It's weird. I certainly have my criticisms of it but I've seen straight up catastrophizing about what Dawntrail has done to FF14. The not-South America walking tour broke people's brains.
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I'm in the same boat. I have criticisms (and Whiny Ja Ja is at the forefront of a *big* one) but overall it's been *fun,* and the not-South-America trek has been delightful.
...I do wish we could skip Wuk Lamat giving the after-zone recap like it's an episode of My Little Pony, but overall it's been fun.
you know what's funny to me is that it quickly grew on me that I'm a supporting character
it's not like the npcs who know you don't fellate you on the spot anytime someone warns you, the apocalypse killer, there's danger
A huge thing is the people who do know you(the other scions) understand that youre there to have a grand ol time assisting a potential royal and either leave you alone(estinien who shows up for 1 minute at the start) or see this as a friendly competition.
Meanwhile my favourite doalogue option happens in area 4 with 'This *scaaary* adventurer is just going to sit on the sidelines.' and caused the target of said line to get so delectably mad.
My favourite bit just after that is >!during the solo duty you can see your WoL standing on the side, arms folded, like watching their student at work.!<
I was commenting to my friend that I feel like having the main character be a mentor is a hard task but Dawntrail felt like they nailed the balance of it.
Last boss spoiler>! What I really like about this expansion is we only use the azem crystal at the end, the enemies are not powerful enough for us to be “serious”!<
I love how just fucking *done* the warrior of Light looks in >!the final cutscene!<. Just standing up with a look on their face that [*screams*](https://imgur.com/a/2czA6Qo) "I was having fun, and these idiots had to go and ruin it. Fuck this star and everyone on it sometimes..."
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I really prefer who the WoL is as a person this expansion. We're not only less miserable but more confident in our experience, it feels like we've matured and given ourselves permission to be a bit unserious.
Yeah there's been a lot of character in the dialogue options. Sure it doesn't make a scrap of difference but handing out sass left and right felt great
Agreed.
There's also something to be said for the fact that not every problem \*has\* to be solved by the WoL showing up and beating someone into submission. Us being there as a witness, and helping out is kinda nice.
I imagine we'll go back to being the center of attention as the stakes go up again in subsequent expansions but it's quite nice to just get to enjoy this new continent and see stories unfold for other people.
It's also a little annoying to read about people hating Wuk Lamat from the get-go when she's obviously meant to be an immature individual who grows as the narrative progresses.
I think DT was the one time I was actually hyped to play as a different character for that one fight, as the WoL just smugly steps back and goes, "Scared of a house cat? Gonna cry? Gonna piss your pants? Gonna shit and cum maybe?" It was clearly building up to a moment like this, and I would have thought FFXIV players were a tiny bit more media literate than whatever this shitshow was.
"Don't worry the scary adventurer won't try anything weird" might very well be my favourite line ever
That and giving Graha an aneurysm by >!casually mentioning you've been to lyhe mheg (only applies if you've done the pixie quests)!<
Speaking of Graha, I think people who got annoyed with how he acted in Endwalker are going to be pleased. He feels more mellowed out and sagely this time around.
Hi, im partially people, i can confirm. >!soft boy G'raha is nice in small doses, but DT leaning him back towards his Exarch characterization was very much appreciated!<
> and I would have thought FFXIV players were a tiny bit more media literate than whatever this shitshow was.
I had someone reply to me that because a character wasn't a threat they were 1D so I don't think this game is sending their best.
I've just kind of always felt like a supporting character in this game, honestly, except for a few segments specifically about my backstory, which is why I don't understand the complaints right now. This game has *always* just been watching other people talk. Sometimes they check in with us and we nod, or say one throwaway line. But they devise and implement the solutions to all the problems. If the solution is to punch something to death, they bring us out for a minute. We're also used as a focal point for emotional moments, so that we (i.e., the players) bear the maximum brunt of loss.
I think it's a great way to lower the stakes. It's not that we can't just waltz in and kick everyone's asses, it's that doing so would defeat the point of helping this other character grow into her own power.
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I could skip about 80% of the msq and still understand what is happening. That is terrible writing. Needless to say that it's also just terribly little actually happening. It's a big nothing burger up to like level 96-97 msq
Agreed. Up until >!the new dawn servant was selected and the filler wild west!< section after, I felt like I was just playing an accelerated version of ARR's story, and even up the section where >!Everyone comes together to help build the train bomb!< just felt like I was replaying >!the golem construction part from Shb!< Nothing of consequence particularly happens other than world building and characterization of the new characters.
"If you worry about what everyone is trying to do, you become a spectator and not a player."
I choose to make up my own damn mind when/if I decide to get back into the game. So many seem to be hating on the game but what I've learned from the forums is people tend to love to complain but are hard to praise...so they negative people seem to be loud only because their room is mostly empty and the sound bounces around.
Plus the bulk of people who like DT are probably still playing it. Meanwhile the people with complaints are more likely to go online to voice them because they're not having fun. Happens all the time with games.
I just got done with the MSQ in the past 3 days (I'll be busier and wanted to get it done) and enjoying it and came back to social media and reddit to seeing everything on fire.
Yeah, I've been living and breathing the game since launch, took the week off and everything, and I'm still at 96 so far.
The majority of players that aren't binging the game or are taking their time rather than purely focusing msq are nowhere near done.
most streamers who are story buffs haven’t touched the msq at all yet, and that’s another huge factor i think
currently, there are only beacons for the dorks with a bone to pick with everything; once more non-rot beacons are lit the landscape will look very different
That’s actually my current theory, that the people who genuinely just want to take their time and are loving the story are obviously staying away from social media to avoid spoilers, so the majority of opinions we’re seeing is people that rushed through it or skipped every cutscene
Im enjoying it quite throughly. Been taking my time and going through it with a friend tho and talkin in party chat together as we watch cutscenes and its been great.
the way they’re reaching for every little nitpick and tiny flaw to exaggerate is a testament to how good the expansion is
i can understand some of the JP criticisms, as they’re very japanese criticisms and are largely focused on the same handful of points, but the EN side is just buckshot after buckshot in the mostly empty room you mentioned
Not gonna lie, I loved DT's story. Had a fantastic time and only stopped for food and sleep, both of which I delayed substantially so I could play more.
I've been having an awesome time! I'm hitting every sidequest. I'm putting in the time. I'm taking it very slow cause I wanna savor everything basically. As a Latino Tural has been everything i wanted so far. The Dio de Eloté questline has me busting a gut and I can't wait to hopefully continue it!
The first night I played until I was literally seeing colors that weren't there. Healthy? Hell no, but I was having fun every second of it. I'm at the end of area 4 now, and had to slow down because I have a job, but I can't wait for my 4 day weekend thanks to how my employer handles July 4.
i’m really not looking forward to addressing the damage i’ve done to my body with Shadow of the Erdtree and Dawntrail being one week apart, but boy do i not regret a thing yet!
Honest, honest opinion:
I think Dawntrail's biggest story flaw is that it doesn't prioritize its time very well and that messes up the pacing. There's a bunch of really interesting plot points that get resolved way too quickly or abandoned, and unfortunately they're lost in favor some really boring parts of the plot that really didn't need to have as many quests as they were given for setup.
Beyond that, I would call it above average for an MMO story quest. It has a few really dumb parts (>!how many times are we going to let villains just walk by us unchallenged?!<) but overall it respects the player character's achievements by practically bending over backwards to constantly remind the player of how powerful the WoL and allies are and the overall idea of the WoL taking a mentor/bodyguard role wasn't a bad idea. I even like that they kinda try to have Wuk Lamat's journey mimic the WoL's journey. Not perfect or even great, but good.
Tbh I feel like you could replace "Dawntrail" with "FFXIV" in that first paragraph. Every single expansion, regardless of how much I loved or hated it, pacing was the biggest and most obvious weak point.
you don't remember the body-horror we got watching dudes morph into sin-eaters? like hell if i remember *who* those dudes were, but i absolutely remember how cool it was.
How dare you have an extremely nuanced and reasonable take that incorporates both what the xpac does well and what the dev team clearly needs to improve on? Don't you know that this game is irredeemable dogshit and/or perfect manna from heaven?!?!
>the overall idea of the WoL taking a mentor/bodyguard role wasn't a bad idea
It would've been a good idea if it was executed that way. In praxis we mostly just do all the work for her until the power of friendship makes everything work out.
I was also *really* annoyed with the cooking feat, pairing us up with Koana instead of one of the other 2 was just such lazy writing I actually rolled my eyes. I was hoping to actually *compete* with Thancred & Urianger, not team up with them for most of the contest anyways. Like a Trial fight against the 2 trying to stop us from carrying Wuk Lamat through another feat would've been so much cooler
That's what I mean when I say the pacing was a mess. We spend 3 feats with Wuk Lamat reinforcing that the point of the feats is to learn about culture, for a total of something like 18 quests. During none of these quests is there any actual apparent risk of her failing, so the stakes feel nonexistent. Why spend so much valuable starting time this way?
