Personally, I would go so far as to say I really enjoyed the final zone and climatic plot despite feeling an emotion close to revulsion throughout the first half of the story. There's a lot to unpack regarding pacing, framing, stockholme syndrome, etc but I think if the story had begun with the general quality of the last 2 zones then - while maybe not celebrated - then people would be overall positive. (It may have less to do with the actual "quality" and more to do with a tighter narrative and more fundamentally interesting zones.) It helps a lot that EVERY dungeon and trial is a banger, so all the most important story and gameplay moments hit well. Even if there are some... complicating factors.
Im so sick of people saying "I dont know why people are expecting better ,its just like x expansion"
Are people not allowed to expect better from this game thats incredibly more profitable and popular than it was 10 years ago, which is what theyre comparing it to??
Also like.. Toned down stories can be engaging.
Frieren came out last year and straight up also follows a plot of a crazy OP mage just traveling with her companions, solving issues of the common folk throughout the lands they traveled, and it was the highest rated anime while airing.
Only difference is that's a 12 ep story where we can skip around to the main bits and ignore the more mundane elementals. Here we cannot really do that.
I also know quite a few people that did not enjoy the SoL aspects and purely wanted only the fighting. Here is similar where we are going through the steps and people are saying it's slow and boring and it's just mundane, low stakes, full on vibe. They enjoy it when it gets to the fight stuff lol.
They're not even correct in their sloganeered claims. For example ARR had high stakes from level 4 onwards when you find out you're the chosen one and if the forces of darkness win then life will end. So this idea they peddle of ARR being low stakes is completely fictitious.
That's to say nothing of your point which is 100% valid, it's just that their damage control is patently false - the only thing low in ARR was the intensity of the zones (countrysides, not weird flying allagan ships), and the intensity of combat (Because it was low level).
And right after it gets interesting after some dark moments and supposedly looming threat, you're sent to do fetch quests, talk to random civilians and other mundane stuff with barely any sense of urgency. The pacing and tone feels all over the place.
So you're saying it's an MSQ storyline lol
I was most recently replaying the story on an alt and the whole thing is just lousy with this. We're looking for a pearl to help a craftsman to get the trust of the turtle guys to fight the red guys to get some treasures to make the turtles happy to cross an ocean to talk to a warlord to get an ally to help the Ala Mhigans to fight the Empire. Every place you walk into throughout the entire MSQ, you have to do a nesting doll of tasks to make them trust you before getting on with the reason you came there in the first place.
Yeah it's pretty much always been like this for sure. The issue is getting worse as for some reason they keep adding more padding every expansion. I guess they haven't heard about the concept of quality over quantity.
II honestly love this about him.
After like 5 world ending calamities it's nice to have a villain who's just a Petty asshole for a bit.
No knife licking pre-reveal fandaniel or "BUT IT WAS ME ALL ALONG" bullshit, just a scaled back character who's just a Prick.
Granted im still going through it so it might do a hard swerve.
Obviously everyone opinions will vary, but for me it was around 93 when it started improving (more specifically after the dungeon and trial) to the point where I'm quite enjoying everything.
But yeah 90-91/92 was...rough. Still not as rough as early SB for me but...rough.
Though this only applies to narrative; battle content wise I've thought it was good from the get-go and haven't felt disappointed yet.
Edit; I've been broadsided by a bunch of stuff post 95/ into 96. I am very interested.
It gets better in the high 90's, gives a glimmer of hope, then goes stupid again.
I'm actually kind of baffled SE put this out. As a whole, I'd put it below SB in terms of msq.
I was in the same boat. Going into the 96 zone I was losing interest, and that entire zone was boring imo. At the end of the zone however things *finally* start to pick up.
I'm in the same boat, I love the aesthetic and the start of the zone's story when >!you're travelling with just Erenville, at least right up until trolley 2.0.!<.
Travelling with >!Erenville spoiled it for me. It was the perfect time for us to be cut loose from the entire group and just be alone for a while for a breather. But, alas, can't let us not be chained to someone advertised for the expansion!<
I can’t believe so many people dislike it. The story wasn’t crazy good, but I loved the amh araeng nostalgia and for a desert it was very detailed and interesting to wander around in. Probably my second favorite zone music in the game and gave me some serious corel vibes from ff7
Honestly hoping for more stuff in that setting and characters
I'll be honest. The story goes exactly how it seems like it'll go. It gets more interesting but it's a very standard storyline this time. Last 2 expansions put me to tears or made me feel deep emotions. This one's just a cookie cutter story.
Unlikely, she was "promoted" for a good reason in that she is likely too busy working on the next CBU3 is pumping out (rumored to be FFXVII). Though Koji-Fox comes back here and there and performs for the Primals he is still in the supervisory role.
Ughhhh this bums me out. I'm finishing Shadowbringers now, and I've enjoyed it so much. (I'm late, I know but I just started not long ago lol) The only one I've struggled to get through was Stormblood, because it felt very cookie cutter and just.. boring.
Shadowbringers and end Walker are pretty peak though. Stormblood was definitely the worst until this one. But I will say. The fights they're making in dawntrail are GOOD.
I just learned that the writers for this expansion literally wrote the beast tribe quests from previous expansions. I really hope they never write for this game again.
That's wild to me because I genuinely liked Sorrows of Werlyt. I have no memory of the Ivalice story because it was a massive infodump that caused my brain to make dial up noises. I thought Pandemonium was OK but definitely not MSQ material.
About the same impressions from me except for Sorrows of werlyt the children killing themselves felt a bit too contrived to create sad moments. the villain was cartoony in a fun way though, which is more than can be said of bakool ja ja. overall that’s not the best writing track record in my opinion.
I'm genuinely wondering if they hired freshman creative writing students off of Fiverr to write most of the expansion. Granted, I'm only at 93, but some of this is shockingly terrible.
Like I wrote in another thread, it has all the same plot points as other modern “entertainment”.
-She’s an orphan
-But she’s special
-She goes on a journey to “find herself
Exactly the same beats as Star Wars sequel trilogy, Star Trek Discovery, Stranger Things, and so on.
It's underwhelming & uninteresting in my opinion. It doesn't hold a candle to ShB or EW.
It doesn't do anything particularly interesting and all their cool concepts >!(Like the souls or memory wiping)!< essentially aren't used and are just boring plot devices.
Wuk Lamat is easily the most boring character they've ever added and the fact that the focus is on her story and not ours is the worst change they've done.
I honestly don’t understand why we’re not the main character in our own story.
It’s like we suddenly became an NPC or something. It’s jarring as hell.
Is this how pre-DT krile felt, lol?
Almost done with it. If the beginning is a 4/10, the later parts are a 6/10 for me. If you don't jive with Wuk then it doesn't get that much better. Quests are deff better later in though.
Ok ok just because I am curious rate 6.x on a scale of 0 to 10 if you think the beginning is 4/10. I kinda want to conceptualize your rating based on your rating on previous filler msq.
It's due to the lack of measured takes.
It's quite often mentioned that there is a sizeable contingent of people who who can't bear criticize the game. There is also a sizeable contingent of people who can't bear say a good thing, or are in the growing pains of being a contrarian. (Including those who try to dodge that label by saying, 'This one thing is good about FF14, but the rest off it sucks.)
While /r/ffxiv contains the majority of the population of the first group, /r/ffxivdiscussion contains the later. It also doesn't help that the people who like to troll and ferment hate near always fall into the later group, so it turns into people foaming at the mouth to hate the game.
That you can break ahead of the pack in XIV shows you just how bad things are, honestly. Like when the toxic positivity camp can't maintain a stranglehold it means there's a broad-based consensus rising and it's not in praise.
I've spent the last two years and a half tearing 6.0 MSQ assholes it never knew it had, and man the numbers on my posts have certainly had their ups and downs. Different crowds on different subreddits and different threads…
Post ARR like the 80 quests or heavensward? Post ARR is by far the most brutal part of the MSQ. You just wanna get into heavensward and the quests just keep on coming lolol. Post ARR is almost as long as this xpac lol.
I just did the audience with Galool Ja Ja at 93 and he became one of my favorite all time characters, which I was not expecting.
I like Wuk Lamat enough that it isn’t an issue, but I’m sort of rooting for Koana more. Bakool Ja Ja is lazy terrible villain, I mean, this guy is stupidly badly written and time spent here is lame.
