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ImpAtom posted:The entire point of that sequence is that they know they will be back if you succeed. They are gambling on you succeeding and throwing themselves into the unknown of despair. There is a reason Alisae's so upset about having to leave you alone, versus being scared of dying. She has faith in you but she hates that you're walking into the face of utmost despair alone and without support. Like the literal premise of the entire sequence is that your friends are decorporating themselves to support you by altering the world around you and the final walk is literally "You Are Not Alone." Thank you! I get so annoyed that people constantly misunderstand the point of this sequence and think it means that because we know the Scions can be brought back there are no real stakes.
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May 7, 2024 17:47
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Endorph posted:solo duty boss fights can be interesting but they can also be a massive pain in the rear end if you die to them and there's a clear design space issue where healers/tanks take longer to kill them than dps jobs, and on the flipside DPS jobs with no self-healing cant survive more than a couple failed mechanics while healers or warriors can just facetank through and barely engage with the design outside of instant loss mechanics not that it makes tanks any less braindead but there is a buff they have in most solo duties that makes it so tanks and healers do more damage, tanks and dps gain health over time, and healers and dps take less damage. with most solo duties having a hard ilvl sync it should take roughly the same amount of time for most classes
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May 7, 2024 17:56
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ImpAtom posted:The entire point of that sequence is that they know they will be back if you succeed. They are gambling on you succeeding and throwing themselves into the unknown of despair. There is a reason Alisae's so upset about having to leave you alone, versus being scared of dying. She has faith in you but she hates that you're walking into the face of utmost despair alone and without support. Like the literal premise of the entire sequence is that your friends are decorporating themselves to support you by altering the world around you and the final walk is literally "You Are Not Alone." Yeah I got that, and it was boring. I didn't miss the point, I didn't find the point compelling. Your friends gambling on you to succeed does not make a compelling plot point when the writers have laid all the groundwork ahead of time for you to know that you're going to succeed. Even setting aside the inherent nature of mmo protagonists being unasailable, everything the scions said in game on ultima thule made it obvious that resurrection was on the table. And it doesn't help that the number of important plot people that die and miraculously come back to life over the course of this 10 year story is higher than the number of those people that actually stay dead. Contrast this with SHB. Yes, it's obvious that you are not going to transform into a lightwarden and it's obvious you're going to kill Emet-Selch and it's obvious that everything is going to be fine. But all the scions and hangers-on around you are deeply concerned for your well-being. The instances of coughing up light are disturbing, regardless of you knowing you're going to survive it no matter where the plot goes. You are strolling into Emet's lobby not entirely certain how things are going to play out. There were several potential options for dealing with the light that would leave you alive but things going poorly for others or the world. They put in the writing time to make the stakes feel believable and laid down enough uncertainty to make the last few hours of SHB tense and exciting. This was not done in EW. And I really want to emphasize how much of a failure this is because I shut my brain off and just jump in for the ride with all sorts of media. Hell I can say I've done that for large chunks of this game pre and post EW. But EW dropped the ball hard enough that even me, a person who was a Mark back when I watched wrestling, couldn't just roll with it. EW's ending sequence lower stakes than attitude era wrestling plot lines. Or more topically, you can contrast it with in from the cold where there are very real stakes to you personally: the threat of having to do a 20 minute duty a 2nd time.
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May 7, 2024 18:01
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For me, In From The Cold was something I didn't like when I did it, because I still hated Endwalker at that point. Now, looking back, it's good, but I don't think it's as good as a lot of people say it is. By the time i got to <<< Ultima Thule >>>, on the other hand, I had changed my mind, and was fully invested in Endwalker, so I found it to be a very tense thing. I'd found speculation that the devs were gonna leave the Scions behind, and replace them with a new group. Since I wasn't sure if we could get them back, I thought it was an excellent way to send them off. I was really hoping the speculation was wrong, but I was prepared for The End. Of course, I know now that those speculations have been flying around for forever, but at that time?
