Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Klokateer636]

-snip-

Interesting! Thanks for the little history lesson. I think makes things a clearer for me now.

The idea of cross-class skills, on paper, sounds cool, but could very quickly become extraordinarily tedious at best, or even cause people to quit the game at worst.

If I were a betting man, I'd say this is exactly why they changed how classes work. It possibly caused more problems than it solved Perhaps even population problems?

So best way to fix things would be to homogenize what the classes do. But then you have add things to make them more flavourful.

Now it's swinging the other way. They added so much they have to take things away, to take flavour away. But because you've added flavour, using Kaiten as an example, taking it away means making what surrounds it feel less unique.

Doing something like, and throw in making numbers smaller, and you're asking for some backlash. Unless they have something up their sleeve.

FFXIV should be far easier to balance than WoW because there's less classes (specs in this case).

This makes me think this: they're trying to take ahold of both a balancing situation and a button bloat problem at the same time by heading it off early and testing the waters with what they can take away. But when you take things away, especially when it comes to easy to read numbers, they may have been abit too heavy handed.

A part of this problem, is why WoW is so badly fucked, because balancing the game is impossible. And let's not even bring talent rows into the equation.

I hope YoshiP doesn't go full retard and consider Talent Rows a solution to the games problems.

 

[Dave.]

Interesting! Thanks for the little history lesson. I think makes things a clearer for me now.

The idea of cross-class skills, on paper, sounds cool, but could very quickly become extraordinarily tedious at best, or even cause people to quit the game at worst.

If I were a betting man, I'd say this is exactly why they changed how classes work. It possibly caused more problems than it solved Perhaps even population problems?

So best way to fix things would be to homogenize what the classes do. But then you have add things to make them more flavourful.

Now it's swinging the other way. They added so much they have to take things away, to take flavour away. But because you've added flavour, using Kaiten as an example, taking it away means making what surrounds it feel less unique.

Doing something like, and throw in making numbers smaller, and you're asking for some backlash. Unless they have something up their sleeve.

FFXIV should be far easier to balance than WoW because there's less classes (specs in this case).

This makes me think this: they're trying to take ahold of both a balancing situation and a button bloat problem at the same time by heading it off early and testing the waters with what they can take away. But when you take things away, especially when it comes to easy to read numbers, they may have been abit too heavy handed.

A part of this problem, is why WoW is so badly fucked, because balancing the game is impossible. And let's not even bring talent rows into the equation.

I hope YoshiP doesn't go full retard and consider Talent Rows a solution to the games problems.

I think the direction square is taking with FFXIV is they're making the game less stat focused and more focused on "flow, style, and feeling" and trying to fit classes into different niches while also giving them diverse identities that not only set them apart gameplay wise from the rest of their packs, but also to have them have their own unique use that not only benefits the party, but also provides utility that can be used to down a boss.

The problem with this way of thinking though is, where do you put healers into this category? Astrologian conceptually does not work in this conceptual way of thinking because the class itself around the heavensward days was a stat focused class. Nowadays its a "slot card in to make party do bigger numbers" class where its nuance and feeling is kind of null because what fates are you procuring when you basically just increase damage? Scholar does not fit in this way of thinking either because before then they were a stat focused class that was centered around strategy and carefully planning when selene what going to buff raid DPS and increase resistance. Essentially it was a job about studying boss strategy and maximizing their toolkit to provide utility for their party, but nowadays its just "cast barrier and make boss do less damage". White Mage was a job about bringing balance to the elements and using their empathy as means of providing aid to the party by turning the elements into tools of recovery. It still has that same flavor, unfortunately it does in areas where it simply doesn't need it (tank mitigation as it stands is overpowered) and they don't have a lot of dps toolkits to compensate for downtime meaning a healer has essentially nothing to do but keep dps uptime which only involves pressing their single cast ability, aoe ability in niche situations, and upkeep of their dots.

I'd like to say there's a solution that compliments this design philosophy, but I don't have a solution for it. Tanks can easily fit in this category, but right now there going through some experimentation, but they're putting their healer jobs into tighter corners as a result. I really do not know what you could do with the healer jobs right now that could make them more fun and more nuanced.

