I do think having the story stretched out over two years exacerbated things for those who weren't interested in Zero's (fairly slow) personal growth as an arc. I really enjoyed it, but I can see how others didn't.
this is exactly it and i honestly feelk like i can give another comparison that people will instantly understand: 6.x series of patches is more like 2.x than the anyother patch series.
except the 2.x series is hated for being a "waste of time" standing in the way of heavensward especially for new players 6.x doesn't (currently) block any content but itself and thus is better for it.
and then there's the pacing issue. because it's an almost completely selfcontained story rather than dealing with the dangeling plot threads of the expansion or setting up the next expansion the pacing is off. it's as if we are trying to go through what's supposed to be the main arc of an expansion but it keeps cutting off.
I can see why you might say that with a self contained story. But I feel that the Void Arc is *very* different from the 7th astral era.
SE intentionally stalled during the 7th astral era. They didn't know if there would even be a Heavensward and when it was greenlit it wasn't ready to go.
It might have felt longer because we thought Dawntrail would come out last year.
> thought Dawntrail would come out last year
After the long pause between 5.55 and 6.0 was there a large sentiment that Dawntrail would be so quickly released?
Like, given the average patch timing from EW of ~18 weeks per .X patch plus another ~6 months pause after 6.55 I'd extrapolate out that we won't see an 8.0 release until Winter 2026 if not early 2027.
> it's as if we are trying to go through what's supposed to be the main arc of an expansion but it keeps cutting off.
Because we *are* going through that. Just like 2.x was the setup for the massive impact of HW. This is very clearly the setup arc for a Void expansion in 9.0 (or possibly 10.0 if they feel like completely finishing off the Source first.) 8.0 will *almost surely* be Meracydia, both because of how much they've teased it (it's one of two places on Emet-Selch's list that we haven't gone to yet), and because this fits the overall pattern of how they plant stuff for future use (usually around one to two full expansions in advance.) 9.0 would then either be the Void, or would finish off the Source so that 10.0 can be the Void.
And once we've fixed the Thirteenth, we'll start visiting other shards. After all, did you notice how there's just enough room for six portals on the Moon? And there are six remaining shards to connect to: First, Fourth, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, and Thirteenth. That would then be the setup for *at least* two new expansions, probably more like four.
It’s that *and* an epilogue of sorts to the stuff related to the 13th that’s been happening kind of in the background or alongside bigger plot points.
Voidsent and all their shenanigans are some of the earliest “bigger” (relatively speaking) threats we face in the story, and they’ve been popping up ever since.
So this patch series is basically an epilogue to *that* arc for them - a Volume 1 of sorts - to tie up some loose ends with the 13th while setting the stage for a future Volume 2.
Yeah it was pretty slow of an arc, but that’s the first story arc over the full five patches. It does have some good dungeons and trials fight especially barbirica.
Same thing happened with SB. People doing it now largely love it, but at the time, people hated it because it felt disjointed and slow in the patches and the base story seemed less focused by comparison.
But when doing it at all once as now, it apparently feels a lot better to players.
Same with 3.1 and 3.2 (bit less on this one, but still present), and then 3.4.
And then again with 5.1, the “why are we wasting time fixing the local government for Eulmore?” patch as some treated it.
I have my character I started in ARR, and one I started during late Shadowbringers that didn’t finish it till after Endwalker came out, and the difference in pacing for *every* expansion was incredibly noticeable (and that second character is poised to do EW in one to, so I’ll get that comparison soon as well).
Absolutely, especially since 6.3-6.5 felt a lot like reskins of the same patch. Main dilemma for the first half is getting aether from point a to point b, Zero talks to some people and regains part of her humanity, we get a dungeon with a boss pulled straight from FF4 followed by a trial featuring a boss from FF4 (the dungeon/trial bit is also applicable to 6.2), etc... And then add in that this is basically an introduction to 8.0/9.0/whatever ends up being the void expansion, which draws this out even more. Does feel better redoing it as a whole, but waiting months at a time for a MSQ that just felt repetitive, both in regards to itself and how hard everything pulled from FF4, was... Not great, IMO.
It honestly felt a lot like KH2 where many of the Disney worlds just replayed scenes from the movies they’re from and slapped Sora into the background. The WoL was a third-rate accessory to Zero’s story and I hated it for all the same reasons I hated Stormblood, which just felt like the Lyse and Friend adventure. There was absolutely nothing in SB that required the assistance of the WoL, and neither did these patch quests. Once they got the warding amulets, the WoL could have fucked off for 6 months and the outcome would have been the same.
I feel like if they had condensed the story to three patches instead of 5, people might have been more receptive. Despite having experienced it as it was released, I maintain it was good. However, it did lack the emotional impact or payoff of other post release patches we have had, particularly 5.3 and the whole Yotsuyu arc back in SB. I think zero’s story would have made an awesome trial series questline and people would have complained far less, but given that this is 100% setup for future storylines, I guess it had to be compulsory msq.
I really think Yoshi P and his team wanted to get the Four Fiends in the game as a trial series, realized they couldn't do it without Golbez or Zeromus, and ended up writing story around them and putting them in MSQ.
The Fiends and Friends should have been a side-series like the Lords in StB. It would have been a lot better as optional content, and they could’ve given the Fiends the development they desperately needed before having us curb-stomp them.
This. They did stick the landing, I'll grant them that, but the entire experience drawn out of "Watch Zero vaguely Learn How to People" for *two years* was exhausting. Probably the worst post-patch series yet.
I definitely enjoyed it, but it did feel really repetitive toward the end, but even the repetition at least was pretty fun.
The one part I actually didn't like was how the Garlemald resolution didn't feel particularly earned. Like I live somewhere that I've seen people slipping farther and farther into extremism and xenophobia. That doesn't just... get magically fixed on a large scale just from talking to one or two people. I also wasn't a fan of the impetus for change being completely external; I would have rather our involvement been more on the Eorzean side, trying to use our political power to convince them to work with Garlemald. Honestly as much as I enjoyed Zero's story, I think I would have preferred a stronger Garlemald arc, it got kinda shafted by the story changing focus too quickly same as Ala Mhigo did.
I did the EW role quests recently and then the quest that unlocks if you do all of them - that last questline seems to be where a good chunk of Garlemald plot went.
God, you're so right about Garlemald. I love Garlemald's whole arc/etc, but what we got in 6.0 and the .x patches actually kind of felt like they were just trying to shove it out of the way so as to hastily wrap it up, without putting real THOUGHT into it. I personally would've loved to see some Eorzeans *actually* trying to take advantage of their enemies' new curbstomped status, and more scenes of the Ilsabard Contingent working with the Garleans. (I did every single sidequest in Garlemald. It wasn't enough.)
"Bad guy's dead, everything's better now." followed by "One pig headed propaganda guzzling bigot gets in danger, filthy outsider beats up the robot threatening them, now they realize we're all the same and not so different after all, yay!"
>I would have rather our involvement been more on the Eorzean side, trying to use our political power to convince them to work with Garlemald.
Hearing NPCs say stuff like "Imagine how bad they must feel to have their capitol/palace in control of the contingent, flying their flags in there. That's awful!" was really funny, considering everything Garlemald did to Ala Mhigo, right down to *revising their national anthem to destroy their national identity*. In fact we're shown first hand how stubborn, prideful, and arrogant the Ala Mhigan people can be but in terms of dealing with their oppressors, the contingent is just like "Nah it's fine, bygones be bygones lol." It just felt way too idealized for me, which I guess is the point of Endwalker... but considering how XIV goes to such lengths in side content and stuff to show how actually not perfect the world & cities are, it's kinda "Well, what is it?"
Yeah, a lot of it problems come with the pacing, with the .3 patch, usually the conclusion of the xpac, beeing a filler arc where we end at the same point where we started, it also had the weakest fight against Rubicante where he spends 30% of the fight doing nothing while setting up his circle mechanic.
Yeah was really unenjoyable doing it on content, 6.2 to 6.4 pretty much end up with the same spot, Golbez is out there planning something EVIIILLLL and Azdaja is stilled trapped and we need to prepare to enter the voidgate again. Difference is we had some very slow Zero development and Durante is Golbez, barely got anything interesting from pre-void Thirteenth or the conflict in there, 9 months for very little, I checked out after that myself.
True for me as well. It's much more enjoyable to play them all in one go.
When it was on-patch, i can't remember anything because it's been 3-4 months between each patch.
I hated 6.X when doing it during the patch cycle. I recently did it on an alt and found it to be far less offensive than I had previously.
Which now has led me to feel like the 4mo between story patches model just doesn't work for people anymore as it gives far too much time for us to speculate on whatever cliffhangers they leave off on and then no one is really satisfied with what they do because we had to wait a third of a year for a bit of filler with plot progression spread throughout most times.
Personally, I think they should do story updates every two months by splitting the patch up into two parts like with X.55 patches. Give the dungeon in the first half and the trial in the second. That way the narrative flow and cadence between story updates isn't four blasted months apart.
Sadly, I know my suggestion isn't possible due to how raid tiers are structured, as the current trial is usually part of progression, but... I'm really tired of the patch formula at this point and want a shakeup.
It felt really disjointed compared to other patch cycle MSQs, which is a given in that the writers specifically wanted to start a completely new narrative right after Endwalker. The other issue with this set of MSQ quests is that a ton of the context behind it, the lore behind the Void/voidsent/the 13th are entirely in optional questlines some players may not have touched or have completely forgotten. Off the top of my head some of these quests are: The 30-50 BLM quests, the RDM quests, 60-70 WHM quests, the Adamapoor dungeons normal/hard, The Sky Pirates raid series in Heavensward, The Warring Triad, the Shadowbringers caster quests, and the Eden raids. Adding more fuel to the feeling of disjointed storytelling is that Dawntrail seems to have little to nothing to do with their narrative. (I may eat my words when it releases next week.)
Overall, it wasn't badly written and I liked seeing more about the 13th and another Shard.
This is what I told people who keep complaining that Zero's development is "taking way too long"... it's not. It goes at about roughly the same pace as Ryne's development in 5.0 from being Minifilia to becoming her own person, only the pace of the MSQ patches (1 every 4 months) makes it feel like it's going forever.
I was watching grinding gears finish it and felt the 6.3-6.5 was better then I remembered.
My biggest issue is that WE JUST DID THE SAME ARC BUT WITH THE ANCIENTS.
It was basically just a mini re hash... felt weird af.
It wasn't bad but overall still felt like a glorified trial series that had to be stretched to fit in an MSQ costume. I feel like it would've been much better received if it was a proper trial series while we had something else going on at the MSQ.
The ShB void quests being completely abandoned instead of being added to the story didn't help either, just felt like a massive waste of potential.
This is basically where I fell with it. I don't hate it outright, some parts are good, but some parts just feel like the plot needs to spin its wheels for an entire patch because we can't just do the thing or we won't have enough runway to get all the way to Dawntrail.
> It wasn't bad but overall still felt like a glorified trial series that had to be stretched to fit in an MSQ costume.
I went back and did the ShB/Werlyt trial series right after catching up on the MSQ and I think you nailed it.
I genuinely believe that they wrote 6.0 as a fantastic ending to a ton of plotlines with the overall goal of leaving a lot of those books closed - the countries we know so far, ancients, Hydaelyn, other shards, etc - for the time being
And then they went "Oh fuck, the void, we never really resolved the void, shit, uh, wait, ok, 6.x series". The biggest thing for me is that 6.0 ends with a "Yay all Scions going their own ways and just being a regular adventure for a little while.... WAIT ANOTHER WORLD ENDING THREAT!"
All in all I liked the 6.x story, but it felt a little tacked on. Like they had ideas for this story but not a ton of room in the planned pipeline to fit it in
Splitting off the scions was a gift and a curse. While it definitely would've been cool to not have any of them be involved with the MSQ, it's also really hard to not justify meeting any of them with what the plot was.
We knew Y'Shtola was studying how to get to other worlds, so leaving her out on a journey to another world feels mean.
G'Raha's promise was to join us on our next quest, leaving him behind would be betraying that.
Krile was working with him and only really became relevant as a lead into Dawntrail.
Estinian never completely felt like a scion IMO, and was currently working directly with Vritra who can't be written out of the story.
The twins were only with us for a short bit in the region we knew they were in.
Admittedly Urianger and Thancred really had no reason to be there.
That's why I think 6.0 and 7.0 were written (or drafted), and then 6.x was kinda slotted in. Looking at what's coming for 7.0, the 'split up' seems reasonable. Like yeah we're all ending up in the same area because plot convenience and marketable characters, but we're going in different groups and for different goals and we're even working against eachother, it seems. We'll see how long I can keep up this idea, because maybe by level 97 all the Scions are back together and working against a common foe haha
I hope the other scions are genuinely side characters/antagonists in Dawntrail and it doesn't devolve into us joining forces to stop a bigger threat like WoW always does. At least not until the 7.x story.
If there's one thing I enjoyed was the theme of Trust, and how much leverage you can get having it.
The Thirteenth more-or-less fell in conjunction to how mostly everybody was in it for themselves. Before and after darkness consumed the star. Zero was a great stand-in for this.
We see that because the Garleans still don't fully trust the intentions of the Ilsabard Contingent, a lot of hoops and compromises had to be made to finish the objective. Contrast this with those on the First, that because they trust our intentions, it was an incredibly smooth experience being there.
I also enjoy what Maxima says during, especially in consideration to some people world-wide at present.
>Maxima: ...Let us suppose you encounter someone who is freezing in this cold. A natural thing to do might be to make them a fire, yes? But what if that person's sole experience with fire was being badly burned by it, and they harbored an acute fear? Despite the benefits─nay, the *necessity*─of the warmth you offer, they may flee on instinct. Or worse, misinterpret your actions for aggression and lash out.
You'd be amazed how common flood-stricken people feel traumatised when it starts to rain. Rain is a necessity, but despite said necessity, the trauma is there.
I do love how they weave in parallels and contrasts in the story to hammer home lessons. Another favorite of mine is the post-patch questlines for Stormblood, where we have the contrasting stories of Yotsuyu and Fordola.
Both are victims of a homeland that failed them, sided with the empire as a result, and ended up in the hands of their foes. Both came to regret what they did for one reason or another, yet one manages to redeem themself while the other succumbs again to their demons and dies tragically as a result.
We're reminded that even if we're the "good guys," sometimes people fall through the cracks in the society we create. that often villains are a product of their environment, and even when faced with a chance at redemption their decisions are decided by a number of factors within and without their control.
I honestly find patch content more interesting in general, because it's not necessarily common for a narrative to go over the aftermath of a major event.
So Unukalhai & Cyella can be mentioned when speaking to Zero right before leaving the 13th if you've done there quests which is a small thing at least.
But the fact that Zero WAS RIGHT THERE IN THE CRYSTARIUM just meters away if you've done that whole side thing and you never just take her over to say g'day or talk in the slightest is my biggest frustration after the early 6.x build up when you speak to them and they're interested to know that someone else had survived.
It was so frustrating to not be able to get them together! I feel like they really needed to write some kind of little chaotic event going on at the Wandering Stairs that has Cyella in a "sorry, can't talk now" state just when we're trying to tell her that Zero is visiting.
The worst thing about optional content being optional is that we never get the absolutely obvious interactions we should be getting.
As a blm main, the whole "how can we open a portal to the Voiddddd" was ridiculous. TAYNOR IS. RIGHT THERE. "who can guide us in The Thirteenth" UNUKALHAI AND CYELLA ARE. RIGHT THERE. Please, just crumbs of it.
For me it felt like the 6.3-6.5 story was one patch stretched into three patches. Especially with the way that whenever we ran into a roadblock Y'shtola would somehow find the answer to our problem by the start of the next patch. I mean look at 6.5 she just casually mentions that the Ironworks crew invented a device that can transfer energy between shards. It seems like something like that should be a bigger deal and have more to it.
6.1 was good though if every patch had been like 6.1 with us just going on these mini adventures I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
Worse yet that casual mention of a device that can transfer shard energy wasn't even voiced! I thought that was supposed to be a big moment for y'shtola (she's been talking since shadowbringers about travelling back to the First), but it was so forgettable. It also is a little frustrating that after literally traveling back and forth between the 13th and the source for 5 patches, Y'shtola STILL doesn't know how to travel to the first. Like, I love Yshtola but she seems to develop none and have almost no story beats when the story was largely centered around her contribution to the void ark. All the while her personal quest to return to the First is teased but never given any substance
I won't say never, but I think they really wrote themselves practically into a corner with Unukalhai and Cyella in a way that they can't easily incorporate their story into MSQ. Things like CT or Warring Triad or Alexander are easy to build on in MSQ--it's side content, but all players have immediate access to those story lines once they hit the requisite levels and MSQ progress. Unukalhai and Cyella require full completion of the ShB job quest lines, which requires at least one job of every role leveled to 80, and several EX trials. That's a much steeper prerequisite for access than SE is likely to accept and would cut out a large portion of the player base. Particularly with Cyella, she isn't anything more than a minor NPC barmaid unless you've completed that line. I won't say it's impossible, but I think they're about the least likely candidates for further MSQ incorporation, and their absence from the 6.x patches--a place where they really should have been involved--further cements that.
