DT: State of the Game

I’ve been reading in most of the DT threads here, and there are pieces of good discussion going on in numerous threads, but there are too many threads to track, too much overlap in the discussions, and far too much garbage to wade thru. I created this thread out of exhaustion and with a meager shred of hope that enough people might post organized, thoughtful feed back to make it worthwhile.

Scale 1-10 (10=Totally Happy. 1=Totally Unhappy)
Top concerns, with #1 as what’s most important to you.

Happiness Rating: 2

1. Job+ Encounter Design
These two things can never be effectively separated. Fun fights and satisfying jobs are a fundamental requirement. You’ve done significant damage or outright destroyed a scary number of jobs, including the entire healer group. When I quit this game, on-going failure in this area will be the primary reason.

Fix Healers or retire the trinity. Period.
Revert the BLM changes.
Parity across the Tank group-> Ridiculous imbalance is ridiculous.
etc

2. Graphics Problems
Give us the settings we need to resolve the eye-strain, motion sickness, and lighting issues.
This is a deal-breaker for many players.

3. Failed MSQ
“Willing suspension of disbelief” is the critical element in storytelling.
The DT MSQ is an epic fail.
The writing and execution are just plain bad.
They not only failed to make us believe, they insulted our mental and emotional intelligence, and made people downright hostile toward the main character. It feels a bit like players put more thought, time, and heart into their critiques of MSQ than the SE teams put into creating it.


I was hopeful for DT until they announced the changes to BLM. I almost left the game when they gutted AST and the exciting gameplay and flexibility of BLM is what saved me. I have no interest in any of the remaining jobs, either because they’re broken too, or in some cases just not my thing.

I used to spend a lot of time in game. Even when I couldn’t focus on serious progression, I hung out in places I like, did a little crafting or gathering, or rearranged the furniture. Nowadays, I’m logging just long enough to check my retainers and feel sad before logging out again.

I did not buy the expansion on my alt accounts and I haven’t spent money in the cash shop since the BLM changes were revealed. If my hope is not restored somehow, it won’t be long before I cancel my sub and move on.

MSQ is the needle that broke the camel's back

People would be OK if there is a ARR level story

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

MSQ is the needle that broke the camel's back

People would be OK if there is a ARR level story

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Right. Or Stormblood?

I agree with OP 100%. Why is drk so shit? They fixed sam and viper in 1 patch yet ignore drk for 4 years. The story sucked my left toe and I can't take the lizard enemies seriously with their giraffe necks

It's true that we have many threads on this topic, so I'm always worried that some of the feedback might get lost.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-full-spoilers <- This thread is very comprehensive and also has linked to other very valid feedback!

The japanese playerbase has a single thread with a lot of valid feedback as well. They have done a great job pointing the flaws out. If you're curious: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...81%84%E3%81%A6
Running it through google translator is often times enough!

Mentioned feedback is story focused. Most flaws have been pointed out fairly well. The fact that Yoshi-P still failed to address core issues pointed out in our criticisms is worrisome for that reason.

Tbh ...Stormblood was good compared to DT. I rather take 10 Lyses then 1 Wuk. At least Lyse wasnt the main focus of every quest.

See, the thing is, at the micro level, all we have are opinions.

For example, my own current happiness rating with the game is probably around an 8.5 or a 9. I have a lot of fun playing PLD, SCH, and RDM. Heck, I've actually found myself enjoying leveling DRG 90-100 when I usually just do that class for the sake of seeing the melee DPS role quest. So for me, jobs and encounters are in a great place.

The graphics update for me is a whole lot of nothing. Graphics aren't really something that particularly draws me in (or pushes me away, for that matter). Gameplay, story, and music are the big ones to me.

And the DT MSQ? I'd rate it a solid 8, and given that it doesn't have much to build on, the highest I would reasonably expect possible would be a 9. (My original thought on this was 7 out of 8, but Living Memory I enjoyed enough I had to step the rating and the max up one.) There's a few things here and there that underwhelmed, but overall I very much enjoyed the story. And the raid series has started off great, too.

