The Lessons Not Learned.

[CheshCa7]

Thank you for your opinion. Under normal circumstances I would’ve liked to dive deeper and ask what specifically didn’t work for you and how I could improve on it, but given how many FFXIV players gleefully ate up a convoluted time travel story with the anime little girl of ultimate despair, I have good reason to dismiss your counsel outright.

I know what works for me in terms of storytelling, and I was considerably gracious in not eliminating the scions outright and even reusing some of the worst characters in the entire Final Fantasy franchise in better ways, such as Meteion and Hermes. In any case now we have people arguing in defense of the most ridiculous round of beast tribe quests yet, so I can safely say that those with such childish tastes will certainly never align with my own.

Thank goodness FFXVI, in spite of Yoshi’s involvement, seems to be shaping up to a more mature game. Unlike here, he couldn’t ruin that game like he did FFXIV as his “playground” subjecting all of us to his ever-changing whims. Or perhaps his passion truly lies there and that is why he appears so confounded whenever he has to answer lore questions about FFXIV. If so, perhaps it’s time for him to pass the torch to someone who cares more and continue pursuing whatever it is he’s most passionate about.

"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." C.S.Lewis

That was also the problem with your writing. It was teenager edgy stuff. You seem to think that a dark story means a good story but a dark story without a good reason behind it is just bad. And when we get to your cringey portrail of Venat where you bent over backwards to throw aside all her background just to turn her into some Scooby Doo villain. Yeah. Not good.
So you see, maybe the problem isn't that we are childish and wrong. Maybe some of us lived more then you, read more then you, understand more then you. And maybe, while we can agree that FFXIV is not some masterpiece of storytelling your version is actually much much worse. Like I'm sure there are Twilight fanfiction pieces that are miles better. You get it now?

[aveyond-dreams]

words

I am not interested in writing for 50+ year olds with the tastes of children. I find those people extremely creepy and off-putting, especially with the fever with which they've defended the catastrophic state of Endwalker's writing. I consider my rewrite superior to the anime fanfic that was the MSQ that released in 6.0, and I say that with 0 reservation.

[vanaii]

I am not interested in writing for 50+ year olds with the tastes of children. I find those people extremely creepy and off-putting, especially with the fever with which they've defended the catastrophic state of Endwalker's writing. I consider my rewrite superior to the anime fanfic that was the MSQ that released in 6.0, and I say that with 0 reservation.

Why not write for children, then? XIV is for 13+, and a huge chunk of the Final Fantasy series itself could be snootily waved away as mere "fairy tales." Heck, Heavensward could be considered the biggest fairytale of them all: Dragon falls in love with a girl? Puh-leeze.

Dunno, I've fallen for the "I want it to be adult" trap myself; I've come to get over myself and simply enjoy things. Life would be boring looking down at my nose at anything that wasn't literary enough. That's what that CS Lewis quote is about, after all.

I am proud to say that not even high-school me would have liked that. Maybe as a literal child, I don't know. But in high-school you already have access to quality writing so you kinda know how it looks like.

Middle/elementary school you probably had the chance to read Bridge to Terabithia. I'm convinced librarians like to sneak that onto shelves as a trap!

[TheMightyMollusk]

Middle/elementary school you probably had the chance to read Bridge to Terabithia. I'm convinced librarians like to sneak that onto shelves as a trap!

My grade school had Fahrenheit 451 on the library shelf. I'm still not convinced the librarian didn't do it as a prank.

[Alleo]

I am not interested in writing for 50+ year olds with the tastes of children. I find those people extremely creepy and off-putting, especially with the fever with which they've defended the catastrophic state of Endwalker's writing. I consider my rewrite superior to the anime fanfic that was the MSQ that released in 6.0, and I say that with 0 reservation.

Have you already published something successfully? A whole new story? Because no matter what, its always way more easy to use a existing story and either write some fanfiction about it or to complain about it than creating a whole new one from scratch. You need to think about characters, about plot points, about pacing and so much more. With Fanfiction you already have most of it. Yet there are many Fanfiction writers out there that write stories that are absolutely awful to read. They think they can write something better with less plotholes while their own version is just full of them themselves.

Because even when I agree that someone can taste a meal and say if its taste good or bad for them, it does not mean that they just can go in the kitchen and create a decent or even better meal from the ground up themselves. (You know without a recipe there to give guidance)

[aveyond-dreams]

Yet there are many Fanfiction writers out there that write stories that are absolutely awful to read. They think they can write something better with less plotholes while their own version is just full of them themselves.

