Is 7.2 the last patch to even save Dawntrail at this point?(SPOILERS AHOY)

7.0 was a disaster. 7.1 was a continuation of that. Will 7.2 be any different? Because right now 7.16(A SMALL PATCH!) has been a complete disaster. Untranslated lines. Story writing being thrown down the drain as if it's written by ChatGPT. How hard is it to ask for a good story? I didn't mind comedic villains being the thing, but I'm not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel - instead I'm seeing a dead end. I might not want to jump ship yet, but I honestly think they only have one chance.

7.2 has to be a FIX to everything that has gone wrong since 7.0 started, since let's be real: people smack Stormblood around because of its pacing, and 7.0 isn't any better - it's worse. However, Stormblood picked up quite a good deal in its Post-Patch quests. This lead to an interesting story for Yotsuyu and everyone's favorite Samurai Gosetsu; yet, there are things that I feel are mainly set-up currently from 7.1's story, and if I hit it beat for beat in 7.2 I'm going to kick myself since this is going into speculation territory.

We have 2 Sphenes. 1 Sphene is akin to DeathGPT, the other is...we don't know! We assume alive, but they may very well be the other part of the personality that Sphene had - the good one. This leads to a lot of questions as to what they're trying to write about, as originally Living Memory was about 'letting go' so to speak with how we shut down all these attractions. It was a literal theme park we turned into a dull world! We got some exposition about Gulool Ja's origins, as well as Koana's - but that's mainly backstory that we should've gotten in 7.0, if I'll be frank.

NEO Regulators make me question whether we're actually going to see Living Memory become active again - as well as have yet another threat to deal with to the Source since last time we pulled the plug, we took our damn time while DeathGPT was processing the end of all living things. This time, they need to write Bad Sphene in a way that can actually make a differential between the two meaningful - because what's the point if we get the same 'Nice Sphene' act we got when we first arrived in Alexandria, and the 'Mean Sphene' act we got after we uncovered Otis? There has to be a motive behind this split to actually make sense, otherwise they're repeating some of the issues they had in post-patch Endwalker after 6.2(and don't get me started on Ysh'tola...)

Either way, the raid content is probably going to distract us for at least a few months before we get 7.25, Shade's Triangle - which, they need to not botch if things are not well-received on the writing end for the next raid tier(which has been excellent this first tier mind). They have to set their story straight irregardless since 7.2 will more than likely give us a new trial to deal with in MSQ(if not, then I will be sorely disappointed unless it's a return to Side Quest).

There's only so long we can do the same song and dance, so the dev team needs to INNOVATE.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

7.2 has to be a FIX to everything that has gone wrong since 7.0 /B]

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GGWP cuz thats not gonna happen.

oh my god, what if they attempt to retcon the whole "erase all the memories in Living Memory" because most players had some serious issues with the writing in that zone, and instead of dealing with the consequences of that happening and/or trying to move on to something else so we can just forget this whole Dawntrail thing ever happened like a bad dream, they instead go, "Look, it's okay, we found a way to restore Sphene all the memories! Hooray! Everyone is happy!"

It sounds outlandish, but everything about late Endwalker and Dawntrail compared to what came before has been pretty outlandish in how stupid things have gotten, so...

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Originally Posted by Ath192

GGWP cuz thats not gonna happen.

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Thanks for taking out of context - definitely could do with more I don't know; constructive discussion?

I'm probably going to tune out 7.2 regardless. As soon as it starts going back into "Talk to Wuk Lamat" constantly like 7.0 and 7.1 I'm just zoning out and going on autopilot.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Thanks for taking out of context - definitely could do with more I don't know; constructive discussion?

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There isn't much to discuss. The damage has been done, faith in CS3 is gone, and Yoshida's still acting as if everything's fine while the majority of the money made by XIV goes to flop after flop. Fixing things would require them to acknowledge that there is a problem.

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

oh my god, what if they attempt to retcon the whole "erase all the memories in Living Memory" because most players had some serious issues with the writing in that zone, and instead of dealing with the consequences of that happening and/or trying to move on to something else so we can just forget this whole Dawntrail thing ever happened like a bad dream, they instead go, "Look, it's okay, we found a way to restore Sphene all the memories! Hooray! Everyone is happy!"

