I hope the Writing doesn't remain like it did from Post 5.0 to Now (post 6.0)

[15725462]

It started from post Shadowbringer. Bear with me.

While discovering how we can focus on treating those not fully succumbed to the Light, we used Beq Lugg's aid to alter the aetherial properties. But such methods were not entirely new to the First, they had it from before as seen from the Court Mage story of Tank Questlines. And we connect the dots that its similar to how "primal tempering" works as well.
But then, within literally 2 patches we rolled up not only how but a warding against tempering as a whole. 12000 years, scholars were doing fuck all and it took our WoL and the Scions to finally make a break through, compared to the First. This, a big challenge and a strong story point of FFXIV got a ride with ShB and got answered. Fine, we're trying to wrap up the old stories, but maybe making this a big point that is done over post ShB and completed near EW would have made it better? Such a critical point of our story, got solved in literally 2 patches. (Not even gonna bother how they did the same with Nymian plague)
Fast forward to Endwalker, the greatest threat that has been teased as the big bad from 2.0 was a mere level 83 trial. We fought a mere shell too. Sure its a very signature final fantasy thing to do to suddenly make the expected big bad just be a puppet, but this time it just felt badly done and was straight up rushed. And rushed it was. We got introduced to a whole new concept, a whole new big bad, mid expansion and defeated them by the end of the expansion. Interviews show that Ishikawa stated (source Famitsu interview translation https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...t=2&utm_term=1 ) that they wanted to end the story in 1 expansion quickly and end the original saga with this. Then why not do that??
Why not give the proper ending to where it all began? We could still have gone to all those places but faced the original big bad in Carteneau. But nope, let's try to see how many new ideas we can fit into the story.

Then came post Endwalker. I won't talk about the content drought which is a big issue over all for Endwalker. Let's see, we are making world level developments each patch now. Every patch ends with us facing a challenge that should logically take people a long time to fix but then the next patch starts with either us realising the solution already exists or lo and behold Y'shtola has found the solution mid patch and we're ready. We now have accessed the big portal in Moon, Y'shtola have discovered what took entire Allagans to accomplish, by herself in a few months, or less.

As much as I love FFXIV story, since post Shadowbringer, we have been making developments in the story in a crazy level, developments in matters that has long been a big plot point of the story that very visibly is being cleared out very quickly. I doubt the devs would close the Void as a threat entirely. So what are we doing here? This isn't tied to the original saga so not like there's anything to tie up for 7.0

If the new writing style of FF14 is going to be making every calamity level threat be solved willy nilly like this, I fear soon there won't be any story. I mean instead of making post Endwalker be actually about us returning to our roots and grounding us, we made another breakthrough. The threat barely could feel like a threat and its already solved and it was done behind the scene...

I sincerely hope this rushed "bring a concept, solve a concept FAST to show characters are strong and resourceful" doesn't stick as the new formula. And more importantly, stop bringing new concepts/plot points into the story and make them look big, if its only there for a while. Look at what they did to Garlemald. All those wars, all those expansions, so much misery and we can't even see a proper Garlemald. If this keeps up, we may end up going to Dawntrail and suddenly there's a whole new world that threatens us from another dimension, but wait, Y'shtola knows a way out and Sharlayan has the means to allow her to do her thing. Go fight.

Not to mention I don't even know what the point of breaking up the Scions was if we're literally spending every moment with the Scions? And yet, no development in the characters or bonding with the Scions themselves. Zero has more bonding and chemistry with Jullus than us, and far more depth to Zero than Y'shtola has had in 6 expansions.

I sincerely hope the writing of the story picks up and we actually start paying the attention the old stuff deserve and not just dust them off to make space in the shelf for new ideas that will be solved within 5 levels worth of content.

[LilimoLimomo]

While discovering how we can focus on treating those not fully succumbed to the Light, we used Beq Lugg's aid to alter the aetherial properties. But such methods were not entirely new to the First, they had it from before as seen from the Court Mage story of Tank Questlines. And we connect the dots that its similar to how "primal tempering" works as well.
But then, within literally 2 patches we rolled up not only how but a warding against tempering as a whole. 12000 years, scholars were doing fuck all and it took our WoL and the Scions to finally make a break through, compared to the First. This, a big challenge and a strong story point of FFXIV got a ride with ShB and got answered. Fine, we're trying to wrap up the old stories, but maybe making this a big point that is done over post ShB and completed near EW would have made it better? Such a critical point of our story, got solved in literally 2 patches.

