Are y'all expecting too much from Dawntrail's story?

[Isala]

I expected the kind of quality one would find in a beach episode filler arc. Barely any. I was still disappointed.

[DrForester]

I feel like it lived up to what we were told it would be. A fun adventure with overall smaller stakes than we saw in Endwalker. Endwalker was the end of a 10 year journey. Thought the expansion was a lot of fun. This was our beach episode.

I do think the story could have been trimmed a bit. Maybe cut down on the whole successor storyline to only 4 objectives instead of seven. Enjoyable as they were, I do think that much lore being dropped at once has led to the feeling by some that it's slow. Thought the back half MSQ story was excellent.

Enjoyed all the new characters. Though Wuk Lamat was great. Think there's been a lot of bad-faith criticism about her from the gamergate 2.0 crowd, but what can you expect from that type.

Only notable story criticism is that I think most the scions were very underutilized to the point I think the devs missed the chance to make this a new starting point for the game. Cut most them out (I would have kept Krile and Estinien), and make a modified MSQ for new players. Basically do for new players in 7.0 what 2.0 did for it's new players.

That aside, I really enjoyed it, and I think there's some excellent hooks for future storylines.

[HyoMinPark]

I haven't even started it yet, been catching up on other stuff since I was gone since 6.1.
Now don't get me wrong, i posted on the "endwalker story bad" thread for years on my other account before i decided to come back to the game on this account.

So, I was under the impression that most of us here on the forum were going into this expansion with no expectations after the Endwalker travesty. Why are there so many hate threads right now? Is it really that bad lmao

Personally speaking, it has been a slog for me. I’m currently in the 4th zone, level 96 MSQ; and it has taken me since Friday to get here because I keep losing interest in what is happening/cannot stay engaged in the story. By comparison, usually around this time with prior expansion launches, I have already either finished the MSQ, or am on the home stretch.

I did spend a lot of Friday leveling up Pictomancer, but I started the MSQ that afternoon/early evening—and it has been a consistent start-stop the entire time. Normally during Early Access, I do my no-life gamer thing and constantly play with little sleep—however, I’ve slept in the last two days and dragged my feet logging in because I am just…not engaged. At all.

Granted, the level 95 portion in the 4th zone did engage me; so I was glad to have some part of the MSQ I enjoyed. I was engaged and laughing and enjoying what was happening. That part of the story FELT like the starting over/new adventure/soft ARR-esque reset that everyone said Dawntrail was supposed to be. However, it isn’t making up for the fact that it took me hours and hours worth of slog to get here. If something doesn’t start “getting good” until the halfway mark, that’s bad writing, in my opinion.

I don’t want to post spoilers since I know people are still working on the MSQ, and OP has not even started it. That said, I went into Dawntrail excited and curious to see what would happen with the story now that the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc was finished. I was not expecting Shadowbringers level of storytelling—I personally don’t think that anything will top that for me—but I was hoping for something that was at least better than ARR. So far, it has not met that standard for me.

The pacing is bad; the story-telling is very trope-y and Saturday morning cartoon special. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with using tropes, the writing just makes them stand out in the worst possible way. There have been several times where my friends and I have paused MSQ progression to discuss what is happening and offer our thoughts and criticisms. There was even a good 30 minutes in the 3rd zone where we interacted with the /shout chat, who were asking if the story got any less tedious beyond that point—and we were told to hush and “stop ruining the experience for everyone else because everyone else is having fun” by 2 or 3 people defending this storytelling as if their lives depended on it.

I am more intrigued by all the characters around the one who’s supposed to be “the main character”, and I honestly think it’s terrible if an author cannot even get a reader to have a smidge of interest/engagement/curiosity about their leading character. Instead, I find them to be insufferable and one-dimensional.

But all of these are my opinions, and people are free to disagree with them. I am still holding on to hope that the story will turn itself around for me—but as of now, the level 90~94 stuff prior to the 4th zone was all something I found to be lacking in nearly every way. There were very few moments during those levels where I was actively engaged; and those few moments were drowned out by the rest of it. Appallingly so.

