Does anyone else miss the feeling of fantasy in this game?

[CuteBucket]

Dawntrail feels so deeply incurious about its world and setting, and it's a huge bummer to me. Its people are puddle deep. Its history is bland and unrealistically peaceful. We already solved what few problems it had. Even when we'd finish an expansion previously and solve one major conflict, there were always lingering questions that the game would explore in the patches. We drove the Garleans out of Eorzea, but now there's rising tension among the city states. We defeated Thordan, but Estinien is now corrupted by Nidhogg and the Ishgard is experiencing rampant civil unrest and the structure of their whole society is crumbling. We've freed Ala Mhigo and Doma, but the Garlean Empire is amassing on the boarders to push back in. We've saved the First from Calamity, but the souls of our friends are still trapped there and the Ascians aren't finished with us yet. We can argue over how well the patches addressed these issues, but the point is, we always ended with some further questions and conflict and plot to follow into the next expansion.

But something changed in Endwalker. Instead of taking the time in the patches to address the fallout from the final days raining fire and monsters down and the fall of a massive empire that has been omnipresent since 1.0, thus logically destabilizing the entire continent of Ilsabard, crashing economies, and creating a huge power vacuum, we go mess around on the 13th in what feels like it should have been a Trial sidequest that was made into the MSQ. Apparently there was ZERO fallout from anything that happened in Endwalker? And now, is there any lingering issues to wrap up in Tural for the next two years of MSQ content? Not unless they introduce some new conflict. Solution 9 has some potential to be explored more, as its concept is a dystopian hellscape, but the MSQ treated it like it was a super neato place where everyone is doing great except for the people that aren't but we're not going to talk about them (the side quests explore some darker themes, but they are very short and don't go anywhere or lead to anything, at least for now).

[StormChase]

Yeah, I am aware Tural not having much conflict makes sense with how they have written it, I just think it’s a really, really lame plot point for a lack of better words. Something about the Coolest Dad In The Whole Continent nigh-flawlessly uniting everyone just felt a little…I don’t know the words. It just didn’t feel…interesting? Thoughtful? This is a completely personal opinion of course.

I do think the mysteries with Alexandria are neat but I do hate that they basically had to insert a fraction of another shard into a giant, unexplored-to-us continent to introduce any of those potential mysteries. And admittedly I just don’t currently trust them to make it interesting. Every character, inside and outside of the dome, severely underreacted to what a horrifying situation that actually was. Especially since it also served as a time warp…


Of course I do want to be proven wrong and/or surprised. I also don’t like being too harsh on writing for MMOs, since it is always a kind of weird, cumbersome task… Just, god damn.

I kinda rationalized it in my head by thinking "Okay, this is some highly exceptional person who's like Tural's version of the WOL," but I wonder if he relied more on the people in his party than his reputation showed. I wish that was explored more. Feels like the only two issues other than the dome are the bandits and Chirwagur. I hope it turns out to be more than that.

It's really a shame because I like Tural and the characters. I think they have potential. But I wish they were in a better story and I'm worried too much of the potential was wasted.

[Vhana]

Instead of taking the time in the patches to address the fallout from the final days raining fire and monsters down and the fall of a massive empire that has been omnipresent since 1.0, thus logically destabilizing the entire continent of Ilsabard, crashing economies, and creating a huge power vacuum, we go mess around on the 13th in what feels like it should have been a Trial sidequest that was made into the MSQ. Apparently there was ZERO fallout from anything that happened in Endwalker?

It’s actually slightly worse than this, imo. The little fallout that there was from the final days, was explored in the role quests instead of the msq. This means that it’s both ‘been done’ and cannot be built upon within the msq until the devs change their stance on largely ignoring events/lore/characters that people would have to play through side content to access.

