The Actual Problem With Dawntrail

[All_Nonsense]

1. The playerbase is media illiterate. That is me being nice.

I will also attempt to be nice, but it might come off condescending since you need to practice some literacy yourself. I'm going to take your strawman away from you for a moment. You can have it back later. You're demonstrating an unfortunate lack of understanding in regards to the valid criticisms a large portion of the player base is expressing - many of them in great detail. I'll link you some of my thoughts on the MSQ and you can tell me if you think I'm illiterate afterwards. When you're done with that please take a look at other criticisms that are detailed out. Your post has 0 likes and every response to it has a multitude. That's not for lack of player base intelligence. You're not understanding your opponent's argument.

Some of my thoughts:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6508598
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...87#post6557087
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...96#post6538196
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...37#post6559337

This post is the mother of all posts on the matter, and if you want a tl;dr then skip to the bottom and check out the links *they've* posted to other threads, both in English and in Japanese: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-full-spoilers

I don't think you deserve to be attacked for your first point, but I do think it came from a place of ignorance. I hope you will at the very least take some time to check out the last post I linked and really familiarize yourself with *why* people actually feel the way they do about the story. Strawmen are no good. Neither is ignorance. You must fully understand the central point before attempting to refute it \o/

[Sarnai]

Honestly my main problem is that A LOT of important stuff happens off screen, while some completely trivial things are what we are seeing. Were going through "lets eat, thats how you can learn about culture" at least 3 times through the plot, but the "Alliance with Thavnair" just happened off-screen and mentioned in one line - just so writers, who written themselves into corner can pull out a dragon to destroy ship. (Also conveniently Vrtra can now call for other dragons too. Pretty helpful skill that couldve deen useful in that End of Days thing when his beloved people got killed and stuff huh)

Also, but this is very personal, pre-last zone just destroyed everything for me. If the whole Alexandria was like Living Memory it would be so much cooler, instead we just got weird Cyberpunk bright PC looking city that just doesnt aesthetically fit with anything, and other characters doesnt fit in it too. Even its own habitants. It just looks neony futuristic for the sake of it, contrary to lets say Allagans, that were highly futuristic but still fantasy enough to blend in just fine.

And the whole weird stuff with souls that just completely destroys everything we knew about the soul as a concept. It was stated very early on about how lifestream and rebirth works, that souls go in there, get its aether renewed and then gets reborn back. We also learned just recently that animals dont have "souls" - just aether as in energy.

And now apparently soul can be separated from memories and cleansed, person, that the soul belonged to, can be completely erased from it leaving only aether that can be used. This kinda throws out the window the whole carcass about shards and recollection we had - like what if a soul shard bearer got recycled like that and then the whole shard got joined back to Source, will it be just a lost shard altogether, like 13th situation? Honestly whats the point of souls and shards now, when the whole aether thing is now irrelevant to the whole system? And its after we somehow accepted the fact that "soul can remember stuff after it got into Lifestream because ink blot and blah blah" we learned in Endwalker too.

And not only our character is completely ok with Alexandrians way of using peoples souls (especially after we saw them harvesting said souls from Etheirys), we also are trying to justify it with "oh well its their culture we cant judge". Its like going to the place where people salvage other humans for parts to build themselves some houses, make clothes and eat, and taking it as just their culture that needs to be understood.

And oh now you can take that aether-essense of any animal and imbue yourself with it to get some sick buffs. Strangely we didnt know that, Sharlayan never tried to research that, even Ancients, as aether beings, didnt try to mix animal aether with stuff.because now its the animal soul we are talking about, thing that was stated multiple times "concepts" created by ancients doesnt truly have.

[Aldath]

Get out of here with that hot take and i've played most games after V. If i'm playing 14, i wanna play 14 and you shouldn't need to play another god damn game to enjoy this one.
Here is another hot take, this game obsession with mindless fan service and callbacks it actually hurting it's development as a numbered entry.

Eden Storyline and Post Game Endwalker feel like the biggest examples of this. Eden tried its hardest to tack on VIII storyline elements that were asinine. The introduction of Golbez, Zeromus and the Fiends sounds like something I would have written in my Chemistry notebook as a kid during class.

[MartinFreeman]

There is indeed a lot of problems, but Wuk is at the lead of said problems due to how it all wraps up.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Me am big brain, u just dum dum lol
.

Media literacy does not make a bad story better.

And for other FF games, they do add to the enjoyment, but they do the smart thing and don't just copy things in their entirety. They will take names, themes, and visuals from the games... They might take like story beats but they won't copy the whole story because they're making their own story, not just adapting the games into an MMO.

[Themarvin]

I it is still only the same 75 people that clicks like or whatever, it does not really reflect the game and the player base.

