Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Troon Whisperer]

well, I actually can't really remember the point of Bismarck

Bismarck ate the key to Azys Lla, so you needed to kill it to retrieve the key.

 

[John Titor]

I should try reading posts from this thread from two years ago. Wondering if our attitude changed over the years and we're past the honeymoon phase.

 

[Rion]

I should try reading posts from this thread from two years ago. Wondering if our attitude changed over the years and we're past the honeymoon phase.

If your looking for the point where people started to sour on Endwalker, while I don't think it was any one specific thing, I started to see a bigger influx in negative opinions around 6.2 and 6.25, and thats when I started to feel negatively about the game, I liked 6.0 when I played it but I don't think EW holds up to retrospect, but a low point in the story is something this game can survive so whatever.

6.1 was basically false advertising, from the promising newfound adventure angle, going right back into the usual shit. The scions spending time apart was an alluring idea, but there they were all back together, it just becomes more and more of a punch in the gut with every patch afterwards where all the scions are just back at it, completely shitting on the ending of 6.0.
The Dawntrail trailer shows they're all still together, so I'm wondering what the point of that even was.

6.2 gave us the release of Island Sanctuary, and that was some of the most community hyped content I've seen for a while, and within a week no one was talking about it. It was incredibly shallow, half baked, and overall boring. You can visit others islands, but theres nothing to do there, and there were no customization options, it was just busywork.

6.25 gave us the release of Criterion and Variant dungeons, and that content died just as fast.
Variants are really shallow, the variant actions don't really add anything, its not like the lost actions from Bozja that give you alternate playstyles.
Criterion was okay, but the rewards were not worth it, and its overall difficulty was basically savage content, even the normal. As a result most people would rather prog the actual savage tier for its gear, and this content went ignored. I swear if they don't add unsyncing for this content its going to be some of the most dead content this game has ever seen.

This isn't even mentioning the smaller fuckups like the release of the Ishgard Housing district releasing broken and taking over a month to fix, or how mediocre the pacing was for the Abyssos raid tier.

 

[Soycast Guy]

One of the big problems with Endwalker is how it ruined a lot of the characters. Estinien in Heavensward was a badass dragoon who had a drive to kill Nidhogg after what the dragon did to his family. And after Nidhogg is defeated in the Dragonsong War quests, there’s an actual touching moment where Alphinaud reminds him of his little brother, and he then leaves Ishgard. That should’ve been the end of his character, but then they brought him back, and while I haven’t played the Endwalker patch quests, I saw that push ups scene on YouTube and I immediately knew I was done with this game. Alright, how about Gra’ha Tia in Shadowbringers? Genuinely interesting character, probably because he for the most part had his hood up. Well then in Endwalker he’s just the “uwu catboy” which was probably done to appeal to the degenerate fanbase which surrounds this game. So there’s this character I genuinely give a shit about in shadowbringers, who now I hate in Endwalker because they ruined his character. The characters feel like mascots now rather than actual characters.

 

[Kharash]

One of the big problems with Endwalker is how it ruined a lot of the characters. Estinien in Heavensward was a badass dragoon who had a drive to kill Nidhogg after what the dragon did to his family. And after Nidhogg is defeated in the Dragonsong War quests, there’s an actual touching moment where Alphinaud reminds him of his little brother, and he then leaves Ishgard. That should’ve been the end of his character, but then they brought him back, and while I haven’t played the Endwalker patch quests, I saw that push ups scene on YouTube and I immediately knew I was done with this game. Alright, how about Gra’ha Tia in Shadowbringers? Genuinely interesting character, probably because he for the most part had his hood up. Well then in Endwalker he’s just the “uwu catboy” which was probably done to appeal to the degenerate fanbase which surrounds this game. So there’s this character I genuinely give a shit about in shadowbringers, who now I hate in Endwalker because they ruined his character. The characters feel like mascots now rather than actual characters.

I noticed this when you first go to india and they make Estinien a joke character who doesn't know how money works. Felt like character assassination.

 

[Soycast Guy]

I noticed this when you first go to india and they make Estinien a joke character who doesn't know how money works. Felt like character assassination.

