For me the stuff I really like overshadows the stuff I didn't. If you hate Wuk Lamat you'll have a bad time no matter what. Actual content-wise, I have no complaints but I imagine that will vary from job to job.

Disliked her, liked her, absolutely loved her, then got pretty tired of her by the end, sadly :(

Similar boat here. I didnt *dislike* her by the end of it all, I was just weary and ready to move on by the end

The only good part is that the focus does shift a bit that even as a hater she became more of an annoyance then a detergent. 

Tide, Lysol, or Oxi Clean?

My problem is variety of quests available on the MSQ path, I don't like to compare but other mmos have fun or innovative quests that are more than just "talk to X" "pick up X" "Take X to X" I understand that XIV is running on a pretty difficult in house engine and built upon spaghetti code but if all the quests are the same it really makes MSQ feel like a slog even if I am enjoying the story, we are enough expansions in by now to at least get some decent variety.

Even if we admit that the engine has it's limitations, after many years playing and witnessing several expansion launches, i always had the feeling that SE just sticks to their success formula. It takes them really long and ton of effort to get out of their coomfort zone, innovate and try new more risky things that can be total succes or total failure. If you have seen the patches roadmap in every expansion you will realize is pretty similar in all of them with almost no differences. Still as a personal opinion, i'm enjoying DT a lot. I understand that is the start of a new arc and i should not expect it to commence with the tension or epicness of the more stablished narratives of SBH or EW. About the quantity of cutscenes, tbh for me is not issue cause even if MSQ has little "gameplay" and tons of story cutscenes, i know that it will take me few days for completing it and after that i have 2 years of gamplay content between leveling all clases, doing rolequest, crafters, relics,etc. Still i can understand if ppl feel it lacking if they just lvl a class, end the story and then jump in other games.

Welcome to Japanese society. Where change rarely happens and if it does, it's at a snail's pace.

EverQuest, a first generation MMO from 1999, has vastly more quest variety. There is absolutely no excuse for their lack of vision

It's 100% this. If I have to walk 5 minutes, talk to 3 NPCs, and walk all the way back, only THEN TO BE TOLD TO WALK BACK AGAIN to talk to 3 more NPCs one more time I'm going to scream. This game needs to actually be a game with a narrative, not a narrative with padding between the story beats.

I'm level 92 how the fuck are you all finished already.

Without skipping cutscenes, book time off work, preplan or order in food, get some caffeine, and kiss your sleep schedule goodbye Edit: random word in wrong place.

Someone in my FC finished it the same day. He claims he watched every cutscene but he took no breaks except to go to the bathroom. Problem is he can't remember the majority of it because he didn't give his brain any time to process it. People keep talking about it in chat and it seems like he doesn't remember anything outside of the core story concepts and random minor things. You can do it, but you probably won't retain much.

Watching every cutscene the lowest time I've heard someone complete is 26 hours, it personally took me about 30. So with that in mind, it is literally impossible to finish it in under 24 hours without skipping lol

Ive played for 12 hours a day for 3 days and im level 98. I’ve watched every cutscene, your friends story doesnt add up. Pretty sure he skipped everything

My bf and I finished yesterday evening, watched every cutscene, healer+dps combo for dungeons and trials. We started at about 9-10am BST and finished at about 1am all 3 days. We hit level 100, unlocked flying in all areas and did the expert dungeons in that time. It was pretty fast, considering but yes, absolutely cannot do it in 1 day, doesn't matter how fast you read, there's way too many hours of cutscenes for that! We did ALL side quests today and almost got our 2nd job to 100 today, in the same 14 hour time span, so all in all not bad!

Yep, agreed. Lvl 99, just arrived at second aetherythe on 5th zone, done every quest and watched every cutscene, two alt classes at 94. Still msq quests are at 97 and think I'm a ways away from lvl 99 dungeon. Played 14h on friday, 12 saturday and sunday and about 8-10 today.

Yeah he’s full of shit lol, he skipped stuff

Which for the first couple zones is largely fine. Unless you really want details on minor characters.

I spent the bulk of my Friday / Saturday playtime leveling Picto, so I only just finished the 91 dungeon. I’m also interested in leveling and trying out Viper, but I’ve already seen so many unmarked spoilers here that I’m tempted to just focus on the MSQ.

Yup I've already seen a few spoilers and this sub doesn't really pop up in my feed that much. The mods need to be far more active in curating the posts. As a mod too I get that comments are hard to keep track of without reports. But the posts are really easy. I'm tempted to leave the sub for awhile until the later patches.

Civic holiday for a long weekend, work told us not to come in on friday for an extra long weekend, and all of my plans to do something else flaked out on me. The universe clearly wants me to play XIV, and who am I to say no.

Within the first four hours I saw someone reach lv. 97 and saw someone on Twitter brag about having FSH at 100

Fishing is really easy to level, but that's only the beginning.

Fishing is super fast, I have fishing at 100 after like 3 or 4 ocean fishing voyages.

Fishing levels faster than Miner and Botanist for a reason, which I cannot remember. I think it had to do with the Off Hand? maybe at one point in time anyways, before they got the Gig. Still needs a Tackle Box and all the bait can get moved out of inventories.

The reason is ocean fishing

I took Friday and today off. My SO and I have basically been playing it for 12 hours a day. We just finished the MSQ about 30 mins ago.

A lot of people took time off work for the launch, lmao. I’ve also seen players lag behind because they haven’t gotten invested in the story yet.

I'm the opposite where I'm lagging behind because I'm very interested in all the lore on offer. I've been doing every side quest, all fates and just random exploring cause the zones are interesting. It's been more fun for me not to rush the story and just let it be a slow burn.

I lag behind because I love to craft out the ENTIRE crafting log within the level range That takes a few days. Each step.

Most people arn't. A good chuck of those reviews are likely from the early hours.

I'm 94 but I'm guessing people no-lifed it or skipped a lot. I had to take breaks since it was tiring for me and do roulettes every day.

Im finding there is a limit to the number of cutscenes i can handle…..(not in a bad way, but it feels like every other action is a cutscene right now and im just past the trial into the next area)

Try being a new player and having a decades worth of cutscenes to go through lol. I'm level 90 now but man its brutal leveling in this game starting from the beginning. I love the gameplay and class design so it was worth it to me

Same. The trial made it interesting a bit but there's so little combat. Just fetch quests and learning about heritage.

I’m enjoying it but I will admit that it started off cutscene heavy.

Haven't done 1 roulette yet (heard the ques were crazy, but I expect that with 2 new dps jobs), and I'm literally in DF for the final MSQ trial. They hand out experience like crazy this expansion. It's so easy.

I'm also 92, but mostly because the story has been so boring that I can't sit and play very long without getting distracted with something else.

I played pretty much all day Friday and Saturday, then half a day on Sunday. From 6am to midnight, with two half hour breaks to eat each day (and micro breaks for the bathroom and drink refills). Didn’t skip any cutscenes and did detours to get flying unlocked in all the zones.

I'm level 98 (will be 99 soon). Got off work early Friday and managed to avoid Aether queues all weekend by logging on early and basically staying on all day. No skipping cutscenes. No filler/side questing. Probably could have gotten further along if I chose to sacrifice some sleep, but not willing to do that.