It sounds outlandish, but everything about late Endwalker and Dawntrail compared to what came before has been pretty outlandish in how stupid things have gotten, so...

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The big thing that grated me a lot was their focus on NOSTALGIA. They ripped XIV a new one in Post-Patch Endwalker with that, and it's basically "insert Trial Series Story here" without any build-up for Dawntrail(mind, that build-up for DT was A SINGULAR PATCH). Also, the bar's in the f***ing ground. I don't know how much more there is to ask at this point because if they go below that, then the game's going to die harder than WoW's BFA did when they screwed up big time.

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

oh my god, what if they attempt to retcon the whole "erase all the memories in Living Memory" because most players had some serious issues with the writing in that zone, and instead of dealing with the consequences of that happening and/or trying to move on to something else so we can just forget this whole Dawntrail thing ever happened like a bad dream, they instead go, "Look, it's okay, we found a way to restore Sphene all the memories! Hooray! Everyone is happy!"

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After the catastrophe of Sphene's failure to protect and nurture the Living Memory, the peacekeepers of Everkeep analyze the data, update their software and we learn that the hive is in fact protected by a mastermind firewall. All our efforts go to waste. They play a backup file, corrupt the Alexandrians with a brain virus turning them into high tech zombie soldiers, restore the Endless and since the barrier is broken, start to suck the aether out of Tural. The threat of an actual apocalypse ruins your taste for taccos. Citizens live in terror. There is no more sweet talk with Spheeeeeeene (Listen to me!) to fix this. Only the united alliances of Garlemald, Sharlayan, Eorzea and Othard can save the star from another calamity. But then, another developed society steps out the shadows and threatens to drop a nuclear bomb. Wuk Lamat breaks down realizing that her nativity almost killed everyone and feels finally actually humbled by her own shortcomings.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

There isn't much to discuss. The damage has been done, faith in CS3 is gone, and Yoshida's still acting as if everything's fine while the majority of the money made by XIV goes to flop after flop. Fixing things would require them to acknowledge that there is a problem.

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Yoshida probably is following corporate interests, I won't lie - especially since their CEOs had an NFT obsession which the Gaming Market denied harshly. However, I've sat for a lot of the 'wait and see' crowd. I'm more speculating how much further they can screw this up because I'm almost certain that it can go into the ground if they're going to pull another Post-Patch EW on us.

for me overall DT was good.

Classes- ok
fights - OK
MSQ- meh. repetitive and predictable and let me guess.. ASCIANS!!

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

for me overall DT was good.

Classes- ok
fights - OK
MSQ- meh. repetitive and predictable and let me guess.. ASCIANS!!

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How does ok+OK+meh. equal good?

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

for me overall DT was good.

Classes- ok
fights - OK
MSQ- meh. repetitive and predictable and let me guess.. ASCIANS!!

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...what? Did you even play Dawntrail? The Ascians had nothing to do with anything in the MSQ.

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Originally Posted by yesnt

How does ok+OK+meh. equal good?

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easy.

Classes 9/10, Fights 10/10, Msq 6.5/10. Final= 8.5

Meh doesn't mean 0 and okay doesn't mean 5.

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

...what? Did you even play Dawntrail? The Ascians had nothing to do with anything in the MSQ.

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Oh really? We shall have this conversation again soon enough..

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

Oh really? We shall have this conversation soon..

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They haven't been present in the MSQ since 6.0. If they show up in the future, fine, but you made it sound like part of why DT's story was so boring and predictable was because of the Ascians showing up, when that isn't the case. We haven't seen them in the story for three years now.

I'm not expecting anything out of this writing team. Dawntrail is over writing-wise, it can't be salvaged. Best thing they can do is take a knee and start writing on 8.0, just wrap up and make the rest of Dawntrail as inoffensive to worldbuilding and lore as possible.

But let's complete the bingo card of what they COULD do to ruin it.