Yup. That too. Didn’t feel like the same character at all.

 

[Privilege Power Hour]

I liked 6.0 when I played it but I don't think EW holds up to retrospect, but a low point in the story is something this game can survive so whatever.

This is the difference between ShB and EW for me: the more I think about ShB, the more I find to like about it; the more I think about EW, the more I find wrong with it. Case in point: Zenos appealing to you starting all of this as just an adventurer and that being your true goal is cool when you first hit it, but thinking about it later I didn't have much connection to the idea because by level 15 you're already gathering crystals from primals and running around with important characters and being implied to be the chosen one.

Alright, how about Gra’ha Tia in Shadowbringers? Genuinely interesting character, probably because he for the most part had his hood up. Well then in Endwalker he’s just the “uwu catboy” which was probably done to appeal to the degenerate fanbase which surrounds this game. So there’s this character I genuinely give a shit about in shadowbringers, who now I hate in Endwalker because they ruined his character. The characters feel like mascots now rather than actual characters.

I will go to my grave arguing that Gra'ha as the exarch is one of the most moving characters in the game and arguably the actual main character of ShB, not you. The final scene of 5.3 where he reprises his monologue about how he dreamed of being a hero since he was a child and now is one is a summary of the most important themes of the story: that the stories of heroes lift us up and make us our best selves, heroes in our own right, who will in turn raise up others in our wake. His devolution into muh husbando character whose most notable scene is eating a hamburger is about as good of an example as you'll get of how bad 14's fandom pandering is right now. Honestly the last time I remember any form of media being this obvious about it was Doctor Who during Matt Smith's run turning into a bunch of winks and nods at the Superwholock girls on tumblr.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I should try reading posts from this thread from two years ago.

I took the initiative to go dig up my own manifesto that I remember scrawling out:

Actually, after writing out all that, I don't think I like much of Endwalker.

What surprises me is that I was actually somewhat high on Elpis - at the time, I think I was so overloaded by just how shitty rabbits and labyrinthos 2 were that I didn't notice how abhorrent Elpis is as this congealed mass of fanservice that goes out of its way to actively kill the pacing and poison multiple characters' personalities. So while most people started middle or high and then started to dislike it as time went on more, I started low and still found more to dislike about it.

I am glad that I slathered praise on the Garlemald section, though. That portion really is stellar, and I do still have fond memories about it - especially the dinner sequence event.

I noticed this when you first go to india and they make Estinien a joke character who doesn't know how money works.

Yeah - he had those character elements before, but they weren't so comically overemphasized. There was always this layer of "he doesn't really like most people," but it was taken to an absolutely absurd extreme... for the sake of making jokes when the story is supposed to be in its final arc? And of course, come the EW postgame, he bears no resemblance at all to the character as written in HW.

I will go to my grave arguing that Gra'ha as the exarch is one of the most moving characters in the game and arguably the actual main character of ShB, not you.

On reflection, I really only remember one time in the entirety of EW where there's any reason to suspect that he was, at one point, the Crystal Exarch. The moment in Thavnair 2 where he rallies everyone is about it - otherwise, it's a completely different character. I gel with the idea that he might be overloaded with a sense of having cheated death and having this joie de vivre about him, but the writers just didn't handle it well.

In a lot of ways, I think it's because of how... immature Endwalker is. Despite having what should be far darker content and a far more grim meditation on nihilism and purpose than Shadowbringers, Endwalker is written very sophomorically and its every conclusion boils down to platitude and moralizing. It introduces heavy themes that are inherent to the human existence and growing up - sacrifice, loss, accepting that what is gone by will never be again - and it abandons every single theme in a ditch in favor of childish simplicity.

This, of course, is only heightened in the post-game content, where it's almost a parody of the problems that main-story EW has. I suspect that these issues being so overt and obvious in the postgame's storytelling are why so many people have snapped to awareness about how bad the base game was.

 

[Agarathium1066]

@Rion Couldn't reply to your post due to length but you hit the nail on the head for the various issues with EW. The at release stuff was fairly enjoyable, story felt like an actually solid conclusion to the build up. It had a few issues as it always does and a few of their usual patterns like an inevitable filler section with irrelevant side shit or things that will build up to a beast tribe or what have you.

