Live Letter Thoughts

[LisSquid]

Having gone the entire MSQ start to end 2 or 3 times?...no.

The MSQ where you have to be on a battle job and do dungeons, kill mobs, enter solo instances to defeat enemies and save allies, kill gods in trials.. that MSQ?

[VelKallor]

The MSQ where you have to be on a battle job and do dungeons, kill mobs, enter solo instances to defeat enemies and save allies, kill gods in trials.. that MSQ?

And a lot of non combat activity.

[LisSquid]

And a lot of non combat activity.

So is waiting in PF for my savage que, but that doesn't stop it from being combat content.

[aveyond-dreams]

People really calling 10 minute yellow quests content lmao

Indeed. While many of us appreciate well done story text, that really is all it is. Story alone does not make someone subscribe for longer than it takes to complete it, that's where content plays a role. Battle content such as Variant/Criterion dungeons should have released with 6.2 rather than being scheduled for 6.25, until then the only current content is PVP and once-a-week grinds. It just isn't comparable to the wealth of things to do when a Deep Dungeon or Exploratory Zone releases. Island Sanctuary, especially given the state it's in, could have used more time to polish and refine and in its place push forward battle content.

Story and the overall writing direction has many players at the point of a crossroads. The over-emphasis on humor and slice of life, coupled with a lack of nuance in approaching the themes of grief and loss has not been received well by a significant amount of players whose ranks only seem to grow as time goes on. "Forge ahead" just isn't how everyone deals with these things, but the heavy-handedness with which the message is imparted can led to an uncomfortable experience for these players when it is delivered by the Scions, now thankfully mostly out of the way, who did not experience many lasting consequences as a result of their actions in the story.

The potential "fixing" of the Void too early on (the trailer already showed dawn breaking in the 13th) would lead to the loss of a whole dark fantasy world in favor of...we don't know. The attitude adopted by the reaper who joins us also has to be considered, as it would be a bit difficult to believe that someone like her has as much goodwill and belief in Hydaelyn as some of the main cast ended up with despite having previously been suspicious of her. It would be more logical for her to have some amount of scorn towards the goddess that effectively abandoned her world in order to bring the WoL's description of the future to fruition.

Pandaemonium is another issue, as upon further analysis it appears we actually did see all 4 fights with the 4th seemingly being Lahabrea, shattering his sigil which was recently described as a "power limiter" so he could face us at full strength. This could imply his demise, and with it no clear path and a multitude of potential inconsistencies arising from Eric becoming our Lahabrea. The woman we fight is very likely Athena, revived by some strange means in Lahabrea's struggle with grief. It is one thing to decide that character will meet his end from the start, but if on the way there the story treats him as a caricature instead of a realistic, dynamic human being then that will severely hurt many player's perception of the character. I do not want to see him be preached to for not "forging ahead" and instead reacting to his grief in a more long lasting way. Some people are just like that, and although we can try to help them it's their choice as to how much of the person they lost they want to carry with them.

The depiction of mourning in general was handled much better in the past despite its rarity in the MSQ. Lord Edmont was clearly beside himself when Haurchefaunt died, and we certainly weren't there to be inappropriately cheery or positive in the face of his fresh grief. Endwalker's "forge ahead" message appears to suggest that we shouldn't react that way, and coupled with the clash between the ideas of reincarnation against permanent and lasting death it all makes for a very unusual situation. With the way in which Ancients were painted for not subscribing to that theme, despite them having every reason not to, it is understandable why some players are unwilling to sit through a repetition of that sort of story.

Despite the amount of research that seems to be going on behind the scenes, it does appear that not enough perspectives were considered when it came to the way in which loss and mourning are viewed by people. "Forge ahead" is just not the lived reality for many.

[Tlamila]

Please, on the very off chance that the Dev team sees this comment I beg you to please consider changing this in the future to make it more accessible to those of us who can't schedule 8 man groups for savage raids.

