Why are some people "disappointed" by the 6.X patch story?

[Eloah]

So I don't see it a lot, but often enough to question why. But I've seen several instances of people annoyed/disappointed/frustrated by the current 6.X patch story.
Some of the main complaints I've seen are:

• It's not as epic as the rest of the stories. Well of course when compared to the epic build up that was Endwalker, and the conclusion of a 10 year long story, of course this new story might feel "weaker"

• It's just filler. We knew it was going to be filler. They never said it wouldn't be. And just because it's filler doesn't mean it's bad.

• The story came out of no where. Most stories do, and as you go forward in them, you learn more, and how they connect to eachother.

So why all the complaints?

True the narrative might suffer a bit because it is being delivered to us in segments, but that's not so different from manga and anime releases either.

It may be filler, but that doesn't automatically make it a bad story. Plus it incorporates elements from the Final Fantasy series that people wanted for a while.

And none of the elements in the story seem to come out of "no where". Everything still connects neatly into the lore/story of FFXIV as a whole.

You could just, "not like it", but these complaints feel like something, "more".

What are peoples thoughts?

[Khet_Fyth]

So far I really like the post EW content. But I love void stuff in general so this was guaranteed to tickle my fancy.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I loved it, and don't look at it as filler. It's between major story arcs, sure, but it's a story of it's own.

[Oizen]

EW ended with the idea that the scions were going to pretend to disband and not work together, yet as of the last patch every single one of them is involved in the "Suddenly Golbez" plotline.
They even did a big character reveal moment for Thancred this patch, a character who did next to nothing in the EW story itself.

I dont know, it just feels un-earned and very predictable in a shonen kind of way.

[Ivtrix]

it feels a little slow

but i guess thats what happens when you spend from 6.1 to 6.5 setting up the 7.0 story

its not terrible, but it does feel a little like filler

[CNitsah]

Story is not bad, but since the end 6.2, we have basically all the infos to get to the end of the story, but instead story feels thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. While nice, that story is not rich enough to last for all the 3 last patches, and a lot of people seem to see it. The elements there are not bad (the whole garlemald thing should have had its own storyline, (something like the Tataru quests, no dungeons or Trials, maybe?) that would have permitted to actually develop that plot. Now we have not enough of it truly be interesting, but too much to not feel like a distraction from the main storyline. Same goes with the scions all making cameo's. Especially the 6.3 twins one.

My opinion on this is that the choice to get the trials back in the msq is the reason why the pacing is so unsatisfying to many.

[NekoMataMata]

There's a lot of detailed posts out but you probably won't read anything lengthy so I'll shorten it up.

6.1 and 6.2 were fantastic. On release and even still looking back(and you could see the forums had a lot of praise during that time too). 6.3 and 6.4 felt a lot like filler/fanservice. It's not that we didn't get useful information to further the story and build up to 7.0, but the ratio of useful information to unnecessary is pretty bad.

Then there's some people that aren't a fan of the return of the scions and feel that they are being forced back into the story for fanservice purposes(and probably just sunken cost fallacy on SE's party too).

Oh, and as for the idea of filler being okay... I don't really think it matters. Filler can be good or bad. It's pretty obvious that most patches are just filler/build up to the expansion. That doesn't mean the content released can't be good. I just didn't find 6.3/6.4 that exciting. There's a few good moments, but the rest of it's kind of meh.

[Kaurhz]

So, for me, and usually I am not as picky, e.g., willing to give the benefit of the doubt on some things in the past, but...

1. That all trials are contained within the story made it very predictable as to how it was going to end up, either 1 of 2 ways, double Golbez or Golbez + a sacrificial dragon, when I saw the pacing the route was plainly obvious to where I was just waiting for him to do it. - I will say if they do continue this route, I can't see the story itself being overly enthusiastic in future post-expansion patches.

2. The story of Garlemald felt very ARR-esque. - In this regard, Garlemald deserves a lot better.

3. For many people, they liked having the comedic aspect completely separate of the MSQ, allowing for the MSQ just to get straight to the point - But with this they effectively integrated elements that were previously only seen in Hildibrand.

4. [Edit: It felt like at times 2 different people were working on the same dialogue/cutscene]

[ZephyrMenodora]

Nice to see some balanced takes. Agree a certain amount of it can feel slow at times so there can be pacing issues.

I think like the 1st, the 13th could have had enough material to be a full expansion and a storyline fitting of the void. Instead we get piecemeal parts of the void, it's very specific and segmented. I know many weren't interested in a 13th expansion, but given how long the voidsent have been an issue I think it could have warrented it's own full storyline in a few years from now.

For example in 6.4, I could have done with less fetch quest/preparation, however realistic it may have fleshed out parts of the world, and more 13th. Why wasn't the dungeon the chasm leading down to Golbez' lair, instead of a random isle to collect aether? We could have had a harrowing journey/dungeon down to him. Especially because we have a quest where we find the chasm and look at it, but never go there. It was like "Oh...it's his shadowy lair." Then, "Don't worry, he likes to visit a few feet from where we are now for no obvoius reason so we don't have to go down there."

I did like the new dungeon we got, but the lair is an easy story setting that could have been a 2nd dungeon if we still got 2 per patch.

Overall I'm just gobbling up Final Fantasy 4 nostalgia so it's clouding my abilities to be more critical.

[CNitsah]

1. That all trials are contained within the story made it very predictable as to how it was going to end up, either 1 of 2 ways, double Golbez or Golbez + a sacrificial dragon, when I saw the pacing the route was plainly obvious to where I was just waiting for him to do it. - I will say if they do continue this route, I can't see the story itself being overly enthusiastic in future post-expansion patches.

I don't know, with a richer story, this could totally work. To me the problem lie with the fact that structure is not fit for the current story. But overall, I agree with you.