I think the story is fine. I just don't enjoy the fact that a major reason I picked up Dawntrail is because of VPR, but then I went into DT MSQ and I hardly ever got a chance to press my buttons.
I am fairly sure the amount of combat encounters between the start of DT and >!the duel with CEO of Tural!< can be counted on one hand. I just want to press my buttons, even if it's just against some trash mobs.
I would be mad at myself for clicking on that spoiler but then I remembered it's literally >!In the trailer!< and >!I really wanted to duel that guy after I walked in on him duelling Big E anyway!<
They’re probably trying to pack the story stuff more and more into skippable cutscenes so they don’t inconvenience the people who would bitch about having to do all the instanced battles on their 8 raiding alts
Same, I believe it's fine.
EW also had a long introduction for nothing. ShB as well had little combat before the actual content but the story telling was a bit better.
My biggest issue is that it feels like one massive lore dump. I get it's a new area, but it really just felt like they were throwing walls of text at us like "This is our new area and this is all of its history".
Sure other expansions did that, but it didn't always always feel like I was just bombarded with information to read.
There were so many occasions I had to stop myself pressing the skip cutscene button.
Yeah *every* expac does it egregiously.
Our brains just forget all the unnecessary lines of text that have to make the story appeal to idiots, by constantly recapping it and/or repeating it with more and more examples to explain it further, and use run-on style of dialogue at times. But we *all* remember the big hype moments.
It's kind of like how when you add extra sentences and examples to a reddit comment, with run on sentences and, unnecessary commas, and keep reiterating the point, because our brains generally filter out information that is repeated when we grasp it, because it's unimportant to us when we understand a concept.
We have a tendency to only remember hype moments, mostly due to our limited brain capacity of filtration of information, so the dopamine sections always stick out to us, since big cool thing = make brain happy, and even though our brains are logically taking in information, it filters out the parts we don't need to hear a second time, because extra info is just unnecessary.
Our brains are wired in a way, to just skip and purge all data that is redundant, mostly due to evolution in progressive knowledge, because the human learning capacity is constructed in a way to build upon itself, by not needing to keep information inside the brain that we already understand. There's no need to remember what we already know, but the things that stand out as application of previous knowledge (sometimes referred to as a "payoff" or "hype" moment)
It's just that whenever we are taught something, our brains have this wild ability to unconsciously filter out, and have almost no recollection of, needless information that completely negates the point of even processing it further, so we only remember the most impactful moments that have some relevancy to said needless information.
(unjerk: OK I can't think of any more creative ways because at this point I'm boring my *own fucking self* and hurting my eyes making these run-on sentences and commas)
lol I totally only read the first 2 paragraphs and skipped to the end... kinda like what I did with the Bunny and Labyrinthos 2 section, or the Build-a-bitch section during ShB, or the faeries of the same expansion, or the... or the... or the... lol.
And let’s not forget how much of this is unnecessary. I feel like the world’s b*tch.
Quest: I wanna clean my as*
Objective: get 5$ from my wallet
Go to the supermarket
Bring me the paper
Find 6 witnesses
Take a selfie
Wipe me
Tell 7 of my friends
It’s OKAY to do this but I feel like with the pacing it’s overdone in DT. So far , everyone I’ve asked felt this way.
Well the duel in question is one of my favorite solo duties and the dungeons/trials have some mechanics I think are pretty interesting, so I'm inclined to say no, it's actually pretty fun where gameplay is involved.
But I'm a filthy casul who barely raid so take from that what you will.
There are some very fun solo duties and the dungeons so far (I am level 98) have been _excellent_.
But you are right there is very little combat in the overworld quests. It's all instanced.
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I noticed there was almost enough extra exp for another class so I did dnc on the side, running a decent amount of fates + aethercurrent quest chains and maybe 6-7 side quests per zone gives you a decent amount of stuff to hit
I'll be honest, I am skipping most of the cutscenes and it doesn't prevent me to understand what's going on. Otherwise I would just fall asleep, there are so few voice lines..
This is a legit critic, there's sometimes 15 lines of dialog just to say simple things like "We need to setup a trap. I'll be the bait to attract the thing."
Yeah I'm not hating the story so far, though I'm not far in, but it's been a thing with ffxiv for years now that you can cut off the voice lines halfway in and basically everything that needed to be said has already been said.