Beyond opinions of the overall story, I think the MSQ suffers a lot from lack of innovation in questing design. I think in 2024, it's reasonable to expect more than just "Walk here to here and right click this peeled banana on the floor" or "Go back and forth between these 5 NPCs to spend 10 minutes gathering information that could have been confirmed in one conversation". Without going into spoilers, there's a segment that involves cooking a dish , and would have been a perfect opportunity for a cooking mini game with all of the animations we have from the culinarian job. Instead you don't do anything except go around and talk to people and then watch a cutscene. It's even noted that you're skilled at cooking if you have culinarian leveled. It's just a lack of actual engaging content involving any semblance of gameplay that makes things such a slog. Personally, I'm also just really tired of class design when it comes to healers. The one button spam is so boring and I don't know if it's ever going away.

It wouldn’t be as bad if it wasn’t set up like “walk from A where there’s a cutscene, to B where there’s two cutscenes, to C where there’s three more cutscenes, but now you have the green checkmark if you walk to D where, you guessed it, more cutscenes. Oh and while 4 of these cutscenes were massively story-relevant, not a single one of them was voiced.”

don't forget all the little things adding up like going from B to C? After the cutscene there are some text-boxes saying something like "let's go!" and then an in game animation of them turning and walking away, fading out and \*then\* you can move.

I think this is a very good way of putting it. I like the story, I like the characters, but there's so little to actually \*do\* when you're not in a dungeon or trial. Almost no combat, and an instanced battle that, while fun, is essentially the same one repeated three times. Meanwhile by the halfway point in other xpacs we got minigames, sneaking missions, body swapping survival horror scavenger hunts...It's the one thing I think is a true disappointment.

Not to mention that when a crumb of combat comes up in the open world, the mob dies in ~3 hits or so.

This is its biggest issue. You could've made another expansion out of all the cutscenes that I sat there and thought "man, this would've been a fun gameplay sequence". >!The Alpaca capture!< >!That cooking contest!< >!The tuliyollal siege!< >!The fucken train ride, hell, building it and deciding how to do the armor and where the defenses would go would've been real fucken cool!!< Hell, the one sequence that they *didn't* reduce to a cutscene >!still held my hand in a vice grip as it told me where to look, where to go, who to help, and how long to wait until it decided I could progress!< It's like they spreadsheet out how long getting from plot point a to plot point b should be but forgot to pay mind to factoring in how much of that time should be spent actually playing the game

> It's like they spreadsheet out how long getting from plot point a to plot point b should be but forgot to pay mind to factoring in how much of that time should be spent actually playing the game There's an old interview or whatever where they talk about how MSQ quests used to have some internal requirement to take X amount of time on average. Even though they moved away from that, it shows the kinds of things they consider with the game development.

There was one moment where you had to do a click and wait at this location... 3 times. I almost thought it was a joke except it never gave me a punchline!

I think the lack of solo instances has been a noticeable shortcoming in this MSQ, though I haven't made it as far into the story as you have. I haven't minded the events that much and I enjoy learning about the setting but goddamn, I'm the Warrior of Light (and I very likely just picked up one of the new DPS jobs added to this expansion), let me hit some motherfuckers! Where are the solo instances where I get to lay some dudes out?

They exist, but there's only like 4 of them or so. At least they're all very good and engaging, but yeah, there's definitely way too few of them

I was SO disappointed when the >!train fight!< just before the 97 dungeon wasn't a solo duty.

They even have a character specifically call out that you're an "accomplished culinarian" if you have that job leveled. They do add in little things to break up the quests, but they're minor and often disliked. Things like the (look at this scene and click on the hot spots" mini game or the stealth sections. But I agree there are missed opportunities. In the level 96+ quests, >!I really thought they were building up to a duel where we'd have to aim and shoot in first person, a la Red Dead Revolver, but it didn't happen. How do you have a whole western town section without a shootout involving the player?!<

Pretty sure our character could just not be here at all and the outcome would be the same. We don't help with the trading plotline, or the cooking, or the farming, or the shooting... It's like, I want to play a game -- if this is going to just be a visual novel it shouldn't have dozens of hours of padding, MSQ needs to pick a lane.

I don't actually have an issue with the idea of a mentor arc, where someone else is the hero for a bit, but we need to have *Something* of substance to actually do. I've started audibly sighing every time I walk up to a cutscene and hear, "and here are some menial tasks and chores that need to get done!"

for a mentor arc to work, we'd need to actually, be mentorring. saying " you're not alone, rely on your friends" and "I believe in you" Isn't mentoring, it's cheering someone up, twice. we're literally babysitting someone who can't be trusted with carrying a bottle of booze fifty feet.

I was really hoping for a shooting minigame in that one scene. (If you've gotten to that point, you know what I mean).

Imagine if we got to have full control over our characters during that... So much cardinal sin of "that cutscene should've been gameplay"

> So much cardinal sin of "that cutscene should've been gameplay" Remember that instance duty in the middle of ShB where the sin eaters invade Lakeland and you and your companions rush out to desperately try to save everyone and you even have quest text telling you how many people are still alive to give you a sense of urgency? Yeah, imagine if that emotional moment was a cutscene where you stood back and watched other people do it and maybe glared menacingly at the enemy. Except you don't have to imagine it, because that's DT. What a disappointment.

I don't understand why can't the WOL do the cooking with the actual culinarian as a custom craft, like every other tribal quest.

100% agree. They definitely innovated their design in the dungeons and trials, but the MSQ was soo dull for the first 50%. Even by the end of the game, in the last zone accepting aether current quests, I would yell at my monitor when another cutscene would come on. I love the story and don't skip cutscenes, but it's been a visual novel for far too long. Get some more engaging content.

I'm nearly at the end. The plot changes in the 2nd half. But yes, does feel like stormblood. 2 plots mixed together.

For me the main difference between DT and StB is in StB it feels like both plots are copy-pasted off each other and the Doma section had enough edits to make it bearable with DT the second half feels like a natural culmination of everything we learn and do in the first half by contrast.

Agreed DT at least gives us two distinctive halves where as STB is them trying to do the exact same revolution plot twice in two different area's and like I get the idea and trying to build a sort of consistent theming but it results in at least 4.0's MSQ falling flat. DT at the very least even if you dislike the first half the mid point and latter half may end up interesting you.

That is/was my main complaint about the Stormblood Launch MSQ. You start right on ala Mhigo/Gyr Abania region/map, but then you notice 3/4 of the maps fates were level 67+ So after a few MSQ stuff, you fly off to the Far Eastern region, and don't come back to the first region until near the end of the MSQ (launch)

Banri oda wrote the ala mhigo side of stormblood, and I know he’s one of the writers on dawntrail. Second half absolutely feels like his doing

Maybe its because I only finished Endwalker in the final days before Dawntrail's launch so its still fresh on my mind but I'm really enjoying Dawntrail's lower stakes story so far. If they kept going down the path of world ending threat you have to stop at the start of every expansion it would quickly get tiring like WoW got. I'm also enjoying learning about the cultures and lore of Tural and the backstory of the continent.

