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Some great replies very interesting points being made.
I just hope it is cold and I know the Winterer thing does not mean cold but I feel after DT we need something harsh and gritty and a little less tropical. I saw Scotland mentioned and Highlanders that would be so cool and a nice change from all the sun sea sand lol. I am a lover of all things Winter so I am really hoping it is cold.
I have enjoyed the new quests with the beast tribes the Yok Huy and really enjoyed the story it was charming and it has snow and the area is really nice. I hope they do add maybe a Physical ranged and I am thinking maybe another tank or healer if we are lucky.
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After Dawntrail, I am not expecting much, to be honest. They need to prove themselves again on a storytelling level to me for the MSQ to be interesting once more.
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Reworking and expanding character creation would definitely be a great thing if they did it.
As for new Jobs, SE should only be allowed to add new healers until they can figure out how to make healers into something other than extremely low damage DPS.
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7.4's story needs to basically start setting up 8.0 for a scenario where we're whisked far, far away from this boring setting and these stale people that bad writing has poisoned us with for years. Even outside of Tural, the rest of Eorzea just feels stale by virtue of us being in it for so damn long. A change of scenery, with a party that's actually comprised of interesting characters we haven't already gotten to know for a decade+, and a return to the sense of adventure and unknown. Remember the ARR opening video, where it shows the characters emerging from the woods after the Bahamut explosion and they see lush green fields with chocobos running around and this vast horizon? That grand sense of exploration, of adventure, that's what they need to promise people with 8.0's msq. Nobody gives a shit about the new continent because the writing did it so dirty that just being there reminds one of the endless fetch quests and the story slog they had to endure. That's another thing. In the next 8.0 main scenario storyline, cut down on the chores. Holy crap. It was so predictable and bland after a while. Every town has you just talk to 3 guys, pick up 3 objects, etc. And so much of the story was just told to us via exposition, i.e. some character would just tell us what happened instead of us getting to learn about something organically by playing the game, or experience it through gameplay/the echo like we used to. Remember the train? You go around building it by collecting piece of crap off the ground and talking to 3 npcs, but when it's time to finally pilot it, it's a damn cutscene. not even a qte in there, you just watch. that's dt in a nutshell. boring as hell. missed opportunities everywhere. but i digress.
idc about new jobs. they will just play like the old jobs. and i dont think they will change the gameplay loop in pve, because we hoped for that in dt and basically got endwalker 2.0. i fully expect jobs to be made even simpler. bard will probably lose all its dots. ast will probably lose its cards entirely because let's be real, with how "fixed" its buffs rotate rn it might as well have lost them. nin will probably lose the ability to screw up mudras. tanks will enter content unable to turn off their stance. but people will still be able to queue up without their job stone. you know.
the only thing i have faith in their ability to do well is bring back the good writers and tell a compelling story. i don't believe in them for anything else.
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A compelling cinematic for a start.
I'm not in the 'Dawntrail was crap' camp. I don't think it was as good as what came before it, but I don't feel it was the catastrophic insult to gaming that some seem to view it as.
But I will say this: the cinematic was..... lacking. I realise it would've been difficult as they were, basically, starting with a clean slate - however, the cinematic, for me, didn't generate the necessary hype or anticipation. And to be fair, the Endwalker trailer didn't exactly lean heavily on what came before and manage to not give very much away in terms of what was to come.
I mean, I can still watch the Shadowbringers and Endwalker cinematics and get chills - hell, I'll admit, the Endwalker one still makes me emotional..... but Dawntrail's just didn't really trigger any strong emotions one way or another.
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2 new DPS jobs!
A 150-quest 10-level MSQ bracket!
Another Island Expedition copy!
Housing Mirage is coming! (not this patch, but next patch. trust)
$60 worth of Mog Station outfits!
Hildibrand exists!
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More of the same but slightly different, and some promises of major shakeups 12-16 months after launch that will be as noticeable as 7.2's "improved encounter design".
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I'll play the game and gauge for myself.
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Obviously better writing quality. But if I can request something more detailed, it's to make the characters talk and act like normal human being. And stop padding cutscene time by showing each characters nodding, cleching fist etc.
Recently replayed bg3 and expedition 33, and it really show how different the dialogue are compared to ff14.
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8.0 Reveal Live Letter needs to be 100% different from that last 5 expansions. They need to stop releasing an expansion with no new features at the start. The design philosophy is not good to have promised features coming out closer to the release of the next expansion when those "Key features" were sold as part of the expansion, example Beastmaster.
Content design needs to be released throughout the patch cycle rather than dumped into one patch, again I don't think we will even see Beastmaster until after the NA fanfest, to showcase how bad it actually is. So we will know the 8.0 location before we even get all the promised content from 7.0.
So whatever they do have planned, it would be nice if the promised features could come out within the first 6 months of the expansion release while building up on it with each additional patch cycle adding new content to the promised content for that expansion.