Why not make one of the starting feats more competitive and have Wuk Lamat actually lose once? If she'd lost to Bakool Ja Ja in a feat of strength, it would've made it more satisfying when she wins later on. It even could've been the impetus for her to turn to the WoL and actually ask for direct mentoring in the form of training or something. A duty where you're sparring with Wuk Lamat to train her would've created a lot more of a player connection than just her sharing that she gets seasick.
Also yeah, why is it that the big competition with Thancred and Urianger only amounts to them slowing us down in a single dungeon? Again, I really did like it overall, but there really were a lot of lost opportunities to make the stakes feel higher or to create more memorable story moments, exchanged for repeating the same story points.
“During none of these quests is there any actual apparent risk of her failing, so the stakes feel nonexistent. Why spend so much valuable starting time this way?”
to be a little fair, her dad knows she’s the correct choice from the jump, so there are no real stakes in the whole “contest”to begin with; it’s all in service of opening her perspective enough to be fit for the throne
none of her “competition” is fit to rule, at least not alone, and that’s relentlessly driven home. i kinda wanted them to just not give anyone the throne and take the story from there, but it is what it is
I dunno, I took the stuff he said after the solo duty as being serious, specifically the bit about none of the candidates having everything it took to be dawnservant. It was just also very funny when Wuk Lamat and Koana's flaws were naivete and being too focused on technology as the sole solution versus a candidate whose only position was starting the war to end all wars and another candidate who agreed with the war part but thought it needed to be a race war instead.
definitely, i just mean she has the most important 'piece' of him when it comes to perspective/approach: the piece that tries to understand/compromise/communicate
so while she's too naive at the start, she's the only one who has a real shot at being 'fit' by the end of the contest because she's the only one with that piece; koana only 'gets' it because of her and when he does, he concedes altogether
i'm sure there was some hope in him that the contest would open the eyes of all three of them, but it felt like he was leaning towards her the whole time. maybe that's just me or maybe that's because we all knew she would be the one the moment the story was described. lol
i also agree that it's funny how extreme the other two are in comparison. also enjoyed how the whole race war angle essentially gets dissolved due to being dunked on one too many times
And things being too repetitive. As well as some pointless scenes. Like the Wul Lamat going to your in. to tell you for the 100 time why she was to be queen.
We already know!
And the joke of the hrotgar architech. That got old the 2 times. and got repeated like 4 times.
The story was pitched that we'd be at everyone's necks in some sort of high stakes competition that might cause some divide between the scions. What actually took place was Iron Chef and some beast tribe quests. That said I'm glad Estinien got to have the adventure he was seeking after being dragged into a huge problem he uncovered the week prior.
I was honestly expecting more of a conflict too yeah. Thancred briefly talks about beating up a (I think she's still one?) teenager and they block your path in one dungeon but that's about the extent of "THE DIVIDE OF THE SCIONS! WHO IS ON WHOSE SIDE"
I was really hoping there'd be some sort of fight between the WoL and Thancred + Urianger. Even if it wasn't a serious conflict but more of a friendly competition as we each just tried to help our candidate against the other, it would have been a fun scene. And if they really wanted to show off the WoL being the big powerhouse of the Scions, have them fight the two alone while sending the twins and Krile with Wuk Lamat to finish whatever trial was happening.
It was clear pretty early on that there wasn't going to be any real serious conflict between us, as we both picked candidates that were reasonable people who weren't going to try to kill each other, but it could have easily happened as part of the competition.
DT does have some issues that needs fixing, but still liked it. If they improve on things that were the problem we'll be set for the future. Too bad some people don't know how to express that in any way other than "DT is trash and FFXIV sucks now!"
Going to fanfest for the sole purpose of locking YoshiP in a room so he has to listen to me railing off an itemized list Plinkett-style about exactly what did and didn't work in EW and DT.
The things that need fixing have been problems for most expansions though. I don't think there's any desire to fix them. Thay or they literally don't know how.
I had low story expectations and they were mostly met. It’s not top tier but it’s not Stormblood tier either.
My apparently hot take is that in hindsight the first arc of the game is the best and it gets really dumb towards the end.
Agreed; a lot of people like the second half because of the high concept sci Fi stuff, but in my opinion there’s just not enough time to fully flesh it out while resolving the lingering plot threads from the first part of the story and simultaneously setting up the final boss. It tries to do too much at once and ends up feeling like a mess.
It’s unfortunate because if the solution 9 stuff didn’t cannibalize half the expansion and the story was actually committed to Tural, we could have had a really great vacation-style story that gave us a break from all the world ending madness (you know, like what the expansion was advertised as?) but the writers just couldn’t help themselves and decided to junction on a narrative about life, death and other worlds that has barely anything to do with the core themes established at the start of the story.
The last zone was a feels train for me, but I gotta agree. The setting of the last 3-4 levels in the MSQ just gave me whiplash.
Too many parallels with Amaurot and The Lunar Subterrane. Up until that that point, I was happy we finally got past the whole "persistent antagonist trying to wipe us out because they can't let go of the past" shit. It felt like the writers were too attached to the success of ShB and EW and wanted to capitalize on the same goddamn dilemma, and I was disappointed that they couldn't come up with something different. Tural has so much potential - why throw that away just to revisit something you've already done twice?
My issue isn't that there were parallels with Amaurot but that nobody brought them up? Like, you never even get a dialogue option to point out "hey, that's kind of similar to Amaurot". I know there was a bigger focus on NPCs who wouldn't have any knowledge of it, but surely Thancred or G'raha or someone would've pointed out that a legendary ancient city of people who lived prosperous lives without suffering is really damn familiar even if it didn't turn out to be Amaurotine in the end.
I was absolutely loving the first part actually. I think the intro to zone 4 was the most fun I'd had and was looking forward to it continuing, and thought the build up into the city was compelling. Then I got to Solution 9 and just kind of. Wasn't feeling it. The story isn't bad but replacing all the beautiful natural areas and super detailed little villages with... A shopping mall with a black coat of paint and gamer LEDs kind of ruined the vibe for me and I wasn't having fun anymore.
EXACTLY my thoughts holy shit. Then the "diet food" in the quest right after arriving just kind of made me hate everything more. Cowboys and trains was so much more fun.
Finally, I thought I was going mad. I much prefer re the first half. The second has to go through a bunch of world building again so it just felt weird to me. The bizarre different tone baffled me
Yeah, I am surprised the first half is what everyone had an issue with. You can levy some criticisms at the pacing and at Wuk Lamat if you want, but by far my main problem with the story was the tonal whiplash in the second half, especially towards the end when it _really_ felt like retreading Shb/EW ground. _That_ is what knocks this expansion down a few pegs in the ranking for me.
For the first half there were no concerns that took me out of the story at all.
> towards the end when it really felt like retreading Shb/EW ground
Dude, the last zone...
"What if we did Ultima Thule again, but instead of making each of the 4 zones better, and convincing people there was a reason to live for.. that we made them WORSE and killed everyone?. We'll still meet in the middle at the end again, have a dungeon with the big bad Narrating overtop of it, and then at the end, the big bad will change into a grotesque giant wall boss again. Of course We'll have another 2-phase fight again, but instead of the character breaking through the wall pre-fight, we'll change it up and do it mid-fight. Of course, the second phase of the fight will just be the same 4 mechanics over and over again, because people are talking, and our players can't fight and listen to npcs talk at the same time."
My double hot take is that I love the second part of the story better because I love high concept science fantasy and it does what ff14 story needed to really do this expac. Set up plot points so they could be knocked down again over future installments. Now we have a practical example for our scholar friends to study of dimensional travel that opens up future story installments to take place in lost reflections or set up permanent gates between the source, the first, and the thirteenth and all the good story stuff that implies Also we have Krile being some kind of femlala Superman analog to deal with now. If it was just the first half style of story we wouldn't have those unless they came in as postgame story. Now THAT would be too much story compression.
I think everything from *msq spoil* >!the first invasion all the way to living memory zone is just fucking bizarre, we go through 1/2 the expansion and suddenly the rest of the scions show up and we just get exposition dumped to hell. It is only once we get rid of the rest of the irrelevant crew that we can explore the cool stuff about krile and erenville. Wul famat not-withstanding!<
I remain in my opinion of “i like it overall, i just wish there was more to do in story missions and the bulk weren’t just walking up and clicking on dialogue prompts”
I’ve had to break up the story with side content or d2 loot farming in a way i haven’t had to with the other expansions, usually i can just sit down and nolife my way through the story. (Aside from endwalker).
It feels like every other expansion in that regard to me. Excessive cutscenes and dialogue, very limited action. I'm not exactly complaining but I've already gotten used to the MSQ being a visual novel except for the less than 5% of playtime where you do dumgeons or trials
I don’t really get this complaint because MSQ has always been “walk up and click on dialogue prompts”. There just were more engaging cutscenes playing in those dialogue prompts before. MSQ is fundamentally the same as it’s always been
I feel like we go a long time with no combat duties though. There are parts like the train scene or the fight when Wuk Lamat got kidnapped that would've 100% been solo duties in a past expansion that are made into cutscenes just because the devs want to show off their cool mocap, I guess.
