Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

I'd like to trust that yes, you are right, in a normal 'proper' situation, I'd like to think it was obvious we did the correct thing and ended that whole mess, and killed the ai thing pretending to be Sphene who was by all accounts, intent on killing everyone and harvesting their soul for use in this weird gabbledegook.

But, that the plot even went there, and tried to make it seem like there was some moral issue in the first place gives me cause for concern. Like thinking outside the bounds of just the game itself.. This went through multiple writers, and a team, I'm taken to believe..

And it was then put into the game. The one that is supposedly world renowned for it's story. I have my doubts this was a one and done thing.

They needed to go all in on the Endless being completely soulless AI and ended up completely botching that point by Wuk Lamat barging into the last trial screaming for Sphene to fight as "herself". This one point completely undercut everything they were trying to do to justify laying the endless to rest. I could not in good conscience tell Sphene that she was just an AI after what happened there.

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Originally Posted by Atmaweapon510

They needed to go all in on the Endless being completely soulless AI and ended up completely botching that point by Wuk Lamat barging into the last trial screaming for Sphene to fight as "herself". This one point completely undercut everything they were trying to do to justify laying the endless to rest. I could not in good conscience tell Sphene that she was just an AI after what happened there.

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They botched the Endless being just AI at every turn from showing us their thoughts, having Cahcuia an Endless herself, be the voice of their dehumanization. Having us dress up to give AI children happy memories. Having Cahcuia express regrets. Having the Endless guide assure us that we should feel the same way we did when we were alive and most importantly, if everyone in Living Memory were just AI then what's the purpose of Living Memory? It would make more sense to allow for continuous interaction between the living and the Endless rather than erasing the memories of the dead from the living. It'd be like constantly running an empty holodeck that runs off human souls...why would anyone do that?

Also Cahcuia never said they weren't sentient, she just said they were copies of dead people. It's the playerbase deciding they are just ChatGPT given the rest of the zone is psychotic if they were meant to be sentient beings. They are written as sentient beings though, the zone is, in fact, psychotic.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

Modern WoW has tried to appeal to a fanbase that doesn't play their game and it led to people interested in the lore not to be retained, if more people dislike DTs story then people who like it in feedback then they should asorb this information especially since they're currently writing 8.0.

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I ask this as the key question - what do you consider feedback? If you listen only to the voices who choose to post on this forum, you are getting a *very* selective group that may not at all be representative of the larger playerbase. For example, there is a post on this forum focused on Living Memory and ripping apart everything about it - as of today, it has 48 upvotes. Meanwhile, there are posts on YT about the same zone and how the posters found it poignant and an excellent tie-in to the final zones of the past two expansions, and both of those comments as of today have over 800 upvotes (one is almost at a thousand). If you only listened to "feedback" that is negative, you would get a *very* wrong impression of what the larger playerbase feels. And if you listen to *all* of that feedback, well, then you get the people around here who think they're being ignored because they won't accept that there's a big world outside their little echo chamber here.

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Don't try to argue with opinions, I think Dawntrail is one of the worst MMO stories ever. Even MMOs without a story focus like Runescape and GW2 have had expansions/questlines that are far better written and more engaging then anything in DT,

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This is the kind of hyperbole that leads to not being taken seriously, by the way.

It just hit me that, out of the claimants for the throne, your 2 villains are from the Mamool Ja beast tribe, while the Good Guys are from the 'humanoid' playable races.

It's just a funny observation, but I enjoy the callback to ARR nonetheless.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

This is the kind of hyperbole that leads to not being taken seriously, by the way.

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I don't think it's hyperbole. I haven't played Runescape and I didn't pay much attention to the GW2 stories, but given the DT story is really, really, really bad, I would not be surprised if those other stories were better.

If I said something was the worst thing I ever tasted, would you really sit there and try to debate me on everything *I've* ever tasted?

If you are correct and the vast majority of players loved DT's story, what's the point of arguing with the people who didn't like it? Are you afraid the devs will listen to us and you won't get another expansion full of plot contrivances, flat characters and logical inconsistences? Believe me, if that ends up being what the majority of people like, I assure you, they'll keep serving you your fill because it's way cheaper to produce. Don't even need actual writers. They can just run their ideas through ChatGPT and they'll be good to go.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

I ask this as the key question - what do you consider feedback? If you listen only to the voices who choose to post on this forum, you are getting a *very* selective group that may not at all be representative of the larger playerbase. For example, there is a post on this forum focused on Living Memory and ripping apart everything about it - as of today, it has 48 upvotes. Meanwhile, there are posts on YT about the same zone and how the posters found it poignant and an excellent tie-in to the final zones of the past two expansions, and both of those comments as of today have over 800 upvotes (one is almost at a thousand). If you only listened to "feedback" that is negative, you would get a *very* wrong impression of what the larger playerbase feels. And if you listen to *all* of that feedback, well, then you get the people around here who think they're being ignored because they won't accept that there's a big world outside their little echo chamber here.

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Everything thats a response to the game that's clearly not a joke is feedback, you can argue that there's different quality of feedback but it's all feedback.
Measure the responses from positive and negative and see what audience thinks and estimate how much of the general playerbase likes or dislikes the story. Then record the most common complaints Vs most common compliments and see what should be avoided and what shouldn't.
If XIV wasn't so focused on story this wouldn't be needed but it's main advertisement and draw in for a large part of the community is the story. They need to treat it like a system and put a lot of focus on improving it and understanding their audience because this expansion is heavily divided on the story while previous expansions were much more one sided to positive feedback. Only other case is Stormblood which they clearly took feedback on.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

This is the kind of hyperbole that leads to not being taken seriously, by the way.

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It's not hyperbole I hate the story because you're forced to do it for 40 hours before you can get to end game. If it was optional I wouldn't hate it as much.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

I don't think it's hyperbole. I haven't played Runescape and I didn't pay much attention to the GW2 stories, but given the DT story is really, really, really bad, I would not be surprised if those other stories were better.

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GW2 had some lukewarm stories, some absolutely awful ones, and a few that were okay.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

GW2 had some lukewarm stories, some absolutely awful ones, and a few that were okay.

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I know not everybody like her, but Aurene is Wuk Lamat done well.
She steal the spotlight from the Commander without relegating them to being just the cameraman, become the center of the story and the single most important being in it yet isn't over overberrigly omnipresent.

And we are her parent and her mentor for real. She learn from us, from our adventures, from our friends.

Everything that Wuk Lamat is supposed to be (minus the parent part), but isn't.

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Originally Posted by Zackneifein

I know not everybody like her, but Aurene is Wuk Lamat done well.
She steal the spotlight from the Commander without relegating them to being just the cameraman, become the center of the story and the single most important being in it yet isn't over overberrigly omnipresent.

And we are her parent and her mentor for real. She learn from us, from our adventures, from our friends.

Everything that Wuk Lamat is supposed to be (minus the parent part), but isn't.

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Aurene still suffers from the soft modern toothless writing (like most of GW2) but I agree that the player is at least shown to be training and mentoring her. I really don't get why they don't let us train/fight Wuk Lamat a few times and show her improving that way. Surely they could have replaced a few agriculture and food scenes for that?