"Man r/ShitpostXIV ... I dunno man, it used to be cool.... but now it went too far. It made fun of something.. something I agreed with... and now, I just... I just don't know. I need time."
All the jobs are so braindead. BLM and SAM were both lobotomized, and VPR is just "click the glowing buttons".
Stormblood had great gameplay but Dawntrail has me very concerned on that front. Here's hoping the raid patch fixes things.
Unironically this. Its insane how dopamine addicted people are. They genuinely want world of warcraft where each threat is bigger and more world ending than the last and the spectacle is all that matters. I hope the devs never cave to these people and design the game for people with non-fried dopamine receptors
My problem is the lack of actual gameplay. Yes, EW was a visual novel as well but the high stakes made it interesting. Here we have lower stakes but no gameplay to ease it up.
With respect, my memory of basically EVER expac is that they're light on gameplay. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I don't think any of them have had thrilling gameplay outside of EX trials at the end of the expac
You can still make a better designed questline than literally repeating something for three-four times: Go to village, learn about problem, talk with people, learn local custom, solve problem, get gemstone. Pelu, Hanu and absolutely not goblins all followed this same structure. We get it the Pelu are traders, no need to stretch it over eight quests.
If you want a visual novel then make it an interesting one: We got our asses handed to us in SB, Vauthry and Tesleens transformation in ShB, HW had Iceheart joining us on a camping trip and us being accused of heresy.
We could have a literal Game of Thrones here, but the characters are boring and the story plays it absolutely safe with no surprises.
https://preview.redd.it/5oixcdfdjj9d1.png?width=934&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4ec28859140860475e1cc1cd385c5a667d162556
I don't need another big bad world ending threat. I was interested in the story at the start when it was just "let's go see this cool new country and get tacos!"
But then it's literally ARR level 5 fetch quest objectives. Oh no, we need some rocks! Go get us these rocks from the river, WoL. Aw jeez, we need some leaves to trade with that merchant. Go get em!
Like, we have a perfectly good thing to set up mystery and intrigue with in the story. It's just *not happening.*
As I’ve said in other comments I feel like this would be the perfect expansion to shake things up. Main story that has been building for a while is finished, our new journey is more focused on adventure and exploring new lands.
I don’t need it to be WoW and leave you to your devices, but maybe give us some quests incentivizing exploring and discovering stuff, lets us fight a few new monsters and take in the sights.
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People just WoW style stories where things are "interesting" and you don't "fall asleep during cutscenes while a guy is speaking in broken english at a word a minute". smh
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People got spoiled the past four years with Shadowbringers and Endwalker being chock full of action and twists. What they fail to understand is that it was a culmination of the previous 6 years of world building through the other expansions and base game. I'll bet money a lot of the people complaining are those that joined at or around Endwalker launch and had 4 expansions plus a base game's worth of MSQ to blast through and are now upset that SQEX is starting a new story which, surprise, is gonna require more world building.
I'm perfectly content with this expansion not being a "stop the ender of the universe" story again. I'm not even that far into 7.0 and I'm still enjoying it *because of that*.
Tbh Dawntrail MSQ has _plenty_ of epic moments so far and meaningful stakes even though it's not a galactic apocalypse.
I am level 99 now, about to finish zone 5, and the story has been _anything_ but dull. In fact the twists and turns have almost been jarring (but luckily not quite).
I am so glad this expansion is more chill after getting TWO EXPANSIONS IN A ROW of "earth ending" shenanigans. I don't feel bad taking it slow this time around.
I remember this discourse when Endwalker was out and people were complaining about slow parts like the Lopporits and said that “Shadowbringers wasn’t like this”
Like my brother in Christ do you not remember the trolley section or the pixies?
Man, the pixies bored me to tears. Haven't felt anything close to that level of boredom in DT so far; this expansion has been a slow, satisfying burn for me. Level 95-96 right now, and I've had two moments so far that hyped me up similarly to Ardbert's "our story" moment.
