Dawntrail Is A Great Expansion

[Jeeqbit]

To depart from all the usual negative posts on the forums, I thought it was a great expansion and all the people I've seen talk about it in the game loved it as well!

At the beginning, you are thinking "is this it? it's just going to be a political campaign trail the whole way?" Albeit a well-executed one.

A well-executed political campaign story in the sense that it wasn't boring. It felt expansion-caliber in its execution, despite not seeming like an expansion-caliber story. New amazing feeling zones, amazing new music, lots of sidequests...

For example, Urqopacha, Kozama'uka and Yak T'el are easily my favorite zones. Both the look and the music make me want to stay in them. So even had it remained this simple story the whole way through, it would have been fine to me personally.

But the expansion throws its first curve-ball... (spoiler tagged)

50% of the way in it abruptly ends and you are led to believe it's all suddenly over. Expansion completed. It acts like you beat the expansion. But you're not stupid. You're only at the level 95 quests.

The next zone feels quiet, almost like the expansion has just split like Stormblood did.

But in reality, it's all building up to telling a single story and it will all come together...

In retrospect, it all feels good with the hindsight of knowing what it all amounts to. I just wasn't sure it would be well-received when I was doing it, since Stormblood wasn't.

But really, what it all amounted to was as big-expansion feel as any other - like Shadowbringers and Endwalker. They pulled off lots of emotion as well, which is impressive, given it felt like there was nothing much left of the lore after Endwalker.

As promised, Wuk Lamat evolved from this naive character into a leader that had learned a lot of lessons, but she also was aware she needed to learn these things.

The expert dungeons are also more interesting mechanically. Still easy to push through with item level and vuln stacks, but a lot more threatening really than the in-out mechanics that have been done for years.

All in all, it was a great expansion and not the holiday lots of people were dismissing it as.

As for negatives:

• I didn't like Solution Nine. It's a great zone, but the cyberpunk style overdoses me on technology to the point I feel sick looking at it and I don't think I will spend much time there. I am very concerned about Arcadion overdosing me on this as well so I sincerly hope they change the look of each floor drastically.
• Heritage Found has something of the same problem for me, but I really like the music in the town so it's worth visiting it just for that alone.

(spoiler)

• I can't fathom why one of the best games in the FF franchise's primitive lore was copy+pasted then catastrophically mudied with advanced technology and such depression. Could we have not related to some other FF game's lore, or a brand new lore, being mudied in this way? Maybe it was to make sure we felt sad for them but it just has the side effect of making us ask why SE would wreck FF9's lore this way.

[Karious]

Nah, it wasn't a very good expansion, sorry.

[Narnio]

Nah, it wasn't a very good expansion, sorry.

Damn, well I guess that's it. Wrap it up people, because Karious is evidently the judge, jury and executioner on this verdict.

If you're going to make a lazy comment like that in response to OP's without even providing reasoning, why even bother commenting at all?

[Voidmage]

I‘m happy that you liked it.
I didn‘t but that’s ok.

I‘m just saying:
Thank you for actually listing why you liked the expansion and without throwing shades at those who didn‘t like it.

[Kes13a]

I enjoyed the expansion, for what it was. I wouldnt call it "great" but it was good.

it is very pretty, the zones are well done. the message overall was consistent... until it wasnt though. on the whole, I didnt run into as many feels during the MSQ that normally come with FFXIV

it would have been far "greater" if they had some explanation for the time difference, as in... it affected everyone inside the bubble, and yes, they had a plausible (universe wise) as to what happened to everyone in it. so why didnt it affect us? I know the WoL is virtually a goddess, but what about the rest of the party that entered?

overall, I felt DawnTrail was a transition piece from one story arc to another, and for that, yes, it was decent. was it bad as many have suggested? no, the people talking in game have enjoyed it. it was as expected, but not knock my socks off great. happy you thought it was great however.

[Jeeqbit]

I didnt run into as many feels during the MSQ that normally come with FFXIV

They were all mostly pushed to the latter half but I did feel they were there. After all it was quite sad what happened to the people inside the bubble and the things you find out in the last area.

it would have been far "greater" if they had some explanation for the time difference, as in... it affected everyone inside the bubble, and yes, they had a plausible (universe wise) as to what happened to everyone in it. so why didnt it affect us?

It would but it was the similar with The First as well. 100 years passed in a short time for us and then suddenly it's the case that you can just return there and not much time has passed.

The moment I spoke to one of the NPCs and they said "it looks like this has been abandoned for years" I figured the whole thing out, but they continued slowly explaining it for people who forgot Shadowbringers.

Although I don't know why the flow of time changed, my guess is that either the initial creation of the bubble temporarily sped up time in the moment of its creation, or creating a hole in the bubble put the timeframes in sync again.

[Granyala]

it would have been far "greater" if they had some explanation for the time difference, as in... it affected everyone inside the bubble, and yes, they had a plausible (universe wise) as to what happened to everyone in it. so why didnt it affect us? I know the WoL is virtually a goddess, but what about the rest of the party that entered?

They chose the simplest way to write it: the moment Vanguard breached the dome and Zoraal-Ja attacked Tuliyollal with the helicarriers, the temporal differential was negated and the flow of time synched to the source.

So our expedition was never subjected to an accelerated flow of time at all. the whole point of having it in the first place is to have some convenient plot device so ZJ could build up his forces w/o us having to wait 3 decades.

[Astronema]

They chose the simplest way to write it: the moment Vanguard breached the dome and Zoraal-Ja attacked Tuliyollal with the helicarriers, the temporal differential was negated and the flow of time synched to the source.

So our expedition was never subjected to an accelerated flow of time at all. the whole point of having it in the first place is to have some convenient plot device so ZJ could build up his forces w/o us having to wait 3 decades.

time travel and manipulation is the option of last resort when a writer is backed into a corner unless the story is directly dealing with it such as the 12 monkeys tv series which was a masterpiece of time travel stories.

[Granyala]

time travel and manipulation is the option of last resort when a writer is backed into a corner unless the story is directly dealing with it such as the 12 monkeys tv series which was a masterpiece of time travel stories.

If used like this: yes.
Though we already had a time differential when we entered the first, so it does make sense, lore wise.

ZJ's goons HAVE TO neutralize it, or anything passing through would be torn to shreds by tidal forces. Keep in mind, we're talking about a factor of roughly 1500 here.

They should have changed / removed the dome during the story. That it remains unchanged whether time flows at 1500x the outside rate or not is weird.

In general, I always enjoy time travel shenanigans like this but in DT's instance it was just waaay to convenient and so obviously a plot crutch that it also negated the entire impact of the inhabitants being dead or old for me.

[LaylaTsarra]

I'm enjoying it on my 3rd playthrough. I will admit if you don't like WUT has to be a tough slog for you. Lots of cool things in the xpac including the graphic update and zones. Love the Western Zone the best was and has been a highlight for me.

More to come so we'll have to see how that plays out.

Looking forward to the relic zones and hope they don't disappoint. Endwalker was a tome weapon fiasco in my view and we need more content like Eureka and Bozja.