Dawntrail is so painful; is it on purpose?

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Originally Posted by Zelda206

The biggest irritant so far has been the new wave of Swifty-fans (going to dub them 'Wuklies') shouting at anyone who so much as voices dissent for an obnoxious two-dimensional character like Wuk Lamat. "You're not allowed to have an opinion" and "Your opinion is invalid", "You don't know what you're talking about; stfu" and "Yaaas Queen suh-laaaay". This particular expansion emboldened those folks

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Funny, but with me being ridiculously (possibly unhealthily) into these forums since DT launch day I can say I have probably read most threads regarding Wuk Lamat, and the kind of defenders you describe I have seen rarely if at all. If they have been around, they sure have not gotten any traction because that is not at all the tone in any of these threads.

Are you sure you are not inventing your own enemy to rage against again, because you yourself are emboldened by the prospect that you'll find easy allies to agree on disliking a certain character for another kind of reasons?

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Originally Posted by juicybug

its sort of like playing through stormblood cept more annoying which i didnt think was possible
none of the scions except graha were written with even a slick of personality, theyre just there bc familiar.

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To be fair to Stormblood, the parts in Othard and Stormblood Post were pretty solid. It was just Ala Mhigo which kind of sucked.

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Originally Posted by pclarkson85

I'm just noticing this as well but is every zone just a remix of the opening track? I use to love FFXIV OST in other expansions but now all Im hearing is that one song in different tempos am I crazy? I know they've done it it before with other main themes but this seems really excessive.

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This is called "leitmotifs" and its been a thing in FF games forever and ever.

It's been a thing in music since classical opera invented it.

Its a combination of having almost as many cutscenes as Endwalker, but in a scenario where theres very low stakes, little action and arguably less enjoyable cast. There is just way too many cutscenes now and they need new methods of narrating the story actively.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

Funny, but with me being ridiculously (possibly unhealthily) into these forums since DT launch day I can say I have probably read most threads regarding Wuk Lamat, and the kind of defenders you describe I have seen rarely if at all. If they have been around, they sure have not gotten any traction because that is not at all the tone in any of these threads.

Are you sure you are not inventing your own enemy to rage against again, because you yourself are emboldened by the prospect that you'll find easy allies to agree on disliking a certain character for another kind of reasons?

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That's because they are mostly on Twitter and Reddit, where any criticism of the trash fire that is Wuk are immediately attacked.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

This is called "leitmotifs" and its been a thing in FF games forever and ever.

It's been a thing in music since classical opera invented it.

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Doesnt make it good. The music is all a disorganized mess.

my motivation to keep playing is at an all time low. The story is so poxxed now. They basically pulled a district 9 with solution 9. we don't see any political fallout like that film through. we get a child king with the nuke codes and a city of stupid npc meme people put on the source. the new raid series shows just how screwed up it is.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

This is called "leitmotifs" and its been a thing in FF games forever and ever.

It's been a thing in music since classical opera invented it.

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I’ve seen a few complaints about the music and use of leitmotifs in Dawntrail and I just think to myself ‘how did you guys get through the last 13 games lol’, it’s extremely on-brand. Like 90% of FF13’s soundtrack incorporates Serah’s Theme/The Promise (exaggerating obv but it’s present in a ton of the compositions lol).

On topic though I did feel like Dawntrail’s story itself felt like a real ‘pain’ lol. Like rolling a Boulder up a hill and it falls back down every time it gets halfway up. You labour away doing all of Wuk Lamat’s boring errands and the reward is like, she takes all the credit while you stand there silently. And it took such a ridiculous time to unlock dungeons I was constantly 2 levels above every dungeon by the time I unlocked it, and that was solely through story quest exp.
It’s like they saw the boring filler crap sidequests from ff16 and were like ‘we can do better’ and put them in ffxiv’s main story just to spite the critics

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Originally Posted by Catwho

This is called "leitmotifs" and its been a thing in FF games forever and ever.

It's been a thing in music since classical opera invented it.