Now, if we truly want to talk "state of the game", what we need to do is look at the macro level. What is the playerbase as a whole doing. In-game, hunt trains are filled throughout the week, there's still FATE farming groups going around DT on a daily basis, and when I checked a couple nights ago on Aether there were just over 150 high-end groups recruiting in PF. We also have the only large-scale data available through Steam charts, and they show the one-month retention rate for DT is right on par with every other expansion, and the average number of people logging in daily is currently among the highest its ever been, with the only exceptions being the release month of DT itself and the brief super-spike we saw from the "WoW exodus" a few years back. But the population is 3-4x higher than it was during the HW and SB days, and about 50% higher than it was during ShB, with HW and ShB often being viewed as top-tier expansions. Point is - the "state of the game" is very healthy right now.

It's possible it is just time for you to move on. The average person today will work ~12 different jobs during their career, changing them about every 4 years. It's a natural human need for change. Some of us have been playing this game for ~10 years now. For some of us, it's just natural to need a change of scenery.

this why i suggest to doing story tell beta testing this way they use feedback for play base. i even throught about put out video how i would do dawntrail

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Originally Posted by Mondschnee

Mentioned feedback is story focused. Most flaws have been pointed out fairly well. The fact that Yoshi-P still failed to address core issues pointed out in our criticisms is worrisome for that reason.

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When the Devs don’t talk about something, it’s a good indicator that the issue is very polarizing, not only with the players but the Devs as well.

Just as with healers, I have a feeling that they will find ways of creatively dodging or ignoring questions from the fans and media on this.

They know it’s bad but if they pivot too hard on this, there will be consequences for them with their staff internally.

Just like with politics, when people go silent, it’s really bad. How bad? Well, how hard they avoid the questions will tell you.

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Originally Posted by Blixie

Boop

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The state of healing is so fucking bad. I now mainly play WoW because SE can't balance shit, at least over there I spend 60+% of the time healing, sometimes as much as 80% based on the fight. Only reason I play this at all anymore is because my wife plays the game. I started as a healer, but after I reached Stormblood MSQ I stopped needing to heal the tank as much, as the healing went down so did my enjoyment of healer. Tanks not needing to be healed as much is why healing isn't fun.

Imagine healing a drk at 100.
Drk:"hey I popped tbn and it's gone already, my worthless mit will be up again in 30 seconds and I'll struggle on my hands and knees until then ok?"
Healer: "ohh...thanks?"

How it is....
https://youtu.be/Mb7IH_UV2Uw

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Originally Posted by Blixie

1. Job+ Encounter Design
These two things can never be effectively separated. Fun fights and satisfying jobs are a fundamental requirement. You’ve done significant damage or outright destroyed a scary number of jobs, including the entire healer group. When I quit this game, on-going failure in this area will be the primary reason.

Fix Healers or retire the trinity. Period.
Revert the BLM changes.
Parity across the Tank group-> Ridiculous imbalance is ridiculous.
etc

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Jobs certainly are quite a mess right now. Some have insanely high DPS, some have pathetic DPS. Healers are pretty much jokes. Tanks are insanely unbalanced. They really need to work on them. My only issue is I get the odd feeling they'll "Fix" every job by just looking at the "strongest" job and just buffing everything else a ton to get "close enough" to it instead of actually, you know...taking time to properly balance things. Encounter wise though I will say is leagues above Endwalker. The current battle content is fun and doesn't put me to literal sleep like Endwalker's did, so that's a step in the right direction at the bare minimum and I do have hopes it just keeps getting better.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blixie

2. Graphics Problems
Give us the settings we need to resolve the eye-strain, motion sickness, and lighting issues.
This is a deal-breaker for many players.

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To me the update is...a mixed bag. While I am fine on it overall, for somethings it's absolutely noticeable. On others it barely looks like it's changed at all. I will say though they did over-correct certain things and it does hurt my eyes once in awhile staring at it for too long.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blixie

3. Failed MSQ
“Willing suspension of disbelief” is the critical element in storytelling.
The DT MSQ is an epic fail.
The writing and execution are just plain bad.
They not only failed to make us believe, they insulted our mental and emotional intelligence, and made people downright hostile toward the main character. It feels a bit like players put more thought, time, and heart into their critiques of MSQ than the SE teams put into creating it.

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I've...definitely said plenty before about the state of the MSQ and a certain house cat, so I'll just summarize it this time by saying they REALLY need to step it up for the patch series. This whole "Let's take a passive and backseat approach so the newer people can get some experience" they seemed to want to do isn't really working. I won't say the new writers need to get the boot, but they need to be overseen a bit more closely until they can actually get some footing with what they are putting out.

