Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[HighlanderClone]

My only issue with the boss design so far is they've done the same thing they did before, increase the difficulty by changing what markers look like and you get punished because you've got to figure out what this glowy circle means or this icon means, it's not exactly brilliant design it's the learn by failure system, not the worst and I think the 3 dungeons I've done so far have been alright, just nothing to right home about. So far most of the expac is mid, not offensive not good, just ok. However the story and job design are so bottom of the barrel bad. It will be interesting to see the feedback now it's out of early access, maybe we're just out of touch old heads that need to move on to a new game and the younger players love it. I don't think that will be the case, I think it will likely be the Glamour, weird chat poster, you know the uwu crowd that will love it and the rest of the western playbase will hate it but we will see in the next 2 weeks.

I think a lot of bosses are much more fast-paced now though, like the second boss in the desert expert dungeon (Anthraxium), and they have been far more willing to introduce overlapping mechanics in the dungeons and trails I've observed. I'm cautiously optimistic.

[GTK0HLK]

I could write a wall, I would write a wall, I will write a wall, I did write a wall.

I can't fn bother editing it in mobile.

So I deleted it.

I'll try and fail to TLDR it as I can.

The Story when it comes to characters when it's about who they are, and what their purpose is. Is sadly misunderstood stood by a undeniable amount. Yet Some of those characters didn't have either enough time to cook, their reason doesn't give you a understanding why they exist, or their conclusions aren't as panned out as they should be.
It, without shame, actually gives reason to worry that the game had stuff injected to it by Current GamIndustry Boogeyman.

Overall, the expansion had enough comedy to entertain and some of it expanded on who the characters are as "people".
Not overbearing, and not underwhelming, Sometimes I just Died Of Cringe, in the good way. Like when a parent or relative gives a bad joke that you just can't help but enjoy suffering through.

The player character suffers from their Nee Positions as "Deus Ex Machina" I'm a expansion where we are basically tasked with powerleveling potential Claimants/Rulers.
But due to our overbearing power, and a side dish of "They don't know that I'm (so and so hero of the universe or that I can basically punch mountains through magma) kinda meme".
Forced to not intervene and teach and lead these characters and the world.

While some scenarios went too far with it, and we should of acted more when it went too far. (Inactivity once Gulool Ja Ja was facing the 1st Promises second Phase. Was a moment we should of acted, at least to avoid a final blow. But Gulool was a great Character, so it was almost expected.)
[Literally will take a group of Antagonists to target us like a Boss Monster all at once. Since they missed the change to weaken us by our own will during 6.x (but tbh, that's just a small thing with how I expected some story to pan out)]

Like I said early some things just felt forced.

Like with music usage or not used in the story.
The Everyone gets together Music/OpenSky Female Version. That was not advertised, out of place. Out of Zone expression.

Where Even is the song that played during the Pictomancer section in the Trailer.

The game overall, likely needed another expac and .x Series to express adequately how it did. More so, since it basically, nearly covered all of the New World.

It needed to be longer and more fleshed out. For some injected plot points resolved way to quickly, had no reason but to make somethings seem more complex. or took too long. (While some of those plot points, had overall reason to exist. they needed more time so players feel like they are story in and of themselves. rather than dislike the injection feeling. and if they care. realize later why it matter at all.)

This isn't covering how a longer DT would affect the gameplay. as it's separate to the story. while both matter. they shouldn't intervene. (Hence why I feel timers and grinds should delay like Savage as well. but that's a separate thing. since it also gives reason for them to, in DTs case. To Flesh It out. and is palatable for most.)

But overall, it can be better.
The concepts are nice/neat.
We are old, wise Deus Ex Machina who basically has to watch and give wisdom like a mini-hyd. and for good or ill. it'll be as such until we can actually do alil of our own thing.

I hoped before DT that the story would do well, and set up the game like ARR/1.0 was supposed to do. But it didn't do that much, if at all.

a Neo ARR.

While I may now have concerns that Boogeyman are injecting things into XIV/SE/CSIII, it'd alil saddening that we might not see what they planned to come after DT. Just as Yoshi P likely guessed before hand.
He already knew how some of us would of reacted justifiably. While some did not understand at all.

The topic is too broad, so I'll leave it at that.

If it was cooked like our Lil Society has for awhile. it would of ascended. but like the Failed Claimants, it was lost to obscurity for some.
While the rest, are left standing, looking at what could of been better paced or expanded.