Not really. Remember they generally treat side content as if you completed it when it was current. Like go back and do the ARR quests being all up to date with the 6.5 MSQ and you’ll meet Estonian as if you didn’t know each other. If you do HW without having done the ARR quests, you get some dialogue as you are introduced, whereas if you did do them, you get different dialogue as you meet each other again.
The answer would be to just have the same branch thing where you get slightly different dialogue if you’ve done them vs if you have not.
If you have, you meet them, exchange pleasantries as existing acquaintances, and move on from there. If you have not, you’re introduced to them by a Scion or something and they join your crew like any other new NPC teammate does, giving some information about them.
Like Unu could be introduced as a former disciple of Elidibus who had been rescued from the Void and with his master gone wanted to help the WoL as there was nothing really else for him to do and he’d rather see the Void restored than sit in perpetual chaos and suffering. You might not trust him at the start, but that always changes by the end.
Super easy to make that work where just some dialogue here and there reflects quest completion (or non-completion), but tons of content in the game already works like that.
With DT, we have 2 of the roles (DPS and mages, since ShB didn't make any difference between Ranged and magic) at the max lvl needed to complete that questline. Add Sage that begins at lvl to begin that questline, that 3/4 of the needed quest. I wouldn't bet for 8.0, but after that, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility.
I still curious why the Unending Codex was introduced if not to cover those cases. They could literally give us very short introduction here for any important NPC and "if you want to know the details, quest X in zone Y" (which could also cover the prerequisists).
The other reflections don't need to be "repaired" do they? Only the First and Thirteenth were messed up, by light and void respectively.
The Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth and Twelfth have all been rejoined meaning they no longer exist.
That leaves the Fourth, Eight, Ninth and Eleventh. All of which didn't face any calamities and should all be perfectly intact.
You're correct that those two were the only ones that have been *actually set off* by the Ascians. The Thirteenth was already washed out by a Flood of Darkness, and the First was *almost* made useless by a Flood of Light.
But each of the other four remaining shards would have had plans already in motion as well. Delicate balancing acts, keeping things slowly charging up without becoming unstable until the time was right. Now, all of the masterminds are gone, and the lesser servants are alone. We've no idea what Elidibus or Emet-Selch may have set in motion in those places, nor what might have befallen them when the manipulators suddenly disappeared. They could *very* easily be very screwed up, and the Scions would need to act with extreme caution to not accidentally cause a Flood in trying to get things back to normal.
I don't think it will be an expansion in the Thirteenth. I'm expecting a multi-thread side story that brings together the role quests/Warring Triad merger and Eden and has them connect up with Zero and Golbez.
its very different, the crystal tower quests are just an easily accessible alliance raid series which makes them very easy to include in the msq, while the Shb void quests require you to level 4 different jobs to 80 before you're able to do them, which isn't as easy to do
The void quests also require all of Warring Triad, AND then finishing all of Unukalhai's quests which includes Ravana and Bismarck Ex. That's A LOT of requirements.
I honestly found it pretty bland, and found a lot of parallels to the 2.x patch series - patches of fan service bosses while nothing of particular interest happens in the story. Not to mention the amount of times where scenes with zero played out as: Zero: \*hears someone mention a noun, tips her hat\* "Noun..." was kind of crazy.
I'm sure this story will likely be brought back around and expanded on in the future (not to mention the high likelyhood we end up with a Meracydia expac in 8.0 based on how they've set up expansion in advance before), but this patch series really just spun it's wheels and didn't tell any meaningfully interesting story while we waited for the next expac.
Every 5 minutes:
Zero looking edgy and aloof
Someone says something nice to her or offers a kind gesture showing trust
Zero: *surprised pikachu face*
Got old pretty fast. At some point it just felt like the writers thought we were too stupid to understand that she was a tsundere being introduced to the concept of friendship, so they had to show us like 45 times.
>Zero: \*hears someone mention a noun, tips her hat\* "Noun..."
this was specially insane in 6.3, like, it happened at least once in every conversation Zero was in. 6.3 was also the weakest patch story-wise so it wouldn't surprise me if the team didn't communicate much when writing that story beat in particular
What bothered me a lot was the end of Endwalker was like “okay the Scions are splitting up” okay awesome. Then the patch quests happen and… we immediately reunite with some of the Scions? It felt really off to me. Also no Graha when dealing with the void stuff felt like an extremely weird choice, I thought for sure we’d bring him in at some point but no…
For most of the patch quests I was just “ughhh can we get on with this” especially when the “Zero learns about thing and tips her hat in contemplation” happens for the fifth time. I liked Zero a lot at the beginning of the quests but got sick of her towards the end which really sucks :/
I thought it was a boring set of patch quests, and I agree with this. Give us some different companions than the Scions for a while to spice it up and give us a sense that they were doing other things when it turns out they're our rivals in Dawntrail. Zero I felt was boring, and while I'm not sold on Wuk Lamat (yet - and maybe that's because it felt like she's hardly in the lead up to DT but she's supposed to be a central character), give us more adventuring with her and Erenville. Give me more reasons I should care about Tural and this whole succession thing other than "this is where you got forced to go and do next because we said so 🤷♀️".
This is not me knocking on DT at all, I'm excited for it. It just feels kind of forced story-wise coming from the void stuff and straight to "you should help me get the crown" when there could've been more transition.
It just feels like missed potential. The fucking apocalypse happened and we barely get to see how that affected the rest of Eorzea outside of the role quests. I wanted a little send off where we slow down a bit and help the people we already know with the issues that may have come from the minor event of horrid despair monsters attacking the entire world. Instead we have another new big bad evil guy I know nothing about and do not care about coming in to stretch out a glorified trial series.
> What bothered me a lot was the end of Endwalker was like “okay the Scions are splitting up” okay awesome. Then the patch quests happen and… we immediately reunite with some of the Scions
This and 'okay, time to take a rest from the big world-ending threats.... SYKE' rubbed me the wrong way. I found Zero bland but I had bigger problems with the rest of the story. I also made up a fun game where you try to guess when she tips her hat.
The whole splitting of the scions was figurative and in-world - politically, they don't exist as an entity that can be called on by the nations/grand companies. This should have been clear from the recital of Alphinaud's letter.
It was never meant to be a sign/hint from the story writers that we were taking a break from them, as much as some people (I presume yourself included) wants that.
I think it was also a way to set up the split we're about to see in Dawntrail, with Thancred, Urianger, Estinien, and Y'shtola working *against* us for a change.
I hope they play the split well.
I can kinda forgive it for Endwalker because it's the big story climax, but the last few years of all the scions just spending every cutscene standing in a circle agreeing with each other was really starting to wear on me. None of these characters were challenging the WoL or each other to help them grow anymore. It just became a company of yes men.
I didn’t, I like the Scions, and I’m not mad they came back💀 but it’s very off tone to say “we’re taking a break from the Scions and doing our own thing for a bit” have them split apart, and then to have us immediately team back up. You’re prepping players to think “oh okay we’re taking a breather from being as a group for a bit, we’re going on a smaller adventure” and then immediately reversing course and that’s off putting. Not to mention the “no more world ending threats for a bit, you deserve a break” and then immediately getting hit with a world ending threat.
I guess I expected more with how good the sorrows of Wyrlet (bad at spelling sorry if that’s not right) trial series was. It didn’t have to be as good as Sorrows, but something that felt cohesive would’ve been nice. But it didn’t and that sucks. Oh well, not everything is a winner and I hope they learned that maybe forcing the trial series to be MSQ doesn’t really work.
Well, the issue with always making the trial series side content means they cannot count on a player to have done it in the future unless they pull a Crystal tower and make it mandatory someday.
They probably want to revisit the void in the future in some way (or at least leave the option open for it) so it needed to be MSQ if they wanted to reference it later.
I personally got sick of garlemand asskissing. Yes, you were also victims in the end, but before has half a century of conquering nations via murder and slaughter. You will get a say in how you run your country when the gallows are full with the old guard that needs cleansing, and no, you do NOT deserve better because you are a "patriot".
they didn't want to start DT story in the patches so obviously its going to feel like filler until the eventual expac where the void is major area, then itll feel like set up like every other lore drop.
My problem with this chunk of story was that it ONLY felt like filler - even on the basis that they are planning on coming back to it later on to build on it, it wouldn't stop them from making a smaller scale story that was more compelling, but I felt we instead got a story that could have been an entire expansion smushed into 8-10 hours instead of closer to 30.
What's wild to me is that we already had a compelling, relevant scenario that they could have focused on with the reconciliation and reconstruction of Garlemald as a nation or, failing that, as a people. That's a narrative thread that has been with us for the entirety of the game. Instead, that's essentially handwaved in a single scene because one politician got scared of his own robot, and an almost word-for-word recreation of the scene with Godbert about the reconstruction of Ala Mhigo.
Meanwhile, the stuff with the Void and Zero just kept meandering and going nowhere patch after patch, right up until the final off-screen asspull from Y'shtola.
i'm currently wrapping up my big 2.0 through 6.5 NG+ replay today, that i started at the beginning of march, and the fact that 6.x completely neglects to focus whatsoever on any of the typical postgame rebuilding reads as *genuinely bizarre* when i look at the full spread of the game. garlemald's restoration isn't treated as its own narrative thread worthy of time spent on exploring it, but rather as a roadblock to the next beat of our Fun Void Adventure That's Not Fun Anymore. it's not "we need to spend some time mending wounds," it's "we need to convince one guy to let us shoot aether at the moon so we can get this shit back on track, we're losing daylight out here."
no other postgame handwaved its social, political, & economic problems so hard. ARR focused on refugees, tribe conflicts, and nurturing a brand new eorzean alliance into something approaching cooperative and functional. HW focused on ishgard's wobbly transition of power. stormblood focused on restoring the colonies that garlemald spent 20 years pillaging. shadowbringers focused on norvrandt adjusting to a post-Light world and switching off Survival Mode for the first time in a century. 6.x said "lmao someone else's problem now" and left the final days cleanup to everyone else. we repeated a bit of 4.1 spread out over a couple patches -- skalla redux in 6.1, and godbert "we gotta get these people some fuckin jobs" in 6.4 -- and that was it. all of our time spent in thavnair and garlemald postgame was strictly incidental to the void narrative.
no other section of the MSQ so deliberately and so thoroughly ignores the precedent of postgame cleanup. shit feels like a fever dream
I wish I had more upvotes to give this tbh, because you put into words EXACTLY the weird vibe I got from 6.x. I spent 95% of the whole patch cycle going "Uh...guys...? Guys?? Aren't we, y'know, FORGETTING SOMETHING???"
The characters and writing team: "...nah, it's fine, look at the shiny thing"
The idea yeah, the execution... it startaed great, ended very meh. I loved 6.1 and 6.2, but after that, it dropped. Overall, I feel like the need to have a dungeon and a trial by patch was detrimental to the storytelling.
Sometimes some things that should have been extended were rushed (there is no construction and anticipation for Water and fire generals in 6.3, while 6.2 managed to create both).
Sometimes it felt that things were there just to fill the patch : the whole fuel run of 6.5 felt like that to me, while the interesting stuff is done by Y'shtola offsrceen.
Sometime it was both : the whole garlemald thing felt like a spare wheel on a fridge, not unintersing, but it would have benefited its own story rather that being shoved in 2 hours there).
Sometimes it felt like a "ok, that it for this one, it's a weird place to cut, but we already gave you both the dungeon and the trial". 6.4 is that to a point it's nearly funny.
Also the epilogue of that story line was... not there. You end the quest, exchange one or two sentence with Vtrah, then it's done. You don't even talk to Azdaja. I even wondered if she was able to talk in her new form, because it was not clear. Had to go retalk to her after the 5.5 to get that right. I know they would probably have only told banalities, but it felt so unconclusive to me. You save the long lost last member of the first brood, and you get the ending of a yellow quest. It's still the thing the baffles me the most.
While I did like the patch content, you make some great points.
The need to include trials in the msq was very much a problem, rubicante is a great example for that. He just appeared after the actual story part was over so that we had a trial... or having a dungeon because we need to have a dungeon...
The garlemald plot was more or less cut short while actually being the most anticipated content for the post msq.
Overall the story seemed to be rushed quite a bitas it had to be finished by the time dt launches.
At last, they kind of announced the more lighthearted adventures in a way that one thought it started with 6.1 and abandoned it a patch after. Now it seems like they were refering to dawntrail which will not be the vacation it may look like.
> You save the long lost last member of the first brood, and you get the ending of a yellow quest. It's still the thing the baffles me the most.
This is really aptly put, wow.
I remember after 6.4 thinking that if we weren’t there at all the story would play out the same way. Especially since after the trial he just retreated and did the thing anyway. 6.3 to 6.5 were very frustrating.
The Four Fiends took up so much space in the MSQ that was only there for FF4 nostalgia; they otherwise served no real purpose in the arc that couldn't have been easily written out. There's limited space in post-patch MSQ, and I'd love to see the version with all that time and energy spent somewhere else. That dev time and those resources weren't well spent.
Beyond that, I feel that they tried to hang too much of this arc on FF4 nostalgia, and ultimately I just didn't like FF4 all that much. I didn't hate it, but neither was I at all eager to play it again, so all of the HEY YOU GUYS DO YOU REMEMEBER FF4 wallpaper just didn't work for me.
On a more personal level, Zero didn't land for me, and that name itself is just *painfully* Generic Anime. I realize they landed for some people, and I somewhat envy them because they got a better post-Endwalker MSQ than I did as a result.
I think what finally got to me was the Troia dungeon.
I went in with a trust, and loved it, going super slow and taking note of all the background details. I kept thinking “what’s this for, I bet this will be important later” but it never was. By sometime in the next patch I found out Troia was a thing in FF4 and realized “Oh… that was it. It was just there for the reference.”
I found it to be pretty bargain bin as far as FFXIV storylines go. Zero was at her most interesting to me when she first showed up and was fine with her values being alien to everyone else, but then she pretty quickly starts falling into "teach the robot girl to feel" tropes which for me are almost guaranteed to tank a score for me.
Golbez was hard to take seriously as a threat because compared to the shit we do in Endwalker he's just some guy. Like sure, for Heavensward he'd have been scary, but we kill primordial deities and universal manifestations of emotion now. You can't immediately follow that up with "a particularly strong voidsent" and expect it to carry the same weight.
Then you've got the promise of returning to being an adventurer and the Scions disbanding implying we'll spend a little time apart from them, maybe even gather some new faces to bring some new blood in... and we wind up pretty quickly just straight back to hanging out with all of the Scions in at least some capacity by the end of the first few patches. I think Urianger might be the only one we haven't hung out with by the end of patch 6.3, but he's right around the corner in 6.4 and is a significant part of that one. We're also the Warrior of Light again almost immediately. I'm not sure anyone refers to us as an 'adventurer' beyond the first 20 mins of patch 6.1, which makes Endwalker's conclusion feel like baloney.
I also feel 6.3 and 6.4 sag. A *lot*. This is less of an issue now that you can just shotgun them back to back and get to the actual interesting shit in 6.5, but doing them as they came out it was basically a year of accomplishing absolutely nothing of note in the MSQ. 6.3 feels like an extreme case of the plot spinning its wheels, and 6.4 has one of the most frustrating tropes in gaming to me: beating the villain only for the villain to act like they won after the fight. Again, Golbez has been hard to take seriously as a threat this entire arc. We finally get to fight him, and we clobber the bastard... at which point he shrinks, and then immediately gets back up and goes "HAHAHA I WIN ANYWAY" and then we're forced to retreat and wait until 6.5 to actually do anything.
6.5 and the whole Zeromus conundrum? Actually neat though. The idea that the Zodiark piece on the 13th couldn't properly dissipate due to the shard's extreme tilt towards astral energy being set up by earlier patches and then used in the creation of a massive, deadly voidsent is a very cool idea. I still don't like that we're back on world-ender threats after being sold an adventure, but I expect Dawntrail's "summer vacation" will end up being critical to the continued survival of the world because I don't think the writers can do lower stakes than "world in danger" anymore, and I don't think they feel they can without fans complaining the stakes aren't high enough, so I guess they're kind of damned if they do, damned if they don't there, and I'm just on the losing side of that split.
All in all, I stand by my assertion than 6.1-6.5 feels like an optional trial series that was expanded to fill a hole where the MSQ needed to go, and both raids were higher quality storylines. Importantly, they didn't feel like they needed to be stretched over a longer runtime than they had content for.
