What Dawntrail Changes Were for the Worse?

[KisaiTenshi]

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

Writing, I'm feeling that the PC (player character) is far too much of a background character in this story than the first half of ARR, some parts of HW and Stormblood. Stormblood at least alternated between the Domans and the Ala Mhigan stories, but in those stories it felt like someone else was doing all the talking. For HW it was largely Alphinaud, for Stormblood it was frequently Lyse/Raubahn and Hein/Gosetsu/Yugiri. But in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, it focused on the Scion characters, and G'raha wasn't center stage all the time.

At one point in DawnTrail I just went "this is just that bloody Titan banquet quest from ARR that everyone hated, again."

IMO, the combined Shadowbringers-Endwalker story was the peak of the game's story telling because the stakes were there. Getting the mcguffins with Wuk Lamat... could have been done with anyone. I don't hate her, but I feel like you could have replaced the WOL with Y'shtola and it would have unfolded exactly the same. I feel like we shouldn't have been "in" the story at all, we should have just walked into town and went "Krile, why are you here?" "Oh that's nice, let's catch up later". We should have been off to explore every area should have been "open", we find the dungeons, we explore, and we run into the important characters when they need help. Like there is only one point that I felt "our help" was needed and that was the 8-man trial.

So far the 4-man duties with Wuk Lamat as a NPC player, she's far more squishier than Thancred in ShadowBringers and Endwalker. Maybe the developers listened to the part about "I could just sit there and do nothing as a healer and the NPC's don't need my help." However it does feel like the game is still not putting the right balance of healing into the content. The healer being reduced to 5% HP, and then having to redo the fight when there isn't enough time to hit another button is different from "the NPC party members barely stay alive". I held back on the first duty to see how squishy Wuk Lamat was. Yes, she will KO if you don't heal her on the first group of mobs, which is more like how it should be.

I appreciate that we can use the NPC's for the content and not have to wait in a queue for an hour. However I feel that the game actually encourages this too much. Like just plain spells out "hey I can fight" and "hey I can heal" despite the fact YOU are the healer. Like I don't need to know this every time my dudes.

[SwadTheFrog]

There's a few. To note, I've passionately liked every expansion thusfar - even bits of Stormblood (even if I think the entire Ala Mhigan section of it was "Mid", to say the least), but this has been an enormous dissapointment for me.

1 : Extremely poor writing. Yes, I know it's easy to say "writing bad" and leave it there, but there's just so many problems going on at once. The pacing of the story is an awkward stop and start that feels like the worst moments of Endwalker. The characters feel genuinely lobotomized and the party dynamic just isn't there. Wuk Lamat is an obnoxious character that's written as someone's OC and needs to be fellated every single cutscene. I don't *mind* the WoL taking a step back, I'm entirely cool with that. But we just had 6.x end, and that was all about following some OTHER character that also was written like someone's teenage OC while we mostly sat back and cheered them on. Why is this hapening again? But again, Wuk isn't even the sole issue. The writing feels like... well. To put it bluntly - for children. Why are there repeated "flashbacks" to things that *just* happened? (EX : Wuk having a flashback to her brothers after JUST stating that she feels inadequate against some people. YES, I CAN MAKE A GUESS THAT SHE MEANS HER SIBLINGS). Why are characters completely flat and one-note, while feeling the need to state their few charactestics out loud repeatedly? Wuk in particular is a criminal example of this. Yes, she feels inadequate. Yes, she has seasickness. Yes, she's an idiot. You do not need to do one of the three EVERY SINGLE CUTSCENE. God, give me Ishikawa back, /please/.

2 : Mechanical homogenization. Actually doubling down on the two-minute burst meta is nuts. So many classes feel very samey now, instead of being given things that actually support their identity. Why did Paladin get just more bloat on their sword combo instead of an ability that lets them support and defend their team? Why does DRK feel like diet GNB? Why did Monk completely lose it's fast attack identity for it to be immediately be given to VPR? Everything is starting to feel like a mush.

3 : The state of healers in general. I've genuinely had multiple friends that play Healer quit, and I don't blame them. Healers feel awful to play in normal content , they're really only engaging in high end content, and that's...just not fun. I tend towards Hardcore content myself, but if you're going to make healers play like an actual bot on casual content, why bother?

4 : Absolute lack of positive innovation. We're going through the same exact mechanics as everything else. Quests provide no new methods of play, it's *all* recycled content that was already used. Dungeons feel the exact same - bland corridors with mostly two pulls per section. They look really good, sure, but the mechanics are just stagnant.

I could probably keep going, but why bother. SE mostly only looks at JP feedback from what I understand.

[Loggos]

God, give me Ishikawa back, /please/.

Wait, did Ishikawa not write DT? I thought she is the story lead now or have there been changes?
(I would be happy to hear it wasn't her though because for her to go from ShB to this would be rather shocking.)

[grinkdaboy]

Not sure why Plunge was removed. Who benefits from it?

It gave people looking for more to do something to weave. And casuals who didn't feel like putting in extra button presses weren't missing out on that much potency - certainly not enough that it matters for the content they are doing.

drk burst was plenty busy before and a lot of people didn't like having to weave in very weak ogcds when they could be pressing other buttons. gap closers being dps neutral should be the standard rather than something you feel like you have to burn

[SwadTheFrog]

Wait, did Ishikawa not write DT? I thought she is the story lead now or have there been changes?
(I would be happy to hear it wasn't her though because for her to go from ShB to this would be rather shocking.)

