JP: Yoshi P should step down, FF14 is a sinking ship, in response to interview

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Originally Posted by AnimalsALot

Actual good PR when a product is this disastrous is to candidly admit to the mistakes and propose solutions.

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"disastrous" lol

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Originally Posted by Drimn

That being said, it's a little odd for a German site to talk about Wuk Lamat's voice acting being a point of criticism when apparently the German voice actor for her was very good, but we are talking about games journalists, I suppose. Anything to redirect discussion from the game itself.
https://jpgames.de/2024/09/final-fan...-an-wuk-lamat/

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Hi, German here. Many of us play the game in english and post on the english forums. Therefore we are no stranger to these topics. The interviewer is likely also one of these players.

I mean I don't expect him to come out and say "Dawntrail sucks because Square Enix has been pissing away all of its money on horrific flop after horrific flop and I'm in charge of FFXIV, FFXVI and two other games and barely give the time of day to FFXIV anymore"
I've gotten the impression that Yoshida doesn't really care about anything in this game that much anymore outside of being a celebrity for its fanbase.

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Originally Posted by Willemdarke

… but instead be more heavily involved again.

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This here.

I don‘t want him to step down but to focus on the game again because I think his attention is somewhere else lately.

Yoshida is a good producer. He makes mistakes yes but he also gave us lots of good content and at least in the past good feedback.

Right now he seems to be completely overwhelmed by the situation, salvaging and saving what he can.
Or maybe he is just not used to respond to open negative questions because in the past those where mostly positive things journalists asked.

Anyway I am annoyed by those responses missing the point and I am happy that people on different sides and languages call it out, even the more positive ones.
I have the hope that it’s just PR and they find a solution but… I don‘t know.
I am starting to feel he didn‘t play the expansion at all.

Also:
>> "The way her character is designed is very Japanese"

Why do you always say she represents Japan as if she were the one?
What is Japanese about that beast?<<

The japanese are ruthless xD.
Some comments there are disgusting though. I will never understand that over the top pride in one’s own country…

That jpgames interview has to be a damn joke. Those answers are straight up nothing more than lazy and apologetic to everything. Not one piece of criticism is being taken seriously, he has a silly apology for everything ready, and we just have to accept it.

"Please don't harass..." "You just don't understand..." "Just the beginning of a new stroy..." "You are a mentor..." my ass.

My god, of course you shouldn't harass anyone! But that doesn't mean people can't be criticized for their work! Especially the writing team and Wuks english VA did certainly NOT do their "very best for the development of the game". And our character was never a "mentor" of sorts to Wuk. She didn't even need one, she solved everything on her own and we and the scions were her cheerleaders at best.

This interview destroys every hope for them to acknowledge all the problems of DT in the next LL with one strike. I'm actually angry right now...I did not expect this.

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

I am not sure why you consider this demand acceptable.
Even if they were the only person here, they devalue their own feedback by calling for someone's job based off a xpac's story being mixed in ratings while end game is just fine, and FF16 which while they may not like it, plenty of people certainly did.

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First, my demand is that Hiroi and his co-writers be fired, not Yoshi-P himself. I want Yoshi-P to focus on FF14 and not split his attention like with FF16, which is a cheap Game of Thrones knock off, hidning behind Kaiju-spectacle.
As a result, he couldn't overlook DT's development and that's how we got this mess of a story. He would NOT have greenlit this Expac if he had been supervising from the start.

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It is entitled to demand someone's job over this.

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I'm a paying costumer and therefore entitled to a working product, the main product is the MSQ, which DID NOT work this time.
If I buy a car and the wheels come of after 5 minutes, I'm going to demand someone fired, I don't care how hard the people behind worked on the car, and I'm certainly not giving them a second chance.

I don't care how good the Raids are if the story is the main focus, I already made that point.

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Between this and people calling for Wuk Lamat's VA's job while completely ignoring most the VAs this xpac have flat moments and the VA studio's director / approach is what needs to be adjusted - It is shameful.

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I played with the JP voices, the EN VA is irrelevant for me. Don't lump me in the same box as actual bigots.

And can you people stop defending mediocre quality? I didn't expect a 10/10 but I'm fine with a 7/10 if the story is at least logically sound, especially after 10 years, but this ain't it chef.

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Originally Posted by Willemdarke

And if you bothered to read said 16 pages, you might have noticed that no one (okay, let's say 1, just in case I've missed it) is actually calling for him to step down, but instead be more heavily involved again.

Get off your high horse. You won't get extra tomestones for defending Yoshi-P's honour.

And in the words of someone you may be familiar with:

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Meanwhile there's a guy requesting a team of writers be fired directly before my post here. You were saying?

And no, it isn't appropriate to call for people's jobs because of one mixed review xpac. Sure, you didn't like it, and I'm not a fan of it either, but there are people who did enjoy it (who aren't here calling for people's jobs because they're enjoying it), and there were good parts to it.

