Unenthused About Dawntrail

[magtuired]

I did not like the end of Endwalker and disliked most of the patches so I have very low expectations for the story, which was why I started playing in the first place. I'm sticking around for femhroth and also enjoying content with my FC.

[Mecia]

What Nizzi said basically but im still playing because at the core i like how XIV plays. Cant wait for them to buff every other job again when Viper/Picto releases busted.

[Carin-Eri]

Mixed feelings, personally. I'll admit I'm a little hyped - but the problem is I don't exactly know what it is I'm supposed to be looking forward to. We've seen new jobs, new maps, new locations and the MSQ left us with some breadcrumbs pertaining to why we need to go to Tural, but at this point in time we have almost no idea what to expect.

On the other hand, I don't think it's terribly 'fair' to judge it on what little we know so far - because that's the point. This is new territory. Every previous expansion, even ARR, had the story that it's predecessor told to fall back on - a story that, obviously, culminated with 'Endwalker'.

I mean, forget the pros and cons of the Endwalker MSQ for a moment - the 'Footfalls' cinematic was incredible; I've watched countless reaction videos both from when the cinematic was new to recent and its clear that the hype was real (it left some of the streamers in tears). But how do you generate that sort of hype when the MSQ is taking a 'clean slate' approach and can't rely on the events that came before to be the foundation of the story they're telling?

Anyway - keeping an open mind myself. Am mildly hyped, as am curious to see how the story develops now that it doesn't have a 'Last time in FFXIV' type crutch to lean on.

[Malthir]

Personally I think they need to kill most the scions they have started to ruin the story and over shadow the WoL. The game was better when they were less a focal point and some of them dying off gave the story an edge.

[Tethan]

Any hype I had (and it wasn't much) turned to dread at the reveal of the Benchmark. Never mind the non consensual makeovers to characters, the direction the graphics update is taking is making me seriously question the competence at CBU3. Mixing high realism skin textures with the current style of face and hair is sending us right to the Uncanny Valley. The lack of bounce light and proper ambient occlusion in a demo released to the public is frankly shocking. I always associated SE with, if nothing else, competent graphics for the time and a strong sense of artistic vision. This is not present in the current state.

And DT wasn't looking good to start with; no story hook I care about. No interesting new features. Post EW story felt like it was treading water. Party finder is still dead on Chaos after DC travel was added, no fix in sight for that. So it will be same old, same old with less cohesive visuals, worse QoL for group play on many DCs (if you are on the wrong DC you are a second class citizen), don't care for Viper or Picto. Between all that and my character getting a very unflattering nosejob I CANNOT undo, what reason do I have to play? Why should I give my money to SE? I don't owe them anything.

[Luluna]

I have played years and I was lucky because I was here for every expansion and had no spoilers. I came from 1.0 to now and it was always the story that kept me. I love the scions but it is because I saw them in 1.0 so I am not too fussed on some of the later additions. I enjoyed Zero as a character but It was not all that. I loved Shadowbringers and Endwalker was the end of the story and it was amazing.

The new story I am not too hyped for, it is reminding me of Stormblood where we are led to different places. I enjoyed Stormblood but it was not as amazing as the later ones. I usually play for the story and lately been bored so just doing my island here and there.

I am hoping Dawntrail can add some excitement back and at least I will have content to do. I hope it is good and leads us to another amazing story and if it is anything they get right it is the story ^o^

[WaxSw]

It all depends on the media tour for me. If they fix the job design and I see a good evolution of healers (instead of adding 2 heals and call it a day) I will probably get really hyped buy until then I'm in the meh camp.

I'm not denying that there are reasons for other people to be hyped but personally what has been shown as of now is not enough. The graphical update seems lackluster, we know too little about the content other than it seem they'll follow the standard formula and the plot so far doesn't seem promising (this may also be the fault of the awful patch story, killing any of my expectations while not setting up anything)

[Reinha]

I have been excited about Dawntrail and still am, but seeing the effects of the graphics update on my characters lessened my excitement. I have 4 creations I'm very fond of and 2 of those will look worse after the update. I was considering trying out Hrothgal before and I guess that choice has been made for me if I want to keep liking the way my main looks.

I'm still looking forward to Viper and hopefully the skill tooltips will not disappoint. The story is still unknown but if it's better than Stormblood then I'm happy. I'm also itching to try new content.

[Kaurhz]

I would say I am in between...

I think part of me not being as motivated as I am, is simply just a product of how long I've been playing. Yes it's new zones, levels, abilities, dungeons, trials, and raids. But ultimately it is just going to be underpinned by the same design that I've been very much accustomed to. To the point where it's the same old with just a different texture.

How I play this game is significantly different from how I did those many years ago, where I am just hunting achievements, and doing whatever I feel like doing -- Not necessarily what the game might expect me to do.

I'd probably go as far to say that if the trials weren't mandatory for the MSQ, then I probably would not have done them, just as I have not done the optional 8-man raids, because there's no reason for me to feel like doing it. There's only so many times you can funnel me into a particular piece of content before being on a circle or square platform starts ti nullify my enjoyment of everything in that particular piece of content.

I've been playing a lot more open world games recently, and whilst they aren't as mechanically challenging for me, personally... That whole roaming aspect just has me wanting, and with this game, no matter how hard I try to convince myself, it'll be just exactly that... Left wanting.

Of course I am still somewhat excited, but that excitement relative to past expansions is just not as high. I'll do the story, I'll probably enjoy it, and I'll probably enjoy levelling everything again, but aside from that I probably won't see myself going beyond casual achievement farming, and catching up on fishing logs, etc.,

I'm not saying any of these are incredibly new either, many, if not all have been the case even since as early as when I first started playing, but that can only sustain for so long before it just gets numb.

[Kisshu]

For me, it hinges on the media tour now.

Are they gonna do something new and interesting with the jobs, or are we getting SHB combat 3.0 with perhaps a single 1 min GCD or a single oGCD.

They're missing a big hook for me in this expansion. While they did talk briefly about large scale battle content or new DD, we'll be lucky if it's in 7.2 and most likely 7.3. It suffers the same problem that IS had, here's a single line and a picture about it, now we're not talking about it for over a year.
Looking back at ToAU in FFXI, we had actual new content right off the bat with besieged and assault.

Don't really feel any pull for it, and unless the FFXI raid is super impressive, I'm not sure what really will be pulling me in at this point.