DT: State of the Game

[Drimn]

Tbh ...Stormblood was good compared to DT. I rather take 10 Lyses then 1 Wuk. At least Lyse wasnt the main focus of every quest.

It feels like they put more thought into the Azim Steppe's lore than they did into all of Tural's. I wonder if they spent too much time brainstorming to fuss over how to execute what they were trying to accomplish or what, but the continent feels dead and fake, like a Disney World version of itself.

[Striker44]

No matter what rate I give my experience with DT, it will continue to drop if the team won't stop making PR apologies for the EN VA that will not stop gaslighting people about not liking the most un-Final Fantasy music scroll in FFXIV.

Let's be real. Aside from a very specific sub-segment of the gaming population, people couldn't care less (and probably don't even have the slightest clue) what VA's do in their spare time.

[sindriiisgaming]

i literally dont understand the problem with stb. zenos was very entertaining and the primals we faut were great. also we still had susan on vocals and lyse actually had a good VA. Kugane was a beautiful city, shirogane is a gorgeous housing sub, it added SAm and RDM to the game 2 jobs we literally NEEDED and they even fit in with the expansions story. The omega raids were some of the best and the hildibrand is 1 of the funniest. we also got our first ultimates and eureka is still popping off while gangos lies uninhabited

[LilaIronman]

I played ff14 now for several years and always loved the story even if it was sloppy like in Stormblood though, never have I really taken a break and always have been going strong in raids and daylies roulettes and such, after Dawntrail launch I suddenly had no urge to do anything, so far I have done the daylie roulettes 2 days and never touched them again lol

The story failed miserable which is a huge point for me
but I also don't think there is any content to do and I simply hate that they choose to spread everything out that could have been there day 1
really makes you realize how lazy they are, not sure how much of the old spaghetti code keeps making improvements worse, but only a Story for an expasion launch?

Come on man wtf

[Mioooh]

I wanted to make this a separate topic, but since you try to gather all of the information, I'll just put this here.

I want to talk about the DT Story-writing.

Short about me for context: I did NOT study creative writing. I write only as a hobby. I'm very passionate about it, I took several masterclasses and I love to analyze, but I'm NOT a professional writer in any way, nor did I ever publish anything. So take all of this with a grain of salt.

That being said: There is a reason why you can actually study creative writing. There are certain rules you have to learn if you want to write a compelling story that is generally received as “good”. Of course there is a lot of wiggle room within these rules, this is where the creativity and writing style etc. comes in place. And if you are really good at it, you can even very specifically break some of those rules to achieve a certain effect.

These rules are not in place to restrict the writer. Rather, they make sure, the reader (or in this case player) has an engaging and immersive experience regarding things like organic character-building and exciting story arcs for example.

Of course, you can also apply these rules to analyze stories to pinpoint problems. This is also the reason why big stories usually go through an extensive editing-process.

I read some comments saying something like: "I can't put my finger on it, but this part of the story just felt off to me”. That is most likely because the writer broke a rule, and you're might not familiar with the concept, hence it just seems "off".

The reason I'm saying this is because I also read a lot of comments saying that “well, in the end it's all just opinions” or “the story might just not be for you”. That is NOT the problem. Of course some just don't like the overall style and that's absolutely okay, you can never appeal to everyone. But the reason that DT got so much critique regarding the MSQ is because if you analyze it, you'll find out that the writers heavily violated the rules of story telling, from start to finish.

Now, do I think the writers a bad? No, I don't, or at least not THAT bad. I will explain: There are several scenes, that are very well written and could have been and excellent base for are smaller arc within the overarching story. The potential is there, the momentum just wasn't used.

At this point I will just assume, that all of the writers at CBU3 have studied the subject, or have at least the reputation to get the job in the first place, especially for such a heavily story driven game. So all of them will be at least familiar with the workings of story telling. And this is what gets me suspicious. I wanna point to a scene, that stood out for me (even tho this might be a very specific example): (Part 2)

[Mioooh]

We are talking to G'raha Tia in the gondola in living memory. He starts talking about loss, brings up ethical questions: “what would you have done, had you THIS?” I thought, this was a great start to bring up the ethics of this place and discuss them further in the process. Maybe this will even bring tention, if he disagrees with what we are about to do. Instead, the moment we step out the gondola the topic was dropped and never mentioned again. This breaks the basic rule of promise-progress-payoff. In this case, they promised the player something, but never followed up with progressing this arc in any way.

