90% of Dawntrail MSQ could be a side quest

[KisaiTenshi]

I would put it above ARR and Stormblood, but not above the others.

I'm sorry, but over half of the quests in ARR, even after pruning constitute as side-quest material.

Because a lot of "ARR" was version 1.0 and Version 2.0 content, and people didn't really recognize it as two games worth of content. When they nerfed the opening stories for Ul'dah/Thancred they basically had to reintroduce half of it through flashback stills in Shadowbringers. No such thing happened with Y'shtola/Limsa or Yda+Papalymo/Gridania. The story merge point in 1.0 was done differently where as in 2.0 the twins basically get introduced at level 15 for no apparent relevant reason until you get to like level 30.

2.0 basically sat on what was established in 1.0 but "everyone forgot". Somehow. But not entirely. Clearly the landscape was decimated and everyone recalls the calamity happening but nothing after that. Where did "you" go doing that time if you were a legacy character. What happened to the primals that were released during the 1.0 opening (which we now know seen to have been implied to have been retconned as being "the first" before the flood of light.)

1.0 and 2.0 was never "neatly tied up", but Shadowbringers+Endwalker sufficiently explained everything from 1.0 in a way that was satisfying. Then DT comes along and starts redefining how souls and aether work and now it's like ... "um..."

Wuk Lamat's entire story didn't feel too exciting. It felt like we were just in the backseat. It also feels like Kriles story was thrown in the backseat because she basically has no story agency throughout the expansion.

[Kaurhz]

I would actually put this below ARR personally. The pacing is pretty much as bad as ARR but at least the content and character dev is there in ARR, this has none of that. When it comes to world building ARR is better, dungeon designs, ARR is better. We got more twice as many dungeons with interesting layouts and self contained stories in ARR. This expac has shiny new graphics which are a meh for most people, the tiny tiny little bits of foliage that slightly bend as you run past at 80mph so can't even really notice them, but you mount wobbles so woooooo I guess.

Personally, going to have to disagree on the dungeons there. There were more varied layouts but the number of times people actually elected to engage with these layouts was very miniscule. Most people had always been more concerned with pulling from wall-to-wall to actually bother engaging with the layouts. Literally the entire dungeon layout is as a result of how people interacted with those dungeons. Even with the appeal of getting Manor Varnish, which would effectively be near 80K Gil if you looted it, even though it meant killing 2-3 extra mobs. Same thing for a lot of the other dungeon loot which required engaging with optional rooms.

Dungeon boss design is at an all time high compared to previous expansions, at least they are in my opinion anyway.

Post-ARR was one of the most drab experiences humanly imaginable, both before and after the pruning of a good 70 quests associated with it. ARR is literally a wall for a lot of people, with many people actually either quitting the game or deciding to spend money to skip the stories. How we got there I understand, but it wasn't exactly a pretty experience by any stretch of the imagination. But if I am speaking to my experience at the time of doing it, I quit the game 2-3 times, and then slowly whittling away at the post-story quests just ended up putting me to sleep to the degree where skipping all of the cutscenes was an appealing decision

Still inclined to put it above ARR, both in the past and of the present (Neither of them are good, frankly. But ARR is just a different kind of torment. But hey, opinions and all..

[Malthir]

Personally, going to have to disagree on the dungeons there. There were more varied layouts but the number of times people actually elected to engage with these layouts was very miniscule. Most people had always been more concerned with pulling from wall-to-wall to actually bother engaging with the layouts. Literally the entire dungeon layout is as a result of how people interacted with those dungeons.

Dungeon boss design is at an all time high compared to previous expansions, at least they are in my opinion anyway.

Post-ARR was one of the most drab experiences humanly imaginable, both before and after the pruning of a good 70 quests associated with it. ARR is literally a wall for a lot of people, with many people actually either quitting the game or deciding to spend money to skip the stories. How we got there I understand, but it wasn't exactly a pretty experience by any stretch of the imagination. But if I am speaking to my experience at the time of doing it, I quit the game 2-3 times, and then slowly whittling away at the post-story quests just ended up putting me to sleep to the degree where skipping all of the cutscenes was an appealing decision

Still inclined to put it above ARR, both in the past and of the present (Neither of them are good, frankly. But ARR is just a different kind of torment. But hey, opinions and all..

