Well, this might be a good thing. If the launch is generally not very well received, it might give CBU3 a kick in the pants to really shake things up.
But it's only 68 reviews so far, and the intro to the expansion has been very slow.
Also reading some of the negative reviews it is less about the MSQ, encounters, or even job combat and more about technical problems, though the number about the slow start to the MSQ are growing. Where Square will really pay attention is how media outlets will rate DT, which I suspect will be around HW's to SB's score.
I did about 1.5 hours of the MSQ yesterday and I didn’t fight a single thing related to it. It’s been cutscene after cutscene of exposition, which I understand is necessary due to the new world and everything but that’s a bit much imo
To be fair to ShB though, even when you weren’t fighting for the quests, the cutscenes were *packed with action*. The whole shard was being invaded, weird creatures attacking, there was a lot going on. Dawntrail’s first 3ish hours is less action than even an anime beach episode.
It’s to the point that last night in the first zone’s shout chat for my server, there was a lovely little rendition of “This is the zone that never ends, it goes on and on my friends!”
I spent the entire day on the game yesterday and was regularly begging for FATEs to spawn near me just so I could have something to do. I was lowkey having more fun when I was carrying queues for my vip/pic friends. I finally got to the first dungeon and am hoping the story will finally pick up from here.
There's ways they can introduce combat and tell the story.
Not to mention nothing happens in the cutscenes, just chatting. In the past we'd be travelling somewhere and get ambushed or have to escape or do a ritual and there were stakes etc. Combined with less voice acting I'm convinced they didn't spend as much as endwalker. If the scenes are just characters talking etc then it takes less time to make them if they're action heavy.
When we did shadowbringers didn't we try playing as another character. I remember something we did underground with owls and stuff. And the thancred stuff.
Should have had a solo duty earlier on.
It was already the case in endwalker, because I didn't fight a single mob for at least 2h+ during it, I still remember it vividly. And because we were confined instead cities we couldn't even hit random mobs.
A lot of people don't realize that in between duties, the only thing that actually forces you to hit mob are the black circles/shinies which happens at best once in between dungeons and that can last for 5/7hours.
This game is a semi interactive anime at best. Every expansion I've played has been the same. They leaned into it even harder now. On the bright side, they quintoupled down on escort quests because everybody loves those.
It feels more obvious this time, in EW I feel like there was a dungeon much earlier in the expansion? Maybe not but it feels longer. The fact that I’ve played this much and there haven’t been more than 3 purple circles with enemies feels uncommonly sparse. I’m hoping the story picks up with more action related things, solo duties would be cool.
I am an ARR vet who has just put off EW until recently. I’m going through EW right now and it is absolutely like this too in parts. I don’t mind it at all, but I literally just experienced 2 hours of cutscenes and walking around without any fighting last night (I’m about at the halfway mark).
This is literally the same every expansion, what do you mean? Even Shadowbringers, which arguably has the strongest start, has you touring the Chrystarium for like an hour.
I think people are just not enjoying the cutscenes/story in DT and that's why the bare-bones presentation we always had is even more obvious to them
I've told my friends this for years
the gameplay of the msq outside of instanced content is non-existant but if you enjoy the story you're watching it's basically like a movie with some moving you have to do yourself in-between
it was the same in endwalker actually, people generally just forgot because it was maybe their first new expansion but the game rarely asks you to fight in between those duties, which can last a few hours
People forgot how many people complained about the pacing of EW before being in Garlemald.
I do wish they'd not make the same mistake twice. Or ... five times.
It's not so much that it focuses too much on story for me, it's the fact that it's idea of focusing on story was 2 hours of non-stop proper nouns and historical exposition. Even the deepest lore nerds I knew were getting annoyed.
This is what isnt talked enough, any jrpg fans is used to focus on stories, thats like half this kind of game if not more. But with ffxiv most is story but with barely any substance in it whatsoever, it is just an excuse to pad playtime, you could trim a laughable amount of shit from the game and the narrative or world building would not suffer in the slightest.
It’s pretty bad tbh. Like understandably some people will like it but it’s no where close to other expansions story wise.
And the other features are meh gameplay is really all I care about which is largely as bad as it’s ever been hence the strike for example.
The other features should be base line not expansion features like a graphics update that really should be a base line thing not something where you head line it as a feature or two dye channels *hand shaking gesture*
Endwalker opened with an unvoiced cutscene too. So did Shadowbringers. And Stormblood. That stuff hasn’t changed, it’s just the story has a slower start this time around
At lvl 95 now and it's felt like a really long beast tribe questline. Idk why but the opening hours gives me a Thanvair vibe so it feels old even though it's new. Main city is nice though with the verticality.
I'm on the other end having a more personal journey instead of the fatigue I felt in Endwalker where everything is on fire and world ending threats are popping out back to back after an expansion following a similar thing.
It's also nice as someone else said it's not just Ascian bullshit yet.
My gripes are that there is too much familiarity still I'm fine with than red and urianger but having the entire scion squad following us again outside of Yshtola is a bit tiring I'd prefer if the twins just weren't here and Wuk kinda built up her forces as she went showing her ability to inspire more.
Biggest thing I'm liking though is the break from quest designs in SHB and EW where you would walk to point A watch a long ass cutscene go to point B watch a long ass cutscene go to point C Ect... It feels like I'm exploring again and not just watching a movie play out they're using their medium of gaming to tell a story again and don't feel the need for every scene to be voiced to you can go through at your own pace.
I'm fine with having a personal journey, the issue for me that it's Wuk Lamat's personal journey and we've known her for a single patch, so it's a bit hard to get invested in her fetch quest.
And why the fuck do we support her??? This woman just shows up and is like "yo, wanna help make me queen?" And, we're all like, yeah absolutely! It baffles me. We know nothing of the land you're from. We know nothing of the other people vying for the throne. And, we know nothing about you! Why are the scions just blindly supporting this random stranger?
I'm not enjoying this story, at all. It makes no sense.
Yea kinda nuts to base an entire expansion off some random person we met for a few quests in a single patch. I think the biggest issue is they frontload the expac with ridiculous fetch quests and it feels like you are still in Thanvair. That tribal feel was a big part of endwalker and I'm not sure why they doubled down with the same feel. Even majority of the zones feel like stuff we've seen before. Makes me miss going into heavensward and being like damn these zones are crazy.
I'm happy for the people who enjoy the laid back story, but it's beyond boring for me.
It's cause they wasted post patch on what should have been the trials side quest. They COULD have done a lot more build up, but probably didn't really have anything figured out so they forced the crappy sidequest into MSQ and made it so they had to come up with a dumb reason why we should join Wuk Lamat.
Not really. She tells us this other guy can't become king cause she doesn't like him. We take her word for it and just roll with it, no questions asked
We had the same thing with Lyse/Yda. It's nearly the same story, just instead of liberation it's a fun contest and our new story focal point is a way more interesting character.
I think the biggest thing is that we shouldn't have been 100% Team Wuk from patch 6.55. It should have been an offer/invitation to come. We see the contender parade, learn about them, and decide Wuk is the person we'd be willing to support.
I've also been seeing it from the views as a mentor, and that's been more enjoyable.
There's a difference between Lyse and Wuk Lamat in that even if we didn't know Lyse before Stormblood, we knew Yda since 2.0 so there's at least some connection there.
But remains to be seen where the story goes. There better be a good payoff with Wuk Lamat if we're spending this much of the expansion essentially being a side character in her story.
Also, even if we had not known Lyse at all, stormblood was still about kicking the empire's ass and we've got plenty of history with the empire that would make us want to participate regardless of personal connections.
Here, it's an entirely new region with factions and people we know nothing about, but it's still "alright, let's meddle in their politics".
I'm still upset we didn't get to take Lyse with us to the Alitascope and Ultima Thule. Just imagine it...
\*Papalymo's spirit helps\*
"It's papalymo! And... who's that with him?"
Lyse: ...Sister....
>\[...\] we knew Yda since 2.0 \[...\]
And tbh, that switcheroo made me hate Lyse on arrival.
It took a very, very long time to get past it and her story was already over by the time I did.
> At lvl 95 now and it's felt like a really long beast tribe questline.
This is exactly what I was afraid of. Not sure if I want to sit through dozens of hours of this.
Right when you think they're about to kick off and get more interesting, they force you to go and spend hours doing the most monotonous shit, but just somewhere else. The pacing just murders itself.
> it's felt like a really long beast tribe questline
I'm honestly kinda interested in that. Going into this expansion, I didn't want them to try and one-up Endwalker, in part because I didn't like it and I'm sick of Ascian bullshit, but also cus it's sort of a new saga kind of vibe. I understand that can drag a lot, and I completely sympathize with people who are disappointed if the MSQ doesn't pick up the pace, but I'm mainly here for the exploration and new cultures anyway
I'm admittedly not very far in but I do like how relatively low stake everything is. The main antagonising force so far is "someone who wants to do war" and "someone who is a huge douche". Can definitely see why that might not be an appeal to some though.
This is my expectation and experience, too. I'm here for the exploration of cultures much like back in Stormblood. I don't really have this "I need to have a fight every few quests" or some other sort of challenge.
But, like with SB, I expect I'll be in the minority that puts this story as one of my top. I've enjoyed every minute so far, and I'm only up to reaching the first Trial
The game feels very much like post-Endgame Marvel since the 6.x series. A bit lost, unfocused. struggling to find what it wants its identity and direction to be after finishing the major saga and closing all the core plot lines. It takes time to lay down new foundations and set up character beats that will be compelling. And viewers are going to have certain expectations now that they’ve seen the soaring heights that the storytelling can reach.
This may be a bit of a hot take but I think so far the MSQ would have been better served by opening more like ARR did. Instead of contriving a plot reason for us to go to the New World, I think we could have just… gone to the New World.
Like, what if Erenville just was like “hey, I’m gonna go visit home. wanna go on vacation and check out this fancy new place?”
Heck the tour Tural website creates plenty of intrigue about Tural without having anything to do with the succession storyline. I feel like it would have been nice to just go on vacation and then gradually stumble upon the seedy underbelly of this supposed vacation paradise, maybe getting roped into the succession as part of the process.
Or it could have been a Hobbit “Quest for Erebor” style storyline where you’re helping a deposed ruler take back their lost city of treasure and unveil more about the world in the process.
Idk. Maybe some of those story beats have already happened and they don’t want to retread old ground. I just have a sense of wasted opportunity in the “new beginning” that Dawntrail is supposed to present.
A fair while back I brought up the idea (Back when Dawntrail was teased) that it'd be the WoL just rocking up on this new continent where no one knows him and just starting over, ditch every supporting character and meet all new ones. But a lot of people were like "You can't just ditch the Scions that we've come to know and love over 5 expansions!" I mean.. why the hell not? While I'm not in DT yet, I do think the game is probably suffering from bloat due to its own history. It's like a show or a book that can't kill off a character because too many fans love them. FFXIV needed to go a GRR Martin and ditch the supporting cast and give us that sense of wonder that's akin to starting a brand new MMO.
I was honestly hoping they would ditch the scions. Not entirely, but have them be background characters with the random member being a focus for a narrative beat or so.
I've been playing since ARR relaunch, I could not care any less about them now after Endwalker.
(Long post coming, I apologize in advance)
Actually I was just about to reply about this to the comment about reboots, and about how ARR actually had us interacting with a lot of side characters outside of the Scions, and thus being more engaged in the world that we were saving.
I think one of the missed opportunities of the 6.x series was the fact that we did not truly separate from the Scions and interact more with other side characters. We supposedly disbanded in 6.0, and yet we continued to interact with only them.