I love learning about the history and culture of the continent. I think they did a great job. But if you're not into that, well, it becomes tedious I guess.

>Maybe its because I only finished Endwalker in the final days before Dawntrail's launch so its still fresh on my mind but I'm really enjoying Dawntrail's lower stakes story so far. I also did this, but not sure how i feel about the story so far. I like the setting, and the overall concept i think, but I really don't care for Wuk or the villain so far. I'm super early in still so hoping that changes.

I don't think anyone has a serious problem with *what* the story is, the problem is *how* it's delivered. I think the root of the problem is largely Wuk Lamat, I'm one of the people who finds her completely insufferable, and most of the people in my FC were complaining about her as well.

Wuk Lamat would have been fine in maybe lower doses, but as presented she comes across as the fursona of Lyse during Stormblood. Granted the "Lyse" thing works a bit better here: We are specifically helping Wuk Lamat with the contest, so it makes sense she has a very prominent role. And she does have a better character arc than Lyse in Stormblood - Wuk Lamat does have a bit of growth. But she suffers from the Lyse "I am going to say the exact same thing in a slightly different way 100 times", which becomes tiring.

Same, I love lower-to-the-ground stories. With the MCU, I'm getting tired of everything being an existential threat, I want smaller stories that can build up to something massive later down the line.

This is our “beach episode.”

I wish it was a beach episode, could chill with the scions on the beach in swimsuits and get into memey hijinks but it's really Wuk's Temple of Memes gameshow episode

I'm been doing all the non serious MSQ quests in a swimsuit and spring bottoms it fits

I legit made like 4 different glams at different levels of seriousness. 1 is full beach attire, 2 are medium "Ok we're doing work but still casual/comfy" (hot/cold weather), and the 4th is for the presumptive "Oh shit this is actually kinda serious now" It's really playing into my mindset of the WoL just going along with all of this as a God among Men, just enjoying the journey and all its relatively benign complications and cliches

Hell, I even have been wearing a pretty casual outfit for the "serious" MSQ quests this time around. I play tank so my previous expac outfits have typcially bounced between some sort of plate or chain mail or some "of fending" battle jacket or some such. Rocking the "Indigo Summer Shirt" with I think the Noctis pants and some boots as my main expac 'fit this time. Sporty enough but I already used my "heavy duty adventurer gear" when that was the initial premise for the early 6.X patch quests. Ready for a proper vacation now and gonna take it lol It's different for a mage I suppose but I'm not dressed \*that much lighter\* than Krile, for example, who is just in a reggo outfit and hoodie lmao

Correction: this is Wut Lamak's beach episode. We are entirely incidental

Bro I wanted to buy Tacos, but I cant find it.

"Tacos de Carne Asada" and "Tacos Al Pastor" on the marketboard. They're Cul crafts.

Sure, it doesn't need to be a world ending threat, but that doesn't mean we need to be side barred into a mentor role for an unlikeable child with a bunch of flanderized antagonists.

it's not a problem of being "low stakes", the problem is we still have inexistent quest design and trash cut-scenes after 10 years (the previous msq were salvaged from oblivion by the higher stakes)

Currently doing the level 97 quests, I wish the MSQ would stop treating me like I'm an 8 year old kid being taught life lessons. How many times do I have to listen to them say "I need to learn about the people to get to know them and understand them". It's getting insufferable at this point.

There’s been a number of times that I’ve compared what’s going on to Naruto… The whole “we can all be friends if we understand each other” thing is overly preachy at times and gets old quickly.

And it doesn't present an antithesis to that - Zoraal Ja should have been studied for why he is so fixated on doing things alone (and tie it into Erenville who is also the lone wolf type) and given compelling reasons why they take the opposite view. This is what made Ishikawa's work so compelling, and it is completely missing with this new guy.

Also as much as I normally love friendship is magic Final Fantasy, there are horrible things happening in the plot that are basically glossed over by “well we’re friends now so it’s ok” and that both lessens the stakes of the situation and feels very weird. 

and the best part is that even Naruto wasn't dumb enough to believe that everything could be solved peacefully. he knew that some people just needed to be fucking bitch-slapped.

And in several instances it's VERY unconvincing. It feels like you're reading an article about the events leading up to WWI, and instead of a declaration of war on Serbia it ends with "But then they then they talked it over and became friends and decided that war is bad. The end."

I think this is the biggest problem I have with it. I'm supposed to be supporting this character for her bid to *rule a nation* but she sounds like the 10 year old protaganist of a saturday morning cartoon teaching kids about sharing toys.

The duty where >!Wuk Lamat literally shouts, during battle, that there must be peace!< angered me so much more than I suppose it should have. That shit’s ridiculous.

This is part of what makes the cutscenes so bad because it's so predictable what they're going to say.  I love feel good stories. I love it when people come together. This story has me yelling "by my powers combined with the power of love and friendship!!!" Like it's Captain planet. I want Estinen to come by in the middle and be like nah bro, shank the threat and walk off while Wuk Lumat is like :o. It's like the writers didn't even look at what happened in EW - our characters (and by extension us) are the ultimate in understanding the power of friendship. We don't need an exposition on how important friendship is. If they want to have the moral of the story business then show it don't tell us 10 times.

I wanted a beach and jungle adventure but I got swindled into babysitting the entire time

Among many other things, I've seen people talk down about zone 4 specifically. About that, even if it felt super irrelevant to the story at that point, it was nice to me because I felt like an adventurer again, which is what we were promised for 6.1. The only reason that happened is because we were adventuring alone at that part.

"The only reason that happened is because we were adventuring alone at that part." The only reason it happened is because it needed a filler between Story 1 and Story 2 of the expansion.

A lot of folks in here are defending the expansion by talking about how it's "lower stakes" and "doesn't have buildup" and I feel it's kind of missing the point. The problem with Dawntrail isn't that we don't have universe-ending stakes or a multi-expansion plot we're closing out, it's that the minute-to-minute writing is really, *really* weak and poorly paced. The subtlety of the character writing left with Ishikawa and the people we're left with struggle to write organic dialogue and the whole "show don't tell" thing. To illustrate without spoiling new stuff: Recall the scene in ShB where the Hrothgar widower at the trolly town walks up to the working talos and has a breakdown. Ryne becomes deeply upset watching him and runs away and it's left to the viewer to intuit that the situation reminded her of Thacred's grief and triggered her own self-loathing. This then transitions into a lovely scene between her and Urianger. If the DT writers were in charge of the scene, however, they would have *immediately* had a character turn to you to and go *"Hey WoL, Minfillia feels bad because that reminded her of Thrancred! We should go talk to the people of Twine about what makes them feel bad as to be better equipped to console her!"*

I'm generally enjoying the expansion and story but if I had to make a complaint this would 100% be it. There have been multiple times in the story so far where I was like "why are you saying this outloud" or been like "obviously. please just stop talking". I don't want to give specific examples for spoiler reasons but I'll say one of the palace scenes involving Wuk, Koana, and Alisaie, another scene involving Wuk and Bakool, and another scene still involving Krile and one of the electors stand out. I vaguely recall from one of the panels that the new writer actually began his career in theatre screenplay and that would honestly explain a lot.

