What is this writing in DT?

Was there also a writers strike in Japan? A team developed this story and got paid for it? Side quests have been better than the MSQ by far, I’m staying in hope there will be more Hildibrand

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Originally Posted by illushiona

Was there also a writers strike in Japan? A team developed this story and got paid for it? Side quests have been better than the MSQ by far, I’m staying in hope there will be more Hildibrand

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Seriously the story seems like it was written by an unpaid college intern so far lmao.

I think my biggest issue with the MSQ so far is the constant shift in pacing between key narrative points. I am currently in the second to last zone I feel like the pacing and stakes are changing every other quest. It is very jarring.

First part, tad too much repetition. And the antagonists are too stereotypical.

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Originally Posted by Rosie_Roses

I think my biggest issue with the MSQ so far is the constant shift in pacing between key narrative points. I am currently in the second to last zone I feel like the pacing and stakes are changing every other quest. It is very jarring.

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It seems to me that Yoshi experimented with replacing some writers with AI. Did not go too well.

Seriously. Did anyone on the dev team actually play through the MSQ and give feedback on it? We have a 10 minute voiced cutscene followed immediately by a 5 minute un-voiced cutscene that just recaps the previous cutscene. They could cut 50% of the cutscenes and lose nothing. This is insane.

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Originally Posted by stupiddog

It seems to me that Yoshi experimented with replacing some writers with AI. Did not go too well.

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This would make sense to me. It seems like there is a secondary team or AI tool that is connecting the main story points together, creating a huge variance in how the pacing is laid out.

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Originally Posted by Ahelissa

Seriously. Did anyone on the dev team actually play through the MSQ and give feedback on it? We have a 10 minute voiced cutscene followed immediately by a 5 minute un-voiced cutscene that just recaps the previous cutscene. They could cut 50% of the cutscenes and lose nothing. This is insane.

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Usually involving someone 3 feet away that is a DIFFERENT QUEST.

Also....I am pretty sure I was playing a moderately written fanfic/VN rather then a adventure game as I am pretty sure I hit 100 with less then 12 combats outside of Duties...

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Originally Posted by illushiona

Was there also a writers strike in Japan? A team developed this story and got paid for it? Side quests have been better than the MSQ by far, I’m staying in hope there will be more Hildibrand

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You know, just whining that things are bad, without saying anything about why you think they are bad, is completely useless and a waste of everyones time.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

You know, just whining that things are bad, without saying anything about why you think they are bad, is completely useless and a waste of everyones time.

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Seems to work for Wuk.

The pacing for this expansion is absolutely abysmal and would rival ARR if it wasn’t also so massively inconsistent. I’ve touched literally 0 roulettes and exclusively done storyline / run the story dungeons, yet somehow I still managed to overlevel the MSQ by at least 2-3 levels. All because the pacing is so completely awful that you’re getting a metric shitton of useless filler quests that pad the exp gain.

As for the writing itself I’m conflicted lol. As someone who also enjoys writing it feels a bit mean to say that it’s just straight up bad . At the same time though, it absolutely is not good either lol. As others have said it feels like a ton of story and dialogue was either AI generated or written by the least passionate intern to have ever existed lol

Square Enix did mention that they would increase their efforts in AI.

Also somehow they are still holding onto NFT's ...

The first part of the MSQ sums up (for the most part, I'd give that) to:

"Let's split and talk to the locals to see what ever mundane thing we can learn..."
<learns obvious mundane things>

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Originally Posted by Connor

The pacing for this expansion is absolutely abysmal and would rival ARR if it wasn’t also so massively inconsistent. I’ve touched literally 0 roulettes and exclusively done storyline / run the story dungeons, yet somehow I still managed to overlevel the MSQ by at least 2-3 levels. All because the pacing is so completely awful that you’re getting a metric shitton of useless filler quests that pad the exp gain.

As for the writing itself I’m conflicted lol. As someone who also enjoys writing it feels a bit mean to say that it’s just straight up bad . At the same time though, it absolutely is not good either lol. As others have said it feels like a ton of story and dialogue was either AI generated or written by the least passionate intern to have ever existed lol

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Ok, I'm not the only one who noticed the over-leveling. That has never happened to me before in an expac. In the past, I usually ended up under-leveled if I just did MSQ and didn't do a roulette here and there. Says a lot about how much filler there is in Dawntrail.

I don't think that the overlevelling would have made a big difference if it were different, but it is indicative of the shift towards pure visual novel with a raiding scene at the end. XIV (and most modern MMOs) have always had levelling as just a footnote to the endgame, but it's wild to effectively not have it and have no other path of progression besides inconsequential gear upgrades that don't matter until the AF is handed to you automatically anyway.