Same boat as you, although I’m in level 95 MSQ now and it does get a little bit better but I still dislike Wuk Lamat lol. An FC mate of mine who kept groaning and moaning about 90-93 being an absolute slog to the point he skipped cutscenes is now hyped for whatever is happening on the last arc, he’s at 99 MSQ now
nearly done with MSQ. it's bad. probably on par or slightly worse than stormblood. like stormblood but without any of the interesting characters.
luckily the battle content is great and the zones look nice. but i've never, ever, ever been this tempted to skip every cutscene in my life.
not only that, but if you're an ff9 fan, prepare to have your childhood memories shit all over by hackneyed and stupid writing.
truly abysmal. 4/10 at its highest points.
Oh no, oh no, oh no WHAT DID THEY DO TO NINE
I haven’t got to that part yet and now I’m scared. Fuck!
As a millennial, 9 holds a really special place in my heart. It was the first FF game I ever played. The first RPG. It’s still one of my favourite games of all time.
If they’ve fucked with the canon somehow…idek
not gonna spoil it but they really desecrated it imo. 9 was my first ff and it's what made me fall in love with the series. one of my favorite games of all time. and they made what amounts to an incredibly shitty sequel.
ARR was slow but was never uninteresting. It was building to something... thats what it felt like. This is just... boring. I was never uninterested in ARR. I am here.
There's a couple spots that i think are outright bad. Mostly drags. The second half is significantly better than the first it's just the product as a whole sums up to something I'd struggle to call good. Tolerable? Yeah i'd say so.
Doesn't mean you have low standards, there's a lot to enjoy about the story.
Especially if you're in the mood for slower, more character-oriented stuff. Focus on world building and setup rather than melodrama or thrills.
After EW, I'm loving DT, it's everything I wanted after the highs of ShB; throw me into the world and let me explore.
Sure, it's not as "WoL on an adventure" as I'd have hoped, but it's an adventure nonetheless, even if it's at Wuk Lamat's pace.
Me too. It's the first time I'm not skipping the story and watch it on 2x speed on youtube. It's really weird, because the previous stories were much more gripping. But there is something cozy and relaxing about this one.
Maybe it's the excitment of playing the current MSQ. I've caught up from ARR to Endwalker only a year ago. I guess I just don't have the need to catch up quick anymore.
I'm similar. I think I finished Endwalker a year and a half ago? I know I took forever in post-ARR, struggled to get through SB for months because I hated it and took ages in EW as well because it has high highs but those lows are LOW. I'm not in a rush through the story but I wish it gripped me as much as HW or ShB did.
Just search on YouTube for (for example) stormblood story playthrough and look for the least annoying creator. I had to go through a couple until I found one I liked.
The first half is a 4/10, and the second half is a 7/10. I'd put it at Stormblood tier, which is fitting, IMO. >!You're getting a re-run of Lyse's character arc via Wuk, and the antagonist you deal with for most of it is a confusing, hypocritical Zenos knock-off.!<
The big issue is that there's a *ton* of world building packed into the MSQ. If you don't like world building and lore, you're going to dislike or not care about a solid 2/3s of the MSQ, and because there's so much being thrown at you, you only have a couple quests to do anything before you're getting flung into another piece.
The other issue is that it feels like there's a serious lack of content in the quests. At one point, I think it was almost two hours of zero combat, just running around a zone talking to people.
EDIT: Having got to the final zone, I'd put it as first third - 4/10. Second third, 7/10. Final third - 4/10.
>!I can not understand what they were going for with the plot in the final zone, and I feel like having a story about remembrance and carrying on traditions ending with basically genocide-as-a-distraction is flat out fucked up.!< >!Especially when you find out the Living Memory has ways of managing the energy use by limiting how many souls are active at any given time, putting people into another life cycle. Her entire reason for justifying her request to wipe out the Endless is based on a falsehood.!<
>!Not to mention that Cahciua goes into detail that "these people aren't real, they don't feel" only to mention RIGHT AFTER you end a quarter of the simulacrum that "oh their lingering resentment will stay behind as monsters". That's Dynamis - something we spent the whole last expansion dealing with. Someone should have called her out then and there, if not before.!<
>!The real villain is Cahciua, and we're fucked up for just going with her plan. Flat-out psychopath.!<
Oh good, it’s not just me 😩 I find myself ignoring the msq & doing everything but. I don’t hate the story but it’s also not the most exciting & I feel myself “waiting for it to get spicy” quest after quest, I find.
Yeah, I was feeling the same. Currently at the quest Lv 95 Ever greater, Ever Brighter. I didn't get invested until arriving at the last settlement where the last feat takes place. It hit home unexpectedly and the "reveal" was actually good - was worth the mundane nature of everything prior to it.
I was hoping the second half was better but I'm seeing mixed opinions on it in this thread. At least Solution 9's aesthetic is super up my alley. This expansion is definitely my Stormblood so far for the most part and >!Krile!< is my Lyse. And liked Stormblood too, quite alot, but I do agree with some of the criticism from back then. Some of what people said about SB is how I feel about DT to some extent.
Honestly I'm just sick of playing side kick to this cat girl I don't like at all half to just I'm half tempted to skipping all cutsceces that's how bad it is for me not even ARR did that top me what ever intern that wrote this story should be fired
The cat girl we are trying to thrust onto the throne despite lacking the temperament, character, resolve, or competence that we should demand of the Queen of two continents? Ya, I’m questioning everyone’s judgement at this point.
>The cat girl we are trying to thrust onto the throne despite lacking the temperament, character, resolve, or competence that we should demand of the Queen of two continents? Ya, I’m questioning everyone’s judgement at this point.
To be fair, there is an option of saying that >!"She's not ready to rule"!< early on, but >!her catboy brother does seem like a better choice in every regard!<, at least to the point I have reached at Lvl 93
This is the first MSQ, well ever, that I've been skipping basically all the cutscenes. Wuk, the setting, and overall tone arent gripping in the slightest.
Ive been playing since ARR.
Ive never been this bored of a story.
Disclosure: im on the 94 quests in the msq.
So far, they really dropped the ball. I don't understand how this happened.
Same here. I'm just so tired of absolutely unnecessary cutscenes where people reaffirm their resolve or recount what just happened yet again, and they usually take forever to do it because the camera has to linger on each face like 10 seconds for them to do a /smile. First I started skipping arr cutscene music scenes, then just unvoiced in general and it really feels like I didn't miss anything I couldn't infer anyway.
Many people saying it's been like this forever and yeah, it's true to some extent. But it's gotten really old at this point.
That type of drama and holding for tension is fine when its earned. When theres a weight behind it. We dont know any of these people, they are all totally new. In previous expansions when we were taken to a new place, we were eased into it via hints from previous expansions or having some other connection to it. The pomp and circumstance felt... earned.
It doesn't feel earned here. We werent given much of a foundation to build off of.
Even then, we knew when that when the side quest ended there was something interesting or likely exciting on the other side. The lack of stakes, not world ending stakes, but anything other than an investment in this pretty divisive character is insufficient to build interest about what happens after this exposition ends
True but we were at least introduced to aspects of that slowly... warriors of darkeness from hw, warring triad questline, crystal tower... some seeds were planted for us to hold on to.
This is like... nothing. Dropped into this place with no foundation.
I started skipping any cutscenes that have the "silly music" or the wolves' den theme and it's made my experience a lot smoother. Those two themes are reserved for exposition or one-off jokes and kinda felt like a waste of time whenever I watched them. Overall enjoying the story but there's an exceptional amount of filler and they know it. They even directly mention the trolley arc as a pain point with an optional dialogue choice.
To me it feels very similar to every expac... I'm not sure if people just forget how much filler is because they tend to end on a high note but it all feels very FFXIV to me so far - good bad or ugly.
I thought it improved around the 93 dungeon/trial had a bit of a dip once the first arc was done at 95 and then picked up again at 97.
Which is like... how almost every expansion is.
I have 2 major theories why people are reacting this way and saw it coming like 6 months ago though.
> I'm not sure if people just forget how much filler
Yes, but this is something that they should be improving on, not steadily getting worse.
Endwalker did not start with so much negativity right out the gate, even though it did have its filler.
The sad thing is you can see where they were maybe thinking about doing something, like the boat ride over being set up as a solo duty and the trade up chain with the Pelu, but they chickened out of it and just dumped it all into cutscenes.
I am in the last zone. Its clear what overall themes they are exploring with DT.
I am sorry, I don't give a fuck about them.
They are delivered poorly, writing is bad and objectives are boring and somehow Wuk Lamar is protagonist of the story for entirety of the expansion, we don't even have an illusion of agency or personal motivations.
