I'll say in defense of Limsa in that they were the proactive in giving Garleans a hard time by making it legal for pirates to steal from them, also slavery is illegal. Their problem is they are the cause of their own problems starting with the beastmen treaty they violated.
And it amazes me that Godbert causes so much seethe when he was very reasonable for saying handouts are not a good idea. There are real life immigrants who manage to uplift themselves with only the shirt on their backs.
Slavery is illegal, but pirates do it anyway because they're criminals. Sastasha's optional slave den and the Miqo'te girl in the ACN quests show that pirates did endorse in slavery. Ul'dah also has this too. I'm pretty sure that's where the slavery discussion begins and ends overall in FFXIV save for Garlemald as a whole.
Limsa is useful, but they are unstable and not exactly good people overall which is more the point to Limsa being shit like everywhere else in Eorzea. There's truly no generally good nation in FFXIV. Except maybe Doma, but Doma's issues are very weakly explained as a societal problem in the MSQ and it seems to boil down to "Asian parents are shit" and some niche subject matter of Geisha (as that's more or less what Yotsuyu was by my read). Most of the issues with Yotsuyu stem from the worst parts of Asian family dynamics especially older age ones before things got a little more progressive over the last centaury or so towards women. Yotsuyu was pretty much expected to do nothing but be pretty to get a man, while Asahi was meant to actually obtain prestige, honor, and power for his family name which is why he got to go to Garlemald military school.
Nah, those are serpents. Feathered serpents are a recurring thing in the various mesoamerican religions (even some of the NA injuns have them), with the most famous probably being Quetzalcoatl.
Incidentally, the Faculty of Archaeology Studium questline in Endwalker spent a lot of time talking about a serpent.
We know that Erenville is from Tural so there's probably a Viera contingent there. And we also know that the Viera in the first worshipped the Serpent of Ronka in the distant past, so I imagine we'll get a lot of lore about the non-Dalmascan Viera and their culture.
Slavery is illegal, but pirates do it anyway because they're criminals. Sastasha's optional slave den and the Miqo'te girl in the ACN quests show that pirates did endorse in slavery. Ul'dah also has this too. I'm pretty sure that's where the slavery discussion begins and ends overall in FFXIV save for Garlemald as a whole.
Limsa is useful, but they are unstable and not exactly good people overall which is more the point to Limsa being shit like everywhere else in Eorzea. There's truly no generally good nation in FFXIV. Except maybe Doma, but Doma's issues are very weakly explained as a societal problem in the MSQ and it seems to boil down to "Asian parents are shit" and some niche subject matter of Geisha (as that's more or less what Yotsuyu was by my read). Most of the issues with Yotsuyu stem from the worst parts of Asian family dynamics especially older age ones before things got a little more progressive over the last centaury or so towards women. Yotsuyu was pretty much expected to do nothing but be pretty to get a man, while Asahi was meant to actually obtain prestige, honor, and power for his family name which is why he got to go to Garlemald military school.
Actually, Doma is apparently pretty shit as well; as noted in the 60-70 Samurai questline, the current government is fairly repressive, with a focus on separating the rich and poor. I think that no one even really disagreed with the villain's points he brought up; the only issue they had was that his rebellion was going to be "too bloody", which is admittedly a concern when Doma is at war with Garlemald.
Granted, I might be missing a few details again; would someone fill me in if I'm missing anything?
Nah, those are serpents. Feathered serpents are recurring thing in the various mesoamerican religions (even some of the NA injuns have them), with the most famous probably being Quetzalcoatl.
Incidentally, the Faculty of Archaeology Studium questline in Endwalker spent a lot of time talking about a serpent.
We know that Erenville is from Tural so there's probably a Viera contingent there. And we also know that the Viera in the first worshipped the Serpent of Ronka in the distant past, so I imagine we'll get a lot of lore about the non-Dalmascan Viera and their culture.