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May 7, 2024 18:04
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Failboattootoot posted:Yeah I got that, and it was boring. I didn't miss the point, I didn't find the point compelling. Your friends gambling on you to succeed does not make a compelling plot point when the writers have laid all the groundwork ahead of time for you to know that you're going to succeed. Even setting aside the inherent nature of mmo protagonists being unasailable, everything the scions said in game on ultima thule made it obvious that resurrection was on the table. And it doesn't help that the number of important plot people that die and miraculously come back to life over the course of this 10 year story is higher than the number of those people that actually stay dead. I mean you say you didn't miss the point but then you said it is bad writing because they laid the groundwork beforehand and that it was obvious resurrection was on the table, which is missing the point. Resurrection was on the table if you succeeded at an impossible task against an unbelievably overwhelming force that toppled gods. You had to march into the heart of despair and summon the soul of a god to bring stability to a broken ruin of a world to have the chance. It isn't about if they will come back or not, that was never what it was about. Like the fact you keep focusing on "Well, I knew the scions were coming back" is missing the point. The Scions didn't suicide themselves without hope. They explicitly set themselves up in a position where their literal hope for you overcomes a great despair and provides you with a new path forward. That's the actual stated plot.
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May 7, 2024 18:09
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i fully believed that not all of the scions might've made it back, especially since endwalker was supposed to be the capstone of the story arc.
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May 7, 2024 18:12
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The last zone of EW isn't a tale of loss (or fire). It's a tale of faith. That's the focus. If that doesn't land for you, sorry to hear it.
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May 7, 2024 18:14
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especially in genre pieces that necessarily tread very well-worn ideas and themes, it's the procedure - the path from point A to a clearly defined point B - that provides the interest. you know columbo is going to solve the case, and you know saitama is going to punch something once to kill it, but how they get to that inevitable conclusion is what keeps you hooked and provides emotional resonance
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May 7, 2024 18:16
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Vermain posted:especially in genre pieces that necessarily tread very well-worn ideas and themes, it's the procedure - the path from point A to a clearly defined point B - that provides the interest. you know columbo is going to solve the case, and you know saitama is going to punch something once to kill it, but how they get to that inevitable conclusion is what keeps you hooked and provides emotional resonance Correct, and what I am saying is that none of that journey landed for me in UT. Most of it also didn't land for me for me in Elpis either. Most of the 6.0 msq experience didn't really land for me if I am being honest. It is entirely possible that by the time I got to UT I had just been nickle and dimed enough along the way that I was unwilling to engage with it anymore. But regardless of how or why, my general feeling during UT was that the events of the main plot had lost most of my interest compared to the side-goings on of the zone itself such as sad dragons, nihilist gasses, and confused robots.
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May 7, 2024 18:27
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Failboattootoot posted:The onus is on the writers to establish credible stakes even under these circumstances. For example (end of shb and ew spoilers): Ultima Thule is a victory lap imo.
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May 7, 2024 18:28
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Noper Q posted:When I did In From The Cold, I got lost for awhile and finally found where I was supposed to be only to just barely lose. So not only was I frustrated by my first, over-long attempt, I then had to deal with the slow, boring, frustrating gameplay a second time, which completely destroyed any enjoyment I could have gotten out of the following cutscenes. Local goon DESTROYS the very concept of narrative Quoted "Yeah I'm too smart to be tricked into investing emotion into a story"
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May 7, 2024 18:30
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I hated that zone so much. It just felt so repetitive to me that anything else that was going on was swept away by a tide of 'we're doing this again, seriously?'
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May 7, 2024 18:31
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What on earth.
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May 7, 2024 18:32
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Opinions on EW's final zone have always been mixed in my experience.
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May 7, 2024 18:33
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Regardless of the stakes involved, the big thing for me was the overarching theme of overcoming despair through trust, faith, and friendship against seemingly impossible odds. That really sold EW's ending for me.
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May 7, 2024 18:34
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I don’t even remember my feelings about ‘Into the Cold’ because the forced crawling section at the end was such a meme that it turned me off of the whole thing. I vastly preferred the Thancred sneaking mission, though I genuinely love Thancred.
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May 7, 2024 18:38
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To me, Endwalker's final zone reminds me of all the times in the story when you're fighting an overwhelming amount of enemies and your allies say "You go on ahead, we'll hold them back." Because they have faith in you to succeed. Do people get upset by these segments too? It's essentially the same thing in Ultima Thule "You go on ahead, we'll forge the path." Because we have faith in you to succeed.
