Players are already lowering their bar for Downtrail

[Fourbestintoner]

I'm not lowering my bar, I'm mentally preparing myself to let my houses get destroyed. If only XIV didn't become popular.

[Boblawblah]

I'm not lowering my bar, I'm mentally preparing myself to let my houses get destroyed. If only XIV didn't become popular.

Speaking of housing, where's Stormy? I haven't seen her around this week. I kind of miss her snarkiness lol

[Shurrikhan]

From the Youtube comments of Zepla's new video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntyav7vnLog):

"I think the most important thing to remember is that we are starting over from square one and that we shouldn't expect the stakes or hype to be on the level of Shadowbringers or Endwalker. We are just starting out on a brand new adventure, which means they are going to be establish a lot of plot threads that aren't going to immediately resolve in this expansion, or even the next. this is a 10 year story arc, so it'll be important to approach it as the opening act to a new saga."

Do you hear yourselves?

We are already lowering our standards and expectations.

"If aiming to have anything of substance, new arcs tend not to skip the entirety of their rising action to jump straight to a climax, so why expect Dawntrail to instantly have the fate-of-the-universe stakes that the climax of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc had?" =/= lower your expectations about the quality of the game.

If you'd pick any other quote, I'd likely agree with you, but you specifically picked one that has nothing to do with your conclusion. They're referring only to very specific type of expectation (level of stake/intensity likely visible at the start of the expansion' story), with no necessary effect upon the overall quality of the game. It's like you overheard a guitarist "killing" a solo and cried bloody murder.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Speaking of housing, where's Stormy? I haven't seen her around this week. I kind of miss her snarkiness lol

That makes one of us.

[Oizen]

"I think the most important thing to remember is that we are starting over from square one and that we shouldn't expect the stakes or hype to be on the level of Shadowbringers or Endwalker. We are just starting out on a brand new adventure, which means they are going to be establish a lot of plot threads that aren't going to immediately resolve in this expansion, or even the next. this is a 10 year story arc, so it'll be important to approach it as the opening act to a new saga."

That sounds completely reasonable actually. What in particular to you think is ridiculous about that? That says nothing about hype or lowering your expectations, they're saying to realize what kind of expansion it is.

Thats exactly what I want though. Infact I want such a new start that I want all of the scions retired and left out.

FFXIV is at its best with its small side stories, once things get too grandiose is how endwalker happens.
I much prefer down to earth stories like Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers to whatever Endwalker was meant to be.

I'm completely fine if Dawntrail is just about us solving some nations or tribes problems, as long as the characters are good and its inherently interesting I don't need to be saving the universe from super zenos fused with zodiark from a different dimension

[GTK0HLK]

As expected, I knew it would kick the inch large hornet nest in the forums as soon as I saw the latest Zepla Video.

While I had not see her previous two(and largely ignored the other threads partially/uselessly talking about the videos)

It has really just shown how despite many players be they Content Creators who have their own perspective. Common Players with their own PoV. and the general feel of the silent, and the servers.
Many have the same basic conclusions.

[It's all the more hilarious, that even at the start of the video, did Zepla try to preface the topic of the video. Yet OP not only made themselves look foolish and miss the point. It made them out to be intentionally disingenuous, or didn't even watch the video at all. Else they may have made better acting bait for a dispute/war of sorts.]

Can only wait to see what the coming LiveLetters and FanFests show.
(and as per usual, If it shows promise on foundations and gameplay. we will keep telling them what we feel needs changing. Regardless.

As for story and tone, we can only trust they do better in Expansions, than they did with the currently longer than normal EW.X series.(Unlike other expansions, EW was self contained in 6.0)

edit:
Yeah, I understand the want and need to have the Scions be rooted to their own desires, with cameos or specific small instances when they join us, or actively set up future plotpoints.
We don't know why they exactly made things go the way the did with the split at 6.0 and then the in and out in 6.X
Though if they plan to make it more official in 7.0 with us backing different Succesors in the story(As far as we know)
it could be their own way to occasionally leave them to the background for awhile at least.
[Also kinda expected for Y'shtola to Run off, but some think she would have solved Shard Travel, yet decide to stay with us. So.., well just have to deal with whatever actually happens.]

[Avoidy]

Crazy how Final Fantasy went from telling these incredible isolated stories that people fell in love with, written by people who weren't afraid to completely start over in each new game and churn out a new banger of a story every single time... to fans telling fellow fans of the MMO to curb their enthusiasm because apparently FF writers in 2023 don't know how to start a new story without boring us all to death.
Absolutely wild. And that's to say nothing of the gameplay side of things, where we've gone from begging devs to stop dumbing things down so hard to just praying that our favorite job/system/game mode isn't next on the chopping block. Watching the community collectively grit their teeth for changes they already know they'll hate, brought to them by a company that won't listen to feedback, is the sort of thing I expect in a f2p game run by a small studio.

And FWIW I don't even see anything wrong with the quote you posted in and of itself. Dude's just saying the truth. The sad, bitter truth. These writers, for whatever reason, love these 89 hour slow burns that put most people to sleep by the time they're done clearing their throat. ARR and the amount of people who quit during its post segment are indicative of this. It's reasonable to expect the same slow pace in Dawntrail. Friendly reminder though, this is the same franchise that was able to immediately suck you into the plot within the first 20 minutes with FFX (as just 1 example), so it's not like the franchise is just historically bad at introducing a player to its world/plot. But for some reason the writers learn they're writing for an MMO and all of a sudden the story's not allowed to be engaging right out the gate, and the gameplay's not allowed to be enjoyable right from the start.

[DrWho2010]

No hype = no one cares about the game anymore.

It's that simple really. Capiche ?

That is inherently a logical fallacy.

You would hear less of it but that does not mean ZERO people care about the game anymore.

[Nebelheim]

I definitely don't want another endwalkers 2.0 for story where we go from endsinger to somehow having a supposed bigger threat then birdlady. I'm glad were done with hydalyn and zodiark and the ascians and glad were essentially having a arr style setup worldbuilding expansion in a new world.

[Amenara]

I get it's a troll bait thread but honestly I am hoping for a low stakes expansion, maybe lead into bigger things, maybe keep it centralized with the plot points mostly being resolved in this expansion and leave just a couple to carry over into next. I need a break from fighting existential threats and kind of want to expand on the world a bit more so than anything else.