A game for 4 year olds

[aveyond-dreams]

And right on cue, the essay writer’s guild makes their entirely expected entrance, only to espouse nonsense not worth more than a passing glance.

All in defense of what is now the most controversial of FFXIV’s expansions. Christ, give me a “meh” story like Stormblood over the disaster that was Endwalker any day.

I can only hope that as FFXIV winds itself down that the sort of people it cultivated and allowed to fester remain in more juvenile media and do not contaminate other games like Ashes and so on. Goodness knows they wouldn’t be able to deal with a story that deals with hope and hopelessness in a more compelling manner.

Plague Tale Requiem comes to mind. But doubtless too much for the types here.

[RukoBoshi]

The most controversial expansion have better overall reviews than Shadowbringers or Heavensward. It's acclaimed by both critics and players.


I can understand not liking Endwalker story, but let's not act like it's FFXIV downfall. Endwalker was the end of a saga, we are starting a new one, so it means you won't see continuation of the plot you didn't appreciated in 6.0.
To me FFXIV have always been as it's best when it tells a self contained story like HW or SHB, this is how 7.0 will start when it will introduce it's new plot.

[aveyond-dreams]

The most controversial expansion have better overall reviews than Shadowbringers or Heavensward. It's acclaimed by both critics and players.


I can understand not liking Endwalker story, but let's not act like it's FFXIV downfall. Endwalker was the end of a saga, we are starting a new one, so it means you won't see continuation of the plot you didn't appreciated in 6.0.
To me FFXIV have always been as it's best when it tells a self contained story like HW or SHB, this is how 7.0 will start when it will introduce it's new plot.

Critics that consequently stopped playing afterwards and likely didn't give the story or its insufferable themes more than the passing glance I gave to the two essays dumped at the bottom of the previous page of this thread, and players that have routinely shut out and censored negative opinions of the game. I'm supposed to put any stock in what they say?

The game is falling apart from content to gameplay to a story that spawned a 700 page thread where it's been torn apart a thousand times over. 7.0 can't come soon enough and good luck to Hiroi, because fixing the wreck that was made of this game's worldbuilding and lore under Ishikawa's tenure will be no easy feat. I do agree that self contained stories are probably the better way to go about this than the cosmic mess Endwalker tried to pull. I just want a region to fall in love and connect with like I did for places like Ferelden, Ishgard, and so on.

For all the attempts to mischaracterize me by some as someone who is impossible to please, I was quite satisfied with this game's story and the way it handled character arcs/growth in Heavensward and Shadowbringers especially. You cannot ask me to let my standards slip when Endwalker delivered a story wherein those elements were handled so poorly, expecting me to root for the Scions as the champions of hope over despair when the suffering was suffered collaterally by everyone around them, with them just making sad faces. This isn't the way things went in 3.0 and 5.0, so I will call it out when people try and defend this nonsense.

[MikkoAkure]

Critics that consequently stopped playing afterwards and likely didn't give the story or its insufferable themes more than the passing glance I gave to the two essays dumped at the bottom of the previous page of this thread, and players that have routinely shut out and censored negative opinions of the game.

Cleretic may have written a lot, but today I learned that about 10 sentences is an essay. I wish my professors thought the same when I was in college.

The post I replied to from you was longer than mine but I guess if you don't like what it says then it's harder to read and worthy of adding a snarky tag to the thread that has improper grammar.

[Carin-Eri]

Critics that consequently stopped playing afterwards and likely didn't give the story or its insufferable themes more than the passing glance I gave to the two essays dumped at the bottom of the previous page of this thread, and players that have routinely shut out and censored negative opinions of the game. I'm supposed to put any stock in what they say?

You know for a fact that they stopped playing?

The game is falling apart from content to gameplay to a story that spawned a 700 page thread where it's been torn apart a thousand times over. 7.0 can't come soon enough and good luck to Hiroi, because fixing the wreck that was made of this game's worldbuilding and lore under Ishikawa's tenure will be no easy feat. I do agree that self contained stories are probably the better way to go about this than the cosmic mess Endwalker tried to pull. I just want a region to fall in love and connect with like I did for places like Ferelden, Ishgard, and so on.