 

[Fcret]

The idea of cross-class skills, on paper, sounds cool, but could very quickly become extraordinarily tedious at best, or even cause people to quit the game at worst.

If I were a betting man, I'd say this is exactly why they changed how classes work. It possibly caused more problems than it solved Perhaps even population problems?

The problem was that cross-class skills were essentially a tax placed on you to even be viable in serious play. Rampart for example was a cross-class skill, which meant that if you wanted to play warrior, you had to go level paladin. Some of this was baked in already - unlocking warrior would require 30 levels in marauder and 15 in gladiator so you weren't really getting to endgame without this skill but it also made it far more likely that you'd see people faffing about at level 50 without their job stone (especially since not having a job stone technically gave you more cross-class skill slots so you'd see some real crackhead builds).

Disciples of magic basically had to level every caster. Healers wanted all of the cross-class DoTs (thunder from thaumaturge especially) and they all needed swiftcast from thaumaturge to be viable. All DPS would need to level archer in order to get raging strikes.

It was neat in theory but bloated the amount of time it took to get a character ready for endgame.

 

[Vapewizard]

There were a lot of 'weird' interactions in HW. For example, different jobs did different kinds of damage (slashing, piercing, etc) which meant that jobs that gave "slashing vulnerability +x%" were always paired with jobs that did slashing damage.

This reminds me of how I feel like I've seen some obscure level 50 equipment with stuff like "Piercing resist" and the slashing resist down debuff that cerberus gives you and I wondered to myself if that was some remnant of old mechanics. Turns out it actually was.

 

[Kane Lives]

This reminds me of how I feel like I've seen some obscure level 50 equipment with stuff like "Piercing resist" and the slashing resist down debuff that cerberus gives you and I wondered to myself if that was some remnant of old mechanics. Turns out it actually was.

You can see this all over older contents. Eg. if you paid attention to your job quests, especially the early class quest ones, you'd notice that the NPCs paired with you use a lot of abilities that you do not have now. (Enemies also have this to a smaller degree, especially the humanoid ones who correspond to classes.) Those used to be standard ARR abilities and skills. Same with HW, SB, etc.

 

[Fcret]

This reminds me of how I feel like I've seen some obscure level 50 equipment with stuff like "Piercing resist" and the slashing resist down debuff that cerberus gives you and I wondered to myself if that was some remnant of old mechanics. Turns out it actually was.

It got extra degenerate back in the day. Dragoon's Disembowel used to not be a personal damage buff but rather it would inflict the target with "piercing vulnerability +5%." Bards and Machinists were the other jobs that did piercing damage and so you'd never see them in parties without dragoons since their parse would suck shit (this was before the aDPS/rDPS split on fflogs).

 

[Vapewizard]

You can see this all over older contents. Eg. if you paid attention to your job quests, especially the early class quest ones, you'd notice that the NPCs paired with you use a lot of abilities that you do not have now. (Enemies also have this to a smaller degree, especially the humanoid ones who correspond to classes.) Those used to be standard ARR abilities and skills. Same with HW, SB, etc.

You mean stuff like stoneskin and protect, right? By the time I started playing, Shadowbringers almost had its last patch out so I only got to use them in Bozja.

 

[Fcret]

You mean stuff like stoneskin and protect, right? By the time I started playing, Shadowbringers almost had its last patch out so I only got to use them in Bozja.

If you do squadron missions, you'll also see the NPCs do some of them. Largesse for big heals, refresh to restore MP, break, etc.

Also if you do the Astrologian questline now, they still go through all the cards individually with some vague flavor about their effects because you used to unlock them through leveling. The job trainer also makes an offhanded remark about time magic now as a reference to when astrologians had abilities that could extend the duration of buffs.

Also has anyone leveled astro since Endwalker? How do they handle the flavor of Noctural Sect shit being complementary to geomancy in-universe now that noct is gone?

 

[Klokateer636]

If you do squadron missions, you'll also see the NPCs do some of them. Largesse for big heals, refresh to restore MP, break, etc.

