After Dawntrails abject Failure of a Story, there need to be serious Consequences

[honest_psycho]

It's been almost three months, there has been hundreds of threads, negative reviews andhours and hours of essays analysing every possible detail of Dawntrails writing and its myriad of problems.

And I think it's safe to say that the Story this time was an absolute abject failure that warrants serious consquences.

For a game that advertised itself as the "Story-MMO", the story this time around did some serious damage to the game's reputation.

Who will look for an MMO, see the good reviews of Shadobringers and Endwalker and NOT be bewildered of the mixed to negative review of Dawntrail?
I, for one, cannot recommend this game to anyone, despite the free trial and the quality up until Endwalkers MSQ, when the future looks like THIS.

So what consequences should this have?

While I'd prefer an actual 100% re-write of the MSQ, with a year long stop on development and free gametime like with 1.0 and ARR, I know this is not feasable.
So I will focus on the things that can and SHOULD be done, to prevent a desaster like this from happening again.

1. Let Yoshi-P focus on FF14 exclusivley.
When I heard that Yoshi-P would ALSO be the director of FF16, I was worried if the quality of FF14 would suffer for it, and unfortunately I was right to worry.
The lack of oversight this story had is obvious to everyone.

Don't waste Yoshi-P's time on side-rpojects that get "underperforming sales".

2. The current writers need to be replaced or outright fired.
For the sake of brevity, I will refer to all the threads in this forum, who already did the work to point out the many problems/plotholes/basic logic etc. this story had, with Wuk Lamat taking the top position as a textbook case of a 'Mary Sue'.

It is clear that the current writers don't have the skill or talent required for this game and need to be replaced or even outright fired.

I refuse to believe that Ichikawa and Yoshi-P gave their ok out of their own volition.

3. The MSQ needs to be heavily re-written and edited to fix the most blatant mistakes and problems (I don't care if this happens at a later point or within a year long break).
Also, some more solo-duties like a playable trainride should be seriously considered.

There are other things I'd like to see, like an actual public apology from Squares management, saying that they will take responsibility (Nintendo'S CEO took a paycut cause the Wii U underperformed, so this has already happened).
But I will hold on for now.

Closing words:
I'm aware that I'm demanding a lot of things but after playing this game for over 3 years and the game itself being over 10 years old, we should expect for a product that at least WORKS.

The main product is the story and needs all the quality it gets to set it appart from the competition.
I love the game too much to let it go down in flames.

[Saraide]

I refuse to believe that Ichikawa and Yoshi-P gave their ok out of their own volition.

My idols would never do something I dont like!!!

[Kes13a]

I get it, you dont like it. it happens.

however.. the game DOES work, you just dont like the story. you are not alone, but this is completely out there for a demand. since the delivered product DOES actually work.. and wow.. over 3 years... congrats.. some people have been playing since 1.0 so... so what?

look, I am not saying that you are wrong, or the story was perfect or anything... but this is a complete Karen post. they will never re-write the MSQ, no matter how long you hold your breath for. I doubt anyone will be fired, and an apology from the CEO of SE is a pipe dream. is DawnTrail bad sure... but it isnt like millions have left and the sub levels are down to 100k or something, so while bad, it isnt catastrophic. not every bit of music is a platinum record, not every movie is a box office smash... and not every story is a hit.

[honest_psycho]

. since the delivered product DOES actually work..

The only thing that works are the dungeosn and raids and the music.

I will not debate the problems with the story here, there are enough threads about that.
The writers are talentless amatuers and need to go.

Sure, it's not as horrible as 1.0, but "not as horrible" is the canary in the coalmine.
I still want to be playing in 10 years.

[Kes13a]

you SAID this:

we should expect for a product that at least WORKS.

implying that the game was released as a buggy mess. it may surprise you, but some people only come for the dungeons and raids.

if you misunderstood what i wrote, I did say the story could have been better, but a majority of mmo stories are made with "plot holes and contrivances"

or is his the only work of fiction you have ever been exposed to? because it rather sounds like it from your meltdown

[honest_psycho]

you SAID this:



implying that the game was released as a buggy mess. it may surprise you, but some people only come for the dungeons and raids.

if you misunderstood what i wrote, I did say the story could have been better, but a majority of mmo stories are made with "plot holes and contrivances"

or is his the only work of fiction you have ever been exposed to? because it rather sounds like it from your meltdown

It baffles me how people can look at the MSQ and not see the blatant problems with it.
Where have been hundreds of examples in hundreds of threads already, including this one.