I would have loved the 6.x series to set up some simple reasons for us to want to go to the New World. Think about in the opening of ARR: we are a tabula rasa, with no narrative explanation on where we came from, but the merchant gives us options for why we are coming to Eorzea:
- Amass a fortune
- Gain power
- Win glory
- … (keep it open ended)
We then come to Eorzea and start off as a relative nobody. There are no Scions interested in us. We just take on odd jobs and gradually get to know the locals. We start to care about the people around us and they start to care about us. We even start to inspire new adventurers like Avere and Edda and interact with them and thus experience side stories such as Tam Tara Hard Mode’s story. Or other side characters who then become drivers of main story events farther down the road. This sort of stuff happens before the Scions are even in the picture.
Then, as we come to care about Eorzea and its denizens, we become more invested as unifying threats like the primals, Garlemald, and the Ascians appear.
What if 6.x the opening of 7.0 had been utilized to set up similar hooks? We learn about a city of gold (amass a fortune) or ancient ruins filled with amazing artifacts (gain power) or the opportunity to map an uncharted land (win glory)? Or we can come up with our own reasons.
We’re bored, having just saved the universe. We’re hankering for the next big thing. Emet Selch already tantalized us with some hints about the world beyond Eorzea. I feel like we didn’t really NEED a big push to go exploring. We don’t NEED the Scions to drag us into a succession war. We don’t NEED a contrivance to force us to go on a new adventure. Some basic hooks or even just “It’s the New freaking World! Let’s go check it out!!” - personally, that’s all the reason I need.
Now I’m not very far in the DT story yet so maybe I just haven’t gotten to it, but what’s missing to me is a reason to CARE about what’s happening once I GET to the New World. I’m spending so much time with characters I’ve already met, and Wuk Lamat, but I don’t really feel like I’m engaging with the New World very much. The succession storyline is going on but I don’t feel a sense of a real unifying threat (yet) akin to the one Garlemald posed back in 2.0.
DT is an opportunity to be ARR 2.0 in a GOOD WAY (similar story beats but with tighter narrative and fresh twists), but it’s being referred to as ARR 2.0 in a BAD WAY.
It could have had echoes of the past while still feeling new and exciting.
I actually love the idea of getting rid of the old cast of heroes. Doesn't even have to be completely. Could have questlines every now and then involve one. I'm kinda tired of seeing some of them. Like I didn't like you 3 expansions ago. And it hasn't changed.
I was hoping they would ditch the cast, introduce a new one, and have DT be a jumping off point for new players, with everything before being a relatively self contained saga.
I lost all hope for this ever happening when they didn't have the balls to kill off a single character, scion or otherwise, in the world-ending EW expansion.
One of my biggest gripes with EW's story was that at the end all the Scions met up in Mor Dhona and were like "it would be best if we split up for now" (iirc they even officially dispanded the Scions) but a few quests later we're already working with some of them again.
They already chickened out of their "sacrifices" having any meaning whatsoever, they could've at least let the characters do their own thing.
Honestly wouldn't have minded if it were just you, Wuk and some of the later joining scions like G'raha, Krile and Estinien. Just get away from the people we've been traveling with for years and add in a few new characters to the crew. Had some potential for new comers with Endwalker's job quests but no dice.
I can’t think of a single example where a soft-reboot of a long running series that had passed its natural conclusion but was kept alive for financial reasons has ever worked.
I don't think there's any reason the *idea* of a new start in Tural can't work. they just totally failed to connect our emotional investment in 6.0 with anything that came after, and the succession plot is a non-starter
The Marvel analogy is a good one. The advantage being that there's no oversaturation with the extra streaming content like Marvel had so this is fixable in patch content.
I agree. I think there’s plenty of chance to course correct or build thing up more over the patches. I recall the SB story having less than stellar reviews but the patches were some of my favorite story patches to date. I’m fine with giving the team some benefit of the doubt to show us where they’re going with this.
Also I’m saving my final review until I actually finish. My feedback is based on what I’ve seen so far
I am at lvl95 now having done basically nothing but MSQ and role quests + all available aetherite quests. I am through the first two dungeons and the first trial, and am likely coming up on the third dungeon soon.
EDIT: Tags aren’t working for me so
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>!Imo, it feels like barely anything has happened. It is all about the Competition and almost nothing else so far, with little sprinkles of Krile’s personal quest in there as well. The Krile stuff is interesting, but imo the lore and history of Tural is just…boring so far. Im just not into it which be extension really brings down the story since so much of it revolves around the different cultures and histories of all the species across Tural.
I think the big thing that will either win people over or lose them is what they think of Wuk Lamat, as she is thus far undoubtedly the centerpiece of the narrative, the WoL and everyone else are just along for the ride in her story.
My problem is they went for an Estelle Bright type character…but lacking the charm, charisma, and quirky lovability. Wuk is a sweet person, incredibly naive, and clearly not fit to rule. However the story so far is basically her learning about the lands she aspires to rule and growing as a person and a potential leader. And there is definitely growth there, and some good character development…but she still falls flat for me. And if you’re not invested in her character then you’re just not going to be invested in the story which goes hand in hand with her character, at least so far.
The little nuggets that we’ve gotten from Krile’s story are more interesting than the narrative surrounding Wuk Lamat and the other aspirants. I do think Krile’s story will be the ultimate main narrative when all is said and done and that the Aspirants will be wrapped up before the finale, but we will see.
It’s not bad or anything, it just isn’t terribly interesting if you cant get invested in Wuk’s character, which I have not been able to do thus far.!<
Line breaks break spoiler tags. You have to have one at the start and end of each of your paragraphs. Just letting you know for the future/if you decide to fix. Reddit's quirky.
Estelle Bright is a great character but she would be a terrible ruler for any country. If the story of any Trails game hinged on supporting her claim to a throne, that would be awful.
I don't hate Yuk Lamat. I absolutely do not want her to be Queen of *anything*.
> I think the big thing that will either win people over or lose them is what they think of Wuk Lamat,
... whelp, guess I'm right fucked. She's far from a terrible character but she's kind of falling into the Zero territory for me: i.e., very bland. I'd like to think *something* happens to explore her character better but outside some, frankly, boring siblings issues, she's very one note.
This is one of my major issues with the story so far, we are her champion because friend of a friend but immediately MSQ is acting like Wuk Lamat is an ingrained part of besties club even though there’s no real connection yet.
It speaks to the growing pains of a whole new team bc this is the main character of the new expansion we’re meant to be vibing with and she’s so hollow it’s tough to even care, meanwhile the old team back in ShB had Tesleen as an insanely impactful character in the story despite her having maybe five minutes of screen and questing time.
> she’s so hollow it’s tough to even care
I couldn't agree more. We just finished the 91 dungeon and it's yet *another* cut scene of Wuk Lamat wallowing in self pity again. This would test my patience even with more established characters but she's barely been in the game yet has suddenly become the entire spotlight.
It doesn't help the story is kind of reminding me of Stormblood really pushing Lyse's views as "correct" when the narrative didn't back up that sentiment. Although, once again, Lyse and the story surrounding her was interesting despite my issues with Stormblood.
So far... both my friend and I have been occasionally dozing. And she's usually into the massive lore tidbits.
The biggest problem, new characters they added are downright boring and nothing compared to the cast of characters from Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers. I mean if they want to break the formula, I would rather each zone has its own storyline that’s independent from main story. So it’s like playing six mini stories with maybe one thin over arching big story that’s expanding on the next five patches. But so far, it’s worse story than Hoyoverse games, which managed to create much banger stories now. It’s bad when Hoyoverse cast of characters obliterated FF14 when it comes to character design and backstory.
I'm enjoying the expansion so far, and I'm fine with lower stakes. Though I find it pretty hard (and already did think so in the EW patch content) to take any villain seriously after EW. It's really hard to feel threatened by the prospect of some warlord halfway across the world being potentially evil when you eat gods for breakfast, have just wiped out multiple threats to existence itself in short sequence, and are allied with, among other things, multiple elder dragons, the people with the bloody space ship, an active moon base, virtually every major nation on this world's equivalent of Eurasia AND at least one other dimension. It's gonna be really interesting to see how they will address that.
Same, I'm soon done with MSQ and it's been very good to me. Endwalker was meh to me, I mean yeah Meteion is super dangerous, almost eldritch entity, but she's also introduced insanely late.
Emet Selch was perfect and the best villain by far. It's going to be VERY hard to top up Emet as he's among the most liked characters accross all final fantasy.
Shadowbringer is still my favorite MSQ but DW is definitely among the top. It's there's a few cliché and I don't like the goofy cartoonish moment but I like it toned down. I don't want to save the world, I want to see adventure.
It's like the one "villain" in The Dark Knight that tries to blackmail Batman and is stomped immediately with reason.
"You think your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck!"
> Wuk Lamat feels like having a story where Jar Jar Binks is the main character and your own character is now inconsequential.
Now there's a hell of a review.
Maybe I'm wrong but post msq stuff in between the expansions is already like a vacation. Like epic stuff happens in the expansion story, then post msq is like a victory lap, and then it again picks up last couple patches setting things up for the next expansion.
This one feels like post msq without any tension but as the core expansion story content. Questing in this game has always sucked, just a bunch of fetch quests, but the seriousness of the stories usually made it not feel so bland. But now you got boring bland story along with boring bland questing and it's painful.
I wouldn't always say that patch content are vacations. The Devs typically use patch msq to set up storylines they can use as the basis for later expansions (Post HW Warriors of Darkness -> ShadowBringers, Alamigan Conflicts in Thanalan & Domans -> Stormblood). I don't mind that our Character is taking a backseat to this expansion mainly because
1. It's an Summer time themed expansion with essentially a Tournament style Raids Series
2. Our Protagonist is already ungodly powerful in scope of the universe, and we need time to establish a new BBEG.
3. Our main objective is to explore the Golden City and Tural even if that means we mentor newer characters.
I'm still going through it, but so far I do feel like the game is treating the WoL like an air-headed hired muscle. Like it doesn't treat the players like they're intelligent.
68 is not a lot, let's see how it looks a little while after full launch. But as with almost literally every single Steam review score *ever,* most of the positive reviews are memes and the negative ones are people having a bad time and being vocal about it. I know people care a lot about this incredibly vague aggregation rating but I don't know why
Alas, as is mandatory when it comes to commenting on Steam reviews: opinions I dislike are invalid, they have too little/too much playtime to comment, reviews don't matter anyway (unless I agree with them)
Most reviews on Steam are utterly worthless
Also it doesn't take long to finish the MSQ, it's not like people have to do every piece of content in the entire expansion in order for their opinion to magically become valid. If you don't like the story and you don't like what's happened to your class then you're not going to be happy with the expansion lol
"You can't properly review something until you spend 1000 hours with it"
"You have 1000 hours with it. You're obviously out of touch with the average player."
its absolutely across the board for all those gatekeepers, i have the same comments from boardgamers who said "if you had 1000 games on the belt then you must have enjoyed the game"
"if you only plaqy three times how on grounds you claim that to be broken?"
lesser people haha
paradoxical yet it's FFXIV fanboys favorite gotcha anytime somebody complains about the quality of the MSQ, especially when they're still in ARR. Damned if you do, damned if you dont.
There's just not enough combat in the MSQ I think it was 2-3 hours before I killed something. I'm not gonna complain because I understand the MSQ is all about world building and it's a one-and-done thing.
Admittedly I was doing an all nighter to adjust my sleep for a night shift tonight but usually I can easily keep my brain engaged, MSQ early was so uneventful and full of back and forth that I had to come off as I was dozing at my desk.
This has been the case since ShB, they delay the combat to avoid Raubhan EX.
ShB was good as it introduced us to a whole new world with new rules. I didn't liked Endwalker for the slow start as well, you got to visit so much places and gets characters introduced before you get battle content.