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May 7, 2024 18:38
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the point of EW zone 6 isn't loss and grief, it's solitude and duty, and no amount of complaining about them not making the threat of loss real enough can bridge that gap
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May 7, 2024 18:53
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ImpAtom posted:I mean you say you didn't miss the point but then you said it is bad writing because they laid the groundwork beforehand and that it was obvious resurrection was on the table, which is missing the point. Resurrection was on the table if you succeeded at an impossible task against an unbelievably overwhelming force that toppled gods. You had to march into the heart of despair and summon the soul of a god to bring stability to a broken ruin of a world to have the chance. It isn't about if they will come back or not, that was never what it was about. The task is not impossible. The task is an 8 man trial that we almost literally cannot fail. The scions gambling their lives on you beating what is narratively impossible is supposed to be the stakes that carry you forward doing a task that is very much possible from the gameplay perspective. But since they already did everything but literally writing out, "hey you can revive us through the ambient dynamis later." then this meant the scions were completely safe. And we also know that we are completely safe. Since there was nothing realistically under threat, the final outcome was uninteresting and uncompelling. Your loving final climactic fight to end a 10 year story should have some stakes to it! I don't care that they were trying to do some plot about how the scions have complete faith in you and are willing to sacrifice themselves on a gamble. They already did that, it was the ending of 2.55. I didn't need a retread of that (especially since all that getting walked back is like exhibit A of why UT fell flat to me), I needed there to be some compelling threat to me, my allies or the status quo to bring uncertainty to the proceedings. Otherwise we get Mordiceius posted:Ultima Thule is a victory lap imo. And I just wasn't there for that. Failboattootoot fucked around with this message at 18:55 on May 7, 2024 |
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May 7, 2024 18:53
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Failboattootoot posted:The task is not impossible. The task is an 8 man trial that we almost literally cannot fail. The scions gambling their lives on you beating what is narratively impossible is supposed to be the stakes that carry you forward doing a task that is very much possible from the gameplay perspective. But since they already did everything but literally writing out, "hey you can revive us through the ambient dynamis later." then this meant the scions were completely safe. And we also know that we are completely safe. Since there was nothing realistically under threat, the final outcome was uninteresting and uncompelling. The threat was that the omnipresent literal embodiment of nihilism and despair would end the entire universe. That was the threat. If you're going to pull the "Well, it isn't a real threat because it is an 8 man trial" then... that applies to every major threat in the game. No poo poo the game isn't going to toss an unwinnable battle at you for the final fight. The task, as defined in the story, was nearly impossible. Going "Well it isn't impossible because it was an 8 man trial" is dumb because that applies to literally everything in the game.
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May 7, 2024 18:59
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gently caress it I will double post, to clarify my fundamental problem isn't the scions sacrificing themselves is unbelievable, it's that there's no actual tension to the final confrontation. The scion's sacrifice cannot be this tension for me for the reasons I just outlined. Thinking about it, if they had just intermingled a few cutscenes back on Eorzea showing our old allies fighting off blasphemies as the final days spread, that probably would have been good enough for me. The scions might be completely safe but can we say the same about Nabdeen or Jullus or Sicard? Edit: ImpAtom posted:The threat was that the omnipresent literal embodiment of nihilism and despair would end the entire universe. That was the threat. If you're going to pull the "Well, it isn't a real threat because it is an 8 man trial" then... that applies to every major threat in the game. No poo poo the game isn't going to toss an unwinnable battle at you for the final fight. Yeah and all the other expansions sold this better than EW. I did not have issues accepting the stakes of the climax of arr, hw, sb, or shb. Hence my consternation with EW. Failboattootoot fucked around with this message at 19:03 on May 7, 2024 |
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May 7, 2024 19:00
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also actually the point is you're not winning and things are going poorly until you send the scions away, Zenos comes in and is like "??? why are you losing a boss fight king", and THEN it goes into an 8-man trial you're definitely gonna win. the fact that it becoming a trial means your victory is assured is very much something they're playing with. e: i mean you even win the trial halfway through by not dying, and it literally starts playing your theme music after. phase 2 of endsinger is a glorified cutscene because she hasn't been a real threat since the moment you teleported everyone else away and zenos burst in Valentin fucked around with this message at 19:24 on May 7, 2024 |
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May 7, 2024 19:04
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Endwalker was kino IMO
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May 7, 2024 19:19
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Valentin posted:also actually the point is you're not winning and things are going poorly until you send the scions away, Zenos comes in and is like "??? why are you losing a boss fight king", and THEN it goes into an 8-man trial you're definitely gonna win. the fact that it becoming a trial means your victory is assured is very much something they're playing with. The entire setup from the conclusion of the dungeon to the end credits is basically a Royal Rumble finale and it's great. It also occurs after the primary tension of the zone has ended. IMO the final dungeon and trial are a separate thing from the journey to get there, with their own distinct conflicts and tensions.