Edit:

Expanding on the Music Thing, the Coming together to Build Up the Train, Could of been a western like track/tune that was abit adjacent to the RDRII House Building Scene. it would of fit with Shaaloani. but they didn't.
Just like I said before, the Ending Naration by Eren, could of had a better track there. Where did the Trailer Track go?

[PercibelTheren]

I agree with some of your points and disagree with others.

1. I thought Zoraal Ja had potential as a villain but the way they went about it was extremely unfortunate. Which is honestly a throughline of the entire expansion. Good ideas, horrible execution.
2. I really hated Wuk Lamat at the beginning but I'm mostly fine with her now. I don't like her, don't really mind her, either.
3. I hate Wuk Ewu and think he's the most annoying side character in the entire story. His quirk is not funny, it's cringe and annoying. I swear if I see him do it again, I will give him what he's asking for just to shut him up.

[Katt_Felista]

Outside the fact this expansion is written for Childrens and is basically some type of naruto plot where naruto is a grown up 20 yo+ Tigerwoman talking like an arrested development children wanting to become the most powerfull hokage disney princess of her clan when she will be stronk and grown up...

I feel that , the Final fantasy 14 team expressed through Yoshi P, last year (no actually nonono, it was like 2+ years ago my bad), to get 1 more week between patches to produce better quality things. Yeah, and also get on vacation ! Because, we did a good job.

Alright. Now, it is clear that these cumulatives weeks over a year and these vacation period gracefully allowed to themselves didn't lead to any improvement in quality in this expansion, I think you all given them way too much leeway and a taste of lazyness by just "letting it go" and now they took notice, and as a thank you for your service sir, we are now looking to renew the playerbase because, phew, we are done with expectations and topping ourselves up and pushing the story in adult themes. 4 to 5 weeks extra a year in between every patches + deciding on extra vacation at any time, yay !

They took notice bro, they took notice don't you worry about it, and out of the finger they asked you to give, surely... They took the whole fucking arm with it.

And you know, even if it feels like a betrayal of what ffxiv used to be, they need to make sure their next 10 years paycheck come from somewhere, fresh and new ! I think i warned early on when the announcement of the extra week per patch was just an extra week of sub in their pocket and it will not pertain to any improvement whatsoever into anything lol. Saw it coming. And everyone was like "noooo shut up it's gonna be better, everything is going to be worked on with extra touches of finition and care, shut up, shut up you infidel !"

Hey, i want the 3 dollar per week i lost these past 2 years to mean something when the model of the mother in law of Wuk Lamat revealed herself to be a Third step Level of Detail 4 polygon model of any old granny wandering around far in the distance of any city of this game, okay ? I didn't let you close to 9 weeks out of my sub these past 2 years to produce a 100 polygon character whose hairs and clothe barely move when talking to me during the most underwhelming emotional reveal of this expansion alright ? I want my time and money back Square, where's my money Lebowski ?!

No but for real when i saw that extremely low poly character presented to me after her illusion shell dissipated, i was schocked, i was wondering if we finally got back to the good ol days of the playstation one era, that's it, Square is doing time travel but in more ways then i could imagine. We are so back, and not in a good way lol.

We had standards here ! Well, we used to.

It is what it is. =D

[Somnolence]

I haven't played FF9 so to me the Alexandria plotline lacks worldbuilding. It comes out of nowhere and is put to rest during two zones worth of quests.

The Endless dilemma is hard to get behind, since it is not explained why exactly they need soul aether only, when there are a lot of beings that are simulated/conjured/etc. Are non-soul aether beings with memories soulless? Or Ultima Thule inhabitants which are made from 100% dynamics?

Or the regulator empowerment mode, how it related so, say something like Oversoul causing Ruby weapon to transform to Nael van Darnus?

I dislike stories where it feels like writers make up random things to advance plot but perhaps its my own fault for reading a lot of fantasy novels and being used to higher quality writing.

[Larirawiel]

The problem, that DT has, is that many parts of the story do not make any sense. And nobody, who has more than one brain cell would act like the protagonists/antagonists do.

First: this "key", which opens the gate to the Golden City and closes the portal after we defeat Zoraal Ja. There is no chance, that Zoraal Ja and his buddys knew, what the key is and how it works. But they stole it(!) and used it to open the gate to the Golden City. Aaaand later, after we defeat Zoraal Ja, Sphene steals it and uses it to flee to the Golden City. So we allowed, that this "key" is stolen from us twice.

