Give Dawntrail the ARR post patch treatment

[Pip_Chick]

There are too many lines that repeat themselves in the MSQ, even voiced ones. A lot of the MSQ quests could do with trimming significantly in terms of go find 3 people, point at robot for the blindingly obvious, listen to how everyone is a sterile clone of each other and echoes each other's opinions.

It's going to go down in history, or already has gone down in history as the expansion people will struggle to advertise to new players to try and grin and bear through, EVEN if hypothetically the next expansion is amazing.

For the sake of helping the game in the long run, I am suggesting to the team to work on trying to cut as much as possible out of this expansion that simply isn't necessary, or repeated dialogue. There is a lot of fat to trim, I don't think anyone, including people who somehow enjoyed this expansion would miss it given how much of it repeats itself or doesn't contribute to the story.

Maybe from less exposure to the characters as a result of a shorter expansion, people would have less of a vitriolic sentiment towards the characters introduced in Dawntrail, thus easing the burden future expansions would have to carry.

I expected the DT story to be on par with ARR. Which to an extent it was. The fetch 3 things, talk with 3 people was always there in all expansions, not just this one and to more or less the same frequency. The "Talk with Wuk Lamat" is no different from talk to "x" character. It is simply to move the story along.

Now I will not defend the writing in itself, it was pretty boring. I liked the first half because we were exploring a new continent and there was a mystery to it. I enjoyed that aspect, but the continuous repetition if statements that had no further meaning than last time did overstay it's welcome. I liked Lamat'y, and thought she was endearing, but she needed more of a personality than "peace and happiness". If the writers wanted more focus on her, that is fine, but they needed to flesh out her quirks, likes, dislikes and fears/faults. Not just she likes to eat, she loves her Papa, she loves Peace and has seasickness + fear of heights. Those are very raw points that are not presented in a way for us to relate/like the character more.

I wouldn't be for an ARR post-patch like cut for the DT MSQ. But rather I would like to see them make a redo of the story. Rewrite it and implement it in a more polished state. I feel like the players have described everything they didn't like, so taking that into account, maybe a polish to the story would be good.

As well as for the love of Zeus, can you guys voice all cutscenes? I recently played Poppy Playtime chapter 4 and was shocked how this indie studio with this more niche game could have all their characters voiced, but a massive game like FFXIV couldn't.

[Auro_Seldaris]

As well as for the love of Zeus, can you guys voice all cutscenes? I recently played Poppy Playtime chapter 4 and was shocked how this indie studio with this more niche game could have all their characters voiced, but a massive game like FFXIV couldn't.

To add to this thought, I recently saw a playthrough of a game I hadn't thought about in many many years. Star Trek 25th Anniversary is an adventure game for PC by Interplay, released in 1992. Keep that year in mind. I watched about an hour of this playthrough and realized there is no excuse for FFXIV to not be 100% voice acted. Every single line of dialogue in that 33-year old game, from the opening narration, to searches on the Enterprise's computer systems, to idle comments between characters on away missions, is fully voice acted.

By the original cast members. From William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForrest Kelley, all the way to more minor characters like random Romulan and Klingon captains, and diplomats. In the year 1992.

If Interplay -a mid-tier game studio at the time - can record full voice acting dialogue by famous actors, and cram it onto a CD-ROM in 1992, there is no reason that SE can't do full dialogue from minor VAs for all cutscenes in a game we download from the internet in 2025.

I'm finally done making excuses for SE and CSIII. That really opened my eyes. The only reason they don't do full voice acting is either sheer unadulterated laziness, or simply not caring about the quality of their game anymore. This is the future, dude, it's inexcusable. Remember, Yoshida is the one who stalled the release of Endwalker for two weeks because he was so worried about the dialogue in a single cutscene that he redid it, and got Rene Zagger and others to do additional dialogue lines in a rush. And still cried because he knew how disappointed we would be about the change of release date. Where is THAT Yoshida, now?

As to the main point of the thread, I really wouldn't want them to waste time and effort on "redoing" DT. They had their shot and they blew it. ARR was needed, Dawntrail is best forgotten about. My recommendation to people in the future will be to play up through Endwalker and just buy a skip to 8.0 (under the condition that 8.0 is actually good). I mean, by their current standard of storytelling, they will be sure to painstakingly recap EVERYTHING that happened in DT for you at the beginning of 8.0 anyway, so nothing will be lost by simply skipping it.

[Pip_Chick]

As to the main point of the thread, I really wouldn't want them to waste time and effort on "redoing" DT. They had their shot and they blew it. ARR was needed, Dawntrail is best forgotten about. My recommendation to people in the future will be to play up through Endwalker and just buy a skip to 8.0 (under the condition that 8.0 is actually good). I mean, by their current standard of storytelling, they will be sure to painstakingly recap EVERYTHING that happened in DT for you at the beginning of 8.0 anyway, so nothing will be lost by simply skipping it.

Agreed to everything except this part. I don't really want the game to have the Great Filter 2.0. ARR is already considered to be a filter because of so many people quitting mid-way. So I think them taking the time to fix the glue that keeps the game together (the story) is a great thing.
But even if they won't, people already skip through ARR, so I personally see no problem in people skipping DT if they don't like it, or any expac for that matter. There are plenty of moments in which the characters will remind you of past events without prompt.
I say don't waste money, take the EXP and just skip. It took me on an experimental character about 1 day of skipping, the majority of which was halted by waiting for dungeons and raids + CT. So it is not that long. I think DT is shorter than ARR too, so it might take even less.
All I am trying to say is, don't waste money on a skip, just skip normally if you don't like it and take the free EXP.