Yoshi said they'd try new things when players demanded changes to what they considered stagnation of content, they'd fail at times in their attempts, and they'd learn from those failures to grow and get better. They're literally doing what we asked, they warned us we may not like some of these things, and they asked us to provide feedback so they could grow / change / continue to try new things.

The community collectively got what they wanted and now their angry it turned out as they were warned it could turn out as. Instead of giving them time to respond to feedback they're demanding someone(s) be fired be it a VA, a team of writers, or Yoshi. All of that is inexcusable and reeks of entitlement. Storm blood wasn't great, I dislike it as much as I'm not a fan of DT, but I'd never be so entitled to call for a person's job. They can give it another go, learn, get better, and hopefully give us another Shadowbringers. WoW bounced back from Shadowlands which was far worse, Yoshi's team can bounce back from this.

And high horse for not wanting to someone to lose their job over a misstep when we were explicitly warned it could happen as they try new things? Nah, get that silver spoon out of your mouth. People mess up at work then go on to do amazing work later. If they get another xpac so wildly wrong then fair enough, but for now I'm going to opt to give them time to grow while working on XIV's new direction.

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

Yoshi said they'd try new things when players demanded changes to what they considered stagnation of content, they'd fail at times in their attempts, and they'd learn from those failures to grow and get better. They're literally doing what we asked, they warned us we may not like some of these things, and they asked us to provide feedback so they could grow / change / continue to try new things.

The community collectively got what they wanted and now their angry it turned out as they were warned it could turn out as. Instead of giving them time to respond to feedback they're demanding someone(s) be fired be it a VA, a team of writers, or Yoshi. All of that is inexcusable and reeks of entitlement. Storm blood wasn't great, I dislike it as much as I'm not a fan of DT, but I'd never be so entitled to call for a person's job. They can give it another go, learn, get better, and hopefully give us another Shadowbringers. WoW bounced back from Shadowlands which was far worse, Yoshi's team can bounce back from this.
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Can't remember getting asked for boring content. We are paying this guys you know ? It's not our Job to tell the grown up man and woman's in a big company what is good. Yes they have to do new stuff but you cannot tell me that a bunch of people been there and accept this as a good work. This Team hell no this company have standards and guess what they failed to reach them. After years they should know how to handle a new expansion period. The next point is and you might not get this, but it's normal if somebody is not good in his job that a company have to fire them. I missed comments like this when people don't get their package for example. Most are angry and they are right. Same goes for this.

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Originally Posted by Besudo

It's so frustrating because people are already throwing around the line he said about taking a break. I don't want to take a break, I don't want to play more than one mmo. I want to play this game and have a reasonable enough amount of things to do in it, even if it's casual. It has been 62 days since DT release at this point and, outside of raiding, there's nothing to do. I've never felt so reluctantly bound to the game because of my house and staying subbed to not lose it

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I can't let this one slide by.

You want a reasonable amount of things to do, "even if it's casual." And yet you claim there is nothing to do.

If you're willing to do casual content, THERE IS A NEVER ENDING SUPPLY OF THINGS TO DO IN THIS GAME.

(Your account is showing up as a level 73 DRK, which may not be your main, but that tells me you've got at least one job you haven't taken to 100.)

Come join us in the achievement chasers! I'm hovering between #45 and #46 on my server these days.

I feel like there's a distinct difference between casual content and busy work.

Collecting things like emotes, Triple Triad cards, barding, etc; vistas, verminion, completing all the entries in Varients, fate grinding, island sanctuary, these are a few things I consider casual content.

Mining 4000 times in a zone or finding 20000 pieces of Accursed Hoard to me is pure busywork. I know that's probably divisive since people will still point and say that mining that same few spots in Thanalan 4000 times is content since there's an achievement for it but I'll never be able to think of that as more than padding. I am glad that you and other hunters enjoy that sort of thing, I'll never rip on someone for liking what I don't.

A few simple things that would really help, since negative feedback without possible suggestions is frowned upon, is repurposing older content. Have us go back to Eureka and Bozja. You already have the zones and structure, put something there for players to go back to if they've completed the place. New items, glamours, field records to add to our collections with delicious lore, luring players back with things to get would help bridge gaps in content. And there's the added bonus of helping players that haven't been there before experience it without the struggle they sometimes face now.

Let's expand the pvp series idea and do that for pve content as well. Wondrous Tails is a tiny start and I know they trot out the Moogle Trove when there's a lull but having something on a permanent basis would be nice. Give us a handful of tasks everyday, similar to the vault in GW2. It could be tasks like "solo queue in DF for x dungeon" or "go do x amount of fates in lakeland". The solo queue removes the issue of just doing it with a party of blue mages or just filling it up and gently shunting people to various queues to help fill them for other players. You still have the roulettes but maybe a small exp bonus on that solo queue task with a currency to buy from a rotating list of items. Small things like this at least help give reasons to log in every day since the tasks would be the only way to get the special currency. As for items, it's a shame that the mog station is the dumping grounds for old event items- they'd be some of the perfect items to put in there for people to log in to grind for. Maybe there could be vouchers for things like old glams from dungeons or raids (like you could get a chest for EW Raid pants and get those pants you've never been able to win from that Nier raid).