The two solo instances in Yak T'el, pretty much back to back. I'll admit that narratively speaking, Wuk Lamat's story arc doesn't have *nearly* the same emotional impact as Ardbert's. But I felt the hype nonetheless, and her flashy custom moves definitely did some heavy lifting there. I think the only thing that would have made the latter solo instance even better would have been a player lb3, but we know why they still haven't done that lol
Edit: It occurs to me that one of the biggest factors in the first of the two instances is the unique gameplay. For an npc solo instance, it actually had more going on than "press 1 for damage, 2 for heal, 3 for ranged damage" for five minutes. The dialogue was also *stellar*
Dude I got so irritated in shadowbringers doing all the chores for the different civilizations. Like they know I’m the warrior of darkness fated to save them all and I’m filling up jars full of water?
For me, Rak'tika was where I really had to force myself to go on.
In Endwalker it was second visit to Sharlyan.
The expansion that kept me decently engaged all the way through was actually Heavensward
The difference is that every slow paced part of Shadowbringers had an incredible and memorable pay off.
People like to speak shit about the trolley but inmediatly after your are done comes the best Thancred moment in the whole plot.
>People like to speak shit about the trolley but inmediatly after your are done comes the best Thancred moment in the whole plot.
Which had nothing to do with the Trolley.
They basically do the Trolley plotline again with Chai-nuzz for the golem to get to Mt Gulg, but that time it actually has a payoff.
You could’ve taken out the entire trolley questline and still had the cool Thancred moment. This is just revisionist memory and selective memory of expansion MSQ
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The MSQ since the very beginning has been like 75% pure filler. It *has* to be, otherwise people would blow through the major story beats in a couple hours and bitch about having to level up via other means to unlock the instanced content. It's extraordinarily difficult to tell a 40-hour-long story in this medium that constantly keeps players actively engaged. It's not like writing a book: words are free, so you can introduce and phase out characters, involved action sequences, and amazing environments and set pieces as easily as you can come up with them. In a video game, all of that stuff costs a lot of money.
It is driving me insane to see people reminiscing about ShB/EW as if they were these ridiculous high-octane adventures from start to finish. Does nobody remember fixing a fucking trolley or building the Talos in ShB for like twelve interminable hours during which literally *nothing* of interest happens? Fucking around with the Pixies and the Nu Mou for hours? Reading books in Sharalayan, listening to Fourchenault and Varshahn blathering on about nothing for cutscene after cutscene after cutscene, dying for an excuse to unsheathe your weapon for any purpose, even for two seconds?
This game has always been a game of ridiculously high highs and ridiculously low lows. I honestly think people are just tired with the formula. The cracks just took a long time to show -- we finally started seeing them towards the end of the EW cycle.
I don't even think DT is that bad so far. The fetch quests feel like they're in service of the main narrative, and not just throwaway time-sucks, so I might even go so far as to say it's better than many previous expansions, but I'll wait until I'm finished with it to make that call.
I think it is the issue with banking the MSQ so much on the story over actual gameplay.
Story good? MSQ good.
Story bad? MSQ gets _really_ bad and becomes a slog.
>otherwise people would blow through the major story beats in a couple hours and bitch about having to level up via other means to unlock the instanced content
I honestly wouldn't be opposed to them trying this formula. I understand the absolut shitstorm that would come from it though
This is what I was gonna say but I'm not far enough in msq to know. Some of the comments are people saying how the first 4 to 8 hours of DT have been slow. I'm currently running through HW right now, which to my understanding is many people's favorite expac, and the first like 10-15 hours of it is basically all fetch quests around the city and is pretty slow. Don't get me wrong I love the story so far, but there is like 140 ish missions in every expac, ain't no way its going to be a adrenaline joy ride the whole time.
To curb your expectations, the formula for exposition thru fetch quest happens in every expansion in almost every single zone.
Very rarely do you get to a new zone and something really cool happens at the start.
But like you said, you love the story so far, so you'll be fine if you don't mind that cadence.
I haven’t finished EW yet but HW is definitely my least favourite expac. I seriously don’t get the love for it, the story just isn’t very good in my opinion. Very few people agree with my, but I think the writing massively improves in Stormblood. The quest structure never really gets better, sadly, and large swathes of the story of each expac are inevitably slow and boring, but the good parts are often pretty good.
