JP Official Forums are also criticizing the Dawntrail MSQ.

[BakoolJaJa]

(Finally registered on the forums many years after starting the game... because of DT.)

This is a nice compilation OP, I have no idea why somebody would jump to mental issues over you doing a reasonable thing and checking japanese forums. I do it myself sometimes, just turn on google translate and skim through the threads to try and get a feel for where they stand on certain issues. And often the different communities do diverge a lot, don't they? Things like healer strike and such.

It is a bit comforting to see that other people feel the same way as I do. Contrary to what some may think, I didn't go to Reddit/Forums because I wanted to fuel some hate circlejerk. I wanted to see that I am not completely out of touch is all. That I didn't suddenly grow out of my favorite game. I just recently did an almost complete replay of the entire story leading up to Dawntrail in fact. I am used to pacing issues, to fetch quests, to filler, to unvoiced cutscenes. I had no negative expectations going into DT. I wanted a vacation and lower stakes. I wasn't doomposting anywhere about how it's bound to suck. Hey, I didn't even dislike Wuk Lamat a single bit when she appeared in the patch. I was completely open going into the new expansion.

The whiplash DT gave me from the first seconds was unexpected. A lot of things just felt off from the get go. Really minor, tiny things, like how a lot of "action" suddenly got confined to cutscenes, from the very first ship in the storm part. In the previous expansions we would have gone from a cutscene in the storm to a gameplay part where we activate the shield, back into a cutscene. Now it's all cutscenes and this pattern continues through all of the expansion. (The train bit later in the story is another example) Most of even the most fetchy, filler gameplay got replaced with talking. But not the kind we had in Heavenward, where every line gave weight to the situation or carefully unraveled the tragic backstory of the dragonsong war. The talking now is all "*cultural greeting that gets turned into attempt at comedy* I am from X tribe, we have X stereotypical tribe tradition, help with tribe tradition, it's very important, you love to learn about cultures right?! Also we are very sad/happy, feel sad/happy with us, here is some comedy boinking noise so you laugh or some sad melody so you feel sad. Now pray return to Wuk Lamat."

I LOVE learning about new cultures. IRL and in games. I don't think I saw any new cultures in DT tbh. It's all very cardboard-ish, very basic and artificial, lots of rehashes. Vath were different. Lopporits, Omicron, Namazu, etc. The new ones really are just replicas of the old but in Tural...

Ugh, whatever, didn't come here to derail the thread into more complaints. I do hope feedback from the japanese side reaches the devs though. I really want the patches to be better so I can get hooked back into the story again. I don't want the game to fail, I love it, I only ever want it to be better.

[cutestfox]

(Finally registered on the forums many years after starting the game... because of DT.)

Like many of us.
I thought I'd never come to these forums and post after playing for the last decade since 2.0

But many things are wrong here and things need to be said.
Those trying their hardest to sweep it under the rug and pretend everything is fine are damaging my favorite MMO, and I can't turn a blind eye to it any longer