[Sivante]

I agree with your initial point that Wuk isn't the problem, but the length of DT isn't the issue I think: It is involved however. The whole thing felt rushed, uninformed, and poorly written. You're right in that the bulk of the quests are missing, but they've largely been replaced by cutscenes. But that being said:

I it is still only the same 75 people that clicks like or whatever, it does not really reflect the game and the player base.

You're right. You will see repeat faces in the forums as we're a minority of the players in the game. That being said, no FF14 expansion has recieved as low of review scores as this one. No FFXIV expansion has taken this much heat, been regarded by so much of the community as a failure. If you wish to disregard the opinions of those on the forum that's honestly valid: we're a minority. You can instead direct your attention to the User Reviews on Steam, or even the meta critic User reviews.

I don't feel a need to try to impress upon CBU3 how bad this was, as I see all the evidence necessary to tell me that Square Enix is losing face and money alike on this expansion. I don't need forums to tell me that, there are numbers that tell me that. In the event those were not enough I can check Squenix's stock prices.

Regardless of what you or I think, the message is resoundingly far more negative than any other expansion, and it's going to kick CBU3 in the pants. That is to say, in the money, and losing money is the only review that really matters at the end of the day for them.

[ReynTime]

I agree with your initial point that Wuk isn't the problem, but the length of DT isn't the issue I think: It is involved however. The whole thing felt rushed, uninformed, and poorly written. You're right in that the bulk of the quests are missing, but they've largely been replaced by cutscenes. But that being said:



You're right. You will see repeat faces in the forums as we're a minority of the players in the game. That being said, no FF14 expansion has recieved as low of review scores as this one. No FFXIV expansion has taken this much heat, been regarded by so much of the community as a failure. If you wish to disregard the opinions of those on the forum that's honestly valid: we're a minority. You can instead direct your attention to the User Reviews on Steam, or even the meta critic User reviews.

I don't feel a need to try to impress upon CBU3 how bad this was, as I see all the evidence necessary to tell me that Square Enix is losing face and money alike on this expansion. I don't need forums to tell me that, there are numbers that tell me that. In the event those were not enough I can check Squenix's stock prices.

Regardless of what you or I think, the message is resoundingly far more negative than any other expansion, and it's going to kick CBU3 in the pants. That is to say, in the money, and losing money is the only review that really matters at the end of the day for them.

I wonder about this. Player activity is still pretty high in lieu of everyone doing the new raid. It might fizzle soon. But if it doesn't... What kind of message would Creative Studio (guys they're not "CBU" anymore) 3 get from it? That the quality of the MSQ is irrelevant for player retention?

I'm very curious if this might end up being the conclusion.

[Sivante]

I wonder about this. Player activity is still pretty high in lieu of everyone doing the new raid. It might fizzle soon. But if it doesn't... What kind of message would Creative Studio (guys they're not "CBU" anymore) 3 get from it? That the quality of the MSQ is irrelevant for player retention?

I'm very curious if this might end up being the conclusion.

That... is actually a very good question. I do know the Steam concurrent player metric (I'm very aware it's flawed, but using as an indicator) was temporarily at its highest ever, but we also have seen a mass increase of RMT botting which would artificially spike that number. It certainly seems to me like there are more players than usual despite that:

But I'm also seeing an explosion of players fed up with the material. Be it from the loot treadmill beginning to feel boring and flawed, savages being too easy/hard (take your pick, varies per person), to people just being kind of done with the formulaic releases. I would personally think MSQ is relevant given how much people rave about it and always have (I've never actually enjoyed the story, but haven't hated it until DT.) But I suppose only time will tell. What I can tell is that I'm certain they will see less sales in the sense of trying to item shop anything from DT's MSQ, but ... to your point that may be the limit of what causes them to care about that in relation to money.

I do, personally, think they are about to take a kick in the money and Square Enix is not doing well financially to take such a kick to one of their primary monetary generators. Well, let me rephrase, the stock markets in Japan tell me they will get kicked in the money, but I do think a good portion of that is going to relate back to DT: But I have no evidence of that it's just my personal prediction.

Also, good call on CBU3->CS3. I was ignorant of this, I appreciate the correction.

[Vhana]

What kind of message would Creative Studio (guys they're not "CBU" anymore) 3 get from it? That the quality of the MSQ is irrelevant for player retention?

I'm very curious if this might end up being the conclusion.

The danger is that SE might get that message and be even less supportive in needed resources going to the story production.

I believe CS3, themselves, is more aware than that. They want to continue for another decade and know they are competing against all new entries into the market on story, graphics and gameplay/combat. Even with the graphics update and the encounter designers creativity in working with/around the engine, story is the only aspect they have a clear industry lead on.