Second: In the last year, I played a lot of story focused games, some 30 hours long, sometimes Visualnovels over 100 hours long.
So don't give me that crap about "only work of fiction you consumed".

[Eyrilona]

I get it, you dont like it. it happens.

however.. the game DOES work, you just dont like the story. you are not alone, but this is completely out there for a demand. since the delivered product DOES actually work.. and wow.. over 3 years... congrats.. some people have been playing since 1.0 so... so what?

look, I am not saying that you are wrong, or the story was perfect or anything... but this is a complete Karen post. they will never re-write the MSQ, no matter how long you hold your breath for. I doubt anyone will be fired, and an apology from the CEO of SE is a pipe dream. is DawnTrail bad sure... but it isnt like millions have left and the sub levels are down to 100k or something, so while bad, it isnt catastrophic. not every bit of music is a platinum record, not every movie is a box office smash... and not every story is a hit.

Sorry, no. This game does not 'work'. It functions. Some important perceptual nuance there for the purpose of whether it will remain attractive enough to draw more new players than it sheds over time.

But what I really wanted to comment on -- Suggesting we shouldn't talk of an emergency as it 'isn't like millions have left and the sub levels are down to 100k or something' is just no way to look at things.

Hypothetically, when you are on an airplane, and one of the engines has failed, there is a weird buildup of smoke in the cargo hold, and 'just one of two cracks' showing in the fuselage, and there is only radio static from the cockpit... would you say "it is still in the air so how bad can it be" ? If you don't declare an emergency until the craft gets to the part where it messily redistributes itself across what investigators will mark as its impact site, then I must suspect you are just not very invested in prevention. In reality, it makes so much sense for everyone involved to manage risks like that, that problem solving protocols exist taking things seriously as early as a single light not coming on on the dashboard.

[Basteala]

I get it, you dont like it. it happens.

however.. the game DOES work, you just dont like the story. you are not alone, but this is completely out there for a demand. since the delivered product DOES actually work.. and wow.. over 3 years... congrats.. some people have been playing since 1.0 so... so what?

look, I am not saying that you are wrong, or the story was perfect or anything... but this is a complete Karen post. they will never re-write the MSQ, no matter how long you hold your breath for. I doubt anyone will be fired, and an apology from the CEO of SE is a pipe dream. is DawnTrail bad sure... but it isnt like millions have left and the sub levels are down to 100k or something, so while bad, it isnt catastrophic. not every bit of music is a platinum record, not every movie is a box office smash... and not every story is a hit.

I understand your point of view and I think giving people the axe for one poor performance is a blatant overreaction. However, I will say that I feel you're understating the importance of story a little bit. This is an RPG, not Call of Duty. The story experience is part of an RPG's gameplay and if the story is broken, so is the RPG.

Now granted, I do think retconning the story is a terrible idea that creates more problems than it fixes--Star Wars sequels anyone?--Dawntrail had some good concepts even if the execution missed, and a good writing team will take those, and put things that weren't so great into perspective to make them compelling. They did that with Lahabrea. They did that--some would say--with Zenos. The writing team doesn't need to give anything or anyone the axe, they just need to course correct like they have a dozen times before.

To the OP, the good news is that the biggest problems were less with Dawntrail's *concepts* and more with the pacing and a lack of nuance and attention to detail in the narrative. Yes those are big problems, but rectifying those is arguably easier than trying to perform acrobatics to fix lore that fell flat on its face.

Now if the team can't do that after a patch or two, then maybe find someone else to head the next MSQ story, but let's keep the insanity to a minimum for now, eh?

[Carin-Eri]

I feel, in the first instance, some feedback from the Powers That Be would be a good first step - there appears to have been very little official feedback in terms of how the player's reactions/opinions and reviews are being received/considered.

A half-baked comment about Wuk Lamat lacking confidence is neither here nor there.

[tsuchii]

Dawntrail is not that bad.

It amazes me how people think like they've been personally victimized by creative choices of the story authors.
It's a work of fiction - you either like or you don't. You don't go demand a writer to rewrite their story just because you didn't like it - eg. like a book or a TV show. This is no different.
Constructive feedback, eg. say how you would have preferred things are made, is good. But crazy demands are just what they are - crazy.