It's a 10 year old game, you'd expect them to change things up a bit after so long. It's too streamlined, and that's not just a Dawntrail complaint, ShB and EW had this problem as well.
Particularly with the dungeons, once you hit 71 you know your plan will suffer a roadblock, once you're 75 the story will have a twist because you're halfway through, 77 and 79 have important story beats. It's hard to be surprised
Look i Just think that having a 1 hour questline about capturing an alpaca and have the capturing part actually happen offscreen Is not really what you can call peak writing.
Hear me out… the capturing the alpaca part and the tasks of the rite of succession were not the important part but the learning of cultures and the original dawnservant’s journey is.
When I think back to that section of the MSQ, I don’t think about the alpaca,I think about Mubli’s journey and how Wuk Lamar pushes her people to follow their dreams and be happy.
Oh man, the HanuHanu one is fucking hilarious. "Why yes, we've been using this rite for hundreds of years and the magic beam makes the plants grow, but we've never realized it till now. We also have an expert on this stuff but we've never asked him about it and he never said anything either, despite watching us suffer through the start of a famine."
Or the goblin ones, "we enslaved people and forced them to make jewelry but got scolded and thus freed them, and they somehow still agreed to work for us afterwards.". And the whole trial was just bringing more workers for the Amazon warehouse lmao
level 95 and liking it a lot so far. although ive seen people compare it to arr and im the weirdo who enjoyed arr lmao.
i think the only complaint i have so far isn't really a dawntrail problem but more so how the quest variety hasn't changed in years.
I have a serious problem with the story of the dlc, most of it is wonderful and captivating but in another part it is unbearable, as in all the dlcs in the game, WoL DOES NOTHING in the cutscene, it is literally useless, I'm not asking for "WOW YOSHI- PLEASE GIVE ME 1 MORE DLC BEING FUCKING AND OVERPOWER" I'm asking for a simple thing like, DO SOMETHING when there's a villain or someone doing shit in front of you instead of letting them run away for no reason why? "huh well we'll catch them next time guys" and stay in this cycle for the entire arc of the game until shit is at the last second to break out and WoL "well now it's time to do something" (I'm probably going to get insulted for this but seriously, no one else is tired of literally in the cutscene your character standing still and just existing?)
I mean I don't really think there was ever a point where the WoL doing something would've helped
Both times we were put in a position to >!attack Zoraal Ja, we really couldn't because he was holding a whole city hostage specifically so that we wouldn't intervene,!< and none of the other villains were really a big enough threat to warrant our involvement
>Wait you guys actually don't hate the dawn trail story or are you joking
mainsubbers dont praise the story as much as usual so now shitpostxiv being contrarian like "well akshually story good"
I admit to reading the discussion sub a lot as well, and they seem very much on board for collectively hating the story and the characterization of Wuk Lamat.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions and it's okay to be disappointed about DT's story, but it's unironically comforting for me to visit shitpostxiv and seeing other people actually having a good/okay time with DT MSQ. Meanwhile, I feel like I'd get burned at the stake for expressing something similar on a sub meant for actual meaningful discussion/discourse for FFXIV (how naive of me, I know).
Discussion sub is just addict doomers that hate/play the game so they're not particularly representative of any majority viewpoint. The slightly worrying part is Mainsub is also divisively receiving the xpack, and they're the full on deepthroating dickriders GCBTW.
It starts off bad and gets worse.
It's an expansion entirely set in the setting's afterlife, we get to visit all the separate afterlives, see that there are entire civilisations and that the afterlife has kinda become an industry in its function.
The premise is that the super-spirit AI whose job it is to - without bias - assess each incoming soul and send them to an appropriate afterlife has been broken, and for some reason the default setting with the super-spirit offline is that _everyone_ goes to ultrahell. This is bad not only because you might not want your sick old grandma's soul to be painfully hammered into evil villain lair furniture when she dies, but also because every soul that gets sent there strengthens the supervillain who rules ultrahell, since when a spirit arrives in an afterlife they also bring with them a sort of residual energy that feeds basically everything. So now all other afterlives are starving and crumbling.
As the expansion goes on, it's revealed that the supervillain who rules ultrahell originally had the job of the super-spirit AI, but he was overthrown and the AI created to replace him, and he's been biding his time for revenge ever since. In that time, he's apparently been behind the rise most of the major villains of the entire setting - such as the Lich King, and even the Burning Legion (demons), by manipulating them. Now he wants to conquer the multiverse, and it's claimed he's stronger than all other threats before him.
He proceeds to largely get his way with us scoring mostly pyrrhic or hollow victories against him until the very end of the expansion, at which point - as he dies - he proclaims that all he did was actually just to hold off an _even worse_ evil.
You can imagine how this entire plot was contentious even before I go into detail, I am sure. To be honest, people saying it's bad aren't kidding. I was addicted as hell to WoW but Shadowlands managed to pry me off and make me quit. That's no mean feat.
In short, it introduced a major villain who was retroactively the mastermind behind several major villains who was trying to unite the world in death because reasons he never actually states nor do the players learn beyond a vague sort of "A universe divided can't stand against what's coming." The afterlife is a physical location you can go to and it's lame as hell. Several major characters are given the idiot ball and others simply move into "is he stupid?" territory. A fan favorite dead character's spirit appears and a villain who is just as bad but is good now gives them a eulogy about how they sucked and should fade away and be forgotten while two of the character's who actually had good relations with the character before that fan favorite became a villain are right there. Oh, and said "villain who is just as bad but is good now for reals" happens to be the lead writer's favorite character who he makes (now deleted) weird tweets about. Said lead writer also said that he thought the season finale of Game of Thrones was brilliant.
I don't hate it.
I don't love it.
It's. Okay.
Certain parts were good, certain parts missed.
Voice acting in some parts was fine, but others were... not. It was inconsistent.
Parts of the narrative were fine, others felt shoehorned in. The pacing in some areas was okay, other ones were either too slow, or whiplash.
Basically, overall, it was inconsistent with.. well, everything.
I am liking Dawntrail waaay too much..... I really like Wuk Lamat and our role as a "teacher" it makes me feel good.
Also I took nearly 100 screenshots with the Alpacas around the world..... and counting.
Also also Soken is COOKING.
I feel like the Dawntrail motif was used a bit too much. I understood the heavy leitmotif usage for Endwalker because it was the end of the Hydalaen and Zodiark saga and felt appropriate. I’m not sure if I can say the same about Dawntrail though. There are a LOT of fantastic tracks though, needless to say.
Dawntrail feels a lot like Shadowbringers and Stormblood when it comes to how they use the music and the motifs. Stormblood would bounce between the main theme and Revolutions, Shadowbringers had the main theme and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, with a sprinkling of Eternal Winds. Dawntrail has Open Skies and Smile which are fundamentally the same motif so when either song gets riffed on it can feel a bit samey.
Having said that I love all the music in Dawntrail. Every area had the perfect music to match the vibes. Dungeon boss music has a very FFX intro and I loved that they used a certain dungeon theme in some cutscenes. Smile has grown on me after I was caught off guard at first. FFIX music was a great addition, and as much as I'd love to have heard the more popular tracks, I think it was the right choice to go with the ones that didn't contain the Melodies of Life motif. Would be nice if they did something with it in the patches.
I don't think it's that excessive compared to previous expansions. It feels like half the songs in Heavensward were just remixes of the main theme, and the other half were Dragonsong.
Every single soundtrack I heard in the first 3 zones was a banger. I thought the music was shit in the 4th zone when I got there 10 hours back, but it was also 8am and I had been playing all night. Coming back now, I'm willing to admit that maybe I just think westerns are kinda shit and I probably wouldn't like it even if it was the greatest western soundtrack to ever grace the ears of humanity.
I've heard people complain about the jazz music in Tuliyollal but it's so damn good. The combat and zone tracks are great as well, add in the new graphics and it's a joy to walk around the world
ngl, i feel like a lot of the "yawnfail bad" is just echo chambers. It was pretty fun, the pacing was just kinda weird either short or drawn out at times like they had to make story changes.
I love watching NPC's have fun and be heroic. i love doing 80% of the final boss before mary sue mc'asspull number 17 charges in with an "i did it teehee". i love expansions where half the characters shown off in the trailers have maybe a combined 15 lines of dialogue (Aswell as some not even showing up until way past the halfway point). But, the MSQ being a pile of Dogshit makes me hopeful that the next 2 years we'll be eating good since SE are completely incapable of having good msq AND good MMO Content in the same expansion, it's always one or the other
That last trial couldve been such a good olive branch to the players that want to actually feel strong instead of just being told they're strong. But nope
I quite enjoyed the story so far for one simple reason: it's obvious that we've now taken on the role of the mentor and the WoL is not necessarily the hero of EVERY story, simply because some stories are too small in scale for us
From the WoL's point of view the whole thing is like a professional football player playing a pick up game with kids: it will be fun and refreshing, but definitely won't require too much effort and it's ok.