Ill way in. This looks fun.

Ok so grading scale 1 being lowest 10 being highest. Lets goooo.

Job updates....Ill give it a 8.

I haven't tried all classes but I did get what I really wanted. Better use of astro cards outside of always balance.

Story-2

I think the forum has explained this too much.

Characters- 5

There were some characters i really liked in dawn trail. Bakool jaja, kona, wuk lamats father (adopted), I didnt mind Zoraal ja.

But then I have characters I didnt like, wuk ofcourse, sphene, erenville mother are just to name a few.

Locals- 7

I give this a 7 cause of solution 9 being just a bit too empty.

Dungeons - 10

The difficulty visuals my god. Its such a wonderful breath of fresh air.

Boss fights- 8

While i have e joyed the bosses so far the eternal queen is my biggest gripe. Outside of phase 2 drama shes boring design, boring fight, and just overall not interesting villian in my opinion. Vali has one of coolest ex mechanics with tanks being the shield cover.

Raids- 10

My god arcadian raids I can gush over this for days maybe weeks why this raid series is amazing. 1 giant tv shows u ppl watch our fight, the fact the fight is being commentated on, npc notice limit breaks being used, npc call out 1 vs 8 as cheating, honey b lovely, the music. The visuals. The astetics, man I just love this raid series.

With that said if I add the msq Id be giving dawn trail about maybe a 5.5/10 but outside the msq I give dawn trail a 8/10 so far. Theres stuff to enjoy outside msq.

No matter what rate I give my experience with DT, it will continue to drop if the team won't stop making PR apologies for the EN VA that will not stop gaslighting people about not liking the most un-Final Fantasy music scroll in FFXIV. Cut the losses and take the overall experience critically in order to move forward with enriching content, whether that's by removing future experiences with Wuk Lamat's character or severely limiting future exposure to it. Separate the game and franchise from the meta-political nonsense being stirred up on social media and bring the S-tier game. I can look past the MSQ, despite the fact that it's the driving heart of the franchise, if they can do that at least.

Jobs, dungeons, current content: I'm a little bit of a 'Boxer', taking the punishment as it comes and doing the best with what I have, but when the story is the worst thing about my experience, then it's time for me to expect to move out if they double down. They set these *expectations for me up to DT (I expected nothing and simply went along for the journey when I started in ARR), they had better find a means to keep them. I'm not the only one.

*I'm not expecting thrills or heroics; I can take a back seat just fine. I want to see a myriad of characters grow, not just me or just one. I'm looking for world-building and not a front-row cheerleading, compliant 'yaas queen' seat to one of the most boorish characters in the franchise, and not limited to FF14 alone. What they did to the WOL's responses was straight up disrespectful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RinaB

Imagine healing a drk at 100.
Drk:"hey I popped tbn and it's gone already, my worthless mit will be up again in 30 seconds and I'll struggle on my hands and knees until then ok?"
Healer: "ohh...thanks?"

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That's far, far better than being in a group with a WAR., and even looking at it from the other side, playing a WAR, I really don't see the challenge. It should be brought much closer to where DRK is , and DRK brought up a bit.

Encounter design was kinda good early in the first two trials and in the dungeons and became again completely utterly boring in the raid. So many bloody 8 man spreads or partner mechs. Plus job balancing is complete and utter garbage (faint wait for the ultimate dps check were if you play the worst of the worst jobs you have too pot phase and hope you crit a lot as we saw the p8s flop were jobs were locked out of pf) and ofc the 2 new jobs are the best dps wise. They design fights with down time and give viper a 3 second gcd range dmg gain move with a stack system while all other meeles die inside.

If I were to assign some numbers to various aspects of the game...

Job Design and encounter design: This one is so highly subjective that I feel weird trying to score it. I'm currently at probably an 8. I'm okay with where my mains are. I've been doing Savage Arcadion on Paladin and I'm more happy with where my job is than my Dark Knight co tank. But I absolutely understand why other players of different jobs than mine are very unhappy. So even though I'm more or less fine, I don't think most of the changes many other jobs are asking for would hurt my enjoyment of encounters or how my job plays, so their opinions should weigh heavier than mine in this area. For example, I just don't play healers or casters, I don't like that style of those jobs, so my opinion on how those jobs are doing doesn't matter much.