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I did say I know they used it in past; my issue was the feeling of it being excessive. They always use the hell out of the main themes but hearing in every city in every zone is horrible. There was always more soundtracks than just this

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Originally Posted by pclarkson85

Did the devs go out of their way to make this so painful and unfun to play? I'm mainly talking about the MSQ here, I'm 94 and I've done one dungeon, and one solo event... the rest has been walking back and forth listening to NPCs that's it!

I wasn't expecting some epic thing, I knew after Endwalker we were slowing down a bit but I was just made to click a "destination" point 3 times to wait, this can't be what suffices as a MSQ quest.
=(

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second dungeon is 93, along with trial, and I agree way too much destination clicking. Big story starts happening right before the 95 dungeon and the overall speed increases greatly until u u get to 1 zone which is the only one where I personally feel they missed the mark. Right before and then after the 97 dungeon where it just gets more and more into what your used to with 14. It a lore building expansion. It's a new world all together, they want u to form relationships with npc's, learn how things work, and get to know the land. Which is what they have to do in a new world. if they rushed you through it, you would know none of the important facts and people and have no relationships with them. When they become important later on. since your lvl 94 your either doing roulettes, or side content cause otherwise you would be at the second dungeon by now. Story is made to go through without doing side stuff at the start. You are welcome to but intended just to go through as far as progression and xp gains. Doing side stuff is going to make a slow starting story even slower, as well as have you greatly out lvl the story. I would just focus on the msq and stop doing the side stuff till your lvling a second job. lvl 95 dungeon related story is fantastic and well built, and has a lot of information that is very important, and really builds on the lore of many of the characters that you have been introduced to so far. I burned through the story in a day and half, skipped 0 cutscenes, and I found some areas slow, some areas amazing, some areas not my cup of tea Which is how I feel just about every expansion. But this is far less of a slog than ARR every was, as someone who played in 1.0 and 2.0 you know this. ARR was far worse on the destination quest, fetch quest, slow moving at times, I mean those zones were massive and not having quest anywhere near teleports so traveling took forever. ect. Over all the story is great. the problem imo is the pacing. A lot of these people complaining have admitted to not watching cutscenes over and over, and only watching cutscenes that only have voice acting. So they are missing so many details about the story. Don't be tricked by the forums. There are other forums and things out there talking about how many people enjoyed it, and how these people are being over dramatic. They stopped watching the story when it was slow. And then fast forwarded through all the good parts once it picked up., and then called the entire expansion bad.

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Originally Posted by Gullis

I feel this is every msq ever tho? People just notice it more in DT, due to not liking the story. I didn't feel like this was any more of a cutscene sim that the others

I do wish they would give us more actual gameplay for sure.

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I can handle quite a bit of visual novel but it's got to actually not be brain-damaged drivel with gaping plot holes. At least between ARR and Endwalker when you were pressing next for the next speech bubble you were interested in what would be in it. I spent 95% of my clicking time in DT rolling my eyes in between outbursts of "WTF is this garbage?!?"

Nothing has changed. The formula for the MSQ is the same as it's always been. There isn't any less or more "action" than there always has been. It's always been mostly go from point A to point B and talk to NPCs, have MAYBE 1 small encounter (you know, those purple glowy circles), then towards the end of section have a bigger fight (the shiny rainbow circle around the NPC) and then sprinkle the dungeons in every other level.

They have literally followed that formula for a decade. And it works.

The issue THIS time is that people don't understand the concept of De-escalation. You see, we came off of pretty much the highest note you can get to in a story (Endwalker's storyline). You can't top that kind of climax. If you want to continue a story after something like that, you have to deescalate and "reset" the baseline. And that's exactly what Dawntrail does.

Yes, the story isn't super grand or world-shakingly important.... it's not MEANT to be. It's meant to bring us back to a baseline. And a lot of people don't understand that.

