My own personal feedback on Dawntrail (up till 7.45)

[FarelTheGecko]

Hello,
the Dawntrail expansion has certainly received a mixed reception, and I felt like offering my own feedback. I could have waited for 7.5 or 7.55, but I figured it'd be best to deliver my opinion a bit earlier.

STUFF THAT WAS GOOD:
1) The Raids: The Arcadion surprised me. I entered with low expectations, but enjoyed my time there. I still prefer the Eden Raids from a story perspective, but the plot here was still quite fun, and the fights were great!

2) Deep Dungeon: Pilgrim’s Traverse was brilliant! I loved this new version of this style of content. I hadn’t dared to try Quantum, but I still deem this to have been a successful experiment. This isn’t to say that all future Deep Dungeons must copy+paste this formula, but they certainly should look at this one for some inspiration!

3) Variant Dungeon: The content is still not exactly my favorite activity in the game, but I will list it in this section regardless, because of the vast improvements made since Endwalker. Advanced Mode is a great idea, and works very nicely, plus the exploration achievement is finally not tied to doing content of the really hard variety. Yeah, yeah, yeah, people complain about the loot, but I personally wish to complement the Variant/Criterion content formula itself for getting some much needed improvements.


STUFF THAT I FEEL MIXED ON (things that I liked, but took issue with some parts):
1) The MSQ (spoilers in case people reading are not caught up): I did not hate the storyline, I certainly saw value in it, and enjoyed it as a whole, but I can't deny that I found some parts of it to be "off"
- Already before launch, it was announced that DT would have a storyline made up of 2 halves, just like Stormblood, something that did not fill me with confidence, and I feel like this aspect was handled even worse this time around, as the Shaaloani portion of the story completely destroyed the pacing in my opinion. I was left bored for a while, which took up time that could have been dedicated to iron out some story arcs and plotpoints in the second half...

- Speaking of that story split: Wuk Lamat's story arc should have carried on from the first half. Her competition was gone, but she should have still needed to venture into Xak Tural or something, while not feeling confident enough to rule over Tural, so that Sphene could impress her, Wuk Lamat would look up to her as an example to follow, but the two eventually would having a falling out, resulting in Wuk Lamat maturing, taking on her own path, and only then becoming the true ruler she earned the right to be (alongside her brother). That would make things feel more earned
- The Post Launch MSQ felt a bit samey with the visual department, but I can understand how with the environment of the 9th, this might have been almost impossible to avoid

[FarelTheGecko]

- The "Evil Sphene" felt very underbaked, especially given how little she gets to do before vanishing. She could just as well have been a voice recording or an image on screen if the 2 Sphenes were not really going to spend that much time together in the end.

2) The Alliance Raids: I am a former FF11 player, so I got really excited for this, and while I genuinely loved the first part, I’m a lot more mixed on the second one:

- Ultima and Omega’s inclusion felt odd, as they don’t seem that specifically iconic to FF11
- Eald'narche was a boring end to the raid. Him realising that this isn’t Vanadiel could have opened the doors for a phase 2 where he potentially merges with some other Lumoria entities to become a more interesting enemy to confront. Him just being his boring regular self was a bit of a lame end to the raid

- The fact that only 2 of the 3 starting cities get used for Raid names/starting-zones is a huge shame. I thought San d’Oria would be the only one of the bunch, with the third raid being named after Tavnazia, Adoulin or something…. , but we are getting Windurst instead, meaning that Bastok gets skipped. Even if it was the city state that I liked the least, I feel like it’s unfair given how many people called it their home. There had to be a workaround to still feature Jeuno as a key location without keeping things this way. And maybe we could have reached Port and Upper Jeuno as well…

3) Cosmic Exploration: I got really excited at the start of this content. It delivered so much, but each following planet was a bit less exciting… Technically the bar for entry and participation was far less high than Ishgard Restoration, but at the same time, I feel like that content also provided me with more thrills, plus I’ll surely be returning to the Firmament far more often than any of these planets after Dawntrail ends, that’s for sure….