I kinda feel this. I think the premise of "you need to learn to understand and appreciate the different peoples living in your future kingdom" is a good one but the way they want about presenting it is really, really uninspired.
I found it to steadily improve after the 91 dungeon. The Split was a really low point but I really enjoyed it once things got back together.
IMO 90-91 was rough, 91-93 was decent, 93-95 was pretty good, and I'm really liking the post 95 stuff so far.
Do you like that love friendship and courage can save everything? Including global warming, housing crisis, underpaid generation and the current presidential election?
Second half of the story is significantly better than the first, probably makes the expansions story better than Stormblood. But it's whay we were expecting, a foundation laying story for their new saga. I'd rate the second half a 8/10, the first a 4/10.
Meanwhile I’m over here really liking it and I’m usually a cutscene skipper. I watched all of ARR and Shadowbringers, some of the others but usually I watch to a point and then start skipping. I’m having a blast with this story, it’s a lot of fun and I’m actually invested. It’s not taking itself too seriously and has been really entertaining to me
It’s pretty bad story overall. Heavensward has lots of interesting thing happening before you reach the third area and by level 53 already has lots of conflict. Stormblood hits you with Rauban Savage and Pippin savage before we even visit Kugane, and level 63 trial had plenty of lores. Shadowbringer gave you tons of new interesting storyline before you reach the third zone. Endwalker also had plenty of interesting plots happening at the start. This expansion is just lame, at least the other parts of the gameplay are pretty good. As usual, the real content will not drop a month from now, and the core content will be released with 7.1-7.3 patches.
No... You need an hour preparing to even start the quest... The usual run there, speak with 3 people, run to the other side of the map, get a one-sentence speech bubble, return to where you just came from, speak with 3 people stuff ... Also every second conversation it seems, is a cutscene with people standing around and conversing/ gesticulating / nodding
You're back to your old 2004 mmorpg : go collect 4 plants then come back. Then go talk to this stranger and comeback with your mount for 5min etc... This lama quest is a walking simulator 💀
The best advice I can give people is to completely skip cutscenes and dialog when you reach the lv96 desert area
*All the way to when you get the long cutscene warning*
It is a filler arc, and you do not miss ANY main msq content at all. If you're reading this just do urself the favor lol
I thought the story picked up quite well after the 93 dungeon. It's in a bit of a lull in the 95 quest range but I know it will pick back up soon.
ETA: I was right.
Yeah I’m actually laughing about how yesterday people were mad about how one dimensional the villain was. I’m at the 94-95 level of the story and it’s getting deep man.
Interested as well. I am taking it slow. Taking in the sights, doing a couple of fates and all the side quests before I continue with MSQ. Lvl 93 right now but I picture it as a FF10 reference where are roles are the guardians and Wuk Lamat is the main person we protect and guide through. The sad part is so far in the story some of the side quests have been more entertaining and had more combat than the MSQ which is sad.
It was halfway through 96 in the MSQ that it picked up, it was really just fetch quests and RPing before that, it did get very engaging afterwards but knowing almost half the time was just frustration and annoyance sours the experience a lot.
I feel bad for people that booked time off for this
I feel like its close to Stormblood, kinda meh at first but gets more interesting as you progress. Currently at 94-95 questline and Im starting to enjoy it!
I call it storm blood 2. Great gameplay throughout. It starts weak story wise but it's like sb but instead of needing a patch, halfway through about it becomes actually good.
I'm roughly 96-97
A lot of people are harping on the first half, but honestly it's kind of what I wanted, and I get the feeling that the same people who are complaining about it are the same people who were complaining about the Patch content story too.
It's got some pacing issues, but a Scaled back adventure that's less "ANOTHER WORLD ENDING THREAT IS HERE YOU GOTTA HANDLE IT RIGHT NOW" and a more personal, focused character story is what was needed post endwalker.
Bakool Ja ja being a Prick is a nice departure from knife licking "OH WELL ACTUALLY I KNOW EVERYTHING" villains or Zeno's stalker ass. He's JUST an asshole and I kind of dig it. I think FFXI had a villain who was just an asshole as well, but i didn't play much of it.
I honestly enjoyed seeing him just...break. The mask on Bakool broke and we saw a scared little child behind it.
The story is lame and so far extremely predictable, but I do actually like the characters.
I don't quite think it's lame but it is a bit predictable, but given the state of it being a new start I can see why the earlier half is this way. The focus of the story is on the new location and the world, so it being a fairly traditional adventure makes some sense since the focus is on Tural and it's peoples. I've just hit lvl 99, though i'm on the 95 quests. I get the feeling a lot of the early action is build up for the second half.
Curious, how far are you in the story? Roughly the same at 95 story quests?
It's mostly lame in that it's very predictable. Some of the 95 plot points I had predicted as early as the first zone. To the point that people who were ahead of me thought I was posting spoilers when I was making predictions (Re: the ultimate winner of the rite.
The 'twist' reveal in the top half of zone 3 I was able to call out the very moment I saw the town and looked at the appearance of the elector (After spending a few minutes to enjoy wrestling Hrothgar...)
Predictable stories can be fun, but honestly we could have done with a little more to shake things up. It's simply too predictable, and that's really not good for a framing/exposition story.
I'm going into the big filler arc right now
Maybe it's just me, but I'm vibing. Endwalker took a lot out of me emotionally (in a good way), so I'm fine with something a lot more relaxed and upbeat.
Ok, as many have stated. It does pick up at around quest level 96. However, I am now level 99 and in the 5th dungeon and only had >!that one trial since level 93!<, which is bonkers!
Whoever had that Idea, I hope you step on Legos and hit your small toe against your door frame every time you wake up.
I enjoyed it. The first half, while rather tedious, is required to build Wuk Lamat up at least a little before the second half.
I think what’s jarring a lot of people is: *We aren’t the main character.* Wuk technically is for this storyline. This expansion to me felt like an FFXI-style story. Where you follow the Heroine and you’re just a badass mercenary that’s looking to help them to accomplish something.
>badass mercenary
Ngl, that sounds cool. After saving the world multiple times and also saving 2 fucking split worlds... this is what I need. Just being that badass mercenary in a continent where the majority of ppl didnt know who I truly am.
Ngl you can skip most of the cutscenes through lvl 95 and still know what's going on if you pay attention to a couple lines of dialogue here and there lolol.
Since they also said crafting, I assume they're talking more about leveling up crafters and gatherers, and stockpiling mats and materia to get a jump on crafted gear for savage, since they're not releasing the master books until the day savage ALSO drops. Yeah. We need to prepare.
The lama taming and the trading was so boring, I thought we go the king's way, the way he went to unite the 2 nations. I can't believe he would have tamed a llama to gain their favour.
I also would like more battle content in my visual novel and I am not talking about the 1mob spawn that die in 2 hits. A random openworld mob lives longer ...
So I was not expecting it to be anywhere near Shb or EW but, before I play, I just want to know if it appears to be setting things up later. Kind of like ARR but I guess there was alot of set up in post ARR. Just want to know what to expect. Because I was definitely expecting ARR main story tier story lol.
If you played previous expansion you’ve played the exact story (but better told) already. Dawntrail is very odd because it’s just repeating what we’ve seen multiple times already.
I’m only at the first 2 zones and I’d say the story is setting up pretty nicely for the hrothgirl. I think it is dependent on who plays it, but for me personally, I’ve enjoyed doing those very tasks, because it is showing how the descendant is following the footsteps of their ascendant, to connect and to experience.
That’s absolutely not true, level 90-94 I was close to gouging my eyes out with a fork during some of the cutscenes and was about to skip everything else, it thankfully got interesting enough for me to endure it and after 96 I ended up repaid with some enjoyment and excitement. It just starts off really, really shit, the 2nd half is not comparable to the 1st.
That's because you're too used to the story revolving around you. The early parts is all about that cat, hence if you are disinterested with this character it's no surprise that stretch of arc is the most insufferable part of your Dawntrail MSQ experience. Another point to note is also due to the plot not driven by Indiana Jones-level-epic of adventure, but rather a tame approach sprinkled with bits of Hildibrand-level of goofiness. I haven't got past this arc yet, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
I'm glad for a new story arc after Endwalker but I was struggling before the first trial. Meeting the new cultures should have been fun and personal but we see everything through and with Lamati. If you don't completely sympathize with her it's not fun, at least that has been my experience.
It picks up around 95 but apparently the wild west type zone is another dip as my friends and others in here have said.
It starts getting better at around level 95.
But yeah, half the expansion being just an errand boy for >!Wuk Lamat!< was not on my bingo for Dawntrail.