There is no way, a professional writer would've not noticed that. And even if, the editing would've fixed the mistake. It seems like they didn't have much freedom and they got clear instructions on how to handle major subjects like certain character arcs for example. There are several of those scenes. The whole story and the pacing feels all over the place and it feels not properly edited. We also have arcs that feel like something got cut out (Bakool Ja Ja – Valigarmanda arc) as well es several “big elephants” in the room (important topics that don't get addressed or even plot-holes). This also negates the argument that the writers would've needed more oversight, because basic mistakes like this shouldn't happen in the first place.

Then there was also Naoki Yoshida's comment at Fanfest (I think?) where he said (and I'm just paraphrasing here): We just put a lot of stuff together, and then we'll see what sticks and what the players like. That is NOT a good basis for an exciting story. That is actually the exact opposite.

Now if you put all of this in context, it could lead to one conclusion. And I wanna make very clear, that this is just an ASSUMPTION. I think, that (for whatever reason) there was a massive re-write of the MSQ happening, rather late in the process. Big parts got cut out, some got edited, others added. And the new team just wasn't experienced enough (and/or didn't have enough resources available) to put all the pieces back together in time, and as a consequence also could not properly edit the whole story again from scratch. I might be totally wrong, but so much points towards it.

To why Ishikawa did not step in at that point: again, just an assumption. But I think she either has the role of senior lead just on paper to keep her in the credits because of her reputation, and she is actually working on other projects, or even her experience just wasn't enough to save the project (which I find hard to believe).

So no, I don't think, the writers are bad. Or at least, I don't think they had a fair chance to proof that they are good. Of course you can always gain more experience and get better, but I don't think, replacing them would change anything, that is not the root of the problem. The problem seems to be that CBU3 just doesn't have a clear course and don't really know which direction they want to go, that they are too afraid of negative feedback (ironically) and this is the result.

[All_Nonsense]

snip

I'm not here to give my opinion. Already gave it in several threads awhile ago and the dev team doesn't seem to give 2 shits after hearing YoshiP's response to criticism, so there's no point. I'm enjoying the gameplay immensely and will be sticking around because of it. That's on me ig. Anyway, I'm only replying to remind you that DRK and SMN are both missing from your signature - you should probably update that. WAR is fun. We got minimal changes and minimal additional skills and we're just kinda happy because we're all dumb. Come be dumb with us.

[Akonyl]

I’ve been reading in most of the DT threads here, and there are pieces of good discussion going on in numerous threads, but there are too many threads to track, too much overlap in the discussions, and far too much garbage to wade thru. I created this thread out of exhaustion and with a meager shred of hope that enough people might post organized, thoughtful feed back to make it worthwhile.

[Heavenchild]

I have no education for creative writing. But I know when I am very bored and when a character is thrown into my face so often that I just wish the character to go away. :/

For me a lot of parts in DT sadly felt boring. It was too much "just tell, instead of show things", too often speak with 3 npc's, too often weird standing around doing nothing, and we had really hurting plotholes.

And again there is no true content beyond MSQ after the release of a whole new expansion. I know that this is as always, but that just means that it's still(!) that bad. They needed much longer than usual for DT release. We waited so long. And then we got just a medicore story and beyond that nothing 'interesting' to do.

I don't know how it really is, when thinking about SE's profit from the game. But for me personally the state of the game feels really bad.

[Dirwen]

I remember when FF11 went downhill as abyssea got released and they raised the 75 cap. This time with DT I'm getting this same feeling since the story ended with endwalker and SE unsure what to do with the story makes me worried.

Problem is there is no new mmorpg in development like when ff11 msq ended and I could at least move to ff14. Just hope the post DT patches will be good. FF11 raids and bozja/eureka content is what I'm looking forward to.