The only REAL problem with Dawntrail

Dear developers,

There's a lot of cutscenes with lots of voice acting, which is great, it's what we've been asking for. Sort of. The players have all said that they want more scenes with voice overs, and you all worked hard to give that to us, and we appreciate all the effort that you guys put into this game. I think there's a misinterpretation though, in that we didn't ask for more cutscenes AND more voice overs. We just wanted more of the scenes to have voice acting, and now Dawntrail has force fed us an over abundance of extremely time consuming scenes. The expansion isn't a video game for the msq, but more a visual novel. We must not lose sight of the fact that this is a Final Fantasy game, not book or tv show/movie.

Please bear this in mind moving forward, we want to actually play the game and not read a book. So many people are losing interest as the scenes drag on and on, and 2/3 npc interactions initiate yet another scene. I admit, several times I walked away mid scene to go tend to things around the house or eat, and I was logged out for my 30 mins of afk time. On a few occasions I had to go through a cutscene 3 times just to get to the end of it.

I very much like the first half of the story , lots of gorgeous scenery and interesting characters and cultures all around. I don't feel the first and second halves of the story blend together well, it just felt like a random plot twist outta the blue, and now we are rolling with and building on it. Now it's at the point that I'm just going to skip the remainder of the story despite it being at the part that has me most interested, in Alexandria (Living Memory). Alexander from ff9 is possibly where my son got his name from, so I am possibly very excited to see this 'ff9 remix' as I call it. Yet I can't bring myself to sit through it all since I feel so far behind everything and tired of how long this is taking.

Please put in more effort to make gameplay fun, new, creative and interesting for the msq. Swapping out an archaic quest design for an over abundance of dragged out scenes is not a solution. We will be here and stay subbed longer if you stop doing things to waste our time despite what you may think about retaining players by having extremely boring/tedious content to kill our paid time with. Many veteran players who have been around since beta or even longer are saying that this is going to be their last expansion, and I am considering it as well. The dumbing down of the game, and widening of the gap between casual content and anything with any sort of difficulty along with the quest design and excessive amounts of childish/cute/rainbow glitter things is driving away a lot of your loyal customers who have been supporters of the franchise since the 90's. I'll leave it at that for now, thanks for reading.

Sincerely, The People™

While I do not mind long cutscenes, I concur that there were quite a few missed opportunities to spice things up with solo duties in the MSQ.

Especially the last zone dragged it's feet pretty horribly while the actual interesting part of the 3rd area was cut way too short.

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excessive amounts of childish/cute/rainbow glitter things is driving away a lot of your loyal customers who have been supporters of the franchise since the 90's.

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Seriously doubt old farts like us are the core audience anymore. :X

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Originally Posted by 1313

excessive amounts of childish/cute/rainbow glitter things is driving away a lot of your loyal customers who have been supporters of the franchise since the 90's.

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Don't take my Pictomancer away from me.

But I kinda agree with you on most parts.
The cutscenes are really beginning to get out of hand.
I don't mind them normally like in Shb or EW but this time there was kinda... not happening anything in them?
I think they should trim down a bit on them and spend the time more on the animations and emotions of the characters in the cutscenes that matter. They have all those new face bones but don't really do anything with them.
It's getting ridicoulus if you have a cutscene, come out of it and go into the next after klicking the next quest target.
There have been enough comments for more interactive gameplay so I want talk about that again.

On the rainbow stuff.
The second part was actually ok and I get it being there in the first part of DT.
Other things though have no excuse. The rubber bullets are stupid, the different tribes too squeeky clean and the dialogue this time was also pretty embarasing at times.
I get a more "relaxed adventure feeling" but even then the dialogue of Wuk Lamat was primary school level at best and even that target audience would be bored.

Maybe I'm getting to old for that stuff but it wasn't always like that. No clue what the goal was.

I began when ARR launched in 2013, and I completely agree with you. I have not played continuously since then, but I always come back for the expansion, and I always buy the digital collector's edition including for Dawntrail (except I bought the physical for ARR). But at this point, I feel like I am just going through the same MSQ template over and over again. The experience of going through the MSQ is just not fun anymore, and now the story itself is no good either. They really need to take a risk and change the formula.

This will sound dumb, but the most satisfying experience I have had so far this expansion was finding the aether currents on my own after I finished the MSQ. I could easily just look them up, but I just decided to find them on my own without any help. I am doing so while listening to old WoW music that I enjoy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9j_VyIeks). It takes a while to find them, and I'm still not done with all the zones, but I am really enjoying this experience because I am able to get into a flow state while playing, and I am being rewarded for making my own discoveries. The MSQ doesn't really give you an opportunity to have that type of experience (getting into a flow state and making discoveries). You are constantly being interrupted by cutscenes and dialogue and don't get many opportunities to just 'play'.