I'm just spitting out ideas so these would need to be heavily balanced and adjusted but I feel like there's just more that can be done here. Something between content that pulls too many resources and busy work that's not particularly appealing.

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Originally Posted by Besudo

I feel like there's a distinct difference between casual content and busy work.

Collecting things like emotes, Triple Triad cards, barding, etc; vistas, verminion, completing all the entries in Varients, fate grinding, island sanctuary, these are a few things I consider casual content.

Mining 4000 times in a zone or finding 20000 pieces of Accursed Hoard to me is pure busywork. I know that's probably divisive since people will still point and say that mining that same few spots in Thanalan 4000 times is content since there's an achievement for it but I'll never be able to think of that as more than padding. I am glad that you and other hunters enjoy that sort of thing, I'll never rip on someone for liking what I don't.

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Wha I would love to see is something like Genshin has.
Little mini trials in the overworld, small time challenges (like Bozja duels) like riding your Chocobo over obstacles.
These are fun little things in between, not that hard to implement and the rewards could be little things like Gil.
Just small things to give players a reason to go into those zones.

Hmm, maybe I should make a thread about those ideas…

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Wha I would love to see is something like Genshin has.
Little mini trials in the overworld, small time challenges (like Bozja duels) like riding your Chocobo over obstacles.
These are fun little things in between, not that hard to implement and the rewards could be little things like Gil.
Just small things to give players a reason to go into those zones.

Hmm, maybe I should make a thread about those ideas…

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Or a certain other MMO that now has puzzles in the open world, treasures to find with neat quests to solve (that don't directly point you to the objective) and rewards ranging from things like pets (minions) to gear/materials/just story stuff, racing courses that let you fly across the entire locations trying to get medals and beat your own best score, delves that are solo friendly content that challenges you with fun little dungeons and mechanics like traps, resource management, rewarding you with anything from neat appearance shit to EVEN ENDGAME GEAR as an alternative to hardcore raiding, pet battles in the open world, etc etc.

Or we could look at any other game that has stuff to do in the actual world that isn't just picking up a quest and handing in a quest. So pretty much any game. Except ffxiv. Because for some reason, even 10 years and 5 expansions later, we are just not capable of evolving anything about the game.

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Originally Posted by BakoolJaJa

Or a certain other MMO that now has puzzles in the open world, treasures to find with neat quests to solve (that don't directly point you to the objective) and rewards ranging from things like pets (minions) to gear/materials/just story stuff, racing courses that let you fly across the entire locations trying to get medals and beat your own best score, delves that are solo friendly content that challenges you with fun little dungeons and mechanics like traps, resource management, rewarding you with anything from neat appearance shit to EVEN ENDGAME GEAR as an alternative to hardcore raiding, pet battles in the open world, etc etc.

Or we could look at any other game that has stuff to do in the actual world that isn't just picking up a quest and handing in a quest. So pretty much any game. Except ffxiv. Because for some reason, even 10 years and 5 expansions later, we are just not capable of evolving anything about the game.

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Sometimes I think this game is catered to cubicle workers who just want to log in, do a few dailies, and log out.

No time for fun in the overworld if you log out in an hour anyway, sleep, and go to your next 10-hour shift anyway.

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Originally Posted by genuine_stranger

Sometimes I think this game is catered to cubicle workers who just want to log in, do a few dailies, and log out.

No time for fun in the overworld if you log out in an hour anyway, sleep, and go to your next 10-hour shift anyway.

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Honstly I'd say this is the case and the game really doesn't seem to have any aspirations about trying to be more

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

Yoshi said they'd try new things when players demanded changes to what they considered stagnation of content, they'd fail at times in their attempts, and they'd learn from those failures to grow and get better. They're literally doing what we asked, they warned us we may not like some of these things, and they asked us to provide feedback so they could grow / change / continue to try new things.

The community collectively got what they wanted and now their angry it turned out as they were warned it could turn out as. Instead of giving them time to respond to feedback they're demanding someone(s) be fired be it a VA, a team of writers, or Yoshi. All of that is inexcusable and reeks of entitlement. Storm blood wasn't great, I dislike it as much as I'm not a fan of DT, but I'd never be so entitled to call for a person's job. They can give it another go, learn, get better, and hopefully give us another Shadowbringers.

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This isn't "got what they wanted". No one asked for boring nonsensical plots for 8 year olds that ignored lore, every basic tenet of storytelling and turned characters into idiots.

Sure, no one should be roaring for people to be fired, that's being childish but by the same token the people who brought us Dawntrail are manifestly un-equipped to deliver on what's required for the FF14 MSQ. It really doesn't matter if it's their own lack of talent or poor supervision or outside influences, the only thing that matters is the horrible outcome. So the team need to go back and work out why all this happened and whatever that pain point is, address it. If that means people need to be reassigned and more experienced writers brought in, then that's what needs to happen.