I have been having fun with the raids though. Arcadion has been a good time. Pretty much the only reason I've been playing at all. Never thought I'd see the day, but here we are.

Graphics: This one is also hard to score. Some things, like the foliage, look WORLDS better and I'm very grateful for the updates. Elpis and Il Mheg, two of my favorite zones, really benefited from the graphical update. Kugane at night in the rain was mesmerizing when I first saw it. However...

There's way too much bloom. I love turning effects like that on for special effects in Gpose with Reshade, but for running around playing the game? It's a lot. It can look very beautiful in stills but it gives everything this unnatural glow that can be too much while running around and playing the game. It doesn't personally harm me but it's harming others. I've also been having a lot of issues with certain locations and lighting environments creating really bad shadow banding and flickering. It's not too noticeable zoomed out and playing, but if I wanna zoom the camera in and look at me or my friends sometimes? Yuck, glitchy shadow stripes everywhere in some places.

And then there's the not so little matter of both of my character's faces getting botched by this "update." My catboy's eyes are now so dark with this new shadow effect you can barely see them, the color, or the cat eye pupil shape. My f au ra looks like she had botched plastic surgery. Her beautiful lips are gone and actually look blurrier and more low res now than they did before, and her bigger pupils make her look tired and sad where she once looked vibrant and alert. I've covered all this in the relevant threads with many pictures, so I won't go into it further here. It's a 3 on the enjoyment for me, which is a real shame, as I was looking forward to the graphical update. I have so little motivation to log in with my characters looking this way.

The MSQ Experience: Awful. Actively painful to get through. 2 points because there were a few moments in Shaaloani I enjoyed. I was really trying to give the benefit of the doubt here. The first half was slow and cheesy and predictable, but I thought it was building so something, so I just nodded and went along, even when I had to roll my eyes at parts. But once I got to the "twist" and met Sphene and realized this 4Kids half-baked friendship and understanding narrative was all I was going ever going to get out of Dawntrail, I was done. It was a chore to convince myself to keep playing. I was not expecting a masterpiece out of Dawntrail. I was more than happy to get another Stormblood, as I liked that expansion just fine and thought people dogged on it way too hard.

I genuinely cannot remember the last time I had this much of a bad time trying to get through a video game. Usually I'd just quit if that was the case, but I have years of love built of for this game and thought "they've only given me expansions I loved so far, why would they fail me this time?" and preordered the collectors edition, so I felt obligated to slog through the MSQ to get to the other side. I didn't skip a single cutscene, because I love the lore and worldbuilding of this game so much. Or at least I did. I like the previous stuff. I've also already written extensively about my issues with the story and characters in other threads, so I'll leave it at this: Wuk Lamat is bad but I don't think I've ever quite disliked a character that I felt I was "supposed" to like and feel sorry for as much as Sphene. She could have been so much more than she was. But everything about her is so indecisive and contradictory and half-assed that by the end of the game, I just wanted to delete both her and Wuk Lamat from my memory so I'd never have to think about a story arc so bad again in my life.

That leaves us with about a 4/10 in total for my Dawntrail review. BIG OOF.

i think the devs are embrass of the dislike for wuk lamar and how bad stories came out so they tried figure out how make it better. they know fans don't like it

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Originally Posted by Lyndina

Tbh ...Stormblood was good compared to DT. I rather take 10 Lyses then 1 Wuk. At least Lyse wasnt the main focus of every quest.

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It feels like they put more thought into the Azim Steppe's lore than they did into all of Tural's. I wonder if they spent too much time brainstorming to fuss over how to execute what they were trying to accomplish or what, but the continent feels dead and fake, like a Disney World version of itself.

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Originally Posted by Zelda206

No matter what rate I give my experience with DT, it will continue to drop if the team won't stop making PR apologies for the EN VA that will not stop gaslighting people about not liking the most un-Final Fantasy music scroll in FFXIV.