Yeah, that's what I meant by dragons; sorry for the confusion!
Have to say, I am interested in the potential lore in the new expansion; also glad to see Erenville is apparently going to be a recurring character from Endwalker on forward!
Anyway, on the topic of what we got in the keynote...
1) My current thoughts are the jobs are going to be some flavor of Corsair and some take on Green Mage. The latter might be good because we've really had a dearth of proper utility jobs in this game, and if they're going to simplify the gameplay loop of casters, they might as well start adding in some complexity elsewhere.
2) I'm a bit miffed because their plans for battle content are to stay the course on criterion dungeons which are already functionally dead content. I don't need Bozja/Eureka, but at least try something new ffs. Even 1.0 hamlet defense coming back might be fun. Just give me something to do that isn't raiding because I hate the raiding scene in this game.
3) No mention of 2min meta cancer. Surely we won't have another expansion with a 2min meta, right?
4) The planner looks neat. If they flesh it out a bit more and make it easily shareable in chat/with party members, it could basically kill the need for text macros. So that'd be nice. Maybe NA PF will no longer spend the first 5 min of every lockout shuffling around markers.
5) thunderous applause for 2dyes lmao. you know exactly what kind of person plays this game
I stopped playing before endwalker, but I kinda want to come back if the story is now "we chilling and finding treasure n' shit" as opposed to "AAAA the world is ending!" for the 3rd expac in the world.
I stopped playing before endwalker, but I kinda want to come back if the story is now "we chilling and finding treasure n' shit" as opposed to "AAAA the world is ending!" for the 3rd expac in the world.
Endwalker basically ties up all the remaining plot threads with the Ascians/Ancients and Final Days. The raid series also basically puts an end to mystery niggas. We were supposed to be doing comfy treasure hunting post-EW and we got that for like, one patch. Then we got the FFXIV equivalent of the Garlic Jr saga with Golbez and it's been pretty meh.
Slavery is illegal, but pirates do it anyway because they're criminals. Sastasha's optional slave den and the Miqo'te girl in the ACN quests show that pirates did endorse in slavery. Ul'dah also has this too. I'm pretty sure that's where the slavery discussion begins and ends overall in FFXIV save for Garlemald as a whole.
Limsa is useful, but they are unstable and not exactly good people overall which is more the point to Limsa being shit like everywhere else in Eorzea. There's truly no generally good nation in FFXIV. Except maybe Doma, but Doma's issues are very weakly explained as a societal problem in the MSQ and it seems to boil down to "Asian parents are shit" and some niche subject matter of Geisha (as that's more or less what Yotsuyu was by my read). Most of the issues with Yotsuyu stem from the worst parts of Asian family dynamics especially older age ones before things got a little more progressive over the last centaury or so towards women. Yotsuyu was pretty much expected to do nothing but be pretty to get a man, while Asahi was meant to actually obtain prestige, honor, and power for his family name which is why he got to go to Garlemald military school.
I'd argue Ishgard on the basis that they started tackling their issues. On that note, the people who reduce HW to "religion bad" was severely missing the point.
Yotsuyu was adopted by the way, technically she is their niece and that's why they're shitty towards her. You're right though, they didn't think Doma all the way through.
Actually, Doma is apparently pretty shit as well; as noted in the 60-70 Samurai questline, the current government is fairly repressive, with a focus on separating the rich and poor. I think that no one even really disagreed with the villain's points he brought up; the only issue they had was that his rebellion was going to be "too bloody", which is admittedly a concern when Doma is at war with Garlemald.
Granted, I might be missing a few details again; would someone fill me in if I'm missing anything?
@Scream Aim Fire I can't quote you but you mixed up Doma with Hingashi. And since we're on the topic of average low IQ players who can't read between the lines, there's a lot who don't seem to understand why toppling the Hingan government is a bad idea.
