Yoshi P - Your next live letter, DT msq and the damage to the brand

[Volgia]

Look im a hardcore advocator of ff14. Even I can say DT had a bad story, lets set aside the Wuk drama. Bad pacing, lack of fan fare, stakes were all over the pkace, horrible plot hole, krile and eren ville were done dirty, bland approach on characters, too many plots, too little resolves, grnocide is ok as long as we make final boss give up on her mission, lack of communication, lack of common sense (certain character dies, we could have prevented that, and another tragedy from happening), the telling others and forcing our views unto them, (the soul thing). Its weird but ideas on DT were all over the place....felt like no real focus until it came to certain parts of the story.

I feel you could describe Endwalker just the same way with the exception of the stakes. Lack of common sense and communication, we get the final boss to give up on her mission by hugging her, we stand there while we watch someone die without doing anything... the story isn't without it's flaws but it wasn't anything too grating to do "Damage to the brand" lmao.

To me that's all a matter of opinoin, I found the storylines compelling. but if I have a real critcisims is that there are so many action scenes turned into cutscenes. You barely control your character but to drag other NPCs around, so it's a cutscene at your own pace. I have all these cool abilities and I use them on maybe 15 encounters. I find the MSQ flawed, but not because of it's characters, it's the narrative that bothers me, with such an up of quality from EW in terms of content it's kind of sad we spend so much time reading a book.

[OMGJesuis66]

I feel you could describe Endwalker just the same way with the exception of the stakes. Lack of common sense and communication, we get the final boss to give up on her mission by hugging her, we stand there while we watch someone die without doing anything... the story isn't without it's flaws but it wasn't anything too grating to do "Damage to the brand" lmao.

To me that's all a matter of opinoin, I found the storylines compelling. but if I have a real critcisims is that there are so many action scenes turned into cutscenes. You barely control your character but to drag other NPCs around, so it's a cutscene at your own pace. I have all these cool abilities and I use them on maybe 15 encounters. I find the MSQ flawed, but not because of it's characters, it's the narrative that bothers me, with such an up of quality from EW in terms of content it's kind of sad we spend so much time reading a book.

You could say that from literally ANY expansion, even Shadowbringers. People praise the stories of other expansions as if they are the newest best narrative ever made, and they forget the same criticism they apply on Dawntrail also existed in the previous expansions. The way the MSQ tried to force down my throat, in Shadowbringers, that I should care and feel bad about Emet-Selch and the Ascians is something that will always bother me in this narrative. They forced the general views on many people to the point I felt such lack of immersion that ever since .1 of Shadowbringers, I hardly could relate with my WoL at all UNTIL Dawntrail as you reach Heritage Found and start to genuinely be bothered by all that's happening.

[Bananarama]

You could say that from literally ANY expansion, even Shadowbringers. People praise the stories of other expansions as if they are the newest best narrative ever made, and they forget the same criticism they apply on Dawntrail also existed in the previous expansions. The way the MSQ tried to force down my throat, in Shadowbringers, that I should care and feel bad about Emet-Selch and the Ascians is something that will always bother me in this narrative. They forced the general views on many people to the point I felt such lack of immersion that ever since .1 of Shadowbringers, I hardly could relate with my WoL at all UNTIL Dawntrail as you reach Heritage Found and start to genuinely be bothered by all that's happening.

I gotta agree here. Maybe the game's story isn't for me, but for most of the game outside of 3.X and parts of 4.X, I couldn't bring myself to be in line with how the game seems to want my character to feel.
The most recent thing was the point where Wuk Lamat is all like "Call me Llama tea!" and I said nothing and crossed my arms, only for another NPC to make sure she knows I WANT to call her that. Little nitpick, but it keeps FF14 from sticking out to me for its "super amazing" story. It's like it's maximized for "engagement" and discussion among fans, and people who aren't terribly into it are just along for the ride.

[Zakuyia]

I feel you could describe Endwalker just the same way with the exception of the stakes. Lack of common sense and communication, we get the final boss to give up on her mission by hugging her, we stand there while we watch someone die without doing anything... the story isn't without it's flaws but it wasn't anything too grating to do "Damage to the brand" lmao.

To me that's all a matter of opinoin, I found the storylines compelling. but if I have a real critcisims is that there are so many action scenes turned into cutscenes. You barely control your character but to drag other NPCs around, so it's a cutscene at your own pace. I have all these cool abilities and I use them on maybe 15 encounters. I find the MSQ flawed, but not because of it's characters, it's the narrative that bothers me, with such an up of quality from EW in terms of content it's kind of sad we spend so much time reading a book.