Everything after release has been a big shrug, the once hyped up content options are pretty simple or can be exhausted of anything unique very easily. The Island Sanctuary is so shallow I really don't understand why the hell they've put all the development time it must've required to try to cobble it together. It's as bland as Garrisons from WoW if not in some ways even grindier if you don't automate some of it. Except Garrisons could make you money in WoW and here its all a closed loop with a few glams, some mounts, and accessories.

Criterion dungeons are so meh that I forgot they existed more than once. The second set I only have some mild interest in because the glams rather than the actual gameplay so once more they made the carrot but covered the stick in shit.

The "NEW STORY" they claimed was coming is genuinely just bland as hell. I was actually annoyed that the void storyline didn't end upon the trial with Lord McLargeHuge. Nah we gotta fight a giant VOIIIIIID elemental. Yawn.

 

[std::string]

In a lot of ways, I think it's because of how... immature Endwalker is. Despite having what should be far darker content and a far more grim meditation on nihilism and purpose than Shadowbringers, Endwalker is written very sophomorically and its every conclusion boils down to platitude and moralizing. It introduces heavy themes that are inherent to the human existence and growing up - sacrifice, loss, accepting that what is gone by will never be again - and it abandons every single theme in a ditch in favor of childish simplicity.

This is just the fate of FF14's story in general, starting in ARR and continuing unabated.

I don't really know if Japanese writers just don't care if a story is all over the place in tone or what. I assume people who praise FF14's story just mentally delete all the filler and comedic interludes.

 

[Dave.]

Spoiler: I too am not liking post-EW

I was honestly stunned at the ending of 6.4 where essentially the writers ripped an entire page from Steven Danuser's (the worst writer in the video game industry) Shadowlands with the villain basically going "HA! I've outsmarted you for the 3rd time in a row! You were all mere pawns to my plan!" and then having the patch end on a cliffhanger that implied that all of the worlds were basically in danger. And our BBEG is barely even phased after the trial fight. Post-EW for me started off a little iffy, kind of mediocre in terms of how the characters were handled and the annoying fanservice and comedic interludes, to a straight nosedive to rock bottom. Right below Stormblood in terms of its writing. Eden was the second worst mostly because it was written by Nomura and his unending emo phase, Pandaemonium was boring and uninteresting because it's retreading old ground I was completely burnt out of coming from Shadowbringers, Eden, and Elpis, but this was worse than all that combined.

 

[Soycast Guy]

This is just the fate of FF14's story in general, starting in ARR and continuing unabated.

I don't really know if Japanese writers just don't care if a story is all over the place in tone or what. I assume people who praise FF14's story just mentally delete all the filler and comedic interludes.

The problem is how much people overhype the story of FFXIV. Endwalker is literal anime tier writing. I love when people say “the filler stops after ARR!” No, it fucking doesn’t. You have to slog through ARR to get to Heavensward, but once that’s done you have to slog through Stormblood to get to Shadowbringers. And after that the story drops off a fucking cliff. It doesn’t help when FFXIV is such a story heavy game that takes a shit ton of time investment. I don’t see Dawntrail getting any better.

Also all the villains suck ass except Emet-Selch.

 

[Rion]

On the topic of Endwalker's writing inconsistencies, it really bothered me how big they tried to hype up the final days as being this big cataclysmic event for the entire planet.
It then proceeds to just be the red sineaters attacking Thavnir specifically, and barely anything else happening around the globe.

Yeah I know the role quests get into this a little, but due to the nature of role quests, you're likely to not touch these until after the msq is completed, as you're likely only leveling one job through it. These stories also have next to nothing with the role you picked so I wonder why they bothered to lock them to specific roles to begin with, and once you finally get around to doing them its really just fringe one-off cases of some random npc turning into a red sineater, no lasting impact is made anywhere else on the entire planet, and none of it matters or will be mentioned again.

It really cheapens the impact how little endwalker actually impacted the world as a whole.