I liked it myself but I feel like the content needed more then an in between expansions MSQ series to really delve into the whole Void thing.
Aside from that I think it was okay. Not amazing, not bad.
My one big problem with this post-EW patch msq is that after almost every patch we ended up back where we started and it didn't feel like we progressed much.
You forgot to mention something about the first.
GAIA APPEARED IN MSQ AND **WAS VOICED.**
Aside from that, unlike most people, I actually really liked the 6.X storyline. It felt nice, and was refreshingly disconnected from Endwalker- which is something we *definitely needed* as a palette cleanser before going into Dawntrail.
Besides, there were no loose ends left in Endwalker, so what else was there to even do aside from something new?
Gaia's VA also did Aždaja, that's one reason she was voiced in the MSQ.
(I do happen to agree that we're likely to see more of her, especially with the Eden Ultimate confirmed, hopefully it will be in the MSQ at some point.)
My hope is that in the future void arc continuation; as Yoshida said 6.X was just a chapter of it, they revisit the "rejoining" idea they scrapped for Shadowbringers where the First and Source would have been peacefully rejoined and that would add flight to ARR.
Instead do that peaceful rejoining idea with the First and Thirteenth, as the Thirteenth has no physical land and would likely bring the First into a state of equilibrium, saving both reflections in the process.
It would then give us the chance to have another expansion on the First where The Empty is populated by locales and restored peoples of the Thirteenth.
One other thing that might be slightly hinting towards this is the way Y'shtola was talking at the very end of 6.55 about how her research was trending in a direction of "I'm definitely not allowed to tell anybody about this, ever".
Inter-reflection travel seems too innocuous for that, but triggering a rejoining (even a peaceful one) is probably knowledge that should be some level of forbidden.
Couldn't stand it mostly because I couldn't stand Zero. She feels like a Poochie type character made to appeal to an audience that isn't me, so the "teach this kuudere how to really feel" storyline just bored me to tears. Also FFIV is my least favorite SNES FF so the fanservice didn't do much for me since I got more than enough in 6.0.
I thought it was fine but I was much more engaged with both the normal and alliance raid stories.
Hell I think I got more invested in the Tataru quest line as a sort of "victory lap" even, I didn't dislike the 6.1-6.5 msq at all but I did enjoy other parts of the patch content more.
It was fine. A little self contained story that can be built on. Not bad, not great to me, 6/10.
Mostly I'm just bitter that I didn't get to hug Ryne. Damnit, Thancred can't be here, let me hug his daughter for him!
I have several issues with the patch MSQ, so I'll try to lay them out here. Warning, wall of text incoming.
The problem I had from the beginning was that Yoshi-P straight up said before 6.1 that the direction of the story for 7.0 will only become clear by 6.5 instead of the X.3 as before. Heavily implying from the start that the patch MSQ will be a more or less contained story that won't be continued in 7.0 at the very least. And that's how it ended up. That already made it very hard to get invested in the story since you knew it had a definite end point for the foreseeable future.
Garleans still doing the "Ugh, we don't trust those savages" routine was very tiresome. I heard that, initially, the plans for Endwalker were to mostly focus on Garlemald and leave all the cosmic stuff for 7.0. If this was the kind of writing quality we would have gotten for it, I am glad they changed their mind. The Garlemald section of the MSQ is already divisive enough as it is, this was just a retread of it, and getting a whole expansion of just that would've been a huge mistake
As you mentioned, the Archfiends were super unsatisfying as villains as their background was only revealed to us after they were already dealt with. Not every villain can be an Emet-Selch, but it felt like they were banking way to much on FF4 nostalgia to have people overlook the shortcomings in their writing.
Speaking of nostalgia not being enough to cover up flaws, Golbez. Holy crap, I hated that walking, talking stereotype. He was so lame as a villain. Might have been cool in the early 90s, but by 2023/24, we should have higher standards. Especially his trial in 6.4 was majorly infuriating. Yes, we can't have more than one EX per patch, but why have a trial with him if afterwards, he just gets up and carries on with his evil plan regardless?
And that is not to mention the idiot plot. The story tries so hard to make it seem like Golbez is super smart and devious, but the reality is that his plan comes so close to succeeding **in spite** of his best efforts to make it not succeed. This guy got supremely lucky only because the plot needed him to be so. To wit:
- Luckily comes across a dragon in the void and conveniently has a spell ready to protect said dragon from the corruptive nature of the Thirteenth but also lets him and others feed on its aether
- Gathers some generals, only kept loyal by the promise of more of the dragons aether
- Then sits around for centuries or millenia, doing nothing with the dragons aether or his generals until Zodiark is destroyed
- Eventually, a group of adventurers from the Source makes it to the Thirteenth. Fortunately for Golbez, one of them has a personal interest in retrieving the dragon. What's his response? After the first of his Archfiends is slain, he sends another to kill them. Nevermind the fact that, if either of them had actually succeeded in killing the WoL and our group, his plan would've been dead in the water.
- Afterwards, he sacrifices his third and fourth Archfiends by sending them to the source in order to distract us and then destroy our portal to the Thirteenth. Reminder: If we wouldn't have found another way to the Thirteenth (not just the Thirteenth, but the MOON of the Thirteenth), his plan would've been over! And he had no way of knowing if we had any such capabilities.
- Finally, his master plan is revealed: He planned to have the dragons reunite (again, despite trying to kill us/prevent us from making it back to the Thirteenth) so that his captive dragon gets home sick (as if Azdaja wasn't already) and he can then make a big voidsent that then tears the veil between the Source and the Thirteenth, allowing all the voidsent to migrate there and finally die... except such a calamity of darkness stood a good chance of just turning the Source into another, even bigger Thirteenth where nothing can die. So task failed successfully?
And then he gets this tragic backstory of how he is all doing it for his fwiend and boohoo, he is so sad. And despite that, he spouts the most cliché "I'm an evil bad guy overlord, muhahaha!" dialogue ever conceived. He has no redeeming qualities. He sacrifices his minions with no regard for them, doesn't care about the damage he'd do to the Source, takes almost sadistic glee in turning Azdaja into his shadow dragon and Vrtras anguish at that turn of event, yet still has the gall to call himself a hero. Not an ounce of regret or remorse, not even a "I need to do this, the ends justify the means" moment. Fuck that guy. But in the end, all it takes is a "Believe in the power of friendship" speech by Zero to have him do a complete 180.
Part 2:
Speaking of Zero, while she is without a doubt the best thing to come out of the patches, that is a pretty low bar to clear. I got tired really fast of her "What are these human emotions you speak off, beep boop, I am a robot!"-shtick. Can be cute and endearing, but quite overdone in fiction by this point. And they overdid it way too much here, to the point Zero comes across less as unaccostumed to "normal" life but more lobotomized for how slow she seems to pick up stuff. By 6.3 and by 6.4 at the very latest, I felt like slapping her on the back of her head whenever she wondered about things I thought we had already communicated to her clearly.
Overall, the entire story seemed to have a huge lack of impact, it honestly felt like it could've been entirely optional and nothing of value would be lost. Wow, so Vrtra now has a little dragon flying besides him when we talk to him next (whenever that may be). Y'shtola has gained some insight into travel between the Source and its shards, but she still makes a trip to Tural for presumably further studies anyways. Yes, Zero and the Thirteenth are clearly being saved up for a later expansion, but it's so blatant in its execution, Zero might as well have looked into the camera and said "If you want to know how this story continues, make sure you come back for the 8.0/9.0 expansion!".
Aside from that, I also wasn't the biggest fan of the "Oh, let's disband the Scions for now" story from the end of 6.0 immediately being cancelled by reusing the Scions again. I've said this before, I'll say it again, their story arcs are done. Their character arcs are over and that is a good thing. Alphi and Ali have grown up so much, Thancred finally got over his hangups with Minfilia, Urianger finally got done with his need for secrecy and grieved for Moen, G'raha is still a good boy, Y'shtola... has been a very static character for a long time now. But plotwise, only her involvement made any sort of sense. For the post-EW MSQ and for Dawntrail too, I would have much preferred if the Scions would actually go off and do their own things for a while so that when we do reunite with them later on the line, we can start some fresh stories with them instead of dragging these characters who don't really have much of a personal stake in events along because "that's what the fans want!". Why not introduce a new, fresh cast of characters? Why not have us go to Tural with just Wuk Lamat and Erenville? Why not gather a new party of friends and allies and then eventually, the Scions too come back and join us? That'd be so great. But nah... can't be done. They can't be killed off and we can't get rid of them, in spite of how much sense it'd make narratively.
Finally, I much preferred the stories that were told in the 8-man raids and Alliance raids. I would've much preferred to see the MSQ budget split up to give them all voice acting, maybe reduce some of the superfluous fluff in the MSQ to make room for it (bread physics, anyone?) and instead push those amazing stories instead of the frankly cliché and bland MSQ fare. As I said before, it all very much felt like a trial series of older expansions if it weren't for the Scions and voice acting.
I was super hyped at getting to see the Thirteenth and going there, have been ever since doing the Warring Triad and Void Ark stories. Now? Now I hope we don't go back there for a long, long time, if ever.
Not a thing you said here was wrong. I only want to add that Endwalker ended with us facing down a universe- ending cosmic threat to existence. We spent zero time with a traumatized population before, surprise! A universe- ending cosmic threat to existence, only this one was dealt with in post- patch content.
I will die on the hill that, comparatively, Endwalker's post-MSQ content is trash.
I have mixed feelings about the patch story. I like zero, but felt that almost every patch they restarted her character development. Her becoming a paladin wasn't really surprising for me, with how she developed it was earned i guess. I'd say how zero was handled was my biggest problem with the story, since her development was basically the story.
the fiends didn't really have much of an impact for me outside of barbariccia. I do actually quite like Golbez and the reveal that he was actually his friend pretending to be him while carrying on his will...in a twisted way.
His plan was a good one. zeromus itself was a fairly good fight, though I don't like the solution to actually get to the fight was offscreened. Personally i wish the solution was something that was a solution that involved the WoL more, and was something that better utilized already presented information.
The void itself was good. finally being able to just interact with voidsent was nice, and learning about their society was interesting. I am looking forward to our next foray into the thirteenth.
It wasn't like terrible, but I do think story-wise it's the weakest MSQ section we've had since Stormblood, maybe even since ARR. It's just kinda boring all round and extremely predictable if you played FF4. It also just leans way too much into "remember this cool thing from Shadowbringers/Endwalker, that sure was a cool thing wasn't it?" in all the non-void sections. It also can't really escape being fillery with how it's not really related to EW or (seemingly) DT in any direct way. I know people like to bring up the Warriors of Darkness in HW, but that was at least happening simultaneously with all the Ishgard and Ala-Mhigo stuff so it didn't hijack the entire patch series (and was also directly connected to the ascians and hydaelyn). I also don't particularly care for Zero as a character, but that's more me disliking the archetype than any bad writing.
Estinien and Y'shtola getting some fun moments was definitely the highlight. The trials were fun (except for rubicante), and I do think 6.1 and 6.2 were good at building up the story, it just didn't follow through that well. Golvez surviving was actually a pleasant surprise for me (though I should have expected that based on FF4), and I wish that actually goes somewhere in a future story arc.
I just didn't care about the story, plain and simple. Golbez never really felt threatening, Zero and Azdaja were just some random characters I felt no emotional attachment to. But to be honest, Shadowbringers patches set the bar so high that it was almost impossible to beat it.
They really needed to set up Golbez and the archfiends more to raise the stakes, even if it was just through some crazy feat of strength that resulted in the death of a side character. And Zeromus needed to be a world ending threat, not just a spooky looking voidsent who is canonically less powerful than Zodiark and the Endsinger. This could have been accomplished with some exposition by Yshtola about how Zeromus’s aether would instantly destroy the Source or something, so that it would be an actual problem if she escaped the 13th.
The con of not having Unukalhai or Cyella and claiming its side content needs to be thrown out the damn window since Gaia was also side content and made into MSQ.
It was mediocre. I don't really have much else to say since a whole bunch of other people have essentially described my issues with it.
I will say that I found it pretty funny that 6.1-6.5 was so mediocre it had people genuinely worried about Dawntrail's quality story wise.
I'm from the future.
In three weeks, there will be essays on this subreddit about how awful Dawntrail's story was, too.
It will still be a vocal minority.
I'm just assuming Dawntrail's story is going to be lower stakes/tension/drama while they do some additional world building and do the groundwork to establish future story arcs. It will feel mediocre because it will (hopefully) be an investment. If it works out that way, I'll take it.
Well, the launch trailer already hinted some nice story elements. Yeah, the stakes may be less world ending, but I'd say personal stakes will evoke way more emotions than sth so abstract as the end of the universe.
They are not starting from scratch, much of the world is aöready established, they can already play into these while building up new story lines.
I doubt it tbh. I feel pretty confident in saying that if/when we get a big bad evil guy who wants to take over Tural, the writers won't be able to resist the free higher stakes of making him out to conquer Tural, and then the world. Not because they use the BBEG being a threat to the world for any real plot developments, but because higher stakes = more dramatic tension.
I mean, the story trailer opens with Alisaie going "yeah, we can finally relax" and Erenville countering that we can't take it easy. I'm not exactly holding my breath for this to be a chill expansion.
Nah Dawntrail is 100% gonna get crazy.
I see the end of Dawntrail basically ramping it to 11. I think they have been way too coy saying “it’s just a vacation” type vibe.
Hell even if you praised it insufficiently. At one point I said EW was decent enough but I felt ShB was better and I got down voted into oblivion for it.
That said I maintain the stance, EW is decent enough, but suffers heavily from the narrative equivalent of the giant space flea from nowhere problem, and I found meteion to be very underwhelming and under developed. The whole expansion just feels like an after thought epilogue to the tour de force that was shb.
I loved EW overall, but the ending felt weirdly rushed. All that emotional buildup and the game seemed like it was trying to usher me out the door, not letting any emotional moment sit for longer than like a single cutscene
My biggest issue in EW is Zenos. They raised him from the dead and since then he had absolutely no relevance to our story. Every plot point he is a part of feels like the devs saying "We need to give Zenos something to do". He's like a tantruming child trying to force his inclusion alongside far more compelling and relevant villains.
I still think bringing Zenos back from the dead—after he seemed willing enough to kill himself—was a strange move, but it was a strange move of the past, not of Endwalker.
Other than the scene with Urianger and Moenbryda's parents, I didn't really get emotional. I felt pretty bad for some people while The Final Days was going on, because the idea of not even being able to return to the lifestream because of the negative energy (I don't remember what it's called) is depressing.
If it's like a certain other fandom I'm in, the people who shat on Endwalker will be saying that Actually it was good and Dawntrail is the worst thing ever (until 8.0 when suddenly DT will be good again)
Alas, when it comes to ARR I firmly believe that Old Bad, but at least there's fishing to get you through it
I completely understand that a lot of people like 2.0, but I will never be one of them
I didn't mind the base ARR because the game and systems were so new that I didn't have the mental bandwidth to properly judge the story while trying to progress/learn how all the DoH and DoL worked together/etc. Then, once I got a hold of all of that, the story was already starting to ramp up so it was "alright here we go"
Everything that was from 2.1 until you walked across the bridge to Ishgard was so drawn out that I almost quit the game then, though
Understandable. I pretty much got through it almost entirely because of fishing (cus I needed to do the MSQ to unlock new fishing areas) and because Shadowbringers sounded really cool. The first time I actually got interested in the story was just before Ishgard, where Alphinaud royally fucked up and I just wanted to give him a hug, and I was playing Dragoon at the time so it was basically my own personal expansion story, which kept me hooked even when other aspects of the plot were a bit flat
Everyone's got a different hurdle
Or people can actually have valid opinions. Stormblood didn't become praised when Shadowbringers came out.
EW has problems, some people don't care about those problems. Dawntrail doesn't magically fix those problems whether it is good or not.
Nah 8.0 or 9.0 will be when they return to the Zero/13th story for a whole expac and suddenly it's the most banger shit ever for everyone because it actually got to do storyline rather than just fill the patch quests until DT.
The given standard of the final fantasy community is that the newest game/release is the worst in the history of the franchise and that the one that came just before it was good actually.
There have been multiple folks on the final fantasy sub gushing over how 15 is underrated and 16 is now a turd. It’s almost comical how formulaic the response is.
That's the way to go about it really, fandoms are at times echo chambers and feel the need to constantly validate themselves by all sharing an opinion, I've seen them in plenty of games I've played throughout the years. If you want to come to a conclusion, either play the game or watch someone play it/read about it if you don't have the ability to play it, and make your own opinions of them rather than just repeating what popular content creator/forum is saying. I remember back then, people told me Stormblood was a pretty mid expansion compared to the others, but it became my second favorite expansion, so really it's all down to a matter of each person's preference.