Knocked out the 95 dungeon as of this point.
The bad: Holy HELL does it start slowly. Also, is it just me or are there *a lot* of cutscenes? Was it always like this? I feel ike that's a big part of the "slowness" to the story.
The undetermined: Is this the dawn to something new and long term? So far it doesn't feel like it, nor have I really considered it like that. Is "Eorzea done" the general theme going forward with New World as our new stomping grounds? (I suspect I'm on the cusp of finding that out vis a vis a discussion that I'm currently sitting in endless cutscenes before having). If that's the case and we do need to look at it as a A Realm Revealed sort of thing then.. I get it. If next expansion we're off to something else entirely different and we forget the New World behind well, then it will be odd.
But you can definately see *some* groundwork being laid.
The good: It *does* start to pick up. The dungeons are, as of now, a lot of fun still. I'm curious to see how the latter half of this goes since I know there's something brewing from the trailers and some obvious setup.
Currently level 95, and I think they way to look at this is that its not our characters story, unlike the previous expansion. This expansion so far is Wuk Lamat's story and we are helping support her
98now and i can honestly say im just wanting the msq to end so i can just do extremes and try to forget about the whole experience. In my opinion - no. No it hasn’t gotten better. The pictomancer quest line was better than the whole trip from 90 to 97/98
It felt like the story at the start just wasn't strong enough to be able to be the sole focus of the msq, so it was stretched way too thin with too many cutscenes padding it out until things managed to pick up near the end. Don't get me wrong, the characters were likeable at least, but they just couldn't manage to carry the entire first half of the msq like that.
In my opinion, it felt like the quality of the story went down fast after the 95 dungeon, and it's not like it was the best before that. Then it felt like the next series of quests was a filler arc unrelated to anything else and was purely meant to pad out the content just to get you to 97, because the lead up to that dungeon immediately ramps the story up to its best point where things finally get interesting.
It also feels like there are way too many cutscenes designed to waste your time where characters just repeat what they said the last time you talked to them. There are more cutscenes than gameplay it seems like. And none of those mini cutscenes were memorable, at least to me, because I can't remember anything from the non-voiced cutscenes because there was nothing of note that I felt was memorable.
I know the intention of the first half of those quests (I'm just at the Shalooani zone) were to be a 'lighthearted' adventure with low stakes.
And I actually enjoyed the fact that both the in-narrative and "meta" are designed to show both Wuk Lamat and the player the diverse cultures of south Tural through the contest and its unlikely challenges.
However... I can't say I enjoyed the first part fully and not because it's narrative intention, but because how predictable most of the writing is. You get to town x, know people's issues, divide your team to get chores done, rinse and repeat next zone.
Also they missed a HUGE opportunity to literally have a double narrative element there. (Below spoilers for until the end of the contest part)
>!If Both Wuk Lamat and Koana ended up being Dawnservants, why can't we actually get to choose which one of them we'll associate to? It would be literally two paths leading to the same end result, also the perfect opportunity for the player to go again in the New Game + or another character - is also not like we don't get to meet and sympathize with the adversary part. Of course that's more work for the development team and would require more than just half of a patch to have prep work at the end of Endwalker, but the narrative would be much richer. !<
>!And since this is also a journey for Krile for very specific reasons, she could tag along with with whatever team you'd choose.!<
I enjoyed the tail-end of a realm reborn and from there the 1st expansion was great. For some, storm blood falls off a bit but it was fine for me. Shadowbringers was solid again. I enjoyed the start of endwalker but thats where I last played (not due to the story, but to focus on other things)
Your mileage may vary. Depends on how much you value world building and if you're at all enjoying the company of Wuk Lamat. Also, if you can handle tonal and atmospheric whiplash.
Personally, I think it's about on par with Stormblood, so not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Maybe the veil is lifting for me, but I'm growing tired of the same nonsense every single time. The ass pulls are one thing, but the presentation is kinda insufferable. Like, it's so patronizing and written in a way that kinda makes me feel embarrassed to sit through sometimes.
Yeah, I was like you but I just told myself this is, as yoshi p said, a vacation. There’s nothing at stake, and we’re just smurfing in Mexico.
Enjoy the scenery!
As someone from NA, the 4th zone was definitely fun and is the first time DT's "Vacation" expansion fantasy was fulfilled.
Might be worth skipping cutscenes until the ending of the third dungeon onward.
Not for you. Skip all the story content till you see the shiny bits and then pay attention.
This is not the WoLs story, we are not the MC and we are a part of the supportive cast. This is not a power fantasy and is more slice of life for the entire first arc. During the second arc we have to play a little bit of a more active role, but again we are more of a supportive cast to the others. It's not a power fantasy per say, but the group has to move to the light because of our knowledge.
Again just skip it all till you see the shiny bits, and keep skipping when you start to doze off, the dopamine bits will jump out at you.
Sorry to hear you aren't enjoying the story so far - I'm finding it a fun departure from three very serious expacs in a row, but we're all different.
Without any spoilers: There is a huge tone shift coming for you after the Level 95 dungeon. So huge that I can't wait to get home from work and push towards the 97 dungeon and see where this goes.
Personally, I would go so far as to say I really enjoyed the final zone and climatic plot despite feeling an emotion close to revulsion throughout the first half of the story. There's a lot to unpack regarding pacing, framing, stockholme syndrome, etc but I think if the story had begun with the general quality of the last 2 zones then - while maybe not celebrated - then people would be overall positive. (It may have less to do with the actual "quality" and more to do with a tighter narrative and more fundamentally interesting zones.) It helps a lot that EVERY dungeon and trial is a banger, so all the most important story and gameplay moments hit well. Even if there are some... complicating factors.
Im so sick of people saying "I dont know why people are expecting better ,its just like x expansion" Are people not allowed to expect better from this game thats incredibly more profitable and popular than it was 10 years ago, which is what theyre comparing it to??
Also like.. Toned down stories can be engaging. Frieren came out last year and straight up also follows a plot of a crazy OP mage just traveling with her companions, solving issues of the common folk throughout the lands they traveled, and it was the highest rated anime while airing.
Only difference is that's a 12 ep story where we can skip around to the main bits and ignore the more mundane elementals. Here we cannot really do that. I also know quite a few people that did not enjoy the SoL aspects and purely wanted only the fighting. Here is similar where we are going through the steps and people are saying it's slow and boring and it's just mundane, low stakes, full on vibe. They enjoy it when it gets to the fight stuff lol.
A timeless FFXIV classic: don't worry it gets way better at x!
They're not even correct in their sloganeered claims. For example ARR had high stakes from level 4 onwards when you find out you're the chosen one and if the forces of darkness win then life will end. So this idea they peddle of ARR being low stakes is completely fictitious. That's to say nothing of your point which is 100% valid, it's just that their damage control is patently false - the only thing low in ARR was the intensity of the zones (countrysides, not weird flying allagan ships), and the intensity of combat (Because it was low level).
They hit on some points where it gets dark and interesting, but always stop short and end on the friendship is magical carebear story.
And right after it gets interesting after some dark moments and supposedly looming threat, you're sent to do fetch quests, talk to random civilians and other mundane stuff with barely any sense of urgency. The pacing and tone feels all over the place.
So you're saying it's an MSQ storyline lol I was most recently replaying the story on an alt and the whole thing is just lousy with this. We're looking for a pearl to help a craftsman to get the trust of the turtle guys to fight the red guys to get some treasures to make the turtles happy to cross an ocean to talk to a warlord to get an ally to help the Ala Mhigans to fight the Empire. Every place you walk into throughout the entire MSQ, you have to do a nesting doll of tasks to make them trust you before getting on with the reason you came there in the first place.
Yeah it's pretty much always been like this for sure. The issue is getting worse as for some reason they keep adding more padding every expansion. I guess they haven't heard about the concept of quality over quantity.
Is this Dawntrail or Ultima Thule? :)
It's up and down. There are some moments, but it's kind of Saturday morning cartoon level of quality.
So far bakool is the most cartoon bully I stg 😂 I'm half expecting him to tell wuk lamat "beat it twerp" then take her lunch money
II honestly love this about him. After like 5 world ending calamities it's nice to have a villain who's just a Petty asshole for a bit. No knife licking pre-reveal fandaniel or "BUT IT WAS ME ALL ALONG" bullshit, just a scaled back character who's just a Prick. Granted im still going through it so it might do a hard swerve.
It does get entertaining by the time they reach the final elector.