Sorry for late reply. Meteon makes sense on our approach to her. We know her, we knew her story, we connected to meteon an not her sisters. Meteon could not be reasoned with. Meteons collective voice is true embodiment of pure unfiltered nillisism. Its why the endsinger had to die. Now im not saying endwalker is not without its fault...but the story was way more compelling than wtf ever DT was trying to sell.

[Volgia]

Sorry for late reply. Meteon makes sense on our approach to her. We know her, we knew her story, we connected to meteon an not her sisters. Meteon could not be reasoned with. Meteons collective voice is true embodiment of pure unfiltered nillisism. Its why the endsinger had to die. Now im not saying endwalker is not without its fault...but the story was way more compelling than wtf ever DT was trying to sell.

Again man, it's your opinion. I liked Sphene a lot, I liked Meteion, but back when EW was out idk if you'll recall how many people said they shoehorned her into the story, and I had to defend her the same way I have to defend Sphene. If you didn't like that's okay, it's okay not to like it, but it's a stretch to say it was universally disliked.

I recommend reading this thread. It very nicely explains a lot of the main objective issues with the character writing in Dawntrail.

Damn that's a long post.

[Malthir]

Again man, it's your opinion. I liked Sphene a lot, I liked Meteion, but back when EW was out idk if you'll recall how many people said they shoehorned her into the story, and I had to defend her the same way I have to defend Sphene. If you didn't like that's okay, it's okay not to like it, but it's a stretch to say it was universally disliked.



Damn that's a long post.

Yes it is long, but can you see the concept of an objective critique vs a subjective critique now?

It being poorly written doesn't mean you can't enjoy it personally. Soap opera's are generally incredibly poorly written but they are still watched by many people. The concept of this damaging the brand was about the fact that FF14's brand image is a well written story and whether you can stomach the story or not on a personal level no one can justifiably say that this was well written, which in turn damages the brand identity. Now when the post patches come out they might be able to salvage some of this and mitigate that damage. If they don't, it risks being a serious detriment to the health of the game.

[Volgia]

Yes it is long, but can you see the concept of an objective critique vs a subjective critique now?

It being poorly written doesn't mean you can't enjoy it personally. Soap opera's are generally incredibly poorly written but they are still watched by many people. The concept of this damaging the brand was about the fact that FF14's brand image is a well written story and whether you can stomach the story or not on a personal level no one can justifiably say that this was well written, which in turn damages the brand identity. Now when the post patches come out they might be able to salvage some of this and mitigate that damage. If they don't, it risks being a serious detriment to the health of the game.

Okay, this post is very long, and it's kind of obnoxious to bring and challenge points without sounding nitpicky. But there are things that are just very opinionated, he gives some claims like Alisae 100% trusting Sphene when she literally is the first one to say "Okay but we aren't really trusting her are we". This whole post reads as a rationalization of wanting the MSQ to be really, really bad, when it's really not better or worse than any early expansions.

I'm all for improving the MSQ, but to me this is all just fluff arguments over not liking a character.

[Malthir]

Okay, this post is very long, and it's kind of obnoxious to bring and challenge points without sounding nitpicky. But there are things that are just very opinionated, he gives some claims like Alisae 100% trusting Sphene when she literally is the first one to say "Okay but we aren't really trusting her are we". This whole post reads as a rationalization of wanting the MSQ to be really, really bad, when it's really not better or worse than any early expansions.

I'm all for improving the MSQ, but to me this is all just fluff arguments over not liking a character.

You seem to be missing the point here, it's not about any individual character. You in fact just pointed out an example of the poor writing, you saying Alisae says "Okay we aren't really trusting her are we." However the actions taken by the entire group and the next few cutscenes just ignore that statement. As I said in my previous comment, one of the tells of bad writing is telling not showing. Alisae tells us how to feel instead of the story showing us how we should feel. They just blurt out emotions then act contrary to those emotions, or they just completely change in personality within the span of a cutscene. Alisae barely spent time with Wuk for example, yet is now calling her lami ti, Alisae, one of the most emotionally guarded characters just decides I'm BFF with this person I've functionally barely met and had very few scenes with.

