The many writing missteps of Dawntrain.

[Vahlnir]

Now you're just being unfair.
While the story does have it's issues, it WAS an adventure into unknown territory and I actually enjoyed it for the most part. I really like the visuals of the Electrope tech. I just wish they'd handled the moral dilemma of using souls and the Endless a little better.

This is as fair as it gets with me. I'm actually being nice. It also amuses me that even you left out the "exciting" part. I'm pretty sure my WoL would have preferred to watch paint dry for hours on end instead of going on this...whatever the heck it was. He certainly had the time with how much of it he spent standing around. But hey, if this MSQ was your jam, then you do you. I don't judge. I wish I had actually enjoyed it too. Truly. I'm just voicing my own opinions on the matter.

[fioravictorine]

I'd like to disagree with that assessment.
We did actively push her into the final trial and resolved the whole prophecy issue.

That is NOT the role of an observer.

Furina is still the MC of the Fontaine arc, Focalors a means to the end. And if we leave arguing the finer details of the both plots aside, it is a similar role we have in Dawntrail. We move the plot a little, but this story is another MC's story - it is most definitely not us

Yet one is well received, and the other is mixed

[CNitsah]

You can add,

- When reaching living memory, there is this quest were you have to get his ring for a guy that want to asks the women he loved to marry her, but he died before her. sHe tells us he died before her, and she didn't marry anyone after that. Except she is not supposed to remember him then since he had they both had a device, or they wouldn't be endless, and she should have forgotten him when he died, and it's a memory without him that should have been archived.

- The society where you forget your parents, children, loved ones is presented as something beneficial and sustainable, yet every quest and side quest that talks about that show how disfonctionnal it is, and how those people benefits from remembering them. All this seems more like a façade than something than something thought through.

- The game tells us endless are not humans, then spends 3 hours showing us how human they are. Not only the game show you the opposite of its discourse, but for a game insist on the "You don't always die when you physically die", that does not sit very well. It sends you the message "being alive is not about your state of consciousness nor ability to think for yourself", which make a lot of Ultima Thule guys not alive, I guess.

What? When you turn off the first tower, there are literally Endless happily waving goodbye, and at least in the first aether current quest, the tour guide happily tells you you're his last customer. If you talk to the knight after the cheesy event, he thanks you for ending his existence on a brighter note. And on and on.

... sometimes I feel like people just don't pay attention on purpose.

Don't you think this deserved to be made clearer? I'm pretty sure the guy that wanted to ask his the woman he loved was pretty unhappy about disappearing without a say. Don't you think it's kinda hard to believe that in 400 years, nobody expressed that to anyone, and just rolled with it, and when you arrive, suddenly everyone is okay with dying? To me it's a facility to not make the player feel bad about what's happening. The whole thing deserved a better development, but there was no time.

[Granyala]

It also amuses me that even you left out the "exciting" part.

I did not expect Endwalker / Shadowbringer levels of excitement.
I expected a more relaxed storyline with lots or world building for future stuff, peppered with a few local problems that needs the intervention of my WoL/Scions to be resolved.

I was pleasantly surprised when Alexandrian forces showed up and SE picking up on another shard world. Going into Heritage found was definitely exciting. (Plus I got to make trolley joke)

The writers just dropped the ball through the whole planet in that last zone though. It could have been an epic trip into the actual shard world Alexandria is from but they botched it completely with some fake-y matrix stuff and shoehorned "moral dilemma" that was then glossed over completely.

Yah, I definitely got "paint dry" vibes in the last zone.

Furina is still the MC of the Fontaine arc, Focalors a means to the end.

Yeah lets just agree to disagree on that part.
Furina is an important person (just like any Archon) but she is not the main character.

That would be Neuvilette because this whole thing is essentially his story about how he gets his authority back from the usurpers.

The main reason for mixed XIV story is just that the plot is full of holes and poorly executed. It's not really about the role of the WoL. For most of XIV we are always just there and witness events, lending our strength to defeat baddies when needed but ultimately others shape the future.

[fioravictorine]

Yeah lets just agree to disagree on that part.
Furina is an important person (just like any Archon) but she is not the main character.

That would be Neuvilette because this whole thing is essentially his story about how he gets his authority back from the usurpers.

Sure, you can dismiss Furina as MC despite how absurd it sounds and say its Neuvilette, but even he is well loved by everyone (and me) so uh, yeah

[Aulainn]

What? When you turn off the first tower, there are literally Endless happily waving goodbye, and at least in the first aether current quest, the tour guide happily tells you you're his last customer. If you talk to the knight after the cheesy event, he thanks you for ending his existence on a brighter note. And on and on.

... sometimes I feel like people just don't pay attention on purpose.

Excuse me? You were the tour guides last customers because you deleted everyone else, he didn't hate his job or anything he just had an unfulfilled wish that you helped fulfill. Also yeah, I bet someone would thank you for making them happy before death, we have real life groups that do that, we even give meal wishes to death row inmates. None of these are examples of people being happy they're disappearing.

[Granyala]

Sure, you can dismiss Furina as MC despite how absurd it sounds and say its Neuvilette, but even he is well loved by everyone (and me) so uh, yeah

You need to realize that Furina did not do much during the story. She didn't even have that much screentime until the very end.