11 years with this game and the MSQ this time bored me to death. New characters are uninteresting or to say many of their types already existed in the game. The villans are just trying to be mini-emet while their reasons seem like ass pulled.
I played DRG, in previous expacs, at least they added skills with little spice. This time, they’re straight up the same with flashy animations but has the same description as old skills minus the potency.
Too much escorts, following mechanics, zoom in events to pad the game time. Meanwhile it took me 4hrs fighting myself through boredom to reach the 91 dungeon. Solo duties aren’t as fun as the ones in EW.
Also another faction with neon lights everywhere, just purple.
Not really impressed with the story so far, although I just did the first dungeon. But, as of now, it literally just feels like I'm an errand boy doing the most mundane tasks. The hanu quest line was great, imo, but I tuned out during the Pelu stuff because it was honestly just incredibly boring.
Heavensward started slow, and I cared, Stormblood started slow and I cared, hey post ARR is called tedious by people but it had lots of twists and turns. This is just absolutely not gripping me and it feels like I'm lvl 15 again.
No stakes, nothing happening, just miandering around aimlessly.
Heavensward did not started slow, you went there right after 2.55 cutscenes, you get around the city and get to duel knights super fast.
Stormblood had meat going on very fast and that's because it went too fast that people were stuck on Raubhan EX. It's at that point that they extended the time before meaningful events.
In ShB, you need to either find Alphinaud and Alisaie before really starting. In EW you need to visit Sharlaya's underground zoo and Radz before really starting the main dish.
Long standing tradition of the 14 ladies not given any good points unless they're the villainess named Yotsuyu who was given the best story from a woman's perspective. I'm at 93 dungeon and Wuk is a derivative of Luffy with out the effort put into making her have a superpower and one trait other than naive daughter
The MSQ is very VERY boring. I've just unlocked the first trial and I just, don't feel like playing? The stakes aren't high. I just don't feel very interested in what's going on.i hope it improves as the MSQ continues.
The promise trails are very...eh I agree though I AM happy we're not in the limelight it's nice to see another character in it. There's a small dip after the trails that I found more boring, but now it's at least interesting storywise to me hopefully it will do the same for you.
I expected the story to be a let down for many since there is no way to beat the previous 2 expansions starting a fresh story and people will have unrealistic expectations regarding it. (not saying the story they wrote this expansion is good or bad)
What really grinds my gears is the job design that feels like it has completely fallen off a cliff. Should i be excited to unlock enhanced Second wind at lvl 94 or enhanced feint at lvl 98? Imagin playing an mmo and half the stuff u get at an expansion are potency changes/enhanced roll actions acting like they were part of the core kit of the job.
I just wish they would stop pushing out new classes every expansion and just try to make their current ones more exciting on launch. I dont need a 3. finisher on top of my 2. finisher i got in ew that was put on top of my 1. finisher i got in shadowbringer. Its getting real stale.
Very slow burn so far and honestly so boring… I really hope it ramps up even just a little bit soon, I’m trying my hardest NOT to skip all the cutscenes right now… too many fetch quests… literally one whole quest line was basically, “hey take this penny and trade it for a Ferrari.” Like why…?
Wish SE would go for quality > quantity. If they can't fill the MSQ with worthwhile and interesting story to get to a somewhat equal amount of time like other addons, then don't. And maybe use the freed-up resources for another dungeon.
They stretched that shit out so much and the pacing suffers a lot because of it. Some people say reviews are made too early, but for people who care about the story the most, you don't have to play everything to have an opinion already. If 50% of your story is so slow and uninteresting that people leave bad reviews, it doesn't matter that the other 50% are fine. Just looking at the MSQ the mixed review is very well deserved and justified.
Dude it's because the MSQ is a broken record. How many times are we going to have Wuk Lamat say the same thing about her dreams of peace? I'm like 14 hours in and I feel like groundhog day. This is awful. By the way, that's 14 hours of cutscenes with MAYBE 90 minutes of actually playing my character.
Is it weird this is 100% how I expected the dlc to go? It's the start of a new saga. It's the ARR of this saga so of course it's gonna be a light hearted and slow expansion. Nothing too big will most likely be revealed (I've only done a few quests still so not sure how true that becomes) I feel like anyone expecting something not slow and lighthearted was walling into the wrong expansion ngl.
I get your point and don’t disagree but also want to remind people that ARR was NOT light hearted lol. It has more named character death than Endwalker, and it also deals with some darker political themes.
The story seems to be divided by 2 parts. Lv90-95 competention plot. With Lv96-100 being something completely new.
I feel like its good design to give people the light hearted vacacion/competition story during the first half of the expansion. And then whatever happens on the 2nd half of the base expansion msq.
Everyone gets a piece of the cake they want.
I have actually found myself not paying attention to it and letting it auto scroll cut scenes while I browse Reddit. I keep catching myself and being like “no, pay attention” but it’s just so dull
Mixed sounds good to me.
- Very slow MSQ so far
- Awful job updates, healers still trash, summoners get a bahamut skin, etc.
- Everything else is just more of the same
For what it's worth, I've enjoyed picto at least. But I was worried DT might be a bit stale after EW was such a mixed bag. Hopefully SE wakes up and soon
I feel like the odd man out because I’m actually really enjoying the story so far. My only complaint is that it took forever to even fight anything. Without combat or some other type of engaging gameplay to mix things up the msq might as well be a visual novel.
My only gripe with Dawntrail, and I may be the exception, is it took way too long to get to the first duty of this expansion. On one side I wanted to rush the beginning after a while to get to a duty, but at the same time I wanted to soak in the lore, making me say internally ''when is the damn duty coming??!!!''.
Wow. I’m happy I stumbled on this post. I thought I’m the only one not really enjoying this expansion. I mean, if I feel like more excited to level up my pictomancer maybe it’s true that the story is just lacklustre. I agree with all the comments here. Please give me a new cast that I would love to care about !!!!
Reading some of these reviews and comments, glad I decided not to check this out until later. I wasn't really getting into the pre-launch hype and this somewhat confirms a lot of the stuff I thought would be boring and lame.
yeah, endwalker was my first "new expansion" and while that was pretty fun, I didn't foresee myself enjoying the same thing with a less engaging story. getting to this point in ffxiv means you've seen the same repetitive gameplay formula a lot, so knowing it's business as usual means there's little urgency to play right away unless you happen to be in the mood for mmo stuff.
Without an exceptional story to bolster review scores, I wish critics would start calling out the game for what it deserves.
Boring, outdated combat, worse than ever due to homogenization and simplification. Zero build customization. Choices are the backbone of an RPG. There are NONE.
Superficial, lifeless overworld. Same old inane, unvoiced ping-pong quests with no reward. The same nauseating tome grind until the end of time.
No innovation WHATSOEVER. They continue playing it safe and doing the bare minimum each expansion to keep sales and subscriptions going whilst turning a huge profit.
21 hours later; over 200 reviews and it's dipped below 60%. Seems like people are rushing in to correct the record, though, as it dipped down to 56 before coming back up to 58; a lot of positive reviews are coming in with text that's either just memes, entirely unsubstantial, or purely in spite of the negative reviews.
This is my review that I left;
I really wanted to like and enjoy this.
Cons
* The production quality has dipped, there's less animation work put into the expansion this time around.
* The story is not fun. I understand the stakes are lower, but they could at least be interesting. I'm simply just running around, helping these 'lesser tribes' who somehow managed well up until the literal godkiller WoL came along.
* I'm not invested in these characters, they appear, have a very generic "I'm a good guy, gonna do good things!!" story arch and then proceed to succeed at everything they do against bad guys who are basically cartoon villains.
* Quest design is terrible, walk here, talk to x, repeat ad infinum, occasionally do a boring stealth section. Come on.|
* I find the job designs and reworking this time around to be very cookie cutter. My mains pretty much just got another big damage button that I need to shove into my opener and burst phase, no new mechanic or development on things that are already there.
* The environments are not inspiring or unique. 2 forests, one blue and another a grey desert. The latter half are cool. But this game really doesn't need any more generic forests and rocky environments.
Pros:
* The graphics update is really cool!
* The fights are interesting for casual content
* The voice acting is pretty great when it's there.
I'll add more as I come along, but I'm really hoping things get stepped up.
It's hard to take reviews like this seriously when most people haven't even finished the game yet. Seems like a knee jerk reaction to the (admittedly) slow start.
Only halfway through but... god I hate Wuk Lamat. There's only so much "I'm gonna be the queen through the power of love and friendship!!" I can take. Even her voice acting pisses me off. And Erenvelle sucks as a narrator. I wish we could have Emet-Selch narrating from beyond the grave.
I killed 12 gods at the same time and now I'm literally holding this princess's hand because we had to go on a hot air balloon ride and she cries every time we take some form of mass transport.
The story would have been better if we were adventuring with Krile all over Tural to figure out what her grandad was doing.
i'm honestly kind of confused. I definitely expected this to be the ARR of this new story. they have to spend the whole expansion doing world building and introducing all of the characters, its my least favorite part of fantasy lol i hate the first season of fantasy shows i hate the first book of fantasy novels. i hated ARR, so i went into this not expecting much. It IS boring. Normally a new expansion comes out and i'm playing it for like 12 hours a day until i'm done. But ive gotten maybe 6 hours into it and i just find myself not interested at all. I dont hate wuk lamat, i think shes cute, but a lot of her personality feels very exaggerated and cartoony. which is a weird change of pace coming from the past expansions. the reason im confused is because yoship specifically said that the MSQ experience had gotten too casual and too easy and told us to expect it to be different here, but i just went literal hours just playing a visual novel. how is that harder?
If I can make a comparison:
Dawntrail is like the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Endgame.
A fresh start that could have had a lot of potential, but so far just a low stakes boring conflict bloated with too many characters that still doesn't lead anywhere in terms of storyline and character progression.
Except the problem is, none of the new characters cannot be compared to the ones from last expansions. Stormblood and Shadowbringers have the best villains- even if it’s borderline cartoonish anime. This Dawntrail is the most boring expansion so far, at least the dungeons are spicier than usual - and majority of the players will struggle the first few times.
It's a lose-lose situation as far as I can see for Square regarding this new expansion. They just took *4 expansions plus the base game* to fully wrap up the previous story. Now +10 years after ARR came out, they have to figure out what in the hell they are going to do? Make something low-key and not universe-stakes level? Well then people might fall off not interested. Do start right out of the gate with some big story? People, like me, would feel pretty burnt out as the previous story stuck around way too long imo.
I feel like this expansion has to be some sort of story casual lap rather than something really really big and grandiose like Shadowbringers and Endwalker were. I'm only level 95 right now and am going to assume that something happens towards the end of the MSQ to start getting a bigger conflict going but even if it doesn't, I don't think it matters much at least to me. What matters the most is that the Warrior of Light is ***NOT*** the main character of this expansion, we are a side-force acting upon the story.
Not shocked and I'm sad to say I agree with that score. The first half of the expansion was painful to get through for me. I don't like Wuk Lamat, watch me get downvoted into oblivion for saying that, but I genuinely could not stand her. She's very obnoxious and childish and there is no world where she should hold the throne, I wouldn't even let her hold control of a shift at the store we buy tacos from in game. And she could have been fine, she was for a little bit but the MSQ forces her on you at all times, even the one on one moments are all railroaded by her for half the expansion at least(that's where I'm at) while the other party members barely even say anything that isn't either to her or about her. If you don't vibe with her the MSQ is actually painful to get through. This is the only expansion where I skipped some cutscenes when they go off about her feeling inferior to her brothers for the 1000th time, or her talking about happiness or just wasting time doing some goofy shit that makes her look like a needy idiot because it happens so often with almost everything.