Also if you do the Astrologian questline now, they still go through all the cards individually with some vague flavor about their effects because you used to unlock them through leveling. The job trainer also makes an offhanded remark about time magic now as a reference to when astrologians had abilities that could extend the duration of buffs.

Also has anyone leveled astro since Endwalker? How do they handle the flavor of Noctural Sect shit being complementary to geomancy in-universe now that noct is gone?

One of the things I spotted that's a leftover from 2.x is those pink items.

I had to ask what the heck they were. I thought when the equivalent to a green in wow when I first got one.

It's just random stats, and pretty much junk. Like remove them if they aren't even used in Heavensward.

 

[Fcret]

One of the things I spotted that's a leftover from 2.x is those pink items.

I had to ask what the heck they were. I thought when the equivalent to a green in wow when I first got one.

It's just random stats, and pretty much junk. Like remove them if they aren't even used in Heavensward.

There were pinks in Heavensward actually. You got them from doing old Diadem. They were 5 item levels higher than the savage raid gear and had random stat distributions technically making them far and way best in slot because you could get all the important substats for your job way higher than you'd get on other gear even with materia.

5.1 removed access to them since it axed old Diadem. None of the gear had unique appearances (and was usually just a reused PVP skin) so no one really misses these.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

I remember a World of Darkness run back during ARR. Someone was trolling using the cross class system on the first boss and it produced some glorious bitching. If you had your job stone equipped, you were down to 5 cross class slots and two other specific classes you could steal from. No job stone and it was 10 slots, no restrictions.

The guy was a Conjurer. Quicky found out it was because he wanted access to tank skills. He would wait until the boss was about to cleave, Provoke, hit the raid, then use Shroud (old Lucid Dreaming, Conjurer skill that restored MP and dumped half your current threat) to send it back to the tank. This was before the days of Shirk. There was nothing the group could do about this guy, and they were maaaaaaaaad. I got a good wheeze out of it.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

There was also a lot less homogeneity all around. Paladins were strong defensively, warriors could poomp damage, and dark knights could cheese certain fights because they had innately high magic mitigation. Astrologian cards would buff different stats so you'd have to think about what stat deficiencies were in your particular party and dole out cards that way (or fish for balance which was a flat damage buff and is basically the prototype for all of astro's cards these days).

Two things (spoilered to spare the innocent from my autistic tangents).

Spoiler: PLD was not strong defensively/HW Warrior was broken

Warrior was the best tank, period, in Heavensward you were basically arguing who Warrior's side kick was in Heavensward. It wasn't just damage, though Warrior had that too.

You are forgetting two major things when saying Paladin was "strong defensively". One Paladin couldn't block magic damage which made Sheltron fucking useless against many tank busters (also Sheltron only blocked ONE hit total so you could lose it to an auto attack with bad timing and due to snapshotting you might miss the tank buster entirely). Hallowed Ground was not good enough to compensate for this, and Sentinel was a 3 minute CD back then compared to the 2 minutes Vengeance had. Also Clemency's casts could be interrupted by fucking anything, so that option sucked ass.

Two, Warrior was fucking stupidly stacked in HW due to its 2.1 rework that made it not a troll job anymore, while then buffing it further in HW.

So back then Inner Beast (Defiance only Fell Cleave replacement) gave you effectively Rampart for 6 seconds, this means if you truly absolutely don't give a fuck about damage Warrior was much better at surviving damage by just smashing Inner Beast which it got every 8 or so GCDs (2 combos to generate wrath, then get the 5th stack on Maim). Also Equilibrium existed and that was much better then Clemency, although you had to be in Defiance to use it. It was awkward, but not unusable and was one of the many reasons HW War for its time was one of the strongest classes in FF's history. Also Storm's Path was an effectively permanent 10% damage reduction on the boss vs Paladin's 10% strength down (lmao physical vs most bosses especially raid wides) if you had a pulse and could rotate combos. This is while Holmgang was a 3 minute CD so you could cheese twice as many tank busters as Paladin, while also having the best 2-3 minute defensive CD as uptime is much more important then pure strength as tank busters tend to favor that 2 minute CD more especially once you do coordinate tank swaps.