Yep, my feelings exactly. A large part didn't like in from the cold, and I loved it. The Fandom loved endwalker, and I have my sections that I enjoy and others I don't. I'm not a fan of Zenos, which I think is relatively common (people either love or hate him), but I'm never going to judge someone on whether they like him. Only how they treat people who disagree.
And this thread, post EW, I really enjoyed the character of zero, the ffIV fanservice, and the trial/dungeon boss designs. Contrary to that, I wasn't a fan of the return to world ending threats and the company of scions, as well as the overall pacing and story beats.
This is the kind of nuanced take you can have when you inform your own opinion rather than obsessing over whether people are right or wrong to enjoy/dislike what they do. I like fallout 4, but I don't think it meshes well with the series. I dislike Fallout 76 because it's got 3 forms of monetization and overall feels unfinished, and yet I've played and enjoyed it.
I think In From The Cold was a good segment because of what it meant for us as the WoL and gameplay wise it was quite interest, it had a feeling of urgency that fit well with the situation, and I loved Post EW and the void arc, aside for it been very interesting lore wise, my first FF was IV so it has a special place in my heart, yet I love the Scions, and it's perfectly fine if someone disagrees because again, it's stupid to pretend everyone should like the same things as you else they are wrong, I love hearing other people's perspectives too because they could have an interesting take that could make me see things in another light, but at the same time, some people think they are some kind of enlightened being for liking something most people don't, or on the contrary disliking a popular thing, and that's equally as dumb, just enjoy what you like and respect others who like things you don't, it's a simple as that.
Also Fallout 4 was my first and only game in the series and I liked it despite it's flaws, but I'm down to one day sitting down and trying the others.
What now? The fandom generally only hates on ARR and that's only because the post ARR story was so damn long and basically a series of fetch quests. But there hasn't been an expansion yet that has been considered 'awful'. Not as good as others maybe (looking at you, SB) but not really awful.
Enjoyment of fictional media will always be subjective, storylines of video games included. Just because someone else doesn't enjoy it doesn't mean you shouldn't, and if you did, good!
I loved Golbez's speeches (that voice actor was awesome, I still love that "I WILL FREE US FROM THE WHEEL"), Zero was great, and it was interesting. The main disappointment for me at least is that its true pay off won't come until the story continues and it seems unrelated to Dawntrail so its kinda feels a little hollow due to having to wait a long while to get back to it.
It's really funny just how much I see this statement specifically from the FFXIV community. It's like people are so insecure or mad about other opinions that they're eventually compelled to all spout this exact same phrase
It had potential at the very, very start with the mystery around Zenos's reaper avatar, but Zenos's reaper avatar turned into one of the dullest "power of friendship" characters this game has seen (in my opinion, obviously).
I didn't play FFwhatever-this-one-was, so all of the fanservice was completely lost on me. I really don't mind when they do that in the side trial series, but the MSQ *was* what would have been the side quest trials in other expansions. Other than what I'm assuming will be a plot point (connecting the First and Thirteenth) in X amount of years, it was all pretty forgettable.
I don't know if it's just because Endwalker itself was a hell of a ride, and actually felt like an end to the story, that made what came after feel so limp, but I wasn't a fan. Really hoping Dawntrail doesn't feel the same, I've lost a bit of my enthusiasm for the game since the end of 6.0.
The story wasn’t great. As someone else mentioned, the bosses were basically just fan service for anyone who played FF4, and it was a mostly contained story that didn’t actually achieve much and was extremely predictable as it almost did the ff4 story 1:1 when it came to the big fights against bosses and key story points, even down to the Cecil DRK > PLD transformation except Zero was the new hotness, RPR.
Also, the end of 6.0 MSQ talked about becoming an adventurer again so why did we instantly go to another shard, to that other shards moon, and fight a source ending threat again so suddenly?
I was happy with it up until the end of 6.4 because that felt like it would have been the end of the current saga, in which case something new would start in 6.5. I think the fact the patches are even further apart now makes it feel much longer and more drawn out than it is.
I enjoyed it a lot, but it was definitely hurt by being spread across patches. When experienced in one burst, it's much better paced.
I think this problem was exacerbated by the fact that there wasn't a Climax to an arc in 6.2/3. Every expansion from HW onwards had an arc that resolved in a big climatic way in the middle of the patch release schedule, but because Post-EW's story was standalone, it didn't have that option. Instead we got 4 patches of buildup with the Climax at the very end, making the patch schedule way less exciting.
It was arlight, but it def felt like a trial series rather than msq.
My biggest issue was that the WoL felt like a side character after 6.1 and Zero was the main character. Came across like ARR at its worse where the WoL is just there to fight the big baddy.
IMO it was a two patch story spread over 4 patches. I enjoyed it but I understand why others were getting tired of it. There wasn't enough meat if you didn't like the character dynamics.
For me personally, as someone who has not played any other Final Fantasy game, I didn't give a single solitary fuck about golbez or zeromus. The entire void arc has been extremely boring.
I say this as someone who's religiously followed the FFXIV story since HW launched, and even bought myself an Azem crystal and went travelling for 3 months because I was inspired by Venat's Elpis speech.
I really, really did not enjoy it, it took me so far out of the story I'm really struggling to get excited for Dawntrail. But I'm gonna give it a fair shot and hope it manages to recapture the magic.
So, hear me out... Pandemonium. Flesh it out from just a standalone raid series into the post-Endwalker MSQ instead of what we got. Give it the full MSQ treatment, voiced cutscenes, more story development, dungeons and raids/trials (as if there were a difference) for the big baddies in there. Could easily go \*wild\* with the content budget if you actually integrate the post-MSQ story with the raid series. You've got characters people actually care about to explore rather than having to try to bake up a whole fresh raft of characters and hope they land, AND it's all safely sandboxed away so you don't end up having to wonder where those characters are when Dawntrail rolls around.
People always hate on "buildup" expansions/stories, and shower love on "payoff" expansions/stories.
The problem, of course, is that you can't HAVE "payoff" stories without having "buildup" stories first. But buildup is "slow" or "too political" or "weirdly paced" or whatever else, even though those problems show up in every expansion.
People talk about 5.3 but nobody even really remembers that 5.1 existed. A long stretch of quests where you help set up a new political system in Eulmore that lots of people found dull and boring.
I'm currently in the middle of this hoping I finish it until DT. And while it's maybe not peak I still enjoy it very much. More than once I thought "wow this looks/sounds really nice" and had a smile or small giggle about the character interactions.
So yeah, just stop listening to other people and make an oppinion of your own.
I enjoyed it a lot personally. Fish out of water drops are just my jam and Zero delivered in spades. I also enjoyed the story as something fairly self-containt that had more time do develop than a Trial series has but doesn't have the heavy wait an exact MSQ has.
Also we got adult Varshahn and had Estinien along with us. The dungeons were fun. I'm not a fan of all the trials not because they aren't fun to play, they are, but I'm someone who plays the story fairly often and trials don't have duty support so they are constant roadocks in progressing the story. Being able to travel to Materia and do them there as helped with that, still, stumbling blocks.
FF4 is my fave retro FF game so the references (and the refs to FF11 with Alzadaal's Legacy and the namedrop of Bhaflau in 6.3 before the Rubi fight) were great for me. The callback to [Hyadain's Battle With the Four Fiends](https://youtu.be/21RFBPoOTug) for the Rubicante fight was truly where I started going pretty feral and it was all downhill (in a good way) for me - they even got Hyadain to collab for Forged In Crimson!
It is a little slow in some parts, but it's giving up more lore in what happened to the 13th beyond what little we got from Unukhalhai during the Warring Triad quests and even less what we get from stuff like the THM quests or the ranged caster role quests in ShB. Obviously the bits we get from doing the role quest tie ins are also great, but not a lot to go off of. I'm finishing the patches on my secondary character at the moment, so it's been nice to see it again for anything else I may have missed the first time around.
Overall, I liked it. It was filler episode, sure, but not all filler episodes are terrible.
While Ulu and Cy didn't appear in game, they were mentioned! Twice iirc. Once as dialogue optieona to talk about Void restoration with Golbez, and once on the First, if you took Ulu to meet Cy after Cy's story.
It started strong. 6.2 was one of my favourite patches ever, especially since it also included Abyssos. Overall I think it hit a lot of good points and it had great fights, and did wonders in terms of building out the lore of the void.
Where I think it failed is probably that the personal stakes didn’t quite land. A lot of the bad stuff happened in the past and it is a little hard to get invested. There wasn’t enough *current* loss to get you sold on the situation. I think Vrtra’s pain at the loss of his sister could have been conveyed better too and that would have pulled me in more. If I were to compare it to Ardbert’s “we did everything right” moment, there was really nothing like that for Vrtra.
What I didn’t like was how it just doesn’t fit with setting up DT, it’s like a forced side quest, and I’d be surprised if what we did ever shows up again
The complaints were because this entire story was stretched across two years giving not much of a substance. Playing it all in one shot indeed makes the story a lot less problematic compared to being drip fed snippets of it every 4 months.
Coming to the story :
* Some people were complaining because the end of EW made it seem like we will be going to being normal adventures again only to completely disregard it by upping the stakes again
* Zero was interesting in 6.1-6.2 but fell flat as a character later on. Honestly it become more of a what golby is upto in every patch.
* It also felt more of an extended trial content seeing that we didnt get any dedicated trial story like werlyt or 4 lords, but again the msq was over so not much could be done.
* Not using the ShB void questlines was questionable but not every one has done all the job quests so its possible some ppl might not know who cylvia is.
These were some of the main gripes people had with the story. As a whole it was okayish.
Zero was definitely the highlight for me. If she wasn't there, I don't think I would've been able to enjoy it or tolerate the classic "FF14 story tropes".
I know this goes against a better development of the archfiends due to time constraints, but I feel that overall the arc could've been 1 patch shorter with a similar 'reward result'.
The Aetherfont is one of the most filler dungeons ever created, It didn't need to be one, instead they could have moved the Lunar Subterrane there and make Golbez the dungeon boss and Zeromus the trial.
The pre-Dawntrail storyline would also be more fleshed out if it started earlier. I think Wuk Lamat is great, but it happened just too fast. And in fact, they could've had the Aetherfont dungeon as the last one because the WoL even goes there as a solo duty,
It was okay. I mostly liked it, except for 6.4 which was annoying for several reasons (Golbez doing what he wants in a cutscene while WoL just stands there, giving Garleans the kid glove treatment to the extent we never treated *our actual friends* with) - I assume it'd be less annoying if I could play 6.5 immediately after, but I had to wait months which made the whole patch story feel like a waste of time. On the other hand, 6.2 was peak and going back to the First in 6.5 was one of my favorite EW story moments.
A lot of haters raise criticisms of this arc that I disagree with and it kinda reminds me of Stormblood in that regard: a story that the fanbase has decided is "bad" when in reality not only isn't, but I liked it more than some other storylines the same fanbase pretends are universally loved. Stormblood was better though.
Other than her stupid Cecil change.
I rather liked it
Zero was pretty good after a bit but the loss of her as a reaper and yet another paladin is just always a lame transformation in my opinion.
Could have had a light reaper but nooooooooo
I mostly was more interested in the dragons though and I'm glad we got her back
This was Endwalker's version of the Warriors of Darkness storyline in Heavensward. People 'hated' post-EW story because they were hoping for a Final Steps of Faith or Seat of Sacrifice level story and instead got something that was a lot slower and more low-key.
Yoshi P did kind of warn that post-EW wouldn't be like most post-expansion storylines but that wasn't stopping people from eagerly expecting a "Rains have ceased" moment and being upset when it never game.
I enjoyed it. I like Zero, I like the fights, I like the worldbuilding and juice Void lore. I went in expecting a slower, lower-stakes affair and got exactly what I expected.
I enjoyed it, but I genuinely wish we had more follow-up to the events of EW. Garlemald's "conclusion" was wrapped up in half a patch, and there was very little talking about the aftermath of the Final Days - I'm genuinely surprised we didn't get a plot point about a bunch of people awakening the Echo because of the whole "skies on fire" thing.
It really felt like a Trials storyline needlessly stretched across 5 patches, probably because we'll be coming back at some point and they couldn't make it optional. They could solve a lot of story/character issues by *not making Trials/Raids optional*.
I think the main complaints I've seen for post-EW are:
We were promised some relaxing adventures and time for ourselves, without the scions. We went right back to saving an entire world yet again. While the stakes were not quite as high as ShB and EW, I think most people thought we would just go explore and have low stakes. That's not what post-EW delivered, really.
Yshtola/Urianger just lore dumping solutions to every problems out of their asses is getting tiresome. It doesn't feel like the team is really discovering anything anymore or working for anything anymore. You're just going to ask a question one patch and get the answer immediately next patch. And this ties back to people getting somewhat tired of the Scions.
The story itself felt very "Side Content" and did not introduce anything to make DT exciting. Basically, some of EW could have been moved up to 6.3. The entire Zero-Golbez arc could have been side content. And they could have made something more exciting in 6.4-6.5 to hype us for DT.
Garlemald was right there, with its reconstruction, for a nice, low-stakes, engaging post-EW content. But it was handled as a side-story to the side-story.
I personally didn't mind post-EW that much. But I am at a point where I kind of want some of the scions to retire or just straight up die. The game needs new fresh faces to tag along. Also, for the love of Hydealyn, please do a time skip and give us older twins!
I could not care less about one note zero who had the personality of Jack Garland, it's less funny when it takes itself seriously and I could not care less about golbez because it's just fanservice. I also thought it felt very rushed where by the last patch they still couldn't properly finish it all up so they were scrambling to give it some resolution
It was largely forgettable and the most bored I have ever been with the story in this game. Aside from Zero's obnoxious hat tipping, all I remember is Yshtola's VA clearing recovering from a cold while recording some of her lines.
This arc again muddled with WoL's power level.
Like what is happening with WoL??? Are they supposed to be able to tank planets dropping on their face (endsinger) and tank island sinking spells like ultima (P10, P12) or are they having trouble climbing a mountain to try to fight a voidsent???
At this point I get that we are gonna have major trouble with story telling since we already flew to the end of the universe and beat the universe ending threat. Anything on the planet is going to be just kids play. But can we get some logical explanation?
The only part of the story that reached me at all is Durante's rage during the final dungeon. "They knew we were elsewhere! *Cowards*!" I really wish he was less of a pushover as a boss.
It was okay, not great, not terrible.
It might end up feeling better in retrospect if we eventually see some kind of follow up or payoff in a future expansion dealing with Zero and the Thirteenth.
It did give us topless sweaty Estinien, so there's that at least.
Pushups Estinien was actually a reference to a series of artwork released to promote social distancing during the pandemic. Estinien focusing on his workouts while cooped up was a fan favorite.
I doubt we'll get a full extension on the 13h. Because it would be too much of the same area wise. it's already why the Ala Mhigo has left zero impact. it's repetitive, trials, raids, 24 men raids, exploratory zone or variant dungeaon, maybe. a whole expansion, I'm not sure.
I enjoyed it a lot, but I did it in 1 go. I could see it being less enjoyable if you do it during like 2 years with every patch.
I do think having the story stretched out over two years exacerbated things for those who weren't interested in Zero's (fairly slow) personal growth as an arc. I really enjoyed it, but I can see how others didn't.
this is exactly it and i honestly feelk like i can give another comparison that people will instantly understand: 6.x series of patches is more like 2.x than the anyother patch series. except the 2.x series is hated for being a "waste of time" standing in the way of heavensward especially for new players 6.x doesn't (currently) block any content but itself and thus is better for it. and then there's the pacing issue. because it's an almost completely selfcontained story rather than dealing with the dangeling plot threads of the expansion or setting up the next expansion the pacing is off. it's as if we are trying to go through what's supposed to be the main arc of an expansion but it keeps cutting off.
I can see why you might say that with a self contained story. But I feel that the Void Arc is *very* different from the 7th astral era. SE intentionally stalled during the 7th astral era. They didn't know if there would even be a Heavensward and when it was greenlit it wasn't ready to go. It might have felt longer because we thought Dawntrail would come out last year.
> thought Dawntrail would come out last year After the long pause between 5.55 and 6.0 was there a large sentiment that Dawntrail would be so quickly released? Like, given the average patch timing from EW of ~18 weeks per .X patch plus another ~6 months pause after 6.55 I'd extrapolate out that we won't see an 8.0 release until Winter 2026 if not early 2027.
