Are we destroying "our own" game?

[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.

[EponaTBHSMH]

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

[Naychan]

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

As a general rule of thumb, for every one person that complains or gives a compliment there are 10 others that feel the same way. Most people wont take to the forms unless they have a strong opinion and many will remain silent.

[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.

[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.

[Astrus]

Here's the weird thing about MMOs and service games: listening to your vocal community can be as bad as not listening.
As with any title with a vast audience you're going to have conflicting opinions in the part of the community that actively leaves feedback. Then there's the unknown silent majority that doesn't give you any feedback until things get bad. A lot of companies are not really great at surveying the audience as a whole for feedback, instead opting to passively aggregate the feedback the vocal part, which is often a minority, leaves.
What you do with that feedback then, becomes a gamble. No matter what you do some part of the community is going to lose out, there's no pleasing everyone.

Do you ignore the vocal minority because your data suggests the majority likes things the way they are? This is a "safe" option and one often taken by developers convinced their vision trumps everything, everyone who doesn't like it wasn't the target audience. The downside here is when that vision had glaring flaws from the start that go unchecked for years and just keep piling up, the other big MMO on the market seems to have learned that lesson.

Do you listen to the vocal minority? This gives your vocal community what they think they want. The trouble here is it may not be what you as a developer want and it may not even be what the community wants. The vocal part of the community is often unclear on, or at odds with each other what, they want. The silent part of the community may become vocal pushing back against the change. The vocal part of your community that wanted something different is going to get more vocal. The people who wanted you to change something may come to realize that that change was not something they actually wanted. Who do you listen to now?

Do you have a vocal majority that gives you pretty consistent feedback about something? Listen. At this point things are bad. The building is on fire, falling over and sinking into a swamp.

So, in that sense, yes we are ruining "our" game. We always are, but what's the alternative here? Not giving them feedback and quietly leaving? Deciding on changes by majority vote? Just sucking it up and continue to spend money on a product you don't enjoy?

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Here's the weird thing about MMOs and service games: listening to your vocal community can be as bad as not listening.
As with any title with a vast audience you're going to have conflicting opinions in the part of the community that actively leaves feedback. Then there's the unknown silent majority that doesn't give you any feedback until things get bad. A lot of companies are not really great at surveying the audience as a whole for feedback, instead opting to passively aggregate the feedback the vocal part, which is often a minority, leaves.
What you do with that feedback then, becomes a gamble. No matter what you do some part of the community is going to lose out, there's no pleasing everyone.

Do you ignore the vocal minority because your data suggests the majority likes things the way they are? This is a "safe" option and one often taken by developers convinced their vision trumps everything, everyone who doesn't like it wasn't the target audience. The downside here is when that vision had glaring flaws from the start that go unchecked for years and just keep piling up, the other big MMO on the market seems to have learned that lesson.

Do you listen to the vocal minority? This gives your vocal community what they think they want. The trouble here is it may not be what you as a developer want and it may not even be what the community wants. The vocal part of the community is often unclear on, or at odds with each other what, they want. The silent part of the community may become vocal pushing back against the change. The vocal part of your community that wanted something different is going to get more vocal. The people who wanted you to change something may come to realize that that change was not something they actually wanted. Who do you listen to now?

Do you have a vocal majority that gives you pretty consistent feedback about something? Listen. At this point things are bad. The building is on fire, falling over and sinking into a swamp.

So, in that sense, yes we are ruining "our" game. We always are, but what's the alternative here? Not giving them feedback and quietly leaving? Deciding on changes by majority vote? Just sucking it up and continue to spend money on a product you don't enjoy?

Welcome to why most modern game companies rely on cold, hard player statistics and data about player habits rather than actual feedback.
Doesn't matter if you have 100 John Does on your forums saying something in the game is bad when literally every point of data is screaming the exact opposite. Or more hilariously in the case of something like the recent Genshin Impact "boycott", claiming something is bad but continuing to engage with that system/thing over and over, thus telling the developers your opinion is irrelevant since you'll still interact with it anyway.

You can even see it in something like SMN, where if you'd believe the vocal minority the job is unplayable/ultra boring/the most unpopular job ever, but both FFlogs in EW and general job data they've shown showcasing its one of the most popular jobs in the game now post re-work.

I've said it before as someone with experience with more modern game development pipelines, the only feedback you can give that truly matters is to influence their statistics by either completely halting your interaction with any system you dislike, or to vote with your wallet and leave. Written feedback only matters to developers when it aligns with what they're seeing in the data side of things and they're looking for more refined details.

[Carin-Eri]

Welcome to why most modern game companies rely on cold, hard player statistics and data about player habits rather than actual feedback.
Doesn't matter if you have 100 John Does on your forums saying something in the game is bad when literally every point of data is screaming the exact opposite. Or more hilariously in the case of something like the recent Genshin Impact "boycott", claiming something is bad but continuing to engage with that system/thing over and over, thus telling the developers your opinion is irrelevant since you'll still interact with it anyway.

Though I almost resent saying it, I'm forced to agree.

This is why so many Free to Play games reliant on sleazy gamblebox marketing tactics survive - it doesn't matter how much the players of such games hate or gripe about such matters on the Internet because the gambleboxes continue to sell anyway. And I doubt there is a single gaming company out there that doesn't have a preference for communication via Credit Card above all else.