The whole Defiance max hp vs Shield Oath/Grit mitigation difference is a wash pretty much, you had the same eHP more or less and Warrior also had traited bloodbath, but you can tank just about anything outside of early prog without your tank stance mitigation if you used CDs so the differences don't even really matter, but even if they did Inner Beast was stupid powerful if you used it decently (just use it when you see the tank buster cast bar pretty much).

tl;dr: Warrior best tank in all ways pretty much, Paladin was god awful in most fights the most it had was Divine Veil but Storm's Path and Reprisal (if you got good rng) was about as good most the time outside of hardcore prog but in hardcore prog Paladin couldn't handle the dps checks and still sucked with tank busters as most of its tools didn't work on most of them.

Spoiler: AST Cards weren't that good at all.

Astro's cards weren't nearly as robust as you're making them out to be, they basically were flat buffs or mp/tp regen, except most the buffs sucked, did effectively nothing, or even hurt you (see giving Arrow to Monk), because of how TP worked and how attack speed makes doing openers more difficult/lag dependent. Also the cards were far too rng dependent to be reliable to "cover stat deficiencies" anyway, because you can draw bole at the wrong time, and now you're stuck holding it for no reason or you don't have spread for the raid wide so Bole doesn't help anyway. That may be the idea on paper, but it did fuck all in practice especially OG Spear before they reworked it to a worse version of Balance.

Bole: Basically Rampart at best, it gave you about 20% DR to a single target iirc or 10% if you spread it. It was okay, but you'd hardly feel this do anything.

Arrow: Cucks every melee opener ever by making their GCD too fast, gives Monks and Ninjas a brain aneurysm. Was only good on BLM which was sketchy for the entirety of HW in terms of balance, every other job hated Arrow compared to Balance.

OG Spear: Meme tier shit, CD reduction sucks in a game that is so scripted and with dps that focus on CD alignment. It at best lets you generate more mana by using it on yourself when your mana CD comes up, but that gets in the way of building up Royal Road so you'll probably shuffle this and using it on a dps throws off raid buff alignment which makes it either no gain or even an overall damage loss. That's right, this thing could actually make you lose damage Arrow could also do that. HW Ast's design was very intelligent.

The update that made this a crit buff was okay and made the card not terrible.

Ewer: This is basically an MP tool, because Ast's MP was trash at the start of HW. The problem with this one and Spire is that they got you to spread, which was by far the best royal road modifier most the time so these tend to become fodder.

Spire: This gives TP as an apology to your Monk/Ninja/Dragoon for giving them arrow, or just RR fodder like Ewer.

Balance: The good one.

tl;dr: Ast cards were garbage and were almost entirely the illusion of choice, at best you had to manage making the best of trash RNG but Ast was not consistent, powerful, or flexible enough to be more then effectively sometimes giving trick attack while also casting healing spells

Rampart for example was a cross-class skill

Rampart was not a CC skill in ARR/HW, the garbage Marauder version called Foresight (basically worse Rampart as it modified the defense stat which was worse then flat damage reduction), was and it sucked ass. The REAL problem was Provoke being a CC skill locked behind level 24 Gladiator iirc. This is why Shadowskin was a skill in HW on Drk where all it did was be a nicer looking Rampart.

Most common problematic Cross class skill choices besides Provoke were: Swiftcast (level 26 THM), Blood For Blood (LNC 34), Quelling Strikes (level 34 ARC), Eye for an Eye (level 34 ACN), Stoneskin (CNJ level 34) I also believe Mantra (level 42 PGL) was also a CC skill but I can't fully remember.

 

[BarberFerdinand]

Finally came back to the game after taking a break directly after the lvl87 dungeon.

Spoiler: spoils

So between burnout from grinding like crazy to reach the end of MSQ + level some alts before endwalker / and disgust over venat's actions in the sundering, I took a lengthy break from the game. Since 6.1 was coming out soon and supposedly this godawful arc was supposed to be over and done with going forward, I decided to pick it up again and push through. Overall, my opinions about the story are mostly unchanged. Venat is still repulsive for the sundering, no, the tidbits that she says later don't even come close to justifying her actions, completely uncalled for, yadda yadda. Watching 95% of the fanbase lick crystalmommys feet explicitly because she unnecessarily genocided an entire civilization is really fucking weird.

