This story is really underwhelming - it's opened to mixed reviews.

[Chasingstars]

Not sure if trolling or if your head is just a decoration, but let me use small words just in case.

Not every person who plays Dawntrail posts a review, reviews are meant to give people who read them an idea of what to expect if they buy the product, and to point out what's good or bad about it.

Reviews also let people know how customers overall feel about the product, if a lot of people don't like the product and post a bad review, then the product is likely bad.

That is my guess, anyway.

If my head is just a decoration so are both are yours. As you want to use statistics to show how something is bad, but don't like it when it gets flipped and compared to the rest of the data. After all it is a sample size of only 822 users who left a negative review on steam, yet there are 70,705 players. So again 1% of the playerbase decided to voice their opinion as a vocal minority. I have seen more numbers for Helldivers 2 in terms of reviews on steam in both the positive and negative.

EDIT: It would almost the equivalent of "See guys of the 100 players, only 2 left a positive review and there is 1 negative, its mixed, story confirmed bad"

[KurenXIV]

If my head is just a decoration so are both are yours. As you want to use statistics to show how something is bad, but don't like it when it gets flipped and compared to the rest of the data. After all it is a sample size of only 822 users who left a negative review on steam, yet there are 70,705 players. So again 1% of the playerbase decided to voice their opinion as a vocal minority. I have seen more numbers for Helldivers 2 in terms of reviews on steam in both the positive and negative.

EDIT: It would almost the equivalent of "See guys of the 100 players, only 2 left a positive review and there is 1 negative, its mixed, story confirmed bad"

You don't need to confirm a story is bad through reviews. If a player plays it and to them the story is bad, then it's bad to them.

Seeing mixed reviews like this when it wasn't this way before does show, however small of a percentage you feel it is, that people are mostly split on the story itself.

Now speaking objectively is the MSQ bad? I'd say compared to what came before, absolutely. From the lack of interesting interactive gameplay, to poor characterization and writing; I'd say as a whole the experience is worse than what came before.

My question to the defenders though is: what, if anything, from DT do you feel is a path that SE should continue with?

Do you feel it's better to have another character be the central focus of the story from here on out (where in we, the player, just watch as things unfold and occasionally do something every several hours or so)?

Do you feel there's compelling story threads, beats or elements from DT that should continue into the next expansions?

Do you feel the way characters are portrayed and dialogue written in DT should be the new standard going forward for the series?

I feel that, while yes some may say the story is "fine" or "serviceable" I feel like those players would be hard pressed to say "Oh I want MORE DT over getting another SHB".

It's OK to like the story, it's OK to like the expansion, but to try and handwave the very clear negative reaction players are having to aspects of the expansion (story and otherwise) is silly.

I, for one, think this is the worst expansion MSQ they've ever released and I've played since ARR launch. So my answer would be to carry over none of what's happened in DT going forward and try and go back to what made the MSQ great in the past. That's not to say repeat the same story beats again, that's to say look at how we as a player interacted with the world and those around us and what worked and build off of that.

[Dogempire]

Snip.

...you do realize the entire point of sampling a population is trying to get a statistic without asking the ENTIRE population, right? Sure, the DT reviews are biased in a sense because the people who post reviews are more skewed towards people with strong opinions who have finished the story, but the reviews are markedly lower than every other xpac, and while we may need to wait for the reviews to stablize/have more submitted, it's still telling of the quality of the expansion if there's a lot of negative reviews when the community is generally very positive about the game.

Going back to the sampling part, it's basically impossible and impractical to survey every single player to get an overall opinion, so statisticians instead take random samples of the population and use it to represent the entire population. You have to take a statistically significant sample of the population for the data to actually work as being representative of the population, and 3 people, as you've mentioned, is not statistically significant.

As for what sample size is statistically significant, I'm sure there might be someone who knows more about statistics than me who could explain, but there's a whole formula involved that I can't be bothered to learn since even if I took the time to explain it, it would fly in one ear and out the other.

[Phaty]

Reviews also let people know how customers overall feel about the product, if a lot of people don't like the product and post a bad review, then the product is likely bad.

But there's more positive reviews than negative, almost double the amount of positive reviews actually, so that means it's good right?

[KurenXIV]

But there's more positive reviews than negative, almost double the amount of positive reviews actually, so that means it's good right?

I'd say it means some people have an issue with your product.

The important thing here, especially for a MMO/live service style game, is to see if there's a tend. If, for example, SE sees that the volume of complaints about X area of the game are 10%....20%....50%....or however much higher than before, then perhaps it'd be wise to hear the feedback being said about why someone feels something isn't good to them.

There's nothing wrong with being critical of a product. I don't think anyone paying to play the game wants to see if fail, we want to make it better and you do that by voicing your displeasure and specifying what you dislike specifically.

[Voidmage]

But there's more positive reviews than negative, almost double the amount of positive reviews actually, so that means it's good right?

It just means that there are more reviews in the 5 and above which makes sense because DT is not a 0 and those are review bombs. This expansion for example is more a 5 or 6 for me which is above average.
It would make more sense to compare it to other expansions and the score of them to get an understanding and not in itself or other games. Given that the game is normaly at an 8 or more and now about 6 or 7 just says that overall players liked it less.
Review sites semself are also not allthe same. There are sides with a more positiv user score (Metacritic) and sites with a more negativ score (google). For steam for example a 60-70 is normaly pretty bad. I don't know how truthfull those sites are and tbh I don't really care.

DT is not unplayable just like another poster said but if we go by score it's also not at the level of other expansions and almost all negative reviews gave the story as a reason for that.
All the reviews imply is that the players are heavely divided this time.

Also even if DT has a final score of ~60 or 70 / 100 that means that about 30-40% of the players are not happy with it. That would not be the majority but certainly a big number of potentialy lost customers.

[Dogempire]

But there's more positive reviews than negative, almost double the amount of positive reviews actually, so that means it's good right?

To add onto what others said, a ~66% positive still marks the game as mediocre, which is honestly about right. DT isn't horrendous, but the MSQ is just okay to tolerable and they haven't done much in terms of innovating the same old formula that they use every xpac.

At the moment, a lot of the xpac hinges on how good the MSQ is, and there's plenty of complaints about it. If they also added new QOL changes, like for instance, removing job-restrictions from glamour, that significantly impact the game for the better then we would see DT's score improve because even though the story is a flop everything that's not the story has made players happy.

[Phaty]

To add onto what others said, a ~66% positive still marks the game as mediocre, which is honestly about right. DT isn't horrendous, but the MSQ is just okay to tolerable and they haven't done much in terms of innovating the same old formula that they use every xpac.

At the moment, a lot of the xpac hinges on how good the MSQ is, and there's plenty of complaints about it. If they also added new QOL changes, like for instance, removing job-restrictions from glamour, that significantly impact the game for the better then we would see DT's score improve because even though the story is a flop everything that's not the story has made players happy.

Yea I can agree with that. FF14 is in a predicament where they just finished a huge decade long arc and have to think of something new, but they don't have the luxury of 50 levels to tell it over to set a foundation like ARR did. I think the worst thing they can do is just ditch what they started and try something new, cuz then that turns into a bad cycle (wow after the LK died)The best would be to learn and improve on what's here now.

[genuine_stranger]

I should post this because I can't handle discussions I don't agree with.

10char123.

[HighlanderClone]

A vocal minority of players actively voice their dislike or like of something.
Keyword: minority of players.

An even tinier vocal minority of players actively defend the company to ward off criticism. What's your point?