Dawntrail's Misleading Advertising

[Xellith]

I took the liberty of uploading each image to imgur as I suspect those discord links will expire soon.

[Voidmage]

I wanted to see Scions divided, but SE doesn't allow infighting or betrayal between the group of friends in FFXIV. Heavens forbid to take risks!

We didn’t even need it to be that dark.
Just a friendly competition.

Thancred showing Alisae WHY he is a seasoned scion (I’ll be honest I think she actually needs a bit of humbling).
Urianger and Alphinaud trying to outsmart each other.

All this while still staying friends.
Even the WoL could have been involved and even be challenged with the reason that they know how we fight or outsmart us by getting us out of the way with using our “help stranger in need” mentality where we still somehow get in time to throw a wrench in their path.
Heck at one point it would have even be fun to go against all 4 of them and show them WHY we are the WoL and by that maybe down ZJ and the others HOW strong we are.

So much potential but they blundered it.

Edit:

Just imagine if one trial (maybe we would have had 4 trials for a change) would have been us be the scions in a friendly match.
A fight against several human enemies would also have made for an interesting extreme with fun mechanics.

[GreenLeafy]

I'm gonna be honest , I'm not the biggest fan of beach episode tropical settings but that absolutely was what we were advertised and 100% what we did not get at all.

In truth seeing all the trailers and the promotions I was genuinely expecting something akin to what the Island Sanctuary questline was - little bit of adventure at some unexplored jungle island , hawaiian shirts and beach volleyball , whilst also delving into an ancient city mystery ala El Dorado or Uncharted in the second half. Which honestly I would've been down with at the end of the day.
Instead what we got was.......forced retainer to a princess I could not find myself to care about and once again being dragged into politics and world-threatening events that is something they also told us we would not be involved in because our WoL went through so much so it was time for a break.

Yet here we are. Killed a world-threat tier serpent , found a pool storage of dead babies from eugenics experiments , stopped yet another ancient advanced civilization from sucking our souls dry and wiped the memory banks of the same civilization. All while having the cheerleader pompoms gorilla glued to my hands to cheer on the princess that takes credit for everything I do in her bodyguard service. Cool ,cool.

I just wanted to slam dunk some coconuts in my hawaiian shirt man.

[Coratanni]

I'm gonna be honest , I'm not the biggest fan of beach episode tropical settings but that absolutely was what we were advertised and 100% what we did not get at all.

In truth seeing all the trailers and the promotions I was genuinely expecting something akin to what the Island Sanctuary questline was - little bit of adventure at some unexplored jungle island , hawaiian shirts and beach volleyball , whilst also delving into an ancient city mystery ala El Dorado or Uncharted in the second half. Which honestly I would've been down with at the end of the day.
Instead what we got was.......forced retainer to a princess I could not find myself to care about and once again being dragged into politics and world-threatening events that is something they also told us we would not be involved in because our WoL went through so much so it was time for a break.

Yet here we are. Killed a world-threat tier serpent , found a pool storage of dead babies from eugenics experiments , stopped yet another ancient advanced civilization from sucking our souls dry and wiped the memory banks of the same civilization. All while having the cheerleader pompoms gorilla glued to my hands to cheer on the princess that takes credit for everything I do in her bodyguard service. Cool ,cool.

I just wanted to slam dunk some coconuts in my hawaiian shirt man.

I wish this is what happened too. And you spelled out exactly what we got in DT, and how it was not what we were told we would be doing.

[sharplysurreal]

I'm gonna be honest , I'm not the biggest fan of beach episode tropical settings but that absolutely was what we were advertised and 100% what we did not get at all.

In truth seeing all the trailers and the promotions I was genuinely expecting something akin to what the Island Sanctuary questline was - little bit of adventure at some unexplored jungle island , hawaiian shirts and beach volleyball , whilst also delving into an ancient city mystery ala El Dorado or Uncharted in the second half. Which honestly I would've been down with at the end of the day.
Instead what we got was.......forced retainer to a princess I could not find myself to care about and once again being dragged into politics and world-threatening events that is something they also told us we would not be involved in because our WoL went through so much so it was time for a break.