There were some boring parts yes but the pacing was generally well done, no super long shortages of action or twists, and the down times also had a lot of interesting lore drops. Like the whole Elpis arc in Endwalker was boring quests and playing tag with a bird girl but there was so much interesting lore dropped throughout that whole section that people forget how long and slogging that section of the MSQ really was. We learned a lot about the Ancients' civilization, how the Final Days came to be, and a lot about the convocation of fourteen. Even about prototype monsters and how the stuff we fight in the world now came to exist. It was a lot of great learning during possibly one of the sloggiest parts of Endwalker
Compare it to Stormblood or ARR in terms of pacing and I'd say EW and SHB are a lot more fun
Elpis was the culmination of like ten years of backstory and is maybe the best zone in the entire game because of it, you absolutely cannot just in a vacuum say "they should make more stuff like Elpis"
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EW levels of MSQ is not expected as mentioned due to the 10 years of story building but DT just lacks good writting and intrigue, for example look at HW where there is not a decade of building and its simply about a town fighting dragons, pretty low stakes but its written in a way where ur interested in Aymeric, Ysayle, Haurchefant and Estenien and the ppl of ishgard in general. In DT they do not spend any effort to raise the importance of their quest to its extent its simply "I want to be queen cuz others bad." And thats just lazy story telling.
Heavensward was also a bit of an anomaly lining up with the other expansions as it was, for the most part, its' own self-contained story.
So far in DT (I'm only on the level 92 quests, shortly after the first dungeon so still early on) I feel like they've started to explain why "others bad" in a good way that's not just "cuz bad". Like they've compared >!Zoraal Ja's desire for war and conquest to the failed Garlean Empire!< and even showing how >!The young people don't remember times of war and how it affected everyone while just seeing it as an opportunity for profit!<. This can also be a >!loosely conveyed commentary how in this current day and age in different parts of the world young people are embracing a rise in fascist ideologies because they don't know better. The people who were alive for the rise and fall of the Nazi regime are almost all dead so first hand witnesses to the atrocities they committed are dwindling.!<
I dunno I don't feel like this expansion is poorly written at all it's just not hitting those dopamine receptors that are burned out lmao.
Its true that they do start explaining why they do what they do more, and there are certain revelations you havent reached yet that further solidifies your point, my grime is more with how they handled the characters rather than the overall world building. >!I understand how they want to build on the new characters but I hate how the scions, the champions that saved the entire star, are just there in the background without much role or impactful opinions, how Wuk Lamat, having spent her whole life in Tural not even heard of certain animals that serves as a very common way of transportation, how Bakul Ja Ja is simply evil for being evil and does horrible actions that at the end of the day everyone is simply annoyed about and forget like "oh Bakul Ja ur so silly" instead of taking him for the life threatning person he is, his character is evil for the sake of evil with no motivation behind it until later on where its convenient (again spoilers for parts u havent reached). Going from writing like EW where there are themes of suicide and ShB and HW where people sacrafice themselves to save what they love, DT just seem like an adventure of a few youths messing about. Sure they didnt have to put the entire star at risk again but it wouldve been nice to have the characters take their situation a bit more seriously instead of just another goofy adventure. !<
> The people who were alive for the rise and fall of the Nazi regime are almost all dead so first hand witnesses to the atrocities they committed are dwindling.
the only way to solve this is to directly expose new people to similar atrocities, leading to a fully culturally fluent generation. Unfortunately, that'll probably suck for a few people, but they'll get over it.
That is basically >!one of the villains' motivation, funnily enough. Inflict enough pain on the world until everyone unites because they're sick of war.!<
This. There are plenty of games and series that skip straight into the high stakes stuff. And you never hear people talking about them except when talking and how bad it was.
Nothing wrong with the story itself imo. Just the presentation is bad and certain characters get grating fast. Video games are an interactive medium, so it is a bit of a shame that Square doesn’t wanna try more with that then they usually do.
Take the part with the pillars that you have to click that talk about the feats of Gulool Ja Ja for example. They could’ve made little cutscenes with voice acting in the style of the pillar’s art for example, or even just a quick flashback to the event. Instead it’s still images of the pillars with a lore infodump for each one.
I know this is how it’s always been in previous expacs, but it really sticks out in a story with low stakes and no interesting story hook/mystery to keep you invested. But then again I do have adhd so 🤷♀️
I haven't seen anyone actually complaining about the story being low-stakes. I've seen *plenty* of people complaining about "people complaining about the story being low-stakes," on the other hand.
Ok, I'm sure that person was speaking in hyperbole when they said "haven't seen *anyone*"
Count the upvotes on the 2 types of posts that they're referring.