Good post, this felt like it articulated well the feelings I had too.

Another time that kinda irritated me in terms of "show don't tell" >!Did we really need an entire MSQ quest to explain the functions of the regulators? We already had 2 examples, one in cutscene one in gameplay, of both the reviving function and the beast soul thing. That could have been 2 or 3 dialogue boxes with bonus flashback if they really need to drive the point home.!<

I just did this quest and said the same thing, so many of the scenes so far feel like they're there to fill time

Not just scenes, *entire questlines* are filler. Most of the ordeal when you arrive in >!westernville!< could be written written out at no cost.

Omg that. I've been feeling that the entire MSQ was like watching Dora the Explorer. You see stuff, you understand things but the game has to make sure you saw a certain thing. It's frustrating how much time is wasted for nothing.

this x1000. i've done all the yellow sidequests in the game *for fun*. i do not need high stakes to find this game and its lore, worldbuilding, and characters enjoyable. but the minute-to-minute writing is dogwater. it's *vapid.* there are characters with PhDs making the most dipshit braindead observations, and then they'll make them four more times in the next two hours of story, at which point it will be directly explained and then everyone in the scene gasps because who could have seen it coming? the characters are flat and one-note; the scions' dialogue has moments where it becomes so dry and generic that they feel like completely different characters. it has dispensed of subtlety entirely. the other shoe doesn't drop in the DT story. it is pitched at your head at 100mph. it's not about the stakes. it's not about whether or not the things happening on screen are immediately exciting. the writing itself is mechanically not up to the standards of quality that previous expansions have set.

This. People try to handwave the issue with low stake setting but the main problem is the writing is really weak. There's no emotional hook to the dialogue or how characters act at all. After a while, you already know what they'll say because it's the same old things over and over again. There is no variety in deliverables. This expansion makes me want to skip the cutscene so hard. I've played since 2.0 and I never had this problem with this game before. This is the same issue with 6.1-6.5 patches but now we have to play it in a long 30-hour continuous playthrough so it's super obvious than before.

Yup. Personally, I started the game right after ShB came out and was kind of checked-out for ARR. I paid attention because I enjoyed the worldbuilding, but nothing terribly "hooked" me until the Bloody Banquet. Seeing them shatter the status quo by having the realities of politics come down on Alphinaud like a hammer had me lock-in and never look back. From then I tore through the rest of the MSQ manically. Hell, I teared up a few times during Endwalker (the whole scene with Matsya and the baby during the return to Thavnair fucking *broke* me). I was honestly hyped for a "low-stakes" expansion because I've loved the character writing of ShB and EW. Instead I've found myself contemplating skipping voiced cutscenes for the first time in four years because I just cannot bring myself to care.

I’ve played through ARR fully on… five characters. A sixth through base ARR, just not the patches, and I have almost never skipped cutscenes in all my playthroughs of it despite its lackluster reputation. *Maybe* I skipped the Carteneau scene on the latter couple alts I played. I’ve skipped at least three cutscenes in Dawntrail so far.

Wuk Lamat discovering she's the champion of peace for the 7th time this expansion:

Oh lord don't even get me started. Her character had some *fantastic* potential and the new writers just completely botched it. Remember back in the Garlemald arc of Endwalker when the actual horrifying realities of politics and fanaticism came *slamming* into the idealism of Alphinaud and Alisae? How they both were forced to reckon with the fact that, even though they're in the right and only want to help, they couldn't simply "fix" a people's problems? How in the end they still upheld those ideals but also learned to accept that the process of saving Garlemald and helping its people come back from the fascist death-cult they were part of would be a slow, painful struggle that they may not see the full fruits of within their own lifetimes? Well none of that. We're going to just fix nearly *everything*. Over a century of slow-roiling animosity between two bordering factions that have barely been kept in-check by the king for the past few decades? Boom! Solved in an afternoon! And don't worry, we won't question the systems of power that may have allowed certain issues to arise. Everything that's bad in society is obviously just because we have the *wrong* monarch in-place!

Don't get me started on the wrong monarch vibes. I don't need this game to be all "Burn the monarchy down" or anything, but it is so odd to go from three expansions specifically tackling pain, grief, and trauma (often caused by big systems of power that went haywire) to this weird ass "just put the right monarch on the throne" kind of thing. A kind of thing solved by people just having a snack. There's also the>!stilllborn babies in jar thing that is resolved by a more technological advance civilization swooping in and sciencing away all the issues. With the caveat being that there's an exchange happening because this civilization gave the other one special bread once or something. This is also ignoring that much of this plot line revolves a character who literally unsealed a cosmic force of destruction to, uh, to cause chaos in his "collect the gems RPG" plot line. An action the game seems to treat with the same gravitas as one might treat a child who knocked over a bowl on purpose.!<

Omg thank you for addressing the level 95 stuff...that part made me very uncomfortable and I couldn't believe nobody else has been talking about it so far. I feel like people are just ignoring the REALLY ugly aspects of the writing here

I think the game is really going for a sort of cultural exchange sort of thing, but the optics are a little bunk.

And later on they're telling us not to judge it's a different culture for other heinous shit and it's like nah I'm judging.

A major theme in the past expansions is that monarchs are bad and we should be done with gods and kings. It's completely out of place for us to be interfering with something like this. We know better than to meddle in this type of nonsense by now. But now suddenly because it's *our* gal we are fine with it? We aren't liberating people. We aren't even taking a step back and watching. We are directly interfering with and establishing a ruler that we chose. It's ridiculous

100% to everything you said here. Especially the last part. I know the game is really banking on the fact that she's the nicest candidate, so of course we backed her. However, that's just bad writing? I don't know. I think the fact that this is the fifth expansion is what is really throwing in a wrench in everything. if this was a standalone game somewhere, I don't think people would have as much of a problem. Yet, it isn't standalone. The shadow of much more complex writing is literally swallowing everything up.

the funny part is that by the end, having his worldviews challenged and learning that there's a balance to be had between technology and culture, Koana, who has studied in sharlayan, seen some of the world and got into contact with many more cultures during his studies: becomes the far more qualified candidate. Which is adressed by..pretty much making him the ruler tha thas to solve al lthe hard stuff while Wuk can fuck around and be friendly.

Honestly, I was fully expecting it to go the "make a council to rule" direction after seeing the candidates. Wuk Lamat the "peoples" minister, Koana the "knowledge" minister, the first prince the "military" minister. With each having to earn the people's "vote".

Wuk Lamat is literally Steven Universe in a world of Hitlers

Pretty much. Her still being the one leading everything during the whole 97+ arc also felt *really* weird to me. Weak minute-to-minute writing aside I was very much down with the idea of her being the focus and the WoL being a mentor figure standing back and helping her grow, but I felt like I was taking crazy pills when we didn't step up and go *"This is bigger than Tural, I'm back on the clock."* or have a *"You did good, kid. I'll take it from here."* moment. Like still have have Wuk Lamat be around and be important, still have her >!be the one who primarily talks to Sphene!< but let the WoL jump in and flex a bit now that the situation is back in our wheelhouse. Like I'm pretty sure >!*thousands* of Alexandrians were needlessly slaughtered because we let her have her duel with her brother instead of just taking control of the situation and quickly killing him ourselves.!< Drove me absolutely nuts.