 

[Kotol]

Looking back at older posts, I still want more Grand Company stuff, but all we got in Endwalker was loot boxes as a money sink/company seal sink. With the ending of 6.0 I thought the Scions would trust the Grand Companies and the individual countries more to handle things, now that most of Eorzea is one giant alliance and all that. You got all of these ranks, surely designing 1 set of armor for each company every 2-3 years cannot be that costly, right? Then again, Square has invested a ton of money into horrible shit (Forspoken) or strange business decisions (FFXVI being a PS5 exclusive), so I guess money is tight for their flagship game?

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

Endwalker was intended to be two different expansions and damn does it show. There is no time to breathe. Every little roadbump is brought up and resolved instantly. Garlemald was the antagonist for just under a decade and it all got resolved completely off screen with they did a fucky wucky and civil war'd themselves to death. Oops.

Same with Zodiark. The single greatest threat to the entire planet that not even Hydaelyn was able to actually defeat, turns out the whole cage wasn't needed after all because we could've flown to the moon and punched him to death any time we felt like it. We didn't need to go through all that bullshit in the first place.

Hydaelyn was supposed to be this totally benevolent mother and it turns out she is the root of all evil. She intentionally allowed the ascians ancients to fall, she had critical information about the final days and meteion and chose to withhold it so her own people would die. Her motives are completely bonkers which she shares with Hermes.

Hermes again goes from 0 to 100 in literally one quest. He values all life and sees purpose in all things, but because his pet bird told him no he decides fuck all that. If the rest of the universe died I guess we should too even though we live in a utopian society. This idea that all life will inevitably self-destruct is the weakest limp dick argument I've ever heard with no actual reasoning behind it.

What really rustles my jimmies isn't even the main story beats. I think Endwalker should have been the greatest story of all time for FFXIV. I love the thought of a villain that is finally too powerful for us to defeat by fighting it. The only way we can end the final days is by convincing the world that there is purpose to life, convincing Meteion that all hope isn't lost. And despite her feelings of anger, and sadness towards the whole world we can overcome it if we choose to. But the actual writing is so dogshit. It's all tell don't show. We aren't given time to understand why Meteion thinks everything is hopeless. We don't see her desperation, we don't see things from her eyes. And because characters flip flop so quickly it's almost impossible to believe. The Final Days were a joke. It was a one night attack that had no lasting conseqeuences and didn't effect anywhere else in the world. The role quests only introduced on monster that was a highly localized threat that again was of no consequence. When every conflict is resolved so easily, quickly, and without any kind of sacrifice the entire expansion crumbles. Why would I believe that this is supposed to be the end of the world, and everything is doomed, when so far every little thing has been going our way?

The entire expansion felt like it was a wiki summary of events, or the devs kept flipping through pages in the book just to get this shit over with, even though this is the grand finale to their baby, the story that players have been invested in since the beginning. The culmination of all things, this is what we've been fighting for. And it feels like the writers don't give a shit about any of it. Shadowbringers upset me because that whole expansion was ass top to bottom. Endwalker upsets me because I see how this could have been the greatest set of expansions ever that we'll never see. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

I'm also on the Endwalker Is Boring train. The patch story isn't gripping me. The Scions have overstayed their welcome. The writing tone is coasting on a stupid moonrabbit glurge bender where everything,  everything, including a plot revolving around the depressing dimension of darkness and despair is intercut with these jarring Joss Whedon jokey moments that don't feel timed well. Jobs are boring. High-end content leans way, way too much into "one wrong move and everyone dies, time to start over". I'm unsubbed. My main entertainment at the moment is the shrieking and bitching people do on the OF and social media. If you ever darken the forums, Renathras is a middling lolcow. Watch that dude sperg the  fuck out on 20 paragraph rants every time anyone suggests he's wrong. It's hardly Farms-worthy, but sperging is sperging.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Yeah, as someone who actually likes Endwalker - or at least, certain parts of it - I can confirm that the story definitely suffers due to being two expansions crammed into one. Not really all that fond of how they handled certain characters - Venat's part of the story has a pretty notable plot hole for instance, Hermes completely lost his shit WAY too quickly (Granted, I think the devs were trying to show how the Ancients were too unable to cope with negative emotions to be able to go on, and that it was just a very bad situation with no real good options... but that wasn't handled the best, sadly), Zodiark feels more like he was supposed to be an end boss rather than the level 83 trial, Garlemald feels like it suffered from a ton of cut content in particular... it just goes on. Part of me does wish that the devs would go back and fix it, but... yeah, I don't think they will. You think they would bother to fix a lot of this stuff, given that Endwalker was basically just one long ass-kissing session, but...

