u/loopdaploop

By that, I mean another overarching and multiexpansion but not entirely existential threat.

I'm excited for the Winterers, because the game does need an arc-spanning antagonistic force, but I think the Ascians worked so well because they were put in direct contrast with Garlemald, who were a more realistic and grounded threat, and had an impact on the day-to-day life of the average person within the world that was directly observable.

Some storytelling benefits antagonists like Garlemald provide:

• The average person within the world actually knows of their existence and can react to and have different histories with them as an antagonistic force. They can also have different opinions on how they should be dealt with. This makes the world feel larger and more interconnected.
• A healthy supply of mid-tier level threats that can have their own personality and motivations, but come into the story with enough context that the game doesn't need to overexplain their existence.
• Provide a contrast with the more existential, fantastical threat, and allows the stakes of the story to grow more organically, as well as allowing expansions and patch stories to have a more natural ebb and flow of stakes.
• Allow for different factions/city-states/states in general to have coordinated or differing responses to them as a threat, which provides significant worldbuilding

Some reasons why I think the devs have been hesitant to go in the Garlemald direction again:

• General feelings of distaste/disinterest/hesitancy in writing 'war' stories: Ishikawa, who I think is a wonderful writer, did steer the course of FFXIV away from war as she did not feel confident to write about it. I do feel like the shift away produced some of the best writing in the game, but I do think it also fundamentally changed the tone and stakes of FFXIV in a way that the game would and demonstrably has struggled to diversify from.
• The lack of any established threat that could replace Garlemald: I personally think this is a bit of an underrated reason, and one that any long-running series struggles with. When you enter a universe in-lieu, it's easy to say 'Here is the big empire, they've been around for xyz amount of years, our hero has to fight against them' (e.g. A New Hope). The game would have to build an antagonistic force from the ground up, make them a serious threat, and make their presence feel natural and earned. There just isn't anything in the current worldbuilding to suggest anywhere is interested or capable of rapidly expanding an imperial project...and if there was/is, it would be quickly handled, which leads to my next point:
• The game's insecurity in leaving unresolved plot points from patch to patch: This one I think has come about for a multitude of reasons. One is probably an overcorrection from very legitimate criticism regarding how certain plotlines resolved, and how some introduced points of conflict were hastily resolved or written out. The second is probably a response to bad faith criticism that forgets this is a constantly updating story and the game doesn't need to address every single plot point immediately - I saw this more after people who got to blast through ARR-SHB and didn't experience all the set-up as it happened.
• The simplest and most obvious reason, which is that the game is increasingly more interested in telling stories about the shards and how the reflections interact with each other, and this necessitates an overarching existential threat, not one that just threatens the Source.

As someone who did generally enjoy Dawntrail for the story it was trying to tell, I do think the game's sense of stakes and momentum have been suffering since 6.1 and I do believe the lack of any consistent and more grounded threat has played a role in that.