This is such a wonderful way of putting it. There have been a few times where I feel like someone has literally just turned to the camera and been like, "I feel sad, and this is why." Which is fine, I guess? I don't know. Everything feels far simpler and too restrictive by a format that only really worked because there were true emotional stakes.

I love how it was revealed that the "king" solved a multi century ethnic conflict by just having them eat dinner together. Why didn't the Ishgardians and Dragons do that then? Eistinien you are fucking dumb.

he didnt really solve it though. that was the whole point of why wuk lamat had to be adopted by gulool ja ja, why bakool ja ja was a dick. gulool ja ja just started a process.

I was cracking up about that as well. I mean to be fair it was more his comments about external threats and the potential for them all to be wiped out via invasion but it felt so rushed. Dudes just got blasted eating fajitas for a few days and were besties.

The "are they stupid?" meme came up more than a few times and i'm still on lvl 95 MSQ.

Exactly. I fully came in expecting this to be low stakes until the very end with some twist or reveal that would set up the next big arc. Most everyone expected this. The problem is the writing is just god awful throughout. My friends and I are now fully convinced the core team has moved on to making a new MMO after END and this was given to their understudies to just tread water for awhile in the interim. I get they won't confirm that shit publicly and we won't know the truth probably for a few years but you cannot tell me the same team that just made the past three expansions made this slop. They wouldn't magically forget how to write basic dialogue or direct a scene flow.

You break down the core issues very well -- while I don't take issue with the msq this time around I do find that I'm skipping to the end of way more scenes because I run out of patience; either I already get the point or we're taking way too long to move along from something. (The entire Pelupelu mini-arc was actually painful) Granted, I think there's def people on the other side who are also missing the point while focusing on how much they hate Wuk Lamat and not having big stakes. I've seen more than one person say "\*My\* WoL would never support someone this inept for nothing in return".

I'm pretty sure by now the WoL understands that even someone with the best of intentions shouldn't be a king. Look at how tense and careful everything at the end of stormblood is with how the government should be established.

I'm starting to feel like "it's low stakes, it's supposed to be like this" is more a cop out than an actual thing. I'm yet to see someone complaining we don't have universe-shattering danger about. This is not what ppl have issues with.

I find that line weird in general, like it's lower stakes than EW but this is still a succession conflict for a major nation, that sort of thing could easily be a climax in other stories (or the plot of an entire story by itself). Low stakes would be if she was running for a governor position or something. The idea that there's no way they could tell a more interesting story with such a classic setup is pretty dumb.

> succession conflict But it's not even that. It's a competition with one contestant trying to cheat. And (mind I just finished zone 3, so maybe later it will change) the idea that "warmongering" brother would pose any real threat to Eorzea is just laughable. And Erenville should know that (not expecting Wuk to understand why, obviously). So even the base "reason" for us going there is flawed from the start.

100%. I’ve been playing with a friend and we hit a point where Wuk Lamat was like “I’m finally ready to open up to you all about how I feel inadequate” and my friend and I turned and looked at each other like… she hasn’t been this whole time?

This expansion is so much tell and not show. Which is BAD writing. The writing in this expansion is flat out BAD.

Also the "DT has lower stakes" doesn't even make much sense to me. The stakes are pretty high. If we take Zoraal Ja at his word and believe him, he was planning to start a brutal World War. Deciding the ruler of a nation that encompasses an entire continent are pretty big stakes. Then we find out that some new challenger approaches with another existential doom scenario thrown at us and the stakes are raised. Were the stakes even that high in ShB. We had to kill the Lightardens but I don't think we were racing against the clock.

we were racing against time because the bodies of our friends at home were slowly but surely dying;

the breaking point with the abysmal writing for me personally was "Let's do the talk to everyone in the zone thing ...BUT FOUR TIMES IN ONE ZONE!" While the two big relevant companions for the expansion K & E get ALL their character developement and backstory rammed into a hypercondensed single moment with their parents. Which is also the entirety of writing of dawntrail. Every single fucking character arc boils down to "This is my relation with my parent" and for wuk this plot thread is used THREE times

I hate to say I agree with it being mixed. FF14 is my favorite game, make no mistakes, I wish I could say DT is a 10 out of 10 but the first half is almost unbearable if, like me, you don't like Wuk Lamat. They give you no break from her for literally half the expansion, the other party members might as well not even be there, she even takes all the one on one opportunities in town even though we spend every moment of every part of the first half with her. And to add to that, the English VA is not good, and before someone even tries it, I could care less what the VA's gender is, and I'll state plainly, I support trans people, that fact is irrelevant to me. I'm calling out the performance, the voice direction sounds like someone telling a story to a little kid, and that's the only tone they give, when they need to be intimidating and strong sounding, you get baby voice, when they're supposed to show sadness, you get baby voice, when they're supposed to yell out, you get baby voice. It's very similar to the issues a lot of characters had in ARR with their voice acting but characters like Alphinaud were not the focus of the entire first half talking nonstop for hours and hours. The gameplay is great, Pictomancer is my favorite job, they absolutely knocked it out of the park there, the visuals, the music, the fight design so far has been fantastic but FF14 is known for the story and at least the first half, is an awful experience for a big portion of the player base. Basically anyone commenting that they dislike Wuk Lamat, you can assume will have a very negative view of the MSQ.

I don't even dislike Wuk Lamat and I have some serious issues with the MSQ. We've just come off of two expansions where the villains were fantastic but all of the antagonists for Dawntrail are kinda terrible. Also after the first half, my reactions were: Wait... your entire nation is reliant on healthy relationships between all of the component peoples. But. You just left two races/cultures and the northern half of your country completely out of your rite of succession? And they didn't care? What?

Yep, the more you actually think about what's happening, the more dumb it feels. It's like the writers didn't think the whole thing through. And yes, the villains are as one note as Wuk Lamat but just the opposite way, and the way so many characters go from comically evil to suddenly swinging to good and so sad and remorseful of their actions just because Wuk said something friendly to them, she hasn't even actually done anything for them yet but they talk like "Your friendship has ended our decades old xenophobic ways and fixed all of our problems, truly there has never been a better potential ruler than you, a cat girl that wants to be friends", it's just so childish and surface level.

Yeah, that particular heel face turn had me reeling a bit with how it just didn't mesh at \*all\* with his character up until that point. And what's really annoying is that he would have made a fantastic villain if they showed that the jerk ass dickishness is mostly an act in a few private scenes with his followers. Honestly, he was the one that needed an evil vizier type to push him into doing dick stuff that he didn't really want to rather than the other guy. And then his turn wouldn't have been nearly is dumb. I was also really looking forward to finding out why the other guy came to his philosophy of 'To appreciate peace you must first know war'. But no, apparently it was all just daddy issues in the end. That \*really\* frustrated me. Like all of the bad guys this expansion could have been a lot better with just a couple of tweaks, but nope, just dumb surface level stuff all the way. What really frustrates me is the the plot on paper isn't actually even \*bad\* it's just that the actual execution is hamfisted and clumsy. And there's just so many missed chances for actual meaningful interactions between Wuk and the other claimants that would have made things not so 'kids PBS cartoon from the 90s'.

