Are y'all expecting too much from Dawntrail's story?

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Originally Posted by missTori

I haven't even started it yet, been catching up on other stuff since I was gone since 6.1.
Now don't get me wrong, i posted on the "endwalker story bad" thread for years on my other account before i decided to come back to the game on this account.

So, I was under the impression that most of us here on the forum were going into this expansion with no expectations after the Endwalker travesty. Why are there so many hate threads right now? Is it really that bad lmao

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For all its flaws, I liked Endwalker.

Dawntrail is unforgivably bad. It's riddled with plotholes that make the closed-time loop of Elpis look pathetic in comparison, bad and repetitive dialogue, completely flanderized characters, wasted opportunities, and the worst of it all - it's boring. It's preachy too, but then doesn't practice what it has been preaching for 20 hours the moment there is any sort of moral friction.

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Originally Posted by missTori

I haven't even started it yet, been catching up on other stuff since I was gone since 6.1.
Now don't get me wrong, i posted on the "endwalker story bad" thread for years on my other account before i decided to come back to the game on this account.

So, I was under the impression that most of us here on the forum were going into this expansion with no expectations after the Endwalker travesty. Why are there so many hate threads right now? Is it really that bad lmao
p.s. avoid reading this thread for possible spoilers further on the pages

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We had no expectations but were still disappointed. I kept thinking and asking up to the release, it seems like we have no idea what will happen in the new expansion at all? In all other expansions, we knew the premise. Turns out I was right, had no idea what it would be about because it was about nothing.
Wuk Lamat trail, cat girl running ahead excitedly while you're in the background carrying her stuff.

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Originally Posted by Tsumdere

For all its flaws, I liked Endwalker.

Dawntrail is unforgivably bad. It's riddled with plotholes that make the closed-time loop of Elpis look pathetic in comparison, bad and repetitive dialogue, completely flanderized characters, wasted opportunities, and the worst of it all - it's boring. It's preachy too, but then doesn't practice what it has been preaching for 20 hours the moment there is any sort of moral friction.

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It is funny that the memory wipe could have been avoided if they had written anything you told them down lol.

If you like tropey shonen anime, it's fine. I, unfortunately, do not. I'm everything but the target audience of it.

I at least expected the things they hyped would happen in Dawntrail to happen. A huge chunk straight up didn't.

I've been playing since 2.5. Every expac that dropped, I played voraciously until finishing the MSQ. The end of ShB and EW felt like fever dreams because I was so exhausted and hyped up on caffeine at the same time, forcing myself to stay awake to finish them. Dawntrail on the other hand has been so bad and boring I've had to take multiple breaks just to tolerate it. I've taken a week off work to play starting with pre-release, and I still haven't even reached the last zone because of how much I've had to step away, either out of boredom or frustration. Even at the worst parts of Stormblood, I was just able to power through the MSQ until getting to better parts.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

If you like tropey shonen anime, it's fine. I, unfortunately, do not. I'm everything but the target audience of it.

I at least expected the things they hyped would happen in Dawntrail to happen. A huge chunk straight up didn't.

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I like tropey shonen anime. It's one of my guilty pleasures. This is not even remotely close to even that low bar of "quality".

I expected to be consistently engaged because even the various side stories/quests tend to have hooks that make me want to see what happens next, but that drive really was just not there until the latter half, which ended up feeling half-baked due to how many major plot points were introduced and largely resolved in such a small timeframe.

Personally, it doesn't take a ton to entertain me because I usually play through MSQ with my brain turned off and in "Mentally roleplaying as WoL" mode, but it's very hard to do so in this xpac because there's not much actual gameplay and there's a lot of story elements that make me go "Wait... why can't we just do X or Y? Why are we just standing around uselessly?"

Plus there's a lot of stupid story elements like how we suddenly become powerless when a character takes a hostage, or how we barely do anything meaningful storywise.

I went in with no real expectations, looking at things as little as possible before launch as I wanted to experience it by myself as much as possible... What I got was a terribly written character, and for the most part what felt like an incredibly padded out story with very little actual substance.
Like 7.0 MSQ feels like it's about a third of the length of the other expansions, and most of it's content is backloaded to after level 96 where it goes straight into spoiler territory.

For the Price of the Expansion + the Monthly Cost, i do expect a Certain Level of Quality thats at least on par of previous Expansions, otherwise why Pay money for when all i get is World of Warcraft levels of Writing?
I do hope post 7.0 Story will be Better, and Wuk lamat Free.