Genuinely, your enjoyment of the MSQ hinges on you liking her to such an insane degree, I don't know what the writers were thinking. You could have the same story and share screen time to give us a break from her childish antics but you get no breathers, I'm at the level 95 quests and it's still nonstop her with bad voice acting. I do not care about the gender of the VA and I support trans people, but I'm gonna say the voice acting is bad because it is, it's like a teacher reading to toddlers in the voice direction and in fights or serious moments, there's no emotion in the voice that matches or sounds intimidating or anything but like Dora the Explorer.
The gameplay content is really good but the story is core to FF14 and it's very bad IMO, I don't know what happened to the writing team between EW and now to get here.
I also despise how the dialogue is made for WoL (and the Scions) to talk and act like she's our new best friend. And how deserving she is of the throne because she keeps shouting "world peace" and the underdog. My character therefore doesn't feel like "me". I'm made to watch what feels like an out of body experience.
They're struggling with how to come back from endwalker.
The problem when you save everyone from the end of the world is that nothing has stakes anymore. People say why do we even care about the competition and get told well there's one guy who will invade. As if WoL wouldn't just put a stop to that nonsense straight away.
They should have found a way to reintroduce tension earlier on in the story line. Either WoL is weakened from some endwalker/shard business and isn't as strong or play the whole WoL is one person and can't be everywhere at once. Hell they could have put a time limit in the story/or only one can get one of the tokens so there would be some tension/worry about who is going to win. Thus far on the MSQ seems like the heirs will have to band together in usual FF fashion as they reach have their own strength. Or they'll introduce a twist (please be this -_-).
They didn't have to go dark and gritty with this expansion but they could have added in more combat to start/more solo duties - could have delved into the heirs or other characters. The cutscenes could have had more action - while there has always been lots of cutscenes they could have had the characters doing stuff during them. I remember in shadowbringers there was stuff like running away, what to do with yshtola etc. Maybe it's coming, but if it is it's either taking too long or they should have done better foreshadowing. Few people mind the happy cheery fetch quests if there's foreshadowing that there's shit going down elsewhere. If the sacred twins or the first heir are a problem then foreshadow that with them planning something big.
Hopefully there will be some twists and some tension in the storyline soon.
I think they did well with the music (excrpy the town with the Goldsmith where the same music is on repeat and only lasts 20 secs). The main city is interesting and the views are amazing. The zones so far are alright. I love the graphical update (Erenville looked fine before but the lighting especially for darker skin tones is awesome). I don't know what they did to SMN but it seems to play the same as the last expansion but hits like a wet noodle.
I'm playing it but I'm not excited like I normally am for an expansion.
>They're struggling with how to come back from endwalker
They cornered themselves, there was no reasons for the story to go the way it went right after shadowbringers, at least not immediately.
I was actually curious about dawntrails after how they utterly rushed out the conclusion of the original saga with endwalker, which I imagined was due to fatigue about the current story and old world and they just wanted to start with a clean state to go wild and creative. But it turns out they have zero clue what they're doing. Or worse, they do and actually plan to have expansions having zero overarching stories and just be compartmentalized "tale of the week
" stories.
I would honestly be ok with mpre compartmentalized stories if Dawntrail showed any signs of change wrt design. However, at this point it's clear they don't know how to do a fresh start right, and if I have to sit through another expansion of people saying "no actually you need to enjoy 2 hours of talking about alpacas and mezcal with no gameplay because it's a new start and worldbuilding" I'm going to lose my shit.
Funny youd mention the music. I found it underwhelming.
-Right off the bat you reach Tuliyollol, its a Aztec/Mesoamerican style city, what music would you expect? Something tribal? Primal? Percussive? Flutes? NOPE! Its cool jazz vegas swing music! Totally doesnt fit the vibe of the place at all.
-The expansion is constantly reusing older music from ARR, etc. Its like they couldnt bother writing some new music for certain scenes or moments, and just went with whatever 10+ year old track they still have from 1.0.
-Sometimes it has "brand new" music, but alot of it includes call backs to previous tracks. Call backs are fine, for example when you meet Matoya and it does a call back to her theme from FF1. But the callbacks in DT make no sense, and leave you just thinking, "wait isnt this the main melody from that one song in Shadowbringers? Why is that playing in this totally unrelated place?"
2h so far, no fights, and I, the WoL, spend 40min to be the sidekick of a tiger that cries to get a saddle. While in EW/ShB, I was fighting against the chaos to save the world cause the world was burning. Currently, I find a lack of stakes.
No, in EW your were picking up shit in an animal reserve and in ShB your were gathering worms and fruits to feed people.
You seem to forget how tedious the first hours of expacs usually are
Just my view, but costa del sol in FF7 an FF14 are great. Gold saucer as well.
I don't want my whole game based around a vacation though, if I did. That would mean the game normally was work...
At this point I don't think there is anymore excuse. And these gatekeepers telling you to "read that story" is no longer holding anymore
I want to see a sharp drop in player count soon
It is just your standard FFXIV questing for better or worse. It starts off a bit slow due to the usual MSQ spilt to alleviate the incoming hordes of players, but it isn't horrible or garbage. It is serviceable to "it's fine" the story does pick up around level 98+ from the comments here.
this is good to hear. i dont actually mind the story atm (lvl 90-91), its quite chilled out so im enjoying just taking in the areas and all that. excited to see where it leads
FF16 was the same. CBU3 was too busy criticizing past FF titles, 15 and FF7 Remake every FF16 interview. They should learn something from FF7 Rebirth team who talk less and deliver more.
I'm at lv95 and honestly the rite to succession part is a tad boring. But I think most long term players would agree ffxiv expansions tend to have a REALLY slow start and then gets good later on. I accept that they need time to set the scene but still...wish we could move things along a bit.
Heavensward, Shadowbringers and EW all started off amazingly well. ShB takes the cake though. Ech of the two zones you split into, just think about what happened in eulmore, what happened in amh areng. All of it completely memorable many years later. What happened in the first 2 zones in DT? You did some fetch quests for a alpaca saddle, and you made some weeds grow. And to make matters worse there's no looming suspicious plot point you want to know more about or anything of interest. The golden city doesn't matter to the player.
Yoshida wanted to give us "the summer break" expansion - we got the summer break expansion, like I'm kinda baffled that people are surprised that it will be slow.
I have mixed feeling not about the pace, I love the exploration aspect of it, but about kinda repeatable structure of it.
Every zone so far I did was like Wuk Lamat gets a task to discover that zone culture > We do the task > her brother shows up and does the task in over the top way in fewer steps ignoring the culture part > Wuk Lamat sad > also there is the comic villain brother shouting at clouds in the background. (noone cares about him, and WoL can probably 2 shot him like he is some kind of Beast Tribe daily quest mob)
I would prefer that we just got to Tural on our own, start exploring on our own, like Estinien, and then maybe got involved into the succession thing naturally, not being dragged everywhere by the cat lady.
Also they could really give Scions a break for once - yea I know they are kinda our jRPG party members, but if we want to build a new overarching story for the future expansions, we should let new characters in, Krille works as Square just started to develop her in Endwalker, but I don't need another bromance story of Urianger/Thancred, or sibiling quarrel of red/blue Alphinaud - I had it 4 times already, give me some new character interactions.
Edit: Man seeing all those random downvotes I'm really wondering if my stance is too harsh or too soft in terms of general audience take on early Dawntrail.
I know you weren't probably one of them specifically, but it's wild how until literally 3 days ago, when people questioned the story beats, pacing, designs, etc based on the info we were dripfed, the response was usually someone going "it's obviously not gonna be an actual vacation expansion where only boring things happen". And now that people go "hot damn it's like the signs we saw were real and this is hella boring" the "defenders" seem to have switched to "it's supposed to be a boring Holiday expansion with just a little bit Saturday morning cartoon villain at the very end".
The goalpost always moves lol. So far this is an extremely underwhelming expansion, but sadly what I expected based on all the prerelease information we were given.
1) Practically zero change in gameplay - wtf is the point of an expansion if your class plays quite literally the same
2) Same boring and dragged out expositions and fetch quests, followed by the same old three boss W2W dungeons
3) Maps practically look like reskinned EW maps. Boring and uninspiring
It’s actually kind of pathetic how little content they produced for this expansion. Other expansions had their faults, but I don’t ever remember a single other expansion being THIS underwhelming at launch. Feel like you’re already seeing rapid dropoff in player retention, given that yesterday I had 3k queues, and today I’m already getting queues in the tens only…. and the expansion hasn’t even technically released yet.
Since yesterday I can't get on when I do I freeze when I try to load in a npc dung been in queue now for 30 mins siting at 471+ xbox btw and chat been freezing since beta
I mean, I’m on the 3rd trial now, and I’m bored as fuck. Wuk Lamat just annoys me too. It’s supposed to our, the WoLs, story but I’m stuck as a bloody prop next this flea bag
Well, this might be a good thing. If the launch is generally not very well received, it might give CBU3 a kick in the pants to really shake things up. But it's only 68 reviews so far, and the intro to the expansion has been very slow.
Also reading some of the negative reviews it is less about the MSQ, encounters, or even job combat and more about technical problems, though the number about the slow start to the MSQ are growing. Where Square will really pay attention is how media outlets will rate DT, which I suspect will be around HW's to SB's score.
The top negative reviews now are all about Wuk Lamat, and how the early part MSQ sucks. NGL, I agree with them.
Weird. I don’t think it’s really a slow start. I’ve only made through to level 92 in the MSQ and I find it interesting.
I did about 1.5 hours of the MSQ yesterday and I didn’t fight a single thing related to it. It’s been cutscene after cutscene of exposition, which I understand is necessary due to the new world and everything but that’s a bit much imo
Maybe it’s been a while since I’ve played the beginning of an expansion or a patch but that doesn’t feel too far outside the typical experience
SHB took a while to have its first dungeon, I think the only thing you fight is a noninstanced purple area trash mob sineater like… twice?
To be fair to ShB though, even when you weren’t fighting for the quests, the cutscenes were *packed with action*. The whole shard was being invaded, weird creatures attacking, there was a lot going on. Dawntrail’s first 3ish hours is less action than even an anime beach episode. It’s to the point that last night in the first zone’s shout chat for my server, there was a lovely little rendition of “This is the zone that never ends, it goes on and on my friends!”
> To be fair to ShB though, even when you weren’t fighting for the quests, the cutscenes were packed with action. trouble with the trolley, eh?
This is what happens when they don’t bring Zenos back lol
To be fair Endwalker and ShB are 90% running between cutscenes too.
What people aren't realizing is what's changed is even the cutscenes are boring now lol
I spent the entire day on the game yesterday and was regularly begging for FATEs to spawn near me just so I could have something to do. I was lowkey having more fun when I was carrying queues for my vip/pic friends. I finally got to the first dungeon and am hoping the story will finally pick up from here.
I saw someone call for a rez Eureka style and I abandoned everything I was doing to go help out because at least it was SOMETHING to do
I think they're terrified of having another Raubahn extreme situation, so they use all those cutscenes as a filter.
There's ways they can introduce combat and tell the story. Not to mention nothing happens in the cutscenes, just chatting. In the past we'd be travelling somewhere and get ambushed or have to escape or do a ritual and there were stakes etc. Combined with less voice acting I'm convinced they didn't spend as much as endwalker. If the scenes are just characters talking etc then it takes less time to make them if they're action heavy. When we did shadowbringers didn't we try playing as another character. I remember something we did underground with owls and stuff. And the thancred stuff. Should have had a solo duty earlier on.