Anyways, ultima thule was kinda neat, but also kinda disappointing. I was initially happy to see more of the omicrons, the Omega questline from stormblood was very interesting to me. Kinda lame that the end all and be all of their motive was just some generic "we wanted to get stronger" plot. Apparently there is more content to come soon in 6.1 for them, so I hope it does a better job.

The entire endsinger ending scenes were tough to get through, quite possibly the cringiest shit I've seen yet in the game. The one consolation is that afterwards they kinda give you the option to tell zenos to fuck off, no I don't want to be your boyfriend. I hope we never see him again, but that's probably hoping for too much.

Looking forward to Hildy sidequests in 6.1.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Finally came back to the game after taking a break directly after the lvl87 dungeon.

Spoiler: spoils

So between burnout from grinding like crazy to reach the end of MSQ + level some alts before endwalker / and disgust over venat's actions in the sundering, I took a lengthy break from the game. Since 6.1 was coming out soon and supposedly this godawful arc was supposed to be over and done with going forward, I decided to pick it up again and push through. Overall, my opinions about the story are mostly unchanged. Venat is still repulsive for the sundering, no, the tidbits that she says later don't even come close to justifying her actions, completely uncalled for, yadda yadda. Watching 95% of the fanbase lick crystalmommys feet explicitly because she unnecessarily genocided an entire civilization is really fucking weird.

Anyways, ultima thule was kinda neat, but also kinda disappointing. I was initially happy to see more of the omicrons, the Omega questline from stormblood was very interesting to me. Kinda lame that the end all and be all of their motive was just some generic "we wanted to get stronger" plot. Apparently there is more content to come soon in 6.1 for them, so I hope it does a better job.

The entire endsinger ending scenes were tough to get through, quite possibly the cringiest shit I've seen yet in the game. The one consolation is that afterwards they kinda give you the option to tell zenos to fuck off, no I don't want to be your boyfriend. I hope we never see him again, but that's probably hoping for too much.

Looking forward to Hildy sidequests in 6.1.

Spoiler: EW Spoilers

I believe Ishikawa effectively said in an interview that Zenos is dead and gone, that this is truly the end and that this was his final moment. The way she talked made it seem like this truly was Zenos' end. So you can, for now, take some solace in that.

Omicrons are basically the Garlemald parallel, they wanted to get stronger for survivals sake as they were supposedly weak in their origin history, and thus they become literal war machines to achieve that goal. By basically doing this, they would is essence remove their humanity and live solely for the sake of war and fall into a nihilistic hole of questioning what they are even doing anymore. They're more or less meant to represent what in this game's opinion Garlemald would have ended up as in due time.

 

[BarberFerdinand]

Spoiler: EW Spoilers

I believe Ishikawa effectively said in an interview that Zenos is dead and gone, that this is truly the end and that this was his final moment. The way she talked made it seem like this truly was Zenos' end. So you can, for now, take some solace in that.

Omicrons are basically the Garlemald parallel, they wanted to get stronger for survivals sake as they were supposedly weak in their origin history, and thus they become literal war machines to achieve that goal. By basically doing this, they would is essence remove their humanity and live solely for the sake of war and fall into a nihilistic hole of questioning what they are even doing anymore. They're more or less meant to represent what in this game's opinion Garlemald would have ended up as in due time.

Spoiler

Good to hear about zenos. I got that kind of vibe doing their quests, I guess I was just hoping for more. As of going through the omega qeustline they were just a mysterious alien race, and I was hoping their motives/culture would justify the mystique. Once revealed it didn't really satisfy, but again there's still hope for the upcoming questline maybe. I'm guessing omega will finally make it back, and it will be interesting to see what the result of that reunion will be.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Spoiler

Good to hear about zenos. I got that kind of vibe doing their quests, I guess I was just hoping for more. As of going through the omega qeustline they were just a mysterious alien race, and I was hoping their motives/culture would justify the mystique. Once revealed it didn't really satisfy, but again there's still hope for the upcoming questline maybe. I'm guessing omega will finally make it back, and it will be interesting to see what the result of that reunion will be.