I don't really have high thematic hopes for the new expansion, and I might already be getting off of the saddle unless, somehow, their writing team manages to trim the fat and pull off another soft reboot. I don't really see that happening - remember in Shadowbringers' beginning, where little details about the world receive surprising attention to make it all the more believable? That attention to detail has been missing both from the small things and from the big-picture ideas (who the fuck thought time travel would be a good idea?). That attention to detail is exactly what you need to make a story about adventure and exploration work - which means they're gonna discover some big, dumb, reality-ending thing they have to use the power of friendship to beat. Again.
So the caribbean itself is a pretty great setting, but I find that RPGs that use it rarely do anything interesting with it. Pillars of Eternity 2 is set in a caribbean format, but it's really just 'generic fantasy with lots of islands, also there's some aphorisms to colonialism and there's pirates I guess.' The fact that Endwalker promised us the ability to finally see what Garlemald proper looks and behaves like, yet everything about Garlemald's culture actually presented in the expansion is indistinguishable from generic anime slop despite all that build-up and source material to draw from the Romans and Byzantines - why would I imagine they'd have a fun spin on Aztecs, Incas, Conquistadors, et-al?
Shadowbringers was a fluke. There's really no other way around it.
Nothing since has inspired to me that they understood what made that game's first and third acts work so well. On the contrary, everything since has suggested to me a serious lack of anyone willing to shoot down stupid ideas in the concepting phase and a pilot who thinks that full black leather outfits are unironically cool.
Nah, that's the hook - a good hook - that is immediately abandoned. The first treasure you find, the very first one, is a lead-in to a reality-ending macguffin fight. Coincidentally, every single person, thing, and event you could possibly need to be forced from one plot-point to the next happens, in sequence, with no rhyme nor reason as to why everyone just happens to be in the right place at the right time for this story to take as many stupid, unnecessary turns as it possibly can. It's pretty bad.
I'd argue Ishgard on the basis that they started tackling their issues. On that note, the people who reduce HW to "religion bad" was severely missing the point.
Yotsuyu was adopted by the way, technically she is their niece and that's why they're shitty towards her. You're right though, they didn't think Doma all the way through.
Let me rephrase: Their is no generally positive and good honorable city who dindu nuffin in FFXIV. Everyone has horrible history and everyone pretty much agrees their city sucked for one reason or another and has since been moving to correct that for the last several years. The closest beyond Doma is probably Ala Mhigo given most of Ala Mhigo's run time is a bunch of "we wuzz slaves, now we ain't no more!" ramblings, but Ala Mhigo has enough background to see past it if you read that far. Ishgard is one of the worst nations foundationally in FFXIV, they're changing yes but so is Limsa and to an extent Ul'dah now that they've trimmed some of the cancerous fat.
I forgot Yotsuyu was adopted, but I believe the same general dynamics apply that the son is generally more honored and expected to do more then the daughter and Asian parents can be truly shit. Doma probably has stuff somewhere, but you need to peel back through layers of side quest drivel to see it at all.
which means they're gonna discover some big, dumb, reality-ending thing they have to use the power of friendship to beat. Again.
This is what I'm expecting which is why my general hopes are pretty low right now unless they explain with more detail what we are doing. I've been around enough JRPGs to know what to expect and I don't expect something like this to work for long. At best it'll keep hold of this general feel for the first 7 or so levels, then the second trial comes in and everything changes until we get a proper finale.
Shadowbringers was a fluke. There's really no other way around it.
That's more or less what I'm thinking at this point. I know I'm not as super critical of EW as you, but my general opinion has soured since after I played 6.0 on release that it was just okay to me overall. I don't think it is horrible and I like some of the general ideas (time travel not withstanding, but hey at least this has existed for multiple years at this point so it was established), but it is a relatively on the low end for me. I prefer ARR over EW if anything, even if ARR drags for an eternity at points EW has barely better pacing anyway so I don't feel bad saying I liked ARR more despite its pacing.
