Regarding Warstriders, I've been looking through the books about them in 3e and it feels that they aren't very integrated into the setting. I feel as if they could use some writeups about organizations in Lookshy and the Realm that are tasked with maintaining them or how they hold places of honor within the palaces of major noble houses.
This is actually backwards in a way that's kind of telling. I got deep into Exalted in 2e. I liked a lot of what I saw, and had other bits that didn't really click. Warstriders in 2e was a big example of what didn't work. Warstriders are there, and also warstriders are rarely there. The books encourage you to dial up or down their presence, but it's a mess to do it either way: if warstriders are not a sufficiently significant improvement over not-using-a-warstrider, then there's no point in warstriders. On the other hand, if it
is enough of a boon, then you're not a serious combatant beyond a certain level if you
don't have one.
Both of these takes were then complicated by the messiness of 2e's actual mechanics. They run into the reality of perfect defenses and associated system mastery and that means that only one of the ends of that dial even fits at all without massive homebrew. There's an intention to allow options, but then it's broken.
Beyond what Omicron shared with how much time and resources are necessary to make a warstrider work, 3e has a very explicit, and well-supported, role for warstriders. Their role is
fight armies.
The inclusion of the Devastating Action mechanic makes this work, squaring the circle that 2e failed to achieve. A warstrider can be a cool set-piece boss for a circle of Exalts, but that's not its role as far as the in-setting doctrine for their use goes. The warstrider's massive size is used to shatter armies, and the devastating action makes that function. In fact, this even is potentially useful in using warstriders in other fashions! The fact that the enemy might rout your ally's army with a warstrider serves as a hype squad for how cool and tough the warstrider is, meaning that its next encounter being a boss fight for the PC Exalts now feels more cool.
I still don't like warstriders, but they're much better considered and included with current lore and mechanics.
2nd edition reacted to that by making the hopelessness less explicit, and relegating the World of Darkness connections to a cute reference. Most of what we consider 2e's strongest writing came from Moran and Grabowski, neither of which had a true 'editor's view' of the setting, but still gave us much of the core flavor that kept 2nd edition going until the fans of Holden and Morke overtook them in late 2e (Dawn solution, DotFA Errata, etc).
3rd edition, I would characterize primarily as being hostile to an overarching, consistent and objective setting. It is the Exalted of the individual. Its mechanics and narrative choices all exist to idealize and accentuate singular character (the PCs notably), and locations. Not to provide a practical examination of realpolitik between nations, mundane or supernatural.
You absolutely can still do those things in 3rd edition, but they're not set up at a systemic level or editorial one, as far as my read goes. I also caveat that with how post-3e Core is an entirely different team of writers, languishing under the malus that is 3e core.
This is a baffling take to me. 2e's setting lore is very big on connecting the big setting places (Gem, Sijan, Nexus, etc) and how they connect to every other location in their Direction and anywhere else relevant. It kind of made it hard to fit in cool new cultures, even if you just found a nice, big, India-sized empty chunk of map. There can't be anything too important there, because they would have had an entry in the Great Forks section of the books, or similar pieces. Its lack becomes its own sort of authoritative.
Now, every 3e location write-up has a section on its neighbors and a bite-sized explanation of how they
are plugged into a living, complicated web of people groups in their area, with the implication that these postage-stamp-sized summaries are as complicated as the places that we know, and that they have neighbors of their own.
On top of that, the 3e Directions (especially the greatly expanded 'diagonals') have themes and tones, as well as complicated histories about how cultures and people groups feel a lot more consistent and overarching. If I hear "I've been writing about a culture in the Dreaming Sea for my own homebrew", I know what sort of vibe it should have, and I can ask things like "how did this culture interact with Y'danna at the height of Y'danna's empire?" It's more easily coherent either without adding many new cultures or by adding them, compared to how the gameline was last edition.
That's kind of why I don't think I agree with this assertion. I know you said that this is "as far as [your] read goes", so I'm curious what you're building this off of. What systems or editorial decisions make it hostile to having an overarching, consistent and objective setting?