Spoiler

Just a note, remember that everything shown in Ultima Thule is basically a projection interpreted by Meteion of why these worlds failed and why she's right. They're not the actual areas themselves and for all we know they're all dead and gone with Omega being the only survivor. So we don't truly and fully know what's going on with them. I like them because I felt they served two different messages that feel relevantly tied together, and I love stories that talk about identity and what makes "us" so called "us" even if it is done in a shlocky way like in a game like FFXIV, and I feel they're unusual within the context of FFXIV's universe as Ultima Thule as a whole feels very "sci-fi" in its themes once you get past the dragonstar section instead of typical JRPG fantasy though perhaps I haven't found enough JRPGs willing to go space.

So Omicrons and the other ghost people who's names I can't remember felt interesting enough.

 

[Fcret]

Spoiler

Crystalmommy did nothing wrong, Amaurotines were just zogged by Big Aether.

But for real though, I have trouble sympathizing with the Venat haters. Etheirys was hardly a paradise once you start digging into it. The people were complacent, nothing new was being made (just riffs on existing designs), and the people had become so detached from living things that they started to treat actual unironic sentient beings as just objects they could discard if they didn't live up to the convocation's standards.

It unironically deserved to be burned to the ground.

 

[Privilege Power Hour]

Finally came back to the game after taking a break directly after the lvl87 dungeon.

Spoiler: spoils

So between burnout from grinding like crazy to reach the end of MSQ + level some alts before endwalker / and disgust over venat's actions in the sundering, I took a lengthy break from the game. Since 6.1 was coming out soon and supposedly this godawful arc was supposed to be over and done with going forward, I decided to pick it up again and push through. Overall, my opinions about the story are mostly unchanged. Venat is still repulsive for the sundering, no, the tidbits that she says later don't even come close to justifying her actions, completely uncalled for, yadda yadda. Watching 95% of the fanbase lick crystalmommys feet explicitly because she unnecessarily genocided an entire civilization is really fucking weird.

Anyways, ultima thule was kinda neat, but also kinda disappointing. I was initially happy to see more of the omicrons, the Omega questline from stormblood was very interesting to me. Kinda lame that the end all and be all of their motive was just some generic "we wanted to get stronger" plot. Apparently there is more content to come soon in 6.1 for them, so I hope it does a better job.

The entire endsinger ending scenes were tough to get through, quite possibly the cringiest shit I've seen yet in the game. The one consolation is that afterwards they kinda give you the option to tell zenos to fuck off, no I don't want to be your boyfriend. I hope we never see him again, but that's probably hoping for too much.

Looking forward to Hildy sidequests in 6.1.

Spoiler: Venat spergery

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who was sour on Venat's justification for the sundering. Worst for me was that the reason she did it was basically a bootstrap paradox which is really unsatisfying. Then trying to justify that she's doomed everyone to suffer because now they can interact better with dynamis? There has to be a better way to write a justification for the sundering, there really does. Honestly, I think that why everyone loves her so much is muh crystalmommy which is just more of the uwu soft and postive bullshit the 14 community does and the fact that her big cutscene is like a Doctor Who finale: big, emotional, and easy to get caught up in, but falls apart under too much scrutiny. The worst part is I think EW finally finds an argument against Emet's claim in ShB that the Ancient world was better through Hermes calling out how flippantly they view life, especially animal life. Hell, the idea that civilizations keep reaching "perfection" and then just giving up and dying is interesting too, but it still doesn't feel right for the response to be Venat making everyone miserable so they'll appreciate life more. It just doesn't work for me and is the main reason I can't put the story in EW above ShB.

 

[CptnSnshn]

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>Asexual
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Why are catboys always so aggresive in their faggotry, I hate them so much.

 

[Dave.]