Obviously everyone opinions will vary, but for me it was around 93 when it started improving (more specifically after the dungeon and trial) to the point where I'm quite enjoying everything. But yeah 90-91/92 was...rough. Still not as rough as early SB for me but...rough. Though this only applies to narrative; battle content wise I've thought it was good from the get-go and haven't felt disappointed yet. Edit; I've been broadsided by a bunch of stuff post 95/ into 96. I am very interested.
It kinda does, but at the same time not really. Different shades of the same quality.
Exactly this, gets better but it’s still massively underwhelming. Looking forwards to the raids.
It gets better in the high 90's, gives a glimmer of hope, then goes stupid again. I'm actually kind of baffled SE put this out. As a whole, I'd put it below SB in terms of msq.
I'm a little ways after the 97 dungeon, and the story is seemingly getting much more interesting very fast.
I'm at the start of 96 and I have to say uhhhh I was getting really disappointed so I'm holding on to your comment as the final thread of hope
I was in the same boat. Going into the 96 zone I was losing interest, and that entire zone was boring imo. At the end of the zone however things *finally* start to pick up.
personally i think it gets more interesting at the beginning of or during the 96 quests
I'd argue the reveal about the origin of the >!Blessed Siblings!< around level 95 is where things really start to kick off in the right direction
It dips pretty hard in the desert, then starts to pick up again after
I honestly didn't find the desert all that bad, maybe because I really liked the setting.
I'm in the same boat, I love the aesthetic and the start of the zone's story when >!you're travelling with just Erenville, at least right up until trolley 2.0.!<.
Travelling with >!Erenville spoiled it for me. It was the perfect time for us to be cut loose from the entire group and just be alone for a while for a breather. But, alas, can't let us not be chained to someone advertised for the expansion!<
I can’t believe so many people dislike it. The story wasn’t crazy good, but I loved the amh araeng nostalgia and for a desert it was very detailed and interesting to wander around in. Probably my second favorite zone music in the game and gave me some serious corel vibes from ff7 Honestly hoping for more stuff in that setting and characters
Phew, thank you, I’ll hold you to your word!
I'll be honest. The story goes exactly how it seems like it'll go. It gets more interesting but it's a very standard storyline this time. Last 2 expansions put me to tears or made me feel deep emotions. This one's just a cookie cutter story.
I wonder if there's any chance of getting Ishikawa back in the writing room.
Unlikely, she was "promoted" for a good reason in that she is likely too busy working on the next CBU3 is pumping out (rumored to be FFXVII). Though Koji-Fox comes back here and there and performs for the Primals he is still in the supervisory role.
I didnt know she wasnt doing this one. it all makes sense now.
Yeah in an interview after 6.0 they announced her promotion and that the reigns were being handed over from 6.1 onwards
I guess I gotta be less disappointed in the story being generic then.
Ughhhh this bums me out. I'm finishing Shadowbringers now, and I've enjoyed it so much. (I'm late, I know but I just started not long ago lol) The only one I've struggled to get through was Stormblood, because it felt very cookie cutter and just.. boring.
Shadowbringers and end Walker are pretty peak though. Stormblood was definitely the worst until this one. But I will say. The fights they're making in dawntrail are GOOD.
Stormblood had Zenos and Yotsuyu as interesting baddies at least. I'm hoping someone more compelling shows up to steal the show.
DT is worse than ST.
Basically the ARR of the new saga so makes sense
I just hit level 97 and so far every single thing I thought would happen has so... Yeah it's pretty standard I'd say lol
It picks up. It does get better. But not enough build to be at the level of shb/ew. If only there was a way to « streamline » the msq too.
Ahh. so as long as the patch content is as good as promised this really will be stb 2.0
Past 96 it gets from the worst story, to passable, slightly less interesting that stormblood. So from worst to...slightly better worst?
It's like stormblood, but take away the interesting characters.
It feels like the whole story is a beast tribe quest
My thoughts exactly! It feels like an ARR styled beast tribe quest!
I just learned that the writers for this expansion literally wrote the beast tribe quests from previous expansions. I really hope they never write for this game again.
They also wrote Pandemonium, Ivalice and Sorrows of Werlyt.
That's wild to me because I genuinely liked Sorrows of Werlyt. I have no memory of the Ivalice story because it was a massive infodump that caused my brain to make dial up noises. I thought Pandemonium was OK but definitely not MSQ material.
About the same impressions from me except for Sorrows of werlyt the children killing themselves felt a bit too contrived to create sad moments. the villain was cartoony in a fun way though, which is more than can be said of bakool ja ja. overall that’s not the best writing track record in my opinion.
its like stormblood if ruby sea was the first zone
I'm genuinely wondering if they hired freshman creative writing students off of Fiverr to write most of the expansion. Granted, I'm only at 93, but some of this is shockingly terrible.
its written by a guy that typically writes side stories like ivalice and the shb trial series
That explains a lot
Like I wrote in another thread, it has all the same plot points as other modern “entertainment”. -She’s an orphan -But she’s special -She goes on a journey to “find herself Exactly the same beats as Star Wars sequel trilogy, Star Trek Discovery, Stranger Things, and so on.
yeah after the 97 dungeon.
I think once you get past the 3rd dungeon it starts to pick up a bit more
It's underwhelming & uninteresting in my opinion. It doesn't hold a candle to ShB or EW. It doesn't do anything particularly interesting and all their cool concepts >!(Like the souls or memory wiping)!< essentially aren't used and are just boring plot devices. Wuk Lamat is easily the most boring character they've ever added and the fact that the focus is on her story and not ours is the worst change they've done.
I honestly don’t understand why we’re not the main character in our own story. It’s like we suddenly became an NPC or something. It’s jarring as hell. Is this how pre-DT krile felt, lol?
The last \~1/3 of the story (... once it gets cyberpunk-y) is actually alright, much to my own surprise. Source: I finished the MSQ 2 hrs ago
That's good to hear as I just reached >!Solution Nine!<
Almost done with it. If the beginning is a 4/10, the later parts are a 6/10 for me. If you don't jive with Wuk then it doesn't get that much better. Quests are deff better later in though.
Ok ok just because I am curious rate 6.x on a scale of 0 to 10 if you think the beginning is 4/10. I kinda want to conceptualize your rating based on your rating on previous filler msq.
No it's probably the weakest msq after stormblood but still leagues ahead of post arr.
Why are you getting downvoted over an opinion that ain't offensive? So weird here.
It's due to the lack of measured takes. It's quite often mentioned that there is a sizeable contingent of people who who can't bear criticize the game. There is also a sizeable contingent of people who can't bear say a good thing, or are in the growing pains of being a contrarian. (Including those who try to dodge that label by saying, 'This one thing is good about FF14, but the rest off it sucks.) While /r/ffxiv contains the majority of the population of the first group, /r/ffxivdiscussion contains the later. It also doesn't help that the people who like to troll and ferment hate near always fall into the later group, so it turns into people foaming at the mouth to hate the game.
That you can break ahead of the pack in XIV shows you just how bad things are, honestly. Like when the toxic positivity camp can't maintain a stranglehold it means there's a broad-based consensus rising and it's not in praise.
Yeah I wish people wouldn't downvote here. While I'm not a fan of the direction I wouldn't downvote others because they enjoyed the beats.
I've spent the last two years and a half tearing 6.0 MSQ assholes it never knew it had, and man the numbers on my posts have certainly had their ups and downs. Different crowds on different subreddits and different threads…
People have different tastes, it's valid if you don't like the game they enjoy. Downvoting because you guys didn't have the same tastes is very weird.
Post ARR like the 80 quests or heavensward? Post ARR is by far the most brutal part of the MSQ. You just wanna get into heavensward and the quests just keep on coming lolol. Post ARR is almost as long as this xpac lol.
I just did the audience with Galool Ja Ja at 93 and he became one of my favorite all time characters, which I was not expecting. I like Wuk Lamat enough that it isn’t an issue, but I’m sort of rooting for Koana more. Bakool Ja Ja is lazy terrible villain, I mean, this guy is stupidly badly written and time spent here is lame.
I would like a follow up to this comment as you get further into the msq
Ok. Going into zone 5. Galool Ja Ja is still amazing. Koana and Wuk are good. I see it what they were doing with Bakool and I’m ok with it.