- Include Ascians and spam Emetts music at you and flashbacks for nostalgia brownies, maybe flashback to Emett or Venat's face to really drive it in.
- Resurrect the "good sphene" AI-part. Instead of the actual body in stasis-Sphene I hope they are going for.
- Make Wuk Lamat a scion
- Mention Dynamis ever again and shoehorn it back into being the deus ex machina travesty it is for the writers
- Resurrect all the "memories" in the last zone, in some asspull "happy ending for all" just like how they resurrected the dead planets population to have a coffeeshop in Ultima Thule in the beast tribe quests, sullying anykind of drama from the planets destroying themselves in the induced despair by Meteion.
- PLAY SMILE ever again
- Make any Scion call Wuk Lamat "Lamateeeee" again, as if she's their family.

The content drought is extremely concerning considering this is not only a live service game but one of the only SUBBED games still operating

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

Oh really? We shall have this conversation again soon enough..

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He has a point. Ascians were by no means even INVOLVED with Dawntrail whatsoever. The only thing that we have is just Azem's Relic I assumed and we haven't even been explained to what it does yet other than travel between shards - WHICH WE STILL DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Thanks for taking out of context - definitely could do with more I don't know; constructive discussion?

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I thought the context was that 7.0 sucked and you wanted 7.2 to be a fix to everything that went wrong. In which case I told you it isn't happening. Let me know if I got the context wrong though.

Now if you're upset because I told you something you didn't want to hear, then that's different. But Instead of getting offended at me and telling me I'm the one that doesn't understand you should say something more accurate.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

I thought the context was that 7.0 sucked and you wanted 7.2 to be a fix to everything that went wrong. In which case I told you it isn't happening. Let me know if I got the context wrong though.

Now if you're upset because I told you something you didn't want to hear, then that's different. But Instead of getting offended at me and telling me I'm the one that doesn't understand you should say something more accurate.

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7.2 being a fix for the story. I could give f all about the other stuff since we all know that's set in stone because of the Battle Team's blundering. The only thing I was a little annoyed at was how some people on the forum tend to s***post like it's Reddit, but most threads I want to at least start with some constructive discussion because majority of the time people are going to stare at the first page looking at those responses.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

But let's complete the bingo card of what they COULD do to ruin it.

- Include Ascians and spam Emetts music at you and flashbacks for nostalgia brownies, maybe flashback to Emett or Venat's face to really drive it in.

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I ADORE the Ancients and the Ascians and even I would be pissed if they pulled some crap like that. It would be rubbing salt in the wound at this point.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

7.2 being a fix for the story. I could give f all about the other stuff since we all know that's set in stone because of the Battle Team's blundering. The only thing I was a little annoyed at was how some people on the forum tend to s***post like it's Reddit, but most threads I want to at least start with some constructive discussion because majority of the time people are going to stare at the first page looking at those responses.

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I don't know what you could do to fix the story except kill those two clowns. Their personality is set in stone by now and they are so bad I don't even want to see them grow out of it. Koana should've gotten killed by the dinosaur and the resurrected Sphene should have appeared to Wuk Lamat at night and stabbed her. THAT would have given me hope.

But it's not going to happen. We are talking about a world where a child, Alphinaud, has a disproportionate global influence because he uses you as his weapon. This is akin to Greta Thunberg having real policy-writing power across all G7 nations instead of being a poster child for climate change.

There is no hope. Gameplay on the other hand, maybe.

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

They haven't been present in the MSQ since 6.0. If they show up in the future, fine, but you made it sound like part of why DT's story was so boring and predictable was because of the Ascians showing up, when that isn't the case. We haven't seen them in the story for three years now.

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On the surface, no... but........... did we find out what happened to all of them and what their mission was?

now an honest question have you been paying attention to the story overall at all and how they operated? Did you even remember how Hades masterminded everything?

Valid for @HyperiusUltima as well. So short sighted..

