The Actual Problem With Dawntrail

[StormChase]

This may or may not be me about the kick a hornet's nest but I'll say it anyway.

I think a lot of players are missing the forest for the trees. Wuk Lamat isn't the problem.

If she wasn't around during most of the scenes where she is then it'd look like she's just sitting on her hands and doing nothing. The first half is her journey to leadership and the second half is how she handles leading. We can help her but we can't do the job for her. She has to be the driving force. When the game tried something like this in Stormblood there weren't many scenes showing Lyse's skills as a leader until the patches, and players thought she was unqualified because of it. The writers didn't want to repeat that.

I think the actual problem is this: Dawntrail is too short. 2.0 had about 160 quests (even more originally) to reintroduce players to Eorzea. 7.0 has only 100, even though we're exploring a whole new landmass and a nation from another shard. That's why these players feel exhausted. Everything is crammed together and there's not enough time to fully explore what the writers want to explore. Wuk Lamat takes the blame for this larger issue because she's the most prominent character.

Dawntrail isn't a bad expansion and the patches might improve it, but Square Enix should be less afraid to make longer expansions. I know a lot of people dislike A Realm Reborn for being tedious, but in the case of Dawntrail I think that kind of length could help.

[genuine_stranger]

I don't know chief, making DT longer would not salvage this poor writing in any way shape or form. Wuk Lamat is just the rug that covers the messed up floor underneath.

[Jason_Ashford]

I don't know chief, making DT longer would not salvage this poor writing in any way shape or form. Wuk Lamat is just the rug that covers the messed up floor underneath.

this. Dawntrail's story was given to a team of writers who only handled small projects before now and obviously didn't know the first thing about writing a whole expansion's worth of story content.

[1313]

There's way too many long cutscenes too. It's not even a game, its an interactive movie for children. There's hardly even any combat. I like the idea of the story , but it feels really scattered like my adhd brain on a bad day, and I don't feel the 95 plot twist was a good idea. This expansion cut down on the good, and made up for it with increasing the tedium of everything. I think the patches will make for a great story, if it is delivered better. The msq felt a lot like the formula they use for patch quests. extremely dragged out with too many cutscenes, too many boring and tedious tasks... but the one good thing in that regard, is that theres less solo instances. there's usually way too many of those, with their ten minute duels vs 1 npc with 56 trillion hp.

[Payadopa]

I think the biggest problem, at least for me, was the boring gameplay (outside of dungeons and such) and literally playing the same job (RPR in my case) with zero changes bar differently coloured particles.

[LilimoLimomo]

I agree that Wuk Lamat is not the problem, but the issue is not the length of the story, it's the writing of said story.

Case in point: Shaaloani. It's an entire zone that feels like a meaningless sidequest where almost nothing of import happens.

And to follow it up, Living Memory. Another entire zone that's narratively wasted, because before even entering it we are told numerous times that its inhabitants are not living beings, but are simulations made manifest from aether. Which means that all the time we spend there pleasing holograms is just time we're wasting, instead of addressing the impending threat to all life.

And all of that is to say nothing of how flat the Scions are for the entire expansion. You would think there was a second sundering with how watered down their personalities are, to the point where they're all basically interchangeable. A longer story would just mean even more of this.

The writer clearly demonstrated that they could not fill the 100 quests they had with life nor a convincing, consistent story. Asking them to perform an even bigger task would have stretched their limited talents even further, resulting in less, not more.

[Nitelancer]

I would have preferred to have no MSQ, only side quests, fates, and dungeons. At least then I could be playing the game.

[Papayatar]

I agree that Wuk Lamat is not solely the problem with DT, but her 24/7 presence was more like icing on somewhat edible cake.

I don’t agree that the story was too short though, the length is decent but I feel the split priorities between right of ascension arc and then cyber city arc hurt the story, and mostly because the merging of the two areas was a bit of whiplash when you get to the second half. Plus I think because they tied up like all the plot threads real quick making a lot of the story arcs seem short because how quickly issues were resolved.

I think if they had tied more of the golden city/S9 into the first part, like throughout the entire story and not just bits and pieces when we get to the Giants area. And also not doing the whole, you can’t see what the Golden City now come back later, thing either.

Then if we see it sooner or what have you then it wouldn’t feel like all these plot threads were rushed to finish. And then it could maybe set up Sphene for an heel turn type antagonist for later patches, kinda like Yotsusu getting more story and stuff later in StB.

[1313]

Which means that all the time we spend there pleasing holograms is just time we're wasting, instead of addressing the impending threat to all life.

This is exactly what happens in every expansion. We have to do a bunch of dumb stuff before we save the world cuz some sissy wants to.

[Boblawblah]

Remove 80% of Wuk from the 2nd half of the expansion and it becomes REALLY good imo.