What do we have to look forward to with Dawntrail?

[Iscah]

• Despite despite the fact that MSQ patches are the weakest story we've ever gotten.
• Despite the fact that the trial series have been cut and just made a part of MSQ.

I don't see why either of those things are reasons to not look forward to future content. The writing is a simple matter of knowing that different writers work on different parts of the game, and the patch content writers are almost certainly a secondary team while the more important ones are off working on the major expansion.

We've been told that Dawntrail's writer is the guy who did Shadow of Mhach, Pandæmonium and the Bard job quests, so I'm pretty confident we're in good hands.

And "trials integrated into MSQ" aren't a reason to not look forward to future content. The worst possible scenario is that we have forever lost the extra story thread provided by the independent trial questline, but we don't even know that for certain, and "smaller total amount of content to look forward to" is not the same thing as not having a reason to look forward to the new content we will get.

[VelKallor]

Despite despite the fact that MSQ patches are the weakest story we've ever gotten.

This is subjective at best and one persons opinion. Not one shared by many.

[Jeeqbit]

I don't think FFXIV was the hardest game to play, ever.

Never said that, but DRK had a lot going on and to consider in addition to the actual tanking and actual fight mechanics, compared to PLD which was totally braindead compared to it. I don't think it was even close.

To think they wanted to lobotomize DRG as well, and for what? Nothing's crazy hard or demanding on DRG. They don't even lose their BotD meter with Geirskogul anymore, the final hits of their melee combos aren't RNG based anymore so no need to adjust, there's no management of anything but a couple of buffs.

To me, DRG was perfect in Shadowbringers (still kind of similar now tbh). I would be fine with BotD still existing or RNG on the hits. Unfortunately I think 7.0 will see it become a RPR clone.

[Tetsujin]

This is subjective at best and one persons opinion. Not one shared by many.

Yeah, my thread, my PoV (as per the OP post), my opinion. I speak for myself. Opinion not shared by many my butt though, the longest going thread in the general since EW is literally questioning what the "lackluster" MSQ was... and I don't even think 6.0 was bad! Just what came after.

Never said that, but DRK had a lot going on and to consider in addition to the actual tanking and actual fight mechanics, compared to PLD which was totally braindead compared to it. I don't think it was even close.

To me, DRG was perfect in Shadowbringers (still kind of similar now tbh). I would be fine with BotD still existing or RNG on the hits. Unfortunately I think 7.0 will see it become a RPR clone.

I think if anything the other tanking jobs should've been brought up to par instead of turning DRK into a WAR clone, or PLD/WAR should have been left as the easy tank for people who prefer less intensive classes. Poor DRK can' even hold a DoT now though, it's sad. I didn't have time to answer most of your points earlier, but generally, I don't think the bar should be lowered to the point it's underground. For people who literally can't read. Devs should have foresight instead of caving in to everything, I think it's incredible that if they do act this way, they only ever seem to cave in for things which makes their life easier, very sus. Or demands for cash shop items, lol.

But yeah, players that do not read tooltips will still be bad now. They have no passion nor drive to even do the bare minimum. Why should we all be treated like 1st graders? They should not be the standard for whom the entire game is built around.

[kaynide]

I’m literally just here for story content. I don’t really care about anything else. It’s a pleasant surprise when there are new gimmicks or if there is something totally different/new to try out, but that’s just a cherry on the cake.

FFXIV for me is the equivalent of my grandma watching Jeopardy every night. There’s a comfort zone that I can zonk out to with my wife/friends. And if I want a game that challenges my “l33t gamer skillz”, or my big brain puzzle solving, or my sandbox surviving, I’ll just play that game instead.

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

My hopes is that the meta game hive mind breaks up and people learn how to have discussions without repeating and rehashing the same weak, tired talking points they have been uncritically spewing for years, but I know better. Gamers never change.