4) Obtaining Phantom Weapons: So much better than Endwalker’s “nothing” approach, but I do nonetheless see a flaw in the design. The grind is a one time thing, after which one simply farms tomestones at whatever pace they feel like. Technically this works for me, but I have a few friends with less free time on their hands who only would in the past get the weapon for their main job, and they are still stuck on the first step. It’s all RNG, and they only can afford 2 nights a week on gametime, and even if they only farm demiatmas, they often end up with nothing. I don’t know what’s planned for the future, but I do believe the difference between effort done by someone only aiming for 1 weapon versus all of them should still exist.

[FarelTheGecko]

STUFF THAT WAS BAD:
Occult Crescent: Seeing my beloved Geomancer job be accessible at least here got me excited. The content unfortunately was incredibly watered down.
- Bozja had so much variety…. FATEs with different goals, multiple ones always active at a time, so players could spread out instead of all players chasing after the same thing. Same with CEs. And of course Forked Tower not having a normal mode just gets normal people stuck doing the FATEs/CEs on a loop, making the gameplay loop even more boring.
- Bozja did so much to be more exciting: the first update had a ton of cutscenes and rich lore, with an optional EX fight on top, so that even if we needed to wait longer for the Southern Front, I was still pumped up (although faster patch releases helped with the wait time too), the second update had 1 exploration zone with a fun group dungeon, the third brought us Delubrum Reginae, and the last had a second exploration zone with another dungeon. OC on the other hand started with 1 new boring zone on release with a group dungeon that was way too hard for casuals, nothing on the 2nd, and only a few additional phantom jobs on the third. The fourth one will have a new zone with the dungeon that we always needed, so there’s a chance for a positive end, but the journey here was undeniably lacklustre, and many won’t experience the end of it, having given up on the content….
- Bozja was a good method to progress in the Relics weapon questline. It wasn’t the only one, but it was something many people wanted to do, even if an outside method could have been minimally better at the time. OC on the other hand was always the worst option by far. For phase 2, it was not even possible to do anything in OC. The zone felt like a complete waste in the long-term. It is quite insulting that I am able to split up “Obtaining Phantom Weapons” and “Occult Crescent” in this forum thread and have it feel so natural, but this is the situation that we ended up in…..
- I want to underline that this is all much preferable to Endwalker’s Relic Weapon acquisition process, but I nonetheless have to acknowledge the major difference where EW’s relic weapon was a failure from not even trying, while DT’s OC on the other hand is a failure from a genuine attempt. Focusing on the result, this is better, but if we try and look at the journey that led us here, it feels really bad…. I do genuinely hope North Horn can help things at least a bit, but we should have never ended up in this situation.

That is my opinion, I don’t expect that this will have significant impact, but I did want to speak up, as I still really like this game, and would like it to get back in shape for the next expansion.

[TheRealMadruck]

Snip

Farel, welcome to the the world of FF14 my friend. I am totally on board with 99% of everything you said. Yet I will be blunt, unless we as players start speaking up, we will continue seeing the garbage that is this expansion come back again. Instead of doing something new with DT, they chose to copy and paste a content grind that many including people in my FC at the time in 2013 to quit the game for years until they came back. They and I hated casino style grinds without any clear form of progression, in which I promise, it was implemented solely for the purpose from the dev team at SE to create MMO bloat so they could grease their sub numbers. How? Instead of content with clear goals, why not implement a system that tugs at the most well known addictive form of habit outside of substances...gambling. It works for Casinos in Vegas...why not in FF14.

My suggestion to you and your friends...be like myself, and prepare for 8.0 and ignore all the garbage that comes from this expansions horrid systems. Don't do them! Don't waste their time! I hope sincerely that the numbers are so bad on the completion rates on these relics that SE/YP will finally wake the heck up on what players want...progression...not gambling!!! Be well.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Occult Crescent would probably be a lot better if they removed the Sanguine Ciphers, significantly boosted Phantom Job XP gains alongside with silver and gold drops. Cutting down the grind needed to get ready for Forked Tower and actually just letting people go into it.