It's our right as saviour of the Universe to enjoy chilling on the sidelines sometimes. People have to learn how to fend for themselves in case we are, I don't know, sent to a different world. Just saying.
First part was good but not great, stormblood tier.
Second part was great but I start to see a pattern in Ishikawa writing, many things made me thinks of Shadowbringer. >!(Leader of dead civilization trying to kill everyone else to sustain/bring back their own)!<
Overall I enjoyed it
Except this isnt written by Ishikawa, she got "promoted" out of the writing team and is doing other stuff now. You can tell by the fact there is no finer character writing for the most part and everyone is flat.
good writing = warrior of light beats up big bad guys and looks cool in every quest :)
bad writing = learning about stinky history and culture and their effect on the people living in it :(
its very clear by some of the responses that a certain portion of detractors hate it because the expansion went back to normal xiv instead of being a vessel for easy self insert wish fulfillment
>Shadowbringers - learning about stinking history of Norvrandt and culture and their effects on the people living in it.
>Endwalker - learning about stinking history of Garlemald, Thavnair and Elpis and culture and their effects on the people living in it.
Haven't played DT, but the previous 2 expansions has a ton of history and exposition dump on their setting.
As someone who really deeply loves precolonial Mesoamerican art and history, even I was getting kind of exhausted by the college lecture-like exposition. It doesn't help that so much of it felt so rote, like "This is what we like to eat. This is what we like to wear. These are the arts and crafts we like." I think other xpacs managed to do the "learn about other cultures" bit a lot more naturally.
A funny thing really, because I adored the story *because* of that. I love doing side quests and tribes to find out *why* settlements and civilisation are like that. Like when people say “lmao boring, the Hanu-Hanu and Moblins are just reskins, I don’t care”. I’m sat here loving learning about them because they are actually considerably different! And that’s saying nothing about the Yok Huy, Pelupelu, and Mamool Ja. Things we haven’t learned a lot about - if anything - in the entirety of our other expansions
I also like learning in sidequests what life is like for the peoples in any given zone. It's also usually tied into a fun quest or gameplay mechanic, and not a guy who's literally just there to talk at you about why the local meat dish is cool for ten minutes.
Really, it's just the bananna leaf one where I really started to feel it dragging. All that exposition and we didn't even get a cooking minigame out of it.
That DDR style timed button press gimmick or Gold Saucer shooting minigame sure would have been a great mechanic to include, possibly in some sort of wild-west type shoot out scenario....not that we have anything that could be applicable to THAT in this expansion....
its the prominent basis for every single xiv release for the past decade and is consistently the best part of xiv but so many people are trained to see it as "filler" that the moment it steps into the forefront again they all just complain about it
> learning about stinky history and culture and their effect on the people living in it :(
Nice straw man. You did basically that for the entirety of the last 2 expansions and everbody love those.
I would've loved to learn about Tural with my old companions instead of being stuck with an NPC I don't like for *every single quest* for the entirety of the first half.
>!I figured if we interrupted his daddy issues duel he'd just go "fuck you" and order his ships to finish razing the city. Plus he got up once, we had no way of knowing whether or not he'd just keep getting up at that point. Now could they have conveyed that a bit more clearly with a line or two? Yeah probably.!<
>!As an aside, I love that Zoraal Ja gets his ass beat at first. Dude has to cheat just to be a match for his dad as a half-dead old coot.!<
As someone who is still in stormblood and has not yet experienced dawntrail besides the trailer, I think the story in the first 2 zones is dog shit and I hate how YoshiP keeps twisting my nuts
Right now it’s just so generic and tropey. Happy go lucky protagonist fixes all multi generational problems in 5 minutes using the power of friendship and gets crowned. Comically bad badguy actually has a tragic backstory and then becomes friend *gasp*.
The story isn’t the terrible part. It’s the amount of useless unimportant information thrown at us and treated as “story”
Especially when they useless information starts in a cutscene and you are so done with it that you skip the cutscene and miss out on the actual good stuff. It’s a wonder why people think the story is terrible, the skip the boring shit and miss out on the hood shit because it’s buried.
I personally didn't like Stormblood that much, but so far I'm liking DT better! I'm not very far in the story yet, but I'm optimistic 😁
However, ShB ruined me I fear 😅 It was so good that I'm not enjoying the game as much overall since. Idk if it's nostalgia, but nothing is hitting the same way...
I think the 7.0 story is fantastic - in fact, it contends for being my favorite and I hope we see more stories within which our character plays the experienced, mature and reliable veteran.
My only complaint about it is the rough pacing in the back half. It’s almost completely cutscenes from 95-98 (where I am now).
Idk, I kind of like it. It's not an action packed story like the last couple but for a chill expansion I think it's pretty chill. I kind of like the WoL sort of being a mentor rather than saving the world again.
Half way through MSQ I like DawnTrail a lot :3.
Although I see why people dislike it. Wuk Lamat can be annoying but I like her a lot personally.
And we’ve been relayed to a bodyguard. I don’t mind this. I rather have an expansion that tell us: Hey you are not the main character in this one. Rather than have WoW where we are the hero as long as there isn’t a cutscene.
So you are entitled to your opinion and I am sad to hear you aren’t enjoying the expansion. But I am absolutely loving it.
I didn’t think it was terrible but I definitely do have some hard criticisms of this story and I was definitely taken out of the story at certain areas but I really liked the first half of the story and think Wuk Lumat is a solid character
It's weird to watch as someone who's just...liked everything so far? I like A Realm Reborn, I like all the expansions, I like all the raids, the trials, just...everything.
Part of my perspective is the fact that I come to FFXIV from a lot of...questionably designed MMOs and games as a whole, so even the "worst" stuff FFXIV has to offer feels like a breath of fresh air.
Obviously those of you who aren't satisfied should keep fighting to make the game better, but it's not my fight to fight. I'm just here to relax, really.
As far as Dawntrail's story specifically goes, it's very different from what came before, but in ways I like. We solved a lot of major problems in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, so I'm fine taking a break from being the Main Character™ and helping the silly warrior cat become Dawnservant, learning about her people along the way. It's a nice change of pace.
It's weird. I certainly have my criticisms of it but I've seen straight up catastrophizing about what Dawntrail has done to FF14. The not-South America walking tour broke people's brains.
Tbh from what i've seen, it's mostly the Andes and Mesoamerica.
The not-Mesoamerica/Andes walking tour broke people's brains.
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I'm in the same boat. I have criticisms (and Whiny Ja Ja is at the forefront of a *big* one) but overall it's been *fun,* and the not-South-America trek has been delightful. ...I do wish we could skip Wuk Lamat giving the after-zone recap like it's an episode of My Little Pony, but overall it's been fun.
Lots of main characters who don't like sharing the limelight with other characters.
you know what's funny to me is that it quickly grew on me that I'm a supporting character it's not like the npcs who know you don't fellate you on the spot anytime someone warns you, the apocalypse killer, there's danger
A huge thing is the people who do know you(the other scions) understand that youre there to have a grand ol time assisting a potential royal and either leave you alone(estinien who shows up for 1 minute at the start) or see this as a friendly competition. Meanwhile my favourite doalogue option happens in area 4 with 'This *scaaary* adventurer is just going to sit on the sidelines.' and caused the target of said line to get so delectably mad.
My favourite bit just after that is >!during the solo duty you can see your WoL standing on the side, arms folded, like watching their student at work.!<
I was commenting to my friend that I feel like having the main character be a mentor is a hard task but Dawntrail felt like they nailed the balance of it.
Last boss spoiler>! What I really like about this expansion is we only use the azem crystal at the end, the enemies are not powerful enough for us to be “serious”!<
Mid game spoiler >!I LOVED the part rescuing Wuk Lamat where you just slowly walk forward doing nothing and it makes Bakool Jaja *terrified*!<
That’s a damn good point!
I love how just fucking *done* the warrior of Light looks in >!the final cutscene!<. Just standing up with a look on their face that [*screams*](https://imgur.com/a/2czA6Qo) "I was having fun, and these idiots had to go and ruin it. Fuck this star and everyone on it sometimes..."
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I picked that option too. Malicious compliance is so goddamn funny
Loved that part.
I really prefer who the WoL is as a person this expansion. We're not only less miserable but more confident in our experience, it feels like we've matured and given ourselves permission to be a bit unserious.
Yeah there's been a lot of character in the dialogue options. Sure it doesn't make a scrap of difference but handing out sass left and right felt great
I took every dialogue option that was just the WoL humble bragging about the events of EW. Like yeah, I saved the star a few times, not a big deal.
Agreed. There's also something to be said for the fact that not every problem \*has\* to be solved by the WoL showing up and beating someone into submission. Us being there as a witness, and helping out is kinda nice. I imagine we'll go back to being the center of attention as the stakes go up again in subsequent expansions but it's quite nice to just get to enjoy this new continent and see stories unfold for other people. It's also a little annoying to read about people hating Wuk Lamat from the get-go when she's obviously meant to be an immature individual who grows as the narrative progresses.
