Live letters have lost their magic - Zepla

[SongOfTheWind]

God forbid people having emotions and being mournful over the game they deeply enjoyed before, now being in a pitiful state.

[Wasselin]

Can you give an example of this happening, please?

All you have to do is look at the front page of the forums to see the opposite of this happening. Almost every single post is negative, and most of the posts within are echoing that sentiment. Any post that isn't negative turns negative quickly, as forum posters call anyone who disagrees a "white knight."

[RoboticNomad]

Some people here are a tad too idealistic. Asking for pragmatism in a video game forum in the year 2025 feels out of touch. People let their emotions fly here freely so it will tend to be more negative or positive. It doesn't really matter as there's not going to be any reasoned discussion here that will lead to some solution. It's just a rough dipstick for gauging the direction of player feedback. In DT's case it's slipping pretty negative so they'll have to address some things. Hopefully they actually do address them.

[yesnt]

Can you give an example of this happening, please?

How does it come you have 421 posts since November, but you seem to be clueless about what Auro said. That's just ignorant.

[ElysiumDragon]

Reasoned and level heads HAVE tried to levy their concerns. All critique or discussion is buried in "GOOD VIBES ONLY" or "YOU'RE JUST A NEGATIVE NANCY."



People have written "laser-focused, good-faith critique" of Dawntrail. There have been forum threads with lengthy posts discussing and dissecting the problems with DT's plot, characterization, world-building, job design, staleness and repetitiveness of content, etc. There have been many of these threads, all done in good faith and with reasonable attempts at discourse. Do you know what happens to those threads?

They get buried in an avalanche of simplistic "I LIKED IT!" or "YOU'RE JUST A HATER, A DOOMPOSTER, A TROLL."

"Content is stale and repetitive" is vibes-based, it isn't 'laser-focused' at all. Stale how? Repetitive how?

"I liked the Dawntrail MSQ as a whole, but the early sections of the expansion dragged due to an overreliance on cutscenes, and a lack of required player engagement. I would have liked 'x' and 'y' story moment to have been a solo duty, instead of a cutscene or happening off-screen" is me naming the exact issue, pointing out specific moments where this issue cropped up, and offering a direct solution.

See how easy it is?

[Exmo]

How does it come you have 421 posts since November, but you seem to be clueless about what Auro said. That's just ignorant.

Woah so rude. And yet... I don't see a single example. Maybe you forgot to link it?

[Auro_Seldaris]

Can you give an example of this happening, please?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...70#post6666270

"The game's fine" is just "I like it" but a slightly different flavor. Said in an attempt to shutdown perceived "doomposting".

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...64#post6665964

Literally you. "The majority of players disagree with you (smiley face)" is only a few words more than "I liked it", which is the implied sentiment of those who you are representing. And the smiley at the end is an implication that you, yourself, agree with them. The entire statement is a passive-agressive attempt to shut down any discourse around the game.

I'm at work right now and I don't have time to dig through the forums, but go look at any thread written by someone in good faith, with long posts about the problems with the expansion, and you'll see that at some point it inevitably gets filled up with "I LIKED IT" posts. I even

[yesnt]

Woah so rude. And yet... I don't see a single example. Maybe you forgot to link it?

Someone answered that question for you, just scroll a bit up and you will see. Always happy to help.

[Nadda]

Not for me! I think the live letters are still exciting and always like to watch clips and the news that come from them. I also like how informal they feel - they don't feel like a corporate presentation, but just the devs showing off what they think is cool.

The format, the previews, everything remains the same as they were - except the info they reveal is new. If the style of the presentation is the same, but you don't feel excited, at what point do you look at yourself and wonder if it's you that's changed?

To me it's hard to understand the constant negativity. It's not clear to me from the feedback what would make people happy and I can't imagine what message the devs are able to glean from it. Almost every single thing they do receives criticism and nothing is enough. People have been saying for over a year now that they want a new field operation, but now that it's been announced and details revealed, it's still not enough. I commend the devs for not just throwing up their hands and giving up and just not doing liveletters at all.

