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

[Zackneifein]

I've read the reviews on Steam which is mostly just dogpiling and complaining about Wuk Lamat, but really, meh. It's been a few weeks since the game officially launched, and i keep seeing more and more players logging in and crafting and doing endgame content.

Dawntrail's story and charaters are vastly superior to ARR, you got Erenville, Sphene, Caciwa and all the thirsts for Bakool Ja Ja, you got the upcoming raids with more characters too. Please, spare me this comparison. You are allowed to dislike and not care about the story, I did it in post-HW, SB and post-Endwalker but to jump into brand damage as if FF is ruined is beyond me.

You want to see a TRUE brand damage, look at Overwatch.

Well, to be honest, when I'm talking about brand damage, I don't talk of something of Overwatch scale.
Overwatch case wasn't brand damage.
It was Blizzard sacrificing Overwatch on an altar for whatever stupid reason.

Dawntrail won't kill FFXIV, and if they realized their mistake, like they did with Stormblood with the patches than came after, it will be more than ok and I am hopefull of that.

But it's also a fact that Stormblood damaged FFXIV reputation even until now. It's just that Shadowbringers was so awesome, loved and successful that it repaired it or at least gave a reason to say "if you survive Stormblood you will have the most awesome MMORPG expansion to experienced".
Since 6.x, the MSQ reputation is on the downstill, and Dawntrail didn't repaired it, we are in the longest period I have ever seen where the MSQ has been so criticized. In a MMO where the story is so important, it's a problem. Not a life threatening one - yet -, but still a problem.

[Malthir]

I've read the reviews on Steam which is mostly just dogpiling and complaining about Wuk Lamat, but really, meh. It's been a few weeks since the game officially launched, and i keep seeing more and more players logging in and crafting and doing endgame content.

Dawntrail's story and charaters are vastly superior to ARR, you got Erenville, Sphene, Caciwa and all the thirsts for Bakool Ja Ja, you got the upcoming raids with more characters too. Please, spare me this comparison. You are allowed to dislike and not care about the story, I did it in post-HW, SB and post-Endwalker but to jump into brand damage as if FF is ruined is beyond me.

You want to see a TRUE brand damage, look at Overwatch.

Damage is damage, you can argue the degree all you want. What I mean by that is. If I say, it's not good I smashed my car into a bollard and smashed the bumper lights and bonnet. Then someone says, that's nothing see this complete wreck. It's irrelevant to my situation that other cars have been damaged worse, the same as it's irrelevant to SE that Blizz dropped the ball with OW2.

You're also wrong, the characters are all terribly written and from a writing standpoint this is the worst expac they have released. Now many will still enjoy the dungeon and raids, and some may enjoy the story, but it's a none starter arguing the story isn't an example of terrible writing.

[SenorPatty]

Look, I'm not a fan of the story myself but anyone who says they need to fix it has not let that stew in their noggin long enough before writing that.

There's no rewriting msq. It is done. Furthermore, msq at its actual worst is ambivalent in reception. It'd be one thing if it was universally disliked but it isn't. It's been a mixed reception everywhere you see the reviews and that's where it's most likely to stay.

To add to that, the massive saving grace that is virtually everything else the expansion has to offer so far is not gonna make devs even acknowledge the story has a problem publicly. Internally? Yeah for sure. But at the end of the day, if there's going to be a fix, it's only going to happen years from now and they'll only touch how you progress like ARR.

[Nothv13]

Look, I'm not a fan of the story myself but anyone who says they need to fix it has not let that stew in their noggin long enough before writing that.

There's no rewriting msq. It is done. Furthermore, msq at its actual worst is ambivalent in reception. It'd be one thing if it was universally disliked but it isn't. It's been a mixed reception everywhere you see the reviews and that's where it's most likely to stay.

To add to that, the massive saving grace that is virtually everything else the expansion has to offer so far is not gonna make devs even acknowledge the story has a problem publicly. Internally? Yeah for sure. But at the end of the day, if there's going to be a fix, it's only going to happen years from now and they'll only touch how you progress like ARR.

People talk like Stormblood was universally hated, yet it scores much much higher than Dawntrail, even as far as story goes. Let that sink it for how much people dislike the Dawntrail story. They started fixing the issues in the post patch story. It didn't take years for the fixing to start to happen.

[Malthir]

Look, I'm not a fan of the story myself but anyone who says they need to fix it has not let that stew in their noggin long enough before writing that.