Dawntrail's MSQ is such a disaster there is no "Oh let's try the same thing again, but harder" or "Let's just keep throwing at the wall and see if it works". Fix needed now, how CBU3 do this is up to them.

You're not getting a fix now no matter how much you want it now. That's not how timelines for development work. As they said, they've begun looking at the story for 8.0. 7.X patch story may be tweaked but the voice and animation work for much of the stuff coming soon is likely well underway. This is why it took WoW until the xpac after Shadowlands to correct many of the mistakes they made.

Yoshi said they'd make mistakes and learn from them. How you took that as "they'll just do more of the same but harder " is beyond me. If they did that with Stormblood then Shadowbringers would not have existed.

But I do agree DT is filled with mistakes from the story to the English VA studio delivering an underwhelming performance across the board at times. They said they'd try new things, make mistakes, and learn from the mistakes. They tried new things (going after a younger audience among other things), they made serious mistakes, now I'm going to watch and see if they uphold their promise of learning from those mistakes by utilizing player feedback.

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

You're not getting a fix now no matter how much you want it now. That's not how timelines for development work. As they said, they've begun looking at the story for 8.0. 7.X patch story may be tweaked but the voice and animation work for much of the stuff coming soon is likely well underway. This is why it took WoW until the xpac after Shadowlands to correct many of the mistakes they made.

Yoshi said they'd make mistakes and learn from them. How you took that as "they'll just do more of the same but harder " is beyond me. If they did that with Stormblood then Shadowbringers would not have existed.

But I do agree DT is filled with mistakes from the story to the English VA studio delivering an underwhelming performance across the board at times. They said they'd try new things, make mistakes, and learn from the mistakes. They tried new things (going after a younger audience among other things), they made serious mistakes, now I'm going to watch and see if they uphold their promise of learning from those mistakes by utilizing player feedback.

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I applaud your optimism. I wish I could share it but I can't.
I think if this expansion came without the graphical update, then I may have been alright with it yet I can't accept these changes to my character, the world, the eyestrain, and to top it off? Really bad MSQ with bad voice acting...I loved this game to bits, until post EW began....When I preordered and resubbed before DT I knew the MSQ may not be for me, all my favs died in EW, I never imagined my favorite game would be causing me headaches and physical pain.

I was helping someone power level BLU and I have a headache...in areas I never had headaches in before. DT was the expansion that made me seriously think about unsubbing and I feel honestly betrayed. The lighting in my house is busted, I can hardly play without fear of headaches, the MSQ is unbearable. At least the grass looks nice and the new areas look 'nice' but I can't enjoy it because everytime I move my eyes hurt.

I'm sorry but to me this is unacceptable. I effectively have 6 months of something that's hurting my eyes. I think if Wuk Lamat was as omnipresent in the trailer as she was in the MSQ, I doubt people would've been excited for DT.

I hope they fix the graphical issues, I don't think my eyes have it in them to wait 2 years. I stay to bump the eyestrain thread..

I'm done giving them the benefit of the doubt until I see changes. No pun intended.

It's not just Yoshi, but they also promoted/move Ishakawa and Kojima Fox away from the game, and these 3 are the pillars of the game. That's why now we had terrible localization, terrible writing, and the general direction just feel off. The people that supposed to replace them are either not up to the task, or too desperate to put their own stamp on the project that it shows.

Sinking ship? Hardly. Not yet anyway, but it's obvious some serious course correction need to happen. People like to link DT to 2.0 but I don;t think it's fair. Sure, if you compare it to today standard, 2.0 was not very good. But 10 years ago it was more than adequate. Remember 2.0 didn't have the benefit of a fair judgement either, it had to be good enough to make people forget and forgive the 1.0 launch, and it was good enough to become the most successful come back story in gaming ever. The point isn't really just about how DT compared to 2.0 and be relatively the same, the point is DT itself is well below average for a game released in the years 2024.

Disregarding that would be like talking about income without inflation adjustment. 12 years ago making 50k a year will get you very far where I live, because rent was only 600-800 a month. These days 50k doesn't mean much when rent had essential triple that. The person earning 50k/year now does not have the same wealth level as the person making 50k/year 10-12 years ago.

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Originally Posted by genuine_stranger

Sometimes I think this game is catered to cubicle workers who just want to log in, do a few dailies, and log out.

No time for fun in the overworld if you log out in an hour anyway, sleep, and go to your next 10-hour shift anyway.