[StormChase]

I kinda rationalized it in my head by thinking "Okay, this is some highly exceptional person who's like Tural's version of the WOL," but I wonder if he relied more on the people in his party than his reputation showed. I wish that was explored more. Feels like the only two issues other than the dome are the bandits and Chirwagur. I hope it turns out to be more than that.

It's really a shame because I like Tural and the characters. I think they have potential. But I wish they were in a better story and I'm worried too much of the potential was wasted.

Come to think of it, there actually is another way Tural could have more conflict. As far as I know, Radz-at-Han is Tuliyollal's first official alliance with an outside nation. What if that pulls them into the political issues overseas?

[AureliusIX]

Dawntrail was meant to be a new Adventure at least that's the marketing impression I was given at each of the fanfests and marketing material prior to expansion release, off to the New World to explore new lands, cultures and people. What I got wasn't exploration and discovery but a very narrowly defined guided tour with every new concept and aspect already explored every land already discovered and my experience couldn't be further from that of exploration but of a guided tour being led from point to point by a main character who very quickly overstayed her welcome, written and presented by a development team who have forgotten it seems what the golden rule of "Show don't tell" means especially as I'm playing a video game I'm not here for a cultural lecture, I'm here to be entertained. To me this was the driest most stale writing and story telling I've ever experienced in a game, I truly don't understand how Dawntrail exists in the same game with story telling on the likes of Heavensward, Shadowbringers and Endwalker. I'm hoping they've taken on board some of the feedback for 7.1, really even if they edited down a lot of the unnecessary over explanatory dialogue it would go someway to alleviating some of the pacing issues. It wouldn't fix it but it would be a start.

[lolnotacat]

What I got wasn't exploration and discovery but a very narrowly defined guided tour....

It was like the tours Westerners get when they go to North Korea. They go to the only shop in the country that sells CocaCola, stick around the parts of Pyongyang that have healthy and fed people, and go to extravagant shows like the Arirang mass games. The curtain was peeled back for a very brief moment when we got to forest zone and dealt with the dead baby dungeon, but were quickly shuttled back to the on-rails guided tour.

"And over here is where we build our train bombs and make our tacos. All glory to the Great Leaders!"

[Voidmage]

I kinda rationalized it in my head by thinking "Okay, this is some highly exceptional person who's like Tural's version of the WOL," but I wonder if he relied more on the people in his party than his reputation showed. I wish that was explored more. Feels like the only two issues other than the dome are the bandits and Chirwagur. I hope it turns out to be more than that.

It's really a shame because I like Tural and the characters. I think they have potential. But I wish they were in a better story and I'm worried too much of the potential was wasted.

I think what it needed was something like Shadowbringers role quests.
Flashbacks where we actually see or even play each party member in their struggle.
Right now it really feels like cooking solved everything.

On topic:
Another thing for me personally destroying the fantasy setting is the comfortable “copying” of concepts from other countries.

Aetherytes? Kiana studied them and they just so happened to engineer them before we arrived and everyone was happy with them.

Hunts? Just almost the same as what they had anyway.

Tomestones? Of course Solution 9 takes them.

Granted other expansions also are guilty of that but at least Kugane and Tavnair had connections to Eorzea in some way or another and the first had the Crystal Exarch shaping it.

Why couldn’t DT have its own more tribal looking aetherytes from history they don’t understand themself with the villages formed around them?
Why not use this expansion to form something new in other aspects. It’s not exactly a DT problem but for me it makes it more obvious.
Right now the whole world feels connected and interchangeable and I think that makes it feel less “exiting” or “adventureworthy”.
I’m just waiting for the obligatory Allagan dungeon or content in the patches tbh.

[Doopliss]

I kinda rationalized it in my head by thinking "Okay, this is some highly exceptional person who's like Tural's version of the WOL," but I wonder if he relied more on the people in his party than his reputation showed. I wish that was explored more. Feels like the only two issues other than the dome are the bandits and Chirwagur. I hope it turns out to be more than that.