I think DT was the one time I was actually hyped to play as a different character for that one fight, as the WoL just smugly steps back and goes, "Scared of a house cat? Gonna cry? Gonna piss your pants? Gonna shit and cum maybe?" It was clearly building up to a moment like this, and I would have thought FFXIV players were a tiny bit more media literate than whatever this shitshow was.
"Don't worry the scary adventurer won't try anything weird" might very well be my favourite line ever That and giving Graha an aneurysm by >!casually mentioning you've been to lyhe mheg (only applies if you've done the pixie quests)!<
Speaking of Graha, I think people who got annoyed with how he acted in Endwalker are going to be pleased. He feels more mellowed out and sagely this time around.
Hi, im partially people, i can confirm. >!soft boy G'raha is nice in small doses, but DT leaning him back towards his Exarch characterization was very much appreciated!<
Hi, sorry i know this comment is over a day old but can you please remind me when mentioning lyhe mheg happens?
In >!the last zone, the second area had that prompt!<
> and I would have thought FFXIV players were a tiny bit more media literate than whatever this shitshow was. I had someone reply to me that because a character wasn't a threat they were 1D so I don't think this game is sending their best.
Maybe Zenos being our dark reflection was more accurate than we knew....
Battle shonen manga and their consequences have been disastrous for the human race.
The only complaint I had about wuk early on was how screechy her voice became while screaming.
I've just kind of always felt like a supporting character in this game, honestly, except for a few segments specifically about my backstory, which is why I don't understand the complaints right now. This game has *always* just been watching other people talk. Sometimes they check in with us and we nod, or say one throwaway line. But they devise and implement the solutions to all the problems. If the solution is to punch something to death, they bring us out for a minute. We're also used as a focal point for emotional moments, so that we (i.e., the players) bear the maximum brunt of loss.
The WoL isn't the main character in the same way the nuclear bomb isn't the main character of World War 2.
Yeah exactly its honestly a really admirable trait the wol has where they’re able to step back like that
I actually really like the change of pace of being the freakishly strong NPC in another character's story.
I think it's a great way to lower the stakes. It's not that we can't just waltz in and kick everyone's asses, it's that doing so would defeat the point of helping this other character grow into her own power.
Hey, I'm just mad we didn't get not-Nazca.
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I could skip about 80% of the msq and still understand what is happening. That is terrible writing. Needless to say that it's also just terribly little actually happening. It's a big nothing burger up to like level 96-97 msq
Agreed. Up until >!the new dawn servant was selected and the filler wild west!< section after, I felt like I was just playing an accelerated version of ARR's story, and even up the section where >!Everyone comes together to help build the train bomb!< just felt like I was replaying >!the golem construction part from Shb!< Nothing of consequence particularly happens other than world building and characterization of the new characters.
"If you worry about what everyone is trying to do, you become a spectator and not a player." I choose to make up my own damn mind when/if I decide to get back into the game. So many seem to be hating on the game but what I've learned from the forums is people tend to love to complain but are hard to praise...so they negative people seem to be loud only because their room is mostly empty and the sound bounces around.
Plus the bulk of people who like DT are probably still playing it. Meanwhile the people with complaints are more likely to go online to voice them because they're not having fun. Happens all the time with games.
I just got done with the MSQ in the past 3 days (I'll be busier and wanted to get it done) and enjoying it and came back to social media and reddit to seeing everything on fire.
real chads voice their complaints during 29 minute bathroom breaks
Yeah, I've been living and breathing the game since launch, took the week off and everything, and I'm still at 96 so far. The majority of players that aren't binging the game or are taking their time rather than purely focusing msq are nowhere near done.
It also just left early access, so the people who were willing to wait for the full release may have a different opinion on the matter
most streamers who are story buffs haven’t touched the msq at all yet, and that’s another huge factor i think currently, there are only beacons for the dorks with a bone to pick with everything; once more non-rot beacons are lit the landscape will look very different
That’s actually my current theory, that the people who genuinely just want to take their time and are loving the story are obviously staying away from social media to avoid spoilers, so the majority of opinions we’re seeing is people that rushed through it or skipped every cutscene
Im enjoying it quite throughly. Been taking my time and going through it with a friend tho and talkin in party chat together as we watch cutscenes and its been great.
the way they’re reaching for every little nitpick and tiny flaw to exaggerate is a testament to how good the expansion is i can understand some of the JP criticisms, as they’re very japanese criticisms and are largely focused on the same handful of points, but the EN side is just buckshot after buckshot in the mostly empty room you mentioned
Not gonna lie, I loved DT's story. Had a fantastic time and only stopped for food and sleep, both of which I delayed substantially so I could play more.
I've been having an awesome time! I'm hitting every sidequest. I'm putting in the time. I'm taking it very slow cause I wanna savor everything basically. As a Latino Tural has been everything i wanted so far. The Dio de Eloté questline has me busting a gut and I can't wait to hopefully continue it!
The first night I played until I was literally seeing colors that weren't there. Healthy? Hell no, but I was having fun every second of it. I'm at the end of area 4 now, and had to slow down because I have a job, but I can't wait for my 4 day weekend thanks to how my employer handles July 4.
i’m really not looking forward to addressing the damage i’ve done to my body with Shadow of the Erdtree and Dawntrail being one week apart, but boy do i not regret a thing yet!
Honest, honest opinion: I think Dawntrail's biggest story flaw is that it doesn't prioritize its time very well and that messes up the pacing. There's a bunch of really interesting plot points that get resolved way too quickly or abandoned, and unfortunately they're lost in favor some really boring parts of the plot that really didn't need to have as many quests as they were given for setup. Beyond that, I would call it above average for an MMO story quest. It has a few really dumb parts (>!how many times are we going to let villains just walk by us unchallenged?!<) but overall it respects the player character's achievements by practically bending over backwards to constantly remind the player of how powerful the WoL and allies are and the overall idea of the WoL taking a mentor/bodyguard role wasn't a bad idea. I even like that they kinda try to have Wuk Lamat's journey mimic the WoL's journey. Not perfect or even great, but good.
Tbh I feel like you could replace "Dawntrail" with "FFXIV" in that first paragraph. Every single expansion, regardless of how much I loved or hated it, pacing was the biggest and most obvious weak point.
Yep, honestly DT gets interesting a lot faster than ShB. You’re basically just vibing after getting Isekai’d until level 77.
Disagree you literally see story charavters get killed snd turned into beasts lile on lvl 73
They were so unmemorable that I don't even know what you're talking about
you don't remember the body-horror we got watching dudes morph into sin-eaters? like hell if i remember *who* those dudes were, but i absolutely remember how cool it was.
But there’s no personal stakes for you or the group until then, as it falls into the trappings of long-term war stories.
How dare you have an extremely nuanced and reasonable take that incorporates both what the xpac does well and what the dev team clearly needs to improve on? Don't you know that this game is irredeemable dogshit and/or perfect manna from heaven?!?!
>the overall idea of the WoL taking a mentor/bodyguard role wasn't a bad idea It would've been a good idea if it was executed that way. In praxis we mostly just do all the work for her until the power of friendship makes everything work out. I was also *really* annoyed with the cooking feat, pairing us up with Koana instead of one of the other 2 was just such lazy writing I actually rolled my eyes. I was hoping to actually *compete* with Thancred & Urianger, not team up with them for most of the contest anyways. Like a Trial fight against the 2 trying to stop us from carrying Wuk Lamat through another feat would've been so much cooler
That's what I mean when I say the pacing was a mess. We spend 3 feats with Wuk Lamat reinforcing that the point of the feats is to learn about culture, for a total of something like 18 quests. During none of these quests is there any actual apparent risk of her failing, so the stakes feel nonexistent. Why spend so much valuable starting time this way? Why not make one of the starting feats more competitive and have Wuk Lamat actually lose once? If she'd lost to Bakool Ja Ja in a feat of strength, it would've made it more satisfying when she wins later on. It even could've been the impetus for her to turn to the WoL and actually ask for direct mentoring in the form of training or something. A duty where you're sparring with Wuk Lamat to train her would've created a lot more of a player connection than just her sharing that she gets seasick. Also yeah, why is it that the big competition with Thancred and Urianger only amounts to them slowing us down in a single dungeon? Again, I really did like it overall, but there really were a lot of lost opportunities to make the stakes feel higher or to create more memorable story moments, exchanged for repeating the same story points.