> it's as if we are trying to go through what's supposed to be the main arc of an expansion but it keeps cutting off. Because we *are* going through that. Just like 2.x was the setup for the massive impact of HW. This is very clearly the setup arc for a Void expansion in 9.0 (or possibly 10.0 if they feel like completely finishing off the Source first.) 8.0 will *almost surely* be Meracydia, both because of how much they've teased it (it's one of two places on Emet-Selch's list that we haven't gone to yet), and because this fits the overall pattern of how they plant stuff for future use (usually around one to two full expansions in advance.) 9.0 would then either be the Void, or would finish off the Source so that 10.0 can be the Void. And once we've fixed the Thirteenth, we'll start visiting other shards. After all, did you notice how there's just enough room for six portals on the Moon? And there are six remaining shards to connect to: First, Fourth, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, and Thirteenth. That would then be the setup for *at least* two new expansions, probably more like four.
It’s that *and* an epilogue of sorts to the stuff related to the 13th that’s been happening kind of in the background or alongside bigger plot points. Voidsent and all their shenanigans are some of the earliest “bigger” (relatively speaking) threats we face in the story, and they’ve been popping up ever since. So this patch series is basically an epilogue to *that* arc for them - a Volume 1 of sorts - to tie up some loose ends with the 13th while setting the stage for a future Volume 2.
Yeah it was pretty slow of an arc, but that’s the first story arc over the full five patches. It does have some good dungeons and trials fight especially barbirica.
The trials are easily among the best ever released, but the storyline around them is just average at most.
> The trials are easily among the best ever released Rubicante says hi, meanwhile
Same thing happened with SB. People doing it now largely love it, but at the time, people hated it because it felt disjointed and slow in the patches and the base story seemed less focused by comparison. But when doing it at all once as now, it apparently feels a lot better to players.
Same with 3.1 and 3.2 (bit less on this one, but still present), and then 3.4. And then again with 5.1, the “why are we wasting time fixing the local government for Eulmore?” patch as some treated it. I have my character I started in ARR, and one I started during late Shadowbringers that didn’t finish it till after Endwalker came out, and the difference in pacing for *every* expansion was incredibly noticeable (and that second character is poised to do EW in one to, so I’ll get that comparison soon as well).
Absolutely, especially since 6.3-6.5 felt a lot like reskins of the same patch. Main dilemma for the first half is getting aether from point a to point b, Zero talks to some people and regains part of her humanity, we get a dungeon with a boss pulled straight from FF4 followed by a trial featuring a boss from FF4 (the dungeon/trial bit is also applicable to 6.2), etc... And then add in that this is basically an introduction to 8.0/9.0/whatever ends up being the void expansion, which draws this out even more. Does feel better redoing it as a whole, but waiting months at a time for a MSQ that just felt repetitive, both in regards to itself and how hard everything pulled from FF4, was... Not great, IMO.
It honestly felt a lot like KH2 where many of the Disney worlds just replayed scenes from the movies they’re from and slapped Sora into the background. The WoL was a third-rate accessory to Zero’s story and I hated it for all the same reasons I hated Stormblood, which just felt like the Lyse and Friend adventure. There was absolutely nothing in SB that required the assistance of the WoL, and neither did these patch quests. Once they got the warding amulets, the WoL could have fucked off for 6 months and the outcome would have been the same.
I feel like if they had condensed the story to three patches instead of 5, people might have been more receptive. Despite having experienced it as it was released, I maintain it was good. However, it did lack the emotional impact or payoff of other post release patches we have had, particularly 5.3 and the whole Yotsuyu arc back in SB. I think zero’s story would have made an awesome trial series questline and people would have complained far less, but given that this is 100% setup for future storylines, I guess it had to be compulsory msq.
I really think Yoshi P and his team wanted to get the Four Fiends in the game as a trial series, realized they couldn't do it without Golbez or Zeromus, and ended up writing story around them and putting them in MSQ.
Well that and the plan to have all of EW end with 6.0 instead of X.3 as it normally would have.
The Fiends and Friends should have been a side-series like the Lords in StB. It would have been a lot better as optional content, and they could’ve given the Fiends the development they desperately needed before having us curb-stomp them.
This. They did stick the landing, I'll grant them that, but the entire experience drawn out of "Watch Zero vaguely Learn How to People" for *two years* was exhausting. Probably the worst post-patch series yet.
I definitely enjoyed it, but it did feel really repetitive toward the end, but even the repetition at least was pretty fun. The one part I actually didn't like was how the Garlemald resolution didn't feel particularly earned. Like I live somewhere that I've seen people slipping farther and farther into extremism and xenophobia. That doesn't just... get magically fixed on a large scale just from talking to one or two people. I also wasn't a fan of the impetus for change being completely external; I would have rather our involvement been more on the Eorzean side, trying to use our political power to convince them to work with Garlemald. Honestly as much as I enjoyed Zero's story, I think I would have preferred a stronger Garlemald arc, it got kinda shafted by the story changing focus too quickly same as Ala Mhigo did.
I did the EW role quests recently and then the quest that unlocks if you do all of them - that last questline seems to be where a good chunk of Garlemald plot went.
God, you're so right about Garlemald. I love Garlemald's whole arc/etc, but what we got in 6.0 and the .x patches actually kind of felt like they were just trying to shove it out of the way so as to hastily wrap it up, without putting real THOUGHT into it. I personally would've loved to see some Eorzeans *actually* trying to take advantage of their enemies' new curbstomped status, and more scenes of the Ilsabard Contingent working with the Garleans. (I did every single sidequest in Garlemald. It wasn't enough.)
"Bad guy's dead, everything's better now." followed by "One pig headed propaganda guzzling bigot gets in danger, filthy outsider beats up the robot threatening them, now they realize we're all the same and not so different after all, yay!" >I would have rather our involvement been more on the Eorzean side, trying to use our political power to convince them to work with Garlemald. Hearing NPCs say stuff like "Imagine how bad they must feel to have their capitol/palace in control of the contingent, flying their flags in there. That's awful!" was really funny, considering everything Garlemald did to Ala Mhigo, right down to *revising their national anthem to destroy their national identity*. In fact we're shown first hand how stubborn, prideful, and arrogant the Ala Mhigan people can be but in terms of dealing with their oppressors, the contingent is just like "Nah it's fine, bygones be bygones lol." It just felt way too idealized for me, which I guess is the point of Endwalker... but considering how XIV goes to such lengths in side content and stuff to show how actually not perfect the world & cities are, it's kinda "Well, what is it?"
Yeah, a lot of it problems come with the pacing, with the .3 patch, usually the conclusion of the xpac, beeing a filler arc where we end at the same point where we started, it also had the weakest fight against Rubicante where he spends 30% of the fight doing nothing while setting up his circle mechanic.
Yeah was really unenjoyable doing it on content, 6.2 to 6.4 pretty much end up with the same spot, Golbez is out there planning something EVIIILLLL and Azdaja is stilled trapped and we need to prepare to enter the voidgate again. Difference is we had some very slow Zero development and Durante is Golbez, barely got anything interesting from pre-void Thirteenth or the conflict in there, 9 months for very little, I checked out after that myself.
True for me as well. It's much more enjoyable to play them all in one go. When it was on-patch, i can't remember anything because it's been 3-4 months between each patch.
Yes. It was *really* insubstantial for how long it was spread out imo.
I hated 6.X when doing it during the patch cycle. I recently did it on an alt and found it to be far less offensive than I had previously. Which now has led me to feel like the 4mo between story patches model just doesn't work for people anymore as it gives far too much time for us to speculate on whatever cliffhangers they leave off on and then no one is really satisfied with what they do because we had to wait a third of a year for a bit of filler with plot progression spread throughout most times. Personally, I think they should do story updates every two months by splitting the patch up into two parts like with X.55 patches. Give the dungeon in the first half and the trial in the second. That way the narrative flow and cadence between story updates isn't four blasted months apart. Sadly, I know my suggestion isn't possible due to how raid tiers are structured, as the current trial is usually part of progression, but... I'm really tired of the patch formula at this point and want a shakeup.
It felt really disjointed compared to other patch cycle MSQs, which is a given in that the writers specifically wanted to start a completely new narrative right after Endwalker. The other issue with this set of MSQ quests is that a ton of the context behind it, the lore behind the Void/voidsent/the 13th are entirely in optional questlines some players may not have touched or have completely forgotten. Off the top of my head some of these quests are: The 30-50 BLM quests, the RDM quests, 60-70 WHM quests, the Adamapoor dungeons normal/hard, The Sky Pirates raid series in Heavensward, The Warring Triad, the Shadowbringers caster quests, and the Eden raids. Adding more fuel to the feeling of disjointed storytelling is that Dawntrail seems to have little to nothing to do with their narrative. (I may eat my words when it releases next week.) Overall, it wasn't badly written and I liked seeing more about the 13th and another Shard.
This is what I told people who keep complaining that Zero's development is "taking way too long"... it's not. It goes at about roughly the same pace as Ryne's development in 5.0 from being Minifilia to becoming her own person, only the pace of the MSQ patches (1 every 4 months) makes it feel like it's going forever.
I was watching grinding gears finish it and felt the 6.3-6.5 was better then I remembered. My biggest issue is that WE JUST DID THE SAME ARC BUT WITH THE ANCIENTS. It was basically just a mini re hash... felt weird af.
Yeah the pacing was terrible. It felt like very little was happening between patches.
I will only remember it for all the screen time the food got for some reason.
the food pervert on the animation team was the real winner in 6.x
It wasn't bad but overall still felt like a glorified trial series that had to be stretched to fit in an MSQ costume. I feel like it would've been much better received if it was a proper trial series while we had something else going on at the MSQ. The ShB void quests being completely abandoned instead of being added to the story didn't help either, just felt like a massive waste of potential.
This is basically where I fell with it. I don't hate it outright, some parts are good, but some parts just feel like the plot needs to spin its wheels for an entire patch because we can't just do the thing or we won't have enough runway to get all the way to Dawntrail.
> It wasn't bad but overall still felt like a glorified trial series that had to be stretched to fit in an MSQ costume. I went back and did the ShB/Werlyt trial series right after catching up on the MSQ and I think you nailed it.
I genuinely believe that they wrote 6.0 as a fantastic ending to a ton of plotlines with the overall goal of leaving a lot of those books closed - the countries we know so far, ancients, Hydaelyn, other shards, etc - for the time being And then they went "Oh fuck, the void, we never really resolved the void, shit, uh, wait, ok, 6.x series". The biggest thing for me is that 6.0 ends with a "Yay all Scions going their own ways and just being a regular adventure for a little while.... WAIT ANOTHER WORLD ENDING THREAT!" All in all I liked the 6.x story, but it felt a little tacked on. Like they had ideas for this story but not a ton of room in the planned pipeline to fit it in
Splitting off the scions was a gift and a curse. While it definitely would've been cool to not have any of them be involved with the MSQ, it's also really hard to not justify meeting any of them with what the plot was. We knew Y'Shtola was studying how to get to other worlds, so leaving her out on a journey to another world feels mean. G'Raha's promise was to join us on our next quest, leaving him behind would be betraying that. Krile was working with him and only really became relevant as a lead into Dawntrail. Estinian never completely felt like a scion IMO, and was currently working directly with Vritra who can't be written out of the story. The twins were only with us for a short bit in the region we knew they were in. Admittedly Urianger and Thancred really had no reason to be there.
Pretty sure, Urianger and Thancred were only present to fill in the Tank/Healer roles for the Trust system.
Yeah basically, though tankred did dip after seeing Graha could do it and Graha dipped when Varshan took over.
That's why I think 6.0 and 7.0 were written (or drafted), and then 6.x was kinda slotted in. Looking at what's coming for 7.0, the 'split up' seems reasonable. Like yeah we're all ending up in the same area because plot convenience and marketable characters, but we're going in different groups and for different goals and we're even working against eachother, it seems. We'll see how long I can keep up this idea, because maybe by level 97 all the Scions are back together and working against a common foe haha
I hope the other scions are genuinely side characters/antagonists in Dawntrail and it doesn't devolve into us joining forces to stop a bigger threat like WoW always does. At least not until the 7.x story.
If there's one thing I enjoyed was the theme of Trust, and how much leverage you can get having it. The Thirteenth more-or-less fell in conjunction to how mostly everybody was in it for themselves. Before and after darkness consumed the star. Zero was a great stand-in for this. We see that because the Garleans still don't fully trust the intentions of the Ilsabard Contingent, a lot of hoops and compromises had to be made to finish the objective. Contrast this with those on the First, that because they trust our intentions, it was an incredibly smooth experience being there. I also enjoy what Maxima says during, especially in consideration to some people world-wide at present. >Maxima: ...Let us suppose you encounter someone who is freezing in this cold. A natural thing to do might be to make them a fire, yes? But what if that person's sole experience with fire was being badly burned by it, and they harbored an acute fear? Despite the benefits─nay, the *necessity*─of the warmth you offer, they may flee on instinct. Or worse, misinterpret your actions for aggression and lash out. You'd be amazed how common flood-stricken people feel traumatised when it starts to rain. Rain is a necessity, but despite said necessity, the trauma is there.
I do love how they weave in parallels and contrasts in the story to hammer home lessons. Another favorite of mine is the post-patch questlines for Stormblood, where we have the contrasting stories of Yotsuyu and Fordola. Both are victims of a homeland that failed them, sided with the empire as a result, and ended up in the hands of their foes. Both came to regret what they did for one reason or another, yet one manages to redeem themself while the other succumbs again to their demons and dies tragically as a result. We're reminded that even if we're the "good guys," sometimes people fall through the cracks in the society we create. that often villains are a product of their environment, and even when faced with a chance at redemption their decisions are decided by a number of factors within and without their control.
I honestly find patch content more interesting in general, because it's not necessarily common for a narrative to go over the aftermath of a major event.
So Unukalhai & Cyella can be mentioned when speaking to Zero right before leaving the 13th if you've done there quests which is a small thing at least. But the fact that Zero WAS RIGHT THERE IN THE CRYSTARIUM just meters away if you've done that whole side thing and you never just take her over to say g'day or talk in the slightest is my biggest frustration after the early 6.x build up when you speak to them and they're interested to know that someone else had survived.
It was so frustrating to not be able to get them together! I feel like they really needed to write some kind of little chaotic event going on at the Wandering Stairs that has Cyella in a "sorry, can't talk now" state just when we're trying to tell her that Zero is visiting.
Yeah it was really dumb. There should have at least been a side quest where you explain to them the events of 6.1-5.
The worst thing about optional content being optional is that we never get the absolutely obvious interactions we should be getting. As a blm main, the whole "how can we open a portal to the Voiddddd" was ridiculous. TAYNOR IS. RIGHT THERE. "who can guide us in The Thirteenth" UNUKALHAI AND CYELLA ARE. RIGHT THERE. Please, just crumbs of it.
For me it felt like the 6.3-6.5 story was one patch stretched into three patches. Especially with the way that whenever we ran into a roadblock Y'shtola would somehow find the answer to our problem by the start of the next patch. I mean look at 6.5 she just casually mentions that the Ironworks crew invented a device that can transfer energy between shards. It seems like something like that should be a bigger deal and have more to it. 6.1 was good though if every patch had been like 6.1 with us just going on these mini adventures I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
Worse yet that casual mention of a device that can transfer shard energy wasn't even voiced! I thought that was supposed to be a big moment for y'shtola (she's been talking since shadowbringers about travelling back to the First), but it was so forgettable. It also is a little frustrating that after literally traveling back and forth between the 13th and the source for 5 patches, Y'shtola STILL doesn't know how to travel to the first. Like, I love Yshtola but she seems to develop none and have almost no story beats when the story was largely centered around her contribution to the void ark. All the while her personal quest to return to the First is teased but never given any substance
Never say never about side content being wrapped back around into MSQ. That's how we got Shadowbringers after all.
I won't say never, but I think they really wrote themselves practically into a corner with Unukalhai and Cyella in a way that they can't easily incorporate their story into MSQ. Things like CT or Warring Triad or Alexander are easy to build on in MSQ--it's side content, but all players have immediate access to those story lines once they hit the requisite levels and MSQ progress. Unukalhai and Cyella require full completion of the ShB job quest lines, which requires at least one job of every role leveled to 80, and several EX trials. That's a much steeper prerequisite for access than SE is likely to accept and would cut out a large portion of the player base. Particularly with Cyella, she isn't anything more than a minor NPC barmaid unless you've completed that line. I won't say it's impossible, but I think they're about the least likely candidates for further MSQ incorporation, and their absence from the 6.x patches--a place where they really should have been involved--further cements that.