Spoiler: Venat spergery

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who was sour on Venat's justification for the sundering. Worst for me was that the reason she did it was basically a bootstrap paradox which is really unsatisfying. Then trying to justify that she's doomed everyone to suffer because now they can interact better with dynamis? There has to be a better way to write a justification for the sundering, there really does. Honestly, I think that why everyone loves her so much is muh crystalmommy which is just more of the uwu soft and postive bullshit the 14 community does and the fact that her big cutscene is like a Doctor Who finale: big, emotional, and easy to get caught up in, but falls apart under too much scrutiny. The worst part is I think EW finally finds an argument against Emet's claim in ShB that the Ancient world was better through Hermes calling out how flippantly they view life, especially animal life. Hell, the idea that civilizations keep reaching "perfection" and then just giving up and dying is interesting too, but it still doesn't feel right for the response to be Venat making everyone miserable so they'll appreciate life more. It just doesn't work for me and is the main reason I can't put the story in EW above ShB.

Finally came back to the game after taking a break directly after the lvl87 dungeon.

Spoiler: spoils

So between burnout from grinding like crazy to reach the end of MSQ + level some alts before endwalker / and disgust over venat's actions in the sundering, I took a lengthy break from the game. Since 6.1 was coming out soon and supposedly this godawful arc was supposed to be over and done with going forward, I decided to pick it up again and push through. Overall, my opinions about the story are mostly unchanged. Venat is still repulsive for the sundering, no, the tidbits that she says later don't even come close to justifying her actions, completely uncalled for, yadda yadda. Watching 95% of the fanbase lick crystalmommys feet explicitly because she unnecessarily genocided an entire civilization is really fucking weird.

Anyways, ultima thule was kinda neat, but also kinda disappointing. I was initially happy to see more of the omicrons, the Omega questline from stormblood was very interesting to me. Kinda lame that the end all and be all of their motive was just some generic "we wanted to get stronger" plot. Apparently there is more content to come soon in 6.1 for them, so I hope it does a better job.

The entire endsinger ending scenes were tough to get through, quite possibly the cringiest shit I've seen yet in the game. The one consolation is that afterwards they kinda give you the option to tell zenos to fuck off, no I don't want to be your boyfriend. I hope we never see him again, but that's probably hoping for too much.

Looking forward to Hildy sidequests in 6.1.

Spoiler

The sundering, from what I can tell and there may have been lore tidbits that I might've missed, doesn't kill the ascians, but instead it makes them more vulnerable and downgrades them from the godlike immortal beings they seem to be from Eithyris in the past. I've given the story some pondering now that the hyped up high has kind of gone away and while I don't really consider Venat a hero, I get why she did what she did. According to the lore from Shadowbringers, Hythlodaeus' image says that half the population needed to be sacrificed to Zodiark in order for him to have enough power to keep the world shielded and this would have to be done periodically over time to keep Zodiark powered pretty much. Venat already drew a pathway to Meteion with her marker which you can see in the sky in the last cutscene in Elpis and she I believe says she would inform the council about what was going on and what the source of this was. She also has knowledge that someone from the future has grown in power over time despite being disadvantaged like the sundered races become after she does what she does in Amaurot. It also makes sense to me because the people as portrayed in the memory crystal you slam into seemed completely content with killing off half their population willing or not to keep things the same and none of them showed any signs that they would take the initiative to fix the problem after Zodiark was created.

Essentially what she did was the equivalent to someone causing a chain reaction blackout to an electrical grid to a nation either because of complacency or because higher ups would prefer to live at the expense of others. She's essentially saying, "You know what, fuck this, try and live in paradise now!" And wiping the slate clean on a more harsher and dangerous landscape. Is this a heroic act? No, not even close and calling her a hero is insanity. But I think the point of the scene was that it was open to the interpretation of the player whether or not what she did was the right decision or not. Regardless of how you feel about Venat's actions, in some fucked up and bizarre way it actually worked. People learned to overcome a harsh landscape, they evolved themselves to fend off suffering rather than try and erase it with sacrifices and magic, instead of trying to recreate Zodiark at the expense of others, they elected to find a way to combat the Final Days. Meteion also, if she were to continue her acts, would've prevented any life from forming on other stars, so that's also something I took into account.

...also the moon spaceship part makes no sense. That's another thing that came to mind.