Character disconnect and disappointing Player Agency in Dawntrail's MSQ [Spoilers]

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Originally Posted by CerusSerenade

So you're just conveniently ignoring the cutscene where Sareel Ja arrives with the key in hand, stating he stole it from the treasury vault, and guided Zoraal Ja to the gate of the Golden City, handing the key to him to which Zoraal Ja uses to open the gate?

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No. I'm questioning how he knew what it was and how and where to use it. Just another instance of poor writing.

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Originally Posted by CerusSerenade

Your assumption that Zoraal Ja and Sareel Ja wouldn't ambush Ketenram despite having done so with minimal interaction in the final trial is baseless. Sareel Ja clearly has his sources, and while he acts surprised that he had the keystones, he would have likely found out eventually.

As for authority to find the golden city, it's a well guarded secret of the Dawnservant. Defying sovereign authority is kind of a big no-no unless you want to start an international incident, which Krile has the good sense NOT to do. Even then, they wouldn't even be able to interact with it without the tablets and keystones, which they wouldn't be given.

You're not going off hypotheticals, you're going off pure head-canon while ignoring established information.

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Originally Posted by CerusSerenade

So you're just conveniently ignoring the cutscene where Sareel Ja arrives with the key in hand, stating he stole it from the treasury vault, and guided Zoraal Ja to the gate of the Golden City, handing the key to him to which Zoraal Ja uses to open the gate?

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We don't know Sareel Ja's connections, abilities, sources or intentions, he never got enough screentime. You too are going off headcanon and assumptions.
The Scions and allies have ignored authority before. We have done our own research into forbidden locations before. If there were an international incident to happen, Tural would not fare well against the Eorzean forces.

You are accusing me of doing the exact same you yourself are doing. By that merit, none of your contributions to this thread have been any less head-canon than mine. You're ignoring established information as it fits you, as well as the traits of characters that have been with us since before Dawntrail.

I can only assume you enjoyed this expansion's MSQ seeing you act so willing to defend it, and am happy for you that you had a good time.

I think what isn't hitting many of you, and it never really does, is that most of this writing team does not think or care nearly as much about the story as players do. They will read your post, not care, and msq will be more of the same.

This should have been obvious since the patches when they completely failed to set up a premise for even visiting Tural outside "we have nothing better to do".

The thing is, people cling to a handful of very high moments the team has pulled off, mostly in 6.0 and 5.0, and then overrate them as they can do no wrong, when the writers egularly do wrong every expansion.

That's not to say the OP is a waste of time or anything. It's just worth considering when things in the story don't make sense, when lore is screwed, etc it's because the writing team simply doesn't care. Seems obvious. They think combat and graphics will satisfy you enough to coast on vibes

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

I think what isn't hitting many of you, and it never really does, is that most of this writing team does not think or care nearly as much about the story as players do. They will read your post, not care, and msq will be more of the same.

This should have been obvious since the patches when they completely failed to set up a premise for even visiting Tural outside "we have nothing better to do".

The thing is, people cling to a handful of very high moments the team has pulled off, mostly in 6.0 and 5.0, and then overrate them as they can do no wrong, when the writers egularly do wrong every expansion.

That's not to say the OP is a waste of time or anything. It's just worth considering when things in the story don't make sense, when lore is screwed, etc it's because the writing team simply doesn't care. Seems obvious. They think combat and graphics will satisfy you enough to coast on vibes

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Thank you for the edit, I was about to reply with a snarky comment in the vein of "just consume the product, you living wallets".

I am aware of the usual futility of providing feedback like this. I mainly started this thread to see if there were more people who had found the same, after seeing so much overly positive feedback regarding the MSQ on Twitter. That was a real disconnect with reality, too.

The story has never been perfect, but I always came out liking it overall, even the weaker aspects. The quality drop this time is simply baffling though.

Case in point: For a palate cleanser I got my character into some casual crafting, starting almost from scratch cause it's a recently promoted alt. I'm currently in Ishgard helping a little dragonling become a crafter, talking to people, offering guidance. It's utterly irrelevant cutesy slice-of-life optional side quest fluff. And it's got more politics, worldbuilding, local culture, NPCs with (some) discernible personality, and us acting as an accomplished mentor, guiding this little dragon, than any of Dawntrail has. I actually care about this.
It's depressing.

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Originally Posted by RabendaShin

We don't know Sareel Ja's connections, abilities, sources or intentions, he never got enough screentime. You too are going off headcanon and assumptions.
The Scions and allies have ignored authority before. We have done our own research into forbidden locations before. If there were an international incident to happen, Tural would not fare well against the Eorzean forces.

You are accusing me of doing the exact same you yourself are doing. By that merit, none of your contributions to this thread have been any less head-canon than mine. You're ignoring established information as it fits you, as well as the traits of characters that have been with us since before Dawntrail.

I can only assume you enjoyed this expansion's MSQ seeing you act so willing to defend it, and am happy for you that you had a good time.

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It is not an assumption that Sareel Ja stole the Interdimensional key and gave it to Zoraal Ja. This happened, or are you disputing that it did?

The scions don't ignore the authority of nations where they have been firmly warned not to do something when it doesn't directly tie to the sake of the world. Even in times of crisis they don't just ignore the authority of the people they interact with. The biggest example is Sharlayan and Garlemald. It would have been easy to simply wipe out the remaining military forces, but we work with them to our detriment instead.