Second: the principle how the Golden City works. They steal souls from the living and use them to recreate a materialized version of the Eternals. Buuuut, it is WAY too complicated and risky to achieve it and clearly violates the principle of parsimony. Because since the memories of the Eternals are saved in a computer, they could easily create a completely virtual world in the computer itself. And the funny thing is, it happens in the last dungeon of the expansion. We upload our memories/soul into the computer to overcome the protection systems of this computer system to shut it down. So the creation of a fully virtualized world for the Eternal's memories is possible and the soul theft makes no sense.

But overall, i liked this zone. It works similar to Ultima Thule.

Then there are some minor stupid things like the Hanuhanu quest line. The Hanuhanu did the ritual with the boat for some ... centuries? And nobody of the Hanuhanu knows what it does and observed how the ritual affects the growth of the reed? Even with the sparkles everywhere and the reed growths immediatelly(!) after the ritual? And then there comes Alphinaud and he figures it out after some minutes?

I also did not like it, that our adventure group speaks sooooo loud, that every antagonist hears what we plan. -.-


Yes, i hope the content patches will be better and more interesting.



Cheers

[HighlanderClone]

I agree with some of your points and disagree with others.

1. I thought Zoraal Ja had potential as a villain but the way they went about it was extremely unfortunate. Which is honestly a throughline of the entire expansion. Good ideas, horrible execution.
2. I really hated Wuk Lamat at the beginning but I'm mostly fine with her now. I don't like her, don't really mind her, either.
3. I hate Wuk Ewu and think he's the most annoying side character in the entire story. His quirk is not funny, it's cringe and annoying. I swear if I see him do it again, I will give him what he's asking for just to shut him up.

I knew me liking Zoraal Ja would be controversial, but I'm always interested in knowing why others found Zoraal Ja lacking, if you're interested in expanding on that. I genuinely liked Zoraal Ja as a villain.

As for Wuk Ewu... it's cringe, but I just laughed because it's so stupid and silly I can't help but laugh. His character is just so absurd it loops back to being funny. More importantly though is that you aren't really stuck with Wuk Ewu for the entire game. He only appears a few times, whereas Wuk Lamat's cringe stays with you the entire MSQ.

Outside the fact this expansion is written for Childrens and is basically some type of naruto plot where naruto is a grown up 20 yo+ Tigerwoman talking like an arrested development children wanting to become the most powerfull hokage disney princess of her clan when she will be stronk and grown up...

I feel that , the Final fantasy 14 team expressed through Yoshi P, last year (no actually nonono, it was like 2+ years ago my bad), to get 1 more week between patches to produce better quality things. Yeah, and also get on vacation ! Because, we did a good job.

Alright. Now, it is clear that these cumulatives weeks over a year and these vacation period gracefully allowed to themselves didn't lead to any improvement in quality in this expansion, I think you all given them way too much leeway and a taste of lazyness by just "letting it go" and now they took notice, and as a thank you for your service sir, we are now looking to renew the playerbase because, phew, we are done with expectations and topping ourselves up and pushing the story in adult themes. 4 to 5 weeks extra a year in between every patches + deciding on extra vacation at any time, yay !

They took notice bro, they took notice don't you worry about it, and out of the finger they asked you to give, surely... They took the whole fucking arm with it.

And you know, even if it feels like a betrayal of what ffxiv used to be, they need to make sure their next 10 years paycheck come from somewhere, fresh and new ! I think i warned early on when the announcement of the extra week per patch was just an extra week of sub in their pocket and it will not pertain to any improvement whatsoever into anything lol. Saw it coming. And everyone was like "noooo shut up it's gonna be better, everything is going to be worked on with extra touches of finition and care, shut up, shut up you infidel !"

Hey, i want the 3 dollar per week i lost these past 2 years to mean something when the model of the mother in law of Wuk Lamat revealed herself to be a Third step Level of Detail 4 polygon model of any old granny wandering around far in the distance of any city of this game, okay ? I didn't let you close to 9 weeks out of my sub these past 2 years to produce a 100 polygon character whose hairs and clothe barely move when talking to me during the most underwhelming emotional reveal of this expansion alright ? I want my time and money back Square, where's my money Lebowski ?!

