Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[jameseoakes]

I tortured myself with the story up to Living Memory. It was painful. I had to take a ton of breaks and probably downed a half bottle of ibuprofen over the period of a week. Then I got to the point in Living Memory where bun mom went full Emet-Selch told us it was fine to kill the endless because they're not real. When our reaction was to essentially shrug our shoulders and go along with it, I completely checked out. I skipped the rest of the MSQ -- the first time I've done so since I started playing in 2.5.

I just got to where it wants me to turn the first one off and just stopped and I just haven't been able to find the interest to push past the feeling of horror at what the writing has

[Shibi]

I just got to where it wants me to turn the first one off and just stopped and I just haven't been able to find the interest to push past the feeling of horror at what the writing has

After you turn it off there are a few kids left over. You need to do their quests to kill them off manually.

Personally, I don't expect much from Steam reviews. The type of people most likely to give them aren't the intended audience

Can't review unless you buy it. So, intended audience....

[ZXN]

I didn't think I'd make a second post here, but I'm trying to get through Living Memory and I'm just... speechless. Did a human being write this? An actual human being who has experienced emotions? Because that's incredibly hard to believe. I'm not going to repeat what everyone else here already said, just that I am literally unable to comprehend that someone wrote this story and expected people to agree with it in any way, shape or form. Erenville being in shock the entire time seems the only actual relatable response.

I have been playing this game since 2.0. Never unsubbed, not a single month. I'm heavily considering it if this absurdity is what we have to look forward to in the future. Your decisions made me a customer, Yoshi P.

And your decisions are on the brink of losing you one.

I tortured myself with the story up to Living Memory. It was painful. I had to take a ton of breaks and probably downed a half bottle of ibuprofen over the period of a week. Then I got to the point in Living Memory where bun mom went full Emet-Selch told us it was fine to kill the endless because they're not real. When our reaction was to essentially shrug our shoulders and go along with it, I completely checked out. I skipped the rest of the MSQ -- the first time I've done so since I started playing in 2.5.

I enjoyed Living Memory myself. I understood the moral implications, the whole "are they technically alive" thing and I genuinely felt bad about turning them off. I won't lie, the scene with bun mom got some tears flowing since it reminded me of my own. However...

This entire zone does a piss poor job at it's purpose and is frustrating to think about looking back.

CONSTANTLY you're told during the entire zone that you shouldn't feel bad or guilty for shutting it all down. On top of this, nobody in the area that you're made to interact with MSQ and side-quest wise actually seems to really give a fuck whether or not they are kept alive or deleted, it's just "whatever" to them. Hell, as much as I enjoyed the Cahciua scene with Erenville, it really painted her like she didn't give a shit about Erenville's feelings the entire time. Hell, it looked like NOBODY gave a shit about Erenville's feelings the entire time. It's just "Poor Erenville" and "We'll be there for him" without ever once asking how he feels having his dead mother guide them all Zone and ultimately end with Erenville having to pull the trigger on his own mother. Some might even see the scene before shutting down the Aero terminal as Erenville being guilt tripped in a way into accepting his mother's request to see the world she cannot anymore.

I still enjoyed Living Memory as a whole, but that was essentially because I turned my brain off to what the writer's expected reality was and substituted my own, because this entire place really is abysmal with how it presented itself due to the writing.

[Lydia77]

