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

[hynaku]

Wow the review I made for early access they didn't count. I know it was a very bad review. Same with 1.0 beta review I did.

[CuteBucket]

I'd love to see a similar breakdown of reviews from metacritic, although that makes it much harder to verify "real" players and hours played.

As sad as it is to see a game I love get bad reviews, it also deserves it. Dawntrail is just not good, and the longer time passes since its release, the clearer it becomes that this isn't just review bombing, a lot of people (like me) are very unsatisfied with this expansion and the state of the game. Every previous expansion to me has been between a 7/10 and 9/10. Never in my wildest dreams before Dawntrail released did I ever think I would give a FFXIV expansion a lower score than that. But here I am now with Dawntrail being a 4/10 for me. Even now, over three months later, I am still sometimes in shock by just how truly wretched the story, setting, and characters were.

[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.

[TaleraRistain]

Some of those make solid points, like how the expansion was trying to emulate concepts from past expansions but doing it very badly. It's because none of those concepts were given the necessary time to develop so they didn't have the impact the same concepts had in previous expansions because of it. That could be writer inexperience, but I hope they've realized now that if that is the case, their new writers need more veteran oversight.

[Daralii]

Some of those make solid points, like how the expansion was trying to emulate concepts from past expansions but doing it very badly. It's because none of those concepts were given the necessary time to develop so they didn't have the impact the same concepts had in previous expansions because of it. That could be writer inexperience, but I hope they've realized now that if that is the case, their new writers need more veteran oversight.

Hiroi's been a lead writer for side content since 3.0. He is far from inexperienced, but a 20-30 hour MSQ storyline was very obviously beyond him. That said, there are many people above him that should have rejected what he and the other writers put forward.

[CuteBucket]

Some of those make solid points, like how the expansion was trying to emulate concepts from past expansions but doing it very badly. It's because none of those concepts were given the necessary time to develop so they didn't have the impact the same concepts had in previous expansions because of it. That could be writer inexperience, but I hope they've realized now that if that is the case, their new writers need more veteran oversight.

That's what really makes me scratch my head and think there must have been something more going on here. Hiroi has been around since ARR. Kawasaki and Onozuka have been around since SB and ShB. Hiroi is no Ishikawa, sure, but I've never flat out hated what he wrote before this. Most of these writers have written okay to pretty good content before. So WTF happened?

[Hyperia]

That's what really makes me scratch my head and think there must have been something more going on here. Hiroi has been around since ARR. Kawasaki and Onozuka have been around since SB and ShB. Hiroi is no Ishikawa, sure, but I've never flat out hated what he wrote before this. Most of these writers have written okay to pretty good content before. So WTF happened?

I believe there has been meddling in the story from higher up or from a third party. This team takes literally years to write and polish the story but at many places, it feels like there were last minute edits as the story didn’t flow smoothly.

[TaleraRistain]

That's what really makes me scratch my head and think there must have been something more going on here. Hiroi has been around since ARR. Kawasaki and Onozuka have been around since SB and ShB. Hiroi is no Ishikawa, sure, but I've never flat out hated what he wrote before this. Most of these writers have written okay to pretty good content before. So WTF happened?

Hiroi has been credited on some of my favorite side content. But unless the writers had assisted previously on the main story, then they could have inexperience with something of that magnitude. And it does feel like they didn't have the necessary oversight from the more veteran writers.