Technically 7.5 is the last patch to save Dawntrail. As that is for when you will have the people who weren't sticking around for most of the expansion potentially coming back and doing content. As at least for those players who only played 7.0, they have five whole large patches of content worth of stuff saved up by comparison.

i SWEAR if the Sol 9 Alexandrians get mind controlled and then find out and are like "Hey... The rulers changed our memories to be subservient! :V" and they rise up and ditch their regulators JUST LIKE THAT......I dunno if i'd be able to get behind any story after that lol

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Yoshida probably is following corporate interests, I won't lie - especially since their CEOs had an NFT obsession which the Gaming Market denied harshly. However, I've sat for a lot of the 'wait and see' crowd. I'm more speculating how much further they can screw this up because I'm almost certain that it can go into the ground if they're going to pull another Post-Patch EW on us.

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Following corporate interests is his job. That's the very nature of it. Corporate interests is to make a lot of money. Find that balance between high quality content and ways to keep the player subscribed. Sometimes corporate interests and player satisfaction line up. If it were to lower profits to give us a better experience, they'll go with higher profits every time. He's a businessman first.

I've been fine with the story myself. But people are, of course, entitled to their opinions as well. My large FC seems more active now (mid major patch cycle) than I think we were in the 7.1-7.2 timeframe for EW. That's not to say that's how everyone else sees it.

for me, yes. Its the last straw before i give up for good with this Xpac. with MHW on the horizon and something resembling fun gameplay. and with Dt continue to set fire to the lorebooks and make a fool of everything i loved about my WOL.. i cannot endure it anymore. I have made an agreement with my boyfriend that if 7.2 does not deliver a good msq i will stop playing until the very tail end of 7.55 when i will have 2 years of content to do.

Please.. SE.. i don't want to do this.

I wonder if the devs will try to expedite the release of the next grind zone or beastmaster to try to salvage customer interest.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

for me, yes. Its the last straw before i give up for good with this Xpac. with MHW on the horizon and something resembling fun gameplay. and with Dt continue to set fire to the lorebooks and make a fool of everything i loved about my WOL.. i cannot endure it anymore. I have made an agreement with my boyfriend that if 7.2 does not deliver a good msq i will stop playing until the very tail end of 7.55 when i will have 2 years of content to do.

Please.. SE.. i don't want to do this.

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Yeah, I'm waiting out 7.2 as well. My subscription is set to expire in April. I expect to let it unless 7.2 offers me content I'm satisfied in. I haven't unsubbed since the gap between 1.23 and 2.0 but I'm not having fun anymore. The deficit of content is apparent. I'm not gonna continue paying them more money for less to do, Legacy account be damned.

We probably still have two more months until 7.2, huh? That's wild. How's anyone okay with this patch structure?

I think they have to be willing to recognize the flaws of the game in order to salvage it, and as far as I can tell, they still aren't willing to do that. My FCs on multiple characters/servers are mostly dead these days because everyone is bored. The MSQ is not good, the classes keep getting dumbed down and homogenized, there is a distinct lack of content to keep people busy other than Ultimates/Savage, and even those get boring. They need to speed up the patch cycle with more content - rework the jobs so they're fun and not clones of each other - and get better writers for the story.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

for me overall
Classes- ok

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Oo
Healers and Ranged Physical, still screwed up and complety forgotten.
half of the magical screwed up or completly forgotten.
1 melee screwed up, 1 made braindead at 7.0, another one one patch later and another one 3 patch later.
Tank are never been this OP
1 job just completly OP.

So hmmm... Where is jobs ok?
DT is the worse we ever got jobs wise.

Despite promises made to make the jobs and encounters better, nothing has changed last patch and in fact, more jobs got butchered down (like DRG), showing that the devs are dead set continuing to drive into the same wall until collision occurs.

Therefore I feel justified in my expectation that Shade's Triangle is gonna be a handful of areas functioning like normal map areas with boring fates to farm and tedious, bland mobs to grind with little to no gameplay behind, in order to finally access a potentially good instance or two once players reach max level, but most of the gameplay otherwise will ultimately go back to farming fates. Oh and we'll maybe get Critical Engagements where it's some variation of a previous boss regurgitating the same mechanics in the middle of a circular arena. Please look forward to it.

I mean they refuse to reinvest into the game, instead of dealing with known security issues they put out C&Ds and ask people with poor character not to do poor character people stuffs.