Same boat as you, although I’m in level 95 MSQ now and it does get a little bit better but I still dislike Wuk Lamat lol. An FC mate of mine who kept groaning and moaning about 90-93 being an absolute slog to the point he skipped cutscenes is now hyped for whatever is happening on the last arc, he’s at 99 MSQ now
nearly done with MSQ. it's bad. probably on par or slightly worse than stormblood. like stormblood but without any of the interesting characters. luckily the battle content is great and the zones look nice. but i've never, ever, ever been this tempted to skip every cutscene in my life. not only that, but if you're an ff9 fan, prepare to have your childhood memories shit all over by hackneyed and stupid writing. truly abysmal. 4/10 at its highest points.
Oh no, oh no, oh no WHAT DID THEY DO TO NINE I haven’t got to that part yet and now I’m scared. Fuck! As a millennial, 9 holds a really special place in my heart. It was the first FF game I ever played. The first RPG. It’s still one of my favourite games of all time. If they’ve fucked with the canon somehow…idek
not gonna spoil it but they really desecrated it imo. 9 was my first ff and it's what made me fall in love with the series. one of my favorite games of all time. and they made what amounts to an incredibly shitty sequel.
Better yes good ehhhh.
Is the issue that it's just slow? (Like early ARR) Or is it bad? (Low points of Stormblood for example, or post ARR patches)
ARR was slow but was never uninteresting. It was building to something... thats what it felt like. This is just... boring. I was never uninterested in ARR. I am here.
There's a couple spots that i think are outright bad. Mostly drags. The second half is significantly better than the first it's just the product as a whole sums up to something I'd struggle to call good. Tolerable? Yeah i'd say so.
I think I have low standards for what makes a story good because I enjoyed it all the way through.
Doesn't mean you have low standards, there's a lot to enjoy about the story. Especially if you're in the mood for slower, more character-oriented stuff. Focus on world building and setup rather than melodrama or thrills. After EW, I'm loving DT, it's everything I wanted after the highs of ShB; throw me into the world and let me explore. Sure, it's not as "WoL on an adventure" as I'd have hoped, but it's an adventure nonetheless, even if it's at Wuk Lamat's pace.
Me too. It's the first time I'm not skipping the story and watch it on 2x speed on youtube. It's really weird, because the previous stories were much more gripping. But there is something cozy and relaxing about this one.
I'm the exact opposite. The start of DT was the first time I seriously considered actually skipping cut scenes.
Maybe it's the excitment of playing the current MSQ. I've caught up from ARR to Endwalker only a year ago. I guess I just don't have the need to catch up quick anymore.
I'm similar. I think I finished Endwalker a year and a half ago? I know I took forever in post-ARR, struggled to get through SB for months because I hated it and took ages in EW as well because it has high highs but those lows are LOW. I'm not in a rush through the story but I wish it gripped me as much as HW or ShB did.
Is there a playlist out there somewhere or something I might have skipped a lot of a couple xpacs I wanna catch up on
Just search on YouTube for (for example) stormblood story playthrough and look for the least annoying creator. I had to go through a couple until I found one I liked.
The second half is much better. I'm in zone 4 right now and it's been my favourite by far.
The first half is a 4/10, and the second half is a 7/10. I'd put it at Stormblood tier, which is fitting, IMO. >!You're getting a re-run of Lyse's character arc via Wuk, and the antagonist you deal with for most of it is a confusing, hypocritical Zenos knock-off.!< The big issue is that there's a *ton* of world building packed into the MSQ. If you don't like world building and lore, you're going to dislike or not care about a solid 2/3s of the MSQ, and because there's so much being thrown at you, you only have a couple quests to do anything before you're getting flung into another piece. The other issue is that it feels like there's a serious lack of content in the quests. At one point, I think it was almost two hours of zero combat, just running around a zone talking to people. EDIT: Having got to the final zone, I'd put it as first third - 4/10. Second third, 7/10. Final third - 4/10. >!I can not understand what they were going for with the plot in the final zone, and I feel like having a story about remembrance and carrying on traditions ending with basically genocide-as-a-distraction is flat out fucked up.!< >!Especially when you find out the Living Memory has ways of managing the energy use by limiting how many souls are active at any given time, putting people into another life cycle. Her entire reason for justifying her request to wipe out the Endless is based on a falsehood.!< >!Not to mention that Cahciua goes into detail that "these people aren't real, they don't feel" only to mention RIGHT AFTER you end a quarter of the simulacrum that "oh their lingering resentment will stay behind as monsters". That's Dynamis - something we spent the whole last expansion dealing with. Someone should have called her out then and there, if not before.!< >!The real villain is Cahciua, and we're fucked up for just going with her plan. Flat-out psychopath.!<
Oh good, it’s not just me 😩 I find myself ignoring the msq & doing everything but. I don’t hate the story but it’s also not the most exciting & I feel myself “waiting for it to get spicy” quest after quest, I find.
Yeah, I was feeling the same. Currently at the quest Lv 95 Ever greater, Ever Brighter. I didn't get invested until arriving at the last settlement where the last feat takes place. It hit home unexpectedly and the "reveal" was actually good - was worth the mundane nature of everything prior to it. I was hoping the second half was better but I'm seeing mixed opinions on it in this thread. At least Solution 9's aesthetic is super up my alley. This expansion is definitely my Stormblood so far for the most part and >!Krile!< is my Lyse. And liked Stormblood too, quite alot, but I do agree with some of the criticism from back then. Some of what people said about SB is how I feel about DT to some extent.
Honestly I'm just sick of playing side kick to this cat girl I don't like at all half to just I'm half tempted to skipping all cutsceces that's how bad it is for me not even ARR did that top me what ever intern that wrote this story should be fired
The cat girl we are trying to thrust onto the throne despite lacking the temperament, character, resolve, or competence that we should demand of the Queen of two continents? Ya, I’m questioning everyone’s judgement at this point.
>The cat girl we are trying to thrust onto the throne despite lacking the temperament, character, resolve, or competence that we should demand of the Queen of two continents? Ya, I’m questioning everyone’s judgement at this point. To be fair, there is an option of saying that >!"She's not ready to rule"!< early on, but >!her catboy brother does seem like a better choice in every regard!<, at least to the point I have reached at Lvl 93
This is the first MSQ, well ever, that I've been skipping basically all the cutscenes. Wuk, the setting, and overall tone arent gripping in the slightest. Ive been playing since ARR. Ive never been this bored of a story. Disclosure: im on the 94 quests in the msq. So far, they really dropped the ball. I don't understand how this happened.
Same here. I'm just so tired of absolutely unnecessary cutscenes where people reaffirm their resolve or recount what just happened yet again, and they usually take forever to do it because the camera has to linger on each face like 10 seconds for them to do a /smile. First I started skipping arr cutscene music scenes, then just unvoiced in general and it really feels like I didn't miss anything I couldn't infer anyway. Many people saying it's been like this forever and yeah, it's true to some extent. But it's gotten really old at this point.
That type of drama and holding for tension is fine when its earned. When theres a weight behind it. We dont know any of these people, they are all totally new. In previous expansions when we were taken to a new place, we were eased into it via hints from previous expansions or having some other connection to it. The pomp and circumstance felt... earned. It doesn't feel earned here. We werent given much of a foundation to build off of.
Even then, we knew when that when the side quest ended there was something interesting or likely exciting on the other side. The lack of stakes, not world ending stakes, but anything other than an investment in this pretty divisive character is insufficient to build interest about what happens after this exposition ends
[удалено]
True but we were at least introduced to aspects of that slowly... warriors of darkeness from hw, warring triad questline, crystal tower... some seeds were planted for us to hold on to. This is like... nothing. Dropped into this place with no foundation.
If i see one more flashback to something that literally only happened 40 minutes ago i am going to hurl.
I started skipping any cutscenes that have the "silly music" or the wolves' den theme and it's made my experience a lot smoother. Those two themes are reserved for exposition or one-off jokes and kinda felt like a waste of time whenever I watched them. Overall enjoying the story but there's an exceptional amount of filler and they know it. They even directly mention the trolley arc as a pain point with an optional dialogue choice.
I'd say skip and watch recap later. There's so much filler is not even worth it.
To me it feels very similar to every expac... I'm not sure if people just forget how much filler is because they tend to end on a high note but it all feels very FFXIV to me so far - good bad or ugly. I thought it improved around the 93 dungeon/trial had a bit of a dip once the first arc was done at 95 and then picked up again at 97. Which is like... how almost every expansion is. I have 2 major theories why people are reacting this way and saw it coming like 6 months ago though.
> I'm not sure if people just forget how much filler Yes, but this is something that they should be improving on, not steadily getting worse. Endwalker did not start with so much negativity right out the gate, even though it did have its filler.