There are a few good videos both on FF14's story structure flaws and also the content cadence.

These I think though while important to be addressed are being made into mountains when they are really molehills. Or since I'm feeling analogy-prone.
Death by a thousand cuts.

See part of the reason I ask for reasoned and pragmatic thinking to prevail isn't to ignore the issues the game has but you got to approach issues brick by brick.
There are so many tiny micro-issues that have compounded into this torrent of ick for lack of a better term.

Like what's a good example...

Wuk Lamat. She's clearly a sore spot for a lot of people let's dive into her just as an example:

I think it's safe to say for example she has way too much focus. After the succession contest of her becoming Dawn Servant, she needed to take a step back from the story.

People will say the story focused on her to much in general but I really feel like the rite of succession as her time to be focused on. After (Especially I felt this in 7.1 it's too much screen time for her)

I also think that the story suffered from having the Twins along instead of keeping them in Garlemald. My logic for this is that it was a perfect leaving off point for the twins. The last 10 years wasn't just - Hydaelyn/Zodiark. It was about Louisoix, and Leveilleur's the Scions.

That story ended and it's truer to the Twins characters to stick around and see Garlemald rebuilt.

People strike issue that the Twins didn't have much to do. Which I agree - but it's more like, these characters are fully formed and don't belong in this story, the twins don't need development because they as of Endwalker are now fully developed.
AND as much as I love them I'd much rather save the twins for a Dalmasca vs Garlemald expansion storyline - and it would make their return feel necessary and warranted.

Krile was another one people bring up... which is peculiar I found - because she kept asking questions involving her earring and her grandfathers letter at each stop. Could it have been done better yes.. and perhaps she could have gotten focused on if say Krile and G'raha had become our new future traveling companions.

Yet... they had G'raha stay behind (again) so strange.

And Wuk Lamat appeared out of nowhere in the final trial of 7.0 SPHEEEENE! I get it people didn't like that. People don't like being sidelined, even though technically Wuk Lamat at least in 7.0 reminded me more of Lyse. We've been in the background before and I was content with being a bit of a mentor... But again this is all subjective and that doesn't take away from people not liking it.

I digress. Those issues became further compounded when you add in Wuk Lamats English voice.
Was the VA perfect? It's subjective I didn't mind Wuk Lamat's voice.

But in looking into Wuk Lamat's VA revealed that they are Trans. What happens after this is discovered? It gets ideologically captured.
Now it's no longer about the performance, but whether this is 'Woke' or not... As someone who has seen many things I love get destroyed in the culture wars.
I don't see Wuk Lamat's VA as really aligned in this culture war shenanigans... I just think the VA was trans. And it's not even reflective of the story or Wuk Lamat's character so what does it matter?

But this is where things entered strange territory. This is the thousand cuts I mean.

So it starts off with.
- Story direction
- Then focus on Wuk Lamat being too much.
- Undermining the WoL
- Not liking Wuk Lamats voice (Just as a performance)
- Ideologically captured discussions and culture wars.


All of these things compound negativity and end up coagulating and thickening into a bigger homunculus monster than there really is.

So the conversation is no longer based in reason but a This, into that, and I didn't like this and I heard this is that. ICK.

It's icky!

Whereas I can see the story stumbling and go - "Well Stormblood was kinda meh but hey after we got Shadowbringers and Endwalker" you know not every at bat is gonna be a dinger.
This homunculus then gets tethered to the lack of midcore content, the lack of midcore content gets tethered to the subscription.

No longer is it "You can take a break when you feel like" <- Remember folk like Zepla used to tell US the viewing public this was good. It's good to take breaks. It's not good for her because she needs to cover the game for a living. For me if I hadn't have been raiding I totally would have skipped 7.1 because that's healthy and reasonable. Because we get a road map telling us when to tune in and tune out.
THOUGH* Obviously for those who want to stick with the game a better shuffling of content next expansion is important I see that as a mistake now... and there were signs of it in EW post 6.0 content.

