What is DT story missing the most?

[LisseyCrowe]

The setting, which I guess means the writing in general. I still cannot buy that Dawntrail happens in the same universe as the rest of FF14, or why we're here. It's a country with a king and everyone is happy, and now help them crown their next ruler. We're not given any true information of how these people live, how they've come together, why they've come together, how they're governed, etc. Gulool Ja Ja went on his own WoL-level journey 80 something years ago(?) and everything's been groovy since then. Except when it hasn't, but we'll just gloss over those moments for shock value when needed and go back to happy-go-lucky asap. We're not here for adventure, we're here to play kingmaker on an guided tour challenge who's own organizer tells us has no plan to honour it if need be. Everyone but the bad people are good, and even those are actually good, we just need to teach them a lesson.

I know Endwalker gets some flak, and even if it's deserved, it ultimately still felt like FF14's world, just with both it's strength and weaknesses dialed up to 11. Dawntrail looked at a setting of different countries learning to trust, accept and work with one another and the often difficult path to get there, all propped up by shadowy organizations and antagonists that play into that and said "What if we just did a shonen story instead? Take a kid who wants to become X and give them dumb simple villains to beat up along the way".

[Kaurhz]

I'm just gonna be blunt.

What it's missing the most is direction and purpose. Like the list of issues and what it is missing or what it needs is really too long that it's difficult for me to say anything else outside of direction and purpose.