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Let's be real. Aside from a very specific sub-segment of the gaming population, people couldn't care less (and probably don't even have the slightest clue) what VA's do in their spare time.

i literally dont understand the problem with stb. zenos was very entertaining and the primals we faut were great. also we still had susan on vocals and lyse actually had a good VA. Kugane was a beautiful city, shirogane is a gorgeous housing sub, it added SAm and RDM to the game 2 jobs we literally NEEDED and they even fit in with the expansions story. The omega raids were some of the best and the hildibrand is 1 of the funniest. we also got our first ultimates and eureka is still popping off while gangos lies uninhabited

I played ff14 now for several years and always loved the story even if it was sloppy like in Stormblood though, never have I really taken a break and always have been going strong in raids and daylies roulettes and such, after Dawntrail launch I suddenly had no urge to do anything, so far I have done the daylie roulettes 2 days and never touched them again lol

The story failed miserable which is a huge point for me
but I also don't think there is any content to do and I simply hate that they choose to spread everything out that could have been there day 1
really makes you realize how lazy they are, not sure how much of the old spaghetti code keeps making improvements worse, but only a Story for an expasion launch?

Come on man wtf

I wanted to make this a separate topic, but since you try to gather all of the information, I'll just put this here.

I want to talk about the DT Story-writing.

Short about me for context: I did NOT study creative writing. I write only as a hobby. I'm very passionate about it, I took several masterclasses and I love to analyze, but I'm NOT a professional writer in any way, nor did I ever publish anything. So take all of this with a grain of salt.

That being said: There is a reason why you can actually study creative writing. There are certain rules you have to learn if you want to write a compelling story that is generally received as “good”. Of course there is a lot of wiggle room within these rules, this is where the creativity and writing style etc. comes in place. And if you are really good at it, you can even very specifically break some of those rules to achieve a certain effect.

These rules are not in place to restrict the writer. Rather, they make sure, the reader (or in this case player) has an engaging and immersive experience regarding things like organic character-building and exciting story arcs for example.

Of course, you can also apply these rules to analyze stories to pinpoint problems. This is also the reason why big stories usually go through an extensive editing-process.

I read some comments saying something like: "I can't put my finger on it, but this part of the story just felt off to me”. That is most likely because the writer broke a rule, and you're might not familiar with the concept, hence it just seems "off".

The reason I'm saying this is because I also read a lot of comments saying that “well, in the end it's all just opinions” or “the story might just not be for you”. That is NOT the problem. Of course some just don't like the overall style and that's absolutely okay, you can never appeal to everyone. But the reason that DT got so much critique regarding the MSQ is because if you analyze it, you'll find out that the writers heavily violated the rules of story telling, from start to finish.

Now, do I think the writers a bad? No, I don't, or at least not THAT bad. I will explain: There are several scenes, that are very well written and could have been and excellent base for are smaller arc within the overarching story. The potential is there, the momentum just wasn't used.

At this point I will just assume, that all of the writers at CBU3 have studied the subject, or have at least the reputation to get the job in the first place, especially for such a heavily story driven game. So all of them will be at least familiar with the workings of story telling. And this is what gets me suspicious. I wanna point to a scene, that stood out for me (even tho this might be a very specific example): (Part 2)

We are talking to G'raha Tia in the gondola in living memory. He starts talking about loss, brings up ethical questions: “what would you have done, had you THIS?” I thought, this was a great start to bring up the ethics of this place and discuss them further in the process. Maybe this will even bring tention, if he disagrees with what we are about to do. Instead, the moment we step out the gondola the topic was dropped and never mentioned again. This breaks the basic rule of promise-progress-payoff. In this case, they promised the player something, but never followed up with progressing this arc in any way.

There is no way, a professional writer would've not noticed that. And even if, the editing would've fixed the mistake. It seems like they didn't have much freedom and they got clear instructions on how to handle major subjects like certain character arcs for example. There are several of those scenes. The whole story and the pacing feels all over the place and it feels not properly edited. We also have arcs that feel like something got cut out (Bakool Ja Ja – Valigarmanda arc) as well es several “big elephants” in the room (important topics that don't get addressed or even plot-holes). This also negates the argument that the writers would've needed more oversight, because basic mistakes like this shouldn't happen in the first place.

Then there was also Naoki Yoshida's comment at Fanfest (I think?) where he said (and I'm just paraphrasing here): We just put a lot of stuff together, and then we'll see what sticks and what the players like. That is NOT a good basis for an exciting story. That is actually the exact opposite.