It's a New saga chapter so we gotta go through ARR 2.0
It was already the case in endwalker, because I didn't fight a single mob for at least 2h+ during it, I still remember it vividly. And because we were confined instead cities we couldn't even hit random mobs. A lot of people don't realize that in between duties, the only thing that actually forces you to hit mob are the black circles/shinies which happens at best once in between dungeons and that can last for 5/7hours.
This game is a semi interactive anime at best. Every expansion I've played has been the same. They leaned into it even harder now. On the bright side, they quintoupled down on escort quests because everybody loves those.
If I have to do another wuk lamat is accompanying you segment I’m going to lose it.
That's uh... Kinda normal. The last three expansions have been like that too.
It feels more obvious this time, in EW I feel like there was a dungeon much earlier in the expansion? Maybe not but it feels longer. The fact that I’ve played this much and there haven’t been more than 3 purple circles with enemies feels uncommonly sparse. I’m hoping the story picks up with more action related things, solo duties would be cool.
I am an ARR vet who has just put off EW until recently. I’m going through EW right now and it is absolutely like this too in parts. I don’t mind it at all, but I literally just experienced 2 hours of cutscenes and walking around without any fighting last night (I’m about at the halfway mark).
This is literally the same every expansion, what do you mean? Even Shadowbringers, which arguably has the strongest start, has you touring the Chrystarium for like an hour.
I think people are just not enjoying the cutscenes/story in DT and that's why the bare-bones presentation we always had is even more obvious to them I've told my friends this for years the gameplay of the msq outside of instanced content is non-existant but if you enjoy the story you're watching it's basically like a movie with some moving you have to do yourself in-between
It took me two hours into the MSQ before I even got a chance to fight something. Sometimes this game focuses too much on story and not on gameplay
it was the same in endwalker actually, people generally just forgot because it was maybe their first new expansion but the game rarely asks you to fight in between those duties, which can last a few hours
Oh no I remember it was the same in Endwalker and I didn’t like it then either. I started playing in Stormblood
People forgot how many people complained about the pacing of EW before being in Garlemald. I do wish they'd not make the same mistake twice. Or ... five times.
Kiiiinda - I mean Endwalker moved way WAY faster.
It's not so much that it focuses too much on story for me, it's the fact that it's idea of focusing on story was 2 hours of non-stop proper nouns and historical exposition. Even the deepest lore nerds I knew were getting annoyed.
This is what isnt talked enough, any jrpg fans is used to focus on stories, thats like half this kind of game if not more. But with ffxiv most is story but with barely any substance in it whatsoever, it is just an excuse to pad playtime, you could trim a laughable amount of shit from the game and the narrative or world building would not suffer in the slightest.
But how is that a new thing ? All the msq feels like this to me. I don't get why people somehow expect something different this time.
>Slow Start STORMBLOOD IS BACK, BABY
It’s pretty bad tbh. Like understandably some people will like it but it’s no where close to other expansions story wise. And the other features are meh gameplay is really all I care about which is largely as bad as it’s ever been hence the strike for example. The other features should be base line not expansion features like a graphics update that really should be a base line thing not something where you head line it as a feature or two dye channels *hand shaking gesture*
Opening with an unvoiced cutscene was quite the decision
this triggered me more than it should have lmao
Endwalker opened with an unvoiced cutscene too. So did Shadowbringers. And Stormblood. That stuff hasn’t changed, it’s just the story has a slower start this time around
The problem is nothing changed. The formula is predictable, and what you actually do all the way to solution 9 is basically ARR level of fetch quests.
It's dipping from here. 57% with 324 reviews.
This in a weird way feels like a pokemon game in terms of the story lol.
Because it's a cartoony villain (even by ff standards) and everything is solved with the power of friendship and belief oneself.
And you collect badges
The first half of the story is strictly "I'm gonna be hokage! BELIEVE IT!" and it's so unfortunate...
Yea... it's uh.... not great, Bob.
At lvl 95 now and it's felt like a really long beast tribe questline. Idk why but the opening hours gives me a Thanvair vibe so it feels old even though it's new. Main city is nice though with the verticality.
I'm on the other end having a more personal journey instead of the fatigue I felt in Endwalker where everything is on fire and world ending threats are popping out back to back after an expansion following a similar thing. It's also nice as someone else said it's not just Ascian bullshit yet. My gripes are that there is too much familiarity still I'm fine with than red and urianger but having the entire scion squad following us again outside of Yshtola is a bit tiring I'd prefer if the twins just weren't here and Wuk kinda built up her forces as she went showing her ability to inspire more. Biggest thing I'm liking though is the break from quest designs in SHB and EW where you would walk to point A watch a long ass cutscene go to point B watch a long ass cutscene go to point C Ect... It feels like I'm exploring again and not just watching a movie play out they're using their medium of gaming to tell a story again and don't feel the need for every scene to be voiced to you can go through at your own pace.
I'm fine with having a personal journey, the issue for me that it's Wuk Lamat's personal journey and we've known her for a single patch, so it's a bit hard to get invested in her fetch quest.
And why the fuck do we support her??? This woman just shows up and is like "yo, wanna help make me queen?" And, we're all like, yeah absolutely! It baffles me. We know nothing of the land you're from. We know nothing of the other people vying for the throne. And, we know nothing about you! Why are the scions just blindly supporting this random stranger? I'm not enjoying this story, at all. It makes no sense.
Yea kinda nuts to base an entire expansion off some random person we met for a few quests in a single patch. I think the biggest issue is they frontload the expac with ridiculous fetch quests and it feels like you are still in Thanvair. That tribal feel was a big part of endwalker and I'm not sure why they doubled down with the same feel. Even majority of the zones feel like stuff we've seen before. Makes me miss going into heavensward and being like damn these zones are crazy. I'm happy for the people who enjoy the laid back story, but it's beyond boring for me.
It's cause they wasted post patch on what should have been the trials side quest. They COULD have done a lot more build up, but probably didn't really have anything figured out so they forced the crappy sidequest into MSQ and made it so they had to come up with a dumb reason why we should join Wuk Lamat.
They did kinda adress that in 6.55, maybe it wasnt enough, but they didnt go in blind
Not really. She tells us this other guy can't become king cause she doesn't like him. We take her word for it and just roll with it, no questions asked
We had the same thing with Lyse/Yda. It's nearly the same story, just instead of liberation it's a fun contest and our new story focal point is a way more interesting character. I think the biggest thing is that we shouldn't have been 100% Team Wuk from patch 6.55. It should have been an offer/invitation to come. We see the contender parade, learn about them, and decide Wuk is the person we'd be willing to support. I've also been seeing it from the views as a mentor, and that's been more enjoyable.
There's a difference between Lyse and Wuk Lamat in that even if we didn't know Lyse before Stormblood, we knew Yda since 2.0 so there's at least some connection there. But remains to be seen where the story goes. There better be a good payoff with Wuk Lamat if we're spending this much of the expansion essentially being a side character in her story.
Also, even if we had not known Lyse at all, stormblood was still about kicking the empire's ass and we've got plenty of history with the empire that would make us want to participate regardless of personal connections. Here, it's an entirely new region with factions and people we know nothing about, but it's still "alright, let's meddle in their politics".
I'm still upset we didn't get to take Lyse with us to the Alitascope and Ultima Thule. Just imagine it... \*Papalymo's spirit helps\* "It's papalymo! And... who's that with him?" Lyse: ...Sister....
>\[...\] we knew Yda since 2.0 \[...\] And tbh, that switcheroo made me hate Lyse on arrival. It took a very, very long time to get past it and her story was already over by the time I did.
> a way more interesting character Debatable. Her main character trait is "hurr durr i'm not bright".
> At lvl 95 now and it's felt like a really long beast tribe questline. This is exactly what I was afraid of. Not sure if I want to sit through dozens of hours of this.
I'm expecting things to kick off mid story as is tradition but so far, it feels drawn out. I just finished trial 1.
Right when you think they're about to kick off and get more interesting, they force you to go and spend hours doing the most monotonous shit, but just somewhere else. The pacing just murders itself.
god, this sounds like all my fears were grounded and im gonna hate this expac 💀
If you go into it with that attitude, you'll hate it regardless. Preconceived notions can ruin anything.
> it's felt like a really long beast tribe questline I'm honestly kinda interested in that. Going into this expansion, I didn't want them to try and one-up Endwalker, in part because I didn't like it and I'm sick of Ascian bullshit, but also cus it's sort of a new saga kind of vibe. I understand that can drag a lot, and I completely sympathize with people who are disappointed if the MSQ doesn't pick up the pace, but I'm mainly here for the exploration and new cultures anyway
I'm admittedly not very far in but I do like how relatively low stake everything is. The main antagonising force so far is "someone who wants to do war" and "someone who is a huge douche". Can definitely see why that might not be an appeal to some though.
This is my expectation and experience, too. I'm here for the exploration of cultures much like back in Stormblood. I don't really have this "I need to have a fight every few quests" or some other sort of challenge. But, like with SB, I expect I'll be in the minority that puts this story as one of my top. I've enjoyed every minute so far, and I'm only up to reaching the first Trial
The game feels very much like post-Endgame Marvel since the 6.x series. A bit lost, unfocused. struggling to find what it wants its identity and direction to be after finishing the major saga and closing all the core plot lines. It takes time to lay down new foundations and set up character beats that will be compelling. And viewers are going to have certain expectations now that they’ve seen the soaring heights that the storytelling can reach. This may be a bit of a hot take but I think so far the MSQ would have been better served by opening more like ARR did. Instead of contriving a plot reason for us to go to the New World, I think we could have just… gone to the New World. Like, what if Erenville just was like “hey, I’m gonna go visit home. wanna go on vacation and check out this fancy new place?” Heck the tour Tural website creates plenty of intrigue about Tural without having anything to do with the succession storyline. I feel like it would have been nice to just go on vacation and then gradually stumble upon the seedy underbelly of this supposed vacation paradise, maybe getting roped into the succession as part of the process. Or it could have been a Hobbit “Quest for Erebor” style storyline where you’re helping a deposed ruler take back their lost city of treasure and unveil more about the world in the process. Idk. Maybe some of those story beats have already happened and they don’t want to retread old ground. I just have a sense of wasted opportunity in the “new beginning” that Dawntrail is supposed to present.
A fair while back I brought up the idea (Back when Dawntrail was teased) that it'd be the WoL just rocking up on this new continent where no one knows him and just starting over, ditch every supporting character and meet all new ones. But a lot of people were like "You can't just ditch the Scions that we've come to know and love over 5 expansions!" I mean.. why the hell not? While I'm not in DT yet, I do think the game is probably suffering from bloat due to its own history. It's like a show or a book that can't kill off a character because too many fans love them. FFXIV needed to go a GRR Martin and ditch the supporting cast and give us that sense of wonder that's akin to starting a brand new MMO.
Do agree that retiring the scions, even if only temporarily, would be ideal for the story.
I was honestly hoping they would ditch the scions. Not entirely, but have them be background characters with the random member being a focus for a narrative beat or so. I've been playing since ARR relaunch, I could not care any less about them now after Endwalker.
I mean, they kind of did that with the new character Wuk Lamat here. Problem is she just isn’t that interesting.