Also, she wasn't well loved at the start of the Fontaine arc at all. I'd say reactions were pretty divided (me being in the camp that hated her fake as fork Diva personality). I only got to like her in the very last act when we got to see her actual shy personality.

To be perfectly honest: I don't think the Fontaine arc allows one single character to be the "main protagonist".
Focalors, Neuvilette, Furina, Navia .. heck even the Duke are all really important in their own way.

Anyhow: keep in mind that the target audience for Genshin is also quite different from XIV. So naturally story based preferences will vary as well. IMHO both Genshin and XIV incorporate too little action/gameplay into their main stories. Both games pretty much cease to be a videogame and are more like movies during story mode.

E.g.: the invasion of Tuliyollal: why no solo duty? The train ride: why no solo duty? We need more ACTION not just "walk from cutscene to cutscene".

[Aulainn]

You need to realize that Furina did not do much during the story. She didn't even have that much screentime until the very end.

Also, she wasn't well loved at the start of the Fontaine arc at all. I'd say reactions were pretty divided (me being in the camp that hated her fake as fork Diva personality). I only got to like her in the very last act when we got to see her actual shy personality.

To be perfectly honest: I don't think the Fontaine arc allows one single character to be the "main protagonist".
Focalors, Neuvilette, Furina, Navia .. heck even the Duke are all really important in their own way.

To be fair everything about it revolved around her, whole plot was literally orchestrated by the focalor to be about Furina. Everything we do culminates into Furina being freed from her suffering and becoming her own person. Everything we do is to get to the bottom of the prophecy, which is about Furina.

[fioravictorine]

You need to realize that Furina did not do much during the story. She didn't even have that much screentime until the very end.

Also, she wasn't well loved at the start of the Fontaine arc at all. I'd say reactions were pretty divided (me being in the camp that hated her fake as fork Diva personality). I only got to like her in the very last act when we got to see her actual shy personality.

To be perfectly honest: I don't think the Fontaine arc allows one single character to be the "main protagonist".
Focalors, Neuvilette, Furina, Navia .. heck even the Duke are all really important in their own way.

Anyhow: keep in mind that the target audience for Genshin is also quite different from XIV. So naturally story based preferences will vary as well. IMHO both Genshin and XIV incorporate too little action/gameplay into their main stories. Both games pretty much cease to be a videogame and are more like movies during story mode.

E.g.: the invasion of Tuliyollal: why no solo duty? The train ride: why no solo duty? We need more ACTION not just "walk from cutscene to cutscene".

You hating on Furina at first and did a 180 by the end of the story is a testament to good writing, which Dawntrail did not have

My point is, in both Fontaine and Dawntrail we aren't the MC and we let other characters took the center stage yet the story worked - while Dawntrail fell flat

Anyway, the MSQ-only crowd might find this experience related vs a raiding/MMO RP crowd sure, I am merely speaking from an MSQ-only perspective

[Granyala]

To be fair everything about it revolved around her, whole plot was literally orchestrated by the focalor to be about Furina. Everything we do culminates into Furina being freed from her suffering and becoming her own person. Everything we do is to get to the bottom of the prophecy, which is about Furina.

The prophecy isn't about Furina at all, it's about the Fontainian people. Oo

Furina is very much a means to an end employed by Focalors, to give her time to charge up the Oratrice mecanique d'analyse cardinale™ in order to nuke the hydro throne and give Neuvilette back his power, because that is the only way to save the Oceanoid mimic population of Fontaine from dissolution in the Primordial sea when the bloody whale breaks out. (which is punishment from Celestia for the unauthorized creation of the mimic population by Focalors predecessor)

I get it, you are Furina fans (I like my lil' Gremlin too, enough to C2 her) but this whole quest is not just about Furina. Yeah Furina gets freed of her burden at the end but so does basically the entirety of the Fontaine when Neuvi forgives their original sin and turns them human.

If anything, this arc is about Neuvilettes development as much as it is about Furinas, because had it happened 450 years ago, Neuvi would just have said "f** the people, they deserve this!".
There is a reason why Focalors left him in charge of the state.

You hating on Furina at first and did a 180 by the end of the story is a testament to good writing, which Dawntrail did not have

My point is, in both Fontaine and Dawntrail we aren't the MC and we let other characters took the center stage yet the story worked - while Dawntrail fell flat

Bakool Ja Ja. Hated at first, then became best man. :'D

I think the main problem for a story like this is the darn MMO format. In Mass Effect you can really dive into the moral dilemma of "Do you consider the Geth alive" and give the player A CHOICE with consequences. That makes the story awesome. You can even design multiple alternative outcomes.

In an MMO, the path is fixed (else people couldn't play together). It doesn't matter what I think of the endless because the whole shabang is decided for me by the DEVs anyway. That's why the whole moral dilemma just falls flat on it's face and lacks impact.

Plus, the pacing was just forkin' horrible:
Me: Ooh big baddie charges up doomsday device! gotta do something!
Cahciua: Yeeah about that... it'll run y-cruncher for quite a while ... have some tasteless icecream instead and go do some utter trivialities.

I got legit ARR "cheese wars" flashbacks there and there is nothing I hate more than the story communicating URGENCY and the Writers throwing meaningless padding at me to delay the resolution. UGH.