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

[Exmo]

Dawntrail isn't perfect but it's is vastly better than ARR.

[Hyperia]

They should have just called this expansion "Fetch Quest". Utter waste of time.

More like cutscene the visual novel. We spent multiple times more time in cutscenes than actually doing quests.

I felt more like the Wallflower of Light than an actual hero.

[Alice_Rivers]

I'm in the "ARR is better than DT" camp, ARR had far better characters, vastly superior world building, actually felt like something was happening and events were connected. ARR had a story, DT just... Happens. The events of North Urqopacha have no bearing on South or vice versa, South Urqopacha and Kozama'uka are apparently completely unaffected by being cut off from their neighbours and Tuliyollal which itself shows no evidence of being impacted by the loss of access to goods from these places. When you look at Yak'Tel, the only way in and out is by hot air balloon and nobody is concerned that the only route to Mamook is cut off, even the residents of Mamook aren't bothered. These are supposed to be places with hundreds of years of shared history, eighty years of it interconnected under one banner, all we see though the briefest of histories and A tradition, one, that's all, what the hell? How long is 7.0 again? How long did it take to make?

On the subject of the local events preceding DT, where is the government? Where are the people trying to restore lines of travel and communication? What is the "Dawnservant" doing while his children run around and make a mockery of running the country? Why does he appear so detached from the affairs of state? How is it that nobody asked these questions of the writers during proof reading or playtesting? Some of ARR's villains might have poor motivations (Nero, Livia) but they're semi-relatable, DT people have such superficial and poorly thought out (if at all) motivations for their actions with the possible exception of Sphene but that has it's own problems.

Basically, yeah, in ARR Eorzea is an actual place populated by actual people doing actual things that relate to an actual history, in DT Tural is a bunch of cardboard cutouts with no history, doing what the writer needs them to do to progress... Whatever they're writing.

[Fatch38]

I'm in the "ARR is better than DT" camp, ARR had far better characters, vastly superior world building, actually felt like something was happening and events were connected.

gonna play devil lawyer here (even if personnaly i have no issue with ARR story while i hated DT) but ARR story has a span of 50 levels to take time for world building etc not 10. and that's the main issue : rythm. i know that some ppl will say that shadowbringer tell a good story on 10 levels too but i would say that ShB may be the exception that proves the rule.

[ReynTime]

gonna play devil lawyer here (even if personnaly i have no issue with ARR story while i hated DT) but ARR story has a span of 50 levels to take time for world building etc not 10. and that's the main issue : rythm. i know that some ppl will say that shadowbringer tell a good story on 10 levels too but i would say that ShB may be the exception that proves the rule.

The amount of levels is completely arbitrary. 3.0, 4.0, etc, have 10 levels each but they're designed to last about as long as ARR's 50.

[Alice_Rivers]

gonna play devil lawyer here (even if personnaly i have no issue with ARR story while i hated DT) but ARR story has a span of 50 levels to take time for world building etc not 10. and that's the main issue : rythm. i know that some ppl will say that shadowbringer tell a good story on 10 levels too but i would say that ShB may be the exception that proves the rule.

I don't think that flies, I would argue that while ARR does have 50 levels it frankly makes terrible use of them in terms of pacing, there is nothing stopping the writers using 10 levels and covering similar amounts of story and lore. In HW for example, we properly explored the Dragonsong War from having no idea it was a thing to it's origins and I expect sidequests flesh it out further like the final battles of Dusk, Steel and Stone Vigils. We also learned a fair amount more about the Allagan Empire and it's war with the dragons, I often forget just how long HW is - it's a LOT of content and a LOT of story, DT doesn't even compare. As you point out, ShB does tell an amazing story, it does introduce and sell us a whole new world with it's own history and the various peoples of that world DO have histories that put DT to shame. I'd argue even SB (much maligned for good reasons) does story and lore better than DT.

Previous expansions, while still bare of story telling in map design (Ishgard had a ship in a lake... Why? Where did the gates go? Is that not just a cliff? Why are there gates at all? Where did the water for the lake come from? I dunno, maybe there are answers in sidequests I've not done) but Tural is so underutilised and unlike EW there's no good MSQ to mask it.Not to say it's not a problem dating back to ARR, but again ARR has a story that covers for it's lacking map design and there are NPCs everywhere with lines about stuff... DT?

I'm not against the old writers giving way to new writers but if they wanted to do that then they should have been mentoring the new writers through sidequests and then role quests before even giving them elements of MSQ, only once they write good MSQ content should they be allowed to take the lead. They had three or more years to write DT, it wouldn't have hurt them to spend a year of that just doing the worldbuilding and how it was affected by the events detailed or played out in previous expansions.

[Kaurhz]

gonna play devil lawyer here (even if personnaly i have no issue with ARR story while i hated DT) but ARR story has a span of 50 levels to take time for world building etc not 10. and that's the main issue : rythm. i know that some ppl will say that shadowbringer tell a good story on 10 levels too but i would say that ShB may be the exception that proves the rule.

I would say this isn't the issue, as honestly the expansions themselves are designed to last just as long, even if there aren't as many quests or levels.

Generally speaking it is just not a good expansion because they tried way too hard with it... they tried way way too hard to try and push a new character into a very much pivotal position in the story, and it was a risk that just went straight into a ditch. Just as they tried way too hard to condense something that should have been its own expansion into a meager 41 quests.

[FudoMyoo]

Nah DT is far superior than ARR in 2013.

I don't like carrying boxes from point A to point for B for bazillion times. What you are playing is the new ARR that SE trimmed and streamlined over the years.

[Basteala]

Let's be honest, the fact that this is even a discussion when ARR was considered by far the worst part of FF14 until recently is a bad sign.

More like cutscene the visual novel. We spent multiple times more time in cutscenes than actually doing quests.

I felt more like the Wallflower of Light than an actual hero.

I mean EW was like that, too. The key difference is that EW's story was actually...good, and the WoL felt like an active participant. Those two details are very important when you have MGS4 levels of cutscenes.

[Lorika]

Let's be honest, the fact that this is even a discussion when ARR was considered by far the worst part of FF14 until recently is a bad sign.

It's the patch that was always considered the worst.... The base game itself never was bad, more people were inclined to say that Stormblood base was worst than ARR.