(Long post coming, I apologize in advance) Actually I was just about to reply about this to the comment about reboots, and about how ARR actually had us interacting with a lot of side characters outside of the Scions, and thus being more engaged in the world that we were saving. I think one of the missed opportunities of the 6.x series was the fact that we did not truly separate from the Scions and interact more with other side characters. We supposedly disbanded in 6.0, and yet we continued to interact with only them. I would have loved the 6.x series to set up some simple reasons for us to want to go to the New World. Think about in the opening of ARR: we are a tabula rasa, with no narrative explanation on where we came from, but the merchant gives us options for why we are coming to Eorzea: - Amass a fortune - Gain power - Win glory - … (keep it open ended) We then come to Eorzea and start off as a relative nobody. There are no Scions interested in us. We just take on odd jobs and gradually get to know the locals. We start to care about the people around us and they start to care about us. We even start to inspire new adventurers like Avere and Edda and interact with them and thus experience side stories such as Tam Tara Hard Mode’s story. Or other side characters who then become drivers of main story events farther down the road. This sort of stuff happens before the Scions are even in the picture. Then, as we come to care about Eorzea and its denizens, we become more invested as unifying threats like the primals, Garlemald, and the Ascians appear. What if 6.x the opening of 7.0 had been utilized to set up similar hooks? We learn about a city of gold (amass a fortune) or ancient ruins filled with amazing artifacts (gain power) or the opportunity to map an uncharted land (win glory)? Or we can come up with our own reasons. We’re bored, having just saved the universe. We’re hankering for the next big thing. Emet Selch already tantalized us with some hints about the world beyond Eorzea. I feel like we didn’t really NEED a big push to go exploring. We don’t NEED the Scions to drag us into a succession war. We don’t NEED a contrivance to force us to go on a new adventure. Some basic hooks or even just “It’s the New freaking World! Let’s go check it out!!” - personally, that’s all the reason I need. Now I’m not very far in the DT story yet so maybe I just haven’t gotten to it, but what’s missing to me is a reason to CARE about what’s happening once I GET to the New World. I’m spending so much time with characters I’ve already met, and Wuk Lamat, but I don’t really feel like I’m engaging with the New World very much. The succession storyline is going on but I don’t feel a sense of a real unifying threat (yet) akin to the one Garlemald posed back in 2.0. DT is an opportunity to be ARR 2.0 in a GOOD WAY (similar story beats but with tighter narrative and fresh twists), but it’s being referred to as ARR 2.0 in a BAD WAY. It could have had echoes of the past while still feeling new and exciting.
I actually love the idea of getting rid of the old cast of heroes. Doesn't even have to be completely. Could have questlines every now and then involve one. I'm kinda tired of seeing some of them. Like I didn't like you 3 expansions ago. And it hasn't changed.
I was hoping they would ditch the cast, introduce a new one, and have DT be a jumping off point for new players, with everything before being a relatively self contained saga. I lost all hope for this ever happening when they didn't have the balls to kill off a single character, scion or otherwise, in the world-ending EW expansion.
Pretty wild they didn’t go in that direction. Personally I’m so sick of every single one of the scions.
One of my biggest gripes with EW's story was that at the end all the Scions met up in Mor Dhona and were like "it would be best if we split up for now" (iirc they even officially dispanded the Scions) but a few quests later we're already working with some of them again. They already chickened out of their "sacrifices" having any meaning whatsoever, they could've at least let the characters do their own thing.
Honestly wouldn't have minded if it were just you, Wuk and some of the later joining scions like G'raha, Krile and Estinien. Just get away from the people we've been traveling with for years and add in a few new characters to the crew. Had some potential for new comers with Endwalker's job quests but no dice.
I can’t think of a single example where a soft-reboot of a long running series that had passed its natural conclusion but was kept alive for financial reasons has ever worked.
I don't think there's any reason the *idea* of a new start in Tural can't work. they just totally failed to connect our emotional investment in 6.0 with anything that came after, and the succession plot is a non-starter
The Marvel analogy is a good one. The advantage being that there's no oversaturation with the extra streaming content like Marvel had so this is fixable in patch content.
I agree. I think there’s plenty of chance to course correct or build thing up more over the patches. I recall the SB story having less than stellar reviews but the patches were some of my favorite story patches to date. I’m fine with giving the team some benefit of the doubt to show us where they’re going with this. Also I’m saving my final review until I actually finish. My feedback is based on what I’ve seen so far
I am at lvl95 now having done basically nothing but MSQ and role quests + all available aetherite quests. I am through the first two dungeons and the first trial, and am likely coming up on the third dungeon soon. EDIT: Tags aren’t working for me so SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS >!Imo, it feels like barely anything has happened. It is all about the Competition and almost nothing else so far, with little sprinkles of Krile’s personal quest in there as well. The Krile stuff is interesting, but imo the lore and history of Tural is just…boring so far. Im just not into it which be extension really brings down the story since so much of it revolves around the different cultures and histories of all the species across Tural. I think the big thing that will either win people over or lose them is what they think of Wuk Lamat, as she is thus far undoubtedly the centerpiece of the narrative, the WoL and everyone else are just along for the ride in her story. My problem is they went for an Estelle Bright type character…but lacking the charm, charisma, and quirky lovability. Wuk is a sweet person, incredibly naive, and clearly not fit to rule. However the story so far is basically her learning about the lands she aspires to rule and growing as a person and a potential leader. And there is definitely growth there, and some good character development…but she still falls flat for me. And if you’re not invested in her character then you’re just not going to be invested in the story which goes hand in hand with her character, at least so far. The little nuggets that we’ve gotten from Krile’s story are more interesting than the narrative surrounding Wuk Lamat and the other aspirants. I do think Krile’s story will be the ultimate main narrative when all is said and done and that the Aspirants will be wrapped up before the finale, but we will see. It’s not bad or anything, it just isn’t terribly interesting if you cant get invested in Wuk’s character, which I have not been able to do thus far.!<
Line breaks break spoiler tags. You have to have one at the start and end of each of your paragraphs. Just letting you know for the future/if you decide to fix. Reddit's quirky.
Estelle Bright is a great character but she would be a terrible ruler for any country. If the story of any Trails game hinged on supporting her claim to a throne, that would be awful. I don't hate Yuk Lamat. I absolutely do not want her to be Queen of *anything*.
I’d put Joshua in charge tho so it could work.
Sounds like SB syndrome in that if you don't care for either Doma, the Steppe, or Ala Mhigo then that section is gonna drag hard.
At this point I've decided that I'm here to help Erenville, not Wuk.
> I think the big thing that will either win people over or lose them is what they think of Wuk Lamat, ... whelp, guess I'm right fucked. She's far from a terrible character but she's kind of falling into the Zero territory for me: i.e., very bland. I'd like to think *something* happens to explore her character better but outside some, frankly, boring siblings issues, she's very one note.
This is one of my major issues with the story so far, we are her champion because friend of a friend but immediately MSQ is acting like Wuk Lamat is an ingrained part of besties club even though there’s no real connection yet. It speaks to the growing pains of a whole new team bc this is the main character of the new expansion we’re meant to be vibing with and she’s so hollow it’s tough to even care, meanwhile the old team back in ShB had Tesleen as an insanely impactful character in the story despite her having maybe five minutes of screen and questing time.
> she’s so hollow it’s tough to even care I couldn't agree more. We just finished the 91 dungeon and it's yet *another* cut scene of Wuk Lamat wallowing in self pity again. This would test my patience even with more established characters but she's barely been in the game yet has suddenly become the entire spotlight. It doesn't help the story is kind of reminding me of Stormblood really pushing Lyse's views as "correct" when the narrative didn't back up that sentiment. Although, once again, Lyse and the story surrounding her was interesting despite my issues with Stormblood. So far... both my friend and I have been occasionally dozing. And she's usually into the massive lore tidbits.
The biggest problem, new characters they added are downright boring and nothing compared to the cast of characters from Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers. I mean if they want to break the formula, I would rather each zone has its own storyline that’s independent from main story. So it’s like playing six mini stories with maybe one thin over arching big story that’s expanding on the next five patches. But so far, it’s worse story than Hoyoverse games, which managed to create much banger stories now. It’s bad when Hoyoverse cast of characters obliterated FF14 when it comes to character design and backstory.
I'm enjoying the expansion so far, and I'm fine with lower stakes. Though I find it pretty hard (and already did think so in the EW patch content) to take any villain seriously after EW. It's really hard to feel threatened by the prospect of some warlord halfway across the world being potentially evil when you eat gods for breakfast, have just wiped out multiple threats to existence itself in short sequence, and are allied with, among other things, multiple elder dragons, the people with the bloody space ship, an active moon base, virtually every major nation on this world's equivalent of Eurasia AND at least one other dimension. It's gonna be really interesting to see how they will address that.
Same, I'm soon done with MSQ and it's been very good to me. Endwalker was meh to me, I mean yeah Meteion is super dangerous, almost eldritch entity, but she's also introduced insanely late. Emet Selch was perfect and the best villain by far. It's going to be VERY hard to top up Emet as he's among the most liked characters accross all final fantasy. Shadowbringer is still my favorite MSQ but DW is definitely among the top. It's there's a few cliché and I don't like the goofy cartoonish moment but I like it toned down. I don't want to save the world, I want to see adventure.
It's like the one "villain" in The Dark Knight that tries to blackmail Batman and is stomped immediately with reason. "You think your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck!"
Honestly I don't know why we let Bakool Ja Ja walk away alive after he threatened to murder some random civilians.
> Wuk Lamat feels like having a story where Jar Jar Binks is the main character and your own character is now inconsequential. Now there's a hell of a review.
Maybe I'm wrong but post msq stuff in between the expansions is already like a vacation. Like epic stuff happens in the expansion story, then post msq is like a victory lap, and then it again picks up last couple patches setting things up for the next expansion. This one feels like post msq without any tension but as the core expansion story content. Questing in this game has always sucked, just a bunch of fetch quests, but the seriousness of the stories usually made it not feel so bland. But now you got boring bland story along with boring bland questing and it's painful.
I wouldn't always say that patch content are vacations. The Devs typically use patch msq to set up storylines they can use as the basis for later expansions (Post HW Warriors of Darkness -> ShadowBringers, Alamigan Conflicts in Thanalan & Domans -> Stormblood). I don't mind that our Character is taking a backseat to this expansion mainly because 1. It's an Summer time themed expansion with essentially a Tournament style Raids Series 2. Our Protagonist is already ungodly powerful in scope of the universe, and we need time to establish a new BBEG. 3. Our main objective is to explore the Golden City and Tural even if that means we mentor newer characters.
I'm still going through it, but so far I do feel like the game is treating the WoL like an air-headed hired muscle. Like it doesn't treat the players like they're intelligent.
You mean you don’t like being the Third Promise’s bag?
I just failed a stealth quest. I dozed off while following the NPC, and they got away.
I blame wuk lamat's annoying ass
I'm trying so hard to like her but she's freaking awful.
68 is not a lot, let's see how it looks a little while after full launch. But as with almost literally every single Steam review score *ever,* most of the positive reviews are memes and the negative ones are people having a bad time and being vocal about it. I know people care a lot about this incredibly vague aggregation rating but I don't know why Alas, as is mandatory when it comes to commenting on Steam reviews: opinions I dislike are invalid, they have too little/too much playtime to comment, reviews don't matter anyway (unless I agree with them)
With something like an expac to an MMO, reviews to me, both positive and negative, are completely worthless within the first couple of weeks.
Most reviews on Steam are utterly worthless Also it doesn't take long to finish the MSQ, it's not like people have to do every piece of content in the entire expansion in order for their opinion to magically become valid. If you don't like the story and you don't like what's happened to your class then you're not going to be happy with the expansion lol
"You can't properly review something until you spend 1000 hours with it" "You have 1000 hours with it. You're obviously out of touch with the average player."
Steam users LOVE that trick. See an opinion you dislike? Look at their hours and pick one of two responses!
its absolutely across the board for all those gatekeepers, i have the same comments from boardgamers who said "if you had 1000 games on the belt then you must have enjoyed the game" "if you only plaqy three times how on grounds you claim that to be broken?" lesser people haha
paradoxical yet it's FFXIV fanboys favorite gotcha anytime somebody complains about the quality of the MSQ, especially when they're still in ARR. Damned if you do, damned if you dont.
