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

[HighlanderClone]

Yeah, who doesn't like all this "criticism" of "Wuk lamat is bad, lamattrail LoL, lamat tea xD, it's mid rofl"...

People are posting literal essays and discussing substantively about why they disliked the story, so take your strawman elsewhere.

[CKNovel]

ARR is not bad and DT is better than today's ARR.
We can't have Shadowbringer everytime.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Everything before Shaaloani could've probably been condensed quite a bit... Aside from Valigarmanda and Skydeep Cenote, everything was relatively unimportant and extremely slow paced... But at the end of Shaaloani things kick of fast and hard, and the story gives actual reason to care.

Now if only you could've kicked Wuk out of the group as well...

[Ruris]

To me, the "It's slow stakes and ARR level on purpose" are scruffy deflections from people who enjoyed the expansion personally, or didn't, but has dehydrated themselves of emotional tolerance for criticism against their emotional support game. They are transparent as ever. As for the people who genuinely believe that it's good to be compared to ARR, they were going to be impressed when the bar is under the ground anyway, so leave them to it. Steam has it sitting on 'mixed' and I personally hope the genuine criticism gets through to SE. Wuk Lamat is a shounen beacon of light I would have enjoyed reading about when I was 13 years old. You can craft this beautiful new world with a character that has literally shades of any other dimension to their personality, and SE chose prime time, safe viewing, trope #1.

[Pavise]

I've only finished up until the claimant arc and just hit the northern half lvl 95 MSQ.

It's definitely a breath of fresh air in this section compared to what I've slogged through the past 5 days since early access.

Partially due to how unlikeable Wuk Lamat is, due to the consistent cry baby nonsense, repeated jokes and horrible VA (even their other works have really bad range which is obviously due to damaged vocal chords, if you know you know) they chose for Wuk Lamat which is insane coming from me since I've played a decent amount of JRPGs where some of the English voices are badly done, but I've never experienced that thought once during my time playing since ARR since their casting has usually been solid, sure some voices didn't match well but their emotional range was on point for the lines they delivered.

Never have I cut off so many voiced lines by a character after I'm done reading through the text than when Wuk is on screen.

[Ruris]

Never have I cut off so many voiced lines by a character after I'm done reading through the text than when Wuk is on screen.

I have the exact same habit this time around. I just have no tolerance for her personality. The only reason I'm sticking with Eng dub is because Jonathan Bailey has me strung to when G'raha reappears. Which is already stupid enough because I'm almost level 95 and he still hasn't appeared but that's how strung I am to that man. Might switch to JP.

[Pavise]

I have the exact same habit this time around. I just have no tolerance for her personality. The only reason I'm sticking with Eng dub is because Jonathan Bailey has me strung to when G'raha reappears. Which is already stupid enough because I'm almost level 95 and he still hasn't appeared but that's how strung I am to that man. Might switch to JP.

There's some really good VAing though for other characters which just confounds me how poorly this was a miscast.

Koana, Bakool Ja Ja, the Autarch and many other new male characters all have fitting voices, even the female characters the Vanu Vanu leader and pink outfit pelu pelu (forgot her name) that are voiced during the MSQ are solid with the deliveries of their lines which get you invested.

[Kashou]

ARR is really bad and it's like 80% filler, but at least it builds up the actual world and sets up the story. Dawntrail is just horrific and it does NOT do the same thing at all. It is a net negative and it has done nothing but harm the overarching plot of the game. We would be better off of they said "well oops we'll redo it" and rolled the servers back for a year so they could rework it as opposed to keeping it in.

[Tethan]

ARR is really bad and it's like 80% filler, but at least it builds up the actual world and sets up the story. Dawntrail is just horrific and it does NOT do the same thing at all. It is a net negative and it has done nothing but harm the overarching plot of the game. We would be better off of they said "well oops we'll redo it" and rolled the servers back for a year so they could rework it as opposed to keeping it in.

I really wish they would. Last time is was this bad they literally blew up the world. I'm not sure the story can be salvaged from here, with anything less than a complete retcon.

[Anarnee]

I liked ARR, I liked it before the cull, and I still like it to this day. That said, I also like DT. I wish that they had the same budget for ARR and HW that they did for all the expansions after cause it would have been even better.