Bit of a shame, too, since Endwalker does have some my favorite moments, like the aforementioned Galremald and the entirety of Ultima Thule - big sucker for post-apocalyptic settings, here - and some of the more emotional stuff, like Venat's death and Meteion's breakdown, definitely had some potential weight... but like you guys said, it goes by WAY too quickly. If anything, the invasion of Garlemald should have been the 6.0 story, and the patch quests could have been the stuff involving the Final Days; would've been better than the Void stuff we've got now.

Mechanics-wise, I agree that High-End for this expac is pretty bad; a lot of the content is made for expert-only kind of plays, and more casual players like myself tend to be more frustrated. Pandaemonium had some cool stuff, but parts of it definitely felt more frustrating to play than entertaining - would it have been too much to actually be able to explore the prison, SE? - and once I get it finished up, I'm not quite sure if I'll be touching it again. Also, tying it into the Ivalice raids was kinda stupid; it's implied that Ultima/Ivalice was manipulating Athena, and by extension, Lahabrea, through the auracite, which has implications for the story as a whole, but given that the devs were supposed to be pretty much ditching the whole thing with the Ascians/Ancients after 6.5, it feels like a wasted opportunity.

Spoiler: Autistic Pandaemonium Sperging

Especially since Pandaemonium being the cause of the Final Days instead of Meteion would've lined up a bit better with Emet mentioning in Shadowbringers about how "a sound from below the Earth" was what caused the Ancients to lose control of their magic, which fits better with the prison (which is below Elpis) rather than the Metia (who were in space). Granted, this is just me sperging, but... it makes me think that Pandaemonium was supposed to have more ties to the actual story, or was even the original way they were going with the potential cause of the Final Days, but then it got cut for some reason. Would've given us a nice little nod to II, instead of the finale being yet another IV nod.

I dunno, maybe it's just me being autistic, but it's interesting to think about.

Class-wise, I think that some of the jobs are in pretty bad shape, too; Magic in particular is busted, with Summoner being so hilariously easy use and yet having such good damage, while Red Mage... doesn't feel all that strong by comparison. I know we're supposed to be getting some reworks for some jobs in 7.0, including one for Dragoon, but the current job balance is making it really difficult to hop back in and try anything new. Some jobs are still fun to play; Reaper is great, and I'm having a TON of fun with Samurai and Dancer right now, actually. But I think the devs need to fix some things up.

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

I want to love Ultima Thule but it's like the writers were drunk the whole time they wrote it because the plot is totally nonsensical.

Spoiler: Ultima Thule venting because this zone frustrates me

From the start we know that Meteion can choose to delete anyone she wants when she wants just because she feels like it. Somehow Thancred's power of Dynamis is suppose to have created the entire zone and protects us from Meteion. No explanation we just need to accept that. Ok fine, but then they talk about how the negative attitude of some entity is preventing us from reaching Meteion. What's actually stopping us isn't magic it's that she's over there, we're over here, and Thancred didn't think to build a fucking bridge for us.

We're told the NPCs aren't real, they are just memories that we can see. But actually they were all just another Meteion in disguise? Somehow Estinien gets the big brain idea that if he talks down to the really sad dragon and says "stop being so black pilled that's fake and gay" somehow that will get Meteion to kill him. In death he can fix Thancred's mistake and build a bridge, even though we already established that Meteion can't kill us because of Thancred's death. Except even Estinien's death didn't fix anything because his bridge doesn't even go to Meteion so that was pointless. They set the plot up so perfectly for the Scions to bow out of the story, sacrificing themselves for the good of humanity, finally removed from the story but with a worthwhile ending for them all. Then the walking plot device tells us no we're all definitely coming back to life it's really easy, but remember don't do it *wink wink*. Why should I feel sad or any kind of tension when you've already told me that nobody is actually going to die and this is all just a big show? You're so desperate to abandon your decade long plotline but too afraid to upset Y'Stohla simps.