That, or they're the people who just skip the story and don't have a clue what's going on, and then they don't like the only things they have seen because they don't have the full picture.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Nothing has changed. The formula for the MSQ is the same as it's always been. There isn't any less or more "action" than there always has been. It's always been mostly go from point A to point B and talk to NPCs, have MAYBE 1 small encounter (you know, those purple glowy circles), then towards the end of section have a bigger fight (the shiny rainbow circle around the NPC) and then sprinkle the dungeons in every other level.

They have literally followed that formula for a decade. And it works.

The issue THIS time is that people don't understand the concept of De-escalation. You see, we came off of pretty much the highest note you can get to in a story (Endwalker's storyline). You can't top that kind of climax. If you want to continue a story after something like that, you have to deescalate and "reset" the baseline. And that's exactly what Dawntrail does.

Yes, the story isn't super grand or world-shakingly important.... it's not MEANT to be. It's meant to bring us back to a baseline. And a lot of people don't understand that.

That, or they're the people who just skip the story and don't have a clue what's going on, and then they don't like the only things they have seen because they don't have the full picture.

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That isn't even the issue. The issue is the story is poorly written, with poorly thought out characters, this is the issue. If it was a good story, with likeable characters, then the formula wouldn't be an issue, but that's not what they gave us.

Story lacks the WOW and OMG moment. They should have kept Solution 9 and Sphene a secret.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Nothing has changed. The formula for the MSQ is the same as it's always been.

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This isn't even true between DT MSQ and DT role quests.

I wonder if they outsourced the writing to sweet baby inc. or some other third party. They outsourced everything else after all after they had to fire everyone for their games not selling.

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Originally Posted by pclarkson85

I'm 94=(

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It gets good at 95

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

This isn't even true between DT MSQ and DT role quests.

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how is it not true?

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

I can handle quite a bit of visual novel but it's got to actually not be brain-damaged drivel with gaping plot holes. At least between ARR and Endwalker when you were pressing next for the next speech bubble you were interested in what would be in it. I spent 95% of my clicking time in DT rolling my eyes in between outbursts of "WTF is this garbage?!?"

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so what I said

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Originally Posted by Alchemii

That isn't even the issue. The issue is the story is poorly written, with poorly thought out characters, this is the issue. If it was a good story, with likeable characters, then the formula wouldn't be an issue, but that's not what they gave us.

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Completely disagree. For a reset/de-escalation, I thought the story was actually quite good. I also understand Japanese and listen to it in Japanese, so that might make a difference.

Frankly, I think this is more about the voice actors than the story. There's controversy around the VAs in English and I think that is coloring people's perspectives.

Also, again, I can say with high confidence that the people who generalize and make blanket claims that "story was bad, characters were bad" etc didn't actually read/watch the whole story.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Completely disagree. For a reset/de-escalation, I thought the story was actually quite good. I also understand Japanese and listen to it in Japanese, so that might make a difference.

Frankly, I think this is more about the voice actors than the story. There's controversy around the VAs in English and I think that is coloring people's perspectives.

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Not everyone is terminally online on twitter. I didn't even know until last week that there was controversy surrounding the VA. And I still don't know what it was about, because I didn't care to look into it, whatever they do or say in privat doesn't affect their performance.

But since you listen to it in Japanese anyway, have you even experienced the worst moments for yourself? Like the final trial, that deflates the whole moment with the bad voice acting?

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Also, again, I can say with high confidence that the people who generalize and make blanket claims that "story was bad, characters were bad" etc didn't actually read/watch the whole story.

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Or, hear me out, people read/watched the whole story, and that's why they can confidently form the informed opinion that it's the worst story, with the most bland characters out of all the expansions we got so far.

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Originally Posted by Barachim

Not everyone is terminally online on twitter. I didn't even know until last week that there was controversy surrounding the VA. And I still don't know what it was about, because I didn't care to look into it, whatever they do or say in privat doesn't affect their performance.

But since you listen to it in Japanese anyway, have you even experienced the worst moments for yourself? Like the final trial, that deflates the whole moment with the bad voice acting?



Or, hear me out, people read/watched the whole story, and that's why they can confidently form the informed opinion that it's the worst story, with the most bland characters out of all the expansions we got so far.