It's really a shame because I like Tural and the characters. I think they have potential. But I wish they were in a better story and I'm worried too much of the potential was wasted.

Sorry for replying yet again, lol. I was turbo sleep-deprived yesterday and was articulating even worse than usual. Well. No, having slept probably isn't going to help me much there.

Anyway, you do make a good point with "Gulool Ja Ja is like Tural's version of the WoL". I believe that is probably what they were going for. I think my actual problem with that is that I'm one of the people who have never really been into the WoL either (it's part of why I RP and have a roster of like fourteen characters lol... i like playing 'random' adventurers more as a personal taste thing).

I don't hate it though, but the ultimate, current status of the WoL is part of why I think the already difficult-to-write MMO story is so messy. If FFXIV were an actual JRPG and could change heroes, or let the timeline move, or even backtrack in the setting more thoroughly, without upsetting whatever balance they've decided to keep for the MMO live-service game, we'd probably get less safe, stagnant story-telling like this... Of course I do want them to take more risks (and rely more on the fact it's an MMORPG instead of pretending it's supposed to be some single-player epic), but I guess I'm still kind of sympathetic because this isn't actually a very utilized medium.

I actually do love the idea of Tural and its characters too. I have problems with DT but it's not all-encompassing for me. Gulool Ja Ja, Wuk Lamat, Koana, Erenville, Sphene--hell--Gulool Ja, too, all had/have super goddamn interesting set-ups--DT was really good at making for that!--but they did nigh-nothing, or, worse, settled most of them into the most predictable, safe outcome possible. I think the only one that sort of surprised me was Bakool Ja Ja. They have all of these opportunities to introduce more thoughtful, interpersonal conflict and just don't, and I feel like they didn't use to do that... Everything feels like it has to be tied up in a neat little ribbon now, both when it comes to world-building and characterization.

At the very least Solution 9 was very much left in a strange, inconclusive place (but that setting is pretty antithesis to this thread), and I am looking forward to the Yok Huy society quests because I felt like they were the most interesting Turali race. Of course I want to think there never is "too much" potential wasted, but that is ultimately up to the writers. It's their world to bend... Just gotta hope they decide to not play it safe for once, out of these more recent years.

This is an extremely personal opinion that would get me shot in some other threads I absolutely never want to step into, but, throughout Dawntrail I was honestly thinking: "wow this would probably make a great single-player story where I was actually thrown into the role of playing Wuk Lamat". But again I think that's part of where the problem is. They need to stop trying to pretend FFXIV is something it isn't. I feel like this is only making things harder for them and their world-building.

[Ramiee]

This biggest problem in JRPGs and general Japanese Fantasy writings is the removal of Spirtuality and Mysticism, especially when they're set in Western European-esque settings. Theres a reason why "Using the power of Friendship to kill God" is such an eyeroll meme, its because its true. Most myths and spiritual aspects of the world are either explained or eliminated, XIV was frankly impressive in its restrictiveness in doing this until Shadowbringers. Its just something you have to come to terms with in JRPGs, ever since like FF6 theres be a lot of overexplaining and deletion of mysticism in the series, past that point Final Fantasy went away from its inspirations of being Ultima/D&D inspired by The Dark Crystal and became its own thing fully.
After the A-Raids in EW I have accepted that the world building in XIV has fallen into the generic series tropes in its world building and so I judge it for its qualities in being a good Final Fantasy story far more than a good Fantasy story from now on.

[Hazama999]

I do wish we'd gotten our "Garlemald expansion."
The empire had been our enemy for so many years. I figured it'd warrant one expansion to itself where we finally do away with those garish clouds in the middle of the map and go waist-deep into imperial territory "proper." Instead we just had.... one zone. You know, I liked EW as a whole, but I did feel like it crammed *so* much into itself. At the same time, I can't really.... fault the devs for cutting it short? I think it's, to a certain degree, understandable to want to be done with something, especially if you've been working on it for nearly a decade or more.