The feeling of beeing Home ...

[MoofiaBossVal]

I was willing to give the new story arc a chance and see what Yoshida was such in a hurry to get to that he trashed Garlemald for it. The Void is conceptually cool but it looks like it won't even get new actual zones and will only be glimpsed in 15 minute corridor dungeons. And you don't even get a new cast of characters, just the same old boring ones who have been stale for years. Doesn't help that the gameplay is meh. The 7.0 expansion is going to make or break the game for me IMO.

[Raoabolic]

The Void is conceptually cool but it looks like it won't even get new actual zones

I pray i'm wrong here but the stinger cutscene at the end of 6.1 that showed off the Void looked a lot like they reused assets from XI's Walk of Echoes in Wings of the Goddess. I pray i'm wrong but I remember actually saying out loud, "Wait, I remember those rocks!" during said cutscene, lol.

[Jeeqbit]

The Ascians in the other side quests aren't really relevant to the MSQ though. Even the finale of the ShB job quests combined with the bit from the HW containment bay story line will likely have nothing to do with the current story line and that's despite the fact that the 13th is involved.

The one in the raid series is. The ones in the SMN quests kind of are because this is you taking out most of the "lower rank" Ascians. Side quests give new context to the MSQ but the MSQ makes sense if you are unaware of the events in the side quests.

[Striker44]

snip

I see two feasible options:

1.) Take a step back, breathe a bit, and try to appreciate the story for what it is rather than what you personally want it to be. It's a very human thing to do, but when we start something new (read a new book, watch a new movie, play a new game), we're not yet invested in the characters, so we appreciate them and the story for the way the authors wrote them. But the longer the series goes, the more connection we make with it all, the more tempting it becomes to get in our minds what we want to happen, and suddenly something becomes "bad" or "disappointing" simply because the authors chose a different path.

2.) Unsub, either for a bit or for good. MMO's are famous again for that human instinct of "invested time" where you've played for so long that you don't want to "lose" or "give up" what you've done. But you already (hopefully) had plenty of fun along the way. There's not actually anything to lose. Personally, I walked away from WoW after about 15-16 years because I didn't like where the story was going and was rather confident that the dev team was continuing down a path that just wasn't to my liking. That's okay. It's healthy to step away.

Man, I really hope those around you, who love and care for you, do not employ this utterly silly answer whenever you have a lull in your life or make a few bad decisions.

Actually, it's a very valid and healthy answer. There are certain things in life that might be really worth sticking with. I don't see video games as one of them. Sometimes you need that friend to remind you it's healthy to step away from something you find only makes you feel negatively.

What you feel here is the realization that you cared more about the game and story than the devs did.

Not at all. I'm very confident the devs care deeply about this game and its story. All that happened was their particular vision - which is their right as the authors - differed from what you personally wanted to see written.

[BaconBits]

The Scions disbanding should have been the end of the story for those character. Time to bring in new characters for the New Adventure.

but nah...bring them all back in literally 5 minutes after disbanding.

Honestly I would love for the core Scions to fade into the background for a bit to let some of the lesser known Scions have their time in the limelight. Like instead of running into Estinien at the Thavnair markets, we meet Hoary Boulder and Coultenet who happen to have come back under less stressful conditions since they're no longer in hiding from the Crystal Braves or dealing with impending war/end of the world scenario. And maybe Riol could take a break from spying behind enemy lines to go on an adventure with us.

I dunno I just wanna see some faces we haven't had a chance to become acquainted with yet.

[Raoabolic]

Honestly I would love for the core Scions to fade into the background for a bit to let some of the lesser known Scions have their time in the limelight. Like instead of running into Estinien at the Thavnair markets, we meet Hoary Boulder and Coultenet who happen to have come back under less stressful conditions since they're no longer in hiding from the Crystal Braves or dealing with impending war/end of the world scenario. And maybe Riol could take a break from spying behind enemy lines to go on an adventure with us.

I dunno I just wanna see some faces we haven't had a chance to become acquainted with yet.