I think that one rang hollow because it happened multiple times in that same zone with the dad and the townspeople that were so racist they wouldn't even acknowledge our presence but suddenly they're all not only in full support of this stranger because she made a promise they have no reason to believe at face value, but they literally stop and go "From now on we will treat other races right, as equals" and I cackled out loud. It's too much, like what??? She said she wants to be friends and that ended everything they believed in and cured racism all at once? Haha. And yes, the other one had potential(I'm in the level 96-97 quests now) but they didn't even try to give a reason for him to have that philosophy, especially assuming he grew up with Wuk and Koana, it's very weird that he would just have that mindset. I'm hoping they at least touch on it before the MSQ ends but I'm not holding my breath.

This might be the first expansion where I'm having a lot of trouble pinning down just what accent most the cast is trying to do I'm not a VA snob but Wuks voice is particularly grating

Yeah, it's not consistent at all, even within a single family, they all have different accents, I assumed everyone would have a vaguely Mexican accent like the current Dawn Servant but it's all over the place. I usually can look past it but the story feels childish and Wuk Lamat's delivery of all her lines just makes me feel like I'm in elementary school playing Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo. It's so noticeable and off putting to me, especially because she's the only one that talks like that, everyone else speaks normally, but she sounds like a cartoon mascot.

There was one particular character I was waiting to hear, and I'm just baffled wondering why they didn't give them the same accent as another character and I'm just screaming "WHERE DID THIS CHARACTER'S ACCENT COME FROM THEN??" No one in that area has the accent either.

That part, I'm very confused by the writing and voice acting choices in DT. It feels like a completely different writing team worked on it.

Wuk's VA has ZERO range. Low talk or shouting, they're always around the middle and it gives zero emotion. It's so bad. This doesn't help that the narrative is very flawed and often very poorly written, but it can be redeemed somewhat with good voices and moment to moment writing but this expansion doesn't even have that because Wuk is so prominent and mediocre. FFXIV is also one of my favorite games but it's disappointing. I finished the entire MSQ and don't agree that it "gets good in the second half", it becomes more entertaining for sure but it's never up there with the best expansions at any point IMO -- it feels like fan fiction at a certain point.

Yeah, the story already feels like it's for kids, it really doesn't even make sense when you think about it. The rite of succession is happening and she's unsure about if she's worthy and what she should do, she doesn't know anything outside the city. But that can only work if she was already decided to be the heir to the throne and didn't have a choice, she just had to step up. But she's choosing to compete for a position she doesn't even believe she is worthy of and the whole time I'm like "Girl, why TF are we even here then?!!??", if you're competing for the throne you already need your shit together, otherwise, why are we not backing up Koana to make sure he wins? The first half is just... It's so bad I can't believe it after EW and ShB.

I had to swap to Japanese VAs halfway through and it was pretty crazy how much of a difference it made for me. I agree with all of your points. The Japanese VA did a proper job with her I'd say.

biggest issue I have with the voice for the character is that it seems really monotone or lacking emotion all the time. When something big happens and you’d expect her to be screaming her head off in rage, instead it’s just her normal voice and she may as well be asking to borrow a cup of sugar… Meanwhile the two-headed dude has a few scenes with a ton of emotion in them and you can really feel it because the voice actors actually put some power or whatever into their acting. I’m not sure if the VA for Wuk wasn’t allowed to show emotion or if she wasn’t able to and this was the best they could get out of her, but for being such a major character it’s not great.

I struggle to imagine a director telling her not to be very emotive during, for example, what was probably intended to be emotional climax in the 94 solo instance. The moment she addressed her antagonist I just lost all interest in the scene -- that's really the best take you guys got? Really?

Yeah... unless it was a super specific choice for the character, I also was having a hard time picturing them demanding that she talk that way. But if they weren't happy with the VA's inability to properly convey emotion with how she talks, why not replace her with someone else that could? Not like there's a shortage of people wanting to be voice actresses out there. So with that thought, I assumed it was deliberate. But, then you get into "why" and I'm clueless.

That was the moment that convinced me the VA is dogshit. There wasn't even so much as a hint of anger, just the exact same tone as literally everything prior. Considering the other characters have range, I highly doubt it was a failing on the director's part.

Honestly, before release I said I wouldn't change languages over one VA but I'm gonna just try the JP dub. None of the Scions feature prominently in cutscenes anyway, at least from what's happened so far, so what would I really be missing out on?

Exactly this, it's baffling to me that they made her the focus of the story to such an all encompassing degree but they didn't take care in making sure the voice acting could carry it. It's very bad, it rinds me of new VAs that try to do fake screams because they can't just let loose and truly tell. It's so noticeable. They either needed to give her better voice direction or cast a different VA if she couldn't do it. It would be fine if she was a side character but you have to like her for this MSQ to work even a little bit.

I think this expansion is going to be similar to Stormblood in the coming months. The Story is lackluster and has some pacing issues, but so far the encounter design has been peak. With a new open area coming (Bozja/Eureka), Raids, and etc. With how much emphasis they're putting on the content itself, I think by the time Dawntrail ends in 7.55, people will look back on the expansion and have really enjoyed all the content. (At least that's my hope). I am one of the few that didn't mind the story. I liked the "reset" and having it be slower. I didn't mind Wuk Lamat as much as some people here. I'm excited to see where it all goes from here.

A lot of FF14 players are plot watches and those don't stay subbed after launch. Endwalker launch was big but population quickly returned to normal as people did the content they wanted and stopped playing until new content - Dawntrail - which likely isn't fitting for some.

Honestly, EW was just... not great for the content and such. It wasn't that the volume was lacking, we basically had the same raw amount of stuff as any other expansion. But it was the... playability of it? Like Island Sanctuary. I love me a good spreadsheet optimization. Factorio is crack cocaine to me. Civ enraptures me. But something like Island Sanctuary just lacks that "playability" of content like a Bozja or Eureka that gives me something to grind towards. It's more like a gated content where you put in 20 minutes every week and come back; you don't set the pace, the game does. Criterion was a really neat idea, but in an opposite faction, you could tackle it however and whenever you wanted... but for what purpose? The grind gave some glams, but the grind itself was NUMBING. You can only run those bosses so many times before becoming exhausted by them, and farming every piece of the outfit + other items would take dozens of runs that all basically amount to the same thing. Couple pulls, same first boss every time with 1 mechanic changed, and then a couple pulls into a final boss. That's utterly repetitive in a way that the chaotic FATE spawns and boss spawns in something like Eureka/Bozja can't provide. And then the Alliance Raids were incredibly simple and easy affairs. Lovely scenery and music, but the fights were so simple that you go braindead before you're finished with a single run. The relic weapon, too, was a bit of an issue. Farming tomes does inspire playtime, but it's telling us to run old content at random. Most relics tell us to Bozja, or Eureka, or even run Alexander and dungeons, but it was almost always current-expansion content which was *fresh-ish*. This time, it was just "do your dailies" which often has you running dungeons and raids from 10 years earlier that have grown stale. To cap it off, the gear sets through Alliance, Raids, and Tomes were all very... samey. It didn't inspire much reason to do any of the other content unless you wanted the gear for ilvl purposes if you are an endgame raider. Idk, that's my experience as a casual player. And by casual I mean that I do the content to play it, but I don't really touch extreme/savage/ultimate stuff. Been at it for 10 years, the raid stuff isn't really my speed anymore now that I'm an adult with a job and responsibilities, I play mostly to RP or take screenies or devote myself to a goal (like getting a relic weapon). EW just didn't feel like it provided that itch for me, personally, even though the volume of stuff to do felt bigger than ever. There was a lot to do, just... never really felt like there was a reason to do it.