Naturally this is going to vary according to taste, but in my opinion they couldn't rush this process fast enough because it was necessary to solve two narrative problems that have plagued FF14 for far too long:

First, I have no idea why the writers of FF14 decided to frame the Grand Companies as double-crossing colonizers (relative to the tribes) while also having the WoL align with them, but they did, and it has sucked. Unfortunately, narratively these tribes have been significantly tempered, making reconciliation difficult. Thus, removing tempering is important because it paves the way for a united Eorzea, which means players can stop feeling like:



Second, in my opinion, tempering has really limited the potential of any story involving primals. Because regardless of who they are or what their powers are, it always comes down to "folks without the Echo will have their minds corrupted". And that's a neat gimmick the first few times. But after a decade it's tiresome. Primals are cool, but there are only like 5 people in the story who are ever allowed to fight them because of this narrative limitation. Removing this limitation creates potential for better stories. (they've also been incredibly inconsistent about tempering, considering that folks like the Company of Heroes defeated Titan...)

I get that they could have done it slower, and that it would have been more elegant to do it slower. But personally, this is one thing I was perfectly happy with them fast-tracking. Solve these problems ASAP so we can move past them.

Fast forward to Endwalker, the greatest threat that has been teased as the big bad from 2.0 was a mere level 83 trial. We fought a mere shell too. Sure its a very signature final fantasy thing to do to suddenly make the expected big bad just be a puppet, but this time it just felt badly done and was straight up rushed. And rushed it was. We got introduced to a whole new concept, a whole new big bad, mid expansion and defeated them by the end of the expansion. Interviews show that Ishikawa stated (source Famitsu interview translation https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...t=2&utm_term=1 ) that they wanted to end the story in 1 expansion quickly and end the original saga with this. Then why not do that??
Why not give the proper ending to where it all began? We could still have gone to all those places but faced the original big bad in Carteneau. But nope, let's try to see how many new ideas we can fit into the story.

Again, different strokes for different folks, but I think having Zodiark as the big bad would have been a bad story. Shadowbringers made it clear that Zodiark wasn't some maniacal villain, but rather a being that literally saved the world. To fight against such a force as the end boss to an expansion would just be rehashing the end of Shadowbringers. I'm glad we got something different.

Then came post Endwalker. I won't talk about the content drought which is a big issue over all for Endwalker. Let's see, we are making world level developments each patch now. Every patch ends with us facing a challenge that should logically take people a long time to fix but then the next patch starts with either us realising the solution already exists or lo and behold Y'shtola has found the solution mid patch and we're ready. We now have accessed the big portal in Moon, Y'shtola have discovered what took entire Allagans to accomplish, by herself in a few months, or less.

Haha, this is a fair criticism. But also nothing new. Y'shtola (and to a lesser extent the other Scions and Cid) are always solving unsolvable problems with a rapidity that is common in fiction but rare in reality. It's what they did when they needed a barrier to protect Doma from Garlemald, it's what they did when they needed to access Azy Lla, it's what they did when they needed to increase the efficiency of the world's first spaceship that Sharlayan's finest had been working on for who knows how long. In short, it's Final Fantasy.

[SannaR]

It's not that a tempering cure wasn't trying to be worked on. It's that no one knew how to properly fix it and even if people wanted to do so an Ascian could and would want to shoot any real attempts down. That and it has been years along with people not paying attention to tribal dailies as there is an Almalj'aa daily that has you use a concoction that they hope cures said tempering. If we look at figuring things out "fast" Cid and Nero figured out time travel within their life time in the UC8 timeline. They just didn't get any backing for it because not enough people wanted to go with their original idea. Sure, Meteion does come in late to the story but she isn't Necron late. Nor is she like some other games where the credits are rolling only for the game to have "the real" boss interrupt the credits.

