DT: State of the Game

[Mioooh]

We are talking to G'raha Tia in the gondola in living memory. He starts talking about loss, brings up ethical questions: “what would you have done, had you THIS?” I thought, this was a great start to bring up the ethics of this place and discuss them further in the process. Maybe this will even bring tention, if he disagrees with what we are about to do. Instead, the moment we step out the gondola the topic was dropped and never mentioned again. This breaks the basic rule of promise-progress-payoff. In this case, they promised the player something, but never followed up with progressing this arc in any way.

There is no way, a professional writer would've not noticed that. And even if, the editing would've fixed the mistake. It seems like they didn't have much freedom and they got clear instructions on how to handle major subjects like certain character arcs for example. There are several of those scenes. The whole story and the pacing feels all over the place and it feels not properly edited. We also have arcs that feel like something got cut out (Bakool Ja Ja – Valigarmanda arc) as well es several “big elephants” in the room (important topics that don't get addressed or even plot-holes). This also negates the argument that the writers would've needed more oversight, because basic mistakes like this shouldn't happen in the first place.

Then there was also Naoki Yoshida's comment at Fanfest (I think?) where he said (and I'm just paraphrasing here): We just put a lot of stuff together, and then we'll see what sticks and what the players like. That is NOT a good basis for an exciting story. That is actually the exact opposite.

Now if you put all of this in context, it could lead to one conclusion. And I wanna make very clear, that this is just an ASSUMPTION. I think, that (for whatever reason) there was a massive re-write of the MSQ happening, rather late in the process. Big parts got cut out, some got edited, others added. And the new team just wasn't experienced enough (and/or didn't have enough resources available) to put all the pieces back together in time, and as a consequence also could not properly edit the whole story again from scratch. I might be totally wrong, but so much points towards it.

To why Ishikawa did not step in at that point: again, just an assumption. But I think she either has the role of senior lead just on paper to keep her in the credits because of her reputation, and she is actually working on other projects, or even her experience just wasn't enough to save the project (which I find hard to believe).

So no, I don't think, the writers are bad. Or at least, I don't think they had a fair chance to proof that they are good. Of course you can always gain more experience and get better, but I don't think, replacing them would change anything, that is not the root of the problem. The problem seems to be that CBU3 just doesn't have a clear course and don't really know which direction they want to go, that they are too afraid of negative feedback (ironically) and this is the result.

[Mortex]

Encounter design was kinda good early in the first two trials and in the dungeons and became again completely utterly boring in the raid. So many bloody 8 man spreads or partner mechs. Plus job balancing is complete and utter garbage (faint wait for the ultimate dps check were if you play the worst of the worst jobs you have too pot phase and hope you crit a lot as we saw the p8s flop were jobs were locked out of pf) and ofc the 2 new jobs are the best dps wise. They design fights with down time and give viper a 3 second gcd range dmg gain move with a stack system while all other meeles die inside.

[CuteBucket]

If I were to assign some numbers to various aspects of the game...

Job Design and encounter design: This one is so highly subjective that I feel weird trying to score it. I'm currently at probably an 8. I'm okay with where my mains are. I've been doing Savage Arcadion on Paladin and I'm more happy with where my job is than my Dark Knight co tank. But I absolutely understand why other players of different jobs than mine are very unhappy. So even though I'm more or less fine, I don't think most of the changes many other jobs are asking for would hurt my enjoyment of encounters or how my job plays, so their opinions should weigh heavier than mine in this area. For example, I just don't play healers or casters, I don't like that style of those jobs, so my opinion on how those jobs are doing doesn't matter much.

I have been having fun with the raids though. Arcadion has been a good time. Pretty much the only reason I've been playing at all. Never thought I'd see the day, but here we are.

Graphics: This one is also hard to score. Some things, like the foliage, look WORLDS better and I'm very grateful for the updates. Elpis and Il Mheg, two of my favorite zones, really benefited from the graphical update. Kugane at night in the rain was mesmerizing when I first saw it. However...

There's way too much bloom. I love turning effects like that on for special effects in Gpose with Reshade, but for running around playing the game? It's a lot. It can look very beautiful in stills but it gives everything this unnatural glow that can be too much while running around and playing the game. It doesn't personally harm me but it's harming others. I've also been having a lot of issues with certain locations and lighting environments creating really bad shadow banding and flickering. It's not too noticeable zoomed out and playing, but if I wanna zoom the camera in and look at me or my friends sometimes? Yuck, glitchy shadow stripes everywhere in some places.

And then there's the not so little matter of both of my character's faces getting botched by this "update." My catboy's eyes are now so dark with this new shadow effect you can barely see them, the color, or the cat eye pupil shape. My f au ra looks like she had botched plastic surgery. Her beautiful lips are gone and actually look blurrier and more low res now than they did before, and her bigger pupils make her look tired and sad where she once looked vibrant and alert. I've covered all this in the relevant threads with many pictures, so I won't go into it further here. It's a 3 on the enjoyment for me, which is a real shame, as I was looking forward to the graphical update. I have so little motivation to log in with my characters looking this way.

[Savagelf]

i think the devs are embrass of the dislike for wuk lamar and how bad stories came out so they tried figure out how make it better. they know fans don't like it

[Drimn]

Tbh ...Stormblood was good compared to DT. I rather take 10 Lyses then 1 Wuk. At least Lyse wasnt the main focus of every quest.

It feels like they put more thought into the Azim Steppe's lore than they did into all of Tural's. I wonder if they spent too much time brainstorming to fuss over how to execute what they were trying to accomplish or what, but the continent feels dead and fake, like a Disney World version of itself.

[sindriiisgaming]

i literally dont understand the problem with stb. zenos was very entertaining and the primals we faut were great. also we still had susan on vocals and lyse actually had a good VA. Kugane was a beautiful city, shirogane is a gorgeous housing sub, it added SAm and RDM to the game 2 jobs we literally NEEDED and they even fit in with the expansions story. The omega raids were some of the best and the hildibrand is 1 of the funniest. we also got our first ultimates and eureka is still popping off while gangos lies uninhabited

[LilaIronman]

I played ff14 now for several years and always loved the story even if it was sloppy like in Stormblood though, never have I really taken a break and always have been going strong in raids and daylies roulettes and such, after Dawntrail launch I suddenly had no urge to do anything, so far I have done the daylie roulettes 2 days and never touched them again lol

The story failed miserable which is a huge point for me
but I also don't think there is any content to do and I simply hate that they choose to spread everything out that could have been there day 1
really makes you realize how lazy they are, not sure how much of the old spaghetti code keeps making improvements worse, but only a Story for an expasion launch?

Come on man wtf

[All_Nonsense]

snip

I'm not here to give my opinion. Already gave it in several threads awhile ago and the dev team doesn't seem to give 2 shits after hearing YoshiP's response to criticism, so there's no point. I'm enjoying the gameplay immensely and will be sticking around because of it. That's on me ig. Anyway, I'm only replying to remind you that DRK and SMN are both missing from your signature - you should probably update that. WAR is fun. We got minimal changes and minimal additional skills and we're just kinda happy because we're all dumb. Come be dumb with us.

[Akonyl]

I’ve been reading in most of the DT threads here, and there are pieces of good discussion going on in numerous threads, but there are too many threads to track, too much overlap in the discussions, and far too much garbage to wade thru. I created this thread out of exhaustion and with a meager shred of hope that enough people might post organized, thoughtful feed back to make it worthwhile.