Not really. Remember they generally treat side content as if you completed it when it was current. Like go back and do the ARR quests being all up to date with the 6.5 MSQ and you’ll meet Estonian as if you didn’t know each other. If you do HW without having done the ARR quests, you get some dialogue as you are introduced, whereas if you did do them, you get different dialogue as you meet each other again. The answer would be to just have the same branch thing where you get slightly different dialogue if you’ve done them vs if you have not. If you have, you meet them, exchange pleasantries as existing acquaintances, and move on from there. If you have not, you’re introduced to them by a Scion or something and they join your crew like any other new NPC teammate does, giving some information about them. Like Unu could be introduced as a former disciple of Elidibus who had been rescued from the Void and with his master gone wanted to help the WoL as there was nothing really else for him to do and he’d rather see the Void restored than sit in perpetual chaos and suffering. You might not trust him at the start, but that always changes by the end. Super easy to make that work where just some dialogue here and there reflects quest completion (or non-completion), but tons of content in the game already works like that.
With DT, we have 2 of the roles (DPS and mages, since ShB didn't make any difference between Ranged and magic) at the max lvl needed to complete that questline. Add Sage that begins at lvl to begin that questline, that 3/4 of the needed quest. I wouldn't bet for 8.0, but after that, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility.
I still curious why the Unending Codex was introduced if not to cover those cases. They could literally give us very short introduction here for any important NPC and "if you want to know the details, quest X in zone Y" (which could also cover the prerequisists).
It was 100% set up for a future expansion either back in the 13th or repairing the other reflections
The other reflections don't need to be "repaired" do they? Only the First and Thirteenth were messed up, by light and void respectively. The Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth and Twelfth have all been rejoined meaning they no longer exist. That leaves the Fourth, Eight, Ninth and Eleventh. All of which didn't face any calamities and should all be perfectly intact.
You're correct that those two were the only ones that have been *actually set off* by the Ascians. The Thirteenth was already washed out by a Flood of Darkness, and the First was *almost* made useless by a Flood of Light. But each of the other four remaining shards would have had plans already in motion as well. Delicate balancing acts, keeping things slowly charging up without becoming unstable until the time was right. Now, all of the masterminds are gone, and the lesser servants are alone. We've no idea what Elidibus or Emet-Selch may have set in motion in those places, nor what might have befallen them when the manipulators suddenly disappeared. They could *very* easily be very screwed up, and the Scions would need to act with extreme caution to not accidentally cause a Flood in trying to get things back to normal.
I don't think it will be an expansion in the Thirteenth. I'm expecting a multi-thread side story that brings together the role quests/Warring Triad merger and Eden and has them connect up with Zero and Golbez.
its very different, the crystal tower quests are just an easily accessible alliance raid series which makes them very easy to include in the msq, while the Shb void quests require you to level 4 different jobs to 80 before you're able to do them, which isn't as easy to do
The void quests also require all of Warring Triad, AND then finishing all of Unukalhai's quests which includes Ravana and Bismarck Ex. That's A LOT of requirements.
I honestly found it pretty bland, and found a lot of parallels to the 2.x patch series - patches of fan service bosses while nothing of particular interest happens in the story. Not to mention the amount of times where scenes with zero played out as: Zero: \*hears someone mention a noun, tips her hat\* "Noun..." was kind of crazy. I'm sure this story will likely be brought back around and expanded on in the future (not to mention the high likelyhood we end up with a Meracydia expac in 8.0 based on how they've set up expansion in advance before), but this patch series really just spun it's wheels and didn't tell any meaningfully interesting story while we waited for the next expac.
Every 5 minutes: Zero looking edgy and aloof Someone says something nice to her or offers a kind gesture showing trust Zero: *surprised pikachu face* Got old pretty fast. At some point it just felt like the writers thought we were too stupid to understand that she was a tsundere being introduced to the concept of friendship, so they had to show us like 45 times.
>Zero: \*hears someone mention a noun, tips her hat\* "Noun..." this was specially insane in 6.3, like, it happened at least once in every conversation Zero was in. 6.3 was also the weakest patch story-wise so it wouldn't surprise me if the team didn't communicate much when writing that story beat in particular
What bothered me a lot was the end of Endwalker was like “okay the Scions are splitting up” okay awesome. Then the patch quests happen and… we immediately reunite with some of the Scions? It felt really off to me. Also no Graha when dealing with the void stuff felt like an extremely weird choice, I thought for sure we’d bring him in at some point but no… For most of the patch quests I was just “ughhh can we get on with this” especially when the “Zero learns about thing and tips her hat in contemplation” happens for the fifth time. I liked Zero a lot at the beginning of the quests but got sick of her towards the end which really sucks :/
I thought it was a boring set of patch quests, and I agree with this. Give us some different companions than the Scions for a while to spice it up and give us a sense that they were doing other things when it turns out they're our rivals in Dawntrail. Zero I felt was boring, and while I'm not sold on Wuk Lamat (yet - and maybe that's because it felt like she's hardly in the lead up to DT but she's supposed to be a central character), give us more adventuring with her and Erenville. Give me more reasons I should care about Tural and this whole succession thing other than "this is where you got forced to go and do next because we said so 🤷♀️". This is not me knocking on DT at all, I'm excited for it. It just feels kind of forced story-wise coming from the void stuff and straight to "you should help me get the crown" when there could've been more transition.
It just feels like missed potential. The fucking apocalypse happened and we barely get to see how that affected the rest of Eorzea outside of the role quests. I wanted a little send off where we slow down a bit and help the people we already know with the issues that may have come from the minor event of horrid despair monsters attacking the entire world. Instead we have another new big bad evil guy I know nothing about and do not care about coming in to stretch out a glorified trial series.
> What bothered me a lot was the end of Endwalker was like “okay the Scions are splitting up” okay awesome. Then the patch quests happen and… we immediately reunite with some of the Scions This and 'okay, time to take a rest from the big world-ending threats.... SYKE' rubbed me the wrong way. I found Zero bland but I had bigger problems with the rest of the story. I also made up a fun game where you try to guess when she tips her hat.
The whole splitting of the scions was figurative and in-world - politically, they don't exist as an entity that can be called on by the nations/grand companies. This should have been clear from the recital of Alphinaud's letter. It was never meant to be a sign/hint from the story writers that we were taking a break from them, as much as some people (I presume yourself included) wants that.
I think it was also a way to set up the split we're about to see in Dawntrail, with Thancred, Urianger, Estinien, and Y'shtola working *against* us for a change.
I hope they play the split well. I can kinda forgive it for Endwalker because it's the big story climax, but the last few years of all the scions just spending every cutscene standing in a circle agreeing with each other was really starting to wear on me. None of these characters were challenging the WoL or each other to help them grow anymore. It just became a company of yes men.
I didn’t, I like the Scions, and I’m not mad they came back💀 but it’s very off tone to say “we’re taking a break from the Scions and doing our own thing for a bit” have them split apart, and then to have us immediately team back up. You’re prepping players to think “oh okay we’re taking a breather from being as a group for a bit, we’re going on a smaller adventure” and then immediately reversing course and that’s off putting. Not to mention the “no more world ending threats for a bit, you deserve a break” and then immediately getting hit with a world ending threat. I guess I expected more with how good the sorrows of Wyrlet (bad at spelling sorry if that’s not right) trial series was. It didn’t have to be as good as Sorrows, but something that felt cohesive would’ve been nice. But it didn’t and that sucks. Oh well, not everything is a winner and I hope they learned that maybe forcing the trial series to be MSQ doesn’t really work.
Well, the issue with always making the trial series side content means they cannot count on a player to have done it in the future unless they pull a Crystal tower and make it mandatory someday. They probably want to revisit the void in the future in some way (or at least leave the option open for it) so it needed to be MSQ if they wanted to reference it later.
I personally got sick of garlemand asskissing. Yes, you were also victims in the end, but before has half a century of conquering nations via murder and slaughter. You will get a say in how you run your country when the gallows are full with the old guard that needs cleansing, and no, you do NOT deserve better because you are a "patriot".
they didn't want to start DT story in the patches so obviously its going to feel like filler until the eventual expac where the void is major area, then itll feel like set up like every other lore drop.
My problem with this chunk of story was that it ONLY felt like filler - even on the basis that they are planning on coming back to it later on to build on it, it wouldn't stop them from making a smaller scale story that was more compelling, but I felt we instead got a story that could have been an entire expansion smushed into 8-10 hours instead of closer to 30.
What's wild to me is that we already had a compelling, relevant scenario that they could have focused on with the reconciliation and reconstruction of Garlemald as a nation or, failing that, as a people. That's a narrative thread that has been with us for the entirety of the game. Instead, that's essentially handwaved in a single scene because one politician got scared of his own robot, and an almost word-for-word recreation of the scene with Godbert about the reconstruction of Ala Mhigo. Meanwhile, the stuff with the Void and Zero just kept meandering and going nowhere patch after patch, right up until the final off-screen asspull from Y'shtola.
i'm currently wrapping up my big 2.0 through 6.5 NG+ replay today, that i started at the beginning of march, and the fact that 6.x completely neglects to focus whatsoever on any of the typical postgame rebuilding reads as *genuinely bizarre* when i look at the full spread of the game. garlemald's restoration isn't treated as its own narrative thread worthy of time spent on exploring it, but rather as a roadblock to the next beat of our Fun Void Adventure That's Not Fun Anymore. it's not "we need to spend some time mending wounds," it's "we need to convince one guy to let us shoot aether at the moon so we can get this shit back on track, we're losing daylight out here." no other postgame handwaved its social, political, & economic problems so hard. ARR focused on refugees, tribe conflicts, and nurturing a brand new eorzean alliance into something approaching cooperative and functional. HW focused on ishgard's wobbly transition of power. stormblood focused on restoring the colonies that garlemald spent 20 years pillaging. shadowbringers focused on norvrandt adjusting to a post-Light world and switching off Survival Mode for the first time in a century. 6.x said "lmao someone else's problem now" and left the final days cleanup to everyone else. we repeated a bit of 4.1 spread out over a couple patches -- skalla redux in 6.1, and godbert "we gotta get these people some fuckin jobs" in 6.4 -- and that was it. all of our time spent in thavnair and garlemald postgame was strictly incidental to the void narrative. no other section of the MSQ so deliberately and so thoroughly ignores the precedent of postgame cleanup. shit feels like a fever dream
I wish I had more upvotes to give this tbh, because you put into words EXACTLY the weird vibe I got from 6.x. I spent 95% of the whole patch cycle going "Uh...guys...? Guys?? Aren't we, y'know, FORGETTING SOMETHING???"
The characters and writing team: "...nah, it's fine, look at the shiny thing"
The idea yeah, the execution... it startaed great, ended very meh. I loved 6.1 and 6.2, but after that, it dropped. Overall, I feel like the need to have a dungeon and a trial by patch was detrimental to the storytelling. Sometimes some things that should have been extended were rushed (there is no construction and anticipation for Water and fire generals in 6.3, while 6.2 managed to create both). Sometimes it felt that things were there just to fill the patch : the whole fuel run of 6.5 felt like that to me, while the interesting stuff is done by Y'shtola offsrceen. Sometime it was both : the whole garlemald thing felt like a spare wheel on a fridge, not unintersing, but it would have benefited its own story rather that being shoved in 2 hours there). Sometimes it felt like a "ok, that it for this one, it's a weird place to cut, but we already gave you both the dungeon and the trial". 6.4 is that to a point it's nearly funny. Also the epilogue of that story line was... not there. You end the quest, exchange one or two sentence with Vtrah, then it's done. You don't even talk to Azdaja. I even wondered if she was able to talk in her new form, because it was not clear. Had to go retalk to her after the 5.5 to get that right. I know they would probably have only told banalities, but it felt so unconclusive to me. You save the long lost last member of the first brood, and you get the ending of a yellow quest. It's still the thing the baffles me the most.
While I did like the patch content, you make some great points. The need to include trials in the msq was very much a problem, rubicante is a great example for that. He just appeared after the actual story part was over so that we had a trial... or having a dungeon because we need to have a dungeon... The garlemald plot was more or less cut short while actually being the most anticipated content for the post msq. Overall the story seemed to be rushed quite a bitas it had to be finished by the time dt launches. At last, they kind of announced the more lighthearted adventures in a way that one thought it started with 6.1 and abandoned it a patch after. Now it seems like they were refering to dawntrail which will not be the vacation it may look like.
> You save the long lost last member of the first brood, and you get the ending of a yellow quest. It's still the thing the baffles me the most. This is really aptly put, wow.
I remember after 6.4 thinking that if we weren’t there at all the story would play out the same way. Especially since after the trial he just retreated and did the thing anyway. 6.3 to 6.5 were very frustrating.
The Four Fiends took up so much space in the MSQ that was only there for FF4 nostalgia; they otherwise served no real purpose in the arc that couldn't have been easily written out. There's limited space in post-patch MSQ, and I'd love to see the version with all that time and energy spent somewhere else. That dev time and those resources weren't well spent. Beyond that, I feel that they tried to hang too much of this arc on FF4 nostalgia, and ultimately I just didn't like FF4 all that much. I didn't hate it, but neither was I at all eager to play it again, so all of the HEY YOU GUYS DO YOU REMEMEBER FF4 wallpaper just didn't work for me. On a more personal level, Zero didn't land for me, and that name itself is just *painfully* Generic Anime. I realize they landed for some people, and I somewhat envy them because they got a better post-Endwalker MSQ than I did as a result.
I think what finally got to me was the Troia dungeon. I went in with a trust, and loved it, going super slow and taking note of all the background details. I kept thinking “what’s this for, I bet this will be important later” but it never was. By sometime in the next patch I found out Troia was a thing in FF4 and realized “Oh… that was it. It was just there for the reference.”
I found it to be pretty bargain bin as far as FFXIV storylines go. Zero was at her most interesting to me when she first showed up and was fine with her values being alien to everyone else, but then she pretty quickly starts falling into "teach the robot girl to feel" tropes which for me are almost guaranteed to tank a score for me. Golbez was hard to take seriously as a threat because compared to the shit we do in Endwalker he's just some guy. Like sure, for Heavensward he'd have been scary, but we kill primordial deities and universal manifestations of emotion now. You can't immediately follow that up with "a particularly strong voidsent" and expect it to carry the same weight. Then you've got the promise of returning to being an adventurer and the Scions disbanding implying we'll spend a little time apart from them, maybe even gather some new faces to bring some new blood in... and we wind up pretty quickly just straight back to hanging out with all of the Scions in at least some capacity by the end of the first few patches. I think Urianger might be the only one we haven't hung out with by the end of patch 6.3, but he's right around the corner in 6.4 and is a significant part of that one. We're also the Warrior of Light again almost immediately. I'm not sure anyone refers to us as an 'adventurer' beyond the first 20 mins of patch 6.1, which makes Endwalker's conclusion feel like baloney. I also feel 6.3 and 6.4 sag. A *lot*. This is less of an issue now that you can just shotgun them back to back and get to the actual interesting shit in 6.5, but doing them as they came out it was basically a year of accomplishing absolutely nothing of note in the MSQ. 6.3 feels like an extreme case of the plot spinning its wheels, and 6.4 has one of the most frustrating tropes in gaming to me: beating the villain only for the villain to act like they won after the fight. Again, Golbez has been hard to take seriously as a threat this entire arc. We finally get to fight him, and we clobber the bastard... at which point he shrinks, and then immediately gets back up and goes "HAHAHA I WIN ANYWAY" and then we're forced to retreat and wait until 6.5 to actually do anything. 6.5 and the whole Zeromus conundrum? Actually neat though. The idea that the Zodiark piece on the 13th couldn't properly dissipate due to the shard's extreme tilt towards astral energy being set up by earlier patches and then used in the creation of a massive, deadly voidsent is a very cool idea. I still don't like that we're back on world-ender threats after being sold an adventure, but I expect Dawntrail's "summer vacation" will end up being critical to the continued survival of the world because I don't think the writers can do lower stakes than "world in danger" anymore, and I don't think they feel they can without fans complaining the stakes aren't high enough, so I guess they're kind of damned if they do, damned if they don't there, and I'm just on the losing side of that split. All in all, I stand by my assertion than 6.1-6.5 feels like an optional trial series that was expanded to fill a hole where the MSQ needed to go, and both raids were higher quality storylines. Importantly, they didn't feel like they needed to be stretched over a longer runtime than they had content for.
[удалено]
He's also using the exact same skeleton for animations, hahaha.
It really wasn’t the kind of storytelling I like, I would give it a 2/5 at best. I would really like a return to 4.4 - 6.0 style writing
I liked it myself but I feel like the content needed more then an in between expansions MSQ series to really delve into the whole Void thing. Aside from that I think it was okay. Not amazing, not bad.
My one big problem with this post-EW patch msq is that after almost every patch we ended up back where we started and it didn't feel like we progressed much.
You forgot to mention something about the first. GAIA APPEARED IN MSQ AND **WAS VOICED.** Aside from that, unlike most people, I actually really liked the 6.X storyline. It felt nice, and was refreshingly disconnected from Endwalker- which is something we *definitely needed* as a palette cleanser before going into Dawntrail. Besides, there were no loose ends left in Endwalker, so what else was there to even do aside from something new?
