Unpopular opinion - I like Dawntrial expansion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by honest_psycho

Show me a single character who said "Hey, Bakool JaJa may have clearly attacked a key-stone keeper and released Valigarmanda. But let's not disqualifiy him, no biggie".

The rule is "Attack a key-stone keeper, you get disqualified".
Why is not a single character even contemplating this?

You seem to be contradicting your complaints.

Yes, nobody said it was no big deal that Bakool Ja Ja attacked a keystone keeper (twice) and released Valigarmanda. That is to say, there is no reason to think they didn't consider it a big deal, but as I recall, he was either long gone or directly ran off in the aftermath of those incidents.

The next time we see him, he declares himself out of the competition, so there is no opportunity to formally disqualify him.

Your earlier post indicated that you think they should have executed him and it's a writing failure that they didn't, but I disagree – redemption is more valuable and he now seems eager to do so. Plus he seems quite young and probably not a mature adult yet.

Additionally, I'm inclined to regard the details of his actions as bad writing in the first place – the basic concept of his story arc is good but it's filled out poorly, making him more of an outright villain in the first act instead of something that fits better with his underlying motivations. (For example, it would make more sense if he had released Valigarmanda in the false belief he could subdue it himself, instead of just vague villainous cackling about causing destruction.)

It feels like at least some individual scenes got written without an eye to the bigger story, which makes me feel like it's difficult to judge whether the characters are reacting to exactly what we saw him do or just the planned outline version of events, if that makes sense.

I think they should have – and maybe should still try to work in an opportunity to – question Bakool (both of him) about what they were thinking at that point and he definitely owes an apology to some people. And the fandom probably won't let the devs forget he also owes them tacos.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sacae

I can agree with all of this. TBH, I wish they had shifted a lot of the worldbuilding to sidequests and the later beast tribes, and trimmed some of the fat from the MSQ. It would have flowed much better, IMO.

I think the problem is that Wuk Lamat's story doesn't work unless she gains that better understanding of the people as she goes along.

The real problem is that the things we learn about them are just not that interesting, or laid out in weird ways like the Pelupelu trading quest or the "everyone is stuck on this thing with an obvious solution" issue at Ok'hanu – it might have been better handled by having it that the villagers are just deliberately testing the candidates with a problem they already know how to fix, but there's too much "oh you've saved the village" for that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CuteBucket

Genuine question for the people that enjoyed the Dawntrail story (specifically the story, not the jobs or battles or zones or music, etc): What parts did you like most and why?

In a show of good faith, as someone who did not enjoy the story, here are the parts I did enjoy in spite of everything:

I'm on the fence regarding Dawntrail's story and I agree it feels like there was a lack of really stand-out moments. It wasn't really bad but it wasn't really good either and I think I just don't like a lot of the story they were trying to tell – though I felt similarly about Stormblood and overall I think I like the characters of Dawntrail better than Stormblood so hopefully the story will likewise get better in the patches.

If some theorising over in the Lore forum is correct, they're angling to bring back a very old plot point left hanging, which is the "keys" mentioned by Nabriales and then touched on again in Alexander (along with that now suspiciously electrope-looking Codex) and highlighted in the first lorebook as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CuteBucket

- I liked Koana and [...] I want to learn more about why he was abandoned by his original family.
- I thought Bakool Ja Ja was an enjoyable antagonist for the first half of the story. He has such "big dumb school bully" energy and I found a lot of his lines genuinely funny. (It's just a shame that his heel-face-turn felt kind of rushed and out of nowhere, but there's a fun, enjoyable character under there)

I think we must be getting to dive deeper into Koana's story at some point, whether it comes in the MSQ or in some kind of side content. I expect Nitowikwe's custom deliveries will be giving us at least some extra insight into the inhabitants of Shaaloani, and they did previously highlight tension between the Mehwahhetsoan tribe and the railway team.

While Bakool's story was awkwardly set up, as I went into above, I still really liked the twist when they got to it. In my case they'd set him up as so unlikable that when we beat him, I felt smug about how he ran off home – and then we get there and see him so defeated and hurt, and realise that he's likely still a child or not far past it, and with such a burden of guilt upon him. If anything, I think my character was harsher on him than I wanted to be in that moment at the cenote – he needed empathy then, reprimanding later. I agree that he has potential to be a fun character going forward if he gets to do stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catwho

I think the community ended up in a giant massive negative feedback loop and a lot of us successfully convinced each other that things were worse than they actually were.

This has been my impression as well. People latch onto a few worst moments, associate the characters with the worst bit of script they had, and bring that up as what defines them.

The story wasn't great but it wasn't the worst thing ever. It set some things up that can be built on and that's all it ultimately needs to do. I would prefer to get something as epic as Shadowbringers was but I don't think it's possible to hit those heights every time – if anything, I think they were trying to chase that success by bringing up similar themes again and it starts to feel like something we've already seen instead of something new.

I've said before, I think it could have worked out better for me if they'd found a way to make it low stakes from start to finish. Make S9 a fun city to visit without all the dark baggage attached. I'm not sure how you'd bring a low-stakes story to a climax but I think I like the idea of it – I think it would rely a lot on likeable characters and interesting worldbuilding though.

Not sure about others but I for one loved the expansion. Being in a mentor role much better suits the WoL for this point in their journey and power level, to continue writing us as the Main protagonist, would alienate normal npc's and humans we meet. It has nothing to do with Wuk Lamat, I love Wuk. It's her hero's journey not ours now.

Also I viewed us being there as more of judge to make sure no matter how bad it got no one would dare kill each other under the WoL watch purely because it'd be political awful to do so

Unpopular opinion ? Huuu ?
I disliked it but somebody else liking is not "hated" or "unpopular".
So you had fun means you are player in the roulette that is pobably positiv in the roulette and what not and nice to play with so from me a thumbs up for that. I like that you liked it. Does not change the fact that i want to beat WukWuk with a moogle to death and feed her to the cloud of darkness.

The 2 channels on certain items are really dope. And l no longer lose gp when l die as a non gatherer job. That's very helpful because l play pvp a lot. I like dt

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iscah

The story wasn't great but it wasn't the worst thing ever. It set some things up that can be built on and that's all it ultimately needs to do.

Agreed.

Players here keep referring to Stormblood as a comparison, which is interesting. I enjoyed Stormblood, but I enjoyed the patch content even more, particularly 'A Requiem for Heroes' - which put everything in place for Shadowbringers.

And most players tend to view Dragonsong War very favorably too.

As Iscah stated, the foundations have been laid for the patch-content; lets see what they build.

I’d like to look back on what the groundwork was in a few years.
Currently it seems like they’re doing a lot of movement towards soul and memory, whether this involves the serpent of ronka and other snakes mentioned or not, or grows into a full ancients expansion, heads in a different direction entirely or remains unused in favour of something else - ceruleum could be interesting with the reduced hostilities of garlemald and serpentlord zone having the extraction plants. The oil analogue almost certainly has some caveat to it that could easily have been swept under the rug for its military benefits - blood of the planet or whatever. Ultima may also be a player given the ivalice one was explicitly just a primal and Athena’s exacerbated issues from contact with the extraplanetary rock. Everyone loves ancient civilisations and the ronkans are not nearly as explored as the allagans, but have been brought up a few times now. There may well be political machinations that have consequences, even if that is largely streamlined these days by aggressive friendmaking with heads of state; the puppet king of solution9 could cause bother if we get a xak tural expansion rather than heading straight to aus.
There’s definitely several dangling threads that originate in or have been tugged on by dawntrail.

I would have liked to see more groundwork laid, but again I’m probably looking right at it without seeing anything yet.