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Honestly, even if the story was actually good, which in my case I'd give it a 35% failing grade, the lack of any meaningful gameplay and overreliance on the same old boring formula would absolutely be a valid criticism to say that the xpac MSQ is bad, I've never once in my XIV MSQ experience kept checking the quest level and going "Oh thank yaoi, we get a dungeon in another level so I actually get a chance to do something meaningful."

It's tired, it's boring, and I wish they would stop sticking to the same formula because the MSQ dungeons/trials being too predictable and lacking any sort of variation on what levels they are makes it extremely easy to predict when the plot twists are, and it's also extremely easy to tell what the trial is by simply seeing who looks like a big bad around the 93/ 99, and 100 level marks.

Imagine the state of DT without graphical update. Theyre smart enough to recognize they need to add that to DT to make it better. Could the lore be purposely boring to make sure the next expansion will be better? Maybe. Gatekeeping contents and releasing them in batches will ensure the quality is spread out. They wouldnt have released graphics update in ShB or EW because the story and everything else already carried those two.

Call it a conspiracy theory if you like but it makes a lot of sense business wise. Like when you know your newly made car model is not as impressive in the terms of performance improvement from the previous one, you just slap never seen before color exclusives to add value to that model. Could they have added those colors to prev models? They could have but they didnt have to.

AND yet another one jump on the bandwagon ... If a game makes me dragging to play. I stop. I unsub!

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Completely disagree. For a reset/de-escalation, I thought the story was actually quite good. I also understand Japanese and listen to it in Japanese, so that might make a difference.

Frankly, I think this is more about the voice actors than the story. There's controversy around the VAs in English and I think that is coloring people's perspectives.

Also, again, I can say with high confidence that the people who generalize and make blanket claims that "story was bad, characters were bad" etc didn't actually read/watch the whole story.

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The critique is on the story foremost and the voices second.
Other languages don’t make the story better.

I‘m not a native english speaker but play in english. Where I live we are required to learn that language and are usually really good with it.
I didn‘t really get most of the criticism of the VA besides the screaming but still think the writing is garbage.

The Japanese and other countries also have the same criticism as we here.

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Originally Posted by Lieri

Imagine the state of DT without graphical update.

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Without the graphical update and the better fights this time I wouldn‘t be surprised if another Dalamud was knocking on the door.

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Originally Posted by CerusSerenade

Dawntrail is the start of a whole new story after the climatic expansion that was Endwalker, nearly a full decade after the beginning of ARR. It has to build stuff up before things can be exciting so yes, it's "painful' because it's nothing like Shadowbringers or Endwalker.

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Have you never read other short stories, watched episodic TV, read single novels, watched regular-length movies, or seen plays? The idea that a 40 hour story "has to build stuff up before things can be exciting" is ludicrous. Maybe you're just used to horrible writing in your media? SMH.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

The issue THIS time is that people don't understand the concept of De-escalation. You see, we came off of pretty much the highest note you can get to in a story (Endwalker's storyline). You can't top that kind of climax. If you want to continue a story after something like that, you have to deescalate and "reset" the baseline. And that's exactly what Dawntrail does.

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I don’t disagree in theory, but two things:

1. A story can and should be compelling, emotional, nuanced and immersive no matter its scale.

2. The idea of deescalation doesn’t align with the reality that Sphene was going to start pillaging all the souls in existence. Or the introduction of a magical MacGuffin that can, at base understanding, allow travel across shards and fuse realities.

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Originally Posted by Gullis

I feel this is every msq ever tho? People just notice it more in DT, due to not liking the story. I didn't feel like this was any more of a cutscene sim that the others

I do wish they would give us more actual gameplay for sure.