One way the MSQ could be made more enjoyable is by having fewer MSQ quests and making it so that the MSQ quests themselves don't give you enough experience to get to the next stage. Instead, we would have to spend some time playing, doing fates, dungeons, side quests, etc., and leveling up to get the the next stage of the MSQ. This would make MSQ quests feel more like a reward, and we could have fun actually playing the game while going through the MSQ.

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Originally Posted by 1313

and 2/3 npc interactions initiate yet another scene.™

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And there is no consistency about them. For example, you have 2 Aetherial Current quest. One of them the NPC just delivery the objective with a talk bubble, take 5 seconds and you're on your way. The other quest for some reason initiate a cutsceen to do the same thing, take like 20-30 seconds between the scene fading/transition and delivery, and I'm always like ... why? IMO cutsceen should only be reserved for voiced scene, or when the characters perform some special animation. We don't need cut into a scene just to see the NPC moving their lip a bit clearer. The worse offender is you talk to an NPC, go through a couple scenes, get control back right next to another NPC you need to talk, and guess what ... another cutscene just so you get double/triple about the blackscreen in between.


Also I remmeber those warning about "long cutsceen make sure you have enough time" used to be reserved for final/end of chapter scene, you see them once or twice each zone now.

Instead of extremely obnoxious and disrespectfully long quests and solo battles, they gave us excessive amounts of cutscenes and environmental designs that make us to take the long way around to force us to take x amount of time to finish the msq. It's honestly so boring to play, i often tab out to read forums or something and just leave my character idle for a long time, checking back to clock something so I don't get kicked, then go back to whatever else. This game truly highlights how ancient it's foundation is, and needs to get with the times.

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Originally Posted by 1313

and environmental designs that make us to take the long way around to force us to take x amount of time to finish the msq.

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HanuHanu quest line:

- Start out on West end of the map, ran 2/3 the way to the East to meet Wuk Evu.
- Back to the village on the West.
- Do some stuff, ran 2/3 the way to the East to meet Wuk Evu again.
- Back to the village on the West.
- Do some stuff, run all the way to the East end of the map (the effigy altar).
- Back to the village
- 2nd Atherial current quest have you run always from the village to the Altar ... again.

EarthenShire quest line:

- Start from the East end of the map. Ran all the way across to the West end of the map.
- Do some stuffs at the village, get ready to leave the zone at the West end of the map.
- Shit happen, now double all the way back to East end of the map.
- Do some stuffs like see you track back 1/2 of the map to the West.
- Go back to the East end, quest conclude.
- Need to go to the West end again to leave the map (but thanksfully there is an Aetheryte at Eathernshire).

Yok Huy quest line:

- Start from the East end of the map.
- Ran all the way across the map to the West end to unlock the lvl93 dungeon.
- Restart from the East end again.
- Ran all the way across the map to the West end to unlock the lvl93 trial (WTF).

Xbraal's quest line: (the least offensive one)

- Start from the West end of the map.
- Run 2/3 of the way to the East.
- Start back at the village.
- Now go all the way to East side again to get to the Mamook area.

Mamook's quest line:

- Start from the East end of the map.
- Run all the way to the West end for a cutsceen.
- Start back from the East end again.
- Ran to the middle and run around a bit.
- Start back from the East end again.
- Run all the way to the West one more time for the lvl95 dungeon.


Like ... the whole running from one end to another end is par for the course so that's not suprising. But the amount of double back tracking in DT is insane. Between that and the excessive amount of unnecessary cutsceen, if someone can convince me it's not padding, they can also sell me a bridge.

They're intent on wasting our time over creating quality gameplay. We gotta speak up bout this. While there's a high standard for quality in some areas, in certain other areas quality doesn't even matter to them. like msq. The dungeons and trials are fine but everything in between is unenjoyable from a gameplay perspective. It doesn't matter how pretty the scenery is, it doesn't matter how good the music is, the nostalgia from the older title references doesn't matter, nothing matters if the gameplay is boring, it makes a bad game. SHB msq was awful because they dressed up the very poorly delivered msq story and gameplay with glams, music, gwibs, and decent combat related content. They really ought to be more thoughtful in regards to msq in a story oriented game.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

the different tribes too squeeky clean

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Yeah, this really bothered me as well. Peace, harmony, and the power of friendship is nice and all but it's also pretty boring in a game.