I expected:

-The Scions actually having a competition amongst themselves within the Rite of Succession (Yoshi-P said this himself during FanFest)

-Krile focused (She was heavily featured in the build up with her Grandfather’s letter, the Scion with the most motivation to go to Tural, being turned into a Pictomancer as the character who will promote the job)

I got:

-Half the Scions fucking missing half of the MSQ. Thancred and Urianger TEAMED UP WITH US MORE THAN THEY COMPETED AGAINST US.

-Krile, despite the set up, still managed to stay as a tertiary character with her only dedicated screentime being at the very last zone. Not even the entirety of the last zone. No. A *section* of the last zone.

I had zero expectations. Except for the trailer I suppose? I watched it. That was about it. To be fair though - the trailer was kind of a complete and utter lie, a total misrepresentation of what Dawntrail will actually be. Whoever made it was full well aware of what they were doing. Scions front and center. Hyping up adventure. Showing cool duels. Basically NO Wuk Lamat. We got the exact opposite.

So if the official trailer counts as expectations... Then yeah, damn, I guess I expected too much of Dawntrail.

With the amount of money I paid for Dawntrail, I could have had at least 10 Hot Pot buffets or 14 Decent meals or 5+5 medium size pizzas and side dishes. So, yes, I did expect quite a lot from the expansion worth that much.

My expectations were in the gutter. This somehow managed to go below them. It's worse than any Final Fantasy story I've ever played. But the zones are pretty and the gameplay is good when you occasionally get to gameplay. I would not fault anyone for skipping this story.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

If you like tropey shonen anime, it's fine. I, unfortunately, do not. I'm everything but the target audience of it.

I at least expected the things they hyped would happen in Dawntrail to happen. A huge chunk straight up didn't.

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Not even anime tropes are this bad dude. I like anime but this is just bad.

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Originally Posted by missTori

I haven't even started it yet, been catching up on other stuff since I was gone since 6.1.
Now don't get me wrong, i posted on the "endwalker story bad" thread for years on my other account before i decided to come back to the game on this account.

So, I was under the impression that most of us here on the forum were going into this expansion with no expectations after the Endwalker travesty. Why are there so many hate threads right now? Is it really that bad lmao
p.s. avoid reading this thread for possible spoilers further on the pages

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This is a strange mindset I fail to understand. When a musician creates his magnum opus he do not simple call it there and reduce the quality. When Shakespeare wrote his masterpieces he never stopped pushing for better. When Leonardo davinchi created the mona Lisa he still outdid himself. As an artist. I understand this. It is not only unacceptable for your fans but also for yourself if you do not continue to strive to to create something better than before. That's what art is. The ability to grow through expression...and to communicate how you see the world to others. To just call it a day after a high is a lazy mindset. One they clearly took, which has opened dt to a sleugh of criticism and complaints. If soken suddenly stopped trying after close in the distance I think you'd all be complaining the dt music is meh. If the zone artists stopped trying you'd complain too. So why is it fair those people put in all that work but the writers don't. It isn't. And it's not an acceptable mindset

I was expecting a filler story to set up future expansions. I wasn't expecting it to be mindnumbingly boring

I was expecting a good story and not a super boring story that puts you to sleep. I hope they hire a better story writer for next part of the expansion and later ones because this story writer sucks really bad.

I would've preferred a dumb, fan service filled beach episode of an expansion to this.
We party, eat watermelons, get a cutscene where Thancred and Urianger wake up in bed next to each other.
The fun stuff, you know?

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Originally Posted by BakoolJaJa

the trailer was kind of a complete and utter lie, a total misrepresentation of what Dawntrail will actually be. Whoever made it was full well aware of what they were doing. Scions front and center. Hyping up adventure. Showing cool duels. Basically NO Wuk Lamat. We got the exact opposite.

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It's because the marketing team knows full well who the players like.
If in the trailer, they gave Wuk Lamat the same screentime (%-wise) as she had in MSQ, people would start asking questions, immediately.

The way I see it is this :
I wasn't expecting much. Low stakes things, funny little vacation and adventure and such. Uncharted, Indiana Jones and the likes vibes in FFXIV. Maybe some little shenanigans between the scions. I feel like that's how they advertised it.

What I got was not one but two very ambitious stories that tried to tackle various themes with deep potential in each of them, while having one new character being the point of focus of both these stories. A character that starts as the good-hearted but kinda dumb nice person and end as savior of the world (which means, will need lots and lots of character development).

Well, that's a lot for a single expansion and it requires some really really talented staff to pull it off. I think they're the ones that wanted to do too much rather than the players expecting too much.

The only thing I wanted is a story that got me hooked. In place I got a story that constantly told me I was a bother, that had to create artificial ways of getting me out. How do you want to feel involved in a story that always tells you it doesn't want you to be part of it.