[Jirah]

Lmao nothing

New jobs maybe? The devs making the some cruddy dungeons? I dont even know the point of a expansion is when their is visibly no threat. This is the Endgame problem, games peaked and run out of threats

[Avoidy]

At this point I'm just hoping the new alliance raid is fun. If it's good I'll happily run it and enjoy myself. If it's a 24man hallway simulator, I'll take a ton of final pics of my ingame house that I struggled to get and then uninstall/unsubscribe because Dawntrail doesn't excite me, the post-EW story has been hella lackluster for me, and the gameplay isn't carrying it at all anymore.

[Igono]

Snip because eating into my word count lol

WDYM? DRK has two DoTs right now: Living Shadow + Salted Earth (heavy /s)

I definitely agree with you a lot on this. Due to the skill level of the general playerbase, I do think it was good for the longevity of the game/enjoyment of most of their subscribers to "dumb down" the playstyle of jobs across the board. Using DRK as an example, I know it was frustrating for a lot of the casual playerbase because they couldn't even function in dungeons just due to the general skill level. That being said, now that they have established this new skill floor, I'd like to see them do something similar to what they have done for the playstyle of BLM; where it's a low skill floor to understand what to do, but a high skill ceiling in terms of per fight optimization. That is, and should always be, the design goal for jobs IMO.

In addition to that, I really do think they should take a step back and look at what they have done in terms of job identity and feel in Crystalline Conflict/PvP. I have really only heard good things in regards to job identity/feel in PvP. DRK in PvP is the most DRK-y I've felt since Stormblood; I was very disappointed when I launched Shadowbringers on launch only to find out they reworked my favorite job to a WAR clone with more oGCDs. And then to further add salt into the wound, the two new classes they added in EW actually stole some of the old mechanics they removed from DRK that made it unique and fun (at least for me) among the tanks; primarily the faster GCD burst windows [RPR wraith] (old blood weapon) + an ability to change/augment other abilities [SGE] (Dark Arts). I don't think we'll ever see a return to stance dancing/the ability to augment or change mitigations/more involved tank mechanics but I'd at least like to see a return to more unique job design within roles. (Also, for any tanks missing the old feel of tanking, I'd highly recommend trying to prog DSR. It is the closest I have felt to how things used to be.)

I understand their want to homogenize so there isn't a "meta" job for each fight/tier, but the path they are going down now leads to boring gameplay with no alternative within the same role. I say this as someone that was locked out of 50%+ of party finder listings just due to my choice of DRK as a tank for most of Stormblood (until world first UCoB clear had a DRK in the party and the community's mindset started to shift). I can only speak for myself on this, but I'd much rather be "locked out" of random party finders that are ran by meta slaves and have a job that actually feels fun to play than what we have now; jobs feel same-y and uninspired but are also fairly balanced.

[Igono]

As an actual response to the main portion of this post, here is what I am looking forward to the most for Dawntrail:
- Stormblood Story / Shadowbringer Raid Ultimates
- New savage raids with interesting fight design. I think they've been testing the waters a bit with being more creative with fights like P2S and P10S.
- A secondary option in the Scouting melee role so you don't feel "trapped" on NIN
- Further improvements/support to Crystalline Conflict and PvP in general
- More Variant/Criterion dungeons + hopefully with a new and improved reward structure
- A new large-scale area similar to Eureka/Bozja (hopefully will bring back an actual relic grind with it)
- New deep dungeon (hopefully with feedback from Eureka Orthos taken into account)
- The story (With how "side-content-y" the current MSQ patch content feels, I'm excited to start a new saga and get back to our adventurer/explorer roots)
- The potential that they'll address boring job design concerns since this expansion is more of a fresh start (copium i know i know)
- Also honestly just looking forward to people actually playing the game again. Outside of the main city areas, it can feel pretty dead and I crave the initial new adventure/expansion hype

Also keep in mind, we also don't know all of the content/changes they have cooking for the new expansion yet. We only really have the super limited information they gave us at NA FanFest. We won't really know what to expect/have legitimate worries until we get the full picture and final huge reveals that will come with JP FanFest in January (and hopefully a little more hype with EU FanFest).