Story aside the current job design is what totally kills it for me. I'm tired of DPS being the end all, be all. Healers were turned into pure healers but we were not given content that requires a dedicated heal only role. Tanks are pointless outside of dungeons because bosses have prescripted movement or are just striking dummies. GW2 tried "what if we made every class DPS" and found out that while most people do want to only DPS it ends up making your encounters shallow and uninteresting. It makes your gameplay loop so repetitive since everything must be predictable, and you have no meaningful way to influence the fight.

Unpopular opinion but I like the summoner rework. Button bloat is terrible. Rotations don't work unless you are are a robot who performs exactly the right action at exactly the right time every time. If you mess up you're just screwed for the whole fight and if you're good you will always do exactly the same moves in exactly the same order every single time which is just boring. I don't see the appeal of having 3 hotbars full of filler. Someone explain to me why Red Mage has Scorch and Resolution, and how those actions are a necessary part of their toolkit. Dragoon is a good example of having this really complicated system of resources, and buffs that ultimately just means you have a 5 button combo instead of 3. Summoner wasn't allowed to break away from the mold but at least it feels like how a job should play. It doesn't require you to play the piano with your keyboard during your rotation, but it's flashy, it's powerful, and it's not needlessly complicated to execute. The only downside is that it still falls into the trap of relying on a complex chain of buffs and traits to get a handful of buttons to do several different actions.

I like reaper because even though the optimal way to play is double-weaving, you can still play mostly optimal without doing anything fancy to align cooldowns. You have some play in when you decide to pop your filler enshroud because you don't have to worry about timing it with the whole party or sitting on a cooldown. It feels like you have some options for optimizing, but you aren't totally neutered if you decide to do it the easy way. The game honestly needs more braindead jobs that casuals who don't want to min-max can still enjoy. We don't have a good mix of easy and complex jobs. The community and now the devs are literally optimizing the fun out of the game.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

It doesn't require you to play the piano with your keyboard during your rotation, but it's flashy, it's powerful, and it's not needlessly complicated to execute

Eh, people said that about the old Summoner. Those people didn't practice on a dummy. It's like people who say BLM is complicated. Read your tooltips, understand what your spells do, and figure out how to recover from a goof and BLM is easy.

Summoner's old problem wasn't needing to double-weave piano sweep. It was the more obvious problem that if you -died-, you were completely fucked because your phase transition had to start over from the very beginning, because you lost all charges of everything. And those phase transitions were minute-long cooldowns, so if you got mega-fucked, you'd be stuck in the filler phase for way longer than you needed to be. The less-obvious problem was that they fucked the timing up with the trances for some fucking reason, so if you stayed in the intro-level trance for its entire duration, you would start to drift your phoenix trance by like five-seconds per, so you actually had to end the first trance like 2 GCDs early. There was no suggestion in the game at all that this would be correct, and you had to look up a guide to even realize why, the longer a fight went on, the more disjointed the class felt.

There were two easy fixes: make the charges towards your next stance not go away if you died, and fix the fucking trance timers. Unless I'm misremembering, Xenoglossy charges will stick with a BLM even if you die, so why trance charges / phases had to fade on death is beyond me. Once you learned not to die and the trick about the timer, Summoner was a very comfy class with the easiest mistake being that it was easy to forget to refresh DoTs. Ruin IV charges could be easily shat out as-need-be between the phases, and especially if you learned what parts of a fight needed mobility they were great to have. Weaving energy drain and fester always felt a little weird, but it was just something you'd get down with a little practice.

I liked having a difficult caster that required some juggling. There is no longer a difficult caster. BLM is really not difficult, with most of the 'challenge' just being knowledge of movement in an encounter.

We don't have a good mix of easy and complex jobs. The community and now the devs are literally optimizing the fun out of the game.

There are a ton of easy jobs. There's everything under RDPS, there's every tank except DRK (which is more busy than difficult), there's every healer except AST, there's SMN and RDM, there's RPR and DRG.

