How FFXIV state change from ShB to DT?

[Striker44]

How can story writer so perfectly in Shadowbringers to be as disappointment as we see in Dawntrail?

For me, I'd say the biggest reason is simply that this is a new story, so there is very little to build off. I compare it to WotLK from WoW. WotLK was far and away the most popular expansion and the "peak" of that game's playerbase. And it owes a great deal of that success to Arthas, who will probably go down as one of the "best" villains in gaming history. Yes, the dev team still had to execute the opportunity they had really well, which they did. But that opportunity existed in the first place precisely because of the groundwork laid by Vanilla WoW and BC, coupled with Arthas - a character that wasn't even introduced in WoW itself but goes all the way back to their previous game (Warcraft III). Point being - WotLK would not have been as massively successful as it was without the buildup leading to it.

I see the same applying here. ShB had the opportunity to be as good as it was because of what came before it. We needed to have the longstanding antagonists in the Ascians, the knowledge of other reflections, etc. for ShB to have the impact it had. Again, the dev team still needed to execute, which they did. But the opportunity for a 10/10 expansion was there precisely because of the other expansions that came before which weren't 10/10. That 10/10 doesn't occur in a vacuum. Or look at EW. Surveys of the playerbase consistently rank ShB as the #1 favorite expansion of players, with EW consistently ranking #2. And again, much of EW's success was due to it being the culmination of all the other expansions. Even more pointedly, one of the main criticisms of EW (and a key reason it's #2 instead of #1) is how Meteion came out of left field while people were expecting Zodiark to be the main villain - notice how the complaint is about a character we just met that expansion and how the "desire" leaned to the one that had already been established.

Personally, I'm very much enjoying the story writing in DT. I've loved seeing the various characters mature, whether that be having skills but lacking self-confidence, or having confidence but not realizing there's skills they lack, and making those discoveries about themselves and growing. I've loved the ambiance of the different zones, the background music has resonated with me, and most of the classes are still very familiar (one of my personal dislikes is when games fundamentally re-work classes with each new expansion and effectively make you have to relearn them - I like keeping the familiar and focusing on the new content). I've also really liked the ways they still managed to sprinkle in various tie-ins from the past (which I'll detail in another thread with a spoiler note at some point). So, yeah, I take into consideration that DT is the start of something new, and as such I can't realistically expect it to be as good as ShB. Doing so would just set me up for disappointment. I'm just looking for it to be solid in its own right, and for me, it's done that.

That puts DT in a position that ARR, HW, and SB were in. Simply put, none of those expansions had a practical chance of being 10/10. To make a baseball analogy, every batter who steps up to the plate can't hit a grand slam. It's literally impossible, because it requires three of their teammates to all get on base ahead of them. The same goes in practical and psychological terms with expansions. Not every one can be a 10/10, because reaching that point requires a build-up. DT itself won't be a 10/10, but looking down the road, a future expansion may well become a 10/10 again like ShB was, and a key reason for it will be the groundwork laid by DT.