The Negative Impact of Poor Character Writing on the Quality of Dawntrail's MSQ

[Tethan]

I'm genuinely curious or rather unsure if the story can even be salvaged at this point, it's something I wanted to make a thread about, but I'm not sure how to put it. It's just..

This is like a curse the game will have to carry for the rest of its life. EVERY new player will have to slog their way through this, a dark stain in an otherwise shining legacy, not very different from 1.0 FFXIV being a stain on Final Fantasy as a franchise and how did they fix that? By blowing up the world.

The MSQ is already like this jenga tower that is build up, every expansion makes it taller and taller, but it ALWAYS has to stand on what came before. If one section isn't stable, nothing that comes after it will be stable. And again, every new player has to climb this tower at least once (or skip I guess, but then why play FFXIV?). How can this be sustainable going forward?

[Icycrits]

I'm genuinely curious or rather unsure if the story can even be salvaged at this point, it's something I wanted to make a thread about, but I'm not sure how to put it. It's just..

This is like a curse the game will have to carry for the rest of its life. EVERY new player will have to slog their way through this, a dark stain in an otherwise shining legacy, not very different from 1.0 FFXIV being a stain on Final Fantasy as a franchise and how did they fix that? By blowing up the world.

The MSQ is already like this jenga tower that is build up, every expansion makes it taller and taller, but it ALWAYS has to stand on what came before. If one section isn't stable, nothing that comes after it will be stable. And again, every new player has to climb this tower at least once (or skip I guess, but then why play FFXIV?). How can this be sustainable going forward?

I am extremely concerned about this as well as I mentioned in my initial post. We are going to get another 10 years of story, with very dubious quality; each story bigger, longer, and more bombastic than the last... how is anyone supposed to genuinely ever get to the endgame? I understand full well as a story-enjoyer that the journey trumps the endgame in XIV, but is 1000 hours of cutscenes really viable? Especially when the quality takes a projected nosedive after the first big arc is resolved?

Dawntrail, narrratively, to me just feels like an expansion that has zero confidence in itself. I feel like Square Enix was very worried about people leaving the game in droves after Endwalker resolved all of the threads that people cared about since their relaunch in ARR. So instead of giving us a relaxed adventure in the new world that would slowly build up into a multi-expansion climax with Sphene that could properly be resolved, they made the same mistake that Endwalker made and rushed through a lot of story to get to the end (Yoshi-P himself has admitted that Endwalker was actually heavily considered as two separate expansions before it was combined into the final product we know today).

However, unlike Endwalker, Dawntrail doesn't have a legacy to fall back on, and instead uses the previous expansions' callbacks as a crutch to keep players interested. Hell, even the reveal of Solution 9 in the marketing material reeks of panic. Imagine if they just showed us Amaurot before Shadowbringers even launched. It completely robbed the player of any sense of surprise because in the back of all of our minds, we were just trudging along, wondering "when does it get to the good parts?" which made an unbearable start that much more painful.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I am extremely concerned about this as well as I mentioned in my initial post. We are going to get another 10 years of story, with very dubious quality; each story bigger, longer, and more bombastic than the last... how is anyone supposed to genuinely ever get to the endgame? I understand full well as a story-enjoyer that the journey trumps the endgame in XIV, but is 1000 hours of cutscenes really viable? Especially when the quality takes a projected nosedive after the first big arc is resolved?

Dawntrail, narrratively, to me just feels like an expansion that has zero confidence in itself. I feel like Square Enix was very worried about people leaving the game in droves after Endwalker resolved all of the threads that people cared about since their relaunch in ARR. So instead of giving us a relaxed adventure in the new world that would slowly build up into a multi-expansion climax with Sphene that could properly be resolved, they made the same mistake that Endwalker made and rushed through a lot of story to get to the end (Yoshi-P himself has admitted that Endwalker was actually heavily considered as two separate expansions before it was combined into the final product we know today).

However, unlike Endwalker, Dawntrail doesn't have a legacy to fall back on, and instead uses the previous expansions' callbacks as a crutch to keep players interested. Hell, even the reveal of Solution 9 in the marketing material reeks of panic. Imagine if they just showed us Amaurot before Shadowbringers even launched. It completely robbed the player of any sense of surprise because in the back of all of our minds, we were just trudging along, wondering "when does it get to the good parts?" which made an unbearable start that much more painful.

Thanks to a friend I know you can finish Dawntrail in a day if you don't read anything and skip all the scenes. So that's how, it'll become another MMO where no one knows or cares what the story is. But I feel they are gonna have to up quality in other areas if they are gonna go that route.

[Archaeothyris]

I came here from Twitter! A very insightful post from both OP and everyone replying. I've been thinking about the MSQ ever since I finished it (and even during it), and I was SO disappointed with so many things in it that I've recorded several voice memos of myself just arranging my thoughts about it. And, after reading through this entire topic so far... I genuinely do not have anything meaningful to add to this. This topic honestly just feels like such an exact explanation for how I felt about the story, that there is no possible way for me to phrase it better than it already has been by all of you.

I just wanted to come chime in, offer my support and say how glad I am to see people who share my views about the Dawntrail MSQ who are so articulate and frankly, correct, with their critiques. I'll be bookmarking this topic for sure and coming to check up on it later, share it with friends who want to know my stance on the MSQ and stuff like that.

Let's hope that the patch quests are better, although... I dunno. I can't say I have too much hope, there's too many holes in the Dawntrail cheese already. I can only hope that they move whoever's been in charge of some of the side quests, aether current quests and role quests to help out with the MSQ, because there are a lot of them that actually slap super hard.

Edit: actually no i do have something to say because i got so inspired by that erenville discussion, so let me continue below

[vonKlippe]

This expansion was so bad that we need a Dawntrail Reborn to overwrite it. Keep the outline, turn the Wuk Lamat dial from 11 down to 3, delete every cutscene except the gondola, and start over.

And make Viper and Pictomancer unique instead of reswizzles of existing jobs.

And give me a tackle box ffs, I have a whole inventory screen full of lures and scrip bait.

One thing that truly puzzles me... No one... NO ONE at Square stood up and said "this doesn't work, we can't ship this."

[SongOfTheWind]

This expansion was so bad that we need a Dawntrail Reborn to overwrite it. Keep the outline, turn the Wuk Lamat dial from 11 down to 3, delete every cutscene except the gondola, and start over.

And make Viper and Pictomancer unique instead of reswizzles of existing jobs.

And give me a tackle box ffs, I have a whole inventory screen full of lures and scrip bait.

One thing that truly puzzles me... No one... NO ONE at Square stood up and said "this doesn't work, we can't ship this."

At this point I am almost convinced they don’t play their own game.
Also please could you keep the gondola? I don’t want it.