There's no rewriting msq. It is done. Furthermore, msq at its actual worst is ambivalent in reception. It'd be one thing if it was universally disliked but it isn't. It's been a mixed reception everywhere you see the reviews and that's where it's most likely to stay.

To add to that, the massive saving grace that is virtually everything else the expansion has to offer so far is not gonna make devs even acknowledge the story has a problem publicly. Internally? Yeah for sure. But at the end of the day, if there's going to be a fix, it's only going to happen years from now and they'll only touch how you progress like ARR.

I agree I don't think they will re write, the level of cost currently is not worth it to them, especially when there's a much a much cheaper option. If subs and interest is severely hit by this expac, when the next expac releases, they will give all new players a free story skip. It removes the barrier to entry DT has created entirely and functionally costs the business nothing. They can even PR spin it to say it's to allow new people to catch up, and not even reference DT's performance.

[DragonFlyy]

A successful product in a sector where reputation is everything, is not defined by "Some people liked it", it is defined by "Everybody liked it".

So by this definition FF14 is a complete failure from start to finish because I have seen some people say the entire story is bad and that makes the game bad. So because EVERYONE doesn't like it, that means it failed.

Hell of a "Failure" since it saved Square Enix.

[Evergrey]

So by this definition FF14 is a complete failure from start to finish because I have seen some people say the entire story is bad and that makes the game bad. So because EVERYONE doesn't like it, that means it failed.

Hell of a "Failure" since it saved Square Enix.

It's amazing how WoW that has the reputation that the quality of the story has dropped since WotLK and with Shadowlands that's been dubbed the worst expansion ever for WoW (if I'm not mistaken) is still online and subscription based.
Oh, and not to mention the reputation of its playerbase being completely toxic.
Reputation is everything. WoW should be long dead by now.
/s

[Malthir]

It's amazing how WoW that has the reputation that the quality of the story has dropped since WotLK and with Shadowlands that's been dubbed the worst expansion ever for WoW (if I'm not mistaken) is still online and subscription based.
Oh, and not to mention the reputation of its playerbase being completely toxic.
Reputation is everything. WoW should be long dead by now.
/s

WoW was so big that it's fall is taking longer than most, but if you look at the sub data they released recently and then adjust it to remove the WoW classic/HC subs, it's current sub count is as low as the worst part of WoD, it's getting lower and lower year on.
That being said all us gamers have the memory of goldfish so you're only really 1 great expac from completely revitalising your game.

[Zackneifein]

It's amazing how WoW that has the reputation that the quality of the story has dropped since WotLK and with Shadowlands that's been dubbed the worst expansion ever for WoW (if I'm not mistaken) is still online and subscription based.
Oh, and not to mention the reputation of its playerbase being completely toxic.
Reputation is everything. WoW should be long dead by now.
/s

WoW was never a story heavy game. It was an MMO where you play no one in a world with a marvelous lore, but there was close to no story about it, the "story" element where first introduce in Wotlk (and not even remotly closed to what FFXIV is doing) and they tried, expansion after expansion to make the "Adventurer" a true character like the WoL and include storyline, because that's what work now for MMORPG.

WoW reputation was mainly about always having something to do, PVP and endgame PVE. I will even say the toxicity of the playerbase was a plus at the beginning, simply because it was a faction based MMO (which became a problem when the "faction war" became stupid lore-wise). And while there was some better times than other, endgame PVE and PVP always worked quite well with WoW. Lore was the only part that was butchered.
WoW was so much high above the cloud, far above what FFXIV can't even dream off, that even by losing a significant amount of player, they are still number one. WoW Is in another planet with Fortnite, LoL or Roblox.

FFXIV reputation in mainly about the community and it's story. A community highly divided with the toxic positivity / negativity all around and a story that also is divisive.

Edit : some grammatical corrections + WoW can't be compared to FFXIV simply because not only WoW is far bigger than FFXIV, but Activision Blizzard was far bigger than Square Enix, they can assume losing millions of subs and compensate it, Square Enix can't.

[Raven2014]

FFXIV reputation in mainly about the community and it's story. A community highly divided with the toxic positivity / negativity all around and a story that also is divisive.

Yeah, if there is one area you don't want to see the players fractured or divisive in FF14, it's the story. Samething with WoW's end game, its lowest point wasn't when the story suck, but when it tried the most asine end game loop.