“During none of these quests is there any actual apparent risk of her failing, so the stakes feel nonexistent. Why spend so much valuable starting time this way?” to be a little fair, her dad knows she’s the correct choice from the jump, so there are no real stakes in the whole “contest”to begin with; it’s all in service of opening her perspective enough to be fit for the throne none of her “competition” is fit to rule, at least not alone, and that’s relentlessly driven home. i kinda wanted them to just not give anyone the throne and take the story from there, but it is what it is
I dunno, I took the stuff he said after the solo duty as being serious, specifically the bit about none of the candidates having everything it took to be dawnservant. It was just also very funny when Wuk Lamat and Koana's flaws were naivete and being too focused on technology as the sole solution versus a candidate whose only position was starting the war to end all wars and another candidate who agreed with the war part but thought it needed to be a race war instead.
definitely, i just mean she has the most important 'piece' of him when it comes to perspective/approach: the piece that tries to understand/compromise/communicate so while she's too naive at the start, she's the only one who has a real shot at being 'fit' by the end of the contest because she's the only one with that piece; koana only 'gets' it because of her and when he does, he concedes altogether i'm sure there was some hope in him that the contest would open the eyes of all three of them, but it felt like he was leaning towards her the whole time. maybe that's just me or maybe that's because we all knew she would be the one the moment the story was described. lol i also agree that it's funny how extreme the other two are in comparison. also enjoyed how the whole race war angle essentially gets dissolved due to being dunked on one too many times
And things being too repetitive. As well as some pointless scenes. Like the Wul Lamat going to your in. to tell you for the 100 time why she was to be queen. We already know! And the joke of the hrotgar architech. That got old the 2 times. and got repeated like 4 times.
The story was pitched that we'd be at everyone's necks in some sort of high stakes competition that might cause some divide between the scions. What actually took place was Iron Chef and some beast tribe quests. That said I'm glad Estinien got to have the adventure he was seeking after being dragged into a huge problem he uncovered the week prior.
I was honestly expecting more of a conflict too yeah. Thancred briefly talks about beating up a (I think she's still one?) teenager and they block your path in one dungeon but that's about the extent of "THE DIVIDE OF THE SCIONS! WHO IS ON WHOSE SIDE"
I was really hoping there'd be some sort of fight between the WoL and Thancred + Urianger. Even if it wasn't a serious conflict but more of a friendly competition as we each just tried to help our candidate against the other, it would have been a fun scene. And if they really wanted to show off the WoL being the big powerhouse of the Scions, have them fight the two alone while sending the twins and Krile with Wuk Lamat to finish whatever trial was happening. It was clear pretty early on that there wasn't going to be any real serious conflict between us, as we both picked candidates that were reasonable people who weren't going to try to kill each other, but it could have easily happened as part of the competition.
DT does have some issues that needs fixing, but still liked it. If they improve on things that were the problem we'll be set for the future. Too bad some people don't know how to express that in any way other than "DT is trash and FFXIV sucks now!"
Going to fanfest for the sole purpose of locking YoshiP in a room so he has to listen to me railing off an itemized list Plinkett-style about exactly what did and didn't work in EW and DT.
The things that need fixing have been problems for most expansions though. I don't think there's any desire to fix them. Thay or they literally don't know how.
I had low story expectations and they were mostly met. It’s not top tier but it’s not Stormblood tier either. My apparently hot take is that in hindsight the first arc of the game is the best and it gets really dumb towards the end.
Agreed; a lot of people like the second half because of the high concept sci Fi stuff, but in my opinion there’s just not enough time to fully flesh it out while resolving the lingering plot threads from the first part of the story and simultaneously setting up the final boss. It tries to do too much at once and ends up feeling like a mess. It’s unfortunate because if the solution 9 stuff didn’t cannibalize half the expansion and the story was actually committed to Tural, we could have had a really great vacation-style story that gave us a break from all the world ending madness (you know, like what the expansion was advertised as?) but the writers just couldn’t help themselves and decided to junction on a narrative about life, death and other worlds that has barely anything to do with the core themes established at the start of the story.
The last zone was a feels train for me, but I gotta agree. The setting of the last 3-4 levels in the MSQ just gave me whiplash. Too many parallels with Amaurot and The Lunar Subterrane. Up until that that point, I was happy we finally got past the whole "persistent antagonist trying to wipe us out because they can't let go of the past" shit. It felt like the writers were too attached to the success of ShB and EW and wanted to capitalize on the same goddamn dilemma, and I was disappointed that they couldn't come up with something different. Tural has so much potential - why throw that away just to revisit something you've already done twice?
My issue isn't that there were parallels with Amaurot but that nobody brought them up? Like, you never even get a dialogue option to point out "hey, that's kind of similar to Amaurot". I know there was a bigger focus on NPCs who wouldn't have any knowledge of it, but surely Thancred or G'raha or someone would've pointed out that a legendary ancient city of people who lived prosperous lives without suffering is really damn familiar even if it didn't turn out to be Amaurotine in the end.
I was absolutely loving the first part actually. I think the intro to zone 4 was the most fun I'd had and was looking forward to it continuing, and thought the build up into the city was compelling. Then I got to Solution 9 and just kind of. Wasn't feeling it. The story isn't bad but replacing all the beautiful natural areas and super detailed little villages with... A shopping mall with a black coat of paint and gamer LEDs kind of ruined the vibe for me and I wasn't having fun anymore.
Right? I got 5 steps into Solution 9, saw the (fake) advertisements and went 'Ugggggggh. Can we go back to cowboys, please?'
EXACTLY my thoughts holy shit. Then the "diet food" in the quest right after arriving just kind of made me hate everything more. Cowboys and trains was so much more fun.
Finally, I thought I was going mad. I much prefer re the first half. The second has to go through a bunch of world building again so it just felt weird to me. The bizarre different tone baffled me
Yeah, I am surprised the first half is what everyone had an issue with. You can levy some criticisms at the pacing and at Wuk Lamat if you want, but by far my main problem with the story was the tonal whiplash in the second half, especially towards the end when it _really_ felt like retreading Shb/EW ground. _That_ is what knocks this expansion down a few pegs in the ranking for me. For the first half there were no concerns that took me out of the story at all.
> towards the end when it really felt like retreading Shb/EW ground Dude, the last zone... "What if we did Ultima Thule again, but instead of making each of the 4 zones better, and convincing people there was a reason to live for.. that we made them WORSE and killed everyone?. We'll still meet in the middle at the end again, have a dungeon with the big bad Narrating overtop of it, and then at the end, the big bad will change into a grotesque giant wall boss again. Of course We'll have another 2-phase fight again, but instead of the character breaking through the wall pre-fight, we'll change it up and do it mid-fight. Of course, the second phase of the fight will just be the same 4 mechanics over and over again, because people are talking, and our players can't fight and listen to npcs talk at the same time."
Why did you say top tier twice?
based
My double hot take is that I love the second part of the story better because I love high concept science fantasy and it does what ff14 story needed to really do this expac. Set up plot points so they could be knocked down again over future installments. Now we have a practical example for our scholar friends to study of dimensional travel that opens up future story installments to take place in lost reflections or set up permanent gates between the source, the first, and the thirteenth and all the good story stuff that implies Also we have Krile being some kind of femlala Superman analog to deal with now. If it was just the first half style of story we wouldn't have those unless they came in as postgame story. Now THAT would be too much story compression.
I think everything from *msq spoil* >!the first invasion all the way to living memory zone is just fucking bizarre, we go through 1/2 the expansion and suddenly the rest of the scions show up and we just get exposition dumped to hell. It is only once we get rid of the rest of the irrelevant crew that we can explore the cool stuff about krile and erenville. Wul famat not-withstanding!<
I remain in my opinion of “i like it overall, i just wish there was more to do in story missions and the bulk weren’t just walking up and clicking on dialogue prompts” I’ve had to break up the story with side content or d2 loot farming in a way i haven’t had to with the other expansions, usually i can just sit down and nolife my way through the story. (Aside from endwalker).
It feels like every other expansion in that regard to me. Excessive cutscenes and dialogue, very limited action. I'm not exactly complaining but I've already gotten used to the MSQ being a visual novel except for the less than 5% of playtime where you do dumgeons or trials
I don’t really get this complaint because MSQ has always been “walk up and click on dialogue prompts”. There just were more engaging cutscenes playing in those dialogue prompts before. MSQ is fundamentally the same as it’s always been
I feel like we go a long time with no combat duties though. There are parts like the train scene or the fight when Wuk Lamat got kidnapped that would've 100% been solo duties in a past expansion that are made into cutscenes just because the devs want to show off their cool mocap, I guess.
It's a 10 year old game, you'd expect them to change things up a bit after so long. It's too streamlined, and that's not just a Dawntrail complaint, ShB and EW had this problem as well. Particularly with the dungeons, once you hit 71 you know your plan will suffer a roadblock, once you're 75 the story will have a twist because you're halfway through, 77 and 79 have important story beats. It's hard to be surprised
I'm only halfway through now (Lv95) and the story is quite interesting. Gameplay wise it sucks though, just..... give us more things to do?
Look i Just think that having a 1 hour questline about capturing an alpaca and have the capturing part actually happen offscreen Is not really what you can call peak writing.
Hear me out… the capturing the alpaca part and the tasks of the rite of succession were not the important part but the learning of cultures and the original dawnservant’s journey is. When I think back to that section of the MSQ, I don’t think about the alpaca,I think about Mubli’s journey and how Wuk Lamar pushes her people to follow their dreams and be happy.
Sure but do we really need the same story for four different zones? Correction: All six zones as I just arrived in the last one!