@Lilimo The Company of Heros only beat Titan and Leviathan by throwing a lot of "bodies" at it. The survivors ended up having to kill some of their own people due to them becoming tempered. It's why they make us run around on what feels like a fool's errand.

[Cleretic]

I'm not replying to all of this because there's a lot, so I'm just zeroing in on the points I want to discuss.

I sincerely hope this rushed "bring a concept, solve a concept FAST to show characters are strong and resourceful" doesn't stick as the new formula. And more importantly, stop bringing new concepts/plot points into the story and make them look big, if its only there for a while. Look at what they did to Garlemald. All those wars, all those expansions, so much misery and we can't even see a proper Garlemald. If this keeps up, we may end up going to Dawntrail and suddenly there's a whole new world that threatens us from another dimension, but wait, Y'shtola knows a way out and Sharlayan has the means to allow her to do her thing. Go fight.

I don't think this is what's happening. When we're in a combat-focused game, the stakes will always involve some level of mortal threat, or else we're the bad guys; you can't solve nutritional issues in the Crystarium (to pull the example of my favorite Facet quest) with wanton murder, that just makes you look horrible.

At this point the Golbez issue has reached 'Possible Calamity-causer' levels, but I actually wouldn't say we're in a scale of constantly stopping world-ending threats (which I do worry about, and I'm very thankful to see Dawntrail is at approximately a Heavensward-level scale). I think we're actually at a scale usually inhabited by raid content: This is certainly theoretically capable of causing some kind of apocalypse, and that's becoming quite plausible now that we're reaching the end, but at the forefront is more of a personal story, we're doing this for Vrtra and Azdaja. It's basically got the same sort of 'narrative motivational structure' there as Alexander or Eden, where there's an existential peril on the table, but far more central is a personal story. And I think that's about the right level for the 6.x storyline; we want it to feel like it's worth our time, but not so big it eclipses everything else.

6.x is an interesting situation there, because by nature it needs to tell a contained story. Traditionally the .1-.3 MSQs acted as something of an epilogue for the expansion, and then .4 and .5 acted as leadup for the next; that wasn't where they went with Endwalker, because they specifically wanted 6.0's finale to be able to stand as the capstone by itself, they didn't want the expansion advertised as 'the end of this story' to end with 'TO BE CONTINUED, come back in four months'; if someone just wanted to reach the end of the story, they could get that right from launch day and then put the game behind them. (Incidentally, I feel like I've seen a fair few angry people who maybe should've taken that advice.) But that means that 6.x has to be an entirely independent story, not just from 6.0 but also 7.0, in a way that overshadows neither but also gets overshadowed by neither. I think that it's been pretty good at that all things considered; I think a lot of distaste about it doesn't come from the fact it's doing what it's doing badly, but because it's not what a lot of people are used to or necessarily wanted. If you were into Endwalker primarily for it to be Garlemald Time, you're probably disappointed not because the Garlean stuff it's doing is bad, but because it's not as central as you want.


But there's something else I want to point out, that shows the root of this problem might be different from what you think:

By your first line, you started post-Shadowbringers. And you also happen to think that the game's writing drops off exactly post-Shadowbringers, at the point where you started playing.

I think what you're actually doing, and not realizing it, is that you're looking at the game differently when it's unfolding in the 'present-day' than you were when you were playing everything that already existed when you joined. I've always thought that was the real reason behind complaints of a 'content drought'--that's mainly coming not from people who've been playing actively across a number of expansions and have noticed an actual dip in content, and more coming from people who started the game in Shadowbringers' patches and are only now grappling with the fact that they ran out of the backlog of the content they liked.

I don't think that's quite the same factor here, but I think it's similar: I think you're subconsciously approaching everything before you reached the end of the current content as an unassailable, complete canon, and everything after that point as fallible additions.

I'm not telling you this to shoot down everything; I'm saying this because I think an important thing to recognize is that we're ultimately speaking subjectively from our own perspective, and I've seen your sort of perspective before.

[Yuella]

I hope it does. The writing in 6.0 is excellent.

