on will be quite as world-shaking as Endwalker's and thus less controversial by nature.

A divide between the peace-seeking Garleans and the others stubbornly clinging to their patriotism and the old ways seems like an obvious direction they could go in and would provide a different flavor of political conflict from what we got in Heavensward and Stormblood. It would also provide an alternative means of providing the Garlemald-focused expansion they had originally been planning on before they decided to resolve the current story arc sooner then later.

[Lauront]

Given that the next story is going to be a "conflict of values" I'm not sure lore discussions will change, they may become worse. I certainly don't have any confidence with the FFXIV team handling this theme after EW.

Regardless, this forum is usually kind of dead. It'd be mostly 'moving on' to inactivity until the next heated debate.

Same. I'm open to seeing what they have planned, but having already not been impressed by how EW was handled (Q&A sort of did a bit of damage control but there were aspects of it I found blasé/weakly thought out), and seeing what the future direction may be, I'm not particularly confident I will enjoy whatever they have coming, and depending on what that is, a(n) (indefinite) break may be due. A lot of the reason people are expressing their dissatisfaction with the story is in the hopes that the devs will take some notice. As Lurina has mentioned before, they actively encourage feedback and read through it, hence many of us posting. Although I will agree with Mikko that this has long since become cyclical and isn't really moving any ground... at this point, with the Q&A now dissected/digested, I'm taking the "agree to disagree" approach.

[Rulakir]

A divide between the peace-seeking Garleans and the others stubbornly clinging to their patriotism and the old ways seems like an obvious direction they could go in and would provide a different flavor of political conflict from what we got in Heavensward and Stormblood. It would also provide an alternative means of providing the Garlemald-focused expansion they had originally been planning on before they decided to resolve the current story arc sooner then later.

Do you think Garlemald is going to get a lion's share of the focus going forward? It could work if it's something like Thordan. I understood his reasoning, but I knew his methods were flawed. It wasn't that dissimilar from Garlemald, although, I'm tired of the "if I/we control everything then the world will be a utopia" motivation.

I suspect we're not done with sympathetic antagonists though, which is more why I'm concerned. I'm not interested in an Ascians 2.0 where my heart breaks for the antagonist that I'm eventually going to be forced to destroy or, worse, having my WoL champion values I don't adhere to while I fundamentally agree with the antagonist. The last two years of real life has been enough conflict in values to last the rest of my days, frankly. :P I'd rather have a return to a Yotsuyu type villain for at least one expansion. Someone who's fun to hate, who I won't feel bad about defeating, and whose story I don't mind being over at the end of the MSQ.

[KageTokage]

I was really expecting certain elements like the Resonant to be much more prominent then they ended up being prior to Garlemald's collapse, so I don't think I'd mind seeing a "last hurrah" for the oppressive side of their regime with some of the remaining legions banding together and bringing all of the most dangerous magitek to bear in a bid to control Ilsabard... or they could opt for something even more complicated with them all being at odds with one another instead of a simple black and white situation.

It always seemed kind of suspicious to begin with that only a small fraction of the Garlean legions even bothered trying to retake the capital so it seems likely many of them had ulterior motives they were waiting to act on...made all the more concerning by the fact that we know basically nothing about what they've been up to aside from the ones we encountered first hand.

We also have no actual confirmation of Nerva being dead or alive and he seemed too important to simply be removed off-screen when we hadn't even seen him first-hand. Maybe that's the mystery they were saying would be relevant to 7.0...?

[Lyth]

No matter how much detail you incorporate in your storytelling, there are always going to be a range of interpretations from the audience. Sometimes this is deliberate, where things are left to the audience's imagination. Other times, it's just a function of perception. Sometimes people just miss a critical detail, misremember it, or willfully ignore it. It's still an interpretation at the end of the day, and fans tend to get very huffy when an author flat out tells them that the beliefs that they have oh so carefully nurtured are wrong. The vast majority of the responses in the Q+A were diplomatic nudges along the lines of 'perhaps you should rewatch the scene where[...]' to alter misperceptions in an official way without hurting anyone's feelings. These types of debates are only going to become more heated as the story runs for longer and as it gains greater audience popularity. And that's fine. I think that a new story arc will help a bit with this, since it brings everyone back to the information gathering stage.

Another thing that you will see more and more as the story reaches a wider audience is the amount of people who want to backseat the writing process and make it into their story. Many forms of popular content creation run into this problem. I think that most artists have a genuine interest how their work is being received, and they'll seek out that information out on their own volition and use their own metrics for doing so. But I think that's a bit different from the 'fan' who is standing over their shoulder shouting into their ear that 'you really ought to use green paint instead of the blue here'. There is a boundary that you have to set where you gently, kindly, and ever so delicately tell them what to do with such 'feedback'. Or you get an industrial strength hearing protector and smile blankly at them while staying true to your own artistic vision. Sensible people will have a natural sense of where that line is, but there is always going to be a subset of the fanbase that isn't nearly so clued in.