No but for real when i saw that extremely low poly character presented to me after her illusion shell dissipated, i was schocked, i was wondering if we finally got back to the good ol days of the playstation one era, that's it, Square is doing time travel but in more ways then i could imagine. We are so back, and not in a good way lol.

We had standards here ! Well, we used to.

It is what it is. =D

Yoshi P did mention that they wanted to capture a younger crowd... Fortnite gamers pretty much. I don't know if they were serious and I hope this isn't a symptom of them going all-in on catering to literal kids.

I haven't played FF9 so to me the Alexandria plotline lacks worldbuilding. It comes out of nowhere and is put to rest during two zones worth of quests.

The Endless dilemma is hard to get behind, since it is not explained why exactly they need soul aether only, when there are a lot of beings that are simulated/conjured/etc. Are non-soul aether beings with memories soulless? Or Ultima Thule inhabitants which are made from 100% dynamics?

Or the regulator empowerment mode, how it related so, say something like Oversoul causing Ruby weapon to transform to Nael van Darnus?

I dislike stories where it feels like writers make up random things to advance plot but perhaps its my own fault for reading a lot of fantasy novels and being used to higher quality writing.

It's interesting that we found the Endless/soul plot points wanting for different reasons, but you make a good point here. While I found it dull mostly because it just feels like a replica of the Ancients plotline, you're right that it also seems poorly developed in itself.

[Dulcia]

I knew me liking Zoraal Ja would be controversial, but I'm always interested in knowing why others found Zoraal Ja lacking, if you're interested in expanding on that. I genuinely liked Zoraal Ja as a villain.

I'm not the one you were asking but if you don't mind a stranger's oppinion, I would say that all the subtle cues of Zoraal being mad at his father were lost on me. He even helped me defeat That snake bird for the Yok Huy. To me it seemed he was a non character. When Wuk Lamat had mentioned back in the pre expansion that she was trying to stop her brother it seemed to me that she was talking about Koana since he was the only one talking and doing things, but of course things didn't go in that direction.

When Zoraal Ja suddenly became a villain, and then had 30 years of character development that happened while Wuk Lamat celebrated her victory - I was personally was struggling to understand his motivations and it didn't come until it was laid out at the end. I think if I understood his motivations earlier it would have made him a better villain. Instead he was a missed opportunity.

To me, seeing how Gulool Ja treated his children and the things he taught them - it made me wonder how did this happen? There wasn't even any hints that Zoraal was having a bad time. If anything I thought his advisor was a bit suspicious and was manipulating Gulool Ja. It seemed his Advisor was using Gulool Ja's strength to obtain the Golden City. Then he was unceremoniously killed. I don't even know whats going on with this character.

[Somnolence]

First: this "key", which opens the gate to the Golden City and closes the portal after we defeat Zoraal Ja. There is no chance, that Zoraal Ja and his buddys knew, what the key is and how it works. But they stole it(!) and used it to open the gate to the Golden City. Aaaand later, after we defeat Zoraal Ja, Sphene steals it and uses it to flee to the Golden City. So we allowed, that this "key" is stolen from us twice.

This key is another example of disjoined lore, since different parts of the game have different writers.

So the key opens portals allowing to travel to another shards. Cool.

Meanwhile Omicrons in beast tribe casually use FTL to get to another planet like its nothingburger. Well, Crystal Tower teleportation to the first was based on Omega tech after all, yet MSQ forgot Omicrons exist in a capacity where they know and can use this tech.

[Grizzy]

This is pretty much as true as it gets. Lots of potential but it was all wasted. I found myself asking, "What? Why?" A lot.

And this constant talk about peace and love, that never really evolved, it was just the same repetitive lines over and over. I liked the first few quests. It was new and I could get behind it, and then the last solution nine quests were amazing if you kinda just take out all the build up to it and treat it as its own story. But Overall the msq this go around was pretty bad and I sincerely hope that they figure out that we don't want this endless talk of peace and love and family and acceptance and redemption for villains.

Just give us a good damn story, pace it well. Break the formula if you have to, give us trials earlier in level, I don't care what they have to do. JUST INNOVATE.

I couldn't believe that we had somehow taken a step back from Endwalker in quest design too. No cool new quest types like endwalker had, in fact it had less than endwalker. I don't mind the visual novel style of it, at least I thought I didn't. But apparently this is too much even for me.