Is 7.2 the last patch to even save Dawntrail at this point?(SPOILERS AHOY)

[Kazuke_Miso]

Were there pacing flaws? Yeah. Did I dislike how much I was forced to interact with Wuk Lamat instead of.... anyone else? Yeah. Was the story weaker than anything since ARR? Absolutely yeah.

Have I still been playing every day and grinding all my jobs to 100 and trying to clear the savage tier and doing silly events with friends like maps and old Extreme mount farming? Also yeah.

Addict lmao

[Lilapop]

One thing I've noticed is that the doomers have been having a massive, hyperventilating DOOM THIS GAME SUUUUUCKS circlejerk since 7.0 launched and a chunk of the playing base decided it was Terrible, Awful, No Good and have taken every opportunity to shit on it.

In the meantime, those of us who kept playing - heck, even replayed 7.0 on alts or watched other streamers go through it - have had an opposite reaction? Mostly, "Oh, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was." Things didn't happen the way I recalled them happening. Wuk Lamat's character is a dumb unga bunga ... because she's a warrior, of course it makes sense she'd be a dummy.

Were there pacing flaws? Yeah. Did I dislike how much I was forced to interact with Wuk Lamat instead of.... anyone else? Yeah. Was the story weaker than anything since ARR? Absolutely yeah.

Have I still been playing every day and grinding all my jobs to 100 and trying to clear the savage tier and doing silly events with friends like maps and old Extreme mount farming? Also yeah.

I've tuned out the "THIS GAME SUCKS" crowd and decided I'd find my own way to enjoy it, and I've been a much happier person after I cut out every else's negative opinions.

Your opinion is valid, but just because people have legitimate criticism doesn't mean their opinion is "invalid negativity." Yours isn't anymore important than theirs and vice versa.

[Lilapop]

The hilarious part of this whole discussion is that what people are clammoring for the exploration zone like it isn't just going to be Bozja zone 3 & 4. Yes it will be different, but it isn't going to reinvent the wheel, and many will be done with it within 2 weeks. Then it's right back to waiting 6++ months for something else.

No, no. It's the new revolutionary content we deserve and have been waiting for! It'll fix Dawntrail and might even change gaming as we know it! /s

Joking aside, we've seen nothing so far in the 7.x expansion that has lead us to belief that this will be any different than the mediocre slop we've been given so far, unless I'm wrong?

[Evergrey]

There is an essential difference though.
In World of Warcraft, you can opt to ignore Shadowlands and BfA.

In FFXIV every single new player joining in will have to bear through the drastic drop in story telling quality right after Shadowbringers and Endwalker set the bar really high. There is no skipping or avoiding story in this game. Dawntrail is the new low, far worse than pre-revamped ARR (to be fair, ARR wasn't even bad. It just had and still has pacing issues).

Dawntrail is the new "it gets better after"-breaking point... potentially. We don't even know for sure yet. Considering last patch we witnessed a relevant story NPC showing more interest in selectively protecting one random entity of wildlife from another random entity of wildlife, than they showed for protecting their own father figure from being killed, my hopes are not exactly skyrocketing.

Unless they revamp, no one will be able to forget how full of severe plotholes and things that don't make any sense Dawntrail is.

If you really want to compare you have to talk about BfA and Shadowlands as if they were the current expansion, seeing how Dawntrail is the current right now.
And at those times people couldn't really opt out of BfA and Shadowlands as they can do now.
And once Dawntrail isn't current it will sooner or later get a "skip potion" from the store so people can opt out of it as well if they so choose to.

If people really dislike Dawntrails story that much, why not just pretend that it's not happening?
I played through out most of Dawntrail and skipped almost every single cutscene and I don't look back and think "this happened in Dawntrail".
I simply focus on what I think is enjoyable.
To be fair however, I've probably skipped like 80% of all cutscenes in FXIV from 2.x up to now.
So I'm not the targeted audience when it comes to this whole "Story Driven" game that most FFXIV players seems to gather behind.
But that also means that the "problems of Dawntrail" isn't a problem for me so I can just enjoy the game like I've always done and not be bothered.