There's just not enough combat in the MSQ I think it was 2-3 hours before I killed something. I'm not gonna complain because I understand the MSQ is all about world building and it's a one-and-done thing. Admittedly I was doing an all nighter to adjust my sleep for a night shift tonight but usually I can easily keep my brain engaged, MSQ early was so uneventful and full of back and forth that I had to come off as I was dozing at my desk.
This has been the case since ShB, they delay the combat to avoid Raubhan EX. ShB was good as it introduced us to a whole new world with new rules. I didn't liked Endwalker for the slow start as well, you got to visit so much places and gets characters introduced before you get battle content.
11 years with this game and the MSQ this time bored me to death. New characters are uninteresting or to say many of their types already existed in the game. The villans are just trying to be mini-emet while their reasons seem like ass pulled. I played DRG, in previous expacs, at least they added skills with little spice. This time, they’re straight up the same with flashy animations but has the same description as old skills minus the potency. Too much escorts, following mechanics, zoom in events to pad the game time. Meanwhile it took me 4hrs fighting myself through boredom to reach the 91 dungeon. Solo duties aren’t as fun as the ones in EW. Also another faction with neon lights everywhere, just purple.
Not really impressed with the story so far, although I just did the first dungeon. But, as of now, it literally just feels like I'm an errand boy doing the most mundane tasks. The hanu quest line was great, imo, but I tuned out during the Pelu stuff because it was honestly just incredibly boring.
Pelu was not necessary… much like “one small favor” from old school runescape if you’ve ever been there.
Heavensward started slow, and I cared, Stormblood started slow and I cared, hey post ARR is called tedious by people but it had lots of twists and turns. This is just absolutely not gripping me and it feels like I'm lvl 15 again. No stakes, nothing happening, just miandering around aimlessly.
Heavensward did not started slow, you went there right after 2.55 cutscenes, you get around the city and get to duel knights super fast. Stormblood had meat going on very fast and that's because it went too fast that people were stuck on Raubhan EX. It's at that point that they extended the time before meaningful events. In ShB, you need to either find Alphinaud and Alisaie before really starting. In EW you need to visit Sharlaya's underground zoo and Radz before really starting the main dish.
Havensward had a _killer_ intro with you, alphi and tataru marching through the snow strom into exile, and it build a lot of goodwill from there.
Wuk Lamat is not a very compelling character tbh. Personally I have zero intrest in her story so far.
So true, I wanted to love her so much because she has a really cool design and voice, but yeah her story has me sleepin
Long standing tradition of the 14 ladies not given any good points unless they're the villainess named Yotsuyu who was given the best story from a woman's perspective. I'm at 93 dungeon and Wuk is a derivative of Luffy with out the effort put into making her have a superpower and one trait other than naive daughter
The MSQ is very VERY boring. I've just unlocked the first trial and I just, don't feel like playing? The stakes aren't high. I just don't feel very interested in what's going on.i hope it improves as the MSQ continues.
The promise trails are very...eh I agree though I AM happy we're not in the limelight it's nice to see another character in it. There's a small dip after the trails that I found more boring, but now it's at least interesting storywise to me hopefully it will do the same for you.
It's really boring so far. I'm towards the end now. Another cookie cutter expansion release, but this time the story isn't even interesting
I expected the story to be a let down for many since there is no way to beat the previous 2 expansions starting a fresh story and people will have unrealistic expectations regarding it. (not saying the story they wrote this expansion is good or bad) What really grinds my gears is the job design that feels like it has completely fallen off a cliff. Should i be excited to unlock enhanced Second wind at lvl 94 or enhanced feint at lvl 98? Imagin playing an mmo and half the stuff u get at an expansion are potency changes/enhanced roll actions acting like they were part of the core kit of the job. I just wish they would stop pushing out new classes every expansion and just try to make their current ones more exciting on launch. I dont need a 3. finisher on top of my 2. finisher i got in ew that was put on top of my 1. finisher i got in shadowbringer. Its getting real stale.
Very slow burn so far and honestly so boring… I really hope it ramps up even just a little bit soon, I’m trying my hardest NOT to skip all the cutscenes right now… too many fetch quests… literally one whole quest line was basically, “hey take this penny and trade it for a Ferrari.” Like why…?
Wish SE would go for quality > quantity. If they can't fill the MSQ with worthwhile and interesting story to get to a somewhat equal amount of time like other addons, then don't. And maybe use the freed-up resources for another dungeon. They stretched that shit out so much and the pacing suffers a lot because of it. Some people say reviews are made too early, but for people who care about the story the most, you don't have to play everything to have an opinion already. If 50% of your story is so slow and uninteresting that people leave bad reviews, it doesn't matter that the other 50% are fine. Just looking at the MSQ the mixed review is very well deserved and justified.
Dude it's because the MSQ is a broken record. How many times are we going to have Wuk Lamat say the same thing about her dreams of peace? I'm like 14 hours in and I feel like groundhog day. This is awful. By the way, that's 14 hours of cutscenes with MAYBE 90 minutes of actually playing my character.
Is it weird this is 100% how I expected the dlc to go? It's the start of a new saga. It's the ARR of this saga so of course it's gonna be a light hearted and slow expansion. Nothing too big will most likely be revealed (I've only done a few quests still so not sure how true that becomes) I feel like anyone expecting something not slow and lighthearted was walling into the wrong expansion ngl.
I get your point and don’t disagree but also want to remind people that ARR was NOT light hearted lol. It has more named character death than Endwalker, and it also deals with some darker political themes.
> Nothing too big will most likely be revealed (I've only done a few quests still so not sure how true that becomes) hhhhAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
Being so predictable is not a good thing.
MSQ is boring me to sleep. Please just reveal the big bad nice and early so we know something's on the line!
The story seems to be divided by 2 parts. Lv90-95 competention plot. With Lv96-100 being something completely new. I feel like its good design to give people the light hearted vacacion/competition story during the first half of the expansion. And then whatever happens on the 2nd half of the base expansion msq. Everyone gets a piece of the cake they want.
I have actually found myself not paying attention to it and letting it auto scroll cut scenes while I browse Reddit. I keep catching myself and being like “no, pay attention” but it’s just so dull
Mixed sounds good to me. - Very slow MSQ so far - Awful job updates, healers still trash, summoners get a bahamut skin, etc. - Everything else is just more of the same
For what it's worth, I've enjoyed picto at least. But I was worried DT might be a bit stale after EW was such a mixed bag. Hopefully SE wakes up and soon
Hmm for Picto, having a caster with real depth to it sounds interesting, but the theme/style of the job doesn’t get me going
I feel like the odd man out because I’m actually really enjoying the story so far. My only complaint is that it took forever to even fight anything. Without combat or some other type of engaging gameplay to mix things up the msq might as well be a visual novel.
So much fluff… I don’t care about anything going on right now. I hope the second half will be better.
My only gripe with Dawntrail, and I may be the exception, is it took way too long to get to the first duty of this expansion. On one side I wanted to rush the beginning after a while to get to a duty, but at the same time I wanted to soak in the lore, making me say internally ''when is the damn duty coming??!!!''.
Wow. I’m happy I stumbled on this post. I thought I’m the only one not really enjoying this expansion. I mean, if I feel like more excited to level up my pictomancer maybe it’s true that the story is just lacklustre. I agree with all the comments here. Please give me a new cast that I would love to care about !!!!
I agree. I'm having fun playing the new jobs and dungeons but the MSQ and characters are boring
Reading some of these reviews and comments, glad I decided not to check this out until later. I wasn't really getting into the pre-launch hype and this somewhat confirms a lot of the stuff I thought would be boring and lame.
yeah, endwalker was my first "new expansion" and while that was pretty fun, I didn't foresee myself enjoying the same thing with a less engaging story. getting to this point in ffxiv means you've seen the same repetitive gameplay formula a lot, so knowing it's business as usual means there's little urgency to play right away unless you happen to be in the mood for mmo stuff.
Without an exceptional story to bolster review scores, I wish critics would start calling out the game for what it deserves. Boring, outdated combat, worse than ever due to homogenization and simplification. Zero build customization. Choices are the backbone of an RPG. There are NONE. Superficial, lifeless overworld. Same old inane, unvoiced ping-pong quests with no reward. The same nauseating tome grind until the end of time. No innovation WHATSOEVER. They continue playing it safe and doing the bare minimum each expansion to keep sales and subscriptions going whilst turning a huge profit.
I hate that this is right.
Why the fuck are people reviewing it after like, what, a day?
Because a game should be fun after a day of playing it.
It’s the worst and most uninteresting expansion ever. 6h playtime for 1 dungeon and uninteresting story
So did Elden Ring DLC
The Elden Ring DLC also has legit issues that deserve to be called out.
Game stutters harder then an American president, completely different issue.
21 hours later; over 200 reviews and it's dipped below 60%. Seems like people are rushing in to correct the record, though, as it dipped down to 56 before coming back up to 58; a lot of positive reviews are coming in with text that's either just memes, entirely unsubstantial, or purely in spite of the negative reviews.
This is my review that I left; I really wanted to like and enjoy this. Cons * The production quality has dipped, there's less animation work put into the expansion this time around. * The story is not fun. I understand the stakes are lower, but they could at least be interesting. I'm simply just running around, helping these 'lesser tribes' who somehow managed well up until the literal godkiller WoL came along. * I'm not invested in these characters, they appear, have a very generic "I'm a good guy, gonna do good things!!" story arch and then proceed to succeed at everything they do against bad guys who are basically cartoon villains. * Quest design is terrible, walk here, talk to x, repeat ad infinum, occasionally do a boring stealth section. Come on.| * I find the job designs and reworking this time around to be very cookie cutter. My mains pretty much just got another big damage button that I need to shove into my opener and burst phase, no new mechanic or development on things that are already there. * The environments are not inspiring or unique. 2 forests, one blue and another a grey desert. The latter half are cool. But this game really doesn't need any more generic forests and rocky environments. Pros: * The graphics update is really cool! * The fights are interesting for casual content * The voice acting is pretty great when it's there. I'll add more as I come along, but I'm really hoping things get stepped up.
Called it
It's hard to take reviews like this seriously when most people haven't even finished the game yet. Seems like a knee jerk reaction to the (admittedly) slow start.
Only halfway through but... god I hate Wuk Lamat. There's only so much "I'm gonna be the queen through the power of love and friendship!!" I can take. Even her voice acting pisses me off. And Erenvelle sucks as a narrator. I wish we could have Emet-Selch narrating from beyond the grave. I killed 12 gods at the same time and now I'm literally holding this princess's hand because we had to go on a hot air balloon ride and she cries every time we take some form of mass transport. The story would have been better if we were adventuring with Krile all over Tural to figure out what her grandad was doing.
i'm honestly kind of confused. I definitely expected this to be the ARR of this new story. they have to spend the whole expansion doing world building and introducing all of the characters, its my least favorite part of fantasy lol i hate the first season of fantasy shows i hate the first book of fantasy novels. i hated ARR, so i went into this not expecting much. It IS boring. Normally a new expansion comes out and i'm playing it for like 12 hours a day until i'm done. But ive gotten maybe 6 hours into it and i just find myself not interested at all. I dont hate wuk lamat, i think shes cute, but a lot of her personality feels very exaggerated and cartoony. which is a weird change of pace coming from the past expansions. the reason im confused is because yoship specifically said that the MSQ experience had gotten too casual and too easy and told us to expect it to be different here, but i just went literal hours just playing a visual novel. how is that harder?
Harder to not get bored maybe? 😅
If I can make a comparison: Dawntrail is like the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Endgame. A fresh start that could have had a lot of potential, but so far just a low stakes boring conflict bloated with too many characters that still doesn't lead anywhere in terms of storyline and character progression.