@John Titor: Yeah, I knew I missed something, so thanks for the correction. You mind explaining the "toppling the government" part, by the way? I haven't exactly gone over that part of the story in quite a while; I legit can't remember the plot specifics, so I'd honestly appreciate a refresher.
I do agree that overthrowing the government at that point would be a bad idea; given the then-current situation with Garlemald, a potential civil war is the last thing anyone needs.
See but that's the thing about Limsa... I very much recall there being women sold into sexual slavery there mentioned during the ACN questline. On top of people just straight up disappearing in the streets and people being assassinated in the streets. It's clearly a shitty place to live yet there isn't really ever complaint about it. It's always the same places over and over.
It would be better if we met Zero somehow on the treasure-hunting adventure, Zero had an actual personality and explained that she was our effective 'foil' from the 13th, and she was taking care of saving that sphere of existence but needed our help to get some powerful doohickey from a wackadoo dungeon.
Along the way, she explains a bit more about the 13th, a bit more about herself, and even a bit more about Zenos instead of being standoffish and tipping her fedora. We get the macguffin (which also has a cool trinket that's a lead-in for more spelunking), wish her well, and she tells us that she may call on us to help later on with saving the 13th, and our adventures continue.
The story absolutely did not need a rushed re-tread of Shadowbringers, nor did it need to follow up "thing that will end all of reality but look you can totally see why it would do so" with "thing that will end all of your reality but look you can totally see why it would do so." There's not a way to make this plotline work because it's so tired and pastiche.
The thing that gets me is that - if it were a well-told JRPG I was expecting, I'd be fine with it having this turn. Heavensward is ultimately just a bog-standard JRPG plotline that's told well, so I like it. The first third of Shadowbringers is just a JRPG isekai-ish story par excellence, with the third transcending into just being good storytelling uplifted by fantastic vocal performances. I'd be game for more of those. I don't have faith they can do that, though - they went overboard to a degree that would make Kojima blush, and received nothing but dicksucking praise for it.
I prefer ARR over EW if anything, even if ARR drags for an eternity at points EW has barely better pacing anyway so I don't feel bad saying I liked ARR more despite its pacing.
So, here's the thing, and this is a hot take: ARR is paced better than EW. ARR's problem is simple: Obsidian's Tyranny came out in 2016, whereas ARR came out in 2013. Tyranny popularized the use of the 'glossary' system in CRPGs: if the name of a person, place, event, or general concept was brought up that your character should logically know about, you could mouse over it to get a little blurb of information about the subject. Tyranny itself didn't honestly make the best use of this, but it got a lot of other studios to take note - I believe it was in the Planescape sequel and Owlcat games have made big use of it over and over.
When you replay ARR with full knowledge of the factions, geography, places, history - the story actually isn't half-bad. It just does nothing to explain any of these things, and so the plot zooming along coupled with all of these ideas being not-exactly-introduced and yet taking center stage ensures that it gives a new player complete and utter whiplash, not to mention that all coming alongside the burden of learning all the game's systems. Replaying it, sure, it has parts that are slow -- but it's at the point in the story where it makes sense for them to be slow.
But if you implemented a glossary, or even that... compendium thing they're trying to shoehorn into the game-as-is right now, I cannot express how much that would improve the experience. Even just little blurbs - and fuck me, how about an actually-useful map of the known world to better orient everything? That's all it would take to vastly improve ARR, up to the point of being a... by-the-numbers JRPG with a little more interest on international political intrigue. By contrast, nothing in Endwalker can make Elpis worthwhile... nor the second half of the moon, nor Labyrinthos, nor Ultima Thule. They are just atrociously paced, for the most part being laboriously slow and yet are placed at the tail-end of a plotline that has been building for nearly a decade.
