Creative Studio III Appreciation Thread [SPOILERS]

[Mercelia]

This thread is meant to show SE and especially the Creative Studio III our gratitude for all their hard work they put in and give us such a great experience with Dawntrail. All of the opinions here are subjective of course, but for the sake of this post let's focus on what we enjoyed with the arrival of Dawntrail so far. Disclaimer: Do not read further if you haven't finished the MSQ yet or mind having the story spoiled.

[Oizen]

I don't agree with the first word in their name but otherwise yeah they made dawntrail

[Nothv13]

I enjoyed every moment Wuk wasn't around, so thanks for the few times that happens.

[Mercelia]

Now with that out of the way...^

THE THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THIS EXPANSION:

WAITING TIMES:
I was amazed by how small the queue was when logging in during Early Access, compared to what it was like in Endwalker. Even after the early access was lifted and everyone could play, the queueing time to log in still remained minimal. I wanted to thank the team for making sure that our login-experience is as smooth as possible, especially after all the DDoS-attacks we were facing pre-DT.


GRAPHIC UPDATE & VISUALS:
The graphical update looks wonderful, most of my characters look a lot better than they did before and the world now truly gets to shine a lot more than before. I know that I had some criticism especially concerning my characters' update, but aside from that I was mindblown how pretty everything looks! I'm so happy that we can have 2 dye slots now, it allows me to be much more creative with combining gear pieces and trying something new.


MSQ-EXPERIENCE:
First off, although I do enjoy playing the story, it is not a priority to me – I prefer spending my time with the playable content which the MSQ unlocks. Thus I was dreading to do MSQ at first, because in FFXIV everything unlocks in a linear way and it's all tied to the MSQ, whereas in other MMO's you can just do the unlock-quests straight away or travel to new maps freely.

With that being said, I think that Dawntrail had the best MSQ experience overall compared to the other expansions. I was happy with how it didn't feel as "fetch-questy", compared to all the other expansions so far (at least to me). A friend of mine said that "SE is getting better about making clear what is exposition, what is the core story and what is new content" – and I couldn't agree more. I liked getting a fresh beginning and finally something different. I like the slower pace and am glad, that it didn't have such high stakes storywise and I think it was a perfect setting for the story to build upon in the coming expansions. I also appreciate being "one of the adventurers" again, and not "THE warrior of light" with that big reputation. The world-building was lovely and even though it was relaxing to play through, it wasn't boring me either. Also I liked the character development of the main characters, it was great to meet new people and learn about their way of life. It was everything that SE already announced before launch and I'm very happy with it, coming in with that expectation in mind.

Continuing below...

[LyraShu]

What I enjoyed about Dawntrail? Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, it looks pretty and Viper is fun *nods*

[Mercelia]

MAPS:
I love the new maps, they're interesting, full of life and there's always something new to discover! Also, the soundtrack is insanely good?! Soken and his team really outdid themselves, this is the first time I kept the background music on, because I didn't get tired of hearing it. What I am REALLY grateful for, is that we were able to attune to the aetherytes straight away and didn't have to run past them until the MSQ would FINALLY allow us to attune to them. THANK GOD! Also, the aetherytes were really conveniently placed too, which makes gathering and doing hunts much easier in the future and thus the DT maps have become my favorite by far compared to most other maps.


CONTENT:
The new dungeons were fun, it is so practical to step in a TP-zone and get brought to the new place that way, instead of clicking on something to TP you elsewhere. Also the difficulty increase is a welcome change from what we had before and I hope that we get more content of that difficulty (or maybe even a little higher, since iLvl will get higher over time). Even the familiar mechanics got an interesting spin to them, which makes playing the content quite challenging. The trials (normals and EXs) are epic, nice to look at and overall really well designed. On top of that, I always wanted to have wing-mounts and I'm hyped that there will be more of them. I can't wait for the future patches to drop, the playable content is S-Tier and I'm very happy to see that they put more focus on gameplay this expansion!


Again, thank you Yoshi-P and team for your hard work and continuing doing the best you can for the players!

[Ath192]

I appreciate they are working on making dungeons more fun. I can forgive the bad story if the gameplay is good.

[Rolder50]

They need to hire more job designers. The, what 3 of them? Are clearly stretched too thin. Can’t design an interesting job to save their lives.

[Mnemy]

Gratitude in creating FFXIV ARR yea but GREAT EXPERIENCE IN DT? Nahhh.

-The zones are gorgeous in DT? Yes that I can say is good
-The fights are more enjoyable this expansion I appreciate that.
-The music is slapping with the exception of Smile.
-The graphics update brought out the beauty of Tural.

Those I can be thankful for but I'm not gonna go easy on all the things they fucked up just because there are good things in the expac. I'm paying to play their game, not to lick their ass

[Amh_Wilzuun]

Uh-oh you are being positive, all of the people with the "Here's a link to my 3000000 word essay on why Dawntrail literally ruined my life" signatures they made 30 minutes after early access went live are going to come out of the woodwork