Are we destroying "our own" game?

[Voidmage]

I startet commenting when the BLM changes were coming and commented mostly because of my disappointment MSQ.

Bevor that I have read stuff here but never commented because I was mostly happy.
Till the end of EW I was even pretty pro Devs and they had a really high standing in my eyes.

For me the story is the most important thing in this game and that was such a big letdown this time I just want to comment and keep at it in the hopes at least something gets to them because I still care for this game.

My feedback just aligned with what is the topic right now.
I also tried to avoid all spoilers for the MSQ and finished it more or less without outside feedback.

I expected a story with lower stakes and adventures with my WoL, new characters and a bit of the scions.
Instead I got Wuk Lamat 24/7, my character benched and a Disney story.
That was frustrating and demotivated me for several days of this game.

So no, I wasn‘t influenced by any negativity. For me the story this time is really that bad and it knocked my view of the devs quit some steps down the stairs.

I just want the storytelling back that I love so much.

[Carin-Eri]

Browsing through the forum here and watching Youtube videos I clearly see how people seem super unhappy with the new Expansion.
Playing the game for myself and also in my fc and social groups I did not experience that feedback for quite a while.
I never checked this froum in the past and just came here recently to look for the "community voice" but.. is it really that bad? Are people that mad about DT or was it always like that in the forum? Maybe someone that observed the forum for a few years can tell me.

I personally think DT is fine story wise.. sure it may not be peak epic but I feel like it is quite good. I was entertained especcially for the last part of it.

The content imo is great. It is more entertaining than in the past and we now even can wipe here and there, which is often funny. People are saying it is too hard but idk isnt it exciting to have a look at the boss while doing roulettes? (talking about dungeons)

For the raids it is kind of the same. I dont feel like they are particulary harder than - for example - ShB Normal Raids?

Are here any people that actually enjoy the game? And if not.. where are they? I've heard player counts are looking good, and I tbh can imagine why.

It makes me kind of sad hearing all that stuff about "dungeons too hard for me" "raids too easy for me" "story is bad" "bring back stormblood", I have the feeling people are more and more driven into the mindset "Well if everyone says it is bad.. then it must be bad!" until they actually feel that way.

Whilst I had minor issues with DT, I did enjoy it overall.

And I guess one of the reasons players are unhappy, aside from the numerous Wuk Lamat complaints, is that everyone seemed so hyped for it beforehand and it clearly didn't meet the expectations of those who've come here to outline their thoughts.

[Isala]

Whilst I had minor issues with DT, I did enjoy it overall.

And I guess one of the reasons players are unhappy, aside from the numerous Wuk Lamat complaints, is that everyone seemed so hyped for it beforehand and it clearly didn't meet the expectations of those who've come here to outline their thoughts.

I'm not sure about that, honestly. Our expectations were pretty much set at "This is going to be a silly, low stakes expansion, don't expect too much out of it.", as they clearly stated this was going to be a vacation for us. There wasn't hype for grand storytelling, or any large scale expectations. In fact, a lot of people I talked with were in agreement that they had better not add a world ending threat for at least another expansion, because there'd be no way to set it up without rushing. And what did we get? A rushed multi-world ending level threat, and the worst storytelling the game has ever had.

[EponaTBHSMH]

I wouldn't take the opinions I see here on this forum as a good representation of the community as a whole tbh

[BigBoom550]

Exactly. At the highest I wanted a Heavensward-level threat. Something relatively small and self-contained. Something that matters locally. Maybe a local rebellion, have us be on the other side of that for a change, something that's still got stakes but doesn't try to come close to anything else.

If securing the Key to the Golden City had been the ultimate goal of the story, with Alexandria being the next expac, I'd have been happy.

This was rushed, sloppy, and tried to be to big and do too much.

[CKNovel]

I still believe the story was fine.
We had as much padding as Endwalker MSQ, remember that 80~81 padding to introduce you to the expansion? Elpis Padding where you needed to be introduced to so many characters? 89~90 padding where you somehow had to help Sharlayan scientist for whatever reason?

The MSQ has positive points, but negative point as well. Most activities were running from an NPC to another, most of the time Wuk lamat who was written like a comically dumb shonen protagonist, the "conflict" between Scions was non existent and they all gathered together anyway...
In my opinion, we're between HW and SB in term of writing. Not bad if you sit back, relax and enjoy.

CBU3 needs to learn to improve the pacing and diversify the activities, that was a problem in XVI as well.
They also need a consistant writing, we got HW, ShB and EW that all had a serious tone with harmless jokes then we crashed into the overwhelming jokes, look at the big dumb cat and laugh.

Other content is fantastic, best dungeons, best 8-man raid, good job changes, good new jobs, hopefully it lasts!

[Lyndina]

Right before Dawntrail i never made it to the forums even though im registred since 2015 i think..only made 1 Post about some problem i had back then. Never had any problems were i had to "go" into this forum, because i was happy with everything. Even though Endwalker lacked content....but after finishing this slog of a story...in the end i was so annoyed, especially Wuk Lamat. So...i went into the forum and looked if i was alone with that feeling of nothing and that my favorite game so far has such a shitty expansion. After all i spend around 14k hours so far in FF. To me...it is important to give feedback because i dont want this game to go into the crap box like Wow.

To be fair...my critic only revolves around the Story, which for me was always the "pull factor" of this game, but this time...all the way from Tural to the final was just a endless cutscene centering around one character. One! I know we had Krile and Erenville...but lets be real...the times you spend with them was like 10 minutes at all? Where as Wuk took every scene. Even the final boss fight, where i had fun finally because my WoL could finally do something...here she fucking comes again ruining everything.

[Sheriyana]

Exactly. At the highest I wanted a Heavensward-level threat. Something relatively small and self-contained. Something that matters locally. Maybe a local rebellion, have us be on the other side of that for a change, something that's still got stakes but doesn't try to come close to anything else.

If securing the Key to the Golden City had been the ultimate goal of the story, with Alexandria being the next expac, I'd have been happy.

This was rushed, sloppy, and tried to be to big and do too much.

It's ironic that it feels like the story is being rushed with too much happening. While for the most of the story, there's nothing happening whatsoever. Pointless cutscenes that repeat the same stuff over and over, talking to random NPCs that don't reveal anything new over and over etc.

[Tehmon]

Story was overall very mediocre, and it comes down to pacing, Wuk being a terrible character and the writing lacking subtlety. But outside of that, I've been enjoying doing the usual stuff, and trials, dungeons and especially raids have reached a point where I have to really pay attention, and overall the difficulty has been exactly what I want out of normal content. Viper is currently my favorite class as well, the music has been quite great, and the zones look pretty/the graphical update has mostly been a success.

So there's plenty of good things despite MSQ being a let down (and even MSQ has it's moments, but they are few and far between).

[Nasigno]

Dawntrail has some minor issues story wise, but it is nothing to outright say it was terrible or otherwise. I think the most obvious are the lack of ramifications of certain acts done during the MSQ.

Content wise it has been enjoyable raids, duties, and current extreme content is fun to do.

The core thing I feel a lot overlook is that anytime we go into a threat we invalidate any other character building or any threat especially given the situation. So we have to sit back if you want to tell a narrative. The level of low stakes it was did not require us to intervene, and to be honest it could used some work on how much we did.

It will take a bit of warming up, it's a new story, new paths. If you are going to running multiple expansions it will be bad to try to set everything up in the 7.0 base MSQ. That is something they did with Endwalker and we got Zero and Metion out of them. Both of which were rushed dues ex machima for the MSQ.