Thing is, there's two difficulties of criterio dungeons. While he called the first normal and the second savage, it seems the normal ones will be savage difficulty, while the savage more like ultimate difficulty. The naming is very confusing, but under those premises it makes sense that the second will require savage gear, as all ultimate content does.
The other mode is savage difficulty and maybe even harder, since you gotta kill all the bosses in a single run and without much chance of prog, plus with very limited resses and trash also being dangerous. Yoshi said, compared to current savage fights, the first boss is like 1.5, the second like 3 and the third like 4, in terms of difficulty, so it's gonna be super spicy.

I'm like you, I wanna do savage but I can't think of committing my time to other 7 people, it's too many, so I'm excited for 4men savage content.

My only let down is I thought the difficultes would equal extreme and savage, rather than directly savage and ultimate, but I know people are happy to have such difficult content too so it's ok.

[Tlamila]

For my part, live letter wise:

I already was not convinced about island sanctuary, but waht we've seen made me completely uninterested. the whole thing looks very mobile game, mechanics-wise, and you don't even actually get to use your DoH/DoL classes, or craft stuff yourself. Eh. Maybe nice to take pictures in and stuff? I'm just sad the mandragora mount is tied to it cause it looks so cute.

Excited about Variant and Criterion. The rodent mount is like the best mount ever and I want it badly, though I've heard diffreent translations on how to get it so I'confused. Some said criterion, some said variant for completing all stories in it.
I don't like any of the new gear they've shown, but what seems to be the relics looks super cool so rip to my idea of skipping relics this time or only doing my main classes.

Kinda worried about the crit changes, cause unless they adjust potencies to it it will buff WAR so much and leave PLD in the dust too far behind the other tanks.

Story and raids are wathever, I guess we'll see. Also meh about another mount that miniaturizes you, but we'll see. ill have to rerun wassname dungeon in explorer mode to see the pre-story of Omicrons.
Shocked they said nothing about the new trial, not the trial itself but the eventual secondary questchain it's tied to? It can't be Tataru's, right?

Most exciting change is the one to the glamour dresser of course.

[Alleo]

I remember back in my day when this thread was about a live letter. Then all the youngin's came in and made it a SAM change thread.

It fits with the liveletter itself. I watched with Youtube and there was one person who constantly went on about the samurai skill. So its not a surprise seeing this happening here too.

About the live letter itself:

I am sorry Adult Vritra but I have no time for the void. Gonna tame animals and harvest stuff. I might go out to do the daily Omekron quests because those look awesome too.

Also cant wait to see the dance number.

So I loved it and wished that the patch was out next week because I cant wait to play it.

[Lustre]

Having gone the entire MSQ start to end 2 or 3 times?...no. There is a huge percentage of non combat MSQ...ALL the crafter / gatherer content is not combat related at all, there are many tribes questlines that arent combat either.



Many of those are chain quests, that last a lot longer than 10 minutes.

Yeah, maybe in a years time when the entire chain is complete. For now and the foreseeable they're still 10 minute yellow quests. Tataru's grand adventure aka, talk to a couple NPCs, port to sharlayan, done. See you in 4-5 months for the next 10 minute adventure.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Yeah, maybe in a years time when the entire chain is complete. For now and the foreseeable they're still 10 minute yellow quests. Tataru's grand adventure aka, talk to a couple NPCs, port to sharlayan, done. See you in 4-5 months for the next 10 minute adventure.

Back in ARR, they made the patches full-length quest chains. Now it's one of the most widely reviled parts of playing through the MSQ, even after being trimmed down. So, blame the player base for it.

[aveyond-dreams]

Back in ARR, they made the patches full-length quest chains. Now it's one of the most widely reviled parts of playing through the MSQ, even after being trimmed down. So, blame the player base for it.

Hmm maybe we should put more fun and engaging battle content in the MSQ to improve the player experience rather than leaning too much into the visual novel sort of gameplay.