You know what would be cool? If their you know what actually mattered at the end of Endwalker. You could even have fun easter eggs in the zone showing translucent ghosts of the scions. Heck, you have the ghosts and robots in the area, nothing saying you can't do a beastman questline in which the finale lets the WoL have a proper sendoff of the scions. Then again, i'm not getting paid for my ideas, though, you can have that one for free SE. I won't get mad!

[Lauront]

Not to give you false hope, but....



Yoshida didn't actually give us a clear answer here. Like many things on the Q&A docket, his answer to the Zenos question was wishy-washy and not at all certain. Sometimes it feels like FFXIV's plot is decided via Rule of Cool.

Many players don't want Zenos to return (he's meh to me, neither like nor dislike him), but based on the vague answer they could bring him back if he's popular enough I'd argue.

There was also this, for whatever it's worth:

Near the conclusion of the Garlemald section of Endwalker, things got weird. Our Warrior of Light temporarily switched bodies with a common Garlemald soldier, and was promptly kidnapped by Fandaniel for a dinner party with archvillain Zenos. That's a whacky plot twist (and Yoshida teases that he "adjusted" the original scene from Ishikawa), but for Ishikawa it's much more simple: Zenos wanted to do it because it was interesting to him – nothing more, nothing less.

In fact, Ishikawa thinks we're a bit quick to judge Zenos by his domineering appearance, glowering sneer, and bloody scythe the size of a human. It's that Zenos is willing to go through "whatever trial and error it takes" in order to achieve his goals that separates him from the player character, Ishikawa believes. Yes, Zenos does think about only himself, and that can have dire consequences for those around him, but it's his drive to do whatever he believes is necessary to achieve his goals that truly separates him from anything we are able to do as players.

Zenos has been a threat to players for years. The villain's story was wrapped up in Endwalker, just like the Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc, and both Yoshida and Ishikawa are very happy with the end result. "His story needed no further embellishment, nor any further happiness or misery," says Ishikawa, adding that because Zenos wasn't concerned with how others saw him, she had no hesitation in writing out the closure of his story. Yoshida, on the other hand, says Zenos was the only one who saw the Warrior of Light as a simple adventurer again, joking that when the villain asks "did you find… fulfillment?", that doubles as a question from the development team to the player.

I was willing to give the new story arc a chance and see what Yoshida was such in a hurry to get to that he trashed Garlemald for it. The Void is conceptually cool but it looks like it won't even get new actual zones and will only be glimpsed in 15 minute corridor dungeons. And you don't even get a new cast of characters, just the same old boring ones who have been stale for years. Doesn't help that the gameplay is meh. The 7.0 expansion is going to make or break the game for me IMO.

This. I'll add that I'd have liked to see more of the unsundered world. The narrative closure of the ancients' arc, plus treating with so many different stars in one fell swoop in UT, so summarily, and to such a caricatured extent, did not sit particularly well with me, either, and does not really inspire much confidence in me for anything they have planned in the future.

[Catwho]

Gotta remember that UT is not what those worlds were actually like. What we saw was Meteion's impression of those worlds, and why she added them to the list of "welp that's gotta go."

Of course it's a caricature. She was a creation with the emotional maturity of a child.

[xenahawk]

I get different characters and different parts of the stories will pull people. Its a shame that it seems that nothing really resonated with you in this expansion. Me personally i was fine not seeing the exact downfall of garlamald because well it fell apart from within, we didnt play a part outside of what we did in storm blood so we got a few tid bits about civil war and then the final straw was anima enthralling some of the garleans. I also enjoyed watch the characters evolve and grew on me over the different expansion stories though yeah some characters still havent grown on me but i still feel they hade good evolutions. Im excited to see what will come next and where the story goes.

[Lauront]

Gotta remember that UT is not what those worlds were actually like. What we saw was Meteion's impression of those worlds, and why she added them to the list of "welp that's gotta go."

Of course it's a caricature. She was a creation with the emotional maturity of a child.

Well for one, it makes that immediate vicinity of the game's universe that much less crowded and in very short order. For another, while it is not representing the worlds in their totality since it is their final moments, I don't recall the impression being given that her recollection of those worlds was tainted by intellectual immaturity on her part. The conclusions she draws from them might be, but the reasons for their downfall (the descriptions of their societal goals and their conclusion, which is what I am referring to as caricatured) are presented as quite objective in narrative terms.