I always promoted FF14 as the greatest RPG story ever. But now i am too afraid to look at the faces off those who joined this beautyfull world. I have met one of my to be best friend in tam tara dungeon and he though its the best content ever. I handheld him for over a year up till EW main story end and he was above heavens. My faorite line with him was: "you think THIS IS GREAT? You know NOTHING!" and it worked.
Then DT came. Me and my BF went throught it but i.... kinda gave up after 1.5 zones. Everything in DT was amazing. Dungeons, Visuals, new zones, graphics, music! All but the main element: MSQ. I still held my hopes knowing that we will get the epics of epics in the end when everything that looked like something will get another meaning and it will all fall into place... Nope. We didnt get anything. I had to make a pause for 5 days making an excuse to not go on. My friend warned me about the ending. *try not to be mad and put away sharp objects* he said. But then SPIIIIIIIIN happened. I dot want to continue VA issue but that is the wors performance that could have been made. Comparing it to JP VA its even worse. Wuk herself was a big (haha GIANT) issue for me but VA didnt make it even slightly better.
Then came the scions. Estinien appearing only to say he is just doing Estinien stuff... OK. Then whole intershard *we all gonna die* crysis happens. We get all the scions ready. YES!!!! FInally!
And we leave them all outside the portal because Poochie needs her ANOTHER moment. WE get Krile because she supposedly have some plot moments (spoilers: she barely did) and Raha because reasons.
That alone droped me from 6/10 to 4/10. And the SPIIIIIIIN moment droped it even lower to 3.
And then we had credits with AWFULL song and hey! Remember when trailer moments were integrated into story but in a slightly diffirent way so you can scream TRAILER MOMENT? Now we put it all in credits because they have to go somewhere.
This MSQ destriyed the game for me. Only things that are keeping me here are my friend, music and a HOPE for Yoshida to fix this mess as he did with ARR

[Raven2014]

The reality? Yeah, people overall are actually really enjoying DT. They're just not the kind of people that love to review bomb. What's your next cope for the game's continued health and success?

I don't know about cope, but if the trend of your posting is of any indication, I think what you need is a dose of critical thinking.

- There is a lot of people complaining about the msq on this forum.

- You need to have an active account to post on the forum.

That should be enough to tell you that your metrics is not reliable to support the narrative you're trying to push. I highly recommend you register for a statistic class at a local community college, that class will teach you the difference between causation and correlation.

If you ask me do I think this is the worst msq ever? My answer is yes.

If you ask me am I currently enjoying the game? My answer is yes.

And if that sounds weird to you, then I have a revelation to make: most normal people think and act on a spectrum. I know that may come as a complete shocker to someone who grew up in the brainrot social media era. You may think it's normal for people to only think and on the extremes ... but trust me, that's not the case. Most people who left a negative reviews isn't making a statement "this game is suxxor and a waste of time, and I'll NEVER PLAY IT AGAIN" but more like "hey, this area of the game isn't good, do better next time".

If I go to a restaurant and unhappy with a certain dishes, maybe I'll talk to the manager, maybe I'll leave a 3* review instead of a 5. That doesn't mean I don't want to come back to that restaurant, rather I want to improve my chance of having a better experience the next time I visit.

If I buy a car and something not working as advertised, I talk to the dealer, I file a warranty claim to get it fixed. Unless it's a safety issue I mostly still gonna drive it, I ain't gonna dump the car in the junk yard just because it doesn't meet my expectation 100%.


So yeah, try to learn how to think on a spectrum, it's a skill that's worth cultivating.

[Coratanni]

I always promoted FF14 as the greatest RPG story ever. But now i am too afraid to look at the faces off those who joined this beautyfull world. I have met one of my to be best friend in tam tara dungeon and he though its the best content ever. I handheld him for over a year up till EW main story end and he was above heavens. My faorite line with him was: "you think THIS IS GREAT? You know NOTHING!" and it worked.
Then DT came. Me and my BF went throught it but i.... kinda gave up after 1.5 zones. Everything in DT was amazing. Dungeons, Visuals, new zones, graphics, music! All but the main element: MSQ. I still held my hopes knowing that we will get the epics of epics in the end when everything that looked like something will get another meaning and it will all fall into place... Nope. We didnt get anything. I had to make a pause for 5 days making an excuse to not go on. My friend warned me about the ending. *try not to be mad and put away sharp objects* he said. But then SPIIIIIIIIN happened. I dot want to continue VA issue but that is the wors performance that could have been made. Comparing it to JP VA its even worse. Wuk herself was a big (haha GIANT) issue for me but VA didnt make it even slightly better.
Then came the scions. Estinien appearing only to say he is just doing Estinien stuff... OK. Then whole intershard *we all gonna die* crysis happens. We get all the scions ready. YES!!!! FInally!
And we leave them all outside the portal because Poochie needs her ANOTHER moment. WE get Krile because she supposedly have some plot moments (spoilers: she barely did) and Raha because reasons.
That alone droped me from 6/10 to 4/10. And the SPIIIIIIIN moment droped it even lower to 3.
And then we had credits with AWFULL song and hey! Remember when trailer moments were integrated into story but in a slightly diffirent way so you can scream TRAILER MOMENT? Now we put it all in credits because they have to go somewhere.
This MSQ destriyed the game for me. Only things that are keeping me here are my friend, music and a HOPE for Yoshida to fix this mess as he did with ARR