For me to be doing "the exact same thing as you" I'd have to fail to provide in-game references to why they would do this. I provided reference to Ketennram having the keystones, Zoraal Ja and Sareel Ja having no real interaction with him, yet still ambushing him AND finding the gate to the golden city. Zoraal Ja loses in the rite of succession in all possible scenarios, so nothign would change.

You have "well if we didn't back Wuk Lamat no one would have suffered!" with no substantiating information beside your head canon that somehow Zoraal Ja would ONLY have found the Golden City if Wuk Lamat won, which makes no sense. Zoraal Ja doesn't care about Wuk Lamat winning, he cares about himself losing.

The only person ignoring anything is you, and it's clearly obvious that you either MASSIVELY story skipped, or you're illiterate. Either way there's nothing more to argue. You're just factually incorrect.

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Originally Posted by RabendaShin

Thank you for the edit, I was about to reply with a snarky comment in the vein of "just consume the product, you living wallets".

I am aware of the usual futility of providing feedback like this. I mainly started this thread to see if there were more people who had found the same, after seeing so much overly positive feedback regarding the MSQ on Twitter. That was a real disconnect with reality, too.

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That's why I was editing because I felt like it came across as "this is pointless" when I'm moreso just trying to help people not get so frustrated, even though it's hard, especially when your education or personal interest is in a writing field, you know? I care a lot about stories, but I had to adjust my expectations playing through the game because I realized they're just never going to get the pacing right, lore will be hit and miss, characters won't always be well portrayed etc. Part of that is the talent of any given writer and another is how many different people are on the team I think. It isn't just Ishikawa at a desk, FF has always been an IP where director, producer, translators, even composers, junior writers etc all have hands on the story. That has upsides and downsides.

That problem is compounded by the fact the story has to gel with all these other components i.e. the battle content, crafting content, side quests. Story is such an enormous task not to mention the budget and resources that go toward everything else in the game. Every expansion always has rough spots and more polished spots imo, like they just had more time and resources on a task on any given day. Or that was the day the expert whatever worked on it.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

I think what isn't hitting many of you, and it never really does, is that most of this writing team does not think or care nearly as much about the story as players do. They will read your post, not care, and msq will be more of the same.

This should have been obvious since the patches when they completely failed to set up a premise for even visiting Tural outside "we have nothing better to do".

The thing is, people cling to a handful of very high moments the team has pulled off, mostly in 6.0 and 5.0, and then overrate them as they can do no wrong, when the writers egularly do wrong every expansion.

That's not to say the OP is a waste of time or anything. It's just worth considering when things in the story don't make sense, when lore is screwed, etc it's because the writing team simply doesn't care. Seems obvious. They think combat and graphics will satisfy you enough to coast on vibes

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To be fair, it also doesn't help that a lot of the community has this toxic positivity "The devs can do no wrong" attitude.

Personally, I'm willing to overlook flaws in the writing if the overall experience is fun, but this MSQ was kind of like having your face shoved in some dung and having to pretend you enjoyed it, and there's tons of morons who'll go "Oh! The dung was so lovely! I loved shoving my face in it!" so it's not like SE has all that much incentive to see things changed.

Being overly negative (Like with the OW2 community) has its own issues, but being overly positive just leads to stagnation and a revolving door of players, which is what we're feeling right now.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

To be fair, it also doesn't help that a lot of the community has this toxic positivity "The devs can do no wrong" attitude.

Personally, I'm willing to overlook flaws in the writing if the overall experience is fun, but this MSQ was kind of like having your face shoved in some dung and having to pretend you enjoyed it, and there's tons of morons who'll go "Oh! The dung was so lovely! I loved shoving my face in it!" so it's not like SE has all that much incentive to see things changed.

Being overly negative (Like with the OW2 community) has its own issues, but being overly positive just leads to stagnation and a revolving door of players, which is what we're feeling right now.

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Indeed. It also doesn't help that the team was on an upward trajectory through the last arc. The writing was becoming more and more critically acclaimed over time, which makes it easier to overlook blunders or inconsistencies present in all those expansions and forget just how dull the storytelling can get. I think the toxic positivity is driven around high points in HW, SHB, and now EW, which all had very high "highs". Some players are going to tell you that you just don't "get it" or you're hating because the team had Ws in the past.

And let's just be real some consumers are better at adjusting their expectations to "none" than others when it's convenient for them.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

To be fair, it also doesn't help that a lot of the community has this toxic positivity "The devs can do no wrong" attitude.

Personally, I'm willing to overlook flaws in the writing if the overall experience is fun, but this MSQ was kind of like having your face shoved in some dung and having to pretend you enjoyed it, and there's tons of morons who'll go "Oh! The dung was so lovely! I loved shoving my face in it!" so it's not like SE has all that much incentive to see things changed.

Being overly negative (Like with the OW2 community) has its own issues, but being overly positive just leads to stagnation and a revolving door of players, which is what we're feeling right now.

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A certain suspension of disbelief is required for any form of entertainment media. It’s also something many writers bank too much on when dealing with Mary-Sues or situations where sharks are in need of being jumped. Regarding the MSQ… all I can say is the classic “I’m not angry, just disappointed”.

I had expected better from this game I enjoyed for its story before, and hope some of the complaints in the forum are addressed. The silence from the devs is deafening, though I don’t expect much.