Why are people settling for an "ARR Tier" story?

[ReynTime]

ARR is better than this.

It was also plagued by bad pacing and fetch quests, but it had the excuse of being written on short notice to accompany a sudo-reboot of a whole game that was never meant to be. One of the "big deals" about ARR's story at the time was the fact the player character was the protagonist. Something that wasn't common in MMORPGs.

It was also written like its audience wasn't still at 5th grade. Unlike Dawntrail.

[Galvuu]

ARR is not bad and DT is better than today's ARR.
We can't have Shadowbringer everytime.

Why can't we have Shadowbringers every time? I don't mean the same story beats and themes, I mean the same quality of writing.
Why do I need to settle for a worse product now? I pay the same- I should expect comparable quality.
It hurts me even more because I love stuff like Indiana Jones or old Tomb Raider. I really wanted to uncover lost artifacts and map my way to a mythical city of gold. I don't want another world-ending threat (people keep parroting that DT is lower stakes, but by the end of the msq, the stakes are the highest they've ever been except for Meteion). I want to piece this puzzle together and find a fantastical, lost treasure- hopefully learning about Erenville and Krle along the way.
I hate this idea that I somehow should eat up a worst product for which I pay because "can't always be Shadowbringers". I want every story to be comparable to Shadowbringers in terms of quality and cohesion- some will obviously miss, but here I don't even feel like they tried. They literally gave me slop and expected me to smile. I find this unacceptable, frankly.

[Striker44]

Why can't we have Shadowbringers every time? I don't mean the same story beats and themes, I mean the same quality of writing.
Why do I need to settle for a worse product now? I pay the same- I should expect comparable quality.

Because that's reality. Not every basketball player will be as skilled as Michael Jordan...if you start going down the road of "unless this is a 10/10, it's absolutely horrible and unacceptable," you're going to spend most of your time being frustrated and disappointed until your view matures a bit more.

DT is the start of a new story. That necessitates a lot of time spent on world-building to set up the future, and the perceived "quality" you find in future expansions will exist because of products like DT.

I'll give a comparison to WoW. Its highest point was WotLK in terms of both size of the active playerbase and critical acclaim. Why? In large part it was because of Arthas as the villain, who will probably go down in video game history as one of the "best" villains of all time. The stage for WotLK was set by the world-building and stories that were built through two previous expansions (Vanilla and BC) as well as the entire previous game of Warcraft III (which introduced and developed Arthas). Consider how one of the more frequent criticisms of EW is how Meteion came from out of nowhere, while people were expecting Zodiark to be the ultimate antagonist. In a similar vein, WotLK was only a 10/10 because of all the content in previous expansions and games that built to that moment. Which isn't to take credit away from the story of WotLK itself - you could still take that buildup and fail to capitalize on it. But WotLK was only as good as it was because it was the capstone for what came before.

Then came WoW's Cataclysm expansion. Simply put, it was not possible for that expansion to also be a 10/10. Because the big storyline had run its course, and by its very nature the developers needed to start something new. That's where we are in FFXIV now. We had several expansions' worth of content leading us to ShB and EW. ShB would not have been the success that it was if not for what came before it. It did significant building of the Ascians (and retconning in the process) and Emet-Selch in particular, but that only worked because we had already been interacting with them for a long time. Visiting the First was a new experience that worked because of all the time spent previously touching on the different reflections, and it's something that can only hit as hard as it did (in a good way) once. Yes, there are multiple other reflections we could visit, for example, but none will have the same impact on us psychologically as the first time we did it.

I hate this idea that I somehow should eat up a worst product for which I pay because "can't always be Shadowbringers". I want every story to be comparable to Shadowbringers in terms of quality and cohesion

So I'll summarize by saying again - what you hate is called reality. It doesn't matter how much you want something to be the case. ShB was able to do what it did because of what led up to it. DT does not have that. DT is the beginning of that very build-up which will enable a future expansion to knock it out of the park again. You can find reality "unacceptable" all you want - it will only end in frustration, frankly speaking.

Personally, I'm through the first two zones, and while I have a few minor criticisms I could make about DT, overall I'm having a really fun time, enjoying the story, soaking in the artwork, vibing to the music, and so on. I set my expectations realistically, and I'm very satisfied with the product I purchased.

[Endy_Sinkai]

No I personally think calling DT, ARR teir is wrong I have played this game since 1.0, have a friend who is so hardcore about FF he could tell you bosses weakness from like 20 years ago. He loves 14 its his favorite game.

Last night he got to Valigarmanda we finished it and he promptly lost his $H!+ basically went nuclear in a way I have never seen before.

What fallowed was a 2 hour rant about how god awful this expansion was how they treated Valigarmanda basically like a lost dog and that nothing mattered because the person who started this was still able to compete? Like fr wtf?!

They supposedly unleashed this monster that was built up as SUCH a threat but no consequences for the one who did it. Like hwat?! At that point I heard something I never thought id hear. My friend said he was just skipping cut scenes he was over the story he hated everything about this expansion so far and that this was worse than anything he's played.

And I won't lie. Having played everything this game has sent out from 1.0 to now. This is by far My worse expansion.

I truly wish for the first time ever not even in 1.0.

I wish I could refund this entire expansion and just wait for the next one for wait til this one was like 70% off.

It was absolutely not worth the price tag or the sub. Highly considering canceling my sub for now even if that means I loose my medium house.

I play for the story of this game If the game fails to deliver that. Then the expansion fails as a whole for me personally. The end period.

No room for negotiation there. gameplay will always be second fiddle in a FF to me and DT has proven to me why Gameplay should never be placed above story. Because I garentee you most of the resources that would have been used to iron out and play test this expansion are being used for patch development and testing instead.