FFXIV has been my favorite game of all time, and we're talking 40 years of gaming, going back to NES and Commodore 64 in the mid 80's. Even FF1 at my friend's house across the street after school. Then Dawntrail happened. The dungeons were still fun, the raids are a blast. But that story. I have never suffered through a story so much as this. I didn't think anything would do worse than FFVIII for me in terms of story. How wrong I was. I use to talk about FFXIV to coworkers all the time. Now when I bring it up, I just talk about how it's been turned into DisneyTrail and if they don't course correct on the MSQ by next expansion, I'll be letting my sub run out after 9 years of playing almost every day.

[Arrogantia]

I don't know about cope, but if the trend of your posting is of any indication, I think what you need is a dose of critical thinking.

- There is a lot of people complaining about the msq on this forum.

- You need to have an active account to post on the forum.

That should be enough to tell you that your metrics is not reliable to support the narrative you're trying to push. I highly recommend you register for a statistic class at a local community college, that class will teach you the difference between causation and correlation.

If you ask me do I think this is the worst msq ever? My answer is yes.

If you ask me am I currently enjoying the game? My answer is yes.

And if that sounds weird to you, then I have a revelation to make: most normal people think and act on a spectrum. I know that may come as a complete shocker to someone who grew up in the brainrot social media era. You may think it's normal for people to only think and on the extremes ... but trust me, that's not the case. Most people who left a negative reviews isn't making a statement "this game is suxxor and a waste of time, and I'll NEVER PLAY IT AGAIN" but more like "hey, this area of the game isn't good, do better next time".

If I go to a restaurant and unhappy with a certain dishes, maybe I'll talk to the manager, maybe I'll leave a 3* review instead of a 5. That doesn't mean I don't want to come back to that restaurant, rather I want to improve my chance of having a better experience the next time I visit.

If I buy a car and something not working as advertised, I talk to the dealer, I file a warranty claim to get it fixed. Unless it's a safety issue I mostly still gonna drive it, I ain't gonna dump the car in the junk yard just because it doesn't meet my expectation 100%.


So yeah, try to learn how to think on a spectrum, it's a skill that's worth cultivating.

[ZXN]

snip

I really enjoyed Dawntrail when I was playing through it, and in terms of enjoyment, I personally put it top 3 behind Shadowbringers and Heavensward when I finished playing it. However, once that initial "this was fun" moment for me passed, I do what I normally do and look over the whole story and go "Was it actually any good though?" That was when I realized that the reason I enjoyed Dawntrail when I played through it was because I completely turned my brain off to Wuk Lamat before I even finished the first two zones because I knew immediately what kind of character the devs were going to try and shove onto me for the entire MSQ. Unraveling the rest from there I wound up with the unsurprising answer of: "Wow, Dawntrail's story is abysmal."

There are just A LOT of issues when you look at the story critically, since that IS ultimately the main thing people will play this game for. Once you start constantly asking yourself "But Why?" to many of the things that occur during the MSQ, it starts to fall apart pretty badly.

