Players are already lowering their bar for Downtrail

[Atelier-Bagur]

at this point from what i can understand.. the community has given up on the game.. and that all it took was 1 bad expansion is kinda sad.. but these people WILL be the end of this game.. itl go back down to the lowest numbers its ever had back in ARR. and most people wont stick with it.. new people wont last long either.

now i hear 1 arguement a lot.. and I cant stand this arguement
"u cant expect a good story after 2 really good ones". if i was the lore writer.. this comment would actually tilt me. because its essentially saying "this artist can make anything good again for a long time" and thats actually offensive.. i as an artist. am not ok posting mediocre stuff that nobody likes... and i wouldnt be ok with people making up excuses for it.. i want ppl to love my work and would make it for them... so people dont realize how insulting this assumption actually is to ishikawa... and the devs..

as for practicality of it... people said EW wasnt gona beat shb.. yet it did.. theres games out there with even better stoies than EW.. and all this game needs to do is draw inspiration from those, and other older ffs stories. find what moves people, capture emotions and create beloved characters. Kingdom hearts premise was simple. 3 friends seperated on a journey to fine eachother again. crisis was the story of a man who wanted to a true hero.. some disney stories like lion king are about betrayal and loss. simple premise but the exicution is perfect and painstakingly though out. and its the effort and dedication the devs will need to use to make ANY story.. a possibilitty. so no, theres no excuse for bad writing. theres no excuse for content luls, there no excuse for "go play another game".

when yoshida talked about playing other games.. it was not meant in a way to deflect from this games problems. he was sayings "its ok to do other things, this game wont forget u.. content wont get removed.. u can allways catch up" it wasn't meant as.. stop playing this game because we dont wanna make more. never ever in any community ive ever been in.. have i ever seen this. and i went through khII-III 10 year drought...

Its amazing how you evaded and twisted every single counter argument that was thrown in this thread for this take.


You can still have a good story without having to top the previous two expansions. Thats all were expecting, a good written story. But its obviously not going to have the same weight or impact as Shb and EW. Its ridiculous to even expect that.

[Noumenon]

You should never be hyped about a game in the first place

That is truly a sad position to take. Sad not as in you, but sad as in the state of gaming is such that that is the logical position to hold.

My point isn't that that's illogical or unreasonable, or otherwise.

My point is that, in taking that position, it means that you don't expect much good at all.

People should be hyped about the story of the new expansion. And yet, everyone is telling each other to temper their expectations.

It means no one is expecting anything groundbreaking from FF14 in 2023. Is that reasonable, sure. Is that sad, yes.

[IvoryHawk]

literally what Renalt said, why would i hype something up to be disappointed, i expect the same formula they've fed to us from expansion to expansion, just this time we'll be getting another open zoned area, untill they openly say or SHOW that they're fixing aspects people are clearly unhappy with, why should i have my expectations high? i find it weird to be hyped over stuff we LITERALLY know nothing about, at that point it's just shilling.

[caffe_macchiato]

Look man, this isn’t World of Warcraft. It’s just FFXIV. What do you expect, the world’s most popular MMO? Square Enix isn’t like Blizzard. It’s a smaller company. They can’t do much. Yes, FFXIV is vastly overpriced for what it is. It’s nowhere near the same level of intricacy as most other MMOs. It’s a much smaller project. When ARR came out in 2013, all SE wanted to do was save their YoY earnings projection. It’s not a big game.

People were deluded into thinking it was. They said this was the “WoW-killer” and the “next big thing”. Wrong! It never was! It’s a side game. It can never replace WoW or any other multiplayer game. It can never be someone’s “main game”. FFXIV is something you play with your friends right after a patch drop before moving on to something else. It will never, ever compete with any other game in your life, not even the free ones. And you all like it that way.

Most people here agree with me on this, which is why you want to lower expectations.

[lennit]

i'm not disappointed at all. all i know about it is a small trailer , there still like a year away for square to surprised us. i will loss my mind when i'm stuck in a ridiculous login queue again

[Raven2014]

Eh, saying it's a new arc doesn't mean the story has to be slow. While 2.0 was a typical MMO experience, near the end it went from 0 to 60 like ... REAL fast, which then following HW. I think SB is when the story slowed down a bit, then picking it up again with ShB. Things peak out early with EndWalker then dive and flat out for the supposed "taking a breather".

Also, it's fairly obvious they're spending a lot of time to build up cross realm traveling in the lore, so now the threat instead of being on the source, it can be on the shards instead, similar to how it was with the first. Remember our adventure in ShD more or less came out of nowhere with very little build up and forwarn, but they still managed to put together some really good setting, characters, and overall story. Sure, it has the Ascian and Emersech, but remember the 13th also a ton of lore behind it already, so as a starting point it may be even better.