[Jeeqbit]

Farel, welcome to the the world of FF14 my friend. I am totally on board with 99% of everything you said. Yet I will be blunt, unless we as players start speaking up, we will continue seeing the garbage that is this expansion come back again. Instead of doing something new with DT, they chose to copy and paste a content grind that many including people in my FC at the time in 2013 to quit the game for years until they came back. They and I hated casino style grinds without any clear form of progression, in which I promise, it was implemented solely for the purpose from the dev team at SE to create MMO bloat so they could grease their sub numbers. How? Instead of content with clear goals, why not implement a system that tugs at the most well known addictive form of habit outside of substances...gambling. It works for Casinos in Vegas...why not in FF14.

RNG isn't necessarily bad from a design perspective. It's how bad that RNG is. If something takes 3 attempts it's alright, but when you go 100 times without anything, it gets frustrating, especially with things like mounts or dungeon minions. Because at that point you could be spending 1000 attempts and realize you have got nothing for your time and may as well have spent no time on it at all.

The grind isn't really bad for DT relics, because it's a 1 in 5 chance from OC, which is very high. It's also higher than the rate in ARR from FATEs, because Atma was 3% and Demiatma is 5%. The difference with FATEs though is they are just super easy and you can go through 100 in an evening, so you're very likely to get some (such as 5) per evening and doing that each evening will even out.

The main issue with the CEs wasn't their RNG drop rates but the timegating where you were potentially looking at waiting 3 hours just for a chance.

[FarelTheGecko]

I understand that RNG has a place in games, and it surely can work, but it still is a tool that can work correctly or badly.

There is a reason for why EX Trials give tokens where 99 of those can be exchanged for a mount directly.
There is a reason for why weapons coffers were added to several fights, in case a player's weapon of choice just simply doesn't drop.

If the odds of something occurring are so low, or the wait-times are that bad, then some means of guaranteed progression help.

In past expansions, the previous relic steps were nerfed quite quickly, while here it hasn't happened. Something which one may argue is justified since the roulette grind or crystal paste collection is simple enough and keeps the Duty Finder more lively. All fair, but the Demiatma step is certainly in a different league, and should be adjusted, because some people just gave up on it.

[Oizen]

You've more or less got the same opinion as everyone else. To add to The Occult Crescent part, one aspect I don't see brought up enough is the core gameplay loop.

For the casual player in Bozja, what do you do? Well, CEs and Fates right, oh but a Solo duel spawned, check that out, everyones cheering around it watching some guy blow up thats kinda fun, or if they succeed you get a buff that helps you progress the content. Neat! Back to CEs and Fates, oh Castrum spawned, now you got a mini alliance raid where you have to communicate with other players to maximize rewards. Its a very healthy mix of content with some socialization as well.

The casual gameplay loop in Occult Crescent is Fate, TP to spawn, Fate, TP to Spawn, Fate, TP to Spawn, CE, TP to Spawn on loop with 0 downtime. And thats it. They spawn so fast you don't really even get the opportunity to engage with anything else otherwise you just miss it. Not that theres much to engage with. It results in Occult Crescent feeling like a single player grindfest despite everyone else being there. Hell you're lucky if you can even resolve the pot/rabbit thing to find your chest and not miss a CE.

[KiraRavens]

Occult Crescent would probably be a lot better if they removed the Sanguine Ciphers, significantly boosted Phantom Job XP gains alongside with silver and gold drops. Cutting down the grind needed to get ready for Forked Tower and actually just letting people go into it.

They seem to agree, judging from their announcements of changes to North Horn in the Live Letter.

[OlafQuintessa]

I'm not sure about Pilgrim's. I was keen at first but then the first boss turns out to such a wall that you can't do it without a group, which guarantees the content will be mostly dead after a couple of months. They should make the first boss of deep dungeons relatively easy so you can clear it solo, then you can keep doing the first 10 floors to level up your aetherpool. The following bosses should get progressively harder, but it's ok as you have a chance to level up first. PotD was doable like that (even before the buff), which was great. It was accessible without having to find a group - and it's still a very popular piece of content. At the very least, when 8.0 rolls around they should buff the amount of aetherpool you get before the first boss so it's soloable. As it stands, in all honesty PT was another own goal from the devs - great for a few months, then more dead content just like Orthos.

(Yes I know if you've already done the boss a dozen times with a group and know the fight already you can probably solo it with low aetherpool, but that's no good if there are no groups in the first place).