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This is how I've felt since playing Endwalker. Everything during that expansion for me personally was just simple and boring and easy to do. I know FF14 is seen as the "casual" MMO but they kind of seem to take that a bit too literal sometimes and just either barely try or don't try at all. Even Yoshi-P said the standard required content put him to sleep, and hell it genuinely did put me to literal sleep sometimes. Endwalker felt like it was made for those 5 days a week 9-5 workers who only had about 2 or 3 hours a day to play, so they made the entire expansion more focused around being as "casual" as possible so the players who did work the 9-5's wouldn't feel stressed about the usual long grinds and whatnot. It's understandable since COVID was still pretty rampant back then, but it resulted in an expansion that caused quite a bit of a split between players who wanted the casual content to be harder and more engaging and players who were happy they could just blitz through everything without needing to use more then half a brain cell and not care, and of course it gave us the infamous "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate" line spoken by Yoshi-P.

While Dawntrail's story is.....a thing, the casual battle content currently ingame has been great so far and definitely a huge step up from Endwalker, and I am just hoping it stays that way or gets even better. We'll truly see once the alliance raids come out.

As for Overworld content: they CAN do better then just jumping puzzles, but there is just no reason for them to. Looking at the Final Fantasy Franchise, there are A LOT of minigames you can do in most of the games. Sure there ARE a pretty good amount of minigames in FF14, but they are either locked to the toybox in the Inn or The Gold Saucer. Overworld wise there is triple triad and the jump puzzles and that's really about it. Adding things that already exist in other Final Fantasy games would be nice, like putting in Chocobo Hot or Cold from FF9. Or they could expand on things that already exist in-game. For example the gold saucer already has Chocobo racing, so they could just find a way to make a single-player version of it and have you race on unique courses in the different areas and zones in each expansion on your company Chocobo [Or Amaro on the first if they wanted to do that extra step] to beat time trials or challenges for minion rewards or unique all glamour items. Hell they could even be somewhat "original" and do a bunch of minigames with the Kojin's Manta Ray in Tamamizu that you do under the water.

Unfortunately stuff like this is justnot even remotely on their radar as "things we should do in FF14" so I won't huff the copium and pretend overworld minigames that are not jump puzzles are going to happen anytime during this game's life.

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

Yoshi said they'd make mistakes and learn from them.

They said they'd try new things, make mistakes, and learn from the mistakes. They tried new things (going after a younger audience among other things), they made serious mistakes, now I'm going to watch and see if they uphold their promise of learning from those mistakes by utilizing player feedback.

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Sorry to butcher your post but I want to respond to that.

I understand making mistakes, it is even important to make them.
But I think there are two major problems with those mistakes in DT and at least part of the reason for the anger.

Making such a huge gamble in the MSQ of all things without a real warning first (like „we will try a new approach on how to write a main character“) is just not good.
They didn‘t even give a warning of how much Wuk Lamat would be the MC, heck she wasn‘t even a topic until 6.55 and even after that nothing suggested this approach. Even the trailers and fanfests didn‘t imply as much.
They were far too mysterious about the female Hrothgar and kept Wuk Lamat far too long hidden.

The second is that it’s stupid to make succh an experiment of „look what sticks“ without a backup plan.
If they gonna experiment then the first two patches should be something entirely else instead of continuing that approach.
If the players would have been happy then they could have told them they will continue it, if not then they would have a plan B.
But waiting for 7.4 or at worst 8.0 before they change course… I don‘t know if that is healthy for the Dev-Player relationship.
Granted we don‘t know the patches yet but right now it seems they bet all their money on people loving the new approach and Wuk Lamat.

In my opinion it was a mistake to start such an experiment with the MSQ or at least without a proper warning.
This is a product people pay for and they expect a specific safety in what they can expect to get.

Their approach of „surprise the players at the last moment“ they usually do with the story backfired spectacularly this time because it wasn‘t the story itself they changed but the narrative.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Their approach of „surprise the players at the last moment“ they usually do with the story backfired spectacularly this time because it wasn‘t the story itself they changed but the narrative.

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Meanwhile, for every person here going to absurd hyperbole like this, there's a dozen people who enjoyed the story and know it didn't backfire at all, but rather has been a great hit.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

Meanwhile, for every person here going to absurd hyperbole like this, there's a dozen people who enjoyed the story and know it didn't backfire at all, but rather has been a great hit.

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you say this:

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every person here going to absurd hyperbole like this

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but follow it up with:

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there's a dozen people who enjoyed the story and know it didn't backfire at all, but rather has been a great hit.

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I would say you are being rather hypocritical as you are being hyperbolic, no? Or are you counting yourself into the "every person here going to absurd hyperbole" category?

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Originally Posted by Striker44

Meanwhile, for every person here going to absurd hyperbole like this, there's a dozen people who enjoyed the story and know it didn't backfire at all, but rather has been a great hit.

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Glad we have someone such as yourself that feels confident speaking on behalf of such a significant number of players.

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Originally Posted by ZavosEsperian

I would say you are being rather hypocritical as you are being hyperbolic, no? Or are you counting yourself into the "every person here going to absurd hyperbole" category?

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A lot of the people who are saying they enjoyed the story aren't on the official forums, because the constant negativity here has made them never want to post anything.