It is the first MSQ in ten years i have to force myself to play, but keep side tracking to doing fun things like fates and leveling and crafting classes.
I have literally no urge to finish it.

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Originally Posted by Regis_Paran

It's because the marketing team knows full well who the players like.
If in the trailer, they gave Wuk Lamat the same screentime (%-wise) as she had in MSQ, people would start asking questions, immediately.

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It still feels strange just how little she was in the marketing despite eclipising everything else in the story

After finishing the MSQ I probably have a 1 of 1 opinion in that I think the first half of the story was better than the second half. I really liked the premise of following in Gulool Ja Ja's footsteps and learning about the people and culture of Tural as a good way to introduce an unknown area to us. I liked Wuk for the first half as it made sense she was the central focus since our entire purpose was to go there and help her win. The second half started off good as a lead in to Erenville and eventually Krille getting screentime but I think SE really flubbed it by making it focused on Wuk again whose character arc was complete. It felt like Sphene and Wuk's interactions were just a complete rehash of the first half of the story with them talking about how much they love their people as rulers. Erenville was criminally underused in at least the Heritage Found zone as that was his home and it felt like he had little screentime for the entire thing. I felt like there was no where near enough interaction between him and his mom for the entire thing and the whole surprise he learns in solution 9 about her felt like it fell flat on it's face immediately afterwards. The last zone should have just been Krille's story and focused on her parents and who they are/what they did and letting them have more than 5 minutes of bonding time. I think there could also have been some more moments between Erenville and his mom as they both deal with knowing how it was going to end. I really didn't feel any emotional attachment to the ending which is a shame because I actually enjoyed the first half of the story.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

People started threads back during EW launch too in order to drum up some praise. These forums have a habit of trying to counter any negative feedback being given.

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Negative feedback? That is all this forum does are you joking? I would say just the opposite if anything positive is posted the negative crowd dumps on it full time.

It really is just that bad.
I didn't expect it to be on the level of Shadowbringers or Endwalker after hearing they replaced the lead writer for it. I had even lower hopes after seeing how bad the 6.X stuff was.
But Dawntrail still managed to disappoint. It's literally the worst MSQ we've had since 2.0.
The writing, the voice acting, the characters. It's all terrible. Shockingly so.
I've heard a few people claim it gets better in the second half, but I'm legit wondering if they were just trying to gaslight, because if anything it gets significantly worse in the second half.
Getting through it has been a chore.

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Originally Posted by Gr1mwolf

It really is just that bad.
I didn't expect it to be on the level of Shadowbringers or Endwalker after hearing they replaced the lead writer for it. I had even lower hopes after seeing how bad the 6.X stuff was.
But Dawntrail still managed to disappoint. It's literally the worst MSQ we've had since 2.0.
The writing, the voice acting, the characters. It's all terrible. Shockingly so.
I've heard a few people claim it gets better in the second half, but I'm legit wondering if they were just trying to gaslight, because if anything it gets significantly worse in the second half.
Getting through it has been a chore.

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Nah, they weren't attempting to gaslight, they are just using a specific definition of "better." The first half was so boring I fell asleep in my chair during a cutscene at five in the evening. The second half kept me awake even if what kept me awake was wondering who greenlit this ridiculously contrived conflict.

Queen Sphene: I must do what's best for my people and for that I need aether.
Wuk Lamat: Okay, we'll help you get aether.
Queen Sphene: Well, my servers only run on LIVING aether, so I need to kill people!
G'raha: Hmmm, that doesn't sound like a sustainable power source, perhaps we can help you find a different one.
Queen Sphene: Uh...no. Even though my people have discovered an ore capable of converting any kind of aether into another, the servers can only be run on people. So I'm going to delete my memories (the thing I most wanted to preserve) to become evil so you will have no choice but to put me down like a rabid dog.
WoL: Wait...no...stop...

Whoever they hired off Upwork to write this story should refund their money because this is ridiculous.

I remember when I saw the first trailer for Dawntrail and at first I didn't like the music at all. Everyone said it was just the unfinished trailer, just wait, there's more to come. Then came the first quest series with Wuk Lamat as a little prelude to the next expansion. For me it was the same feeling as with the trailer, Wuk Lamat didn't make me excited.
I didn't care about her from the very first moment.

So I went to the forums and took part in some discussions where my opinion was portrayed as "negative", cause I didn't liked what I saw in the Trailer.
I then made my Signature and was immediately condemned with a shitstorm.
The next trailers came and to me they all looked the same.
The expansion was announced as a vacation, which I assumed it would be sun, sand, beach and so on, with a great story.
Then pictures were shown of Solution 9, some dungeons to hype the people. The actual story, those who appear in the story, were only mentioned briefly in passing, and a few pictures were shown here and there in the live letter. They didn't want to spoil anything for us.