Instead of adding housing or instancing it they keep limited housing and demolition so peps that own those homes will stay subbed.

Instead of fixing the glamour system they keep all the glams on one chara so you will have to spend extra time to grind in game or go to mog station and buy the outfits and hairs multiple times if you really want the glams.

instead of making a fun battle system they dumb down the existing classes to appease people that are not good with remotes, to help the balance of the 800 people that will clear ultimate raids and to give flavor to the new classes. why doesn't Drk have mp regen why can't war spam fell cleave as much as they have skill speed why does war have as much health as the other tanks? it used to have way more than drk and pld!!

back to the remotes we already have a good way of fixing button bloat look at how pvp stacks buttons that could easily be an option for controller plyers with limited hotbar space. we play video games to be entertained and have fun.

The director knew that reception to the xpack would be mixed why would you sign off on something you know won't be well received? They're just not hungry like they were back in 2.0 back in SHB.

getting to a point where I'm questioning if the homes are even worth keeping... CBU3 is getting lazy. 5 months between updates with little to no content in the updates and sub mid level writing 5 months is 70 usd the price to value is pretty low...

You can't put out poor product and expect to keep collecting a paycheck...

In terms of story, I don't have much hope cuz 7.1 proves that DT story, while the ideas are okay, has serious problem with execution. I was fine with 7.0 but still admitted there were plenty of hiccup. But 7.1 story blew my mind about how bad the execution is (have to watch a kid listening to his mom simping his Dad, have to watch the cringe calf-protection scene). That couples with a single very short Hildabrand quest, a forgettable society questline, and the final quest of badly-executed humor-fueled Role quests with very lacking of QA (some Japanese text still remains). I don't think 7.2 or 7.3 will be able to fix anything if the story execution continues to be this bad.


Content-wise, I think 7.2 will be serviceable for a while. The continuation of a 8-man raid that proves to be engaging both combat and story. Cosmic exploration for crafters/gathers. Field Operation content for relic grind. Maybe the first Variant dungeon. It would be enough to keep grindaholic to be busy for a while.



So yeah, 7.2 may have the story dies, but its content will keep players around.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

easy.

Classes 9/10, Fights 10/10, Msq 6.5/10. Final= 8.5

Meh doesn't mean 0 and okay doesn't mean 5.

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Fights where partner stacks can be lived solo by dps/healers easily on day 1 objectively makes the fights not a 10/10. The pictomancer balance issue objectively makes classes nowhere near a 9/10.

you guys are really out of your mind if you think that SE is gonna change something in small patches

They barely do something for an expansion release

I stopped caring about Dawntrail awhile ago. I’m just waiting to be able to buy a Story Skip and forget I ever wasted the couple hours I did it on (and that’s with skipping cutscenes).

Nothing can save this hot garbage pile xpac.

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

oh my god, what if they attempt to retcon the whole "erase all the memories in Living Memory" because most players had some serious issues with the writing in that zone, and instead of dealing with the consequences of that happening and/or trying to move on to something else so we can just forget this whole Dawntrail thing ever happened like a bad dream, they instead go, "Look, it's okay, we found a way to restore Sphene all the memories! Hooray! Everyone is happy!"

It sounds outlandish, but everything about late Endwalker and Dawntrail compared to what came before has been pretty outlandish in how stupid things have gotten, so...

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While I think we need to restore that map cause it was one of the very vew interesting places I do think there need to be consequences.
Cause what we did was so un-WoL and un-Scions due to the author wanting to hamer forward his bad story.

However that means acknowledging that it was a mistake and dumb as it had not yielded any results in regards to dealing with Sphene.
Cause we should have ways to solving the issue or alternatives as WoL and our Archon Scion friends.

There's the issue tho. That idea was, as everything in DT, Wuk Lamat's and we all know the writer is allergic letting her play second fiddle or have flaws.
So by that aloone I think they'll either ignore the zone or just snap it back and everything will be a-okay in Disneyland that is DT yet again.

Seriously this writer is so terrible.

Dont really care for 7.2

There is no saving this MSQ. At this point I am just waiting for 7.25 for the exploration content to have a reason to not cancel my sub.