Y'shtola is a Mary Sue.

[BrokentoothMarch]

Snip

I'm not even gonna bother to counter this.

"Lol." said the scorpion "Lmao."

[Deceptus]

Well her blindness is linked to something that will eventually lead to her end one way or another. And as that eventually comes closer, she won't really be able to do as much so she will just get weaker and weaker as time moves on.

Sure. . . . sure.

I'll believe that SE gets rid of the Mascot of FFXIV when they stop supporting the game and shut down the servers. Y'shtola will be the one who presses the button.

Not every character needs an emotional growth arc to make them great.

Characters in well crafted stories do.

[aveyond-dreams]

It is also worth noting that "off-screen character development" is cited by many as one of the disappointing aspects of WoW's handling of its story. The last thing we need in FFXIV is for the same thing to happen here.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Name me one time where Endsinger was hinted at or even named prior to 6.0. She came from nowhere. She appears and die in 6.0 that not called being ''build up''. We had Zodiark portrayed as the BBEG since 1.0, he should have been the final boss or used by the final boss at some extend.

Im not saying murder all Scion btw, im just saying it okay to let some die, Papalymo died yet we survived the next few Xpac didn't we?

Now you're moving goalposts. You said not mentioned at all before now you're saying prior to 6.0. Gotta be consistent here. That may not be build up to you but it is to others. Endsinger certainly wasn't some random pop up to me.
As for Zodiark why would an incomplete being be the final boss? Imo the subversion was very well done.

One thing I'll never get is why people think characters need to die for stuff to be good.

[KizuyaKatogami]

this is an easy one..


ARGUABLY depending on how wide we throw the net, and how 2direct" you want it..


References to a potential idea similiar to ENdsinger WAS dropped in ARR. During the Ending cutscene after punching Lahabrea hydelin talks about "the dark one, residing in the abyss, for while it yet lives, the world may never know true peace"(heavily paraphrased) that Line, at the time, was ALMOST 100% taken to mean zodiark givne the namedrop a few moments later, and it is possible(if not likely) that it was intended to be about zodiark, but the wording, and hindsight of EW, makes it fit FAR better to Endsinger, as hydealin would not have said "while it yet lives" given she didnt want you to murder zodiark.


Yes, this reference was A) very likely retconned later, and B) very obtuse, it is however, a very possible "foreshadow" about somethign other then zodiark, ESPECIALY after we killed him in EW

It’s not foreshadowing. The devs literally said this expansion that they don’t plan things out ahead of time. They just go with the flow of the story. It was 100% meant to be Zodiark.

[aveyond-dreams]

Now you're moving goalposts. You said not mentioned at all before now you're saying prior to 6.0. Gotta be consistent here. That may not be build up to you but it is to others. Endsinger certainly wasn't some random pop up to me.
As for Zodiark why would an incomplete being be the final boss? Imo the subversion was very well done.

One thing I'll never get is why people think characters need to die for stuff to be good.

Meteion and Hermes were introduced as last minute additions by means of time travel. A decent chunk of the playerbase believed that the the Sound was caused by some kind of extra-terrestrial parasite like Lavos or an unseen 3rd deity within the Star. None of these groups won out by having the Sound be "ultimate despair." The playerbase knew something else was up, but we were expecting something better than sad bird girl and sad researcher.

No, characters do not need to die for the story to be worthwhile. They need to evolve in meaningful ways, grow, perform sacrifices, etc. Their sacrifices also need to count for something, and not be invalidated and made meaningless 2 seconds after they occur. FFIV had the twins turn to stone. They came back, but not until the end. In this game, Gosetsu held off a collapsing castle just long enough for us to escape, but didn't return until several patches later, which helped build up the anticipation and desire for the character to return.

In Endwalker there's very little of that when it comes to the Scions. All the character progression G'raha Tia experienced in Shadowbringers was thrown into the trash can for the sake of memes and college living scenes. Thancred's sacrifice back in Shadowbringers amounted to very little, and barely had a reaction when he learned the First would be left behind if the inhabitants of the Source escaped via the moon. It's been said a million times already, but Ultima Thule was the pinnacle of this joke. A series of "fight for hope!" scenes and their subsequent fake-outs leading to the party being brought back eventually. There was hardly any impact at all.