Worse yet, ARR assumes you are a big kid who can understand big kid things to its chagrin; Endwalker assumes you are a fucking retard. Why is Labyrinthos a zone and not a dungeon? Because they were worried you might miss the fact that Sharlayan was making an ark - they really had to draw it out and make it clear, guys, they're making an ark!!! Why does the section with the rabbits in space drag on for so fucking long with nothing to do? They wanted to make sure you really understand, this ark could ferry everyone away to another planet!!! It could go to another planet!!! look, see, everyone can live here!!! Why fucking anything with Elpis? The point of Elpis is to impress upon you, just in case you missed it in Shadowbringers, that the ascians aren't actually chaotic-evil bad guys!!!! See? Look at all of them! They're nice people some of the time!!!! they have motivations!!!! Fandaniel's characterization, Venat's role in the sundering, Meteion's existence - take a hot five seconds and you can think of better ways to implement the first two and can scratch at the question of whether the last one was even necessary when the role of "dispirited, nihilistic font of entropy" was a slot already ready-made for Zenos.
Wouldn't it have been more interesting for Fandaniel to make a jab in his dying breath about Venat's role in the sundering? Who the fuck is Venat? Rather than Elpis as a zone, why not Elpis as a dungeon? Remove the stupid fucking macguffin flower from Labyrinthos (which itself should be a dungeon) and instead have us go ask Elidibus who the fuck Venat is, he's all cryptic and shiet and has us do a little dungeon to find her - whoah, Venat is Hydaelyn! After only this brief sojourn back in time, we return to the present with the end-days still going on, and we know we've gotta confront Hyds about why she did this, and what she knows about the end times. There, we get an explanation of Fandaniel's motivations, a defense from Venat herself about her actions (and deception), an explanation that Zodiark was primarily used as an aether-shield-thing, and the introduction of Dynamis. Oh and that her ark plan is the only plan to roll with, because she doesn't know what the fuck you could ever possibly do about it.
From there, our pals fill in the rest - Hannish alchemists explain the emotional component of Dynamis. Through this we somehow, maybe with the help of Vrtra, discover its source. The space-rabbits suggest that they could probably drive the Ark there, but there's no way that it's got enough fuel. Zenos returns to the fray after skulking off on the moon and suggests that Garlaen magitek could improve the performance of the Ark and allow it to juice itself out to the ends of reality, if they might harness the power of the planet's mightiest primal. Return to Hyds, and she like before agrees to help if we can best her in combat, we do that, and now she's the turbocharger juice in the ark.
Fly out to the ends of reality with Zenos on board - his condition for access to the magitek would of course be that we fight after everything was saved, use Ultima Thule to explain that this all-consuming dynamis-thing causing the end-times is the result of the emotional anguish of countless dead worlds, the gang realizes that a disembodied mass of emotional energy isn't exactly something that they can all just 'stop' and that they rushed out to the ends of existence without any real plan for what would be there or what to do, cue dispair and hopelessness.
Zenos makes an enjoyably kitschy remark about how everyone's a bunch of sentimental ninnies, somehow slurps up the collected Dynamis into himself, becomes a conduit-manifestation of it, and forces us into the combat he has always been jonesing for: neither the protag nor zenos is anymore a champion of a primal, and instead both are relying on the emotional resonance of the desire to exist versus the desire to not exist. By granting Zenos this legendary clash that he's had a boner for since he began to exist, the sheer sense of contentment he feels in defeat washes over the collected, swirling mass of dynamis and puts it into a state of contentment: no longer does it desire to consume everything, and thus it stops spreading. Best of all, Emet-Selch does not appear anywhere in this story whatsoever, not even a flashback, and we let that character enjoy a satisfying conclusion rather than digging him up so the writer can tell us how cool he is again.