Again this isn't about Wuk or Sphene, It's all the characters, the way the story is paced doesn't allow for any functional character development, so the writing just has characters respond to things in specific ways for the sake of this plot point, even if that response would be out of the established behaviour for the character. Bakool, is a monster for most of the story, He believe might makes right, the weak have no purpose. He's not just slightly bad, he's out right evil. He starts of with threatening the exam proctors, sabotaging rivals, then he escalates to kidnap and threating the life of his sister, then he escalates again by freeing a creature that's could wipe out thousands of people, then he finds out about his sisters bio dad reveals this to her to emotionally traumatise her and then threatens to kill the man. He then has a 2m cutscene where he explains his sad backstory and when next we see him he is willing to potentially sacrifice his life for those weaker than him...... complete 180 of the character, no arc no development no meaningful introspection. Just I had bad things happen ok I guess I'll be good now.

That's not personal taste for the character that's just poor writing. It's all over the story, Erenville and Wuk are childhood friends, really, because they certainly don't seem like it with any of the ingame actions or dialogue, other than when we're just flat told, Wuk and Erenville are childhood friends, to reiterate, you should show the audience not just tell them.

The fact that people think they can't salvage anything is mind boggling.

They salvaged 1.0
They cleaned up ARR MSQ and dungeons.
They salvaged SB,
They somehow wrote a fairly cohesive story for an MMO with a bonnet by the end of Endwalker for the course of 10 years. No single MMO has EVER accomplished such a feat over that time span.

The track record of FFXIV transcends every single MMO out there, no cap. The fact that anyone has doubts against this record still is wild and delusional.
The forum community (vocal minority) is the biggest detriment the game has. Just a bunch of whining ungrateful people that don't really understand how good they have it compared to anywhere else. Voicing opinions is fine, harping constantly on rehashed points is doing nothing at this point and really only making the community look worse and not even concise enough to generate actual feedback devs can use.

There is no "brand damage". If we survived SB when arguably MSQ was at it's worst to then go to people SALIVATING over SHB and soon after EW, nah we fine, you just a doomer for the hell of it.

And still DT is looking better than SB.

You're wrong and here is why. In 1.0 FF14 had such a tiny portion of the market no where near a good level of saturation, being bad is less impactful when you're small. Also 2.0 was not amazing, it was just amazing considering what came before, don't get me wrong it was good but it was only comparatively good. They still never truly cleaned up 2.0, the low level leveling experience is still accepted to be a colossal barrier to entry. SB wasn't something they needed to salvage, some people were critical but generally it reviewed ok, by all measurable metrics SB is significantly better then DT. The difference is now, FF14 is a big guy in the world of MMO's they have achieved good market saturation, everyone has at least now heard of it. The thing they have heard of though, is it's got a well written story. Well, now being that big plays against them. Everyone who heard about the game will now also here they've released a sub par story that's poorly written. This of course damages the brand, because who as a new player wants to be told, you've just got to get through ARR MSQ, then it's good, until the latest expac and then it's not very good again. Also people are always remembered for their latest release, 6.x was not well received there were lots of complaints about the story so people start to see it as a down trend in writing standards when you release and expac that's written even worse. Then tack on that satisfaction about how the jobs play is at an all time low.

As I said they could potentially salvage some of this if the post patch is great, however their main competitor is about to drop an expac next month, FF14 has lost alot of good will with it's community over the job designs, and the bad writing, they are going to have to hit this absolutely out of the park, this is a massive up hill battle just to recover what's been lost. Damage to the brand image is not saying they are going to shut doors, what it really means is SE might start making sweeping changes or they might decide that the companies future shouldn't rely on the MMO and reduce it's budget, no one knows how the execs will respond, but there's going to be some substantial in house discussion about this.

[Volgia]

You seem to be missing the point here, it's not about any individual character. You in fact just pointed out an example of the poor writing, you saying Alisae says "Okay we aren't really trusting her are we." However the actions taken by the entire group and the next few cutscenes just ignore that statement. As I said in my previous comment, one of the tells of bad writing is telling not showing. Alisae tells us how to feel instead of the story showing us how we should feel. They just blurt out emotions then act contrary to those emotions, or they just completely change in personality within the span of a cutscene. Alisae barely spent time with Wuk for example, yet is now calling her lami ti, Alisae, one of the most emotionally guarded characters just decides I'm BFF with this person I've functionally barely met and had very few scenes with.

That's just how the MSQ has always been, this isn't worse than it already was. It's kind of disingenous to say that Bakool had no redemption arc when all of the 94 questline is exactly looking how he had to uphold this supremacist ideology because if he didn't it meant that sacrificing thousands of children to make him happen was for nothing. It wasn't a 2 min cutscene, it was Wuk Lamat beating him, it was him helping bridge their people and your group, it was you, Koana and the scions helping them establish a means of economy to support their land, it was him coming to the defense of Tuliyollali and saving it's people to the soul-sucking machines.

