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

[Fiel_Tana]

They already gave an interview. The MSQ author said how different it turned out to write this than theatrics while existing writers thanked and praised the author and whatnot in a way sounding like "we know, noob did it wrong but not intentionally". So it's obvious they know it's poorly received. Online scores/reviews are the lowest of all expansions, damage has been done. But don't expect they would fire anyone as this wasn't done intentionally and likely 50 people reviewed and greenlit all of the MSQ and its implementation. I also doubt the main author decided on every quest and pacing.

Some people also speculate their Q&A caught the MSQ weird aspects like the Hanu Hanu paradox with the festive so they quickly added an "explainer" dialog

Till late October or early November there won't be much communication from them I guess. Then we will get 7.1 and some letters from the producer. Now they "must" nail the grind content and abuse Honey B. Lovely or Bakool Ja Ja for some fan service and people will be happy (or horny) :P

Where is that interview please? Do you have a link or search term to find it? Would love to read their take.

[Asari5]

i dont pay attention to stuff like that but simce they work on a pretty precise timeplan, does somebody know around when we can expect the next live letter?

[Uncle_Jafar]

Dunno when, but have a feeling a lot of people will be disappointed.

[Striker44]

YT. Where people tiptoe around negative commentary for fear of not being invited to the media tours and 'making it.' I'll listen to players over the social media, but thank you.

Openly acknowledge I didn't read most of your post, but saw this line at the beginning and wanted to point out - I'm not talking about the "content creators" on YT. I'm talking random people posting comments (of which both positive and negative ones exist) and then looking at the upvotes. Being invited to anything has nothing to do with any of that. I recommend checking out videos on the OST, and then looking in the comment section, where people will often talk about the part of the story associated with the particular music track. For example, the relatively huge topic on this forum of the "healer strike" currently has just over 400 upvotes, and several of the "I hate DT" or "Wuk Lumat is terrible" threads clock in around 200. Meanwhile, one of the Living Memory videos has people talking about how meaningful the zone was to them getting over 800 upvotes, and likewise the Lvl 95 dungeon music has positive story comments getting 750+ upvotes. That's just regular people who are enjoying the game looking up the music and agreeing with the positive vibes.

[All_Nonsense]

Grow up.

I hate to brush the feelings aside but we gotta get back to the reality:

- FF14 makes up a majority of SE's revenue
- FF14 advertises the story as the strong point
- Almost half of the playerbase didn't like the story

I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of running a business but I'm sure people are capable of doing a little simple cause & effect to piece together a potential for loss of revenue due to the quality of the story we were presented with. Regardless of the circumstances behind the story not being particularly well received compared to any other expansion, the company is currently in an environment where a loss of revenue can occur. As part of risk management certain actions will probably need to be taken to mitigate the potential losses since it's a lot harder to get someone to restart their sub than to convince them to keep paying it. You also don't want an environment where new players are deterred from beginning the game because they're waiting for it to "get good." Again, from a purely business sense.

You can go play a cult classic and tell your friends about how it deserved better etc. This isn't the game for that kind of stuff. It needs to be well received by a vast majority of the playerbase because that's where the money's coming from. No money, no SE. It's unfortunate to come to terms with the reality especially when you disagree with it or feel like it's unfair, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. I think the best way to "grow up" is to recognize these types of realities in our lives and come to terms with them. Hope this puts the op's post into a better understood context for you.

[nephilimmg]

The only thing i want from the next LL is the announcement that Ishikawa will be writing the MSW again from now.
I don't think i will keep playing if they keep the current writers.

[Haru304]

One of the primary problems with the MSQ is that it feels like a mobile game main story, where Wuk Lamat is the mascot character that speaks for you and never leaves you tf alone.

[Corlia]

honestly I found the MSQ a total snooze festival and I wound up skipping most of the cut scenes with Wuk. Plus what story was actually there for the scions? it felt so broken and shoe horned into the main story any time you met with them.

it felt like this

WoL Wuk
Wuk WoL
Wuk scions
What are you doing here this is MY story.
WoL get me out of here please Yshtola!

[Jokerz_93]

I’d invite to see this video.
It has been brought up to me from a friend and i think it has good starting points for where to start writing feedbacks which can defined as such.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=020X...51gA6iGGUmTq9e

And a personal note on the side: even if I understand why someone would want “to fire” who’s responsible (in this case the creative team for the narrative), I want to remind that
1) Firing does not resolve the problem and in general compnaies tends to avoid firing their employees.
2) In general there’s the need of an approval by the supervisor before something can be delivered. I’d be more mad with whoever thought and approved the story than with the ones who wrote it.

[Voidmage]

snip

I apologize if that may sound harsh or disrespectful but that’s not a good take.
You are cherry-picking different things to fit a narrative.

First you are comparing post on a forum with posts on a video game soundtrack.
YouTube has by far a larger audience than the forum or Reddit by default.

Even those who hate DT say that the music is good me included and many give praise where praise is due.
So the music videos are the wrong approach.
Also you exclude posts under videos about the story or content creators.
Those posts are dependent on the video itself normally.
A critical cc has more critical posts about the story and a cc with a positive opinion has more with a positive attitude as well.
I didn’t do math here but all in all it seems that the amount of critical cc is higher and there are more comments with more negative stances.
YouTube is quite “territorial” with people watching those with a similar opinion.


Let’s also look at the Japanese forum because it is known over there as being extremely positive of the game normally.
I linked that thread multiple times already and I am on mobile so apologies for not doing it again.

Positive comments range at like ratio of about 20 some at around 30.
Negative comments range around 100 some even approaching the 200.
That’s a regularly over all pages.
It also seems to be the fastest growing thread over there.

On page 108 you can find a post that says the following:

“ However, I got the impression that a considerable proportion of those who wrote positive opinions said things like "There are some things in the scenario that bother me." It seems that there are very few people who praise it without reservation.”

So even in Japan the general opinion seems to be not positive or mixed. No one knows what is the majority here though.

Reddit as well:
The main sub is extremely positive normally with a heavy base of downvoting negative opinions. That’s why the discussion sub exists over there and the F***youfridays thread where everyone is allowed to just go nuts to let off steam.
Even the main sub is majority negative with negative posts getting heavy upvotes and positive posts or threads getting only a few if any.

Granted I only speak of what I saw but so do you.
Your findings do not prove that the majority liked DT just that the people generally like the music.

Many (also including me) with a negative opinion also say that the groundwork itself was good and that the storyboard would have worked but that the executing is the problem.

That’s all from me.
I’m tired of always repeating the same thing over and over again.


On topic:
With the Japanese side being so negative about the points I also didn’t like (WoL sidelined, childish storytelling) and the big content creators like Preach reviewing DT as mixed I am hopeful for the future.
The only thing I am fearful off right now is the localization with all I have read also with localizing of other works (I fear they will force the Lamati thing on us).
I actually think of switching to German to be on the safe side even though I prefer English and am normally a big fan of the voice acting in English.