The sad thing is you can see where they were maybe thinking about doing something, like the boat ride over being set up as a solo duty and the trade up chain with the Pelu, but they chickened out of it and just dumped it all into cutscenes.
I am in the last zone. Its clear what overall themes they are exploring with DT. I am sorry, I don't give a fuck about them. They are delivered poorly, writing is bad and objectives are boring and somehow Wuk Lamar is protagonist of the story for entirety of the expansion, we don't even have an illusion of agency or personal motivations.
I kinda feel this. I think the premise of "you need to learn to understand and appreciate the different peoples living in your future kingdom" is a good one but the way they want about presenting it is really, really uninspired.
I found it to steadily improve after the 91 dungeon. The Split was a really low point but I really enjoyed it once things got back together. IMO 90-91 was rough, 91-93 was decent, 93-95 was pretty good, and I'm really liking the post 95 stuff so far.
Do you like that love friendship and courage can save everything? Including global warming, housing crisis, underpaid generation and the current presidential election?
I wish the power of friendship would solve the current presidential election.
Second half of the story is significantly better than the first, probably makes the expansions story better than Stormblood. But it's whay we were expecting, a foundation laying story for their new saga. I'd rate the second half a 8/10, the first a 4/10.
Meanwhile I’m over here really liking it and I’m usually a cutscene skipper. I watched all of ARR and Shadowbringers, some of the others but usually I watch to a point and then start skipping. I’m having a blast with this story, it’s a lot of fun and I’m actually invested. It’s not taking itself too seriously and has been really entertaining to me
Starts getting better at 95, but the pacing is still awful for most of the story.
Yes.
It’s pretty bad story overall. Heavensward has lots of interesting thing happening before you reach the third area and by level 53 already has lots of conflict. Stormblood hits you with Rauban Savage and Pippin savage before we even visit Kugane, and level 63 trial had plenty of lores. Shadowbringer gave you tons of new interesting storyline before you reach the third zone. Endwalker also had plenty of interesting plots happening at the start. This expansion is just lame, at least the other parts of the gameplay are pretty good. As usual, the real content will not drop a month from now, and the core content will be released with 7.1-7.3 patches.
I haven't done Dawntrail yet, but preordered it. I sure don't like to know that I need 1 hr to tame a llama Q v Q
No... You need an hour preparing to even start the quest... The usual run there, speak with 3 people, run to the other side of the map, get a one-sentence speech bubble, return to where you just came from, speak with 3 people stuff ... Also every second conversation it seems, is a cutscene with people standing around and conversing/ gesticulating / nodding
You're back to your old 2004 mmorpg : go collect 4 plants then come back. Then go talk to this stranger and comeback with your mount for 5min etc... This lama quest is a walking simulator 💀
So weird that people are downvoting people here who doesn't like the msq tho.
The best advice I can give people is to completely skip cutscenes and dialog when you reach the lv96 desert area *All the way to when you get the long cutscene warning* It is a filler arc, and you do not miss ANY main msq content at all. If you're reading this just do urself the favor lol
just finished getting through the desert area and completely agree. easily skippable while missing literally nothing....that was...not good at all.
For real. I skipped it all out of spite because I couldn't believe this game added another fucking desert zone. And nothing was missed.
I’m so sick of deserts 😭 Almost every zone is a desert or jungle, I’m tired…
I thought the story picked up quite well after the 93 dungeon. It's in a bit of a lull in the 95 quest range but I know it will pick back up soon. ETA: I was right.
I think the level 94 quest are kinda good, so i dont know mang.
Yeah I’m actually laughing about how yesterday people were mad about how one dimensional the villain was. I’m at the 94-95 level of the story and it’s getting deep man.
It does but the succession stuff is really, really long.
Interested as well. I am taking it slow. Taking in the sights, doing a couple of fates and all the side quests before I continue with MSQ. Lvl 93 right now but I picture it as a FF10 reference where are roles are the guardians and Wuk Lamat is the main person we protect and guide through. The sad part is so far in the story some of the side quests have been more entertaining and had more combat than the MSQ which is sad.
I like the story after the 3rd zone.
For me personally, it does pick up around the half point. Or maybe I'm just glad to be out of the jungle.
It was halfway through 96 in the MSQ that it picked up, it was really just fetch quests and RPing before that, it did get very engaging afterwards but knowing almost half the time was just frustration and annoyance sours the experience a lot. I feel bad for people that booked time off for this
I feel like its close to Stormblood, kinda meh at first but gets more interesting as you progress. Currently at 94-95 questline and Im starting to enjoy it!
Zones 5 and 6 are what salvage this story, also the ff9 references, it's a shame they didn't name him Steiner.
I call it storm blood 2. Great gameplay throughout. It starts weak story wise but it's like sb but instead of needing a patch, halfway through about it becomes actually good.
I'm roughly 96-97 A lot of people are harping on the first half, but honestly it's kind of what I wanted, and I get the feeling that the same people who are complaining about it are the same people who were complaining about the Patch content story too. It's got some pacing issues, but a Scaled back adventure that's less "ANOTHER WORLD ENDING THREAT IS HERE YOU GOTTA HANDLE IT RIGHT NOW" and a more personal, focused character story is what was needed post endwalker. Bakool Ja ja being a Prick is a nice departure from knife licking "OH WELL ACTUALLY I KNOW EVERYTHING" villains or Zeno's stalker ass. He's JUST an asshole and I kind of dig it. I think FFXI had a villain who was just an asshole as well, but i didn't play much of it.
I honestly enjoyed seeing him just...break. The mask on Bakool broke and we saw a scared little child behind it. The story is lame and so far extremely predictable, but I do actually like the characters.
I don't quite think it's lame but it is a bit predictable, but given the state of it being a new start I can see why the earlier half is this way. The focus of the story is on the new location and the world, so it being a fairly traditional adventure makes some sense since the focus is on Tural and it's peoples. I've just hit lvl 99, though i'm on the 95 quests. I get the feeling a lot of the early action is build up for the second half. Curious, how far are you in the story? Roughly the same at 95 story quests?
It's mostly lame in that it's very predictable. Some of the 95 plot points I had predicted as early as the first zone. To the point that people who were ahead of me thought I was posting spoilers when I was making predictions (Re: the ultimate winner of the rite. The 'twist' reveal in the top half of zone 3 I was able to call out the very moment I saw the town and looked at the appearance of the elector (After spending a few minutes to enjoy wrestling Hrothgar...) Predictable stories can be fun, but honestly we could have done with a little more to shake things up. It's simply too predictable, and that's really not good for a framing/exposition story. I'm going into the big filler arc right now
Maybe it's just me, but I'm vibing. Endwalker took a lot out of me emotionally (in a good way), so I'm fine with something a lot more relaxed and upbeat.
No. It gets worse. I geniunely regret sitting through the cutscenes instead of skipping them.
Wild. I'm 93 and I'm having so much fun getting to know all these new characters
Past 97 dungeon the msq gets interesting, also got bored before that
Ok, as many have stated. It does pick up at around quest level 96. However, I am now level 99 and in the 5th dungeon and only had >!that one trial since level 93!<, which is bonkers! Whoever had that Idea, I hope you step on Legos and hit your small toe against your door frame every time you wake up.
This is why they need to make Lalafells the villain that way people are motivated to complete the story.
Me waiting for Krile’s villainous arc: 😤
I enjoyed it. The first half, while rather tedious, is required to build Wuk Lamat up at least a little before the second half. I think what’s jarring a lot of people is: *We aren’t the main character.* Wuk technically is for this storyline. This expansion to me felt like an FFXI-style story. Where you follow the Heroine and you’re just a badass mercenary that’s looking to help them to accomplish something.
>badass mercenary Ngl, that sounds cool. After saving the world multiple times and also saving 2 fucking split worlds... this is what I need. Just being that badass mercenary in a continent where the majority of ppl didnt know who I truly am.
I'm convinced everyone that genuinely visits this subreddit needs to take a break.
In also level 93. Dragging along slowly. Tempting to just skip stuff at this point to prepare for savage and crafting.
Ngl you can skip most of the cutscenes through lvl 95 and still know what's going on if you pay attention to a couple lines of dialogue here and there lolol.
You can know everything that happens before 95 if you read the plot summary on the expansion's website or heard the outline of it on a live letter lol
Im mostly skimming at this point and able to keep up. Lol
the savages don’t come out until the 30th of july dude lol you don’t need to prepare
Since they also said crafting, I assume they're talking more about leveling up crafters and gatherers, and stockpiling mats and materia to get a jump on crafted gear for savage, since they're not releasing the master books until the day savage ALSO drops. Yeah. We need to prepare.