Now if you put all of this in context, it could lead to one conclusion. And I wanna make very clear, that this is just an ASSUMPTION. I think, that (for whatever reason) there was a massive re-write of the MSQ happening, rather late in the process. Big parts got cut out, some got edited, others added. And the new team just wasn't experienced enough (and/or didn't have enough resources available) to put all the pieces back together in time, and as a consequence also could not properly edit the whole story again from scratch. I might be totally wrong, but so much points towards it.

To why Ishikawa did not step in at that point: again, just an assumption. But I think she either has the role of senior lead just on paper to keep her in the credits because of her reputation, and she is actually working on other projects, or even her experience just wasn't enough to save the project (which I find hard to believe).

So no, I don't think, the writers are bad. Or at least, I don't think they had a fair chance to proof that they are good. Of course you can always gain more experience and get better, but I don't think, replacing them would change anything, that is not the root of the problem. The problem seems to be that CBU3 just doesn't have a clear course and don't really know which direction they want to go, that they are too afraid of negative feedback (ironically) and this is the result.

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Originally Posted by Blixie

snip

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I'm not here to give my opinion. Already gave it in several threads awhile ago and the dev team doesn't seem to give 2 shits after hearing YoshiP's response to criticism, so there's no point. I'm enjoying the gameplay immensely and will be sticking around because of it. That's on me ig. Anyway, I'm only replying to remind you that DRK and SMN are both missing from your signature - you should probably update that. WAR is fun. We got minimal changes and minimal additional skills and we're just kinda happy because we're all dumb. Come be dumb with us.

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Originally Posted by Blixie

I’ve been reading in most of the DT threads here, and there are pieces of good discussion going on in numerous threads, but there are too many threads to track, too much overlap in the discussions, and far too much garbage to wade thru. I created this thread out of exhaustion and with a meager shred of hope that enough people might post organized, thoughtful feed back to make it worthwhile.

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https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards_2x.png

I have no education for creative writing. But I know when I am very bored and when a character is thrown into my face so often that I just wish the character to go away. :/

For me a lot of parts in DT sadly felt boring. It was too much "just tell, instead of show things", too often speak with 3 npc's, too often weird standing around doing nothing, and we had really hurting plotholes.

And again there is no true content beyond MSQ after the release of a whole new expansion. I know that this is as always, but that just means that it's still(!) that bad. They needed much longer than usual for DT release. We waited so long. And then we got just a medicore story and beyond that nothing 'interesting' to do.

I don't know how it really is, when thinking about SE's profit from the game. But for me personally the state of the game feels really bad.

I remember when FF11 went downhill as abyssea got released and they raised the 75 cap. This time with DT I'm getting this same feeling since the story ended with endwalker and SE unsure what to do with the story makes me worried.

Problem is there is no new mmorpg in development like when ff11 msq ended and I could at least move to ff14. Just hope the post DT patches will be good. FF11 raids and bozja/eureka content is what I'm looking forward to.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

Imagine healing a drk at 100.
Drk:"hey I popped tbn and it's gone already, my worthless mit will be up again in 30 seconds and I'll struggle on my hands and knees until then ok?"
Healer: "ohh...thanks?"

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Sounds like you've only experienced shit Dark Knights.

The good ones barely dent their health bar with rotating mits and rapid fire TBN every thirty seconds.

Of course, that requires at least putting our a 3/10 in effort instead of the -1/10 that WAR needs.

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Originally Posted by Dirwen

I remember when FF11 went downhill as abyssea got released and they raised the 75 cap. This time with DT I'm getting this same feeling since the story ended with endwalker and SE unsure what to do with the story makes me worried.

Problem is there is no new mmorpg in development like when ff11 msq ended and I could at least move to ff14. Just hope the post DT patches will be good. FF11 raids and bozja/eureka content is what I'm looking forward to.

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I think ff11 in its current state with seekers of adoulin and the release of rhapsodied of vana'diel and the voracious resurgence were pretty good expansions. I personally wouldn't consider ff11 to be dead with the release of abyssea. I personally like the current state that ff11 is in and think it's just as fun as 75 era was. I wouldn't consider ff11 to have gone downhill with abyssea as there is still a decent population and got an expansion and 2 add-ons since abyssea and still has a decent population for an old mmo and don't think ff14 will see any massive dropoffs with dawntrail or suddenly die off because one expansion was bad or dawntrail marks the beginning of the end. If the next expansion and post patches are as bad or mixed as dawntrail then I would probably worry.