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

[Malthir]

Well then the "Brand damage" was happening in Endwalker, not in Dawntrail. Dawntrail in fact saved FFXIV for me because now I have fun playing it. EW was just so boring I saw myself leaving if DT dropped the ball on content. I've been in this forum before, and I was super highly critical of this game both in MSQ and Content. I don't think the MSQ in DT is perfect and I have my crits on it, but it's hard to discuss with so much disingenuity going on here.



That's what you're implying though, that there was so much damage it hurt the brand, and I don't know how you can measure that other than the fact that you feel that you are right in that this expansion sucked and the VAST majority of players hate it, it's such a confirmation bias argument, man. We'll only know if the brand was hurt if there's massive unsubbing, or if no one buys next expansion.



I mean that's your opinion, I didn't find them to be terribly written to the point we should send the writer to a backroom.

It's not my opinion, it's objectively poorly written. In art there exists both subjectivity and objectivity in critique. The writing, on a purely technical level, not just a personal taste, is very poorly written. It's to the point of being a semester 1 creative writing course's don'ts list.

You ask how it's damage, so let me explain, FF14 is a game with the core demo being players who enjoy story dense games. This is the first expac they've ever released to be received this poorly. All scoring and reviews across the web has this as the worst preforming expac. Even positive reviews are commenting on poor writing standards. When you release something that is bad around you core selling feature, it's is going to damage your brand image because in this case your brand is good story writing. A good analogue would be, KFC switching to a new chicken supplier and it's being received poorly, as in most people say the chicken now tastes bad. They don't just serve chicken at KFC, the rest of meals, sides etc are all still nice, but people go to KFC for chicken. To FF14 it's story is it's brand in the same way chicken is KFC's brand. You can as a business shift what your brand is, but that would involve some innovation in other areas which hasn't happened.

So yes DT is going to damage the FF14's brand, it's still early days so the amount of damage is currently unknown, it's unlikely to be unrecoverable damage, it's really going to depend on the quality of the post patch story content. If their story going forward doesn't absolutely slap, and I mean there can be no friction to the players because they are at a point of having almost no good will when it comes to this story. Then that can cause a major issue, especially with a major competitor releasing an expac in a month.