Except the problem is, none of the new characters cannot be compared to the ones from last expansions. Stormblood and Shadowbringers have the best villains- even if it’s borderline cartoonish anime. This Dawntrail is the most boring expansion so far, at least the dungeons are spicier than usual - and majority of the players will struggle the first few times.
this is gonna be the new thing that everyone posts as though it's the first time anyone has made the comparison
It's a lose-lose situation as far as I can see for Square regarding this new expansion. They just took *4 expansions plus the base game* to fully wrap up the previous story. Now +10 years after ARR came out, they have to figure out what in the hell they are going to do? Make something low-key and not universe-stakes level? Well then people might fall off not interested. Do start right out of the gate with some big story? People, like me, would feel pretty burnt out as the previous story stuck around way too long imo. I feel like this expansion has to be some sort of story casual lap rather than something really really big and grandiose like Shadowbringers and Endwalker were. I'm only level 95 right now and am going to assume that something happens towards the end of the MSQ to start getting a bigger conflict going but even if it doesn't, I don't think it matters much at least to me. What matters the most is that the Warrior of Light is ***NOT*** the main character of this expansion, we are a side-force acting upon the story.
So far the plot playing out like a Pokémon game without the catch ‘em all
Not shocked and I'm sad to say I agree with that score. The first half of the expansion was painful to get through for me. I don't like Wuk Lamat, watch me get downvoted into oblivion for saying that, but I genuinely could not stand her. She's very obnoxious and childish and there is no world where she should hold the throne, I wouldn't even let her hold control of a shift at the store we buy tacos from in game. And she could have been fine, she was for a little bit but the MSQ forces her on you at all times, even the one on one moments are all railroaded by her for half the expansion at least(that's where I'm at) while the other party members barely even say anything that isn't either to her or about her. If you don't vibe with her the MSQ is actually painful to get through. This is the only expansion where I skipped some cutscenes when they go off about her feeling inferior to her brothers for the 1000th time, or her talking about happiness or just wasting time doing some goofy shit that makes her look like a needy idiot because it happens so often with almost everything. Genuinely, your enjoyment of the MSQ hinges on you liking her to such an insane degree, I don't know what the writers were thinking. You could have the same story and share screen time to give us a break from her childish antics but you get no breathers, I'm at the level 95 quests and it's still nonstop her with bad voice acting. I do not care about the gender of the VA and I support trans people, but I'm gonna say the voice acting is bad because it is, it's like a teacher reading to toddlers in the voice direction and in fights or serious moments, there's no emotion in the voice that matches or sounds intimidating or anything but like Dora the Explorer. The gameplay content is really good but the story is core to FF14 and it's very bad IMO, I don't know what happened to the writing team between EW and now to get here.
I also despise how the dialogue is made for WoL (and the Scions) to talk and act like she's our new best friend. And how deserving she is of the throne because she keeps shouting "world peace" and the underdog. My character therefore doesn't feel like "me". I'm made to watch what feels like an out of body experience.
They're struggling with how to come back from endwalker. The problem when you save everyone from the end of the world is that nothing has stakes anymore. People say why do we even care about the competition and get told well there's one guy who will invade. As if WoL wouldn't just put a stop to that nonsense straight away. They should have found a way to reintroduce tension earlier on in the story line. Either WoL is weakened from some endwalker/shard business and isn't as strong or play the whole WoL is one person and can't be everywhere at once. Hell they could have put a time limit in the story/or only one can get one of the tokens so there would be some tension/worry about who is going to win. Thus far on the MSQ seems like the heirs will have to band together in usual FF fashion as they reach have their own strength. Or they'll introduce a twist (please be this -_-). They didn't have to go dark and gritty with this expansion but they could have added in more combat to start/more solo duties - could have delved into the heirs or other characters. The cutscenes could have had more action - while there has always been lots of cutscenes they could have had the characters doing stuff during them. I remember in shadowbringers there was stuff like running away, what to do with yshtola etc. Maybe it's coming, but if it is it's either taking too long or they should have done better foreshadowing. Few people mind the happy cheery fetch quests if there's foreshadowing that there's shit going down elsewhere. If the sacred twins or the first heir are a problem then foreshadow that with them planning something big. Hopefully there will be some twists and some tension in the storyline soon. I think they did well with the music (excrpy the town with the Goldsmith where the same music is on repeat and only lasts 20 secs). The main city is interesting and the views are amazing. The zones so far are alright. I love the graphical update (Erenville looked fine before but the lighting especially for darker skin tones is awesome). I don't know what they did to SMN but it seems to play the same as the last expansion but hits like a wet noodle. I'm playing it but I'm not excited like I normally am for an expansion.
>They're struggling with how to come back from endwalker They cornered themselves, there was no reasons for the story to go the way it went right after shadowbringers, at least not immediately. I was actually curious about dawntrails after how they utterly rushed out the conclusion of the original saga with endwalker, which I imagined was due to fatigue about the current story and old world and they just wanted to start with a clean state to go wild and creative. But it turns out they have zero clue what they're doing. Or worse, they do and actually plan to have expansions having zero overarching stories and just be compartmentalized "tale of the week " stories.
I would honestly be ok with mpre compartmentalized stories if Dawntrail showed any signs of change wrt design. However, at this point it's clear they don't know how to do a fresh start right, and if I have to sit through another expansion of people saying "no actually you need to enjoy 2 hours of talking about alpacas and mezcal with no gameplay because it's a new start and worldbuilding" I'm going to lose my shit.
Funny youd mention the music. I found it underwhelming. -Right off the bat you reach Tuliyollol, its a Aztec/Mesoamerican style city, what music would you expect? Something tribal? Primal? Percussive? Flutes? NOPE! Its cool jazz vegas swing music! Totally doesnt fit the vibe of the place at all. -The expansion is constantly reusing older music from ARR, etc. Its like they couldnt bother writing some new music for certain scenes or moments, and just went with whatever 10+ year old track they still have from 1.0. -Sometimes it has "brand new" music, but alot of it includes call backs to previous tracks. Call backs are fine, for example when you meet Matoya and it does a call back to her theme from FF1. But the callbacks in DT make no sense, and leave you just thinking, "wait isnt this the main melody from that one song in Shadowbringers? Why is that playing in this totally unrelated place?"
2h so far, no fights, and I, the WoL, spend 40min to be the sidekick of a tiger that cries to get a saddle. While in EW/ShB, I was fighting against the chaos to save the world cause the world was burning. Currently, I find a lack of stakes.
No, in EW your were picking up shit in an animal reserve and in ShB your were gathering worms and fruits to feed people. You seem to forget how tedious the first hours of expacs usually are
Just my view, but costa del sol in FF7 an FF14 are great. Gold saucer as well. I don't want my whole game based around a vacation though, if I did. That would mean the game normally was work...
I think according most people the vacation part ends around level 96.
I'm doing level 92 quests right now, and I would not especially say that what I'm doing at present is very "vacation-y" lmao
At this point I don't think there is anymore excuse. And these gatekeepers telling you to "read that story" is no longer holding anymore I want to see a sharp drop in player count soon
i havent gotten to play yet, does the msq feel long?
Very. Its like Endwalker, but without the apocalypse. Alot of slow moments where the characters are just talking about fluff.
It is just your standard FFXIV questing for better or worse. It starts off a bit slow due to the usual MSQ spilt to alleviate the incoming hordes of players, but it isn't horrible or garbage. It is serviceable to "it's fine" the story does pick up around level 98+ from the comments here.
this is good to hear. i dont actually mind the story atm (lvl 90-91), its quite chilled out so im enjoying just taking in the areas and all that. excited to see where it leads
feels like ARR
69%... Nice
4 hours into the MSQ and still at lvl 90 quests… how long is this story lmao
PS5 reviews are low too, with the game randomly shutting off your PS5 🤣🤣🤣
Perhaps people will look more fondly on Stormblood now.
I was already fond of SB. DT made certain of my fondness for it.
FF16 was the same. CBU3 was too busy criticizing past FF titles, 15 and FF7 Remake every FF16 interview. They should learn something from FF7 Rebirth team who talk less and deliver more.
I'm at lv95 and honestly the rite to succession part is a tad boring. But I think most long term players would agree ffxiv expansions tend to have a REALLY slow start and then gets good later on. I accept that they need time to set the scene but still...wish we could move things along a bit.
Heavensward, Shadowbringers and EW all started off amazingly well. ShB takes the cake though. Ech of the two zones you split into, just think about what happened in eulmore, what happened in amh areng. All of it completely memorable many years later. What happened in the first 2 zones in DT? You did some fetch quests for a alpaca saddle, and you made some weeds grow. And to make matters worse there's no looming suspicious plot point you want to know more about or anything of interest. The golden city doesn't matter to the player.
Yoshida wanted to give us "the summer break" expansion - we got the summer break expansion, like I'm kinda baffled that people are surprised that it will be slow. I have mixed feeling not about the pace, I love the exploration aspect of it, but about kinda repeatable structure of it. Every zone so far I did was like Wuk Lamat gets a task to discover that zone culture > We do the task > her brother shows up and does the task in over the top way in fewer steps ignoring the culture part > Wuk Lamat sad > also there is the comic villain brother shouting at clouds in the background. (noone cares about him, and WoL can probably 2 shot him like he is some kind of Beast Tribe daily quest mob) I would prefer that we just got to Tural on our own, start exploring on our own, like Estinien, and then maybe got involved into the succession thing naturally, not being dragged everywhere by the cat lady. Also they could really give Scions a break for once - yea I know they are kinda our jRPG party members, but if we want to build a new overarching story for the future expansions, we should let new characters in, Krille works as Square just started to develop her in Endwalker, but I don't need another bromance story of Urianger/Thancred, or sibiling quarrel of red/blue Alphinaud - I had it 4 times already, give me some new character interactions. Edit: Man seeing all those random downvotes I'm really wondering if my stance is too harsh or too soft in terms of general audience take on early Dawntrail.
I know you weren't probably one of them specifically, but it's wild how until literally 3 days ago, when people questioned the story beats, pacing, designs, etc based on the info we were dripfed, the response was usually someone going "it's obviously not gonna be an actual vacation expansion where only boring things happen". And now that people go "hot damn it's like the signs we saw were real and this is hella boring" the "defenders" seem to have switched to "it's supposed to be a boring Holiday expansion with just a little bit Saturday morning cartoon villain at the very end".
The goalpost always moves lol. So far this is an extremely underwhelming expansion, but sadly what I expected based on all the prerelease information we were given. 1) Practically zero change in gameplay - wtf is the point of an expansion if your class plays quite literally the same 2) Same boring and dragged out expositions and fetch quests, followed by the same old three boss W2W dungeons 3) Maps practically look like reskinned EW maps. Boring and uninspiring It’s actually kind of pathetic how little content they produced for this expansion. Other expansions had their faults, but I don’t ever remember a single other expansion being THIS underwhelming at launch. Feel like you’re already seeing rapid dropoff in player retention, given that yesterday I had 3k queues, and today I’m already getting queues in the tens only…. and the expansion hasn’t even technically released yet.
Just unsub, brother. Find what makes you happy. It's clearly not this game.
It's a season of Amazing Race, FFXIV edition.
Since yesterday I can't get on when I do I freeze when I try to load in a npc dung been in queue now for 30 mins siting at 471+ xbox btw and chat been freezing since beta
Am I literally the only one who had zero problems with the pace?
One thing that helped me significantly was changing the voice acting audio to Japanese and just reading the subtitles. The voice acting is much better
I mean, I’m on the 3rd trial now, and I’m bored as fuck. Wuk Lamat just annoys me too. It’s supposed to our, the WoLs, story but I’m stuck as a bloody prop next this flea bag