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Originally Posted by Ahelissa

Ok, I'm not the only one who noticed the over-leveling. That has never happened to me before in an expac. In the past, I usually ended up under-leveled if I just did MSQ and didn't do a roulette here and there. Says a lot about how much filler there is in Dawntrail.

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Same; I’ve been through every expansion since ARR (unless 1.0 counts lol) and I honestly think in terms of exp gain / quest padding this expansion is the worst offender of them all lol. There are far too many entire quests dedicated to like ‘Wuk has a chip in her axe’, ‘talk to 3 people in this location’, ‘stop in the middle of a ruined town populated by killer robots to gather meat for a heart-warming dinner’. The robots are literally 4 feet away from the door and you want to stop for food?!?! With a child present?!

Why did Ishikawa step back from writing the main story? They really need to bring her back and have her write everything.

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Originally Posted by Ahelissa

Ok, I'm not the only one who noticed the over-leveling. That has never happened to me before in an expac. In the past, I usually ended up under-leveled if I just did MSQ and didn't do a roulette here and there. Says a lot about how much filler there is in Dawntrail.

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I've been doing my daily roulettes for tomes, because I just could not be bothered to full 660 on weekly tomes in EW, and somehow, with those, and quests, I have two Jobs ahead of the MSQ, one equal, and two a single level behind. That's one of each role for the role quests, pretty much keeping up with me for story, just by doing my daily chores, and doing MSQ and SQs while I wait in DPS queue...

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Originally Posted by Connor

The pacing for this expansion is absolutely abysmal and would rival ARR if it wasn’t also so massively inconsistent. I’ve touched literally 0 roulettes and exclusively done storyline / run the story dungeons, yet somehow I still managed to overlevel the MSQ by at least 2-3 levels. All because the pacing is so completely awful that you’re getting a metric shitton of useless filler quests that pad the exp gain.

As for the writing itself I’m conflicted lol. As someone who also enjoys writing it feels a bit mean to say that it’s just straight up bad . At the same time though, it absolutely is not good either lol. As others have said it feels like a ton of story and dialogue was either AI generated or written by the least passionate intern to have ever existed lol

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I just hit 100 on my main on the 99 dungeon, so I was 100 going into the 99 trial. I still have 7 or 8 level 99 quests left which would be wasted xp if I do it on my level 100. I'm not sure if that's overleveled or not. It's roughly 10 million experience wasted, which is only about half a level. I didn't do any roulettes. Just MSQ and MSQ dungeons/trials.

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Originally Posted by OliverQ

I just hit 100 on my main on the 99 dungeon, so I was 100 going into the 99 trial. I still have 7 or 8 level 99 quests left which would be wasted xp if I do it on my level 100. I'm not sure if that's overleveled or not. It's roughly 10 million experience wasted, which is only about half a level. I didn't do any roulettes. Just MSQ and MSQ dungeons/trials.

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Fun Fact, all of the yellow quests are now synced down to lvl 90 and you can turn them in with whatever job you want. So even more free exp.

Idk if past expansions did the same thing, I just noticed it after I was clearing the 4th zone of them that I can get free levels on another job.

aside from my issues with Wuk Lmao I don't think DT is a total bust. But I sure as hell miss Ishikawa.

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Originally Posted by Ahelissa

Ok, I'm not the only one who noticed the over-leveling. That has never happened to me before in an expac. In the past, I usually ended up under-leveled if I just did MSQ and didn't do a roulette here and there. Says a lot about how much filler there is in Dawntrail.

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I had early access and the overleveling was 100% not a thing at the time. I had to run a duty at 88 to catch up at one point. I suspect the experience curve was over tweaked at the official launch.

There were some people here that were making Naruto jokes about 2 weeks before early access. Oh boy were they correct about it.

There is another thread going into way more detail about it. But I think it’s all obvious stuff. The pacing is bad, the characterization feels lazy, Wuk Lamat had potential but ultimately was extremely annnoying annd had no business taking the main character role, and our character has no agency. If it was a novel or a comic I would have dropped it almost immediately. I gave it 30+ hours trying hard to like it, and it’s just poorly written. To the point I can’t believe any professional writers had a part in it

As a positive, the Wild West zone with Erenville was actually a great story part, because we finally went on our own adventure, and the sub plot with the vulture was cool and interesting. I also found myself begging Estinien to take us with him away from the msq, he is more of an adventurer than we are