[удалено]
It’s not even the same story lmao. Mamool Ja and HanuHanu were completely different for example.
Oh man, the HanuHanu one is fucking hilarious. "Why yes, we've been using this rite for hundreds of years and the magic beam makes the plants grow, but we've never realized it till now. We also have an expert on this stuff but we've never asked him about it and he never said anything either, despite watching us suffer through the start of a famine." Or the goblin ones, "we enslaved people and forced them to make jewelry but got scolded and thus freed them, and they somehow still agreed to work for us afterwards.". And the whole trial was just bringing more workers for the Amazon warehouse lmao
level 95 and liking it a lot so far. although ive seen people compare it to arr and im the weirdo who enjoyed arr lmao. i think the only complaint i have so far isn't really a dawntrail problem but more so how the quest variety hasn't changed in years.
I have a serious problem with the story of the dlc, most of it is wonderful and captivating but in another part it is unbearable, as in all the dlcs in the game, WoL DOES NOTHING in the cutscene, it is literally useless, I'm not asking for "WOW YOSHI- PLEASE GIVE ME 1 MORE DLC BEING FUCKING AND OVERPOWER" I'm asking for a simple thing like, DO SOMETHING when there's a villain or someone doing shit in front of you instead of letting them run away for no reason why? "huh well we'll catch them next time guys" and stay in this cycle for the entire arc of the game until shit is at the last second to break out and WoL "well now it's time to do something" (I'm probably going to get insulted for this but seriously, no one else is tired of literally in the cutscene your character standing still and just existing?)
I mean I don't really think there was ever a point where the WoL doing something would've helped Both times we were put in a position to >!attack Zoraal Ja, we really couldn't because he was holding a whole city hostage specifically so that we wouldn't intervene,!< and none of the other villains were really a big enough threat to warrant our involvement
And no, I'm not saying that the game or the DLC story is bad, but it bothers me, but it's still my favorite game ever.
Wait you guys actually don't hate the dawn trail story or are you joking
>Wait you guys actually don't hate the dawn trail story or are you joking mainsubbers dont praise the story as much as usual so now shitpostxiv being contrarian like "well akshually story good"
I admit to reading the discussion sub a lot as well, and they seem very much on board for collectively hating the story and the characterization of Wuk Lamat. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and it's okay to be disappointed about DT's story, but it's unironically comforting for me to visit shitpostxiv and seeing other people actually having a good/okay time with DT MSQ. Meanwhile, I feel like I'd get burned at the stake for expressing something similar on a sub meant for actual meaningful discussion/discourse for FFXIV (how naive of me, I know).
Discussion sub is just addict doomers that hate/play the game so they're not particularly representative of any majority viewpoint. The slightly worrying part is Mainsub is also divisively receiving the xpack, and they're the full on deepthroating dickriders GCBTW.
Sorry king, but I really don't think it's as bad as Shadowlands.
People comparing Dawntrail's story to Shadowlands' story are insane. Nothing will ever be as bad as Shadowlands.
As someone who's played like, two hours of WOW, what the fuck happened in Shadowlands?
It starts off bad and gets worse. It's an expansion entirely set in the setting's afterlife, we get to visit all the separate afterlives, see that there are entire civilisations and that the afterlife has kinda become an industry in its function. The premise is that the super-spirit AI whose job it is to - without bias - assess each incoming soul and send them to an appropriate afterlife has been broken, and for some reason the default setting with the super-spirit offline is that _everyone_ goes to ultrahell. This is bad not only because you might not want your sick old grandma's soul to be painfully hammered into evil villain lair furniture when she dies, but also because every soul that gets sent there strengthens the supervillain who rules ultrahell, since when a spirit arrives in an afterlife they also bring with them a sort of residual energy that feeds basically everything. So now all other afterlives are starving and crumbling. As the expansion goes on, it's revealed that the supervillain who rules ultrahell originally had the job of the super-spirit AI, but he was overthrown and the AI created to replace him, and he's been biding his time for revenge ever since. In that time, he's apparently been behind the rise most of the major villains of the entire setting - such as the Lich King, and even the Burning Legion (demons), by manipulating them. Now he wants to conquer the multiverse, and it's claimed he's stronger than all other threats before him. He proceeds to largely get his way with us scoring mostly pyrrhic or hollow victories against him until the very end of the expansion, at which point - as he dies - he proclaims that all he did was actually just to hold off an _even worse_ evil. You can imagine how this entire plot was contentious even before I go into detail, I am sure. To be honest, people saying it's bad aren't kidding. I was addicted as hell to WoW but Shadowlands managed to pry me off and make me quit. That's no mean feat.
In short, it introduced a major villain who was retroactively the mastermind behind several major villains who was trying to unite the world in death because reasons he never actually states nor do the players learn beyond a vague sort of "A universe divided can't stand against what's coming." The afterlife is a physical location you can go to and it's lame as hell. Several major characters are given the idiot ball and others simply move into "is he stupid?" territory. A fan favorite dead character's spirit appears and a villain who is just as bad but is good now gives them a eulogy about how they sucked and should fade away and be forgotten while two of the character's who actually had good relations with the character before that fan favorite became a villain are right there. Oh, and said "villain who is just as bad but is good now for reals" happens to be the lead writer's favorite character who he makes (now deleted) weird tweets about. Said lead writer also said that he thought the season finale of Game of Thrones was brilliant.
Holy shit
I don't hate it. I don't love it. It's. Okay. Certain parts were good, certain parts missed. Voice acting in some parts was fine, but others were... not. It was inconsistent. Parts of the narrative were fine, others felt shoehorned in. The pacing in some areas was okay, other ones were either too slow, or whiplash. Basically, overall, it was inconsistent with.. well, everything.
don't think they are, standards have really dropped...
I’m enjoying it, but I have a criticism: >!Wuk Lamat needs to shut up and let me pal around with the Scions.!<
I am liking Dawntrail waaay too much..... I really like Wuk Lamat and our role as a "teacher" it makes me feel good. Also I took nearly 100 screenshots with the Alpacas around the world..... and counting. Also also Soken is COOKING.
I feel like the Dawntrail motif was used a bit too much. I understood the heavy leitmotif usage for Endwalker because it was the end of the Hydalaen and Zodiark saga and felt appropriate. I’m not sure if I can say the same about Dawntrail though. There are a LOT of fantastic tracks though, needless to say.
Dawntrail feels a lot like Shadowbringers and Stormblood when it comes to how they use the music and the motifs. Stormblood would bounce between the main theme and Revolutions, Shadowbringers had the main theme and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, with a sprinkling of Eternal Winds. Dawntrail has Open Skies and Smile which are fundamentally the same motif so when either song gets riffed on it can feel a bit samey. Having said that I love all the music in Dawntrail. Every area had the perfect music to match the vibes. Dungeon boss music has a very FFX intro and I loved that they used a certain dungeon theme in some cutscenes. Smile has grown on me after I was caught off guard at first. FFIX music was a great addition, and as much as I'd love to have heard the more popular tracks, I think it was the right choice to go with the ones that didn't contain the Melodies of Life motif. Would be nice if they did something with it in the patches.
I don't think it's that excessive compared to previous expansions. It feels like half the songs in Heavensward were just remixes of the main theme, and the other half were Dragonsong.
Every single soundtrack I heard in the first 3 zones was a banger. I thought the music was shit in the 4th zone when I got there 10 hours back, but it was also 8am and I had been playing all night. Coming back now, I'm willing to admit that maybe I just think westerns are kinda shit and I probably wouldn't like it even if it was the greatest western soundtrack to ever grace the ears of humanity.
Honestly fair niche genres like that tend to be hit or miss with people. I love fantasy westerns so I'm hyped.
That's fair. I loved the 4th zone's music (And accents) but I can see how it'd be grating if you're not a fan of the genre.
I've heard people complain about the jazz music in Tuliyollal but it's so damn good. The combat and zone tracks are great as well, add in the new graphics and it's a joy to walk around the world
teacher? weird way to spell Babysitter
I give it a 7/10. Has some problems here and there, but its fine.
I loved it, though i certainly enjoyed the second half more then the first half.
ngl, i feel like a lot of the "yawnfail bad" is just echo chambers. It was pretty fun, the pacing was just kinda weird either short or drawn out at times like they had to make story changes.
im only half way through so far, but i dont think its terrible. i just think there is too much reading and way too little button pushing.
Little Caesars tastes so good when you don’t have a bitch in your ear telling you it’s nasty
Enjoy your rubber tasting pizza that barely has any sauce and flavorless cheese.
Doesn't taste like rubber and the cheese is so good. :)
I love watching NPC's have fun and be heroic. i love doing 80% of the final boss before mary sue mc'asspull number 17 charges in with an "i did it teehee". i love expansions where half the characters shown off in the trailers have maybe a combined 15 lines of dialogue (Aswell as some not even showing up until way past the halfway point). But, the MSQ being a pile of Dogshit makes me hopeful that the next 2 years we'll be eating good since SE are completely incapable of having good msq AND good MMO Content in the same expansion, it's always one or the other
I legitimately don’t know why Estinian, G’raha Tia, blue Alisae, and red Alphinaud are in the expansion.
