Dawntrail is so painful; is it on purpose?

[Zaniel]

I feel this is every msq ever tho? People just notice it more in DT, due to not liking the story. I didn't feel like this was any more of a cutscene sim that the others

I do wish they would give us more actual gameplay for sure.

I can handle quite a bit of visual novel but it's got to actually not be brain-damaged drivel with gaping plot holes. At least between ARR and Endwalker when you were pressing next for the next speech bubble you were interested in what would be in it. I spent 95% of my clicking time in DT rolling my eyes in between outbursts of "WTF is this garbage?!?"

[Kaedan]

Nothing has changed. The formula for the MSQ is the same as it's always been. There isn't any less or more "action" than there always has been. It's always been mostly go from point A to point B and talk to NPCs, have MAYBE 1 small encounter (you know, those purple glowy circles), then towards the end of section have a bigger fight (the shiny rainbow circle around the NPC) and then sprinkle the dungeons in every other level.

They have literally followed that formula for a decade. And it works.

The issue THIS time is that people don't understand the concept of De-escalation. You see, we came off of pretty much the highest note you can get to in a story (Endwalker's storyline). You can't top that kind of climax. If you want to continue a story after something like that, you have to deescalate and "reset" the baseline. And that's exactly what Dawntrail does.

Yes, the story isn't super grand or world-shakingly important.... it's not MEANT to be. It's meant to bring us back to a baseline. And a lot of people don't understand that.

That, or they're the people who just skip the story and don't have a clue what's going on, and then they don't like the only things they have seen because they don't have the full picture.

[Alchemii]

Nothing has changed. The formula for the MSQ is the same as it's always been. There isn't any less or more "action" than there always has been. It's always been mostly go from point A to point B and talk to NPCs, have MAYBE 1 small encounter (you know, those purple glowy circles), then towards the end of section have a bigger fight (the shiny rainbow circle around the NPC) and then sprinkle the dungeons in every other level.

They have literally followed that formula for a decade. And it works.

The issue THIS time is that people don't understand the concept of De-escalation. You see, we came off of pretty much the highest note you can get to in a story (Endwalker's storyline). You can't top that kind of climax. If you want to continue a story after something like that, you have to deescalate and "reset" the baseline. And that's exactly what Dawntrail does.

Yes, the story isn't super grand or world-shakingly important.... it's not MEANT to be. It's meant to bring us back to a baseline. And a lot of people don't understand that.

That, or they're the people who just skip the story and don't have a clue what's going on, and then they don't like the only things they have seen because they don't have the full picture.

That isn't even the issue. The issue is the story is poorly written, with poorly thought out characters, this is the issue. If it was a good story, with likeable characters, then the formula wouldn't be an issue, but that's not what they gave us.

[Laerune]

Story lacks the WOW and OMG moment. They should have kept Solution 9 and Sphene a secret.

[ThorneDynasty]

Nothing has changed. The formula for the MSQ is the same as it's always been.

This isn't even true between DT MSQ and DT role quests.

[Wildheaven182]

I wonder if they outsourced the writing to sweet baby inc. or some other third party. They outsourced everything else after all after they had to fire everyone for their games not selling.

[bp_isa_ff]

I'm 94=(

It gets good at 95

[Gullis]

This isn't even true between DT MSQ and DT role quests.

how is it not true?

[Gullis]

I can handle quite a bit of visual novel but it's got to actually not be brain-damaged drivel with gaping plot holes. At least between ARR and Endwalker when you were pressing next for the next speech bubble you were interested in what would be in it. I spent 95% of my clicking time in DT rolling my eyes in between outbursts of "WTF is this garbage?!?"

so what I said

[Kaedan]

That isn't even the issue. The issue is the story is poorly written, with poorly thought out characters, this is the issue. If it was a good story, with likeable characters, then the formula wouldn't be an issue, but that's not what they gave us.

Completely disagree. For a reset/de-escalation, I thought the story was actually quite good. I also understand Japanese and listen to it in Japanese, so that might make a difference.

Frankly, I think this is more about the voice actors than the story. There's controversy around the VAs in English and I think that is coloring people's perspectives.

Also, again, I can say with high confidence that the people who generalize and make blanket claims that "story was bad, characters were bad" etc didn't actually read/watch the whole story.