BUT now we've been in this doom spiral for soooo long now there is the pessimism now there is the apathy, the disillusionment. Now instead of looking forward to the content folk were after, now it's about how long it will take.
So to me it takes all the Good will out of it.
People when they want change (Like Black Mages) should voice their concerns. Criticism should always be in good faith. The idea is you believe things will get better. The temperature and content made people like Zepla however can only be demoralizing and it's reflective in the speech of those who feel the same way and let their negative emotions effect them more because Humans experience and harbor negative emotions stronger than positive.

WoW had to fail a lot to look at its competition and now they are doing better but even WoW suffers from apathy. People who see how it's changed but got burned too many times to feel anything. I don't believe FF14 is deserving of this Apathy. (Not yet anyway)

[Auro_Seldaris]

"Content is stale and repetitive" is vibes-based, it isn't 'laser-focused' at all. Stale how? Repetitive how?

"I liked the Dawntrail MSQ as a whole, but the early sections of the expansion dragged due to an overreliance on cutscenes, and a lack of required player engagement. I would have liked 'x' and 'y' story moment to have been a solo duty, instead of a cutscene or happening off-screen" is me naming the exact issue, pointing out specific moments where this issue cropped up, and offering a direct solution.

See how easy it is?

Yes. Its very easy. It's also very easy to find posts where people have done exactly that. You simply are pretending they don't exist. I've read many posts on here that are a lot more like example #2 you gave than #1. You're just being willfull at this point.

"Content is stale and repetitive" is shorthand for "the basic structure of the story is just 'go to 1 of 6 zones, find out problems in non-voiced cutscene, do chores, get cutscene, go to next of 6 zones. The basic structure of quests is almost always just 'talk to npc, have flappy mouth cutscene with canned animations, go to x on map, click 3 things and/or stand in circle, get attacked by 1 or 2 mobs at best, return to questgiver, rinse and repeat. The rewards structure is always some minor emote or cosmetic, or a meaningless piece of gear that simply increases your ilvl, instead of offering you interesting opportunities to create builds or offer sidegrades. Exploratory zones are mostly a mix of boring FATE grinds and mindless mob-grinding. Raiding offers little more than higher ilvl gear which only is useful in clearing the same exact savage raids only faster. Dungeons are always 'mob pack, mob pack, wall, maybe another mob pack or two or if the devs are feeling particularly spicy a sinlge miniboss, boss' because the devs got tired of wall to wall pulls. The gear progression is always the same boring tomestone grind."

Among many, MANY other repetitive and redundant parts of the game's "formula".


You know full well what people mean when they say it's "Stale and repetitive", you are -again- simply being willful about it.

EDIT Side note: You may not notice it, but we're now living in a "vibes-based world". Reality matters little compared to how people feel about it. I know... I used to be more "facts and logic" myself, but I've learned that feelings don't care about facts, and so the world itself is slipping more into irrationality and "Feels over reals". I don't necessarily like it myself, but it is what it is.

EDIT 2 While we're at it: The train ride battle should have been a playable fight. There should have been a solo instance, similar to the Lakeland battle or the Rhalgr's Reach fight, where we defend Tulliyolal instead of just doing nothing meaningful. There should have been a cutscene or playable section of us and the Scions fighting Zoraal Ja's endless horde of robots, thus being unable to help Gulool Ja Ja in his fight against ZJ instead of simply standing there like a slackjawed idiot while his son cheats and guts him like a kipper. There should have been an echo flashback -similar to the reveal of VAuthry's creation - explaining ZJ's origins and why he had such a massive chip on his shoulder, one that showed the weight of expectation being a "miracle" placed on him and how no one person could ever possibly live up to that expectation. Would you like more? Because I've had months to think about all the things they did wrong that they got RIGHT in previous expansions.