For example: The Mamook area. As much as I love my boy Bakool Ja Ja, you're not going to convince me that after kidnapping Wuk, releasing Valigarmanda for literally no reason other then essentially "because I can", and literally threatening Wuk's birth father and even say he was going to be killed anyway after Wuk loses in 1 on 1 combat against him, alongside some other basic villain things like pulling his weapons out against civilians to strike them down and constantly blocking the feat paths, that after just a few bonks on the heads with an axe, one sad story that our WoL LITERALLY says to not use as an excuse for what he's done, and ONE short heart to heart talk with Wuk, they are now friends and everyone around Wuk just goes "Okay, he's forgiven." The fact Alisaie even says "Well, maybe it's for the best. Hatred is exhausting, after all" right after along with Wuk saying all her anger just disappeared effortlessly was just WAY too sudden for all the shit they had him do up till then. Mamook's issues as a whole were also resolved like it was just no challenge at all. "We beat my father's shade. Now, here are some seeds to grow more then bananas. Now stop your eugenics project and be my friends." And then it's just...done. The power of Wuk Lmao's friendship and love for peace fixed something that has been ingrained in a group of people for centuries and just solved all of their issues as well in no time at all in the most perfect way possible for everyone involved.

Just one example of many.

I didn't think Dawntrail would be worse then Endwalker for me personally, as I hated both the MSQ and Post-Patch, yet Dawntrail's MSQ story with how it was written and presented did it somehow.

[Cenobia]

I'm done.
It's done.

After almost two months I have managed to struggle my way through Dawntrail's writing. I don't even feel relief, I just feel numb. Everything up to Living Memory was bad but manageable, then I could just stare in disbelief at my screen for the 4 days it took me to get through it.
I'm not even going to bother bringing up any of the plot craters and schizophrenic yet paper-thin characterization that happened until Living Memory- it literally feels like a haze, a distant dream of better times. From the trauma conga line the Only Sane Person (Erenville) suffers through - alone - during the entire zone, to the fact that every single Endless, without exception, are fine with being deleted (???) even if they just managed to reunite and bond with someone they loved in life. (Also, I'm sorr- no, I'm not sorry. It's rant time.)

From the moment that male elezen appeared, mentioning that he died much earlier than his beloved but was finally reunited with them as an Endless, and we were taken on a gondola ride with Raha where he traumadumps on us out of nowhere, I was sure, SURE, that they were building up to a dialogue choice where he asks you if you also have a dead person you wish you could have spent more time with, and if you picked the strongest agreeing choice, the game would show that the beloved of that Elezen is an Endless version of your reflection from that shard, implying that the elezen was a reflection of Haurchefant that also died tragically while their beloved -you- lived on. I fully expected the beloved to be modeled after your WoL, just with different colours.
It'd have been a humongous gut punch for the player that picked that dialogue choice to see that one of their reflections did get to meet their beloved again in the afterlife, an afterlife that you're being tasked to destroy. Hell, they could even have had the two of them trying to fight you off together to stop you from doing it as a solo duty.

Alas, like almost every interesting opportunity Dawntrail sets up, it is squandered. But anyroad. (1/2)

[Cenobia]

(2/2)

The one thing that I couldn't get out of my head the entire time was that the whole expansion we've been relentlessly beaten over the head with the themes of communication and conciliation, yet the one time it would have been actually interesting to do so, it forces conflict on you "Because thou must."
My Warrior of Light was staring at her Tomestone in horror, looking at her contacts list which comprise of-

Garlond Ironworks
Skysteel Manufactury
Garlemald Engineer Corps
Radz-at-Han Alchemists
Sharlayan Ragnarok Division

So on and so forth, all of them extremely skilled in magitek and magical technology in general, who could be called on at any time (Since, as the story showed us with Raha and Shtola, travel time is not a factor) to help overhaul and upgrade the Endless system. "Oh, but there was no time, it was running low on 'soul aether' which is apparently special!"
Cool. Turn the active simulation off then, and set the Endless to Storage Only while we work together to avoid a genocide. The power requirement would go way down and buy teams who built a starship that travelled to the edge of existence time to overhaul the Endless system. It was the screamingly obvious conciliatory solution we were denied because the writing team is simply horrendous at their job and don't know their own lore nor characters.

"There was no other way" my plump, swaying tail.