What an apt description for Endwalker's 6.0 MSQ. An expansion that betrayed everything that came before it in order to let a handful of ocs shine. This is not what brought me to FFXIV back in the Heavensward/ARR days. Even if we were to return to that style of writing wherein you'd see that I have very little to critique, you'd still love the game with as much enthusiasm as you do now. So that way, and by consequence my way of going about stories, would cause less problems overall.

However, when it comes to content, the game is failing in spectacular fashion. Variant/Criterion dungeons had every chance to be something worthwhile and not just one and done, but instead they stacked Island Sanctuary full of rewards and left hardly anything for the content that should've been giving more people a reason to log in daily. It's amazing how you can get more from doing nothing but clicking things on the island than you do from battle content we've been starving for.

[Alleo]

What an apt description for Endwalker's 6.0 MSQ. An expansion that betrayed everything that came before it in order to let a handful of ocs shine. This is not what brought me to FFXIV back in the Heavensward/ARR days. Even if we were to return to that style of writing wherein you'd see that I have very little to critique, you'd still love the game with as much enthusiasm as you do now.

However, when it comes to content, the game is failing in spectacular fashion.

Yeah in your opinion. I found the writing style in Endwalker not much worse than other expansions. No I was even surprised how they were able to finish this long long story with a (IMO) great ending. Reading about your different views on the story including the newly introduced Zero I doubt that something that you would have liked would be something I enjoy. I hate grim dark stories. I stay away from books/movies like Game of Thrones because I find them utterly depressing. Endwalker and Shadowbringer (another great expansion you did not mention in your text I quote) are emotional for me but not too depressing. We do lose people but its not a mass slaughter of favorite characters. The themes can be quite dark (that szene with the family in the dschungle dungeon) and mature (Uriangers grief), yet we also have nice scenes to bring our spirits back up.

Honestly I really dont see how ARR or even Heavensward were better in that regard. In ARR none of the scions die, even Minifila still exists in a way. Its mostly the bad guys that perish. Yes we have the attack on the scions headquarter but again no major character dies there. And scenes like the headquarter exist in Endwalker too. After all we see quite a few people die on screen when the Final Days start. In Heavensward we lose some characters but overall the themes are not that deeper than in other expansions. We are able to stop a war that is going on for thousand of years and make peace between dragon and man.

So I am really not sure how these are so much better than Endwalker. We still solve the problems of these long going on conflicts with the power of friendship (and some good trashing).

About the new content:
Variant itself was a reward to me. It did not need many rewards for me to run them quite a few times. Honestly even just the notes and the puzzles would have been enough for me. I barely even looked at the rewards until I was finished. This was something great, something new. Something that they can build upon and that could be a nice little side content. Side content which brings us more lore without being mindnumbing grindy. I am sure that the long living content will come with the new deep dungeon (including gear and/or weapons) and the next relic steps.

Also have you finally done Island Sancturay and have you run the Variant dungeons yourself?

[VelKallor]

I am not interested in writing for 50+ year olds with the tastes of children

I tend to find children a great deal more honest than their adult counterparts, you are also mistaking childish for childlike..they are two separate concepts.

The childlike wonder of new things, or to admire the beauty of a single flower, when you can no longer find wonder, joy,. laughter in simple things, when you cannot suspend disbelief..you havent grown into an adult..you have grown OLD.

Guess what...even at 61 I never stop growing, learning, enjoying a good book, even at 57 I was with Capt Nemo at the bottom of the ocean, walked with the Elves in the forests of Lorien and heard their cries under the glory of the moon...when you can no longer find joy or laughter in every day...when you stop growing, you stop living.

That is just SAD.

.I find those people extremely creepy and off-putting, especially with the fever with which they've defended the catastrophic state of Endwalker's writing.

I find you are no one to judge what i should or should not enjoy. I loved all of it. You didnt. Your loss.

I consider my rewrite superior to the anime fanfic that was the MSQ that released in 6.0, and I say that with 0 reservation.

I dont.

My grade school had Fahrenheit 451 on the library shelf. I'm still not convinced the librarian didn't do it as a prank.

So did mine. I memorised it. Every single word. That book should be required reading. They also had Lord of the Flies, it said a lot when none of my class knew who Lord of the Flies was.

Except me.

that should've been giving more people a reason to log in daily

Yup. Was waiting for this.

This is your major mistake, right here. That one sentence illustrates exactly why you are dead wrong about all of it.

That one sentence proves you have not understood one of the major core design principles on which FF 14 was created.