7.3 Hopefully the end of talking to Wuk Lamat

[Yoshihara]

Don't worry, they already said that the focus would return to the WoL with and after 7.3

The only character from Dawntrail that has the "chance" to survive the MSQ without becoming a once line of dialogues every expansion, and accompany us for what's come after, is real Sphene.

Then they would've gotten the wrong feedback in regards to what was wrong with the story.
I've grown to really dislike that about the way they collect feedback in regards to certain things.
The problem isn't that the focus was taken off of the Warrior of Light, nor was it so much that there was a different main character this expansion.

The problem is that the expansion was written like hot garbage, their beloved main character that ate up a majority of that screentime was also written like garbage and the writers are to blame.
The blame is not on the idea that there could be a prominent character the story is focused on other than the WoL it is purely to do with the fact the character that they wrote was garbage as well as the characters that orbited her and enabled her to be such a garbage character, which INCLUDED many established characters.

[JMadFour]

People greatly exaggerate how "bad" the story actually is.

Wuk Lamat is too present in the 2nd half of the story and that's the main issue with it. The Train cutscene was cringy just because of the song that went with it, it would be fine with a different song.

beyond that, the story is fine, overall, imo.

People are being really dramatic about it though. it's all very silly.

reminds me of the WoW forums.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Do people not finding the fact that Dawntrail is quick to move on from things that should've mattered more while spending too many times for inane discussions & excessive redundant exposition as issues? To me at least, that's been a major narrative momentum killer.

[Nero-Voidstails]

Do people not finding the fact that Dawntrail is quick to move on from things that should've mattered more while spending too many times for inane discussions & excessive redundant exposition as issues? To me at least, that's been a major narrative momentum killer.

the first half of the expension could have made well the full extension and then the lv96 could have been the post game and when you enter the dome a full expension

[Auro_Seldaris]

Agreed - I really can't see the story having her do anything other than remain in Tural.

Remember I said this:

You can go ahead and screencap this for when she decides to leave Tural in the hands of Koana and either Real Sphene/Gulool Ja and accompanies us on our next adventure as the new G'raha Tia-type character.

[Auro_Seldaris]

Do people not finding the fact that Dawntrail is quick to move on from things that should've mattered more while spending too many times for inane discussions & excessive redundant exposition as issues? To me at least, that's been a major narrative momentum killer.

This started in Endwalker due to its rushed nature, there's odd pacing everywhere.

Remember how we kill Zodiark and we're barely given 10 minutes to ponder the ramifications of what just happened and what the weird voice was before LOL MOON RABBITS SO RANDOM!

And then we go down to Heaven and kill the only benevolent god/primal we have around and we're literally just vomited back out in Labyrinthos... there's no dramatic music or cutscene showing the party stumbling back, exhausted and uncertain if what they did was right, and no one even really comments of the death of Hydaelyn other than Y'shtola going "well the sun will rise tomorrow, no biggie".

Remember we were in a hurry to finish the spaceship to fly to the end of the universe and punch out despair, and there's dramatic music on loop forever, and yet we spend an eternity giving moon bunnies a tour of Sharlayan's secret doom bunker and hugging it out with Moenbryda's parents?

Dawntrail did the same things. Heritage Found... we get there and I instantly went, "okay time passes differently on shards, clearly this town has been displaced in time". I mean, I watch enough scifi to figure that out.. and that's without even relying on specific knowledge of time travel in FFXIV. But the game insists on taking an eternity for the characters to reach the same conclusion. And then decades of prejudice and racial violence are solved with tacos. It's baffling. That's not even getting into weird out-of-character things like Alisaie not caring for the poor orphan kid, which is a core part of her personality. Or the fact we meet the kid with levinsickness and just... forget we can cure aetheric imbalance now. Or Y'shtola not really being that interested in coming with us when there's clearly been a portal to another shard opened.

For the past two expansions now, there's been a weird tendency to focus too much time and energy on the wrong things and I'm not sure what to chalk it up to, other than rushed development and lack of care for the finished product. The only real explanation I can think of is that certain higher-up devs did checks on "vertical slices" of the game, went "you need to explain this and this more" , and it happened too many times in certain sections, leading to either over- or underexplaining things, such as three explanations in a row for how the regulators work, one of them being after we have literally witnessed it in action. Either way, it's a huge problem for two expansions now. I see a pattern forming.

[MartinFreeman]

The rushness is a product of our time, also. There's unfortunately a lot of amateur writers who don't have the intellect to make things feel fleshed out or make worldbuilding. That's what's lacking. They don't understand nuance or subtlety. They also cant just let things lie and breath a little. WoW is having the same problem, albeit they've been having it for the past three expansions. I didn't expect the bad writing bug to bite FF14, too, but after that Sweet Baby Inc consulting, they haven't been the same ever since.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

This started in Endwalker due to its rushed nature, there's odd pacing everywhere[...]

In Dawntrail specifically, I've named several parts in the past but the one that comes to my mind right now is the one you just mentioned: in HF. Same line of thinking. "Time passes differently..." ; and also "Oh wait look those people we see are also wearing the same badge-thingy that Zoraal Ja uses. Will they actually go super saiyan? Are they dangerous to us?". But guess what we did instead? Learning about the soil fertility and the state of agriculture/farming at the Outskirts...

Me:"W h a t...?"

Why are we repeating the same goddamned topic for the third time? Lmao, we already had similar discussion back in Kozama'uka and Mamook? What is this, some high school field trip to the rurals???

And then there's LM section. Sphene starts a countdown. Look what we're doing?

Uhhhhhhhhhhh....popcorn... icecream... put on costume.... y e a h.... n o...

As the player, we know the countdown timer will wait for us. But the bizarre pacing AND the fact that our crew don't seem to act in urgently fashion... hello? Is this countdown a joke or something? That really broke the immersion, hard.

[TaleraRistain]

And then there's LM section. Sphene starts a countdown. Look what we're doing?

Uhhhhhhhhhhh....popcorn... icecream... put on costume.... y e a h.... n o...

As the player, we know the countdown timer will wait for us. But the bizarre pacing AND the fact that our crew don't seem to act in urgently fashion... hello? Is this countdown a joke or something? That really broke the immersion, hard.

And it didn't even need like a big explanation or anything. Just say you can't turn the terminals off unless you put enough souls at rest or something. Anything to make us going through each area doing that have some semblance of a reason it was necessary.

[Atma]

but after that Sweet Baby Inc

Sweet Baby mentioned, opinion discarded. I've seen the opinions of people who are still obsessing over that company, and none of them are positive or good.