It's falling in-between that is the problem. Paladin was not a difficult class to play before its rework, but you had to manage the two different phases and there were some nuances like goring blade timing. It is now fucking braindead easy. Hell, Inner Release at 90s CD sometimes meant even a warrior had to consider whether to bunga or to try to re-align with buffs. Combos not mattering at-all means that most classes can just freestyle and be totally fine.

For most jobs, you have your basic kit to learn, and then you have nothing much to optimize except to become the top-level uber-optimized perfect rotation, because there's really nothing else to work towards. Throw in an antisocial community obsessed with parsies or eating paste exclusively, and you just have that trouble (mentioned earlier by someone linking to a streamer going on about it) where there's nothing inbetween the paste-eater and the poopsocker and voila.

I want to love Ultima Thule but it's like the writers were drunk the whole time they wrote it because the plot is totally nonsensical.

Realizing that Endwalker was written-by-committee and that there was that weird delay right before the game came out where Yoshi said something to the effect of 'playtesters didn't like the tone so we're gonna change it,' as well as all of the "sacrifice is inevitable and a part of life" lead-ins that have absolutely zero payoff, it feels like at least some of them were probably originally intended to die there.

Hell, maybe everyone pretend-dying only to immediately get back up, and everyone pretending to "pursue their own things" only to immediately return five seconds after leaving are intentional jabs at someone up above forcing down really, really shitty storytelling. Of course, ironic dogshit is still dogshit.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Right, so... I can't reply to either of you two, @Spilled Spaghett and @Rich Evans Ayypologist, so let me just post my thoughts:

Spoiler: Ultima Thule's Story

For starters, concerning Ultima Thule: yeah, I can agree that the whole fake-out sacrifice thing was kinda stupid. I mean, I sort of get the story behind it - I think the reason behind the sacrifice bits was because, while Meteion couldn't kill us outright thanks to Thancred, she was still in control over the area, as noted by Emet, so the other Scions had to continuously sacrifice themselves to open the way for us to actually reach her nest. I also think part of the reason why she didn't just kill us outright is because she wanted to "show us the futility of our actions"; by giving "us" the hope that we might be able to reach her and make those sacrifices worth it, but then remain just out of reach to inflict more despair. Granted, that might just be me reading too much into things, and Y'shtola casually spoiling the ending for us ruined said impact anyway...

To be honest, I kinda wish one of the Scions died, as well; I mean, I'm a sucker for happy endings, make no mistake, but the last time we lost any major allies was back in Heavensward. Yes, we did lose Venat, which was a rather touching moment (I actually really liked her character, I admit)... but as noted, the prior plot holes and the rushed storyline ended up accidently dulling the blow, sadly.

Hell, to veer slightly off-topic; I kinda agree with the assessment that the Scions have a bit too much plot armor. For instance, I think Thancred should have possibly died back in Shadowbringers, after his final fight with Ran'jit; it seemed like a perfect send-off point, personally, and the only issue I really have with it is him being our only Tank for the Trust system. Not sure who I would have killed off in Endwalker, honestly; would probably be Y'shtola, given that she's... actually kinda useless and a bit dull.

I think I did read at one point that Thancred was actually supposed to die in UT, but... well, I'm not so sure if that's accurate.

Anyway, maybe they'll go back and fix some of the story issues, someday; they've fixed a few issues before, so maybe they'll do that again? Doubt it, but it would be nice; fix up that plot hole with Venat and the Convocation would be my first fix, because right now it's a pretty solid case of "good idea, bad execution".

Concerning jobs: I can agree, having a good balance between accessibility and difficulty is important. Unfortunately, the balance is kinda fucked right now, with most of the jobs being WAY too easy, and thus, kinda boring. I mean, Reaper and Dancer both flow pretty well right now, personally, but they really need to do some fixing to try and make the jobs both rewarding and challenging enough to actually play, while still being fun. Unfortunately, with the devs listening to all of the paste-eaters on Reddit and the Forums right now, it's unlikely that the current balance with improve; I can't help but feel that the game is going to continue to dumb down, until it becomes too braindead to be enjoyable.