As a former game tester I would put money on this. It is mostly how the msq ended up in this state. Not enough eyeballs to correct the issues with it because of the workload behind the scenes.

[Galvuu]

Because that's reality. Not every basketball player will be as skilled as Michael Jordan...if you start going down the road of "unless this is a 10/10, it's absolutely horrible and unacceptable," you're going to spend most of your time being frustrated and disappointed until your view matures a bit more.

DT is the start of a new story. That necessitates a lot of time spent on world-building to set up the future, and the perceived "quality" you find in future expansions will exist because of products like DT.

First off, this is the wrong analogy. We're not getting a new player every time. Rather, this is like a restaurant, and each week the quality of the food varies from "pretty good" to "borderline inedible". This establishment has showed me before they can serve me quality meals- why do I need to be tolerant to an inferior service?

Ah, but here comes the "it's a new story" argument, as if every first two or three chapters in every book written by mankind, or every TV show ever created, are necessarily horrific to read through. In fact, the opposite is true- you need a good premise and either a very gripping start to capture the interest of the viewer, or, if it's a slower paced affair, it needs to be oozing charm and charisma so people feel enamored. If the first 50 pages of a book I pick up are dreadful, I am not finishing that book. This isn't an excuse. I recently read American Gods by Neil Gaiman (just before Dawntrail), and the start of that book hits you with a big twist regarding the MC right away to keep your attention, all while slowly dripping information about the world and its fantastical rules. If he had wasted time literally talking about nothing, I'd have returned the book to the friend that lent it and went for a different story. I remember watching the first two episodes of season 1 of Game of Thrones and I was glued to my screen. And they have a lot of world building and lore exploration to do there.

To circle back to the analogy- it's as if the restaurant did a radical menu change. Things are new, they're going a bit experimental, that is fine. I'm not asking for their top quality every time, of course they'll be slight off the mark every now and then, and not every experiment works- this was even in my post, you just conveniently choose to ignore it to make an argument not against what I actually said, but what you're pretending that I did. But Dawntrail has 0 care put into some of its aspects. The script is dreadful, the characterization is completely off (did Krle even make a single humorous remark towards a friend of hers beyond the group staring at Wuk Lamat when she lies her ass off about seasickness?) and there's a myriad gaping plot holes (seriously? Even in the Mamool Ja land where everyone's depressed and hopeless the Final Days were not felt at all? Not even a singular mention of it in all the msq text??). This restaurant just served me raw chicken, basically. The sides (dungeons) are amazing, but this is just really hard to swallow. And hey, there's another establishment with a new proposition coming out in August just around the corner...

But I guess that's reality! If SE decides to launch patch 7.1 without any msq (or without any combat content), is that also reality? How low does your tolerance for content with glaring flaws go? Do these wild swings in quality happen sometimes? Yea. And usually they lead to disastified customers. And that leads to a decline in the business putting out said product too. But I guess we're ignoring that part of "reality"- I'm sure companies can afford to tank the quality of their problem and that's just life. I've never heard of games shutting down before when that happens.

[SirShady]

Yeah, who doesn't like all this "criticism" of "Wuk lamat is bad, lamattrail LoL, lamat tea xD, it's mid rofl"...

Maybe you should learn how to read. The criticism is valid if you're literate, surprisingly. You might not agree with it, but you can't argue it's not substantiated.

[SirShady]

... bring our friends back to the First to see people they care for...

Ok, I hadn't thought about that at all. I doubt the current writers could give me a good explanation for how it works, but there is some massive potential there for some really sweet emotional scenes. Thanks, now I actually have something to look forward to in the post patches! Please don't screw this up!

[Kukajoo]

My expectations were low, my standards were low and I was disappointed. More often than not I found myself yearning for the story to end so I could go grind the new EX trial mounts instead.

[Rekh]

Wonder what happens when ARR is the best msq to some of us. I like this direction a lot; rpgs are supposed to be adventures; well to me anyway, so this direction is the way to go in my book.

[DreadCrow]

I am going to perish from cringe if I read another post summarizing all criticism of this expansion as "You just want to be the main character" and defending it with "Its a new story" "Its a vacation". Not every single defense is like this, mind you, but I'm going to try to correct this specific type of misapprehension.

The problem is the writing, the cutscene direction, and the overall direction of the MSQ. It genuinely feels like there is no editorial process for some of this stuff. Cutscenes drag for far too long, the exact same dialogue is repeated constantly for several quests in a row. Flashback sequences for things you did one quest ago. Obvious observations are treated as revelations, some more intriguing implications are never addressed where they would have been in prior works from this studio.
If these things don't bother you, that is fine. Good even, I wouldn't begrudge anyone for enjoying things. What I will begrudge you for is invalidating other peoples experiences by misrepresenting them.

Just engage with what people are saying, it really is not hard.

But what if you liked the expansion because it was "a vacation"? The reason why I enjoyed the first half of the expansion was because I got to return to being just literally a nobody, someone who some rich person hired to be their muscle which lead me to see a new part of the world that few in Eorzea got to see, learn about their culture, and the like... And while I did end up saving the world in the end, it felt like it was more of a side-thing than the main focus. Overall, we got to be a nobody instead of the big damn hero. It's a nice change of pace, especially with two expansions focused on how damn important we are to the universe.

There's even some complaints I legitimately can't understand, like people who act like Wuk Lamat is the worst character in the game. There's certain characters in the story I wish got more screentime, mind you, but like... When Lyse and Hein exist, I'm not sure why she gets so much shit.