Sena Bryer is right: the hatred that Smile gets is highly problematic

[lolnotacat]

I don't know if that's working.

All I've been seeing so far it's localizers complaining about "they're taking our jeerbs!" rather than doing any degree of self reflection and thinking "huh, maybe I should provide a work so well done AI can't replace it?"

Oh that's my point. They're gonna get replaced and I'm behind it at this point. They'll only consider any sort of reflection once they've learned to weld.

[LarsBehe]

Honestly, I think it would just be better if we just tell people that its okay to just completely skip Dawntrail (be it just skipping all the cut scenes or waiting for the Story skip to drop in the Mogstation), and just give a VERY short synopsis of what happened in the story. Because honestly there's only one thing that happened in the story (an item that we got) that's going to be relevant going forward once we are completely done here in Tural.

I've always been an advocate for people to sit down and watch the story unfold in XIV, because that is what the game is known for; its story telling. But this expansion just completely missed the mark in terms of writing, pacing, voice acting (on the English/western side), and execution. People like to bring up Stormblood and Lyse as a defense for Dawntrail's poor storytelling and Wuk Lamat's poor execution, but if that's the case then why would CBU3/Square Enix repeat that same mistake with this expansion? Or did they learn nothing from what people were critical of from Stormblood's storytelling? Isn't the point of failures (if Stormblood's story telling was that bad/poor) to learn from them and improve and maintain higher standards? Why repeat it again? Make that make sense to me, please.

I don't know what changed or why the bar for quality control went down to hell with this expansion in terms of story and VA quality...but I hope something changes for the better in the upcoming patches.

[lolnotacat]

Honestly, I think it would just be better if we just tell people that its okay to just completely skip Dawntrail (be it just skipping all the cut scenes or waiting for the Story skip to drop in the Mogstation), and just give a VERY short synopsis of what happened in the story. Because honestly there's only one thing that happened in the story (an item that we got) that's going to be relevant going forward once we are completely done here in Tural.

I work in gaming and can tell you there's an issue with that. The managers at Squenix will see the increased income from story skips and will actually push for more garbage stories so more people will buy skips, especially if there's a 10 minutes cliff notes version of the story attached to it. You have to remember, most employees aren't at a company for the long haul, not even in Japan anymore. They don't care about reputation, customer good-will, etc... They just wanna hit/exceed goals, get their bonuses, then move on to somewhere else they can parasitize.

The only way they'll really show contrition for this and prove they care is to offer story skips for free/heavily discounted price (like $5) or to completely fix their blunders ARR style. Neither of which will happen.

[Rueby]

Honestly, I think it would just be better if we just tell people that its okay to just completely skip Dawntrail (be it just skipping all the cut scenes or waiting for the Story skip to drop in the Mogstation), and just give a VERY short synopsis of what happened in the story. Because honestly there's only one thing that happened in the story (an item that we got) that's going to be relevant going forward once we are completely done here in Tural.

I've always been an advocate for people to sit down and watch the story unfold in XIV, because that is what the game is known for; its story telling. But this expansion just completely missed the mark in terms of writing, pacing, voice acting (on the English/western side), and execution. People like to bring up Stormblood and Lyse as a defense for Dawntrail's poor storytelling and Wuk Lamat's poor execution, but if that's the case then why would CBU3/Square Enix repeat that same mistake with this expansion? Or did they learn nothing from what people were critical of from Stormblood's storytelling? Isn't the point of failures (if Stormblood's story telling was that bad/poor) to learn from them and improve and maintain higher standards? Why repeat it again? Make that make sense to me, please.

I don't know what changed or why the bar for quality control went down to hell with this expansion in terms of story and VA quality...but I hope something changes for the better in the upcoming patches.

I just imagined mentors years down the line 'don't worry it gets better' .... It will get better...right?



Quality control has been kinda eh since EW for me, noticed it in the environment, lack of visual clarity, and a few chars being watered down to be parodies of themselves for a quick 'ahaha'. The benchmark didn't instill comfort in me with 'we forgor'. I have unpopular opinions about quality, but it's been downhill from EW personally speaking.

[ViaDesperare]

I don't know what changed or why the bar for quality control went down to hell with this expansion in terms of story and VA quality...but I hope something changes for the better in the upcoming patches.

They really should've stayed out of America, tbh, the VAs here are super entitled and can be awful people. For Genshin Impact, the VAs are cheering on the boycott of the game where it's an imaginary world where fictional people exist. It's always the Americans, and it's always the Californians that do the most messed up crap. Story-wise idk, many people think it's SBI but it could just be Hiroi destroying FFXIV like he destroyed his theatre thing... I am in the SBI team though, because the story is just REALLY OFF compared to anything else. Also, since funds are limited, could be that YoshiP invested money into SBI and thus why we got a lower quality english voice experience. I remember reading a comment about how he asks for x amount and uses it up accordingly.

