Dawntrail is so painful; is it on purpose?

[Barachim]

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.

Not everyone is terminally online on twitter. I didn't even know until last week that there was controversy surrounding the VA. And I still don't know what it was about, because I didn't care to look into it, whatever they do or say in privat doesn't affect their performance.

But since you listen to it in Japanese anyway, have you even experienced the worst moments for yourself? Like the final trial, that deflates the whole moment with the bad voice acting?

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.

Or, hear me out, people read/watched the whole story, and that's why they can confidently form the informed opinion that it's the worst story, with the most bland characters out of all the expansions we got so far.

[Dogempire]

Not everyone is terminally online on twitter. I didn't even know until last week that there was controversy surrounding the VA. And I still don't know what it was about, because I didn't care to look into it, whatever they do or say in privat doesn't affect their performance.

But since you listen to it in Japanese anyway, have you even experienced the worst moments for yourself? Like the final trial, that deflates the whole moment with the bad voice acting?



Or, hear me out, people read/watched the whole story, and that's why they can confidently form the informed opinion that it's the worst story, with the most bland characters out of all the expansions we got so far.

Honestly, even if the story was actually good, which in my case I'd give it a 35% failing grade, the lack of any meaningful gameplay and overreliance on the same old boring formula would absolutely be a valid criticism to say that the xpac MSQ is bad, I've never once in my XIV MSQ experience kept checking the quest level and going "Oh thank yaoi, we get a dungeon in another level so I actually get a chance to do something meaningful."

It's tired, it's boring, and I wish they would stop sticking to the same formula because the MSQ dungeons/trials being too predictable and lacking any sort of variation on what levels they are makes it extremely easy to predict when the plot twists are, and it's also extremely easy to tell what the trial is by simply seeing who looks like a big bad around the 93/ 99, and 100 level marks.

[Lieri]

Imagine the state of DT without graphical update. Theyre smart enough to recognize they need to add that to DT to make it better. Could the lore be purposely boring to make sure the next expansion will be better? Maybe. Gatekeeping contents and releasing them in batches will ensure the quality is spread out. They wouldnt have released graphics update in ShB or EW because the story and everything else already carried those two.

Call it a conspiracy theory if you like but it makes a lot of sense business wise. Like when you know your newly made car model is not as impressive in the terms of performance improvement from the previous one, you just slap never seen before color exclusives to add value to that model. Could they have added those colors to prev models? They could have but they didnt have to.

[FudoMyoo]

AND yet another one jump on the bandwagon ... If a game makes me dragging to play. I stop. I unsub!

[Voidmage]

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.

The critique is on the story foremost and the voices second.
Other languages don’t make the story better.

I‘m not a native english speaker but play in english. Where I live we are required to learn that language and are usually really good with it.
I didn‘t really get most of the criticism of the VA besides the screaming but still think the writing is garbage.

The Japanese and other countries also have the same criticism as we here.

Imagine the state of DT without graphical update.

Without the graphical update and the better fights this time I wouldn‘t be surprised if another Dalamud was knocking on the door.

[Folsom]

Dawntrail is the start of a whole new story after the climatic expansion that was Endwalker, nearly a full decade after the beginning of ARR. It has to build stuff up before things can be exciting so yes, it's "painful' because it's nothing like Shadowbringers or Endwalker.

Have you never read other short stories, watched episodic TV, read single novels, watched regular-length movies, or seen plays? The idea that a 40 hour story "has to build stuff up before things can be exciting" is ludicrous. Maybe you're just used to horrible writing in your media? SMH.

[Vhana]

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.

I don’t disagree in theory, but two things:

1. A story can and should be compelling, emotional, nuanced and immersive no matter its scale.

2. The idea of deescalation doesn’t align with the reality that Sphene was going to start pillaging all the souls in existence. Or the introduction of a magical MacGuffin that can, at base understanding, allow travel across shards and fuse realities.

[Magikazam]

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.

Imo it only an issue since EW. The moment they removed the few gameplay encounter where you go in a purple smoke and spawn like 3 bandits or something really made it look like the story turned into a visual novel. Like those part weren't even engaging in term of difficulty but imo they gave good spot to wait and digest the story a bit and they did a better job for the story than adding 3 extra step of ''go talk to x'' where we will get a few cutscene of useless yap.

[Chuhsu]

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.

By now I have seen several comments in the English Forum questioning if...or stating that the Japanese version is better. As someone who plays every expansion in JP and on JP DC, I will testify that bad writing is bad writing in 7.0 regardless of whether it is in English or Japanese.

If people need more evidence they can go to the megathread on the Japanese forum, many critics there express similar concerns as those in English. They tend to be a bit euphemistic but are still clearly pointing out the problems, and some of them are just outright criticizing, which is a rare situation.

Edited to add the mentioned megathread link here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...81%84%E3%81%A6

Also on one aspect Wuk Lamat is even worse in JP: she is strangely impolite in her choice of second person pronouns and how she almost never speaks in polite form. It might be a shonen trope thing, but to be honest, can't say the JP players receive that very well, since it is also stated she is a princess and would be queen.

[Mnemy]

While FF14 has always been a lot of this (I've been here since 1.0 and love the game) but the story has alwasy been worth it; this time it's almost unbearable.

I think you have the answer right here. It has always been like this, you are correct there. While they also made the player gameplay experience less in DT ie. the solo duties, the game has always been more narrative driven. IT'S JUST MORE NOTICEABLE BECAUSE AS YOU SAID, THE STORY IS NOT WORTH IT. I'm in the same ballpark as you. I dont mind this AT ALL if the story is well written, ergo now its a slog to go through because we dont enjoy the MSQ anymore.