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May 7, 2024 19:20
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I hate to spoil all future story in this game but: you're always going to win in the end. every expansion is going to end with an 8-person trial that you will not lose
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May 7, 2024 19:21
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FuturePastNow posted:I hate to spoil all future story in this game but: you're always going to win in the end whoa what the gently caress
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May 7, 2024 19:21
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My unpopular final EW zone opinion is that the song should have reverted after the MSQ because it feels way less impactful when I'm just flying around gathering herbs
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May 7, 2024 19:24
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I have datamined (from my mind, via my rear end) that 7.0 will also end with an 8-person trial where you beat a boss
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May 7, 2024 19:25
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FuturePastNow posted:I hate to spoil all future story in this game but: you're always going to win in the end. every expansion is going to end with an 8-person trial that you will not lose minstrel's ballad: banquet hall which is just 90 minutes of a dps race on teledji and adeledji
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May 7, 2024 19:27
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FuturePastNow posted:I have datamined (from my mind, via my rear end) that 7.0 will also end with an 8-person trial where you beat a boss What the gently caress!
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May 7, 2024 19:29
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FuturePastNow posted:I hate to spoil all future story in this game but: you're always going to win in the end. every expansion is going to end with an 8-person trial that you will not lose Are you sure? The first week of the trials with DF is pretty rough 
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May 7, 2024 19:29
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Countblanc posted:My unpopular final EW zone opinion is that the song should have reverted after the MSQ because it feels way less impactful when I'm just flying around gathering herbs I think it probably would be for the best if it had gone back to being an instrumental, kind of like how Kholusia temporarily has the full Big Anime Hero theme in the run up to the 79 dungeon and then chills out afterwards. But man there are still people out there who actively dislike the song in UT and I'm like what.
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May 7, 2024 19:30
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FuturePastNow posted:I have datamined (from my mind, via my rear end) that 7.0 will also end with an 8-person trial where you beat a boss My datamine source says the final boss will be 2 bosses so take that 
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May 7, 2024 19:36
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It'd be neat if we unlocked zone music selection once we finished the MSQ. As it is now, I have a plugin that lets me set whatever BGM I want. I mostly use it to never have to hear the Labyrinthos distorted clown parade theme.
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May 7, 2024 19:39
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the final boss theme is gonna be in the launch trailer
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May 7, 2024 19:41
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I mean for all we know the team was inspired by FF7R and the final battle of DT will be a two hour long boss gauntlet where the last boss has a lol gotcha mechanic at 5%. But we can be pretty confident it won't conclude with a world FATE or a Triple Triad duel to the death.
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May 7, 2024 19:46
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When will the NDA lift, next Thursday?
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May 7, 2024 19:46
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Alder posted:Are you sure? The first week of the trials with DF is pretty rough Thundarr posted:But man there are still people out there who actively dislike the song in UT and I'm like what.
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May 7, 2024 19:48
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Dawntrail's main story actually wraps up at level 99 and the final level 100 DT boss is a casual game of mahjong with the Scions, but you only get one chance to win or else the game uninstalls itself and deletes your account and it detects if you alt-tab out or take too long and flags you as cheating. Is that enough narrative stakes for everyone?
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May 7, 2024 19:51
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FuturePastNow posted:I have datamined (from my mind, via my rear end) that 7.0 will also end with an 8-person trial where you beat a boss 7.55 ends with a trial you lose and 8.0 is the bad future expansion.
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