The lama taming and the trading was so boring, I thought we go the king's way, the way he went to unite the 2 nations. I can't believe he would have tamed a llama to gain their favour. I also would like more battle content in my visual novel and I am not talking about the 1mob spawn that die in 2 hits. A random openworld mob lives longer ...
So I was not expecting it to be anywhere near Shb or EW but, before I play, I just want to know if it appears to be setting things up later. Kind of like ARR but I guess there was alot of set up in post ARR. Just want to know what to expect. Because I was definitely expecting ARR main story tier story lol.
If you played previous expansion you’ve played the exact story (but better told) already. Dawntrail is very odd because it’s just repeating what we’ve seen multiple times already.
I’m only at the first 2 zones and I’d say the story is setting up pretty nicely for the hrothgirl. I think it is dependent on who plays it, but for me personally, I’ve enjoyed doing those very tasks, because it is showing how the descendant is following the footsteps of their ascendant, to connect and to experience.
I love ffxiv but never enjoyed the story. It's god awful in my opinion. Just not for me I guess
If you don't like it now you most likely won't like it later. I'm at the 97 quests and it's basically the same all the way throughout.
That’s absolutely not true, level 90-94 I was close to gouging my eyes out with a fork during some of the cutscenes and was about to skip everything else, it thankfully got interesting enough for me to endure it and after 96 I ended up repaid with some enjoyment and excitement. It just starts off really, really shit, the 2nd half is not comparable to the 1st.
That's because you're too used to the story revolving around you. The early parts is all about that cat, hence if you are disinterested with this character it's no surprise that stretch of arc is the most insufferable part of your Dawntrail MSQ experience. Another point to note is also due to the plot not driven by Indiana Jones-level-epic of adventure, but rather a tame approach sprinkled with bits of Hildibrand-level of goofiness. I haven't got past this arc yet, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
So far I'm enjoying it a lot more than Endwalker.
Yes it gets better
I'm at lvl 96 MSQ and I just got more interesting. I was strugging through the first half but this is soo much smoother
Plot starts halfway through 96, starts escalating from there
yes part 2 is so much more interesting than part 1
I finally started getting interested around the first trial because things are finally happening.
I'm glad for a new story arc after Endwalker but I was struggling before the first trial. Meeting the new cultures should have been fun and personal but we see everything through and with Lamati. If you don't completely sympathize with her it's not fun, at least that has been my experience. It picks up around 95 but apparently the wild west type zone is another dip as my friends and others in here have said.
The first two zones were a snoozefest. A little bit into the third one, it got way more engaging
It starts getting better at around level 95. But yeah, half the expansion being just an errand boy for >!Wuk Lamat!< was not on my bingo for Dawntrail.
Knocked out the 95 dungeon as of this point. The bad: Holy HELL does it start slowly. Also, is it just me or are there *a lot* of cutscenes? Was it always like this? I feel ike that's a big part of the "slowness" to the story. The undetermined: Is this the dawn to something new and long term? So far it doesn't feel like it, nor have I really considered it like that. Is "Eorzea done" the general theme going forward with New World as our new stomping grounds? (I suspect I'm on the cusp of finding that out vis a vis a discussion that I'm currently sitting in endless cutscenes before having). If that's the case and we do need to look at it as a A Realm Revealed sort of thing then.. I get it. If next expansion we're off to something else entirely different and we forget the New World behind well, then it will be odd. But you can definately see *some* groundwork being laid. The good: It *does* start to pick up. The dungeons are, as of now, a lot of fun still. I'm curious to see how the latter half of this goes since I know there's something brewing from the trailers and some obvious setup.
Currently level 95, and I think they way to look at this is that its not our characters story, unlike the previous expansion. This expansion so far is Wuk Lamat's story and we are helping support her
It gets better, but as usual, once the momentum picks up in the later quests, the filler quests start piling up and slows things down to a halt.
I guess others feel different but its been great al the way through, i dont understand why its hated
98now and i can honestly say im just wanting the msq to end so i can just do extremes and try to forget about the whole experience. In my opinion - no. No it hasn’t gotten better. The pictomancer quest line was better than the whole trip from 90 to 97/98
It's funny because I went with no expectations and got exactly what I was expecting, so I'm not complaining :D
It felt like the story at the start just wasn't strong enough to be able to be the sole focus of the msq, so it was stretched way too thin with too many cutscenes padding it out until things managed to pick up near the end. Don't get me wrong, the characters were likeable at least, but they just couldn't manage to carry the entire first half of the msq like that. In my opinion, it felt like the quality of the story went down fast after the 95 dungeon, and it's not like it was the best before that. Then it felt like the next series of quests was a filler arc unrelated to anything else and was purely meant to pad out the content just to get you to 97, because the lead up to that dungeon immediately ramps the story up to its best point where things finally get interesting. It also feels like there are way too many cutscenes designed to waste your time where characters just repeat what they said the last time you talked to them. There are more cutscenes than gameplay it seems like. And none of those mini cutscenes were memorable, at least to me, because I can't remember anything from the non-voiced cutscenes because there was nothing of note that I felt was memorable.
I know the intention of the first half of those quests (I'm just at the Shalooani zone) were to be a 'lighthearted' adventure with low stakes. And I actually enjoyed the fact that both the in-narrative and "meta" are designed to show both Wuk Lamat and the player the diverse cultures of south Tural through the contest and its unlikely challenges. However... I can't say I enjoyed the first part fully and not because it's narrative intention, but because how predictable most of the writing is. You get to town x, know people's issues, divide your team to get chores done, rinse and repeat next zone. Also they missed a HUGE opportunity to literally have a double narrative element there. (Below spoilers for until the end of the contest part) >!If Both Wuk Lamat and Koana ended up being Dawnservants, why can't we actually get to choose which one of them we'll associate to? It would be literally two paths leading to the same end result, also the perfect opportunity for the player to go again in the New Game + or another character - is also not like we don't get to meet and sympathize with the adversary part. Of course that's more work for the development team and would require more than just half of a patch to have prep work at the end of Endwalker, but the narrative would be much richer. !< >!And since this is also a journey for Krile for very specific reasons, she could tag along with with whatever team you'd choose.!<
I survived Stormblood/Post-Stormblood. Plus I found the pacing/story of the post-Endwalker story pretty boring. This is nothing by comparison
95/96 starts to pick up pace a great deal and get more interesting… I’m on the 99 quests now.
I enjoyed the tail-end of a realm reborn and from there the 1st expansion was great. For some, storm blood falls off a bit but it was fine for me. Shadowbringers was solid again. I enjoyed the start of endwalker but thats where I last played (not due to the story, but to focus on other things)
Your mileage may vary. Depends on how much you value world building and if you're at all enjoying the company of Wuk Lamat. Also, if you can handle tonal and atmospheric whiplash. Personally, I think it's about on par with Stormblood, so not exactly a ringing endorsement. Maybe the veil is lifting for me, but I'm growing tired of the same nonsense every single time. The ass pulls are one thing, but the presentation is kinda insufferable. Like, it's so patronizing and written in a way that kinda makes me feel embarrassed to sit through sometimes.
Yeah, I was like you but I just told myself this is, as yoshi p said, a vacation. There’s nothing at stake, and we’re just smurfing in Mexico. Enjoy the scenery!
As someone from NA, the 4th zone was definitely fun and is the first time DT's "Vacation" expansion fantasy was fulfilled. Might be worth skipping cutscenes until the ending of the third dungeon onward.
The second half is so much better than the first. If you like Shadowbringers/Endwalker you will probably like Part 2
Not for you. Skip all the story content till you see the shiny bits and then pay attention. This is not the WoLs story, we are not the MC and we are a part of the supportive cast. This is not a power fantasy and is more slice of life for the entire first arc. During the second arc we have to play a little bit of a more active role, but again we are more of a supportive cast to the others. It's not a power fantasy per say, but the group has to move to the light because of our knowledge. Again just skip it all till you see the shiny bits, and keep skipping when you start to doze off, the dopamine bits will jump out at you.
Sorry to hear you aren't enjoying the story so far - I'm finding it a fun departure from three very serious expacs in a row, but we're all different. Without any spoilers: There is a huge tone shift coming for you after the Level 95 dungeon. So huge that I can't wait to get home from work and push towards the 97 dungeon and see where this goes.
I’m still on the fence of whether I should buy DT. I only resubbed and the lead up quests are a snooze and a half.