It’s not foreshadowing. The devs literally said this expansion that they don’t plan things out ahead of time. They just go with the flow of the story. It was 100% meant to be Zodiark.

Or Hydaelyn, by the end of Shadowbringers I had grown to distrust her especially after the revelation of her original name being Venat. While I grew to like Venat as an ancient and part of the trio in Elpis, her later actions were a betrayal of both me as the player character and of all humanity besides. Instead the story has to bend over backwards trying to justify how the FFXIV equivalent of humanity's expulsion from paradise was somehow ok, and how a character who is more fallen angel than Goddess is somehow in the right.

I would have liked to have gained a "blessing of darkness" from Zodiark or at the very least have had his plotline fleshed out more. Instead we got Urianger promising to not lie to us again or whatever else happened with the Loporrits and the Moon.

[Magikazam]

Now you're moving goalposts. You said not mentioned at all before now you're saying prior to 6.0. Gotta be consistent here. That may not be build up to you but it is to others. Endsinger certainly wasn't some random pop up to me.
As for Zodiark why would an incomplete being be the final boss? Imo the subversion was very well done.

One thing I'll never get is why people think characters need to die for stuff to be good.

It's almost like you don't read what we write.... so for the third time. We're not saying ''lol let homicide Scions'' We're saying it's hard to get involved in a story where nothing matters cause there is no RISK of death for them. It is not thrilling if, let's say Urianger get left behind cause he ''sacrifice'' himself to buy the WOL time, cause you know he will succeed and get out of it with no serious injury. I'm not saying he should die, but he could get some injury that takes him out of the story for a bit so he can recover.

Also saying Zodiark can't be a boss cause he incomplete is kinda stupid as 98% or so of the bosses are and so is the WOL. The fact they turned their whole main villain build up into the first trial just show they had no idea of what to do with the story.

[KageTokage]

Honestly, by the end of Shadowbringers I had already mentally written off Zodiark as being the final boss of Endwalker because they had already done away with his prior image as some sinister god of chaos, he was stuck in an incomplete state, and the Final Days strongly implied there were other forces at work.

...Though in the end, he was arguably still treated as a villain for representing the supposedly ill-fated wish of Ancients to bring back their "perfect" world and the unending codex glosses over the fact that he's the main reason Etheriys even exists still.

[Magikazam]

Or Hydaelyn, by the end of Shadowbringers I had grown to distrust her especially after the revelation of her original name being Venat. While I grew to like Venat as an ancient and part of the trio in Elpis, her later actions were a betrayal of both me as the player character and of all humanity besides. Instead the story has to bend over backwards trying to justify how the FFXIV equivalent of humanity's expulsion from paradise was somehow ok, and how a character who is more fallen angel than Goddess is somehow in the right.

I would have liked to have gained a "blessing of darkness" from Zodiark or at the very least have had his plotline fleshed out more. Instead we got Urianger promising to not lie to us again or whatever else happened with the Loporrits and the Moon.

IMO would have been better if they made Hydaelyn similar to Emet back in Shadowbringer. A character with Motivation that is for the ''greater good'' but requires sacrifice that is ambiguous. They could have gone for the thing they did back in Eden with Shiva, where her theme hints that the Light wants to create peace and salvation at the cost of free will. We could have had a depressed Hydaelyn that came to the conclusion that salvation could only come at the price of free will. And having our WOL proving her wrong or something of the like.

[IkaraGreydancer]

IMO would have been better if they made Hydaelyn similar to Emet back in Shadowbringer. A character with Motivation that is for the ''greater good'' but requires sacrifice that is ambiguous. They could have gone for the thing they did back in Eden with Shiva, where her theme hints that the Light wants to create peace and salvation at the cost of free will. We could have had a depressed Hydaelyn that came to the conclusion that salvation could only come at the price of free will. And having our WOL proving her wrong or something of the like.

Why repeat story beats we had with other characters? That would just be a Vauthry story on roids