Yet here we are. Killed a world-threat tier serpent , found a pool storage of dead babies from eugenics experiments , stopped yet another ancient advanced civilization from sucking our souls dry and wiped the memory banks of the same civilization. All while having the cheerleader pompoms gorilla glued to my hands to cheer on the princess that takes credit for everything I do in her bodyguard service. Cool ,cool.

I just wanted to slam dunk some coconuts in my hawaiian shirt man.

My exact thoughts

[Karious]

Very little of the marketing or lead up to the expansion really contained much of Poochie or how much they planned on pushing her. Sure by the time second Fanfest happened we had 6.55 and were introduced to her, but I didn't get the vibe that we were going to be joined at her hip from how the expansion was presented.

[Somnolence]

I wanted to see Scions divided, but SE doesn't allow infighting or betrayal between the group of friends in FFXIV. Heavens forbid to take risks!

I still regret that they did not allow Scions to fight Zenos in our body in that duty. That would have been so cool.

Not sure why they have all these lines they are unwilling to cross, it makes the story so limited.

[Balmung_Griffin]

We didn’t even need it to be that dark.
Just a friendly competition.

Thancred showing Alisae WHY he is a seasoned scion (I’ll be honest I think she actually needs a bit of humbling).
Urianger and Alphinaud trying to outsmart each other.

All this while still staying friends.
Even the WoL could have been involved and even be challenged with the reason that they know how we fight or outsmart us by getting us out of the way with using our “help stranger in need” mentality where we still somehow get in time to throw a wrench in their path.
Heck at one point it would have even be fun to go against all 4 of them and show them WHY we are the WoL and by that maybe down ZJ and the others HOW strong we are.

So much potential but they blundered it.

Edit:

Just imagine if one trial (maybe we would have had 4 trials for a change) would have been us be the scions in a friendly match.
A fight against several human enemies would also have made for an interesting extreme with fun mechanics.

All these makes sense if we were not stuck playing cameraman.
There was no reason whatsoever for the Scions to go against each other ( in a sportsmanship way) at all because anyone that was not a claimant had absolute no agency, why would they delay the WoL at all...

The more I think about DT... do you guys, remember Team Bakool JaJa 's henchmen? That's us on another team, at least Bakool JaJa was candid with them lmao
Lizard A, Lizard B, Lizard C and Lizard Cameraman.

We were robbed of an adventure, Estinien just lived the dream.
That's what I thought we were going to have, an exploration and sometimes we would cross paths with other characters but we would have a story/discovery/challenges of our own.

[Andevom]

I wanted to see Scions divided, but SE doesn't allow infighting or betrayal between the group of friends in FFXIV. Heavens forbid to take risks!

They tease this all the time, and it's always an empty threat. Even the way the trailer was shot for Shadowbringers made it seem like there was going to be some conflict between Alphinaud and the WoL - nothing resembling that happened.

The closest we got was in Heavensward with Urianger palling around with the WoD and Ascians, but even then you knew there was an ulterior motive and explanation just waiting to be put out there.

Since I know they'll never make us enemies against any of these characters, I'd rather them not waste the time creating scenarios that try to "trick" us into thinking it'll happen.

[RaideDuku]

All good points. While I am not in the meeting room, so I cannot tell you why they made the decision that they did, I have a feeling that the team of FF14 has unfortunately started meeting with their "consultants." Wuk fits a lot of checkboxes for the initiative that the company is finally putting to the forefront, and that also includes the many themes in the story itself to the point this expansion is literally just Disneyland in both presentation and other aspects. From the songs, to the zones, and unfortunately to the narrative. There is no high tension, no point to anything, and love and friendship always wins. That's the theme.

I bet my bottom dollar that this is exactly why they misled us. They did not want to tell their playerbase that they were under new orders from a cultural standpoint. Long live the king.