They're in my Discord channels, though. They're on Tumblr. They're in my linkshell. I've got a few actual proper Wuk Lamat stans in my friend's circle, and one of them is a published author who caught on that she's a "shounen protagonist." From the time Wuk Lamat was introduced, she adopted sort of a big sister persona towards her, so a lot of the things that rankled most of us (including me) she appreciated for what it was presented as - a dumbass kid learning.

I didn't hate Dawntrail, but I did think it was weaker from a storyline perspective than the last two expansions,and struggled with pacing issues around Shaaloani especially. I genuinely enjoyed it after that.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

A lot of the people who are saying they enjoyed the story aren't on the official forums, because the constant negativity here has made them never want to post anything.

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Honestly I thought the story was fine personally. It was all just ‘ffxiv standard fare’ really. And annoying as she was I didn’t ’hate’ Wuk Lamat either. We do exist! I think (therefore I am?)

…that said, thought of even trying to defend either of those points in any of the many, many dumpster fires we call threads on the forums now? Uh, check please lol

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Originally Posted by Connor

Honestly I thought the story was fine personally. It was all just ‘ffxiv standard fare’ really. And annoying as she was I didn’t ’hate’ Wuk Lamat either. We do exist! I think (therefore I am?)

…that said, thought of even trying to defend either of those points in any of the many, many dumpster fires we call threads on the forums now? Uh, check please lol

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I thought it was disappointing, but not awful. Not far from ARR post-patch level, but even that had some decent moments, to be fair.

I think what pisses people off more is that this is where the new story arc's momentum will have to build off of, giving it decently high stake for situating something interesting (even if not a great need for any immediate urgency into that new arc), and they wanted to see something far, far better than ARR from whatever experience was gleaned over the expansions since. To many, there was an awful lot of wasted potential, or silly missteps with disproportionate cost.

I was told Krile would be in this expansion.
Still waiting on that instead I had to deal with a dumbass furry and the ShB stalker after I had my fill of him in EW.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I thought it was disappointing, but not awful. Not far from ARR post-patch level, but even that had some decent moments, to be fair.

I think what pisses people off more is that this is where the new story arc's momentum will have to build off of, giving it decently high stake for situating something interesting (even if not a great need for any immediate urgency into that new arc), and they wanted to see something far, far better than ARR from whatever experience was gleaned over the expansions since. To many, there was an awful lot of wasted potential, or silly missteps with disproportionate cost.

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You don't feel that getting a key that will allow us to freely visit the rest of the shards will be fun? I'm looking forward to it!

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Originally Posted by Catwho

A lot of the people who are saying they enjoyed the story aren't on the official forums, because the constant negativity here has made them never want to post anything.

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I understand this. LOTS of people love Wuk Lamat and are absolutely allowed to like the character for their own reasons. Players should be able to go on the forums and talk about how much they like Wuk Lamat. People harassing them or mocking them or labeled them with certain terms for liking Wuk Lamat for their own personal, genuine reasons is a petty thing to do.

But the reverse is also true.

Players should be able to go on the forums and talk about how much they dislike Wuk Lamat. People harassing them or mocking them or labeled them with certain terms for hating Wuk Lamat for their own personal, genuine reasons is also a petty thing to do.

Unfortunately this is the internet, so for some people the knob must ALWAYS be cranked up to Zealot levels of either defense or hatred.

Wuk Lamat supporters on Twitter, for an unfortunate example, like to call players who dislike Wuk Lamat either misogynistic or transphobic or a bigot, because to them you MUST be either one of these things or all of them to dislike Wuk Lamat. Likewise, Wuk Lamat haters like to call players who like Wuk Lamat...well, I won't say for the obvious reason that a lot of the things said get hit with the sensitive material warning, but they say it because to them you MUST be a minority or "trans enabler", or whatever dumb shit they call people who support trans people these day, to like Wuk Lamat.

I hate Wuk Lamat. Does that mean I deserve to be labeled as a transphobic, misogynistic bigot even if I give my own genuine reasons why? Likewise, if a player loves Wuk Lamat, does that mean THEY deserve to be called a groomer or even slurs if they give their own genuine reasons why they like the character? If a player who uses Japanese/French/German voices and dialogue loves/hates Wuk Lamat, does that mean THEY deserve to be labeled a certain way/called a slur? While I obviously cannot/will not speak for the other languages: I would think it should be seen as extremely rude and asinine to go "You hate Wuk Lamat? Glad to know you're a bigot" or "You like Wuk Lamat? Of a course a -insert bad slur here- would love this character" to a Japanese/French/German player who uses their own language for the voices and most likely has absolutely no idea what the hell is going on, or even remotely care, with the English side of the game, but still got labeled something terrible by the English side anyway.

Should you be able to say "I LOVE Wuk Lamat" and have a conversation? Yes.
Should you be able to say "I HATE Wuk Lamat" and have a conversation? Yes.