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Imo it only an issue since EW. The moment they removed the few gameplay encounter where you go in a purple smoke and spawn like 3 bandits or something really made it look like the story turned into a visual novel. Like those part weren't even engaging in term of difficulty but imo they gave good spot to wait and digest the story a bit and they did a better job for the story than adding 3 extra step of ''go talk to x'' where we will get a few cutscene of useless yap.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Completely disagree. For a reset/de-escalation, I thought the story was actually quite good. I also understand Japanese and listen to it in Japanese, so that might make a difference.
Frankly, I think this is more about the voice actors than the story. There's controversy around the VAs in English and I think that is coloring people's perspectives.
Also, again, I can say with high confidence that the people who generalize and make blanket claims that "story was bad, characters were bad" etc didn't actually read/watch the whole story.

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By now I have seen several comments in the English Forum questioning if...or stating that the Japanese version is better. As someone who plays every expansion in JP and on JP DC, I will testify that bad writing is bad writing in 7.0 regardless of whether it is in English or Japanese.

If people need more evidence they can go to the megathread on the Japanese forum, many critics there express similar concerns as those in English. They tend to be a bit euphemistic but are still clearly pointing out the problems, and some of them are just outright criticizing, which is a rare situation.

Edited to add the mentioned megathread link here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...81%84%E3%81%A6

Also on one aspect Wuk Lamat is even worse in JP: she is strangely impolite in her choice of second person pronouns and how she almost never speaks in polite form. It might be a shonen trope thing, but to be honest, can't say the JP players receive that very well, since it is also stated she is a princess and would be queen.

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Originally Posted by pclarkson85

While FF14 has always been a lot of this (I've been here since 1.0 and love the game) but the story has alwasy been worth it; this time it's almost unbearable.

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I think you have the answer right here. It has always been like this, you are correct there. While they also made the player gameplay experience less in DT ie. the solo duties, the game has always been more narrative driven. IT'S JUST MORE NOTICEABLE BECAUSE AS YOU SAID, THE STORY IS NOT WORTH IT. I'm in the same ballpark as you. I dont mind this AT ALL if the story is well written, ergo now its a slog to go through because we dont enjoy the MSQ anymore.

The moment I witnessed the young seaman from the first Main Scenario Quests having a voice of a grizzly 60-year old, I knew I was in a wild ride.

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Originally Posted by Chuhsu

By now I have seen several comments in the English Forum questioning if...or stating that the Japanese version is better. As someone who plays every expansion in JP and on JP DC, I will testify that bad writing is bad writing in 7.0 regardless of whether it is in English or Japanese.

If people need more evidence they can go to the megathread on the Japanese forum, many critics there express similar concerns as those in English. They tend to be a bit euphemistic but are still clearly pointing out the problems, and some of them are just outright criticizing, which is a rare situation.

Edited to add the mentioned megathread link here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...81%84%E3%81%A6

Also on one aspect Wuk Lamat is even worse in JP: she is strangely impolite in her choice of second person pronouns and how she almost never speaks in polite form. It might be a shonen trope thing, but to be honest, can't say the JP players receive that very well, since it is also stated she is a princess and would be queen.

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Thanks, I am glad JP players are also having the same sentiment (no idea what is being discussed in there tho since I don't speak Japanese)

I hope the devs notice that both EN and JP players are extremely upset about the storytelling (and Wuk Lamat)

I find the "it's only about the VA" rebuttals disingenuous with all the actual story critique that's been posted already. But I'll respond seriously anyway with my own perspective: It's not about the voice actor or acting; I don't care who an actor is, I'm part of the alphabet faction myself, it'd be idiotic of me to mind. The quality itself was not what I was used to from before, but it's not the point.

Over time I've played the game in three different languages, trying things out, and eventually settled on all-English because I used to really enjoy what the English localiser team did with the extra writing flourishes (not to everyone's taste, but I had fun), and I thought the British theatre-degree actors were overall the best. In Dawntrail, I gradually noticed a difference in quality, saw everyone recommending a switch to JP voices and did that, and while the voice quality improved drastically, the writing did not, and that's what bothers me.
As a disclaimer of sorts, I can understand enough Japanese to rely mostly on the audio while playing, but I keep the text in another language for difficult vocabulary and cause my kanji are very rusty. But I'd say I got enough from the Japanese voices to get the main part, and the written-only text would hardly be changed to such a significant degree as to turn a good story into a bad one. It's a linear game story with all kinds of factors coming together, gameplay, animations, what have you, a few choices of words won't make the difference.
And the overall improvement was barely there, and it didn't save anything about my experience as a player and normally-MSQ-enjoyer.

