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.

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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 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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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.

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Originally Posted by PaleYonder

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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I recommend doing all the role quests after MSQ as a palette cleanser too. Really feels like I have my character back after her being held hostage for 30 hours by the MSQ.

And fuck, the quest hook is "there are beasts running amok"? And when I go to the quest objective, there's a dude there lying on the ground surrounded by purple smoke and I actually fight the damn beasts? Revolutionary.

They even immediately after show how badass the NPC lead of the quest chain is, by having him easily kill some more monsters that show up to threaten WoL. Something I'm told I must hate from the bottom of my heart because of my "main character syndrom", but I dunno, somehow the little agency made all the red go away. It's the darnedest thing.

And when there's another cutscene where the villain gets away, blam, straight from the cutscene into another fight as I'm jumped by the villain's underlings. So it doesn't look like I just let her walk away for no reason. Wow. Gameplay and story? Working together?

Seriously though, is there an entirely different team directing the role quests, and why aren't they directing the MSQ?

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

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.

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I'll be honest. If the criticism get's Square to finally pull the pants up and care more about the game again then I will "forgive" all this.
I think you are right that the players actually care more about the story then they do and that they probably had a pretty high horse to sit on after EW.
The dungeons showed that a slap in the face to wake them up can actually work (and yes it was the criticism no matter how they want to sell it as their own idea). Lets hope it's the same with the story because it seems to be more players criticizing it then the combat back then.

For me some live letters have shown some kind of disconnect of the devs if not arrogance (Yoshida's "you care so much for the story?" for questions about Azem or that one time with the Hrothgar hair debacle (you know, those stupid pictures?)).
It was sometimes like a mentallity of "too big to fail" or "they will buy it anyway".
Dissapointing in the story though get's bad when that is the thing the game prides itself on and the one thing both casuals and hardcore players enjoy to a big chunk.
There was always some nagging and hating but all in all the story was regarded as good to great. DT... I really don't know when the last time was I saw such a big split everywhere, not just here.

I wait for the first patch and then I will see.

It's just crazy to me that ff14 has that stepchild status at square. It really seems like it was successfull to this day despite Square (not the devs mind you) not because of it.
They have the favourite child ff7 and and then ff14.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

It'll be interesting what interviews and other dev statements are like (such as LLs). EW had this glowing aura around it and a very high MC score. DT is now the lowest. I'm not sure what they can say. "Sorry we f'd that up, please play the patches"? Lol. It's not like they can fix the MSQ, not for this level anyway.

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They probably won't apologize for it nor do I think it is needed (just do better and actually recognize the feedback).
There may be remarks like "we tried something but it was not received as we thought" or "we got a lot of feedback and will look into how to be better to hold your and our standard".

They probably have a few meetings now if only because of the scores on the internet and may slightly adjust the patch story but not much (maybe switch Wuk Lamat for someone else and have no voiceover there).
Who knows. Maybe they even knew that the story would be diverse in the reception and the patch story is somethingelse entirely to then quickly respont to feedback, like the void questline.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

I recommend doing all the role quests after MSQ as a palette cleanser too. Really feels like I have my character back after her being held hostage for 30 hours by the MSQ.

And fuck, the quest hook is "there are beasts running amok"? And when I go to the quest objective, there's a dude there lying on the ground surrounded by purple smoke and I actually fight the damn beasts? Revolutionary.

They even immediately after show how badass the NPC lead of the quest chain is, by having him easily kill some more monsters that show up to threaten WoL. Something I'm told I must hate from the bottom of my heart because of my "main character syndrom", but I dunno, somehow the little agency made all the red go away. It's the darnedest thing.

And when there's another cutscene where the villain gets away, blam, straight from the cutscene into another fight as I'm jumped by the villain's underlings. So it doesn't look like I just let her walk away for no reason. Wow. Gameplay and story? Working together?

Seriously though, is there an entirely different team directing the role quests, and why aren't they directing the MSQ?

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Revolutionary indeed! Thanks a lot for that advice, I'll make sure to check that out. I was going to ignore the role quest NPC entirely cause I was so soured on the whole region and the expansion's storytelling.