How would you improve Dawntrail's writing?

[OliverQ]

I'd either make it a Garlemald expansion and ignore Turali entirely with a writing style more like ShB, or I'd get rid of the contest to become Dawnservant, and instead help Krile uncover the Golden City, leading us to a new shard where would then have to help them restore the shard like the First.

[sindriiisgaming]

torch it and start again. No. I'm not kidding. this is unsalvageable. There is no way to write wukky out now that will not feel forced. and keeping her around will only annoy more people

we should have had a SHB style expansion in the void. infact SHB gave me hope it could happen. what we got was ignoring entirely a massive plot point that millions of innocent souls were yet trapped in the aether starved world and instead of saving them we rushed off to go have a vacation in new mexico. hero of the hour.

i actually LIKE zero. even got a bit of a girl crush on her because shes just so cool. She plays my main job, and i Love her hat, she actually inspired a glamour change from me. Her personality is new and refreshing, shes morally ambiguous and could easily turn on us to get what she needs.. whats this? a potential rival? Why did they not do this? how amazing would it have been to travel around the void with her and we visit ruined kingdoms and learn of the original events. could have even brought gaia along since she is the oracle of darkness and might have been able to rechannel some of that dark aether. the world would have been stunning. proper dark fantasy, could have set the game up for an awesome future, an interesting new scion that plays by her own rules, or just a good frenemy to push us more. Kind of hope they have a second think on the void and try it again. (also maybe retcon the ending cause it was pretty lame)

DT has a lot of potential to be an amazing expansion. connect it to ronka, give us loads of mayan style glamour, write interesting cultures and interesting characters. ACTUALLY EXPLORE what in the 15th century would have been completely uncharted rainforest. Beautiful Peruvian pan flute music like in (you guessed it) shadowbringers's on version. How do u have an expansion set in MAYA and mess it up.. it needed more time to cook so 100x more effort could have gone into it. we had a perfectly serviceable template for the void and they ended it more poorly than End of Evangelion TV

[MediocreIndigo]

torch it and start again. No. I'm not kidding. this is unsalvageable. There is no way to write wukky out now that will not feel forced. and keeping her around will only annoy more people

I really don't like the idea of Wuk Lamat being written out because that kind of feels like the standard procedure for what happens in the event a major female character is unpopular (like Minfilia getting sent to another world and eventually killed off after A Realm Reborn or Lyse being stuck in politician purgatory after Stormblood). Personally, I'd much rather see a character's writing improve than just have them tossed away.

I actually think Wuk Lamat was given most of what she needed for a functional arc and that her issues can be attributed to the subpar writing of Dawntrail as a whole rather than something wrong with her specifically. I think that if the writers hadn't been trying to rush things as much and distributed the spotlight between characters a bit more evenly, she wouldn't have been as divisive as she is.

[Antharaes]

Someone actually wrote this ? Sesame Street has better quality then this garbage. Would love to have an expansion about Meracydia, Garlemald, everything else is better then this.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

I'd either make it a Garlemald expansion and ignore Turali entirely with a writing style more like ShB, or I'd get rid of the contest to become Dawnservant, and instead help Krile uncover the Golden City, leading us to a new shard where would then have to help them restore the shard like the First.

Please god, no. If this game goes back to Garlean anything, I'm going full "Escape -> Would you like to skip this cinematic -> Yes" for the whole expansion. Zenos in particular was peak "hey, it's bring your kid to work day, and my 8-year-old son designed an antagonist."

[Mawlzy]

Please god, no. If this game goes back to Garlean anything, I'm going full "Escape -> Would you like to skip this cinematic -> Yes" for the whole expansion. Zenos in particular was peak "hey, it's bring your kid to work day, and my 8-year-old son designed an antagonist."

Yeah we spent more than enough time wandering around a grey landscape under a grey sky with grey people all obscured by white noise snow. The writing of Zenos and Fandaniel was reminiscent of a Scooby Doo staff writer who didn't understand the assignment.

[Exmo]

Maybe an unpopular opinion but FFXIV is at it's easiest weakest when it's discussing themes of imperialism and oppression. I'm glad we did not get a whole expansion dedicated to Garlemald.

[TBerry]

Not looking at the forum is a good start.

[kaynide]

1) Go back, rewriting a large chunk of Endwalker. I would have lifted the plot of Chrono Trigger (Cosmic threat exists inside the core of the planet), has existed there since before even the Ancients, and is very source of their "Creation magic".
2) Rework everything post Garlemald in Endwalker, with Zodiark being an uber-Primal hell bent on his purpose, and not just a glorified mech suit.
3) Destruction of Zodiark releases "Zeromus" from the core of the earth.
4) Final zones are deep underground/underworld type. And the interior of the moon a la FF4.
5) Post can deal with Golbez, but he needs to be a major part of the MSQ earlier (like around when we defeat Zodiark)
6) No Elpis (unless it's a modern ruin), No Ultima Thule, No meteon, no Kairos. The end-times were not caused by Emo-Twitter.

Then, we get to Dawntrail

1) We specifically do not follow ANY of the claimants for the throne. Rather we act as judge/referee. The other Scions are teamed with the claimants, while we bounce between groups as needed/relevant/interesting to the story. Our specific story is more of deciding who did better at a particular task, but also removing outsiders to keep the actual trials fair.
This means we get a zone maybe more close with Wuk, another following Zuraal or Koana.
2) Yes, this is to say we could fully support Koana, or even Zuraal.
3) Make Galool Ja Ja release Valigarmanda with intent to kill it solo, but be overpowered. This is his turning point from enemy to respectable rival.
4) We learn that Alexandria engineers blessed siblings, and that this is in fact a failed result. What they get from Mamook I don't know.
5) Zuraal is actually the first successful result, a blending of 2 Mamool Ja "types" into a single entity.
6) Ultimately, all 3 siblings come together. Zuraal included.
7) Alexandria is a far future combination of Ronka and our Alexander. They are capable of shifting space/time with some great effort. They're currently in some weird between-dimensions place and trying to get to our reflection. One attempt crashed a chunk of their city into Rak'tika.
8) Going to and rescuing (or ultimately destroying) Alexandria is the focus of the later bit. No more "wow emotions" final zones...
9) No cyberpunk. No solution 9, no Heritage found, no yee-haw cowboys. Save north America for another expansion.

TL;DR: Idk, just scrap the 2nd half of Endwalker AND Dawntrail and do something that at least attempts to keep to the established lore.

[TakoyakiLala]

One of the things like liked about Dawntrail was how only some of the Scions were with us for the first half. While I don't mind having the Scions around all the time, it is nice to just spend time with only a handful of them, plus a few newish characters, like Erenville whom we get to know a little better.

Plus it was nice having Krile with us, too! I hope for the next expansion the devs continue with this type of formula for handling the Scions and only bringing them all together when the plot deems it necessary to have more high caliber Sharlyan experts on particular subjects we can't handle on our own.