Sucrose Reddit Link

That's just one of the VAs, you'll see many of them posting the most messed up crap. Many attacking the company that hired them or doing creepy stuff. For sanity sake, avoid their twitter, but if you want to dig in then a lot of the VAs do terrible stuff and give terrible takes. They've become so obsessed with Twitter/X that it's their life and personality, it's creepy. Its been awhile since I checked but I think the general nice VAs are Cherami Leigh, Bryce Papenbrook, and JYB? I don't think i've heard controversies about them.

[Serilyn]

Honestly, I think it would just be better if we just tell people that its okay to just completely skip Dawntrail (be it just skipping all the cut scenes or waiting for the Story skip to drop in the Mogstation), and just give a VERY short synopsis of what happened in the story. Because honestly there's only one thing that happened in the story (an item that we got) that's going to be relevant going forward once we are completely done here in Tural.

I've always been an advocate for people to sit down and watch the story unfold in XIV, because that is what the game is known for; its story telling. But this expansion just completely missed the mark in terms of writing, pacing, voice acting (on the English/western side), and execution. People like to bring up Stormblood and Lyse as a defense for Dawntrail's poor storytelling and Wuk Lamat's poor execution, but if that's the case then why would CBU3/Square Enix repeat that same mistake with this expansion? Or did they learn nothing from what people were critical of from Stormblood's storytelling? Isn't the point of failures (if Stormblood's story telling was that bad/poor) to learn from them and improve and maintain higher standards? Why repeat it again? Make that make sense to me, please.

I don't know what changed or why the bar for quality control went down to hell with this expansion in terms of story and VA quality...but I hope something changes for the better in the upcoming patches.

Actually kinda related to the posts before yours (and not true since we know who the writers are): Wouldn't it be funny if AI wrote it. Would maybe explain all the weird mashup of bits from previous expansions and seeming like a parody of itself overall that doesn't quite grasp what makes a good story.

[Annapaw]

the song just sucks, its badly vocalized. that its, why is it so hard for sena to take criticism without attributing it to some background, hate agenda, or transphobia? she is a bad VA and that is a badly sung song, that's it, I am not a western nor Japanese, I had no idea its black gospel(went to listen some after learning, it sounds great) I am also extremely LGTBQ+ supporting, but i hate excuses, and i hate bad work, its bad its bad unrelated to anything else. it what it is.

[Exinias]

White Classical Music". Lol. There's pleeeeeenty of "non-white" music in this game and the composer isn't even white. It's an insult to literally every culture as well as black culture that is moderately represented in this game to all of a sudden think "finally, a black person song.". There's many songs in this game that represent many many cultures so it's ignorant for you to conveniently look over all of those in pursuit of "social justice". Sena is completely wrong here and trying to support it with your misguided racist ideals is disgusting honestly. Remember, this game had zero diversity until Smile released. This is the expansion about culture, not race.

[Oizen]

the song just sucks, its badly vocalized. that its, why is it so hard for sena to take criticism without attributing it to some background, hate agenda, or transphobia? she is a bad VA and that is a badly sung song, that's it, I am not a western nor Japanese, I had no idea its black gospel(went to listen some after learning, it sounds great) I am also extremely LGTBQ+ supporting, but i hate excuses, and i hate bad work, its bad its bad unrelated to anything else. it what it is.

From what I have seen of Sena's twitter I can only conclude that they are a bad faith actor who hides from criticism by using LGBTQ+ identities as a shield and is likely fishing for sympathy.

[ZXN]

the song just sucks, its badly vocalized. that its, why is it so hard for sena to take criticism without attributing it to some background, hate agenda, or transphobia? she is a bad VA and that is a badly sung song, that's it, I am not a western nor Japanese, I had no idea its black gospel(went to listen some after learning, it sounds great) I am also extremely LGTBQ+ supporting, but i hate excuses, and i hate bad work, its bad its bad unrelated to anything else. it what it is.

As a Lizard Dad once said: "Ignorance begets strife. Understanding begets fellowship." Unfortunately, for some people, it is simply "easier" to "invalidate" any criticisms and feedback someone might have by trying to tie it to some extreme reason then to have an actual conversation.

"You're saying Sena did a bad job VA'ing Wuk Lamat? You're only saying that because you're transphobic."
"You hate Wuk Lamat as a character? You just hate female leads you misogynist."
"You don't like the song Smile? Well to me it sounds like Black Gospel music, but of course a racist would hate it."

Instead of having a conversation, so both sides can attempt to understand each other and their reasons, some would rather just go: "You hate X, so you MUST be Y!", and now suddenly to them all of the feedback and criticisms that you might have are now "gone", and they now pretend to have gained a newfound delusional superiority over the "bigot" they were talking with, because it is just easier to try and reduce everything to an agenda of some sort then actually talk about and acknowledge any genuine criticisms someone might have.