The Ancients still deserved better, after everything

[Lauront]

Unfortunately, nothing else in the game works like this. The Scions being the poster children of how to handle suffering and despair was laughable when they're some of the most privileged bunch we ever meet. The average citizen of Eorzea has been through more. It's arguably a side effect of joining themselves at the hip to the WoL who never loses, so they're handed wins and rarely ever have to suffer any setbacks.

Needless to say, it's hard to take something like this seriously when the main fault of the Ancients is they didn't have the WoL championing them. There was no logical reason for either Doma or Ala Mhigo to win against Garlemald, but here we are.

Not only that, but putting aside the main character group's plot armour (and by implication the sundered's too, as they benefited from this anointed group of Hydaelyn's knowing where to find Meteion and deal with her, plus benefiting from ample aid besides), on the one hand while not deserving something doesn't mean it won't happen, on the other hand this is a story and so there is also the narrative surrounding it (i.e. that it is the best possible outcome), and that tends to be what people are referring to with "deserved better". But yeah it's rather weird to insist things work like they do IRL... fine, then what about the main cast's plot armour? I think that touch of logicality has long since been drowned out by the former.

[Kranel_San]

Unfortunately, nothing else in the game works like this. The Scions being the poster children of how to handle suffering and despair was laughable when they're some of the most privileged bunch we ever meet. The average citizen of Eorzea has been through more. It's arguably a side effect of joining themselves at the hip to the WoL who never loses, so they're handed wins and rarely ever have to suffer any setbacks.

Needless to say, it's hard to take something like this seriously when the main fault of the Ancients is they didn't have the WoL championing them. There was no logical reason for either Doma or Ala Mhigo to win against Garlemald, but here we are.

Nothing else working isn't an excuse. I praise them for the sole attempt of being logical and realistic for once and wish they'll do it more frequently. Back to the days when the scions were under the threat of dying at any given moment without warnings.

[MikkoAkure]

Unfortunately, nothing else in the game works like this. The Scions being the poster children of how to handle suffering and despair was laughable when they're some of the most privileged bunch we ever meet. The average citizen of Eorzea has been through more. It's arguably a side effect of joining themselves at the hip to the WoL who never loses, so they're handed wins and rarely ever have to suffer any setbacks.

Needless to say, it's hard to take something like this seriously when the main fault of the Ancients is they didn't have the WoL championing them. There was no logical reason for either Doma or Ala Mhigo to win against Garlemald, but here we are.

Funnily enough while I know you're trying to compare the average Eorzean to the Scions, up until the whole end-of-the-world thing the average Eorzean has been through more than the Ancients have. Which was part of the point Venat made in doing the Sundering. And the only reason WoL got attached to the Scions at the hip anyway was because a black-masked Ascian tried to kill us. If the ghostly descendants of the Ancients weren't creeping around doing random acts of evil and recruited us instead, the story would be different. It's a little harder to empathize with someone after they tried to murder you.


Besides that. the WoL wasn't always successful.

First there was 1.0 where we ended up killing Nael but Meteor happened anyway, partially destroying the realm and killing thousands of people until Scion #1 sacrificed himself to pause it. Then there was that whole thing where Alphinaud's private army went rogue, did a coup, briefly arrested us, and then scattered the Scions and imprisoned Raubahn. Then his private army ended up fully succeeding in their aim by summoning a primal, leading to one of the Scions sacrificing himself, taking from his teacher's example.

Even in Stormblood, the first half of the expansion was us getting beat up by Zenos over and over and our base was destroyed. The only reason Doma and Ala Mhigo won against Garlemald was because the Garleans put Zenos in charge. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and had everything going for them and would have won if they literally had any other leader. He purposefully would let rebels get away and get stronger so that he can raise up stronger, angrier people to fight since he's a maniac. Which I would suppose is to be expected from a classical fantasy evil empire trope. Other than Zenos doing stuff because he's in love with the WoL and the primal parts, Alisae and Lyse could have done that whole expansion by themselves and I can't think of anything non-Zenos or primal related that required the WoL. They could have just rang us up on the linkpearl and we show up hungover every now and then to kill a god.


With the WoL becoming more and more special and powerful over time, us losing over and over starts making less sense and I wish we got de-powered at the end of EW. But still, I'm not sure what you're expecting from an MMO. If the story is to continue, then the main character that you created is going to end up ultimately winning.

Even with the Ancients, we are still a shard of one of their rulers who was every bit the same as us but even more powerful. The reason the Ancients didn't have WoL/Azem championing them was because we abandoned them. Both team Hydaelyn and team Zodiark. I hope they eventually reveal why. But considering how the recent Omega storyline doubled-down on "Ancients were heading to an end anyway", and we know that Azem thought differently than the rest of the Ancients, it's probably not going to be a reason you're going to like and people will come back to the forums to complain again.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I don't think the suggestion was that the Ancients deserved to die. But they were definitely a Dead End.

Each and every one of them had the power to destroy the universe. It took one depressed Ancient and his pet bird to nearly end all life in the universe. Took one righteous Ancient and her 12 closest friends to sunder the star. If Venat wanted something resembling humanity to continue their power levels had to be nerfed.

That being said, I value consent, so I feel like if they wanted to die out hitting the morphine button called Big Daddy Zodiark they should have been allowed to do that.

Also, had Venat told them everything the most obvious solution would be to cloak the planet in aether and create a slave race (us) to be tortured for 10k years so that we would be strong enough to deal with Meteion. Basically do what Venat did, but not to themselves, create people specially for that purpose. There was a way for them to get out of their current problem if they knew what was going on, but they'd still be in the same situation where they live on a planet where everyone can end the universe on purpose or by accident.