The Lessons Not Learned.

[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?