I've been avoiding reddit for 2 days now and just in 3 hours of reading discourse about the story across /r/ffxiv, /r/ffxivdiscussion, and now shitpost: there's wayyyyy more comments/posts that support what they said.
The vast majority of the complaints regarding DT story are not about high stakes, everyone says it's just fuckin' boring and a slog to do and the villains are dumb.
This is what annoys me about the ffxiv community. We basically make people up who have an obtusely dumb opinion, and disagree with that rather than actual people. It's the same with people who dislike Solution nine "FFXIV has always had sci-fi" is a refutation to an incredibly dumb argument a small amount of people made.
Me watching *Before Sunset* and being utterly gripped by two people walking and talking for an hour and a half about their lives and the mundane more than any action or thriller has ever gripped me.
I'm only 91 in DT, I'm sure the dungeon is soon, but so far I'm loving it. I'm so excited to go to new zones and just learn and soak it all in without feeling rushed along. I hardly remember exploring the EW zones, most were just "places where X event happens" in my head (sans Garlemald, I really enjoyed Garlemald despite not loving their unceremonious collapse in 5.x), but right now I've basically just been learning about different peoples and how they operate in their lands, their cultures, and their desires. And the character writing's been pretty dang solid, except for maybe Wuk Lamat, who just feels a bit oblivious, even if she shows promise deep down that I hope it capitalized upon. She just needs a good moment to open up and explain why she believes what she believes, otherwise we're basically just bodyguards shrugging and following a good-natured doofus.
This mindset is my nemesis when it comes to games.
I like stuff that is smaller in scope and often it's either Stardew/Animal Crossing/Harvest Moon clones or indie adventure games or nothing.
And that's your opinion, it's fine. I'm having a blast (at still L90), just vibing around, catching FATEs and currents on my way to the next quest, etc. I'm having early SB vibes, it's true, but with *much* better character work
Sure, but with the amount of powercliffing out character possesses, having defeated Omega and Endsinger, we NEED to be threatened in order for us to feel like it is worth a damn. We are pseudo-gods at this point, and never once felt like there was an issue we couldn't solve lol.
Yes, this is exactly the problem with always rising stakes.
It's also exactly why Dawntrail is *low* stakes : to pull everything back and allow them to ramp things back up in the future. You do a solvable problem now that open towards seemingly insurmountable problem(s) later. Otherwise, you run into exactly what wow did, which is the 'but there's a bigger bad' around the corner, and *that* is tiring to a whole other level.
You don't *have* to like Dawntrail, Wuk Lamat's story, etc. I'm enjoying myself but I'll recognize that yeah, it's slow. *However*, I'll also flat out say that people who are complaining about the danger levels of Dawntrail being too low flat out don't understand the mechanics of storytelling.
I think everyone is glancing over just how terrifying that first trial is in terms of lore. Which leads me to I don’t think it’s a matter of fighting stakes, it’s a problem with character stakes. There have been a few less then desirable writing choices that lead too, some rather flat character moments.
Overall I’ve been quite enjoying myself, but I’d be lying to myself and everyone else if I just pretended the flaws weren’t there. Combat wise tho for dungeons/trials ost and fight designers have done a stellar job.
And I'll tell you that I've been creating a conworld for over 18 years and have been researching storytelling for half of that, and you are oversimplifying this in order to make a point that does not have*much any relevancy here.
It isn't an issue with rising stakes, it's an issue with poor storytelling. You absolutely, cannot have a story that never feels like a threat to a player character. There is no tension, no stakes. The Villain may parade that they are going to destroy the World, but we've already killed an Interdimensional Superweapon, a Time-Distorting superweapon, a pseudo-god that was going to flood the world with his darkness that we struggled to overcome, and a universal threat that we technically died to, followed up with a second battle that again we died twice to. It's bad story telling.
We both can be right here.
Furthermore, the "Threat" at the end of the expansion, comes out of nowhere with regards to how much story we've gone through. All of the sudden, world threat. No. Not good storytelling, pacing, anything.
So what you're saying is it's impossible to continue the story at this point, and just say fuck it and wipe everything (lore wise) and start clean? Like getting "metroided" where you lose your powers at the beginning of the game in a lot of sequels?