The game isn't falling apart just because a select few representatives of a vocal minority (i.e. some forumites) say so.

For all the attempts to mischaracterize me by some as someone who is impossible to please, I was quite satisfied with this game's story and the way it handled character arcs/growth in Heavensward and Shadowbringers especially. You cannot ask me to let my standards slip when Endwalker delivered a story wherein those elements were handled so poorly, expecting me to root for the Scions as the champions of hope over despair when the suffering was suffered collaterally by everyone around them, with them just making sad faces. This isn't the way things went in 3.0 and 5.0, so I will call it out when people try and defend this nonsense.

That's the issue here, though; you're judging everyone else by your standards and seem to have little tolerance for those who don't agree and either enjoyed Endwalker or, at the very least, liked it regardless of it's flaws.

[Garnix]

Torn apart for 700 pages by what? 20 players out of a couple millions, who make most their arguments sound like trolling, and then get surprised that said "white knights" disagree with them and immediately proceed insulting them?

[SannaR]

@cleretic non named, minor, and faceless npc deaths don't count to a certain crowd. Same crowd also doesn't take in that story beats ect have to be written differently from single player games due to one being an on going saga and the other having to wrap up at some point. So one can have a fake out last most of the game in a single player meanwhile in an MMO when you need to cram the equivalent of a complete single player game into an expansion some of the things need to get shortened. Endwalker is probably the first time it's been heavily slapped into your face.

I loved XIII it has some of the best music in the series. Just it didn't give you as good of an illusion as other games in order to hide the linear-ness it had. It probably also could have allowed you to explore more before reaching Grand Pulse and maybe a go back to X but it does make sense as to why it doesn't allow that.

[AwesomeJr44]

non named, minor, and faceless npc deaths don't count to a certain crowd.

Gee, I wonder why the death of random side NPCs that we've known for 5 minutes don't really matter.

[SannaR]

Gee, I wonder why the death of random side NPCs that we've known for 5 minutes don't really matter.

If they don't matter then why even show their deaths? Why have one of the mantras the WoL uses to continue their fight still be For those we have lost. Those who we can still yet save? Not showing them would probably have more people complaining about the lack of deaths. If a nameless nobody's death doesn't matter then why should the death of someone you know?

[Cleretic]

@cleretic non named, minor, and faceless npc deaths don't count to a certain crowd. Same crowd also doesn't take in that story beats ect have to be written differently from single player games due to one being an on going saga and the other having to wrap up at some point. So one can have a fake out last most of the game in a single player meanwhile in an MMO when you need to cram the equivalent of a complete single player game into an expansion some of the things need to get shortened. Endwalker is probably the first time it's been heavily slapped into your face.

Yeah, that's kinda the thing about calling a story 'bloodless' or 'lacking death'; there's a bunch of different, mostly arbitrary ways to declare that certain deaths 'don't count'. Hell, even I do it; I consider Dragon Age: Origins a pretty death-free game, because while it has a high bodycount barely any of them are characters that actually matter to anybody, it's basically just a throng of bodies to set the tone and setting. But yeah, that's why I mentioned that Endwalker's no slouch in terms of both named and unnamed NPC deaths; if one of those doesn't count to you, the other should.

And I think it should also be noted that FFXIII has perhaps the most egregious usage of 'fight against stated inevitable fact but winning because of Determination' in the entire series at the end. At least with FFXIV it gets conceptual with the help of a zone and concepts that really help it make that actually work, while XIII basically just goes 'no, they believed hard enough to get a good ending anyway'.

I consider XIII's sequels better than the original (in no small part because XIII-2's ending includes the characters trying to do the 'fight fate with conviction' thing and failing miserably, which is very funny), but I'm fully aware that to a lot of people, saying 'FFXIII's sequels were better' is a claim met with great skepticism, because anyone who can say it played multiple FFXIII games.