I'm more than fine with doing some ARR-like world building with the different tribes while exploring a completely new continent, but when you compare the tribes in Tural to those in Eorzea it's pretty much night and day. In Tural everyone just gets along and is very understanding of each other, and when they disagree with each other they still trade with each other and don't come to blows. Then look at Eorzea and the state of the Sylphs, the invading Sahagin, and even the racism towards duskwight Elezen and it's all just way more interesting.

It also hurts the gameplay because it makes the first half of the MSQ just a bunch of talking about each others rich cultures and being very understanding and impressed about them instead of fighting interesting threats. And if you do fight (mostly during Fates and side-quests) it's mostly just against wildlife because everyone else gets along and loves peace too much. Again, compare it to ARR and you'll see there's way more actual gameplay that has you fighting. And not just against wildlife but also against interesting enemies/tribes like the Ixal, Kobolds, and Amaljaa.

Tbh considering how dull the current PvE design is for overworld enemies and how painfully easy the solo duties are despite being bit flashful, I don't mind if they would get completely binned.

Either seriously redesign the questing part or let me just enjoy a movie of the story without pointless walk around interruptions so I can get to other stuff after it's over.

The real issue besides Va is pacing, sense of urgency, lack there of common sense, a sense of story direction, scions being paper weifgts wol a potted flower.

To ppl saying its cause we have main charecter syndrom...if I wanted to be secondary charecter to that exten I would play WoW.

No let me direct you to a story that does it right. Hildebrand. Hildebrand does the shoving us to side to tell another story right. What we have with Dawntrail is storm blood 2.0 too many stories being told at 1 time with no proper breaks in between it. Some ppl could connect I just couldn't then there the thing with erenville that was literally just a wtf moment, and krille literally be casted to side like trash. Consistent story telling may have save the story but the story is on of main messy issues in this game....

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Originally Posted by 1313

They're intent on wasting our time over creating quality gameplay. We gotta speak up bout this. While there's a high standard for quality in some areas, in certain other areas quality doesn't even matter to them. like msq. The dungeons and trials are fine but everything in between is unenjoyable from a gameplay perspective. It doesn't matter how pretty the scenery is, it doesn't matter how good the music is, the nostalgia from the older title references doesn't matter, nothing matters if the gameplay is boring, it makes a bad game. SHB msq was awful because they dressed up the very poorly delivered msq story and gameplay with glams, music, gwibs, and decent combat related content. They really ought to be more thoughtful in regards to msq in a story oriented game.

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Post shb or main story cause shb is regarded well. That was probably one of if not the most risky ff bedn in term of experimenting with story. Valuthry, sin eaters, the primordial light...yeah you cappin.

Its ok to say you hate something but cite your source shb is beloved by user base and when compared to DT we are seeing night an day

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

Post shb or main story cause shb is regarded well. That was probably one of if not the most risky ff bedn in term of experimenting with story. Valuthry, sin eaters, the primordial light...yeah you cappin.

Its ok to say you hate something but cite your source shb is beloved by user base and when compared to DT we are seeing night an day

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I'm only sharing my personal opinion which is shared by a large number of people, but those types of people aren't the type to provide feedback, there's no source to cite. I was talking about SHB main story being poorly delivered. Like, it's way too slow paced, too much running around, too many crying npc's everywhere that require us to fix their problems before they help us prevent their murder, it was just a really dragged out, boring, and frustrating experience. Can't even call it gameplay, it's just a waste of time. The content in shb was good, the story/quest design was bad. I didn't find the story all that interesting, due to the pacing and delivery, until around the grand cosmos in the post story.

As for DT, everyone is throwing a huge temper tantrum already when the story isn't even done being told. Dawntrail started out strong til 95, then the plot twist outta nowhere and extreme shift from magic fantasy mmo to sci-fi futuristic anime mash up kinda hurt the delivery of the story, but overall the Dawntrail main story is far better than SHB. The super long and frequent scenes cause a massive disconnect for players since they aren't engaged, they're bored. I get it. I don't feel like i want to bother leveling all my jobs to max anymore, like i always do in each expansion, several times over. Already feels like there's nothing to do now that msq is done, which sucks. However, I think the players are overreacting , mixed with a bit of "monkey see, monkey do", leading more players to come here and parrot what other people say for the sake of having social interaction and attention.

As for the reasoning behind why the game is the way that it is, is very clear to see. They're attempting to bring in younger players. More subs. So they make a childish theme song, make it look really pretty and colorful, over enforce bans on people who swear or stand up for anything at all, and paint a big false image of the community and company as a whole. This is what happens when a game company sells out to take a gamble on luring in more subs. More people, more problems... that is, if they even succeed. They might just destroy the entire Final Fantasy franchise if they can't remember to stay true to themselves as they grow and move forward.