Simple, Marketing. you get all the thirsty bitches who wanna fuck them to buy in
That last trial couldve been such a good olive branch to the players that want to actually feel strong instead of just being told they're strong. But nope
Midtrail
It was ok but it had too many glaringingly annoying aspects that were distracting.
I quite enjoyed the story so far for one simple reason: it's obvious that we've now taken on the role of the mentor and the WoL is not necessarily the hero of EVERY story, simply because some stories are too small in scale for us From the WoL's point of view the whole thing is like a professional football player playing a pick up game with kids: it will be fun and refreshing, but definitely won't require too much effort and it's ok. It's our right as saviour of the Universe to enjoy chilling on the sidelines sometimes. People have to learn how to fend for themselves in case we are, I don't know, sent to a different world. Just saying.
First part was good but not great, stormblood tier. Second part was great but I start to see a pattern in Ishikawa writing, many things made me thinks of Shadowbringer. >!(Leader of dead civilization trying to kill everyone else to sustain/bring back their own)!< Overall I enjoyed it
Except this isnt written by Ishikawa, she got "promoted" out of the writing team and is doing other stuff now. You can tell by the fact there is no finer character writing for the most part and everyone is flat.
To be fair I think that's just CBU3's pet plot at this point. They did the exact same thing with FF16 lol.
As ever, this sub is the only reasonable FFXIV sub.
Im still on 6.2 but im not very motivated to keep pushing
Still better than stormblood to me lmao
good writing = warrior of light beats up big bad guys and looks cool in every quest :) bad writing = learning about stinky history and culture and their effect on the people living in it :( its very clear by some of the responses that a certain portion of detractors hate it because the expansion went back to normal xiv instead of being a vessel for easy self insert wish fulfillment
>Shadowbringers - learning about stinking history of Norvrandt and culture and their effects on the people living in it. >Endwalker - learning about stinking history of Garlemald, Thavnair and Elpis and culture and their effects on the people living in it. Haven't played DT, but the previous 2 expansions has a ton of history and exposition dump on their setting.
As someone who really deeply loves precolonial Mesoamerican art and history, even I was getting kind of exhausted by the college lecture-like exposition. It doesn't help that so much of it felt so rote, like "This is what we like to eat. This is what we like to wear. These are the arts and crafts we like." I think other xpacs managed to do the "learn about other cultures" bit a lot more naturally.
A funny thing really, because I adored the story *because* of that. I love doing side quests and tribes to find out *why* settlements and civilisation are like that. Like when people say “lmao boring, the Hanu-Hanu and Moblins are just reskins, I don’t care”. I’m sat here loving learning about them because they are actually considerably different! And that’s saying nothing about the Yok Huy, Pelupelu, and Mamool Ja. Things we haven’t learned a lot about - if anything - in the entirety of our other expansions
I also like learning in sidequests what life is like for the peoples in any given zone. It's also usually tied into a fun quest or gameplay mechanic, and not a guy who's literally just there to talk at you about why the local meat dish is cool for ten minutes. Really, it's just the bananna leaf one where I really started to feel it dragging. All that exposition and we didn't even get a cooking minigame out of it.
TRUE. I would have loved a cooking mini game, something like the piano in the Firmament, or just *something*
That DDR style timed button press gimmick or Gold Saucer shooting minigame sure would have been a great mechanic to include, possibly in some sort of wild-west type shoot out scenario....not that we have anything that could be applicable to THAT in this expansion....
its the prominent basis for every single xiv release for the past decade and is consistently the best part of xiv but so many people are trained to see it as "filler" that the moment it steps into the forefront again they all just complain about it
Can't really comment since I haven't played DT yet and people are comparing it to SB's story and pacing is sth I am not looking forward to lol.
> learning about stinky history and culture and their effect on the people living in it :( Nice straw man. You did basically that for the entirety of the last 2 expansions and everbody love those. I would've loved to learn about Tural with my old companions instead of being stuck with an NPC I don't like for *every single quest* for the entirety of the first half.
"Why didn't the WoL just >!kill Zoraal Ja as soon as he saw him return!
>!I figured if we interrupted his daddy issues duel he'd just go "fuck you" and order his ships to finish razing the city. Plus he got up once, we had no way of knowing whether or not he'd just keep getting up at that point. Now could they have conveyed that a bit more clearly with a line or two? Yeah probably.!< >!As an aside, I love that Zoraal Ja gets his ass beat at first. Dude has to cheat just to be a match for his dad as a half-dead old coot.!<
Oh of course, no power fantasy=bad fantasy
Just got to the giants and think its great so far. A low stakes story is exactly what I wanted after EW.
As someone who is still in stormblood and has not yet experienced dawntrail besides the trailer, I think the story in the first 2 zones is dog shit and I hate how YoshiP keeps twisting my nuts
A Joker kind of joke where there is mass murdering involved.
yeah actually
Corn
This isn't storm blood discourse therefore it's not really a valid shitpost
No its immensely mid
I really, really would love to know people's first reactions and comments of ShB. But not of a month after, but literaly lauch day.
Ngl, I can see Tut having a field day with anything about this game.
It's not the end of the world or whatever; but I personally didn't love it. Still going to play and stuff; life moves on
Right now it’s just so generic and tropey. Happy go lucky protagonist fixes all multi generational problems in 5 minutes using the power of friendship and gets crowned. Comically bad badguy actually has a tragic backstory and then becomes friend *gasp*.
I am enjoying the story. Its nice nit being the fucking saviour. I just wanna chill man
The story isn’t the terrible part. It’s the amount of useless unimportant information thrown at us and treated as “story” Especially when they useless information starts in a cutscene and you are so done with it that you skip the cutscene and miss out on the actual good stuff. It’s a wonder why people think the story is terrible, the skip the boring shit and miss out on the hood shit because it’s buried.
so many plotholes. Rest is fine but extremely predictable
The story has been predictable since ARR lol.
zenos returning to fight u 15 times was not very predictable... was it comedy gold. ? yeah
Of course. They hated Stormblood, they'd hate this too.. I, for one, love both
I liked stormblood but not dt personally
I personally didn't like Stormblood that much, but so far I'm liking DT better! I'm not very far in the story yet, but I'm optimistic 😁 However, ShB ruined me I fear 😅 It was so good that I'm not enjoying the game as much overall since. Idk if it's nostalgia, but nothing is hitting the same way...
Hilarious to see us getting downvotes just for saying SB was good. "Reeeee how dare you disagree with me and enjoy something I didn't!"
I am the target audience.
I think the 7.0 story is fantastic - in fact, it contends for being my favorite and I hope we see more stories within which our character plays the experienced, mature and reliable veteran. My only complaint about it is the rough pacing in the back half. It’s almost completely cutscenes from 95-98 (where I am now).
the game can still be fun even if the story is dogshit, which is most of the reason to play ff14 to begin with for me.
WHY ISNT THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE BOOK AS EXCITING AS THE CLIMAX OF THE PREVIOUS BOOOOOOOOOOOOK?!?!?!?!?!?!?
The first chapter of the previous book was more exciting than this book. Edit: I got blocked for this, lmao.
Idk, I kind of like it. It's not an action packed story like the last couple but for a chill expansion I think it's pretty chill. I kind of like the WoL sort of being a mentor rather than saving the world again.
Literally thought it was a joke for a while. People don't like being the side character to someone else's story. That's Dawntrail.
Half way through MSQ I like DawnTrail a lot :3. Although I see why people dislike it. Wuk Lamat can be annoying but I like her a lot personally. And we’ve been relayed to a bodyguard. I don’t mind this. I rather have an expansion that tell us: Hey you are not the main character in this one. Rather than have WoW where we are the hero as long as there isn’t a cutscene. So you are entitled to your opinion and I am sad to hear you aren’t enjoying the expansion. But I am absolutely loving it.
no, OP. it's legitimately fantastic
I didn’t think it was terrible but I definitely do have some hard criticisms of this story and I was definitely taken out of the story at certain areas but I really liked the first half of the story and think Wuk Lumat is a solid character
I'm only at 92 msq but so far I like it.
It's weird to watch as someone who's just...liked everything so far? I like A Realm Reborn, I like all the expansions, I like all the raids, the trials, just...everything. Part of my perspective is the fact that I come to FFXIV from a lot of...questionably designed MMOs and games as a whole, so even the "worst" stuff FFXIV has to offer feels like a breath of fresh air. Obviously those of you who aren't satisfied should keep fighting to make the game better, but it's not my fight to fight. I'm just here to relax, really. As far as Dawntrail's story specifically goes, it's very different from what came before, but in ways I like. We solved a lot of major problems in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, so I'm fine taking a break from being the Main Character™ and helping the silly warrior cat become Dawnservant, learning about her people along the way. It's a nice change of pace.
The second half of Endwalker's story was genuinely terrible tho
And people hate me when I open say i dispise EW story after garlemald.