I have not thought about this very long. It took maybe thirty minutes to come up with and type this stupid idea out. They had several years to figure out the story's conclusion, and Endwalker was it. It's not just the little things that are wrong: it's a fundamentally terribly-told conclusion from the very top-level concepting of key events. Endwalker does very little to actually build up (or work within) the world that's been created thusfar, and instead is obsessed with spending inordinate amounts of time introducing new concepts that don't really 'click' with anything outside of themselves, in service of setpieces that mostly fall flat in comparison to other moments. ARR is clunky and awkward, but it at the very least does a lot of foundational work and doesn't have a habit of abruptly interrupting the story to ensure that we understand some stupid little detail stretched out over 5 hours.
@John Titor: Yeah, I knew I missed something, so thanks for the correction. You mind explaining the "toppling the government" part, by the way? I haven't exactly gone over that part of the story in quite a while; I legit can't remember the plot specifics, so I'd honestly appreciate a refresher.
I do agree that overthrowing the government at that point would be a bad idea; given the then-current situation with Garlemald, a potential civil war is the last thing anyone needs.
So Hingashi pretty much went through, as far as I can tell, the Sengoku Jidai in actual Japanese history. This is kind of complicated and I might mess up a few details but the tl;dr is: The Sengoku Jidai happened because in essence the martial forces of Japan had far more power then the actual Emperor himself due to how the politics were structured. Which eventually lead to the concept of the Shogunate who is effectively the true ruler of Japan and is in essence the ruler of the martial forces.
This would then lead to the Warrior Class: The actual Samurai, who are in one of the highest positions within the Japanese social ladder. So the actual political forces and rulers in modern society we'd call "our leaders/representatives/etc" were more symbolic then having actual power, the military really had the power and the Shogun was pretty much the head of the military.
The problem is the Shogun succession process was pretty much a total shitshow due to usual feudal system issues and some unusual circumstances, like the soon-to-be passing Shogun not having a living heir until the literal last minute of him stepping down, which eventually kicked off the civil war where all the militarized clans wanted to take power and rule over Japan as the Shogun was weak and the actual Emperor was incapable of doing shit to stop it. It was a massive power vacuum that overtook and changed Japan over the course of over a centaury as every clan wanted to take power and land for himself
Some wanted to become Shogun, some wanted a puppet Shogun they could control, and some just wanted more land and power. The great unification (usually credited mostly to Oda Nobunaga, but there are two others and Oda died first of the three iirc far before the Sengoku period truly ended in the early 1600s) pretty much stamped out all of this and reformatted the country which lead to the Edo period a time of peace which is where Hingashi more or less is today.
Hingashi pretty much went through something probably very similar and the 60-70 Samurai quest is pretty much some rebel guy thinking if he creates a power vacuum through a violent upheaval and let war decide who becomes the ruling forces of Hingashi then a better end result for Hingashi's politics will arise. The counter argument is pretty much "No it won't we literally just did that and it was horrible." because of the Sengoku Jidai parallels.
I haven't gone into the post-6.0 story yet; decided to make an alt before going any further into the story. Not looking forward to it, after everything that I've heard.
I actually agree with this take. ARR has a bad rap mostly because of the era it was created in and the audience of people who typically get into MMOs. Namely - if your game doesn't have a shitzillion explosions, a string of quippy one-liners, and at least five twists in the first 30 minutes, consumers get bored. And MMO players have been trained by like 20 years of WoW to not give a shit about story or lore and only care about immediate bing-bing wahoo loot and scoot with some Marvel-tier cinematics in-between.
Being a fan of old-school jarpigs, I really enjoyed ARRs slow, methodical worldbuilding. You really feel like you're getting to experience all the major factions on the ground of Eorzea and organically build up your reputation. You're just a normal adventurer but then you get caught up in mystery nigga madness. Then the people who fight the mystery niggas are like, "You're pretty good at fighting mystery niggas, you should join us." Then in the course of fighting mystery niggas, you demonstrate your ability to resist the corruption of primals and the mystery nigga exterminators decide to use you as an in with the major military powers on the continent. And that naturally progresses to you fighting the empire. End of ARR.