Unfortunately, again, this is the internet, and it's just easier to call someone each other name in the book instead of having actual conversations and coming to an understanding.

It all feels a bit overly melodramatic to me. Let's look at it this way for a moment -- even if you'd want to believe that the game is a sinking ship, the metaphor just doesn't work anyway because while an actual sinking ship is an urgent crisis that is going to take you down with it if you don't abandon ship in time, an online game poses no such threat to us. If the servers at some time in the future do end up getting taken down due to waning success, you can even stay logged in and watch it happen and there'd be no harm done. So to what end this hurry some people seem to be in to get out early?

FFXIV is still in the lower cost range of monthly subscription based games and other modern monetization schemes, so it costs us fairly little to just hang with our friends and play the content already in there that we do enjoy (which is how a lot of the player base already plays the game anyway). The cost of wait and see is really low here.

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Originally Posted by Sensui

You don't feel that getting a key that will allow us to freely visit the rest of the shards will be fun? I'm looking forward to it!

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Yes and no. Even were it a wholly a yes, though, there's a lot to be said for opportunities missed prior on the way to that MacGuffin allowing us to do... well, what we've already done for the past 2 expansion -- trot off to other shards.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Yes and no. Even were it a wholly a yes, though, there's a lot to be said for opportunities missed prior on the way to that MacGuffin allowing us to do... well, what we've already done for the past 2 expansion -- trot off to other shards.

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I agree with those mixed feelings, for an additional reason -- Dawntrail reduced the entirety of Tural, a landmass larger than the one in which we have ARR, HW, and the western half of SB combined, to four zone maps. They are burning through places to go on our world map not previously canonically covered at a ridiculously unnecessary fast rate, which means that once we have also visited Meracydia and Locus Amoenus, there is literally going to be nowhere left on Aetherys to put future zones. So going to other shards or other planets in future expansions will not be an exciting possibility, it will literally be the only way out we can still get a new set of zone maps with every expansion, making it expected and.. kind of disappointing? I might have preferred if Tuliyollal had only been presented as a much smaller part of the whole of Tural, leaving larger areas of that continent unexplored and a possible destination for future expansions on the Source.

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Originally Posted by Willemdarke

I didn't say it's a sinking ship, just that it is bad.

As we can see from the graph, player numbers were steadily increasing throughout ShB's lifespan, reaching their peak with EW's launch. Since then numbers have been in decline, raising slightly during content drops only to dip back down right away.

A healthy game would be growing, like in ShB, not losing all hype immediately after an expansion launch.

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The game is growing. Dawntrail reached record player numbers and drop happens every single patch, and you using ShB as an example of game's natural cycle/growth could only fool somebody who has no idea what was happening back then like WoW shitting the bed and people trying XIV, Asmongold and other streamers bringing XIV to new hights with gigantic viewerships and other outside factors.

Try better next time.

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Originally Posted by PassinLay

A game not growing at all is not a good thing. Since when has that become acceptable ?

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FF14 broke player record 2 months ago.

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Originally Posted by MisterNublet

Crazy how people are trying to defend the game's player count drop when the population is already back down to levels seen when the game had one of the worst content droughts and a terrible post-msq.

Correct me if I'm wrong, the current numbers we have now is the same as the pre-wow exodus numbers which means the game is no longer growing.

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FF14 broke player record 2 months ago. Here I hope I was able to help.

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Originally Posted by Sensui

July 2024 vs same time last year:

July 2024
Avg players: 42,181.1
Peak players: 77,305

July 2023
Avg players: 22,851.4
Peak players: 37,518

Also. EW released during the pandemic. More people were home playing games and using it as a form of social interaction. So using that as a baseline is somewhat flawed. The delta from peak EW and DT was only ~4k considering. I dunno, doesn't scream sinking all things considered.

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The game is dying, yoship bad etc. etc, don't destroy their narrative lmao

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Originally Posted by Striker44

Meanwhile, for every person here going to absurd hyperbole like this, there's a dozen people who enjoyed the story and know it didn't backfire at all, but rather has been a great hit.

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Sample size bias.

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Originally Posted by ZXN

Unfortunately, again, this is the internet, and it's just easier to call someone each other name in the book instead of having actual conversations and coming to an understanding.

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You're convieniently forgetting the very first post in this thread, where OP layed out in clean bullet points, what is wrong with the story.
Not only this thread, but also all the other dozens of threads.

If you ask 10 different people "what's wrong with the MSQ", you get 10 different threads, detailing 10 different reasons.

Just claiming that all we do is just blindly hate and not provide any feedback at all is insulting and ignorant.
The vitriol comes from people, whose arguments are simply ignored or downplayed.
I'm sick and tired to hearing "WE ARE A MENTOR" or "THIS IS A VACATION EXPAC" when these kind of arguments are blatantly false.