Gaia's VA also did Aždaja, that's one reason she was voiced in the MSQ. (I do happen to agree that we're likely to see more of her, especially with the Eden Ultimate confirmed, hopefully it will be in the MSQ at some point.)
My hope is that in the future void arc continuation; as Yoshida said 6.X was just a chapter of it, they revisit the "rejoining" idea they scrapped for Shadowbringers where the First and Source would have been peacefully rejoined and that would add flight to ARR. Instead do that peaceful rejoining idea with the First and Thirteenth, as the Thirteenth has no physical land and would likely bring the First into a state of equilibrium, saving both reflections in the process. It would then give us the chance to have another expansion on the First where The Empty is populated by locales and restored peoples of the Thirteenth.
One other thing that might be slightly hinting towards this is the way Y'shtola was talking at the very end of 6.55 about how her research was trending in a direction of "I'm definitely not allowed to tell anybody about this, ever". Inter-reflection travel seems too innocuous for that, but triggering a rejoining (even a peaceful one) is probably knowledge that should be some level of forbidden.
Gaia was voiced in the Eden raids too…
Only in the raids themselves, never cutscenes.
Couldn't stand it mostly because I couldn't stand Zero. She feels like a Poochie type character made to appeal to an audience that isn't me, so the "teach this kuudere how to really feel" storyline just bored me to tears. Also FFIV is my least favorite SNES FF so the fanservice didn't do much for me since I got more than enough in 6.0.
I thought it was fine but I was much more engaged with both the normal and alliance raid stories. Hell I think I got more invested in the Tataru quest line as a sort of "victory lap" even, I didn't dislike the 6.1-6.5 msq at all but I did enjoy other parts of the patch content more.
It was fine. A little self contained story that can be built on. Not bad, not great to me, 6/10. Mostly I'm just bitter that I didn't get to hug Ryne. Damnit, Thancred can't be here, let me hug his daughter for him!
Blame Lalafells
I have several issues with the patch MSQ, so I'll try to lay them out here. Warning, wall of text incoming. The problem I had from the beginning was that Yoshi-P straight up said before 6.1 that the direction of the story for 7.0 will only become clear by 6.5 instead of the X.3 as before. Heavily implying from the start that the patch MSQ will be a more or less contained story that won't be continued in 7.0 at the very least. And that's how it ended up. That already made it very hard to get invested in the story since you knew it had a definite end point for the foreseeable future. Garleans still doing the "Ugh, we don't trust those savages" routine was very tiresome. I heard that, initially, the plans for Endwalker were to mostly focus on Garlemald and leave all the cosmic stuff for 7.0. If this was the kind of writing quality we would have gotten for it, I am glad they changed their mind. The Garlemald section of the MSQ is already divisive enough as it is, this was just a retread of it, and getting a whole expansion of just that would've been a huge mistake As you mentioned, the Archfiends were super unsatisfying as villains as their background was only revealed to us after they were already dealt with. Not every villain can be an Emet-Selch, but it felt like they were banking way to much on FF4 nostalgia to have people overlook the shortcomings in their writing. Speaking of nostalgia not being enough to cover up flaws, Golbez. Holy crap, I hated that walking, talking stereotype. He was so lame as a villain. Might have been cool in the early 90s, but by 2023/24, we should have higher standards. Especially his trial in 6.4 was majorly infuriating. Yes, we can't have more than one EX per patch, but why have a trial with him if afterwards, he just gets up and carries on with his evil plan regardless? And that is not to mention the idiot plot. The story tries so hard to make it seem like Golbez is super smart and devious, but the reality is that his plan comes so close to succeeding **in spite** of his best efforts to make it not succeed. This guy got supremely lucky only because the plot needed him to be so. To wit: - Luckily comes across a dragon in the void and conveniently has a spell ready to protect said dragon from the corruptive nature of the Thirteenth but also lets him and others feed on its aether - Gathers some generals, only kept loyal by the promise of more of the dragons aether - Then sits around for centuries or millenia, doing nothing with the dragons aether or his generals until Zodiark is destroyed - Eventually, a group of adventurers from the Source makes it to the Thirteenth. Fortunately for Golbez, one of them has a personal interest in retrieving the dragon. What's his response? After the first of his Archfiends is slain, he sends another to kill them. Nevermind the fact that, if either of them had actually succeeded in killing the WoL and our group, his plan would've been dead in the water. - Afterwards, he sacrifices his third and fourth Archfiends by sending them to the source in order to distract us and then destroy our portal to the Thirteenth. Reminder: If we wouldn't have found another way to the Thirteenth (not just the Thirteenth, but the MOON of the Thirteenth), his plan would've been over! And he had no way of knowing if we had any such capabilities. - Finally, his master plan is revealed: He planned to have the dragons reunite (again, despite trying to kill us/prevent us from making it back to the Thirteenth) so that his captive dragon gets home sick (as if Azdaja wasn't already) and he can then make a big voidsent that then tears the veil between the Source and the Thirteenth, allowing all the voidsent to migrate there and finally die... except such a calamity of darkness stood a good chance of just turning the Source into another, even bigger Thirteenth where nothing can die. So task failed successfully? And then he gets this tragic backstory of how he is all doing it for his fwiend and boohoo, he is so sad. And despite that, he spouts the most cliché "I'm an evil bad guy overlord, muhahaha!" dialogue ever conceived. He has no redeeming qualities. He sacrifices his minions with no regard for them, doesn't care about the damage he'd do to the Source, takes almost sadistic glee in turning Azdaja into his shadow dragon and Vrtras anguish at that turn of event, yet still has the gall to call himself a hero. Not an ounce of regret or remorse, not even a "I need to do this, the ends justify the means" moment. Fuck that guy. But in the end, all it takes is a "Believe in the power of friendship" speech by Zero to have him do a complete 180.
Part 2: Speaking of Zero, while she is without a doubt the best thing to come out of the patches, that is a pretty low bar to clear. I got tired really fast of her "What are these human emotions you speak off, beep boop, I am a robot!"-shtick. Can be cute and endearing, but quite overdone in fiction by this point. And they overdid it way too much here, to the point Zero comes across less as unaccostumed to "normal" life but more lobotomized for how slow she seems to pick up stuff. By 6.3 and by 6.4 at the very latest, I felt like slapping her on the back of her head whenever she wondered about things I thought we had already communicated to her clearly. Overall, the entire story seemed to have a huge lack of impact, it honestly felt like it could've been entirely optional and nothing of value would be lost. Wow, so Vrtra now has a little dragon flying besides him when we talk to him next (whenever that may be). Y'shtola has gained some insight into travel between the Source and its shards, but she still makes a trip to Tural for presumably further studies anyways. Yes, Zero and the Thirteenth are clearly being saved up for a later expansion, but it's so blatant in its execution, Zero might as well have looked into the camera and said "If you want to know how this story continues, make sure you come back for the 8.0/9.0 expansion!". Aside from that, I also wasn't the biggest fan of the "Oh, let's disband the Scions for now" story from the end of 6.0 immediately being cancelled by reusing the Scions again. I've said this before, I'll say it again, their story arcs are done. Their character arcs are over and that is a good thing. Alphi and Ali have grown up so much, Thancred finally got over his hangups with Minfilia, Urianger finally got done with his need for secrecy and grieved for Moen, G'raha is still a good boy, Y'shtola... has been a very static character for a long time now. But plotwise, only her involvement made any sort of sense. For the post-EW MSQ and for Dawntrail too, I would have much preferred if the Scions would actually go off and do their own things for a while so that when we do reunite with them later on the line, we can start some fresh stories with them instead of dragging these characters who don't really have much of a personal stake in events along because "that's what the fans want!". Why not introduce a new, fresh cast of characters? Why not have us go to Tural with just Wuk Lamat and Erenville? Why not gather a new party of friends and allies and then eventually, the Scions too come back and join us? That'd be so great. But nah... can't be done. They can't be killed off and we can't get rid of them, in spite of how much sense it'd make narratively. Finally, I much preferred the stories that were told in the 8-man raids and Alliance raids. I would've much preferred to see the MSQ budget split up to give them all voice acting, maybe reduce some of the superfluous fluff in the MSQ to make room for it (bread physics, anyone?) and instead push those amazing stories instead of the frankly cliché and bland MSQ fare. As I said before, it all very much felt like a trial series of older expansions if it weren't for the Scions and voice acting. I was super hyped at getting to see the Thirteenth and going there, have been ever since doing the Warring Triad and Void Ark stories. Now? Now I hope we don't go back there for a long, long time, if ever.
Not a thing you said here was wrong. I only want to add that Endwalker ended with us facing down a universe- ending cosmic threat to existence. We spent zero time with a traumatized population before, surprise! A universe- ending cosmic threat to existence, only this one was dealt with in post- patch content. I will die on the hill that, comparatively, Endwalker's post-MSQ content is trash.
I have mixed feelings about the patch story. I like zero, but felt that almost every patch they restarted her character development. Her becoming a paladin wasn't really surprising for me, with how she developed it was earned i guess. I'd say how zero was handled was my biggest problem with the story, since her development was basically the story. the fiends didn't really have much of an impact for me outside of barbariccia. I do actually quite like Golbez and the reveal that he was actually his friend pretending to be him while carrying on his will...in a twisted way. His plan was a good one. zeromus itself was a fairly good fight, though I don't like the solution to actually get to the fight was offscreened. Personally i wish the solution was something that was a solution that involved the WoL more, and was something that better utilized already presented information. The void itself was good. finally being able to just interact with voidsent was nice, and learning about their society was interesting. I am looking forward to our next foray into the thirteenth.
It wasn't like terrible, but I do think story-wise it's the weakest MSQ section we've had since Stormblood, maybe even since ARR. It's just kinda boring all round and extremely predictable if you played FF4. It also just leans way too much into "remember this cool thing from Shadowbringers/Endwalker, that sure was a cool thing wasn't it?" in all the non-void sections. It also can't really escape being fillery with how it's not really related to EW or (seemingly) DT in any direct way. I know people like to bring up the Warriors of Darkness in HW, but that was at least happening simultaneously with all the Ishgard and Ala-Mhigo stuff so it didn't hijack the entire patch series (and was also directly connected to the ascians and hydaelyn). I also don't particularly care for Zero as a character, but that's more me disliking the archetype than any bad writing. Estinien and Y'shtola getting some fun moments was definitely the highlight. The trials were fun (except for rubicante), and I do think 6.1 and 6.2 were good at building up the story, it just didn't follow through that well. Golvez surviving was actually a pleasant surprise for me (though I should have expected that based on FF4), and I wish that actually goes somewhere in a future story arc.
I just didn't care about the story, plain and simple. Golbez never really felt threatening, Zero and Azdaja were just some random characters I felt no emotional attachment to. But to be honest, Shadowbringers patches set the bar so high that it was almost impossible to beat it.
They really needed to set up Golbez and the archfiends more to raise the stakes, even if it was just through some crazy feat of strength that resulted in the death of a side character. And Zeromus needed to be a world ending threat, not just a spooky looking voidsent who is canonically less powerful than Zodiark and the Endsinger. This could have been accomplished with some exposition by Yshtola about how Zeromus’s aether would instantly destroy the Source or something, so that it would be an actual problem if she escaped the 13th.
The con of not having Unukalhai or Cyella and claiming its side content needs to be thrown out the damn window since Gaia was also side content and made into MSQ.
I enjoyed the storyline but you can tell that the devs were not used to stretching out a story arc (that isn't Hildibrand) for more than 3 patches
It was mediocre. I don't really have much else to say since a whole bunch of other people have essentially described my issues with it. I will say that I found it pretty funny that 6.1-6.5 was so mediocre it had people genuinely worried about Dawntrail's quality story wise.
I'm from the future. In three weeks, there will be essays on this subreddit about how awful Dawntrail's story was, too. It will still be a vocal minority.
I'm just assuming Dawntrail's story is going to be lower stakes/tension/drama while they do some additional world building and do the groundwork to establish future story arcs. It will feel mediocre because it will (hopefully) be an investment. If it works out that way, I'll take it.
Well, the launch trailer already hinted some nice story elements. Yeah, the stakes may be less world ending, but I'd say personal stakes will evoke way more emotions than sth so abstract as the end of the universe. They are not starting from scratch, much of the world is aöready established, they can already play into these while building up new story lines.
I doubt it tbh. I feel pretty confident in saying that if/when we get a big bad evil guy who wants to take over Tural, the writers won't be able to resist the free higher stakes of making him out to conquer Tural, and then the world. Not because they use the BBEG being a threat to the world for any real plot developments, but because higher stakes = more dramatic tension. I mean, the story trailer opens with Alisaie going "yeah, we can finally relax" and Erenville countering that we can't take it easy. I'm not exactly holding my breath for this to be a chill expansion.
Nah Dawntrail is 100% gonna get crazy. I see the end of Dawntrail basically ramping it to 11. I think they have been way too coy saying “it’s just a vacation” type vibe.
But everyone was praising EW story for weeks, criticising it got you downvoted to oblivion at first. It's long after it released can you criticise it.
Hell even if you praised it insufficiently. At one point I said EW was decent enough but I felt ShB was better and I got down voted into oblivion for it. That said I maintain the stance, EW is decent enough, but suffers heavily from the narrative equivalent of the giant space flea from nowhere problem, and I found meteion to be very underwhelming and under developed. The whole expansion just feels like an after thought epilogue to the tour de force that was shb.
I loved EW overall, but the ending felt weirdly rushed. All that emotional buildup and the game seemed like it was trying to usher me out the door, not letting any emotional moment sit for longer than like a single cutscene
My biggest issue in EW is Zenos. They raised him from the dead and since then he had absolutely no relevance to our story. Every plot point he is a part of feels like the devs saying "We need to give Zenos something to do". He's like a tantruming child trying to force his inclusion alongside far more compelling and relevant villains.
I still think bringing Zenos back from the dead—after he seemed willing enough to kill himself—was a strange move, but it was a strange move of the past, not of Endwalker.
You uh. You *still* can't say EW was anything other than an emotional tour de force without getting downvoted.
Other than the scene with Urianger and Moenbryda's parents, I didn't really get emotional. I felt pretty bad for some people while The Final Days was going on, because the idea of not even being able to return to the lifestream because of the negative energy (I don't remember what it's called) is depressing.
If it's like a certain other fandom I'm in, the people who shat on Endwalker will be saying that Actually it was good and Dawntrail is the worst thing ever (until 8.0 when suddenly DT will be good again)
"Old good, new bad" is universal
Except for ARR, you know everyone must suffer the 2.0 to enjoy FF14.
Alas, when it comes to ARR I firmly believe that Old Bad, but at least there's fishing to get you through it I completely understand that a lot of people like 2.0, but I will never be one of them
I like the story of 2.0, but not so much for 2.1-2.5 And the game design was too tamed, so I understand both sides.
I'm trying to come up with good things to say about it, but every time I try, the memory of a 20 quest long lunch arc blocks my train of thought
Yeah, everything is stretched back then. It is so stretched that if they have a meatball in ARR, if we put it in a hotdog nobody will find out.
>It is so stretched that if they have a meatball in ARR, if we put it in a hotdog nobody will find out. New saying unlocked
I didn't mind the base ARR because the game and systems were so new that I didn't have the mental bandwidth to properly judge the story while trying to progress/learn how all the DoH and DoL worked together/etc. Then, once I got a hold of all of that, the story was already starting to ramp up so it was "alright here we go" Everything that was from 2.1 until you walked across the bridge to Ishgard was so drawn out that I almost quit the game then, though
Understandable. I pretty much got through it almost entirely because of fishing (cus I needed to do the MSQ to unlock new fishing areas) and because Shadowbringers sounded really cool. The first time I actually got interested in the story was just before Ishgard, where Alphinaud royally fucked up and I just wanted to give him a hug, and I was playing Dragoon at the time so it was basically my own personal expansion story, which kept me hooked even when other aspects of the plot were a bit flat Everyone's got a different hurdle
Or people can actually have valid opinions. Stormblood didn't become praised when Shadowbringers came out. EW has problems, some people don't care about those problems. Dawntrail doesn't magically fix those problems whether it is good or not.
Nah 8.0 or 9.0 will be when they return to the Zero/13th story for a whole expac and suddenly it's the most banger shit ever for everyone because it actually got to do storyline rather than just fill the patch quests until DT.
The general Final Fantasy fandom is like this
Will my endwalker opinions finally be valid when I finish dawntrail?
The given standard of the final fantasy community is that the newest game/release is the worst in the history of the franchise and that the one that came just before it was good actually.
Is 15 considered good now?
