What Dawntrail Changes Were for the Worse?

[Wilcojolom]

Who ever decided that rough divide needed to be changed on gunbreaker, needs to rethink their life decisions and quit their job.

[KisaiTenshi]

The realisation that any given plot consists of not being allowed to sacrifice someone has been killing my interest in the main scenario.

The Warrior of Light and all the "party members" basically have plot armor. They can't die because a MMORPG does not allow you to put someone on a bus. They have to exist due to mechanics in the game that say they still exist.

We can't lose Nanamo any more than we can lose Ser Aymeric, because so much of the games writing observes that they are alive. If Thancred dies in act III of 8.0, they have to retroactively change every non MSQ quest that references Thancred to language acknowledging he no longer exists. Which can be quite daunting. We are not time traveling if we decide to finish Endwalker as a single job and then decide to do all the other content. This would mean that any new NPC characters have to exist in a bubble in their expansion like how "Zero" basically wound up. Likewise with Ryne and Gaia.

Like explicitly Thancred is in the Shadowbringers raid storyline. It takes place contextually as post-shadowbringers starts. But if you don't do this raid during this time, then a lot of stuff feels retconned.

Only a few characters can be killed off, and you will see the death flags the minute they are introduced. Not a single character that was killed (presumed dead) in the MSQ at any point surprised me.

Moenbryda didn't surprise me. Haurchefant didn't surprise me (I was literately expecting it.) Ysayle had the death flag, and i had assumed she died before she did. Yotsuyu I had assumed died the first time, only to not be surprised the second time.

With Shadowbringers, you had several characters basically get introduced and then die immediately. So this left the expectation that "anyone" introduced will die 5 minutes later.

Papalymo is probably the only "death" that seemed suspicious. Like the way Papalymo was written, and the way he was written out just felt like "we need to kill off this character because the Yda and Papalymo entire boke and tsukkomi thing doesn't translate from Japanese as funny." Hildibrand meanwhile is basically indestructible. So I feel that Papalymo was just thrown away rather than "noble sacrifice"

Anyway we can suggest killing off the scions but then the writers will get a lot of backlash for killing someones favorite character. So the window to do that has long shut and the only reason to do it now would be to kill the game. The window has not closed on killing off characters introduced in DT until the next expansion comes out.

[Donze]

Agreed. The writing is extremely poor, so much so that it seems like whole cut and stitched together.

I see the same mistakes in amateur writing, or sometimes when writing for children. Things like disjointed local narratives that are immediately contradicted by what preceded it or following it or, as I am seeing to a shocking degree, just god awful forced tension. Things like Wuk Lamat being pushed back after swinging her axe at the Blessed Siblings, and people assuming she is dead from that. Or when her Dad, during the ceremony said 2 things, a quick greeting and 1 sentence, followed by "But I've talked long enough". As the player, we saw you come out and talk for approx. 12 seconds... but the writers are swinging extremes, trying to manufacture tension, sympathy, conflict, etc without bothering to do any foot work, which, as previously stated, I see a lot in children's stories (single digit ages, easy to follow) or amateur writing that is still working out the pace. These are short instances, but severe whiplash nonetheless, much like Wuk Eva's quick adjustments to his own worries.

Taking a step back (im currently up to MSQ 97/98), things are looking even worse for the big picture. I get no sense of continuity and despite the WoL frequently not being the main character of the events, WoL is awkwardly treated as such when its time for the Care Bear Stare friendship power time. Many of the events thus far are poorly explained (I still don't understand the 'horror' of the blessed children; there was no mention of forced breeding pits or the like, so is it saying 'never breed outside your tribe! only 1 in 100 live!"). But I still have more MSQ to go, so maybe something will tie things together because currently it feels like a collage of writers, each tasked with homework in coming up with a story line, and whatever lead writer said "yes, all of them, leave nothing on the cutting room floor".

[hynaku]

The character graphics update. Now in cutscenes I see the skin to my character clipping thru their outfit. One cutscene today saw whole top part of my character clipping thru her dress. They need to revert back to the old character models.

[Blixie]

I didn't have high expectations for DT, but I didn't expect to have all my enjoyment sucked out of the game in one go. Right now, I'm totally uninspired to login.

I'm not leveling another job only to have it gutted and here they are announcing changes to a job that's only been out a week. I don't even know what I'd bother to play at this point.

They have completely destroyed the game balance- and don't try to tell me they can't achieve balance between low-end and high-end content, or design jobs that have some versatility and potential complexity. There are plenty of games that, while not perfect, have managed to do it quite successfully.

The story is poorly conceived and badly executed to say the least. (see myriad threads filled with heartfelt feedback).

If they make the needed changes to the graphics options so I don't hate all my favorite places including my house, and I can actually play without getting sick or incredibly frustrated, that will be something at least.

ugh