That being said, I've been on a FFXIV break for a while now.
Just returned for a month to buy the new mount from Chaotic and my sub will run out before mid-Februari. Edit: Correction, it ends tomorrow. I really forgot when I resubbed.
Then my break will continue and I will continue playing other games.
Not that I think FFXIV is any worse than before.
I'm just at the time of "burned out" of FFXIV from playing for years upon years.

I would recommend others to try taking a break from FFXIV if they are tired of the "poor quality".
There are plenty of games to explore while waiting for the game to "get better" instead constantly complaining about it.
Why waste precious time of ones life complaining when one could fill it with enjoyment instead.

[Zakuyia]

oh my god, what if they attempt to retcon the whole "erase all the memories in Living Memory" because most players had some serious issues with the writing in that zone, and instead of dealing with the consequences of that happening and/or trying to move on to something else so we can just forget this whole Dawntrail thing ever happened like a bad dream, they instead go, "Look, it's okay, we found a way to restore Sphene all the memories! Hooray! Everyone is happy!"

It sounds outlandish, but everything about late Endwalker and Dawntrail compared to what came before has been pretty outlandish in how stupid things have gotten, so...

At this point...im still in that dynamis place listening to zenos talk, and DT is a fever dream, im still fighting for my life.

[Catwho]

Your opinion is valid, but just because people have legitimate criticism doesn't mean their opinion is "invalid negativity." Yours isn't anymore important than theirs and vice versa.

Absolutely, but the correct thing to do when you have a bad opinion about something is to.... stop interacting with that content. Instead of continuing to consume hate-watching content of other people who also disliked it. That's the negative feedback loop. It was fine for the first month when everyone was still trying to parse out what had happened, but it's been going on for half a year now.

I've stopped watching quite a few streamers who insist on talking about how much they hate it over and over and over again, instead of finding a new game to play and discuss that they like better.

There's constructive criticism, but also destructive criticism, and too much of what has been put out has been the latter.

Addict lmao

Doesn't help when I get a ping on Discord from my college buddies from 20 years ago who go HEY KAT WANNA DO MAPS

[Zakuyia]

Addict lmao

I mean to be fair im still playing as well doing savage, thats really about it trying to clear m4s and world of darkness

[Archeron]

Honestly Shadowlands is the best comparison for Dawntrail, Not BFA.

Shadowlands and Dawntrail were both expansions that had absolutely AWFUL content. The stories were trash, the content sucked, and they resulted in mass player loss on a scale never seen before.

I am not convinced anyone at Square Enix, CS3, or even Yoshi P himself are even aware of just how bad the situation is. They're not taking the communities feedback seriously, players are rapidly dropping off and amidst the largest player drop off in recent history Yoshi P continues to blunder his PR. I think the reality of the situation is, that Yoshi P and SE have convinced themselves that this player loss is normal and they're not going to fix anything or do anything differently in the future.

[Evergrey]

I think the reality of the situation is, that Yoshi P and SE have convinced themselves that this player loss is normal and they're not going to fix anything or do anything differently in the future.

That people leave during the time of an expansion is normal and no developer would consider it as a sign.
Sure, might be more than normal now during Dawntrail, but still within the "acceptable amount".
Doesn't help that people complain yet still pay a sub. That only shows that people might not agree with the expansion but doesn't consider it bad enough to stop playing, which itself is within acceptable parameters.

What people have to do if they aren't happy is to not just complain and do nothing about it.
People have to stop playing and end their subscriptions.
Ofc, there are no promises that such actions will yield results.
And probably why a lot of people don't do it.
But it sure leaves a stronger message than remain paying for "bad content".

[Kaurhz]

Nothing is saving this disappointment.

They have demonstrated time-and-time again that they cannot deviate from their rigid formula. Exploratory will not save this expansion. It's going to be Bozja with a fresh coat of paint.

Cosmic won't save it either. Sure, it'll approach it from a different angle, but we're still going to have the same boring excuse for expert recipes because they find it a brilliant idea to induce recipes ridiculous requirements, that are still underpinned by the same disappointing crafting system, because they elected to completely gut one of the few things that actually had FFXIV going for it (An engaging crafting system)