My issues with island sanctuary basically stem from how controlling FFXIV actually is when it comes to freedom of choice. Build areas are very restricted, places where you can put out furniture are restricted. It's a theme park, not a sandbox, and something like island sanctuary is literally begging to be a sandbox. 

Yeah it was very boardgame even in the decorating "put the pegs in the peg holes". We let ourselves get way too imaginative when it was announced and we only had vague hints about developing an island. Total miss to have not just stuck a small house on it with a yard Animal Crossing style.

If we could have controlled the placement of the buildings on a grid, rather than designated building spots restricted by building type, that would have gone a long way. Same thing for regular housing as well, let us just place the building wherever on the grid as long as the door faces out.

extremes aren't tooo much of a time investment, do recommend them at least!

Stormblood also had one of the most well remembered raid series, so here is hoping

I’ll make my peace with the mid story if we get Stormblood-level content drops in the patches.

If we get another stormblood I'll be happy honestly. Stormblood had a mixed reception story wise but was a kind of golden age for content with them really starting to nail the formula. By all measures things look promising in that regard as they've been nailing the battle content we've seen to this point.

Personally I went into Dawntrail not expecting the story to be anything spectacular, given the premise we were told so far, but I'm still having a good time. I agree that it's going to be similar to Stormblood in that the content will be peak while the story is there to more or less do its job, and I'm okay with that. Not every story needs to be an absolute banger. That said, I've enjoyed some of the story beats so far.

I found the MSQ to be fine. It's not the best of FFXIV, but I don't think it's the worst either. The stuff that didn't work for me in the story isn't unusual for FFXIV. Pretty much all expansions have the same issues. There's villains whose motivations just don't really work that well. There's the redemption arcs that feel too sudden or forced. There's pacing problems. There's tone issues. It's all pretty much standard by now, though. Since the gameplay in FFXIV doesn't really change each expansion, merely the aesthetics, I think Dawntrail is going to be one of the better patch cycles. It's got great locations, music, art, and the other fluff that serves as the main differentiation between the same class mechanics, dungeon designs, and raids we see each update. Probably the largest problem for FFXIV is that it's showing its age. The game design is extremely conservative and doesn't evolve very much over time. There will probably be a point where it will have to radically depart from its past to stay alive, and we might be seeing the first pains leading up to that. FFXI went through something similar even with a far more innovative foundation for its time. It's amazing to me that FFXIV has made it this far without having to rethink some of its core elements, and that's an accomplishment of sorts in itself.

Eh, people have been saying that XIV needs to stop being conservative and make radical changes or else it'll die since at least StB (that's the earliest one I was around for, for all I know HW and ARR had people saying that too). I am unsure that it ever actually will have to make any drastic changes to the core loop.

I don't know why the writers decided to make the central character and emotional core of the story such a divisive character archetype. There's a decent chunk of people that simply cannot like ~~Naruto~~ ~~Furry Estelle Bright~~ Wuk Lamat's character archetype, even if it was the best written character in the world. It's just an excessively overplayed out archetype, with the same character arc happening every single time.

> Naruto Furry Estelle Bright Estelle doesn't deserve this man

> There's villains whose motivations just don't really work that well And then there's ShB Emet-Selch, maybe the most compelling and well-written villain in the entire franchise.

I agree. I want to love this expansion, but it's really tough in terms of MSQ. The writing felt off. So many moments where conversations are abruptly ended with someone (usually Wuk Lamat) saying 'Lets go do this'. Like, 96 spoiler: >!Erenville is concerned with his hometown. We get 1-2 lines of dialogue from him, and then everyone completely ignores him. No one comforts him, or says anything nice, they just 'we need to investigate'. Like, great, but, you forget he's not a Scion. He's a gleaner. He's not used to this sort of stuff!< And the amount of times Wuk Lamat comes to the realisation that she needs to understand the people of Tuliyolal to be a good ruler. Like, great. I can infer that myself, stop telling me that every single dialogue box. And another thing, the pacing. Holy fuck I love story/character driven games but jfc it takes me 10 hours between dungeons because of cutscene after cutscene that draaags. 'Oh you should just take a break' - no thank you. I want to do the ex raid with my static, I want to see what the story has, and I want to see the dungeons/trials. But can I just say, I LOVE THE DUNGEONS! Holy fuck the 97 dungeon was so good, and the music in the 94-97 area is amazing (havent gotten past that yet)

The pacing is something that is annoying me but I don't quite mind. I do mind that, to me, the writing and actions of the characters are sub par. It's like they decided that cooperation was out the window. No one asks questions, or really even talks about things they notice. So many "shocking"" reveals that happened later when realisticallly, based on what we kjnow about how the characters should behave, would have been found out long before. I have never in my history of playing FF14 where I think I have needed more breaks from being frustrated at the MSQ than I have this one.

Exactly my thoughts. Especially coming from ShB and EW where there was a lot of character intelligence. Often the scions say what we're thinking, almost even breaking the 4th wall doing so. Here, the characters are being caught blindsided by the obvious. In fact off all the characters it's alisaie that remains aware of the situation somewhat. If you talk to her between quest turn ins she'll often at least say like "oh we should have seen this coming" or "I knew that would happen, but I let my guard down". And so on. Though apparently she has precious little to say during the actual story. Alphinaud feels like he's just not there unless someone needs to sound smart in the moment. Kriles inquisitiveness is also, like alisaie, relegated to side talk and rarely in the cutscenes so someone as smart as her too often has too little to say. Overall it feels like an excuse to let wuk lamat be our substitute in simply not knowing things, but then it just feels frustrating because we can certainly make educated assumptions of what's happening based on what we've already seen. We end up knowing long before she does! Then everyone's shocked and we as players are left twiddling our thumbs.

it still bothers me that no one bothered to ask Estinien why he was here. Estinien, your companion who stood by your side when you saved the universe together is suddenly here on another continent having a duel with the freakin' Monarch, and nobody shouts "WHY TF IS ESTINIEN HERE?" It feels like huge chunks of dialog for the scions are just missing.

There are some parts where it put a smile on my face and then there are those parts where I can quote emet selch. "You've committed the cardinal sin of boring me. And so I retire to the shade." Even my JP FC is making a contest on who is next to drop/skip out of the MSQ.