I can say the same about Alisae, she spent ALL the expansion with Wuk, she fought shoulder to shoulder against Valigarmanda and Zoral'ja. You don't like the story because you feel like it has no subtelty or subtext then you probably shouldn't like any of the early expansions either.

Again it's easy to fall into the trap of not liking something, and rationalizing it all to be the OBJECTIVELY bad and then bouncing back and forth on posts and analysis that already agree with you, especially here in the FF Forums, there were people doing this kind of analysis to Shadowbringers and Endwalker, it seems to happen to every damn expansion.

[Havenchild]

You're wrong and here is why. In 1.0 FF14 had such a tiny portion of the market no where near a good level of saturation, being bad is less impactful when you're small. Also 2.0 was not amazing, it was just amazing considering what came before, don't get me wrong it was good but it was only comparatively good. They still never truly cleaned up 2.0, the low level leveling experience is still accepted to be a colossal barrier to entry. SB wasn't something they needed to salvage, some people were critical but generally it reviewed ok, by all measurable metrics SB is significantly better then DT. The difference is now, FF14 is a big guy in the world of MMO's they have achieved good market saturation, everyone has at least now heard of it. The thing they have heard of though, is it's got a well written story. Well, now being that big plays against them. Everyone who heard about the game will now also here they've released a sub par story that's poorly written. This of course damages the brand, because who as a new player wants to be told, you've just got to get through ARR MSQ, then it's good, until the latest expac and then it's not very good again. Also people are always remembered for their latest release, 6.x was not well received there were lots of complaints about the story so people start to see it as a down trend in writing standards when you release and expac that's written even worse. Then tack on that satisfaction about how the jobs play is at an all time low.

As I said they could potentially salvage some of this if the post patch is great, however their main competitor is about to drop an expac next month, FF14 has lost alot of good will with it's community over the job designs, and the bad writing, they are going to have to hit this absolutely out of the park, this is a massive up hill battle just to recover what's been lost. Damage to the brand image is not saying they are going to shut doors, what it really means is SE might start making sweeping changes or they might decide that the companies future shouldn't rely on the MMO and reduce it's budget, no one knows how the execs will respond, but there's going to be some substantial in house discussion about this.

The fact that they even could salvage 1.0 is amazing and SB proves my point though. SB received the EXACT complaints DT has and probably even worse (general consensus on forums was people didn't like EITHER Ala Mhigo or Orthard). Forget Lyse versus Wuk Lamat, MOST people here and in-game hated Lyse. We are not about to try and rewrite history to try and engage the hate parade for DT. The only saving grace of SB at the time was battle design of raids and after a time but not initially, job balance. For jobs specifically, several people had issues with how they neutered everyone's kits especially the removal of synergy throughout the jobs. It was only during the Kefka raiding era that SB really started coming into its own with battle content, story MSQ and job balance that everyone more fondly refers to. 6.0 overall is reflected on extremely well in the community including the 6.X series. If you are consistently only on the forums, then yeah you would not get that feeling cause these forums are toxic af and ONLY trend negative.

FFXIV does not have a main competitor. People who play WoW largely still play WoW. Very few if ANY actually quit forever. They generally touch two different markets of players and while there is some overlap, there are far more exclusive advantages of either. FFXIV has also not "lost alot of goodwill" Get off the forums first off. If anything, the fact that a lot of people were hype about the battle design and raids goes to show that they have in fact, re-ignited a good chunk of hardened players that felt the game had become too casual.

Lastly, it's ok if DT isn't for you. That's fine. Not every piece of content, whether MSQ / Raids / Extremes / other random content, is going to be perfection throughout. It never has been the case. But we not gonna sit here and try to make sweeping comments as if the whole thing is bad. Even comments in this thread and places like steam reviews, people can rate the MSQ down, but almost seem to unanimously enjoy where the battle content is right now, which is literally majority of the game.

Thus the game will be fine. You can doomer all you want but you wouldn't be the first or the last person to do it. People like yourself have shown up on these forums ever since ARR for literally every expansion to announce how the game is failing, will end etc and like those in the past, you will inevitably be proven wrong and delusional.

We can put every single SE property right now against FFXIV and can still confirm, none of them will outlast XIV, the main cash cow for the company. For XIV to fall, the company itself will have to go under which is nowhere on the horizon.