Really, most people didn't have the gear to be able to wall to wall in ARR, normally you took 1 or 2 packs at a time. Tanking was way way harder, TP was a thing so DPS had to actually pay attention, DPS had to not over agro etc. Also the dungeons were substantially less formulaic. Boss fights involved more environmental and player action and tanking paths based mech instead of dance dance revolution on a square platform. Don't get me wrong ARR had plenty of issues from the story being long winded and convoluted at times, Jobs were very bare bones they didn't have mechanics they had a playstyle which in a way was good but I can understand why they changed it. However for dungeons, party content and world building it was probably one of the best expacs.

[Endy_Sinkai]

To be completely honest. I have come to the conclusion that this is mainly the fault of the writers and more likely the pr team not allowing the scions to be left behind.

If you stop and think about it. Resources that had to be made to put them in this expansion absolutely would have went to msq or new character development.

Instead they where basically forced into the expansion just to be a crutch narratively for us to have things get fixed or expained when we couldn't do it or Wuk couldn't.

We started this game with zero scions and it should have started our new journey without them too.

When you take as many resources as it takes for that many pre-established characters other parts of the game will suffer because now you have to write for them being there.

You have to animate them being there you have to test their models being there ect ect.

It was just the wrong call and the msq super suffered for having them there.

Would it have fixed everything no probably not.

However it would have more than likely forced the writers to make changes to the structure of the quest and write the characters in a different way.

Now they would have had to figure out salutations on there own merit or actually get the player character involved from time to time like when we first started our adventures.

[Tunda]

I don't actually know if they hire an experience people.. if not they actually do not know their game advantage!
combat wise and responsiveness there is other games that is better technically.
story wise no other MMO have this depth.

Basically they lost their competitor's advantage in this expansion

[Ahelissa]

I think trimming and consolidating cutscenes would go a long way towards helping the pacing. The 5 seconds between voiced lines, every giant/dragon talking painfully slow, 10 seconds to watch a character silently emote, recapping what I just saw in the previous cutscene, etc. It all adds up over 100+ cutscenes. They could trim hours out of the story without actually cutting any content. And they could cut 10 hours easily if they stopped writing like we all had a brain injury and couldn't remember what we just learned 30 seconds ago

[Silver-Strider]

Honestly, what kills me is getting out of 1 cutscene to then talk with an NPC that immediately triggers another cutscene.

[Bonoki]

I wish SE never disbanded the Scions in 6.0.
I wish SE never called the 6.1 patch "Newfound Adventures".
I wish SE never shoe horned Wuk Lamat at the end of 6.55.
I wish the contest had real conflict among the Scions.
I wish SE never referred to Dawntail as a vacation in any such capacity.
I wish the community would stop calling us Wuk Lamat's mentor.
I wish the Mcguffin was explained better.

[CatWeazle]

I wish SE never disbanded the Scions in 6.0.
I wish SE never called the 6.1 patch "Newfound Adventures".
I wish SE never shoe horned Wuk Lamat at the end of 6.55.
I wish the contest had real conflict among the Scions.
I wish SE never referred to Dawntail as a vacation in any such capacity.
I wish the community would stop calling us Wuk Lamat's mentor.
I wish the Mcguffin was explained better.

I wish we would've gone on vacation with Estinien instead, he seemed to have fun

[DontReadThis]

You mean you didn't love how every single time you talked to an NPC it would immediately trigger a cutscene with a fade to black, camera panning over the environment to remind you of where you are, characters slowly walking into place, everyone emoting or nodding after every 1-2 sentences, and then finally zooming in on someone clenching their fists?

But I do agree the part of the story with the feats should have been more heavily condensed. The latter part with Sphene was more interesting and definitely suffered from being crammed into 3 levels, and even that wasn't safe from needless padding since the final area could itself have been trimmed with everyone splitting up to shut down different terminals. Krile's moment definitely would have been better without that forced ice cream scene, or the quiz, and would have been better with just the camera panning over her hugging her parents before shutting down the terminal herself, implying all that needed to be said without wasting time with words.

The feats really should have only taken between levels 91-93, ending with a trial. Then Wuk Lamat would remain in the city for the rest of the MSQ with us just visiting to occasionally check in. Next, 93-95 would have been a revisit to every area to check in on political unrest because Wuk Lamat is incompetent and too idealistic to actually be able to run things herself, ending with her convincing the catboy to be dawnservant with her like in the current MSQ. Finally the invasion would transition into the Alexandria/Living Memory story for all of 95+ without that cowboy area that was legitimately 100% filler with zero character development.