Dawntrails doesn’t feel like Final Fantasy

[Winterfang]

Seeing Besaid, the Calmlands and even Zanarkand (Final Zone?) would just be amazing.

If they only choose zones from X, maybe they can do something like
Besaid, Djose (With the Moonflow separating the zone), Macalania, Calm Lands, then lastly head towards Zanarkand. Maybe use a bit of the end of the Calm Lands and a start of Zanarkand zones as to place a smaller Mt Gagazet to bridge those last two zones.

[Avoidy]

The initial trailer felt more like a goofy epilogue. A beach episode. A straight to VHS Disney sequel. A sequel to a big film written 20 years later that leaves you asking "why was this made? What was left to resolve?" because the main plot finished already.
If the next trailer at least establishes some kind of conflict, then at least there'll be something. But right now it just seems like fluffy fanservice.

[SilverObi]

The initial trailer felt more like a goofy epilogue. A beach episode. A straight to VHS Disney sequel. A sequel to a big film written 20 years later that leaves you asking "why was this made? What was left to resolve?" because the main plot finished already.
If the next trailer at least establishes some kind of conflict, then at least there'll be something. But right now it just seems like fluffy fanservice.

Same sentiments were around when FFXI went into Treasures of Aht Urghan after the stellar finale of Chains of Promathia. Though unsurprisingly, the surface feeling of side quest quickly gave way to new enemies and threats revealing themselves that added more to the world and its lore.

[Reap00]

I find it amusing that someone that spends all their time on the forum is already looking into playing the next expansion. You actually intend to support the game going forward? Of course you do. You are a lifer. Your ilk is a plague on the WoW forums. There is life outside FFXIV. I promise. Take a break from the game. Oh and the it isn't final fantasy assessment is really really weak. It didn't work when it was levied against FF16 and it won't work here. You can at least do better.

[MintnHoney]

Don't get me wrong; I like BG3... but there's no way its gameplay belongs in an MMO.

Sure it does. Why else would they give healers Rescue?

[TaleraRistain]

A game 'not feeling like an FF' is an empty statement, I'm sure there were people who would have said the exact same thing about Final Fantasy VII when it first came out, now its what most people think of when they think Final Fantasy.

Oh they did. They very much did. And there was a lot of this "doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy" from those who only knew games like VII about XVI. Like you said, the one commonality to the series is that it constantly reinvents itself.

[Nebelheim]

Same sentiments were around when FFXI went into Treasures of Aht Urghan after the stellar finale of Chains of Promathia. Though unsurprisingly, the surface feeling of side quest quickly gave way to new enemies and threats revealing themselves that added more to the world and its lore.

So far dawntrail gives me a mix of aht urghan and spira vibes so i'm hoping we get a lot of ff11 and ff10 references. I'm hoping the story plays out similar to aht urghan style of storytelling.

[MikkoAkure]

So far dawntrail gives me a mix of aht urghan and spira vibes so i'm hoping we get a lot of ff11 and ff10 references. I'm hoping the story plays out similar to aht urghan style of storytelling.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm hoping here. Especially since that's where Mamool Ja were introduced.

Treasures of Aht Urghan was my favorite expansion of FFXI and the last one I fully played through. It also came after the end of the Zilart and Altana x Promathia storylines that felt very close to FFXIV in that the Zilart were also an ancient and powerful race fighting against adventurers whose civilization's existence only came with their race's demise and Altana and Promathia were a good goddess of light and bad god of darkness respectively.

From what I remember after however many years, after finishing the main plot of the game (or at least the Shadowlord in the vanilla, ARR-equivalent), we got invited by Vana'diel's version of East Aldenard Trading Company to go to another continent and then a lot of plot happened that I generally remember as being generally better than the other expansions before it. ToAU gave us a whole bunch of brand new game modes like Assault where we got to attack the local beastman tribes trying to steal the mysterious thing Aht Urghan held to diminish their capacity for war or Besieged where apparently we had to defend the city from the attackers with hundreds of other players but I was on PS2 at the time so I would just target randomly, cast death scissors, and hope for the best in the sea of lag. I didn't get to play Salvage, but I know that's where the 6.1 dungeon and some of its enemies were copy-pasted from so the devs at least have already established a connection to that expansion.

I'm not keeping my hopes up for a whole host of brand new and exciting game modes after getting continuously disappointed in Diadem, Eureka, and Bozja, but I am excited for the story. Maybe my bar is low, but for at least 2-3 years I just want to relax and experience something new in a place that's new and not have to hear anything about Ancients, Ascians, Allagans, or Garleans in anything more than a passing mention about all of them being dead and done with.

[Eisi]

Yoyoyo!

I just wanna say that "Tuliyollal" is the most Final Fantasy sounding name for a location I've heard since "Limsa Lominsa".

[Zakuyia]

He's fine lol
Its just fun and easy to laugh at him because he says alot of silly things, and also because he keeps saying he's quitting, just to come back next patch with another whole thread to complain about something. Often about hating the light-hearted tone and how much he wants FF to be this gritty Medieval type of game he clearly likes.

And now hes on a high just because some more youtubers are saying ""Negative"" things about FFXIV. So he wants to @#*$#* himself and act like he was right....when plenty of us already have said there were issues with the game Narratively and Content-wise.
Sure, I was on abit of Hopium, because I dont like to judge things before they happen, and things can always change and surprise us. Ah well.

And hey, we dunk on the guy, but plenty of times Ive said that he does make sense sometimes. So its not like he's Completely wrong about anything. In some cases

XD I guess thats fair some hot takes are worth making fun of :3