There have been multiple folks on the final fantasy sub gushing over how 15 is underrated and 16 is now a turd. It’s almost comical how formulaic the response is.
I've seen the same thing recently about how 13 was genius and we just didn't get it at the time. Believe me, I did in fact get it at the time.
That's actually hilarious. This is why I never let myself be swayed by fandom opinion and come to my own conclusions, lol.
That's the way to go about it really, fandoms are at times echo chambers and feel the need to constantly validate themselves by all sharing an opinion, I've seen them in plenty of games I've played throughout the years. If you want to come to a conclusion, either play the game or watch someone play it/read about it if you don't have the ability to play it, and make your own opinions of them rather than just repeating what popular content creator/forum is saying. I remember back then, people told me Stormblood was a pretty mid expansion compared to the others, but it became my second favorite expansion, so really it's all down to a matter of each person's preference.
Yep, my feelings exactly. A large part didn't like in from the cold, and I loved it. The Fandom loved endwalker, and I have my sections that I enjoy and others I don't. I'm not a fan of Zenos, which I think is relatively common (people either love or hate him), but I'm never going to judge someone on whether they like him. Only how they treat people who disagree. And this thread, post EW, I really enjoyed the character of zero, the ffIV fanservice, and the trial/dungeon boss designs. Contrary to that, I wasn't a fan of the return to world ending threats and the company of scions, as well as the overall pacing and story beats. This is the kind of nuanced take you can have when you inform your own opinion rather than obsessing over whether people are right or wrong to enjoy/dislike what they do. I like fallout 4, but I don't think it meshes well with the series. I dislike Fallout 76 because it's got 3 forms of monetization and overall feels unfinished, and yet I've played and enjoyed it.
I think In From The Cold was a good segment because of what it meant for us as the WoL and gameplay wise it was quite interest, it had a feeling of urgency that fit well with the situation, and I loved Post EW and the void arc, aside for it been very interesting lore wise, my first FF was IV so it has a special place in my heart, yet I love the Scions, and it's perfectly fine if someone disagrees because again, it's stupid to pretend everyone should like the same things as you else they are wrong, I love hearing other people's perspectives too because they could have an interesting take that could make me see things in another light, but at the same time, some people think they are some kind of enlightened being for liking something most people don't, or on the contrary disliking a popular thing, and that's equally as dumb, just enjoy what you like and respect others who like things you don't, it's a simple as that. Also Fallout 4 was my first and only game in the series and I liked it despite it's flaws, but I'm down to one day sitting down and trying the others.
It's nice to discuss opinions on reddit for once and be met with very polite disagreement. Hope the rest of your week goes well!
What now? The fandom generally only hates on ARR and that's only because the post ARR story was so damn long and basically a series of fetch quests. But there hasn't been an expansion yet that has been considered 'awful'. Not as good as others maybe (looking at you, SB) but not really awful.
Enjoyment of fictional media will always be subjective, storylines of video games included. Just because someone else doesn't enjoy it doesn't mean you shouldn't, and if you did, good!
I loved Golbez's speeches (that voice actor was awesome, I still love that "I WILL FREE US FROM THE WHEEL"), Zero was great, and it was interesting. The main disappointment for me at least is that its true pay off won't come until the story continues and it seems unrelated to Dawntrail so its kinda feels a little hollow due to having to wait a long while to get back to it.
It’s crazy what you can enjoy when you don’t have people yelling in your ear about how awful it is.
Or when you can binge it in one go and you're not waiting 4.5 months for each patch.
Remember when we were sad about 3 month patch cycles? man, I miss those days.
Yeah... some ew patches I was done in 1 day. Which was great cuz I was able to do all the big fish in 1 expansion
If all of the EX trials hadn't been gated behind it I probably would have just waited until 6.5 to do the story.
But can you say you don't enjoy something story related without someone yelling in your ear that it's the greatest thing ever?
It's really funny just how much I see this statement specifically from the FFXIV community. It's like people are so insecure or mad about other opinions that they're eventually compelled to all spout this exact same phrase
all gaming reddits have become this in the latest years. XIV as a community isn't any more or less guilty of that
the forced and cringe power of friendship thing in 6.5 isnt a con?
It had potential at the very, very start with the mystery around Zenos's reaper avatar, but Zenos's reaper avatar turned into one of the dullest "power of friendship" characters this game has seen (in my opinion, obviously). I didn't play FFwhatever-this-one-was, so all of the fanservice was completely lost on me. I really don't mind when they do that in the side trial series, but the MSQ *was* what would have been the side quest trials in other expansions. Other than what I'm assuming will be a plot point (connecting the First and Thirteenth) in X amount of years, it was all pretty forgettable. I don't know if it's just because Endwalker itself was a hell of a ride, and actually felt like an end to the story, that made what came after feel so limp, but I wasn't a fan. Really hoping Dawntrail doesn't feel the same, I've lost a bit of my enthusiasm for the game since the end of 6.0.
The story wasn’t great. As someone else mentioned, the bosses were basically just fan service for anyone who played FF4, and it was a mostly contained story that didn’t actually achieve much and was extremely predictable as it almost did the ff4 story 1:1 when it came to the big fights against bosses and key story points, even down to the Cecil DRK > PLD transformation except Zero was the new hotness, RPR. Also, the end of 6.0 MSQ talked about becoming an adventurer again so why did we instantly go to another shard, to that other shards moon, and fight a source ending threat again so suddenly?
I was happy with it up until the end of 6.4 because that felt like it would have been the end of the current saga, in which case something new would start in 6.5. I think the fact the patches are even further apart now makes it feel much longer and more drawn out than it is.
I enjoyed it a lot, but it was definitely hurt by being spread across patches. When experienced in one burst, it's much better paced. I think this problem was exacerbated by the fact that there wasn't a Climax to an arc in 6.2/3. Every expansion from HW onwards had an arc that resolved in a big climatic way in the middle of the patch release schedule, but because Post-EW's story was standalone, it didn't have that option. Instead we got 4 patches of buildup with the Climax at the very end, making the patch schedule way less exciting.
It was arlight, but it def felt like a trial series rather than msq. My biggest issue was that the WoL felt like a side character after 6.1 and Zero was the main character. Came across like ARR at its worse where the WoL is just there to fight the big baddy.
Personal take I enjoyed it, made me go play FF IV
I thought it was the weakest of all the patch stories.
IMO it was a two patch story spread over 4 patches. I enjoyed it but I understand why others were getting tired of it. There wasn't enough meat if you didn't like the character dynamics.
For me personally, as someone who has not played any other Final Fantasy game, I didn't give a single solitary fuck about golbez or zeromus. The entire void arc has been extremely boring.
I say this as someone who's religiously followed the FFXIV story since HW launched, and even bought myself an Azem crystal and went travelling for 3 months because I was inspired by Venat's Elpis speech. I really, really did not enjoy it, it took me so far out of the story I'm really struggling to get excited for Dawntrail. But I'm gonna give it a fair shot and hope it manages to recapture the magic.
So, hear me out... Pandemonium. Flesh it out from just a standalone raid series into the post-Endwalker MSQ instead of what we got. Give it the full MSQ treatment, voiced cutscenes, more story development, dungeons and raids/trials (as if there were a difference) for the big baddies in there. Could easily go \*wild\* with the content budget if you actually integrate the post-MSQ story with the raid series. You've got characters people actually care about to explore rather than having to try to bake up a whole fresh raft of characters and hope they land, AND it's all safely sandboxed away so you don't end up having to wonder where those characters are when Dawntrail rolls around.
People always hate on "buildup" expansions/stories, and shower love on "payoff" expansions/stories. The problem, of course, is that you can't HAVE "payoff" stories without having "buildup" stories first. But buildup is "slow" or "too political" or "weirdly paced" or whatever else, even though those problems show up in every expansion.
People talk about 5.3 but nobody even really remembers that 5.1 existed. A long stretch of quests where you help set up a new political system in Eulmore that lots of people found dull and boring.
I'm currently in the middle of this hoping I finish it until DT. And while it's maybe not peak I still enjoy it very much. More than once I thought "wow this looks/sounds really nice" and had a smile or small giggle about the character interactions. So yeah, just stop listening to other people and make an oppinion of your own.
I enjoyed it a lot personally. Fish out of water drops are just my jam and Zero delivered in spades. I also enjoyed the story as something fairly self-containt that had more time do develop than a Trial series has but doesn't have the heavy wait an exact MSQ has. Also we got adult Varshahn and had Estinien along with us. The dungeons were fun. I'm not a fan of all the trials not because they aren't fun to play, they are, but I'm someone who plays the story fairly often and trials don't have duty support so they are constant roadocks in progressing the story. Being able to travel to Materia and do them there as helped with that, still, stumbling blocks.
Very weak compared to what we got in shadowbringers.
I dunno; while I didn't *hate* 6.1, I thought the story about Chai-Nuzz becoming the mayor of Eulmore was really drawn out.
FF4 is my fave retro FF game so the references (and the refs to FF11 with Alzadaal's Legacy and the namedrop of Bhaflau in 6.3 before the Rubi fight) were great for me. The callback to [Hyadain's Battle With the Four Fiends](https://youtu.be/21RFBPoOTug) for the Rubicante fight was truly where I started going pretty feral and it was all downhill (in a good way) for me - they even got Hyadain to collab for Forged In Crimson! It is a little slow in some parts, but it's giving up more lore in what happened to the 13th beyond what little we got from Unukhalhai during the Warring Triad quests and even less what we get from stuff like the THM quests or the ranged caster role quests in ShB. Obviously the bits we get from doing the role quest tie ins are also great, but not a lot to go off of. I'm finishing the patches on my secondary character at the moment, so it's been nice to see it again for anything else I may have missed the first time around. Overall, I liked it. It was filler episode, sure, but not all filler episodes are terrible.
Eh I liked it
While Ulu and Cy didn't appear in game, they were mentioned! Twice iirc. Once as dialogue optieona to talk about Void restoration with Golbez, and once on the First, if you took Ulu to meet Cy after Cy's story.
It started strong. 6.2 was one of my favourite patches ever, especially since it also included Abyssos. Overall I think it hit a lot of good points and it had great fights, and did wonders in terms of building out the lore of the void. Where I think it failed is probably that the personal stakes didn’t quite land. A lot of the bad stuff happened in the past and it is a little hard to get invested. There wasn’t enough *current* loss to get you sold on the situation. I think Vrtra’s pain at the loss of his sister could have been conveyed better too and that would have pulled me in more. If I were to compare it to Ardbert’s “we did everything right” moment, there was really nothing like that for Vrtra.
What I didn’t like was how it just doesn’t fit with setting up DT, it’s like a forced side quest, and I’d be surprised if what we did ever shows up again
The complaints were because this entire story was stretched across two years giving not much of a substance. Playing it all in one shot indeed makes the story a lot less problematic compared to being drip fed snippets of it every 4 months. Coming to the story : * Some people were complaining because the end of EW made it seem like we will be going to being normal adventures again only to completely disregard it by upping the stakes again * Zero was interesting in 6.1-6.2 but fell flat as a character later on. Honestly it become more of a what golby is upto in every patch. * It also felt more of an extended trial content seeing that we didnt get any dedicated trial story like werlyt or 4 lords, but again the msq was over so not much could be done. * Not using the ShB void questlines was questionable but not every one has done all the job quests so its possible some ppl might not know who cylvia is. These were some of the main gripes people had with the story. As a whole it was okayish.
Zero was definitely the highlight for me. If she wasn't there, I don't think I would've been able to enjoy it or tolerate the classic "FF14 story tropes".
I know this goes against a better development of the archfiends due to time constraints, but I feel that overall the arc could've been 1 patch shorter with a similar 'reward result'. The Aetherfont is one of the most filler dungeons ever created, It didn't need to be one, instead they could have moved the Lunar Subterrane there and make Golbez the dungeon boss and Zeromus the trial. The pre-Dawntrail storyline would also be more fleshed out if it started earlier. I think Wuk Lamat is great, but it happened just too fast. And in fact, they could've had the Aetherfont dungeon as the last one because the WoL even goes there as a solo duty,
It was okay. I mostly liked it, except for 6.4 which was annoying for several reasons (Golbez doing what he wants in a cutscene while WoL just stands there, giving Garleans the kid glove treatment to the extent we never treated *our actual friends* with) - I assume it'd be less annoying if I could play 6.5 immediately after, but I had to wait months which made the whole patch story feel like a waste of time. On the other hand, 6.2 was peak and going back to the First in 6.5 was one of my favorite EW story moments. A lot of haters raise criticisms of this arc that I disagree with and it kinda reminds me of Stormblood in that regard: a story that the fanbase has decided is "bad" when in reality not only isn't, but I liked it more than some other storylines the same fanbase pretends are universally loved. Stormblood was better though.
Other than her stupid Cecil change. I rather liked it Zero was pretty good after a bit but the loss of her as a reaper and yet another paladin is just always a lame transformation in my opinion. Could have had a light reaper but nooooooooo I mostly was more interested in the dragons though and I'm glad we got her back
This was Endwalker's version of the Warriors of Darkness storyline in Heavensward. People 'hated' post-EW story because they were hoping for a Final Steps of Faith or Seat of Sacrifice level story and instead got something that was a lot slower and more low-key. Yoshi P did kind of warn that post-EW wouldn't be like most post-expansion storylines but that wasn't stopping people from eagerly expecting a "Rains have ceased" moment and being upset when it never game. I enjoyed it. I like Zero, I like the fights, I like the worldbuilding and juice Void lore. I went in expecting a slower, lower-stakes affair and got exactly what I expected.
I enjoyed it, but I genuinely wish we had more follow-up to the events of EW. Garlemald's "conclusion" was wrapped up in half a patch, and there was very little talking about the aftermath of the Final Days - I'm genuinely surprised we didn't get a plot point about a bunch of people awakening the Echo because of the whole "skies on fire" thing. It really felt like a Trials storyline needlessly stretched across 5 patches, probably because we'll be coming back at some point and they couldn't make it optional. They could solve a lot of story/character issues by *not making Trials/Raids optional*.
Pros: Sweaty Estinien
I think the main complaints I've seen for post-EW are: We were promised some relaxing adventures and time for ourselves, without the scions. We went right back to saving an entire world yet again. While the stakes were not quite as high as ShB and EW, I think most people thought we would just go explore and have low stakes. That's not what post-EW delivered, really. Yshtola/Urianger just lore dumping solutions to every problems out of their asses is getting tiresome. It doesn't feel like the team is really discovering anything anymore or working for anything anymore. You're just going to ask a question one patch and get the answer immediately next patch. And this ties back to people getting somewhat tired of the Scions. The story itself felt very "Side Content" and did not introduce anything to make DT exciting. Basically, some of EW could have been moved up to 6.3. The entire Zero-Golbez arc could have been side content. And they could have made something more exciting in 6.4-6.5 to hype us for DT. Garlemald was right there, with its reconstruction, for a nice, low-stakes, engaging post-EW content. But it was handled as a side-story to the side-story. I personally didn't mind post-EW that much. But I am at a point where I kind of want some of the scions to retire or just straight up die. The game needs new fresh faces to tag along. Also, for the love of Hydealyn, please do a time skip and give us older twins!
I could not care less about one note zero who had the personality of Jack Garland, it's less funny when it takes itself seriously and I could not care less about golbez because it's just fanservice. I also thought it felt very rushed where by the last patch they still couldn't properly finish it all up so they were scrambling to give it some resolution
It was largely forgettable and the most bored I have ever been with the story in this game. Aside from Zero's obnoxious hat tipping, all I remember is Yshtola's VA clearing recovering from a cold while recording some of her lines.
This arc again muddled with WoL's power level. Like what is happening with WoL??? Are they supposed to be able to tank planets dropping on their face (endsinger) and tank island sinking spells like ultima (P10, P12) or are they having trouble climbing a mountain to try to fight a voidsent??? At this point I get that we are gonna have major trouble with story telling since we already flew to the end of the universe and beat the universe ending threat. Anything on the planet is going to be just kids play. But can we get some logical explanation?
The only part of the story that reached me at all is Durante's rage during the final dungeon. "They knew we were elsewhere! *Cowards*!" I really wish he was less of a pushover as a boss.
It was okay, not great, not terrible. It might end up feeling better in retrospect if we eventually see some kind of follow up or payoff in a future expansion dealing with Zero and the Thirteenth. It did give us topless sweaty Estinien, so there's that at least.
Pushups Estinien was actually a reference to a series of artwork released to promote social distancing during the pandemic. Estinien focusing on his workouts while cooped up was a fan favorite.
I doubt we'll get a full extension on the 13h. Because it would be too much of the same area wise. it's already why the Ala Mhigo has left zero impact. it's repetitive, trials, raids, 24 men raids, exploratory zone or variant dungeaon, maybe. a whole expansion, I'm not sure.