I'm not criticizing you, and if my tone sounds like that, I apologize. I actually agree with you. It's kinda lazy doing the 'metroided' thing, but it allows a story to continue. I feel that needs to happen in FFXIV, like a sort of 2.0 thing where our canon-WoL goes on a vacation and we create a new character and everything, starting at level 1 as another WoL style person on one of the shards.
I dunno, I'm not a story writer, but something along those lines.
You can absolutely still have high stakes even with our prominent stature. A common trope you mentioned, disempowerment— I'm not a fan of disempowerment because...ironically, it is lazy, but the story had an easy route to this with Hydaelyn's death. It itself wouldn't explain the disempowerment, but you'd be surprised how quick ideas stick when you through them on the wall. We could have accepted this pseudo-side adventure *because* we are disempowered, and figured it could be a way to ease the stress of not being what we were, knowing that we may not be capable of contending with major threats.
That lowers the scale, but keeps the stake high, AND sets up future story arcs.
With that said, I feel like you may be confusing the scale of the conflict with the high/low stakes it may offer. You don't need to one-up the previous grandeur, as long as the pace the tension presents is sensible, and not having a threat in any sense, breaks that pace irreparably... especially if the threat appears suddenly during the >!last moments of the story!<.
I'm sure they also teach that reusing generic by-the-numbers trading-up plots is the way to go at Good Story School as well.
You can lower the stakes but you need to keep it kinetic and interesting. IDK, I'm typically a big proponent of "you can make saving a town feel as important as saving the universe" in writing. Like to give an example, half the stuff that went on in the first season of The Mandalorian was a million times more interesting than whatever the they were doing in the star wars sequels even though it didn't have shit for stakes comparatively. But early Dawntrail isn't really doing it for me... I'm really hoping that it grows on me in the back half.
I'm not asking for higher stakes, but the loredumping is getting a bit much. Every quest group a new location with a new character soup, and I already forgot all of them because it's just too many and it ends up in a blur of "the birds" in "the river area" and "the x-2 guy" and "the other goblins" instead of whatever names they gave things.
Right because after we save the whole universe, it's IMPOSSIBLE to recreate those same stakes. I just got to Mamook so idk yet how much the story changes, but the whole point of dawntrail is to prevent everything we worked towards from being undone while also showing the beauty of diversity. People think it's just ARR 2, but what ARR did right was show how what the wol did changed them. Here we see how Wuk Lamat is changed by everything she does and it genuinely feeds into who she is as a person. We see how each trial is meant to teach her to be a better leader as well as show us how Tural became united.
It's not supposed to be this super huge world ending thing like every other expac, although the threat IS there. It's supposed to be Wuk Lamat growing as a leader while we prevent the world from falling out of peace. It also expands on previous expacs ideas of peace where it was just "no conflict". Now it's showing that peace isn't enough and we can always push for further understanding and betterment of our lives
Exactly my point, but sadly thats what people expect every sequel to be these days, unless you can one-up yourself and raise the stakes people lose interest.
It's like the Avenger movies where no one really cares after Endgame. Like yeah people care about it, it still makes money, but after ten shows and 40 movies of lower stakes no one cares
Avengers was what instantly came to my mind as well. Perfect example of people losing interest as soon as the stakes and spectacle cant be raised any more
I was thinking exactly of this and how glad I am they’re choosing to build a new story rather than go the warcraft route.
They’re setting up new characters etc, the only thing I do think this story will need eventually is a nanamo-cup moment to kick it into gear. Not yet though.
If heavensward came out today people would call the first half “slow”, especially the moogle section People only remember the hype parts of each expansion
The moogle filler happens right after we storm and kill Nidhogg's mate. It then directly leads into us "killing" Nidghogg.
DT starts and stays with Moogle type filler for pretty much the first half of the game.
Unironically, this post speaks from my soul. I'm about to become a gatekeeper and embrace the most toxic parts of the GCBTW.
People really be out here suckin' off Emet-Selch for his proto-fascist rhetoric and then balk at being a conquistador.
Something I don't think people are fully grasping is that Endwalker was the END of an entire era, it answered all the questions that had been building up for years and gave us (imo) an incredibly satisfying ending to the Ascians and their arc. Like of COURSE Dawntrail isn't going to be as exciting as the literal end was, think of it more like ARR 2.0 where things are just starting all over again. *We will get our epic heroics, just let the slow burn take place like it did with previous expansions.*
more like yawntrail, i expected actual adventure and finding new and unknown things instead i just repair a ship for a festival and do some linear trading.
doing menial tasks, i don't feel like a adventurer at all
The problem is I feel like a side character again. Everything is about Wuk Lamat. This feels like WOW, you're a random adventurer following the exploits of a named hero.
