JP Official Forums are also criticizing the Dawntrail MSQ.

[jameseoakes]

I can't agree more. I'm tired of hearing this from people defending the MSQ. They had tens of hour to do some world building and ended up doing less than some amateur cartoons do in their 20m pilote episode. I don't care we have side quests that give more informations, I want the actual important content to be in the f**** mandatory MSQ so I don't feel robbed out of my time while doing it. It's asinine how low your standards have to be for you to be fine with the "world building".

The story was so long yet and had so little depth and completly forgot to actually set up the villains arc it's so badly written

[BakoolJaJa]

I can't agree more. I'm tired of hearing this from people defending the MSQ. They had tens of hour to do some world building and ended up doing less than some amateur cartoons do in their 20m pilote episode. I don't care we have side quests that give more informations, I want the actual important content to be in the f**** mandatory MSQ so I don't feel robbed out of my time while doing it. It's asinine how low your standards have to be for you to be fine with the "world building".

I don't even know what that commenter is smoking to think that side quests "further elaborate." There is nothing to elaborate on and consequently the side quests do not give any additional information at all. I did all side quests for the first two maps including the questlines that eventually connect two location inhabitants together. There is nothing there. It's all just water. Pelupelu continue trading. None of them stop trading. There's no side quest about not trading. When the giant's quest eventually crosses over all we learn is that Pelupelu are willing to hire them as bodyguards. Because they aren't ultra racist... Though one of the first quests kind of made me give it a side-eye. Said something along the lines of "I always dreamed of hiring a Yok Huy, but they look scary so I didn't." Which uh. Certainly not something I would say irl - "I always dreamed of hiring a person of X skin color, but they kinda look scary so I didn't." Maybe the race of an employee shouldn't be something to dwell on THAT much, but what do I know.

Not that I care personally, because this is a silly a video game and all that. But this sort of thing along with the shallow and stereotyped depiction of the peoples sure comes across as tone deaf, especially in combination with nonsense like renaming beast tribes to "allied society quests." Essentially virtue signaling while doing the exact opposite.

[Gortys]

Though one of the first quests kind of made me give it a side-eye. Said something along the lines of "I always dreamed of hiring a Yok Huy, but they look scary so I didn't." Which uh. Certainly not something I would say irl - "I always dreamed of hiring a person of X skin color, but they kinda look scary so I didn't." Maybe the race of an employee shouldn't be something to dwell on THAT much, but what do I know.

One thing I noticed in the story is her people may be "at peace", but they don't seem to know or like one another. You would think a good leader would remedy this since peace is difficult to achieve if one cultural group is suspicious, fearful, etc of their neighbor. For all of my dislike of StB, at least they showed this which I now have to respect. All of the previous expansions try to show that peace between nations is more than just talk and saying "you should like one another."
I understand some may find those topics too heavy, but this is way too light.

[Verathel]

Not only light but especially in the beginning partially ridiculous. They actually had a solid foundation in the beginning where they talked about the different factions that supported each Promise but they never explored that beyond a few quest lines, never created intrigue behind it or even let it affect the MSQ to make it slightly more interesting.

And it did not help that Wuk Lamat's endless "peace and love" drivel kept appearing nonstop and for nearly every quest without fail to the point it became cringe.

[Voidmage]

Though one of the first quests kind of made me give it a side-eye. Said something along the lines of "I always dreamed of hiring a Yok Huy, but they look scary so I didn't." Which uh. Certainly not something I would say irl - "I always dreamed of hiring a person of X skin color, but they kinda look scary so I didn't." Maybe the race of an employee shouldn't be something to dwell on THAT much, but what do I know.

I don't think that's a good comparision. The ff14 world has different races unlike the real world.
Being intimitated by a being two to three times your size with a different anatomy is not really wrong. Prejudice yeah but understandable.

A better comparision would be hiring an intelligent elephant that had conquered the continent in the past.

[BakoolJaJa]

I don't think that's a good comparision. The ff14 world has different races unlike the real world.
Being intimitated by a being two to three times your size with a different anatomy is not really wrong. Prejudice yeah but understandable.

A better comparision would be hiring an intelligent elephant that had conquered the continent in the past.

I'm not bothered by any of it, but my focus wasn't even on the scared part. I found the idea of dreaming of hiring a person of a certain race more weird than the being intimidated part. Your elephant example probably is good, but that's sort of the thing, it almost sounds like they were talking about an animal and not a person. And that might be completely appropriate to the world of ffxiv... Eorzeans did use to call everything foreign "beastmen" and kill them in droves just for existing, so... But we're supposed to believe that Tural is so different and the cultures are so deep. Which I'm not seeing. They COULD explore these issues. I'd be perfectly happy with that. They just don't.

[starstorm91]

I've read a lot about the criticisms of DT's MSQ and the ones that resonate with me the most came down to this. Dawntrail's story outline IS interesting, but this execution is the worst one they've ever done, topping even Stormblood. That translated comment I've seen in another thread said it best, that this feels like a marriage of ARR's errand boy questing and Stormblood's preachy moralizing.

Whatever you think about DT's story however, I think this comment in OP's post is my overall general feeling of the whole MSQ:

I'm very sorry to the person in charge of the [Dawntrail MSQ] scenario, but I don't want them to be involved in the story of the First World and other areas that are filled with memories up until now, and I don't want them to touch it.

To be honest, I'm scared that even my memories of the story from A Realm Reborn to [Endwalker] will be destroyed.

[ThorneDynasty]

This talk reminds me of one of the biggest character developments in the game: The entirety of Ishgard. We went from collectively going "fuck these elf bastards", to seeing "FOR ISHGAAARD!" being earnestly shouted in game chat.

They threw in almost every trope of a backwards ass nation and then somehow turned everyone's opinion around in one expansion. And not by magically making them all "peace and love" and one dimensional (we still dealt with their nonsense all the way up to the restoration content), but just by giving us a broader picture of their society, and having characters whose development and faults mirrored their society.

[Daralii]

This talk reminds me of one of the biggest character developments in the game: The entirety of Ishgard. We went from collectively going from "fuck these elf bastards", to seeing "FOR ISHGAAARD!" being earnestly shouted in game chat.

They threw in almost every trope of a backwards ass nation and the somehow turned everyone's opinion around in one expansion. And not by magically making them all "peace and love" and one dimensional (we still dealt with their nonsense all the way up to the restoration content), but just by giving us a broader picture of their society, and having characters whose development and faults mirrored their society.

We were still dealing with the fallout in the EW caster role quests. The root problem was that the Church never agreed to undergo any reforms, and they finally agreed to work with Aymeric by the end.

[DreadCrow]

... nonsense like renaming beast tribes to "allied society quests." Essentially virtue signaling while doing the exact opposite...

You realize that Beast Tribe, in universe, was a term created by the Syndicate of Ul'dah explicitly to dehumanize the Amalj'aa, right? Like, the first Encyclopedia Eorzea had a blurb where some Sharlayan scholar questions if it should even be using the term. We've also not really had a "tribal" beast tribe since Stormblood really. With Dawntrail, all the potential "beast tribes" are integrated fairly well into society.