For the writers of the FFXIV story

[DrHanschucrutes]

You players have probably read dozens of reviews, hundreds of comments about Dawntrail, about pacing breaks, about Wuk Lamat, about repeated dialogues, about the slowness of the story, but this message is not for you.
I know it's very difficult for the devs to read other very active forums like Reddit, so I had to come here.

This is an appeal to them. You know that the FFXIV player base is made up of adults. You know that we all work, study, have families, or whatever, we are all adults.
So please, please, go back to making adult stories. FFXIV only rose in popularity because the general public discovered it is a JRPG with a considerably adult story. We don't want "beach/holiday episodes." Please, we want an emotional rollercoaster, don't be afraid of your player base. Everyone loved Heavensward and Shadowbringers for a reason, and that reason is the mature story, a story we can relate to. The latest Endwalker patches and Dawntrail have certainly lowered the bar of the main aspect that everyone loved in this game, but there is still a way to elevate it. That's why I ask the devs to look at other media, look at reviews in other languages especially, be it Steam, Reddit, etc., but avoid staying in a bubble.

That's what I wanted to say. I love FFXIV and hope to continue for another 10 years in this game.

[Yuella]

I just got to the fourth zone and I like the story so far. This is exactly the story I expected when they announced Dawntrail. The world building is really good. I enjoyed the sidequests where each of the two towns in a zone has a quest line (one of the aether current quests in each town) and they ended with a combined story of the two towns. Best side quests since Stormblood (where it had similar side quests structure in each zone).

[DreadCrow]

Speak for yourself. After Shadowbringers and Endwalker, I'm absolutely fine with a "beach episode", especially considering it won't last. Not to mention that constant darkness and despair isn't exactly good writing and it isn't "adult". You need levity and quiet moments.

[Bright-Flower]

'Beach episode' was a joke when they said it at fanfest and the msq is definitely not a beach episode. Especially in the latter half. Though I do think the story was a step down from SHB/EW you can't call this a beach episode with a straight face after actually playing through 7.0.

[Cleretic]

I find it ironic when people say that Dawntrail isn't an 'adult' or 'mature' expansion, becuase honestly I feel like the only way you could reach that is by being distracted by the aesthetics of 'beach vacation and cool tech'. I'd actually say that it concerns itself with very mature themes and subjects.

Broadly speaking, once we zero in on a core theme, we're talking about death again; that's not new, or itself all that mature, but it's a very broad subject. And I actually find that Shadowbringers, Endwalker and Dawntrail almost form sort of a triptych of different ways to approach, think about and deal with death.

Shadowbringers is almost surface-level; 'death is bad'. We visit a world on the brink of death, filled with death, and the final villain is someone who is haunted by death and trying to undo it. There's nothing wrong with that at all, death exists as this primal fear and base, end-all threat, but it's all sort of ending there. Emet flirts with there being more to it, but he's lamenting death as if it were still fresh, it doesn't feel like it's developed into something further to him.

Endwalker gets existential; out of the three it's probably the one least about death itself, but death is a part of its focus on the inevitability of suffering, pain and despair; the logical endpoint, but also something that's dotted all across your journey. If we consider Shadowbringers as a story focused on death in the immediate, Endwalker is the creeping terror that follows; you escaped death, or maybe only observed it, but now it's real, now you have to come to terms with it.

And then we have Dawntrail. And I'll try to keep this vague because I know at least some people are here without having finished yet (I admire your ability to either not care about spoilers, or expertly dodge them), but Dawntrail looks at death almost... externally. Not as someone who won't die--it actually racks up quite a bodycount by the end--but as the people who live after someone else dies. There's this deep focus on memorials, legacy, the afterlife not as 'a place/state you go to after death', but as the conceptual way that the living think about and relate to the dead. Far from thinking about your own death either immediate or eventual, Dawntrail's relationship with death is closer to the day of someone else's funeral; you surround yourself with these thoughts and feelings about what the dead mean to you, and then you leave that funeral and have to carry those thoughts into a world that's still going, and have to figure out how to reconcile all of that. I actually find that a deeply mature approach to the subject, this realization that death just happens and the world keeps going.

[kaynide]

@Cleretic: this is tongue-in-cheek, but in very broad strokes, would you say the past few expansions match the stages of grief (at least in final zones)?

denial, (HW), The Ishgardians lied for ages about the Dragonsong war
anger, (SB), I mean… it’s about revolution…storming castles and whatnot.
bargaining, (ShB), with Emet trying to reason with us/get our sympathies
depression, (EW), with various races just…dying or giving up hope
acceptance, (DT), with the Endless accepting that death is part of life.

It’s always seemed to be about death in some way.

[Bright-Flower]

@Cleretic: this is tongue-in-cheek, but in very broad strokes, would you say the past few expansions match the stages of grief (at least in final zones)?

denial, (HW), The Ishgardians lied for ages about the Dragonsong war
anger, (SB), I mean… it’s about revolution…storming castles and whatnot.
bargaining, (ShB), with Emet trying to reason with us/get our sympathies
depression, (EW), with various races just…dying or giving up hope
acceptance, (DT), with the Endless accepting that death is part of life.

It’s always seemed to be about death in some way.

Hah, I doubt it's intentional but that is a fun observation.

[Cleretic]

@Cleretic: this is tongue-in-cheek, but in very broad strokes, would you say the past few expansions match the stages of grief (at least in final zones)?

denial, (HW), The Ishgardians lied for ages about the Dragonsong war
anger, (SB), I mean… it’s about revolution…storming castles and whatnot.
bargaining, (ShB), with Emet trying to reason with us/get our sympathies
depression, (EW), with various races just…dying or giving up hope
acceptance, (DT), with the Endless accepting that death is part of life.

It’s always seemed to be about death in some way.

I think you can swing it, and in conversation Iw as trying to fit some of it through with ShB-EW-DT, but the thing that caught me was that the cycle of grief is when dealing with the loss of another. And only Dawntrail's really preoccupied with that, the others are more focused on people dealing with their own deaths, with Emet being the only real exception.

I'd actually say that Heavensward and Stormblood are more about war than death (ARR too but it's a lot less 'theme-ey'), and with those too you can see that there's some variety in where that broad theme can go. But at the scale FFXIV tells its stories, a war story is always very much about the war, which sorta limits the range.

[Lyth]

I don't really have a problem with the storyboard itself so much as the pacing and execution, which I felt was substandard.

But I do have to ask: Why the rubber bullets?

[kaynide]

I don't really have a problem with the storyboard itself so much as the pacing and execution, which I felt was substandard.

But I do have to ask: Why the rubber bullets?

That whole zone was such a waste tbh. Some people may enjoy it and that is absolutely fine.... but man... it was cartoonist bad. The only thing the Vulture was missing was a Snidely Whiplash mustache, and maybe tying someone to the train tracks.

I get they felt some need to have yee-haw land in there because it's "the Americas", but they really shoulda just stuck with Meso/South America and mayyyybe done some yeehaw mad max in a later expansion.