For the most blatant example:
The infamous uninvited trial entrance was voice-acted well in JP, I thought; she did a really good job at portraying the character in the scene and bringing on all that shounen energy. The problem was that the entrance itself was a horrible idea, narratively, for the player experience, and just on every level. It shouldn't have happened at all. The whole forced setup of Wuk Lamat and Sphene as having any sort of connection didn't land for me. The way they keep talking over the last part of the trial and the aftermath, making it about them, didn't work. The whole section disregards the experience the player comes to expect of the final trial of an expansion. It tries to copy a formula that worked in different contexts, with different characters, in different ways that were organically part of the story (Zenos, Gaia, Emet, "Light the way"...) and simply does not work here. All after forcing the one character in for the whole game and making her unwelcome no matter what. No amount of voice acting skill, and no amount of linguistic flourishes can salvage that.
And that's just one scene; the whole MSQ is full of these moments because the entire setup and structure is incredibly flawed from the ground up.

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Originally Posted by fioravictorine

Thanks, I am glad JP players are also having the same sentiment (no idea what is being discussed in there tho since I don't speak Japanese)

I hope the devs notice that both EN and JP players are extremely upset about the storytelling (and Wuk Lamat)

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They really discuss the same stuff as this side here.
Many comments are almost the same.
It’s about Wuk Lamat being too focused, the WoL sidelined, the story too childish at parts, the writing just being bad and so on.
There are a few voices liking the story but really not so many and far, far less then usual.

Really. The only thing not being discussed there is the voices.

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Originally Posted by PaleYonder

I find the "it's only about the VA" rebuttals disingenuous with all the actual story critique that's been posted already.

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The whole stuff about criticism just being about the voices is just pathetic bait at this point.
No one who spend more then 5 min on the internet and actually read at least a handful of criticism would post that take in good faith.
It would be best to just ignore it at this point. Something I will probably also do from now on.

Some people just love to rile up the crowd.

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Originally Posted by Gullis

how is it not true?

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Have you actually played the tank role quest for example?

MSQ: We have to catch an alpaca > Wuk Lamat goes to catch an alpaca in a cutscene.
Role quest: We have to stop these rampaging monsters > Find someone attacked by monsters and defend them in gameplay.

MSQ: Oh no the villain is trying to get away > We stand there haplessly in a cutscene as the villain leaves, not even trying to stop them.
Role quest: Oh no the villain is trying to get away > Immediate transition from cutscene to gameplay, you are attacked by villain's goons as they make their escape, using gameplay to explain why the plot beat makes any logical sense.

None of the previous MSQ writers were involved in the making of DT.

Apparently the EW writer was overseeing some of DT, but left the team of two quite a lot of freedom as it seems.
The DT writers previously were involved in a random side quest and a fairy beast tribe quest afaik. Take this info with a grain of salt, as I didn't go out of my way to double check the details again, I just know I've read that somewhere before. Feel free to confirm it yourself.

tl;dr They let some known to be bad writers go wild for whatever reason. The Raid story shows some potential though

Imagine commenting on the MSQ before actually completing it.

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Originally Posted by Solsbeary

Imagine commenting on the MSQ before actually completing it.

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There's nothing wrong with it. They didnt say that the MSQ in its entirety is bad, they're saying that they are not enjoying what they have seen so far. So they are feeling the outdated formula that SE has for its MSQ because of the fact they are not enjoying what they are currently experiencing.

It is so dull I am taking it in chunks. It is hard to finish tbh and do not really care to. :/ The story isn't the same quality as Stormblood or Endwalker and if people were honest, they could admit that.

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Originally Posted by Solsbeary

Imagine commenting on the MSQ before actually completing it.

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Imagine the MSQ being terrible at almost every single step so no matter where you are on the path you have some garbage to be justifiably annoyed about.