If you REALLY want, you can find more than enough properly elaborated arguments for why the story was absolute hot garbage.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

I agree with those mixed feelings, for an additional reason -- Dawntrail reduced the entirety of Tural, a landmass larger than the one in which we have ARR, HW, and the western half of SB combined, to four zone maps. They are burning through places to go on our world map not previously canonically covered at a ridiculously unnecessary fast rate, which means that once we have also visited Meracydia and Locus Amoenus, there is literally going to be nowhere left on Aetherys to put future zones. So going to other shards or other planets in future expansions will not be an exciting possibility, it will literally be the only way out we can still get a new set of zone maps with every expansion, making it expected and.. kind of disappointing? I might have preferred if Tuliyollal had only been presented as a much smaller part of the whole of Tural, leaving larger areas of that continent unexplored and a possible destination for future expansions on the Source.

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It really felt like it was meant to be just a highly geographically varied pair of mid-sized islands. Heck, I've had to avoid looking at frames of reference/scale that would worsen cognitive dissonance by showing it was intended as anything else.

It's been on the level of Doma's implementation, wherein there were maybe 50 civilians in the whole damn nation simply because they couldn't be bothered to reframe the playable stretch as some sliver beyond the wall, etc.

If they just made the playable part look like an island-pair with a key mountain, a key forest, and a general sampling of much of what all was across the larger continent, I'd have been far less disheartened by the waste.

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Originally Posted by honest_psycho

You're convieniently forgetting the very first post in this thread, where OP layed out in clean bullet points, what is wrong with the story.
Not only this thread, but also all the other dozens of threads.

If you ask 10 different people "what's wrong with the MSQ", you get 10 different threads, detailing 10 different reasons.

Just claiming that all we do is just blindly hate and not provide any feedback at all is insulting and ignorant.
The vitriol comes from people, whose arguments are simply ignored or downplayed.
I'm sick and tired to hearing "WE ARE A MENTOR" or "THIS IS A VACATION EXPAC" when these kind of arguments are blatantly false.

If you REALLY want, you can find more than enough properly elaborated arguments for why the story was absolute hot garbage.

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I have given my own personal opinion on multiple threads: Dawntrail's story and Wuk Lamat are fucking abysmal. Wuk Lamat is literally a Black Hole Sue fursona OC and Dawntrail is someone's fanfiction about her that got the greenlight.

I could go on and on about all the points I've made before in other threads, but that has no bearing at the moment.

The point was that it is simply easier in a place like twitter to scream buzzwords and slurs and label each other then to actually attempt conversations with each other like you can on the forums.

On the forums, someone CAN go "I like/hate Wuk Lamat" and can actually talk with others and attempt to understand each other's reasons.

You try to have a thread like this one, or one of the many others, on a platform like twitter though and I guarantee it would become an absolutely shitstorm by the end of the day if the algorithm delivers it to the FF14 twitter side of the community.

It will absolutely be swarmed with zealot players doing everything they can to reduce any and all criticisms and feedback you might have by just constantly trying to push the narrative that you're only giving "feedback and criticism" because you're actually just Transphobic/Bigoted/Misogynistic/etc and not even attempt to have a conversation to understand your criticisms, while also funneling in bad apple players and actual bigots and make everything worse by derailing conversation attempts with slurs or transphobic remarks and potentially vile images.

You're just simply NOT going to get the same results from FF14's twitter side like you can attempt to get on the forums.

You said it yourself: "Just claiming that all we do is just blindly hate and not provide any feedback at all is insulting and ignorant." And you're right.

As a Lizard Dad once said: "Ignorance begets strife. Understanding begets fellowship." Unfortunately for many people, especially in twitter's case, it is simply "easier" to "invalidate" any criticisms and feedback someone might have by trying to tie it to some extreme reason then to have an actual conversation.

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Originally Posted by Naven

The game is dying, yoship bad etc. etc, don't destroy their narrative lmao

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Nobody is saying that FFXIV is dying, neither than Dawntrail will kill it.

What we are saying is that it's taking a bad direction, and fact are wherever you look at, influencers, reviews, forums and even the fact that Yoshida himself is talking about it so soon, we may have a point.

An MMORPG so old don't die in a few weeks, months or even years (SWTOR is still alive, in what states we can talk about it, but still). FFXIV may never be put offline before decades even.

But it doesn't mean it can't "die" metaphorically, with no longer any content added.

What I want for this game that I love, much more than most game I have ever played, is that it remain "alive" as long as it can, and for that, when I see it going in a bad direction - in this case, bad storytelling with subpar characters and storylines, two elements which are for me major keys to the success of FFXIV - I complain vocally.

Because those you are talking about, who aren't complaining on this forum or reddit, the "silent majority" they will also just stop playing the game without making a sound.

And if nobody complained and just stopped playing, ARR would not even be a thing.

Seems a little blown out of proportion, but I AM glad the Japanese side of the fanbase is continuing to talk about their dissatisfaction with Dawntrail at least.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

They show just how toxic this community really is, all while they smile and say there is no toxicity in ffxiv.

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i like the avatar innuendo at the end. All in one good post very constructive