Dawntrail was not as Advertised (Spoilers)

[fallingwithstyle]

This expansion was advertised as "a break for the warrior of light", and a departure from saving the world. Even the opening trailer has Erenville saying "enjoying yourself for a change"; indicating that this would be a departure.

A safari-like adventure, where the warrior of light can do whatever they want, and find the city of gold! Sounded exciting!

What began as something somewhat fun, beautiful, and tropical, quickly turned into another "we need to save the world, Scions assemble!". And of course, another plug from a previous FF.

It felt like the devs were desperately trying to combine 2-3 different ideas, and executed on none of them.

The main city and music leaves me bitter now, only making me wonder what could have been; because a lot of the elements look and feel great.

What happened to "Time for the journey of our lives" and "blue and wondrous skies"? Instead, it ends with a desperate attempt to get us care about story that no one wanted, and to not only take artificial life offline, but to extinguish the fabled city of gold. Fun.

I genuinely feel that a story rewrite is in order.

[Gullis]

What annoyed me the most was the talk about how there was gonna be a rift between the Scions. Yeah right

[Cerbolt]

Wuk Lamat was barely in the promotional material yet she's glued to our side for 90% of the msq. Makes me think that at least the marketing department knew that people would have issues with the msq.

[niwaar]

I clicked on this to see a rant about the "we were promised a race against our comrades with a split group of scions on each side, and all we got was a single "for show" moment in a dungeon and a pair of cutscenes where we were truly on opposite sides. By the time we are done with the 3rd "zone", we are working together again. Not a "we were promised a race to the golden city and we got a "off to save the world... again" story... We were in fact promised this from the time we got the first story trailer. Do I agree that we got bait and switched. But if you truly believed we were going to have an expansion without high stakes, you havent been paying attention. Even ARR the storyline with the least immediate stakes, ended with a "murder" that sent us on the run. Heavensward in fact didnt have high stakes, It was in fact a "road trip with Alphinaud" for most of the msq, but it ended with a conspiracy, and a confrontration with a Great Wyrm. This is XIV, no matter how low stakes a storyline starts out as, there is going to be a twist that makes them higher than they were before. Hell look at Endwalker, we had the high stakes of stopping Zodiark'release, only to have the end of days occur immediately after we stop it. I'd say quit your complaining, it was a decent story (even if its pacing was off and the elevation of Wuk to savior instead of ourselves. But we got what was expected even if YOU forgot what game you were playing.

[fallingwithstyle]

None of the previous expansions started low stakes in my opinion:

ARR: Ascian evil meddling and Garleans prepare for Eorzean invasion
Heavensward: the scions are scattered, Warriors of Darkness are hunting us, and we get involved in a 100-year war
Stormblood: we storm a garlean wall, summon a great wyrm, a scion dies, and we start a rebellion while looking for the sole heir to Doma
Shadowbringer: begins with a war zone, and we are transported to another reflection to prevent our own death while preventing a calamity from starting again that will end all life
Endwalker: Fandaniel

More to the point however, the game was advertised as something else based on what I recall; listen to the first Fan Fest for Dawntrail's announcement. Fanfest 2023 Las Vegas 1:04:00 exactly if you want to hear it yourself.

Yoshi P - "What we want to bring to all you Warriors of Light, is the very best summer vacation a hero could possibly have! I understand that this is a sudden change from the feeling of Endwalker... But I mean, you did not only save all of Hydaelen, but the whole universe so we'd thought maybe to give you a little break"

[niwaar]

People can't have it both ways..."We wanted a Summer Vacation where saving the world wasn't our responsibility" gets a story where we are the mentor and our mentee is the hero of the story...then complains that we are the Warrior of Light and it should have been us doing all the heavy lifting at the end and not Wuk Lamar... We got what was advertised, was it a great vacation? no it wasn't. BUt we were not the hero of this story, we were the hero's mentor and were mostly "along for the ride" so to speak.Was it a bait and switch with the "Split Scions"? sure as hell it was on that regard. But overall, we had a very unrelaxed vacation, If you thought we were going to go happy go lucky into the jungle with no stakes to be found any where I feel bad you feel you were misled.

[Volfe]

If it was a full vacation plot there would be even more complaints about the story being boring

[Canadane]

What began as something somewhat fun, beautiful, and tropical, quickly turned into another "we need to save the world, Scions assemble!". And of course, another plug from a previous FF.

Did we play the same game?
At no real point was the whole world at stake. We weren't really ever the main character. We were just the hired goon. We didn't even have the spotlight during the final encounter.
And while the scions were indeed involved, a few of them were doing their own thing and wasn't directly in relation to us.
This was a welcome break from the norm, imo. I hope for more.

[Infindox]

The story wasn't pushed as what you think it was. The theme of "summer vacation" was joked on, and they always pointed out in every LL that we were going to Tural to help out with the Rite of Succession. The only thing that I can see someone being irritated about is that the Scions being against each other plot was barely anything.
Also I wouldn't want an entire expansion 's main msq be low stakes vacation anyway. Exploring and doing what we want is meant for the patches.
We got our "break" by not being the main character for once and just being the help.

Did we play the same game?
At no real point was the whole world at stake.

The world was very much at stake near the end, though as you said we weren't the main spotlight.

[fallingwithstyle]

Zoraal Ja wanted global domination. Sphene regains control of the portal key and wants all souls for her Endless to continue living. The world was at stake twice.

And every scion was involved in some way.