Zepla's Dawntrail MSQ Analysis

[xxmiamorecadenza]

Zelpa who? Did she pay the same subscription fee as me?

Guys look! I’m so quirky and rad that I have no idea who this Zelpa lady is. Aren’t I totes cool? Aren’t you glad I posted about me not knowing who she is?

[Carin-Eri]

This is something XIV's sound direction borrows from long-running anime.
Composers for anime usually come up with certain themes and motifs for specific major story points or characters. Then the directors decide to re-use those themes based on the audience really liking it the first time so let's keep using it + not wanting to use older tracks but also not wanting to allocate budget for even more additional tracks.

Whoever makes those cutscene music decisions in XIV is being very lazy.
Series like Naruto have done this a lot. It undermines the significance of the first time some of the (actually very good) themes because they get used 20 more times, often for situations that are nowhere near as impactful.

Agreed - Dragonball Super did this too. The 'Ultimate Battle' track from the Universal tournament was awesome when it was first used, but was then used for almost every major fight that involved Goku to the point where you wound up thinking "oh - that track again".

[SamuraiMiqo]

Sorry I can't use that persons clown with a mic thing to anything, the person is very short sighted and a joke.

Hmph! How very glib.

[OlafQuintessa]

Just got around to watching Zep's video - thanks OP for the heads up. I felt pretty much the same as Zep after finishing the msq - depressed at how bad it was, and ended up unsubbing for a while. I think Zep did a good job of being critical but even-handed and constructive. I sincerely hope they get the producers of ffxiv to sit down and watch it, and the next time Yoshi does interviews and media tours he gets asked some tough questions instead of people just fawning over him. The MSQ package thing sounds eerily accurate - there are so many recycled elements in the last few expansions, it's like they've run out of imagination or can't be bothered. So much for Yoshi P saying he's grateful for all the fans that have stuck around - I guess they can just have slop now! Having said that I still think there's a lot of fun to be had playing ffxiv, but since Endwalker the msq has been very much to the game's detriment.

[BigCheez]

Just got around to watching Zep's video - thanks OP for the heads up. I felt pretty much the same as Zep after finishing the msq - depressed at how bad it was, and ended up unsubbing for a while. I think Zep did a good job of being critical but even-handed and constructive. I sincerely hope they get the producers of ffxiv to sit down and watch it, and the next time Yoshi does interviews and media tours he gets asked some tough questions instead of people just fawning over him. The MSQ package thing sounds eerily accurate - there are so many recycled elements in the last few expansions, it's like they've run out of imagination or can't be bothered. So much for Yoshi P saying he's grateful for all the fans that have stuck around - I guess they can just have slop now! Having said that I still think there's a lot of fun to be had playing ffxiv, but since Endwalker the msq has been very much to the game's detriment.

I think we're incredibly unlikely to see anyone pressing Yoshi-P during the media tour. They likely wouldn't be invited to the next one, so it just isn't in their interest. The pattern in most game communities is that content creators will try to be as positive as possible to ensure that they're invited to and given the ability to cover events and whatnot. That rarely changes unless it becomes impossible to do so without coming across as fake to their viewers, which would cause them to lose credibility.

The devs have received torrents of critique since Dt released and the last Lucky Bancho report suggests that things are looking pretty dire in terms of player retention. The number of new players picking the game up has dropped drastically, 33% of the people who started Dawntrail didn't even finish it, and the decline between 7.0 and 7.1 is the sharpest drop off we've ever seen.

Dawntrail started with the highest recorded player numbers of all time and then dropped to the lowest numbers that we've seen since late Stormblood.

The good news is that people are voting with their wallets and that's the best way to have a developer actually listen.

[NamiRocket]

Guys look! I’m so quirky and rad that I have no idea who this Zelpa lady is. Aren’t I totes cool? Aren’t you glad I posted about me not knowing who she is?

I envy him.

[Oizen]

I do not disagree with a single thing she said in this video.

[ReynTime]

I do not disagree with a single thing she said in this video.

I was almost there but then she complimented Gulool Ja Ja as being a great character and a really cool guy.

He's not better written than the other characters at all. We're just told he's this amazing leader who united the continent but apart from fighting Estinien and us he's sitting his ass all the time in a big empty palace, ddin't lift a finger to help his kin with their crop and isolation problems that led them into this xenophobic culture and horrible ritual to birth blessed siblings. Lets complete idiots who free continental threats for funsies to join a succession trial and couldn't even tell there was something wrong with his relationship with his son.

He's a total jackass on screen. We're only TOLD he did great things in the past. But at the same time we see all this shit he leaves unchecked right under his roof for years.

[Zelda206]

I was almost there but then she complimented Gulool Ja Ja as being a great character and a really cool guy.

He's not better written than the other characters at all. We're just told he's this amazing leader who united the continent but apart from fighting Estinien and us he's sitting his ass all the time in a big empty palace, ddin't lift a finger to help his kin with their crop and isolation problems that led them into this xenophobic culture and horrible ritual to birth blessed siblings. Lets complete idiots who free continental threats for funsies to join a succession trial and couldn't even tell there was something wrong with his relationship with his son.

He's a total jackass on screen. We're only TOLD he did great things in the past. But at the same time we see all this shit he leaves unchecked right under his roof for years.

I remember going through a long cutscene and someone asked me who was the worst character in FFXIV apart from Wuk Lamat, and I said Gulool Ja Ja for many of the reasons you've already stated. Dismissive father, loss of potential at being a rash and brazen illogical leader due to the nature of his 'wiser' head, heavily-bias to the adoptive children, blaming the corruption of his biological son on his son alone, blackmailing us for Krile's ancestry by ensuring the favorite child wins the throne, spins a lie about the Rite of Succession 'cultivating a leader' when his entire goal was to get the lion queen to replace him, played favorites with the children and outright dismissed the plights of the different cultures around his nation for the sake of the Rite, ignored the cold war that resulted in his adoptive daughter being in Tuliyolal in the first place, 'showed' his children the cultures but did not properly educate them, and the worst part of all is he agreed to allow the god-ending Warrior of Light be the crutch that would enable his favorite candidate to rise above the others without a hint of discipline. There are so many ways the plot would have benefited the new characters that were introduced, and this was the worst of the bunch we got at a heavy price-tag. It wasn't just embarrassing or insulting, it's disgraceful.

[Oizen]

I was almost there but then she complimented Gulool Ja Ja as being a great character and a really cool guy.

He's not better written than the other characters at all. We're just told he's this amazing leader who united the continent but apart from fighting Estinien and us he's sitting his ass all the time in a big empty palace, ddin't lift a finger to help his kin with their crop and isolation problems that led them into this xenophobic culture and horrible ritual to birth blessed siblings. Lets complete idiots who free continental threats for funsies to join a succession trial and couldn't even tell there was something wrong with his relationship with his son.

He's a total jackass on screen. We're only TOLD he did great things in the past. But at the same time we see all this shit he leaves unchecked right under his roof for years.

I don't disagree with what you're saying but I do think he's infinitely more amusing than every other character we're paired with. The bar is pretty low that its on the ground.