How would you improve Dawntrail's writing?

[Themarvin]

By having more developers and writers... so the writing on the story and more is not long planned, but on the fly so it does not have to be what has already been planned.

You can't really forecast stuff like this, since it is not a single player gamer, but need to be on the fly following more what the community would like as well of course and first of all the people behind this game most of all, it would cost more to increase the staff like this, but I think it would also be a reward on its own being able to deliver even better and more spot on.

With everything, drop any of the characters voices entirely and let it be text based only, with possible an AI solution to read up if you are dyslexic, lesser investment in people needing to put voice onto the NPC's, so you can put stuff out more quick for people to enjoy, in the end an MMO is supposed to be like players in a way living in the game with other players and not so much rounded up around the faboulous 4 in a figure of speech.

[MediocreIndigo]

Whilst I agree in principle... would they remember?

The most recent (at the time of this post) additions to the MSQ demonstrated their memories can be manipulated. I'm not sure there would be much value in telling people who attended a funeral they no longer remember, for a Queen who is no longer dead, that their Queen wasn't (isn't?) the saint they think she was/is.

Yeah, I'm aware that the thing with the imposter Sphene throws a wrench into my idea. Maybe it would be possible for my idea to happen after that gets resolved.

[Keumjo]

I would have definitely stopped repeating the established and well-known goals over and over again. The moment I was done was after a mission and they were like, "relax in your hotel room!" and she comes in, freaks out about being stuck inside, and you HAVE to escort her to a viewpoint to listen to her state her goals and dreams AGAIN. That moment crossed me over from "indifferent" to "I do not enjoy this."

This was a new world we hadn't visited before, much like in ShB, so there is no reason we couldn't have had something better than we did. My expectations weren't the level of history that ShB had, but they were able to introduce a new world with a unique problem and new characters without it all feeling ham-fisted and patronizing.

[Mawlzy]

My main issue was the lack of tension. It is a very long story punctuated by some ocassional neat moments, but I was overall bored and found myself spending more time alt+tabbed out to browse the internet than engaged and sitting on the edge of my seat wanting to find ou what happens next.

Right off the bat, it does not feel like there is an urgency or stakes to the contest. Bajool Ja Ja is just a bully and then jeeps failing so no reason to fear him. Zoraal Ja never came across as threatening. So I go to Urqopacha and Kozam and spend a lot of time meandering around and doing chores and Wuk gets two keystones, and then eventually the only thing that happens is that Wuk Lamat gets kidnapped, and then we get her back and she hasn't lost any keystones. The turning point for me was when the doom bird was unleashed and nothing happened. I was expecting it was going to be like FF8 or FF10 and villages would have to be evacuated, settlements wiped off the face of the earth, the army mobilized and divisions wiped out, etc. But we just teleport onto a rock with 8 guys and kill it just like that with no casualties. That greatly diminished my interest in the story, and then the cooking contest had the two agreeable good guys paired with each other vs the two antagonists, and at that point it is clear there is no risk of failure or anything bad happening, and I abandoned the MSQ to go level up alt jobs instead.

These are all good points. In addition to the lack of tension, I'd note the lack of compelling mystery. For all its flaws, ARR introduces lots of plot lines where you ask yourself "this is interesting, what's going on here?" I expect that in a MMO I'm going to have to find someone lost goat and kill a bear on the way, but that pacing only works if there are mysteries that drive you forward.

One could argue the end of 7.1 is doing that, but my reaction was "oh no, not XXX again." And there aren't multiple plot lines that we're curious about. I do think there's potential to build that interest over all of 7.x, but it ain't there yet.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't feel the basic idea of Dawntrail was problematic, outside of choosing how to characterize and leverage its main NPC -- a fool with nowhere near sufficient redeeming qualities to make them believable let alone likeable accredited for things not even indirectly helped along by her. Larger than that, though, it was just --much like Stormblood-- far too rushed and jarringly out of scale.

Had Tural been introduced as a small island with a much shorter span of its culture intermixing, much would have been more believable, but even then the individual cultures and emotional beats would have predominantly fallen flat under the attention and density. The story itself could obviously have contained stronger emotional beats, too, but I suspect those would/should stem from having a Wuk Lamat competent in more than just plot armor singularity and a more engaging introduction to Tural's cultures.

Apart from that I'd have to roughly second what Moofia suggested -- just far better milking opportunities (and/or adding additional ones) for meaningful/engaging tension and intrigue.

[mallleable]

As someone who enjoyed Dawntrail's story, and characters what stuck out to me was how inconsistently stiff some of the character writing was which includes things like how characters navigate story beats, and their dialog -- they're too efficient if that makes sense. Believable characters are messy. Which leads me to believe the current writing team is not totally confident with writing these characters yet. So I actually think the writing team needs to be allowed to play around with these characters from time to time as part of their writing process, and in doing so figure out what truly makes them tick. And these play sessions should not be done with the goal of putting the results in the game, but instead used to figure out who these characters actually are. An undeveloped plot is a lot more forgivable than undeveloped characters.

[Fawkes]

I wouldn't have the Scions go back to being bland. Shadowbringers really brought out their personalities and now it feels like they're back to just talking a lot without saying anything.

If the point was to get Wuk Lamat over I would probably try to show her grow instead of having her catch an alpaca off screen or get a sudden power up when the story demanded it with no in-story reasoning for it.

If it's supposed to be a new start for a new story I wouldn't have the characters constantly calling back to past events like "this reminds me of the flood of light" or "this reminds me of the 13th", and I certainly wouldn't have the deus ex machina Endwalker dragon saving the city from the invading robots.

[MitsukiKimura]

Wuk lamat dies giving her life for her people
We bury her next to her father
Her brother takes over rulership
Smile plays in the background

[StormChase]

The feats should've felt way more involved than just going from point A to point B. I would've taken a little inspiration from Eureka. Don't immediately tell the player where to go or what to do. Instead you need to look for clues from the locals, and you and your allies figure out where to go from there. Make it feel like a puzzle. Maybe add some more minigames and solo duties. Also, remove Alphinaud and Alisaie from the main party. Focus more on Wuk Lamat, Erenville, and Krile bonding with both you and each other. The story already has some good ideas in place but needs to build on them more.

[NegativeS]

Make Wuk Lamat a villain. Turn the knob up on her naive bad leadership trope by making her overly confident in her skills. She becomes Dawnservant, runs the country into the ground, and we have to Bloody Banquet our way out of the city after we try to convince her to stop being a bad leader.

We get separated from the present Scions in the commotion except for Krile and Koana, giving them more spotlight. We meet up with Zoraal Ja who saw this coming and tells us he told us so, and we learn more about him while we try to pick up the pieces and find a way home or something.

Solution 9 would have been better if it were a holdout of survivors from a merged reflection. We tell them our plight, they're extremely sus until Krile meets her parents (not dead) and is able to convince S9 through them that we're chill.