Thread: 8.0 Selling points

After Dawntrail, I am not expecting much, to be honest. They need to prove themselves again on a storytelling level to me for the MSQ to be interesting once more.

7.4's story needs to basically start setting up 8.0 for a scenario where we're whisked far, far away from this boring setting and these stale people that bad writing has poisoned us with for years. Even outside of Tural, the rest of Eorzea just feels stale by virtue of us being in it for so damn long. A change of scenery, with a party that's actually comprised of interesting characters we haven't already gotten to know for a decade+, and a return to the sense of adventure and unknown. Remember the ARR opening video, where it shows the characters emerging from the woods after the Bahamut explosion and they see lush green fields with chocobos running around and this vast horizon? That grand sense of exploration, of adventure, that's what they need to promise people with 8.0's msq. Nobody gives a shit about the new continent because the writing did it so dirty that just being there reminds one of the endless fetch quests and the story slog they had to endure. That's another thing. In the next 8.0 main scenario storyline, cut down on the chores. Holy crap. It was so predictable and bland after a while. Every town has you just talk to 3 guys, pick up 3 objects, etc. And so much of the story was just told to us via exposition, i.e. some character would just tell us what happened instead of us getting to learn about something organically by playing the game, or experience it through gameplay/the echo like we used to. Remember the train? You go around building it by collecting piece of crap off the ground and talking to 3 npcs, but when it's time to finally pilot it, it's a damn cutscene. not even a qte in there, you just watch. that's dt in a nutshell. boring as hell. missed opportunities everywhere. but i digress.

idc about new jobs. they will just play like the old jobs. and i dont think they will change the gameplay loop in pve, because we hoped for that in dt and basically got endwalker 2.0. i fully expect jobs to be made even simpler. bard will probably lose all its dots. ast will probably lose its cards entirely because let's be real, with how "fixed" its buffs rotate rn it might as well have lost them. nin will probably lose the ability to screw up mudras. tanks will enter content unable to turn off their stance. but people will still be able to queue up without their job stone. you know.

the only thing i have faith in their ability to do well is bring back the good writers and tell a compelling story. i don't believe in them for anything else.

A compelling cinematic for a start.

I'm not in the 'Dawntrail was crap' camp. I don't think it was as good as what came before it, but I don't feel it was the catastrophic insult to gaming that some seem to view it as.

But I will say this: the cinematic was..... lacking. I realise it would've been difficult as they were, basically, starting with a clean slate - however, the cinematic, for me, didn't generate the necessary hype or anticipation. And to be fair, the Endwalker trailer didn't exactly lean heavily on what came before and manage to not give very much away in terms of what was to come.

I mean, I can still watch the Shadowbringers and Endwalker cinematics and get chills - hell, I'll admit, the Endwalker one still makes me emotional..... but Dawntrail's just didn't really trigger any strong emotions one way or another.

2 new DPS jobs!

A 150-quest 10-level MSQ bracket!

Another Island Expedition copy!

Housing Mirage is coming! (not this patch, but next patch. trust)

$60 worth of Mog Station outfits!

Hildibrand exists!

More of the same but slightly different, and some promises of major shakeups 12-16 months after launch that will be as noticeable as 7.2's "improved encounter design".

I'll play the game and gauge for myself.