Friday, June 28th came - early access to Dawntrail. So I checked all my jobs, changed my glamour a bit and recolored it. I got on the ship heading for vacation. At least that's what I thought, because that's how Yoshi P wanted to sell it to us.

Every quest is Wuk Lamat, every no we say is interpreted as a yes and we always have to go somewhere with Wuk Lamat by our side. We stand by and smile like some senile idiots in every possible Cutscene.
I'm now a level 99 pictomancer, explored half of the first map, the second map completely, and can't fly yet. Only done the first new dungeon, I am on the third trial for Wuk Lamat's throne story and there's no vacation in sight for me.
Or did Yoshi P mean by vacation "you've got a really bad story here" now cancel your subscription for the next 2 years?

So I'm rating what I've seen so far.

The first two Maps 9/10
There are no places that you can explore, where you can experience something. Fates alone don't bring places to life.

The first Dungeon 10/10
I didn't want to beat up the second boss, he's too cute.

MSQ 1/10
Wuk Lamat - Voice unbearable, the look could have been done much better.
This insecurity, this naivety and then the next moment a complete idiot who acts thoughtlessly. (I just want to cry into my pillow when I see Wuk Lamat).

Music 1/10
Jazz is absolutely not my thing, and somehow it doesn't fit.

Atmosphere 1/10
Somehow the choice of music doesn't put me in the mood at all. What's the use of a nice Map with bad music?

I think SE should apologize for this bad written Story and give all Players who bought the Expansion at least 30 Days Free Gametime as compensation.
If Yoshi has more Quests with Wuk Lamat, then trash them and let others write something new. Cause 2 - 2.5 Years with this Story is not acceptable.

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Originally Posted by Aneshda

Music 1/10
Jazz is absolutely not my thing, and somehow it doesn't fit.

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Now that you mention it, I can't remember any music from the songs, except the chill beats from the 2nd hub city and espescially 2nd trial, that one is probably one of the best themes they have made.

Truth? Like looking deep within sort of truth?

Yea, I definitely expected too much. That's totally on me and I have since tempered my expectations. I was truly expecting Heavensward\Shadowbringers. Since it's an 'off' expac, and that's been their tradition. Launch and ARR were meh. Heavensward was absolutely epic. Stormblood was meh. Shadowbringers raised the bar - I still get chills thinking about what an amazing take it was on our traditional dark versus light battles when going in I wasn't expecting much more than a cheesy XI Dynamis rip off. Endwalker tried valiantly to continue and felt in many ways like a DLC for Shadowbringers, but even using the same score for literally everything couldn't carry a weaker overall story. So, I give that a meh.

Which by my count should have put Dawntrail back at that epic level. But, instead of being logged in and playing, I'm here, seriously contemplating whether it's worth the sub anymore when it seems there's much more about the game that I dislike, than like. Even discovering a new land feels forced, like I don't get to just hop outside and check things out at my leisure, no I have to follow the main character all over the starting city. It's taking a crazy long time to get to a point where I feel like I'm playing the game rather than just watching a movie, and that's not interesting or compelling to me. I like cutscenes, but we have too many. FAR too many, and in too many inopportune places. And unskippable cutscenes in solo content, no, that's not acceptable. That just makes me want to get up and literally walk away from the game.

Sigh. I miss Final Fantasy. I'm not sure I recognize what this is.

I cant really say why without spoiling the story for you, so unless you dont care about the story, this thread is a bit difficult to respond to.

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Originally Posted by Aneshda

I think SE should apologize for this bad written Story and give all Players who bought the Expansion at least 30 Days Free Gametime as compensation.
If Yoshi has more Quests with Wuk Lamat, then trash them and let others write something new. Cause 2 - 2.5 Years with this Story is not acceptable.

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They should take away my 3 month sub I bought instead because I am quickly losing my interest to play. The story has made my mood so foul that the gameplay is the only saving grace and now they're threatening to take away my fun with Viper.

Some of the zone songs are either just straight up not new or a remix of old songs, I dont think that ever happened before, they just got lazy

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Originally Posted by genuine_stranger

Now that you mention it, I can't remember any music from the songs, except the chill beats from the 2nd hub city and espescially 2nd trial, that one is probably one of the best themes they have made.

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I still remember the absurd Lion King music that occasionally popped in out of nowhere in a couple of cutscenes, like the Rite of Succession.
"It's the ciiiiiircle of liiiiiiife!"