[Isala]

Enjoyed all the new characters. Though Wuk Lamat was great. Think there's been a lot of bad-faith criticism about her from the gamergate 2.0 crowd, but what can you expect from that type.

Bullcrap. I wouldn't have even known about their deal if I hadn't tried to look up if I was the only one who thought that voice acting was terrible.

[Amenara]

I have been enjoying seeing Wuk's character development and learning about the different cultures in Tural. The beginning was definitely bad with how slow it was to roll out but it has gotten better so far. Only at the second half of the third zone though around level 95.

The entire premise of the story was really cool to me, though, and that probably is what kept me engaged.

[hydralus]

Yeah the expectations are weird. Not just for the story - which is 'okay', but people were expecting more combat? Since when was there combat in the MSQ? I certainly don't remember doing anything before the first dungeons in ShB or EW. Heck Stormblood at least had a solo instance before the first dungeon.

[Boblawblah]

I said it before, but I'm willing to bet that most people's enjoyment will directly correlate to how much they like Wuk Lamat. The expansion is so much about her that if you love her, you'll likely really enjoy the expansion. I've never seen a single character get this much attention before in an expansion, and it's not really close. So I hope that you really like Wuk Lamat

[KurenXIV]

No. What I expected was a competent story with engaging characters that made me feel like I was starting an all new adventure.

You can have low stakes, that's not the issue here. The issue is we have an expansion which is mostly tell don't show (ie: you get exposition dumps as to what is happening vs experiencing it) and you mainly play a side character to Wuk Lamat.

The content isn't fun either, there's barely any combat quests so you're left with point A to B quests, quests where you follow someone, etc.

Yes, XIV has done this before but it was anchored by a much MUCH stronger story.

How should they have done it is quite simple and I'm amazed they didn't.:

1) Ditch all your old Scion friends sans Kirle. The 6.x patches should have been a farewell series of patches where we could send them off. They can return MUCH later in certain scenarios but SE should have made a narrative break from them. This sets us up to be going to the new world with just Kirle to investigate the stuff with her grandpa.

2) With that new series of build up patches done we then can set foot into the new world as a stranger and *then* you can build us up to learning about the whole "who gets to be the next ruler" story thread. In which, we can then learn about each of the characters vying for power. We can even rotate helping them and/or learning about their motivations. This allows for a much more nature progression and feeling of being the main character in our own story and experiencing this all for ourselves instead of being a side character to Wuk Lamat.

3) Lastly, the core MSQ would be around not just the people vying for the throne but us going from area to area to learn about all the different tribes which make up Tural. We can then have low stake (in the grand scheme of things) quests which are high stakes to those tribes. This would allow us to form a connection with the people and have us as a player invested in their well being.

Simple little things like this would have gone a long way to set up a brand new adventure, a new set of characters and a new land that we now care about and are invested in.

Instead, this is the first time I am skipping story cut scenes out of sheer lack of caring as to what is happening in the MSQ. I've played since ARR launch so that should say something to the quality of the story being given to us.

Obviously this is all subjective but I think a more skilled writing team could have pulled this off much better. The lack of the previous key writers being the driving narrative force for the MSQ shows.

[Amenara]

Yeah the expectations are weird. Not just for the story - which is 'okay', but people were expecting more combat? Since when was there combat in the MSQ? I certainly don't remember doing anything before the first dungeons in ShB or EW. Heck Stormblood at least had a solo instance before the first dungeon.

I definitely think the way the MSQ is presented really needs a complete revamp for the future because going through the Pelu area at the beginning and killing 3 total mobs the entire half of the zone was not great.

[Valorak]

Sometimes, I really feel like I'm not playing the same game as forum posters.

Yeah, I've just been here like twice, but it seems like they're kinda prone to severe exaggeration?

You'd think that the FFXIV writers shot their dog or something.

-EDIT-

Bullcrap. I wouldn't have even known about their deal if I hadn't tried to look up if I was the only one who thought that voice acting was terrible.

IDK; there's two people talking about diversity being pushed into Japan/SE by western powers in one of the hate threads, right now lol. And they've gotten multiple likes, so...