Basically, my point is there is no reason for the next expansion not to be as interesting as ShB, at least storywise. Regardless of which side of the fence you might be, I think SE and Yoshi realize a lot of people are not exactly thrill about a 2 years vacation, so it'll be foolish of them to have another "R&R" expansion. Also in his own words, post MSQ for EW is not only a vacation, but also the introduction for the next story arc. Which I think the 13th and the pantheon raid are about, also can't help but notice they're putting an emphasis on the restoration of the Student of Basion who specialize in find new and weird things. In another word, we already have our warm up and set up for the next expansion right now, so expect to hit the ground running in the actual expansion itself.

[Payadopa]

That is truly a sad position to take. Sad not as in you, but sad as in the state of gaming is such that that is the logical position to hold.

My point isn't that that's illogical or unreasonable, or otherwise.

My point is that, in taking that position, it means that you don't expect much good at all.

People should be hyped about the story of the new expansion. And yet, everyone is telling each other to temper their expectations.

It means no one is expecting anything groundbreaking from FF14 in 2023. Is that reasonable, sure. Is that sad, yes.

That's only part of it.
Hype, first off, is hard to meet. You expect a fantasy only to be disappointed by the reality. By being positively optimistic and then getting a good game you get more out of it. It's common sense, really. It's like a good horror movie that never really shows you the monster completely because your imagination will always be better than the actual scare, if that makes sense.

And hype nowadays is this perverted thing that's just being generated for PR reasons to sell preorders. The fact that some people in this thread seem to interpret the absence of hype as something negative when it's just normal to wait and see what the *actual* product looks like just shows you how normalised this thinking has become. Buy product and then get excited for next product.

[Payadopa]

im gone be real with ppl like you. if this game fails to deliver a good story in 7.0. its going to die and no amount of excuses making or justifying it will matter. there aree better games out there. and if this game wants to survive its gona have to.. im already gona be cancling my sub when ff7R drops in feb. and if dawntrail doesn't improve. i wont be comming back till 7.5 and 8.5 respectivley

People like me, huh? Again, it's just how stories work.
Did Endwalker start with Meteion trying to destroy the universe? No.
Did ARR start with a certain lala getting poisoned? No. Was Ala Mhigo liberated at the end or the beginning of SB? You see what I'm getting at? All these scenarios have in common that they needed build-up to make what was happening meaningful in context. Why do you think is that? I'm really not sure what people are expecting from the very first trailer.

By the same token do I not understand people who are... uh... distraught by EW having ended a big story arc. That's literally what happens in every book, movie, video game or play with a story that has ever existed. If people react so strongly then I'd question if they ever read a book before.

That being said, I'm happy we are going back from saving the actual universe to something more grounded. It's getting kinda silly at this point. I like Nihilism as much as the next WoL but I think one expansion is enough for now. But that's just me.

[SieyaM]

We are only kind of starting over, the same characters that have had their 10 year arcs are coming along and with them all the baggage and history that we have with them. So no this is not a square one new story, this is a new story with the same cast as we've had with some new ones sprinkled in. It is also not going to change anything significant in gameplay either so it is also not all that new of an adventure when you're bringing along the same abilities you've had all along as well. It's going to be another few zones with their own story that may or may not continue on past the Dawntrail expansion, I really doubt we are going to learn anything incredibly revolutionary, after all they set it up so everything that ever happens in this world anywhere is the result of the ancient's work before the sundering since they created everything anyway.

[Atelier-Bagur]

People like me, huh? Again, it's just how stories work.
Did Endwalker start with Meteion trying to destroy the universe? No.
Did ARR start with a certain lala getting poisoned? No. Was Ala Mhigo liberated at the end or the beginning of SB? You see what I'm getting at? All these scenarios have in common that they needed build-up to make what was happening meaningful in context. Why do you think is that? I'm really not sure what people are expecting from the very first trailer.

By the same token do I not understand people who are... uh... distraught by EW having ended a big story arc. That's literally what happens in every book, movie, video game or play with a story that has ever existed. If people react so strongly then I'd question if they ever read a book before.

That being said, I'm happy we are going back from saving the actual universe to something more grounded. It's getting kinda silly at this point. I like Nihilism as much as the next WoL but I think one expansion is enough for now. But that's just me.

No you see, we just need game stories where it just starts at the climax. No time for build up or character development or good pacing, the player arent babies, they can figure all the context and weight behind what happens and not be pleased- oh wait this is what WoW does with the new player experience and everybody thinks its bad.