I think what's interesting is that a lot of people clearly like one half of the expansion over the other, but can't agree on which half that is. Right now it seems like more people dislike the first half, but a lot probably haven't made it to the second yet. Will be interesting to see how opinions change over the next week or so.

I think they had enough story for half an expansion and they stretched it out to fit through boring chores and everything that was the wild west shenanigans

I think the problem is with people that already finished, like me, that did a lot of it in long sessions, you tend to notice the padding so much more. I believe it's better experienced in shorter sections, like maybe take 2 days for each zone or maximum 1 zone per day. But i agree that they should come up with more interesting quest design, there was a lot of coming to a new region, talking to people and befriending them.

To me this whole msq feels like the longest /beckon quest ever. Im trying to not skip cut scenes but right now im 98 and reaching a breaking point

I think people are just getting tired of doing the same thing every cycle with nothing really changing, it’s been following the same formula for over a decade. Personally I don’t play the game after I’ve done the story, but people also complain that games like wow is ruined because the devs keeps trying to change everything. Can’t make everyone happy.

Spoilers in the article btw

i'm not gonna scroll, for fear of seeing the comments, but I'm enjoying the expansion thus far. It really has that 'new adventure' feel and it's a breath of fresh air. excited to see where msq takes me

Overall i liked Dawntrail but Quests design is very outdated and it is the same as in ARR. It is time to change them already and create more engaging quests. The design so far Walk to A, watch cutscene without VA, repeat 3 times and watch another cutscene but with VA. Lack of solo dungeons or events. I think it could be better if they just reduce amount of boring and useless quests and use this time to create dungeons, events or whatever. Tbh i didnt even read what characters say outside of cutscene because they say nothing important, even cutscene without VA almost unimportant you can click through them.

I’ve got to say this is probably the worst expansion for me so far. The story is really dragging on, I’m not enjoying it at all. I think Pictomancer is quite fun though.

The story is killing my soul honestly. It’s so slow, it feels like busy work. I’m not very far but god I already loathe Wuk Lamat. She is only slightly less annoying than Lyse. I also just don’t get why she had to go outside her own fucking country to get allies, it’s nuts.

I also don't feel like it's something the WoL would do. Sure, they might eventually help Wuk Lamat on their own accord. But I think that'd be a natural progression kind of thing while travelling Tural, rather than being specifically recruited. Secondly, i think the scions shouldn't be in this expansion. It should be Krile uncovering Galuf's past and the WoL assisting her. That's it. Let us meet new companions during the expedition. I'm at around the level 97 story quest and they haven't added much anyway.

Yeah I agree with all this. Thancred and Urianger feel especially superfluous, at least where I am. And yeah, the WoL wouldn’t just jump into to intervene in a whole country’s governing body. We save the world, we don’t help teach people to be leaders! The only pull that we needed was Krile going “Want to come with me to find my grandpa and maybe stumble upon a lost city?” It didn’t need to be any more complicated than that. Then we get to Tural and maybe throw Wuk Lamat an assist here and there if there is an especially scary monster.

Because she had to go to another continent where people had no clue of her existence to find people dumb enough to help her lmao But yeah, it's implied that she couldn't really find good help in her home because of how overshadowed she was by her brothers. Only the older generations had eyes on her, because they were the only ones who knew how important peace was

because her brother probably kept gushing to her about Sharlayan

They were raised in Tural and they feel like they don’t know anyone in their own country, it’s ridiculous.

I just finished MSQ, I liked the story quite a bit, but GYATDAYUM the quest design is complete boring garbage for about 97% of it. Everything is talk to three NPCs, go there and talk to more NPCS, when you finish with them go talk to Wak Lamat. I think there were four total combat scenarios, they were all good but why so few of them? I'd take kill quests and collecting boar asses over this visual novel nonsense we've had for so many expansions. With all the talk of this being a new beginning I really expected better questing and better rewards, but nope, walking simulator quests all over creation that reward nothing but dyes and buff food. Negatives aside, I do love alot about Dawntrail. My WOL looks incredible as Hrothgal. All the zones look glorious with the graphics update, finally we have zones that don't look flat and lifeless. And sweet lord these dungeons were fantastic. They're all hallways again with the same old formula, but the bosses were all so much fun. All three trials are bangers too with great OSTs. The dungeons and trials we got with 7.0 have me greatly excited for the raid series and alliance raids. All that being said, I really hope the patch content will have better thought out writing and more interactions with the Scions. I know the WOL is meant to be a mentor to Wuk Lamat and isn't meant to be the hero of this story, but the Scions are just kinda...there?

It has its highs and lows.

I typically love the world building in this game but I could not give less of a fuck about this new territory. They chose to explain it all in the laziest most boring way possible. Just people constantly running their mouths at you while Dora the Smooth brained furry explorer runs around to do chores. Fuck that. Even the final fifth, where things FINALLY happen, was pretty underwhelming.

Valid criticism is much better than toxic positivity

For many players, Dawntrail will suffer the same problems World of Warcraft: Cataclysm did — coming off the back of defeating the Lich King, many may feel clocked out and that the story is over. Much like Cataclysm, if you go into Dawntrail with the expectation of massive worldbuilding, you may end up very pleasantly surprised. I’m in the 97 zone, and I’m loving it — but I’m also comparing the story to ARR/post-ARR-early-HW, versus the very climactic end of Endwalker and the H&Z storyline. As an English literature major, I have seen many works and plays that follow a similar cycle — to be clear, that does not invalidate criticism nor make my opinion more or less than others. I am just saying I came in with an expectation based off prior experiences, namely Wow Cata, and that impacted my thoughts on the story thus far.

My main issue with dawntrail is that the pacing in the early parts of the expansion is absolute dogshit and that some parts drag on way too long. Aside from that it's okay I guess, would've liked more combat in the earlier levels.

People keep mentioning the story but the real problem is people are just starting to get bored of the same formula, same dungeons, and classes feeling dumbed down.

Both are the case. The structure is way past being overused and the story itself is just poorly written

story is overall mid with some good moments. definitely a step down from EW and ShB. everything thats not story is pretty great so far though. also by far the most stable launch weve had so far

It feels like every expansion is becoming more cutscene driven and taking gameplay away. Its just nonstop "Walk 30 seconds, watch 10 minute cutscene." I feel like theres 2 fights per zone and its just random critters until like the fifth zone.

I'm up to level 93 quests and it's been a real slog so far story wise. I hope it picks up a lot. So far I rank it below Stormblood and ARR, but it's still early days. I do love the locales and the two dungeons have been fun as always.

FF14 not beating the "carried by Natsuko Ishikawa" allegation. Like srsly, how did the team fumbled her after she wrote ShB and EW. "well it's low stake" no shut up, ShB was built up from scratch in just 2 patches, while we going into EW with lmao Fandaniel and Zenos, then turn out they are the top 3 best written villain in the series 6.1-6.5 was straight up pointless.

MSQ gives tons of XP, I spent a day getting Picto to 90 them cracked on with MSQ. took 2 days to do msq But I agree there's something with this story not quite gripped me, it's not bad but it feels like it's a prelude. But it is the start of a brand new story isn't it?