Dawntrail's Misleading Advertising

[Healing-the-things]

I've enjoyed everything that doesn't have Wuk Lamat in it.

...which isn't a lot.

[Arzalis]

Still remembering when they originally told us Shadowbringers would be about the Fall of Garlemald at the NA fanfest and showed screenshots of the like... two scenes of Estinien and Gaius to drive it in. Or when they really did imply Island sanctuary would be huge and somewhat close to personal housing and started slowly walking it back throughout the expansion until we got what we got. The graphics update for Dawntrail was overhyped by them too. It does look pretty good and generally better, but SE also made it seem like the changes were going to be far more substantial.

They mislead all the time since it's all just advertising, but sometimes it does cross into outright lying too.

Honestly? Just assume nothing in any of the trailers is true unless it shows actual gameplay (you should do this for all trailers anyway) and then ignore any supposed context they give in the launch trailer that has gameplay. Also, just assume everything at Fanfest isn't true or so deeply misleading it might as well be. It's the only way to not be disappointed. Never forget: Basically anytime YoshiP talks, advertising is the main objective.

Upcoming example: People expecting huge changes when they announce whatever is going on with the graphics update at the end of this month. All the changes are almost certainly going to be fairly minor.

[Bitmoar]

Is it bad that I actually wanted to join Thancred and Urianger's side and ditch WL?

Not at all. In fact, I thought we had more to offer in mentoring Koana, and Thancred and Urianger (especially Thancred) were better equipped to mentor Wuk. Wuk is just WoL lite. Our role in her quest came down to hired muscle and yes man. Thancred could have helped Wuk using his experience with Ryne and her self doubt, whereas the WoL could have helped Koana with the more human side of ruling.

[ZXN]

Is it bad that I actually wanted to join Thancred and Urianger's side and ditch WL?

The entire 1st part of the MSQ I just kept wanting to join Koana. As the feat went on we got to see more and more of Koana's changes overtime. With our experience traveling all over and actually having seen, and taken part in, many different cultures around the star, we could've helped Koana grow from someone who seemed to not really care at all about his nation's culture and was adamant that technology was the only way forward to someone who learns the importance of it and what culture means about the happiness of Tural's people as a whole and embrace it...

Where as Wuk was just "I love peace, now let's be friends" every step of the way and really barely seemed to change or grow much over the course of the feat and it always got the perfect outcome to nearly every situation because of it as we just yes man her the entire time.

[GreenLeafy]

Or when they really did imply Island sanctuary would be huge and somewhat close to personal housing and started slowly walking it back throughout the expansion until we got what we got.

Man I remember when they first introduced the concept of Island Sanctuary , me and my friend that wanted to just be retired farmers at this point were excited we get basically retirement content. They said there would be so much to do - interact and do things with your minions , mounts , have them roam everywhere!! Exploring and decorating your new island freely , you finally get your own gardening plots!! A haven to showcase and have fun with your collections more or less.

As time went on they spoke about it less , and less , and at some point it felt like it was all a collective fever dream until they released it finally , after many delays and pushbacks. To ultimately get....... a tropical reskin of Diadem with extremely rigid decorating , barely anything to do with your minions other than have them as decoration filler and outright useless materials outside of the island. You couldn't even garden with seeds from the main game , it was all new seeds that were just fodder to get the new made up grind currency. That also had basically 0 QoL at initial release by having to pick up your items 1 by 1 from the menus lmao.

And here I was , a still naive me expecting something akin to WoW Garrisons where at the very least I could have a tiny hub of materials that were relevant to all my crafting. Its ironic that they managed to make a genuinely worse and more useless version of that. Imagine how cool it would've been if you as a capped gatherer could choose 1-2 of the legendary/ephemeral nodes to respawn at a timer in your sanctuary. But alas ,nothing but another timesink until you get enough backlog to just leave it to automate itself to grind out the currency for more collectables and glamour. A pity.

Ever since then , good faith I had from years just started to dissipate more and more throughout Endwalker and now DT. The misleading promo just goes deeper and deeper as time goes and I've been on this train ride since 2015. I'm willing to gamble the new different planet exploration content thing is gonna be as boring as Starfield. Island Sanctuary 2.0. - Farmville grind across the galaxy. Please look forward to it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ZXN]

...Or when they really did imply Island sanctuary would be huge and somewhat close to personal housing and started slowly walking it back throughout the expansion until we got what we got...

...They said there would be so much to do - interact and do things with your minions , mounts , have them roam everywhere!! Exploring and decorating your new island freely , you finally get your own gardening plots!! A haven to showcase and have fun with your collections more or less...

Island Sanctuary was certainly hyped up by the devs to be this grand thing, only to ultimately be released as a time-gated, spreadsheet, point and click sim where the mammets do pretty much all of the work and you pay them 300 cowries or so a day to keep things running like a factory. There was nothing really "relaxing" about it in the long run. They made capturing animals complete RNG and also time-gated, made it so you had to really min-max the workshops to get the most out of it, and had to constantly make sure you had large stacks of some specific materials because they were used in so many more recipes then others materials [Laver, Sugarcane and Sap for example are used in 8-9 recipes each and always require several per recipe, where as something like the multicolored isleblooms and palm leaf are used in...2.]

Also the keynote slide, when Island Sanctuary was first revealed...



There ain't no horse anywhere. Couldn't even give us that before leaving Island Sanctuary to die.

I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if they WANTED Island Sanctuary to be much more then what we got, but the games spaghetti code just couldn't make it a reality.

[Oizen]

I think Sphagetti code is more of a community excuse and the reality is SE doesn't give the game that big of a budget.

[GreenLeafy]

If spaghetti code is the reason they can't pull off the things they say they want to do at this point I'd much rather them spend the money ,time and effort on updating or outright changing the game's engine after a decade instead of pushing out a half-baked graphics update that breaks lighting across the game and still keeps half the textures crunchy regardless. Don't care for sugarcoating the pile of outdated code when the rest of the gameplay continues to be ass. Gimme a new plate of spaghetti. Or stop promising us things they literally can't even push out of the dev brainstorming office.

[Aldath]

I think Sphagetti code is more of a community excuse and the reality is SE doesn't give the game that big of a budget.

Believe me, this game has more than enough budget; it just loves to play it safe because that's Yoshida's directing style, which is ironic since he was the one who took the bold decision of nuking XIV to make ARR. And this isn't speculation, he's said before that there's a structure to everything because it's less risk, more money. I don't know if you played FFXVI: that game has the same issues as XIV despite it's massive budget. The gameplay parts are amazing, but all the dungeons are corridors with mob sections, and the maps are relatively big and open with nothing to discover, and most side quests are "go here, talk to guy, go back".

The only reason why he promoted those modes with grandeur is because he's a good PR speaker. As a director, I don't doubt he was the one who axed chunks of projects. That's why I think he's better off as CEO and brand representative than Director, and I wish XVI and DT made them realize that.

[Vensaval]

I wanted to feel as though we were actually competing. Not just being along for the ride. Every little thing was weighted in Wuk's favor.

Was a solo instance where we fight Thancred and Urianger as Wuk and Koana race toward a goal really so much to ask for?