/r/ffxivdiscussion: Data analysis of Dawntrail negative reviews (Steam)

[Astronema]

[Sotaris]

I dunno how the reviews are now after several months but I could tell the first couple of weeks when it was cool to bitch about Wuk, that a majority of the negative reviews were simply a review bombing campaign.

I'm still of the opinion that the expansion is fine, but its neither good or bad. It's mid.

[Tint]

I dunno how the reviews are now after several months but I could tell the first couple of weeks when it was cool to bitch about Wuk, that a majority of the negative reviews were simply a review bombing campaign.

I'm still of the opinion that the expansion is fine, but its neither good or bad. It's mid.

People would not review bomb if they had liked what they got.

Not sure how much playtime I have combined since I play/ed between PS, Xbox, Steam and PC (I'm a bit nuts I know). But played very active between 2014 until 2023 ish. If I were to guess I'm probably in 30-40k hr range.

You can use the text command /playtime

[Dante131]

thats actually great work. Have to say thank you for doing the effort

[Erzaa]

Yup, I'm someone who enjoyed all of the MSQ, ARR through EW, some I liked more than others. I honestly loved SB too. Even when people complained about the EW patches story, I genuinely enjoyed it, I liked Zero as a character and her journey. I liked Wuk Lamat's introduction even. Liked her on the boat scene at the start of 7.0.

But... just, DT MSQ is such utter drivel, I can't even... I'm of the opinion that it's worse than ARR by alot.

But also, one bad expansion isn't necessarily the death of the game, continued bad expansions will be.

[Daralii]

Yup, I'm someone who enjoyed all of the MSQ, ARR through EW, some I liked more than others. I honestly loved SB too. Even when people complained about the EW patches story, I genuinely enjoyed it, I liked Zero as a character and her journey. I liked Wuk Lamat's introduction even. Liked her on the boat scene at the start of 7.0.

But... just, DT MSQ is such utter drivel, I can't even... I'm of the opinion that it's worse than ARR by alot.

But also, one bad expansion isn't necessarily the death of the game, continued bad expansions will be.

Even if ARR was a fairly cookie cutter JRPG with a lot of padding, it at least had had a setting that was fleshed out and interesting with a lot of tension even among allies. DT is just a void comparatively.

[Sotaris]

You can use the text command /playtime

I'm aware. If I were still playing the game.

People would not review bomb if they had liked what they got.

Which is fair, but it felt like a review bomb campaign when 90% of the reviews was just bashing on 1 character. I wouldn't say 1 NPC ruined the whole expansion. That's just petty and silly to me. You're free to disagree.

I'm not sure about Steam, but the review score on Metacritic has continued to slowly go down since the release of DT, as more and more people finish the MSQ. Personally, I didn't feel the need to leave a review until DT. I only tend to review games that are either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad and found FFXIV to be neither. I was already on the fence in Endwalker and Dawntrail really pushed me in the direction of thinking the MSQ was terrible. It's frustrating because the themes they went with are fine, it's just that they're handled in the worst possible way. Same with characters - the ideas of them are fine, but they end up flat and one-dimensional. They feel like someone's first RPG character.

Edit: Just went and checked. The Metacritic scores started out at 7.4 and are now sitting at 5.3. I checked about a month ago and they were still at 6.0. I would hardly call people leaving negative reviews months after an expansion launches and people have had the chance to really experience it "review bombing". A lot of us just didn't like DT and that's it. If you did, good for you, I wish I had liked it as well but alas.

I haven't checked Metacritic since I thought I was clear about talking about Steam (maybe I wasn't enough clear on that, I only refered to Steam reviews).
It is interesting if the overall score for the game (I assume?) dipped so hard, it sounds like its a lot of negative reviews just based on Dawntrial, no?

Another observation, and maybe I'm a minority, it seems user reviews is based on almost only the MSQ and not the overall experience. It would be interesting to see if it improves as patches is being released or I'm just alone in thinking the expansion is fine, and not a 1/10 as I know many set it as.

[PercibelTheren]

Another observation, and maybe I'm a minority, it seems user reviews is based on almost only the MSQ and not the overall experience. It would be interesting to see if it improves as patches is being released or I'm just alone in thinking the expansion is fine, and not a 1/10 as I know many set it as.

Makes sense to me, as FFXIV is marketed as story-first. Most negative reviews I've seen praise the battle content while criticising the MSQ. Patch content could indeed salvage the situation but they need to finally release some. The incredibly long patch cycle isn't doing the game any favors. The fact that field operations have been pushed to something like 7.3 is dire. Most people from my FC subbed for a month and they're off playing other games because there is only so much to do in DT unless you're a Savage raider.

[Sotaris]

Makes sense to me, as FFXIV is marketed as story-first. Most negative reviews I've seen praise the battle content while criticising the MSQ.

All fair and good. I must be in a minority that doesn't think the story is 0 or 1/10 like most negative reviews I saw on Steam at least. It's not like I actively read reviews for a game I was actively playing.

[Carin-Eri]

I dunno how the reviews are now after several months but I could tell the first couple of weeks when it was cool to bitch about Wuk, that a majority of the negative reviews were simply a review bombing campaign.

I'm still of the opinion that the expansion is fine, but its neither good or bad. It's mid.

Same here. For me it sits in a 'grey area' of sorts. I enjoyed it - not to the same degree as I enjoyed Shadowbringers & Endwalker, and I'd never argue that it didn't have some glaring faults, but on the whole I can't say I regret paying for/playing it.