What Dawntrail Changes Were for the Worse?

[Shurrikhan]

What Dawntrail changes do you think have negatively affected the game or your experience thereof?

Please be specific, and provide reasoning for why it was a net loss if able.

Moreover, are there any components, or likely overarching ideas/intentions, of the given change that seem redeemable?

:: This is intended as a quick compilation thread to, ideally, give a quick location for feedback that may provide reasoning for negative player sentiments and/or what changes may be worth reconsidering. I will create a shortlist of most-liked posts, quoted in the space below.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Writing.

That's my #1 problem. Making it hard to get through this MSQ and I have to take regular breaks.

Other MSQs I actually cared what happens next. Here when my WoL is asked what I think, my real answer is "Just do what you want, I don't care!"

---

Adding specifics:

1. No attention grabbing situations in at least the first 5 hours, maybe more.
2. Little to no action for long periods of time. Even if they wanted to have us be "on vacation" why not some friendly comepetitive minigames to break up the boredom or something?
3. Weak cast of characters, especially the main party.
4. Unlike other MSQs where the cast changes throughout, we are stuck consistently with this cast and it doesn't vary as it did in other stories. Some characters are better in small doses. Having them center stage here feels bad.
5. Our Warrior of Light has become a background prop to the "Story of Wuk Lamat". I don't think many people really wanted an expansion where we aren't even a protagonist.

[Lusarae]

Writing.

That's my #1 problem. Making it hard to get through this MSQ and I have to take regular breaks.

Other MSQs I actually cared what happens next. Here when my WoL is asked what I think, my real answer is "Just do what you want, I don't care!"

---

Adding specifics:

1. No attention grabbing situations in at least the first 5 hours, maybe more.
2. Little to no action for long periods of time. Even if they wanted to have us be "on vacation" why not some friendly comepetitive minigames to break up the boredom or something?
3. Weak cast of characters, especially the main party.
4. Unlike other MSQs where the cast changes throughout, we are stuck consistently with this cast and it doesn't vary as it did in other stories. Some characters are better in small doses. Having them center stage here feels bad.
5. Our Warrior of Light has become a background prop to the "Story of Wuk Lamat". I don't think many people really wanted an expansion where we aren't even a protagonist.

The lack of action is devastating. Let us hunt some things. Let us dive into more dungeons. Give us more FATEs. What's the point of having these gigantic beautiful zones where we never get to do anything in them? I think this is like the biggest weakness this game has. Something that it suffered from since ARR, but at least the story could carry the experience all on its back. When the story doesn't have you as invested the weakness shines very brightly. Also it is extremely hard to get friends to play this game when you can't even do anything with them. So we take a week off from work and all we got to do is a couple of dungeons and one trial together. Rarely even get to see each other between the endless torrent of cutscenes.

The quests are just so badly designed they don't allow you to take in the world and maybe stumble into the "optional" side content easier. Like being able to stumble into FATEs without having to hunt them down, or having more monsters to kill on the hunting board. Lack of dungeons and very little quests that involve combat. Sometimes your brain needs a mental break from the 12 hour movie to digest what's going on and just kill some monsters while zoning out. Doesn't have to be nearly as tedious as something like WoW which is a 10 on the tedium "how many hours killing boars" spectrum, but being a 1 like FF14 isn't that great either.

Shame we couldn't get like a special "variant" style dungeon. That has a lore reason to revisit, which we discover 1hr into the MSQ. That gives us a reason to pause the cutscenes and explore it once in awhile and not feel like we're "wasting time" like we would if we were doing roulettes for example. We could be 100% done with it by the time we're 100.

[Shurrikhan]

<Reserved.>

[AlessaImpera]

I'd say the only real noteworthy mistakes were probably the BLM changes and the mana issues for DRK

[koko-on-da-forumz]

I'd say the only real noteworthy mistakes were probably the BLM changes and the mana issues for DRK

And Monk and Samurai.

The few job changes they made only served to lobotomize jobs further, make them stricter, clunkier, and less fun.

I do not understand who asked for any of this. We've been giving feedback about how unfun the jobs have been since Shadowbringers launched and it has only gotten worse patch over patch.

[Tuchkin]

My character appearance.

Logon, looked at that... doll, and logout - i don't want to play with this, its ruined my RP in its current state.
May be later... may be never - depending what course of action devs choose in response of criticism.

[Malthir]

My character appearance.

Logon, looked at that... doll, and logout - i don't want to play with this, its ruined my RP in its current state.
May be later... may be never - depending what course of action devs choose in response of criticism.

Have you tried changing some of your looks around, we do get a free fantasia. For me the graphic have been the only thing I don't dislike this expac, not saying that they're amazing, just for me they seem fine.

[Tuchkin]

Have you tried changing some of your looks around, we do get a free fantasia. For me the graphic have been the only thing I don't dislike this expac, not saying that they're amazing, just for me they seem fine.

My character is many years old and I don't want to change her. Besides, I didn't break it-whoever broke it, let him fix it.

[Malthir]

My character is many years old and I don't want to change her. Besides, I didn't break it-whoever broke it, let him fix it.

Sad to say it's unlikely they will my friend, the dev team don't walk things back historically, they double down and almost never admit they made mistakes, you literally have to hit them with a million screenshot of an actual bug before they will do jack. You'll either have to pivot or join the rest of us looking for a new mmo to play.