[Rongway]

While discovering how we can focus on treating those not fully succumbed to the Light, we used Beq Lugg's aid to alter the aetherial properties. But such methods were not entirely new to the First, they had it from before as seen from the Court Mage story of Tank Questlines. And we connect the dots that its similar to how "primal tempering" works as well.
But then, within literally 2 patches we rolled up not only how but a warding against tempering as a whole. 12000 years, scholars were doing fuck all and it took our WoL and the Scions to finally make a break through, compared to the First. This, a big challenge and a strong story point of FFXIV got a ride with ShB and got answered. Fine, we're trying to wrap up the old stories, but maybe making this a big point that is done over post ShB and completed near EW would have made it better? Such a critical point of our story, got solved in literally 2 patches.

I don't have a problem with this. Yeah the Source has been dealing with the consequences of primal tempering for thousands of years. Because they didn't have the critical experiences that Leveilleur, et al., had in the First. And as I've said before, I hope she's able to make an Archon thesis out of it or something.

Rapid advances in real world science have occurred overnight after one person has applied some critical new experience to a thousand year old problem.

[Brightamethyst]

While discovering how we can focus on treating those not fully succumbed to the Light, we used Beq Lugg's aid to alter the aetherial properties. But such methods were not entirely new to the First, they had it from before as seen from the Court Mage story of Tank Questlines. And we connect the dots that its similar to how "primal tempering" works as well.
But then, within literally 2 patches we rolled up not only how but a warding against tempering as a whole. 12000 years, scholars were doing fuck all and it took our WoL and the Scions to finally make a break through, compared to the First.

People died of things like smallpox, polio, tetanus, etc, for thousands of years before cures were "suddenly" found. A team of expert scholars armed with new information (and not subject to Ascian sabotage) finally figuring out and solving tempering doesn't feel so odd to me.

[Eisi]

We're gonna get a new lead writer for 7.0, so I assume the writing will change in some ways. The quick developments in the story happened because they wanted to wrap up everything in Endwalker, which they only got one expansion for and one of the goals was to end the ambiguous moral nature of the Eorzean citystates, so that no more stories need to be told in Eorzea and we can look beyond and know our home in safe hands and that everything has become good and we are no longer needed. This happens in every expansion and everywhere the WoL goes, we appear and then everything becomes good so that we no longer care about the place. That will happen in Tural as well of course, so it will start out as an interesting place with conflict where we wanna go, then by the end the conflict will have been resolved and therefore nobody will care about Tural anymore and we will wanna go somewhere else where there's new conflicts to solve. It's kind of like the Omicron, but instead of destroying places literally, we destroy them narratively.

[Rufalus]

Glad I'm not alone in feeling this way. I stopped connecting with the story when the miracle breakthroughs went into overdrive.

I wouldn't mind so much if there was some unprecedented world-changing event as an explanation for all the brand new science. Some reason that the impossible became so easy in this era. Not just the same group of prodigious youths bulldozing through scientific barriers whenever something inconveniences them because they are so smart.

I mean honestly, the contrived story has the same root cause as the repetitive gameplay formula problems -- it's the Yoshida style. He told the writers to not feel restricted by Oda's pre-existing lore, just make up some convenient excuse on the spot to smash through it.

The history of the realm has much better writing than the present-era player's journey. We're just gonna keep on liberating cities, planets, dimensions, whatever we focus our gaze on because it's so easy. The main scenario is about as serious as Hildibrand at this point.

Yoshida isn't alone in hurting the series reputation for good story content, it's all the directors and writers in the S-E age. XIII was some incomprehensible Fal'Cie god nonsense, XV was half-finished with some major story locations and events cut for time, XVI didn't finish as good as it started but I guess it could be called progress, it's better than the worst game.

[Eisi]

I mean honestly, the contrived story has the same root cause as the repetitive gameplay formula problems -- it's the Yoshida style. He told the writers to not feel restricted by Oda's pre-existing lore, just make up some convenient excuse on the spot to smash through it.

Citation pleazeeeee! That would be big if true! Also how does this tie into the repetitive gameplay formula, wouldn't that be the opposite?