All the major plot beats of ARR follow from each other and grow out of making yourself a household name in the world. And HW and SB in a sense also follow that progression since no one knows about you in Coerthas, Dravania, Hingashi, Doma, or Gyr Abania. And then ShB works because you're a literal who in the First and even when people figure out your special sauce, there's not really much certainty that you'll be able to fix things (or if things can even be fixed at all).
EW's biggest thematic problem is that it feels really self-indulgent at times. Everyone knows who you are - they either love you and want to suck on your fat cock or hate you because your dick's too big. The interpersonal relationships are basically already completely established and there's almost zero character development. And this isn't really terrible for a finale chapter where you're wrapping things up, but the writers have had a really bad problem of continuing to write the NPCs as still wanting to suck your cock constantly. They really need to take advantage of this new world setting to make us a literal who again or it's just going to be EW again except I don't care about the stakes.
One thing that did pique my interest is that Yoshi-P mentioned divides opening up in the scions over what to do in the succession crisis happening in Tural. If they're smart, they'll use this to actually start pulling some characters out of stasis and also break up the scions so we can have different characters in the next expansion. But I'm not hopeful - I think they're legitimately scared of pulling certain characters out of the rotation for fear of upsetting the insane fanbase.
On a side note - I notice in the new world map that they've left Not!NorthAmerica covered in clouds so maybe we'll at least get a fun cowboy expansion or something down the line.
I overall agree with you, while ARR has its slow points that really do drag a lot, upon second pass I rather missed that feeling of being somewhat irrelevant in the grander scope and actually needing to show I can do shit for the world. It felt like an older school RPG sort of adventure, like low level DND where you're just some guy and you need to make a name for yourself as you go. It really made Shadowbringers more special when they highlight that those moments are what makes the story work the way it does when you get to the last third of 5.0.
I'm so sick of everyone needing "mystery", "drama", and "the actual plot" to be brought up every single second to enjoy a story at all because no one gives a shit about just little problems because they need to feel like the baddest bitch in the room at all times. Unless they get confronted by the someone stronger around the midgame then OMG IT WAS SO SUBVERSIVE TO MAKE ME LOSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STORY!!! Or whatever.
I dunno doing shit like helping the Ala Mhigans in Gridania, getting involved in Camp Drybone, and the early Coerthas stuff really felt nice to have just small little plot arcs where you have to actually do shit to get people's trust as opposed to snapping your fingers and getting your way without using exceptional actiony violence to force your way. I don't even think this is an MMO thing either, I think this is just a current year writing thing further amplified by "ARR sucks, but everything else is AMAZING" shit which ruins ARR before it even starts for some people.
I also don't think the Titan feast stuff is that bad in full context, to me it felt like a proper final send off the Adventurer WoL as we in essence get the blessing of veterans in our profession and prove ourselves that are genuinely the real deal beyond just ignoring tempering. We also learned a decent bit about the Miqo'te tribes which is barely explained or touched on in most places in this game. It was also nice to have a dragon feel like a proper encounter for once and not some endgame fodder enemy like most JRPGs tend to do with dragons that aren't super duper special. It was nice that just normal dragons got some level of respect in early ARR. It isn't even that long in current ARR compared to original ARR.
ARR is a perfectly fine (albeit messy) first major arc to a much larger story that teaches you a lot of things that generally get built upon later on and people are just illiterate, Stormblood is worse and I'd say it is at best comparable to Endwalker and I'll die on that hill.
I really think Yotsuyu deserved a better arc. Instead, we got Fordola and her Walmart-tier Echo because...reasons. Even renouncing both her name and citizenship and just fucking off into the sunset with Gosetsu would have been better than just making her an even worse Ysayle. Her being a retard after Doma Castle was kind of cute tbh
I have also finally found my first Duty Finder retards. Had 2 tanks that didn't turn on stances and made me tank Tsukiyomi's first major attack
