Why are people settling for an "ARR Tier" story?

[Wildheaven182]

They could have ai generated emet selch read 120 hours of ai generated story directly to the player in a silent cutscene and drooling idiot fanboys and fangirls will still say it was the best expansion yet, it was just laying the groundwork for future content.
I think the devs needed a vacation, not the WoL.

[Zaniel]

ARR wasn't "bad" it was just slow, the actual story and characters were pretty good. DT is objectively bad in almost every respect with its story. From framing to character building to pacing to plot holes and blatant illogical craziness and unholy levels of repetition and forced flat attempts at humour to its complete ignoring of the entire events of FF14 to date (was Tural immune to the Final Days??!?!?!).

There are some hazy kernels of good ideas in Dawntrail, the setting and history of the region sometimes peak out from underneath the suffocating blanket of the plot, a couple of characters briefly show some sparks of what could have been interesting personalities before collapsing into caricature. To me it feels like when they first brainstormed ideas for the expansion some really good post-it notes got up on the board, then the producers just walked out of the room and left the amateur writers to their own devices. Cue forward two years later and everything had collapsed under the weight of inexperience and the lead writer's love of "baby's first MMO character".

Any framing of this as being "a restart" or "a holiday" or "subverting expectations" is just utter nonsense, it is just OBJECTIVELY appalling bad storytelling from a team that should know better. Keeping up with the Kardashians is OBJECTIVELY bad TV, it just is, don't excuse it. It's fine if you like it for the cheese and moving coloured lights after a hard day's work and are sick of thinking, I am happy for you and I'm not going to criticize you for liking it. However you simply can't pretend it's good.

[Zaniel]

How on Hydaelyn's green earth did you get from here to Kardashians?

Because it is a media example of something that is objectively utter trash but people still like it, like Dawntrail.

[Zaniel]

That's not what "objective" means, you're entitled to have your opinion and shout from the rooftops that you think Dawntrail sucks if you want to. But if there are people who disagree with you, then that's subjective, not objective.

Same with the Kardashians actually, there are people who give a toss about them. One man's trash is another man's treasure and etc.

I know the difference between objective and subjective and I used the term deliberately. Dawntrail, by any sane measure and example of historical or contemporary writing the way it is used and consumed by humanity, is OBJECTIVELY bad. If you submitted this script to a even partly normal writing class or movie/game production house you would be told to go back, reread your class notes and start again. If you disagree that's fine, you aren't a bad person but you are still incorrect. I'm sorry.

[Garolymar]

I think ARR is a lot better than Dawntrail. For one learning about Eorzea and its troubles were a lot more interesting than anything on Tural. The different ways the beast tribes were being oppressed and using their religious fervour to summon primals was really good stuff. The 3 main city states were all also very fleshed out compared Tulliyolol. Like besides the food stuff and "everyone gets along always here" it doesn't go into much detail at least from what I remember, Maybe there are some yellow quests that flesh out the country more but I didn't do any yellow quests in ARR and I still got to experience Ul'dahs shady monetarist under belly, the trafficking and piracy of Limsa, The weird spirit elementals that haunt Gridania. It kinda felt like they were too afraid to give Tural any sort of grit in case it offended somebody.

[Jojoya]

My problem isn't the first half of the story. It's the second half.

To me, it's (spoiler tagged because it will give away most of the plot)

second half of Endwalker repeated.

Right now, it seems most players will like one half but not the other and it varies between which half is liked. That's going to leave a lot of players unsatisfied in general with the MSQ.

Edit: regarding the first half of the story, remember that the WoL is

the soul of Azem.

.

While someone might prefer more combat, lore-wise the tour is very fitting.