Ishikawa didn't write anything after Endwalker, as far as I understand?

The writer for Dawntrail is Daichi Hiroi which...I don't want to be mean to the guy. But he is *subpar*. Wrote some class and role quests, 5.5 and 4.4. All of the stuff he's done I really didn't like, apart from Tataru's Grand Endeavour, which he did do and I thought it was at least cute. The problem is that his writing works well enough for very light-hearted side content. But for a whole expansion, he is 100% not cut out for it, and it should have been clear from the beggining.

[OdinelStarrei]

Not sure why Plunge was removed. Who benefits from it?

It gave people looking for more to do something to weave. And casuals who didn't feel like putting in extra button presses weren't missing out on that much potency - certainly not enough that it matters for the content they are doing.

Allow me.

The argument being put forth for Plunge's removal is that it reduces the amount of buttons being pressed in DRK's burst window. That's the reason that was given, but as you pointed out, it makes little sense, because us DRK mains only play it for that high APM. It's the only time when the job extends past 1-2-3 gauge spender, so the removal of 2 oGCDs and potential fight optimization is a net loss for the job. I don't know who actually gains from this.

Further more, Shadowstride, as cool as it is thematically for those who are okay with losing the Berserk reference, has the "unintended?" drawback of nerfing Enhanced Unmend, a trait that was already the laughing stock of the game. Now you can't even get theoretical potency gains off increased Plunges. Doesn't even return the entire Shadowstride, it's still five seconds. Meanwhile Raiton, something you actually use, gives you FREE Shukuchis on NIN.

Like, why not have Shadowstride TURN INTO Plunge after using Unmend? Like how SAM/RPR's change when they are forced to disengage? Why am I not allowed to gapclose to friends if I'm not hitting them with my giant sword? If you're going to give me Thunderclap, why not go all the way?

There's an inverse relationship with how much I want to say about DRK vs what was meaningfully added to the job this time around. Three expansions running, and we're still failing to meet our potential.

[Wyssahtyn]

stuff i can speak to so far:

the tsubame gaeshi change for sam just makes things clunkier for no reason

the character graphics (the sculpt changes or w/e) change actively hinders my enjoyment of the expansion. the environmental stuff is nice enough, i guess.

[Loggos]

Ishikawa didn't write anything after Endwalker, as far as I understand?

The writer for Dawntrail is Daichi Hiroi which...I don't want to be mean to the guy. But he is *subpar*. Wrote some class and role quests, 5.5 and 4.4. All of the stuff he's done I really didn't like, apart from Tataru's Grand Endeavour, which he did do and I thought it was at least cute. The problem is that his writing works well enough for very light-hearted side content. But for a whole expansion, he is 100% not cut out for it, and it should have been clear from the beggining.

Thank you for the clarification!
This is oddly comforting because at least now I know that it wasn't Ishikawa who gave us the terrible writing that is DT...
Though, of course I wish she could actually have written it instead of Daichi Hiroi.

This is a bit offtopic but

do you know why she didn't write anything after EW? She was so acclaimed and EW was overall still very well received. Did she leave herself? Because otherwise I can't imagine why they would not give another expansion to one of their most prolific writers...

[GoatOfWar]

Allow me.

The argument being put forth for Plunge's removal is that it reduces the amount of buttons being pressed in DRK's burst window. That's the reason that was given, but as you pointed it, it makes little sense, because us DRK mains only play it for that high APM. It's the only time when the job extends past 1-2-3 gauge spender, so the removal of 2 oGCDs and potential fight optimization is a net loss for the job.

Further more, Shadowstride, as cool as it is thematically for those who are okay with losing the Berserk reference, has the "unintended?" drawback of nerfing Enhanced Unmend, a trait that was already the laughing stock of the game. Now you can't even get theoretical potency gains off increased Plunges. Doesn't even return the entire Shadowstride, it's still five seconds. Meanwhile Raiton, something you actually use, gives you FREE Shukuchis on NIN.

Like, why not have Shadowstride TURN INTO Plunge after using Unmend? Like how SAM/RPR's change when they are forced to disengage? Why am I not allowed to gapclose to friends if I'm not hitting them with my giant sword? If you're going to give me Thunderclap, why not go all the way?

There's an inverse relationship with how much I want to say about DRK vs what was meaningfully added to the job this time around. Three expansions running, and we're still failing to meet our potential.

It's depressing when you look at all the love War got (again) No amount of favouritism makes me want to play Warrior.
Patch after patch after patch, the favouritism just continues. Drk has absolutely nothing going anymore.

[SongOfTheWind]

Thank you for the clarification!
This is oddly comforting because at least now I know that it wasn't Ishikawa who gave us the terrible writing that is DT...
Though, of course I wish she could actually have written it instead of Daichi Hiroi.

This is a bit offtopic but

do you know why she didn't write anything after EW? She was so acclaimed and EW was overall still very well received. Did she leave herself? Because otherwise I can't imagine why they would not give another expansion to one of their most prolific writers...

She was not involved in 6.x either. She didn’t leave, but was promoted out of the writing scope to let the others shine. So now they shine.