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

[OMGJesuis66]

total failure..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLylO7eDfMo

Watch Preach actual opinion about Dawntrail instead of going 'huehue, clips'.

[fioravictorine]

total failure..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLylO7eDfMo

Lol people used to watch reacts to see how good a scene is

With DT everyone is enjoying making fun and laughing at how bad those scenes are


'We've tried everything we could! Everything!'

Half the time, the camera pans at WoL and the Scions eating popcorn watching everything unfold

[Havenchild]

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.

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.

[Valorak]

Well I can see that the melodramatic takes on these forums haven't died down.

[TheGrimace]

I had one or two irritations with the game's plot that definitely made me go "what, why?!" but the story, gameplay, music, and aesthetic have left me thoroughly satisfied with Dawntrail. I think that Dawntrail is a sign of good things to come from Creative Studio III.

[Voidmage]

The vast majority of people don't know what a story actually is or how it functions... this is a new entry, they're testing things, it's a new writer as well, they'll need time to analyze what the players liked, didn't like and where to go from here.

You don‘t use an expansion for such an experiment though but side story things or at most half of an expansion story.

This is something people wait 2,5 years for. In EW more or less without much content.

Doing experiments there and not communicating that the story at least has a complete different direction and narrative is just disrespectful.

They could have said beforehand „hey, this story has another character in the focus as the MC. Try it and we look how it is received“ would have at least made it so I knew what I gave my money for regarding the story. The thing I regard as the most important thing for me.

That wouldn’t have been a spoiler, they could have explained the reasoning behind that and maybe people wouldn‘t have been as disappointed (mind you there are still other issues but that is the biggest for me).

I don’t see how wanting clear communication beforehand is such a bad thing and no, that change in direction was really not to foresee. Vacation and new beginning or whatever.

[Raven2014]

The vast majority of people don't know what a story actually is or how it functions... this is a new entry, they're testing things, it's a new writer as well, they'll need time to analyze what the players liked, didn't like and where to go from here.

I have said this many time and I will keep repeating it every time I see someone say this. This is not an excuse:

- A story can be new, doesn't mean it has to be bad.

- There are many games that have self-contain, intriguing and complete story that can be told in 20-30 hour.

- it doesn't matter if it's a new story, or a continuation, or a conclusion to an old story. If you can not write a good story in 30h, your writing sucks.

- It doesn't matter if it's a new or old writers. A professional writer shouldn't need to analyze the audience to know that having one character hogging the majority of screen time or repeat 50 variation of the same line for 30h is a BAD idea.

You can try to come up with as many contexts as an excuse you could, it won't change the fact a lot of failing in the MSQ can not be excuse. Because - the failure is basically on a Writing and Literature 101 level. If you submit this story as an essay to a college writing or literature class, it will earn no more than a C. Now while that is ok for a college freshman, it's not ok for a professional writers working on the main story of one of the biggest MMO on the market that also bear the name Final Fantasy.

[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.

[Absurdity]

When people see the story as a big important thing (and apparently quite a number do with all the biggering between those who liked and those who disliked the MSQ) then yes it is dramatic.

I bet that most of the FF14 players give the story quite a high priority and those who don't are in the minority.

It's fine for you to not care about the story, be it positive or negative but come on. This is FF14. There is a reason MSQ roulette has unskippable cutscenes, the expansions are ranked with the story first and the devs making such a huge deal of the expansion stories.
Most of the patch trailers have the story in the big spotlight also.

That's what they've put their focus on for the last 2 expansions and Endwalker absolutely suffered for it. I guess we will have to see how hard the player numbers drop to determine how much importance people really put on the story over everything else.

[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.