* Goes to land where nobody knows you
* Isn't treated as the main character because nobody knows you
* They treat person everyone knows as the main character
mfw
Mfw people still disregarded who the WoL was in Shadowbringers until they proved through their feats against world ending threats and were accompanied by legends foretelling their arrival.
Also the major leader of 1 out of the 2 cities already knowing who they were and telling people to revere them as their only hope of survival in a previously doomed world.
Also that story being on the comeuppance of a major climax and now were in the world building stage of ours and should give it more than 5 minutes without expecting a nation who knows 0 zilch about the WoL to be sucking them off.
It can both make perfect sense in the context of the story *and* be a bit of a drag to be fair. I like Wuk Lamat and think she's kinda fun but we are spending a lot of time as her cheerleader thus far (I'm not that far in).
Fair.
I think the problem is coming from people waiting so long after endwalker for a world building expansion.
If you just finished endwalker, this would make for a nice break.
It's my hope (because they've proven it before) that the expansion will be better in hindsight when future releases build upon the world they've established and shine more of a light on it.
I liked and respected stormblood alot more after beating Shb and EW than I did playing through it at first because so much tied back into it.
Yeah now you're a no name champion whose every achievement happens next to a major lore character conveniently there to hoover vacuum up the credit.
Wait.
Idk I just did the first trial and I’m not really super invested. I guessed the ending about 10 quests in and the way the story is progressing I’m sure I’m right. It’s a highschool government class combined with a coming of age story with a sprinkle of colonalism for flavor. I’m really hoping the back half grabs me more than the first half has.
>! I swear to Christ if the golden city is the friends we made along the way I’m uninstalling. That or if Krylies grandfather is trapped in the golden city like UCOB. !<
Unironically bored out of my mind with the story. Starting to just skim dialogue because my god do I not give a shit about any of this(just got to second dungeon).
I love (not) this subreddit lmao
you guys spend 3 years shitting on Endwalker deservedly for being a boring shitty slop with barely any gameplay, just to go "well akshually lack of gameplay is good and you are just dopamine addicts >:c"
When I was playing through the MSQ the thought that came to mind is that they have to come up with a different formula. It's too predictable, do half of a zone, do another half currents, next zone...
A bunch of samey quests, follow an npc, fetch something, oh new town talk talk talk, fetch....
I managed to time my meal breaks in tune with the voiced cutscenes, it was glorious. And in the boring cutscenes that were voices it was pretty much, stretch time and walk around lol.
Honestly the complaints are valid. I'm in the 96 quests rn and people just do not fucking shut up. I feel like I've already had more cutscenes than the entirety of 6.0
My sibling in Hydaelyn one claimant offers Garlemald 2.0 and one other literally has no afterplan if he claims the throne, both possibly wiping out entire Tural population
I think that's what the early quests are meant to build up, big dazzling city and then out into the hinterlands to get a look at its peaceful people and their funny local traditions. Getting to know them and realise they're important and their way of life deserves to be protected from the people who want to drag them off to war.
early quests are supposed to create the setting yes, but the execution is poorly done and players aren't even interested by the introduction to begin with.
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Dawntrail's story can be as slow as square enix wants, but it's still boring even on climatic segments of the expansion. I simply do not care about this fight for succession or w/e, or the newly introduced characters that behaves like a Disney sock puppet.
Sorry I didn't finish reading your title because it was too slow, could you speed it up a bit?
SE hear DT MSQ slow. Go fast 7.1
Too slow! I can't read, I need to do every single piece of content immediately and then post on reddit about how the new expansion has no content!
MSQ fanum tax 7.1 skibidi rizz
Finally, someone who understands good storytelling
What if Eorzea was Ohio all along
Too wordy, can you TLDR?
7.1 zoom
I think the story is fine. I just don't enjoy the fact that a major reason I picked up Dawntrail is because of VPR, but then I went into DT MSQ and I hardly ever got a chance to press my buttons. I am fairly sure the amount of combat encounters between the start of DT and >!the duel with CEO of Tural!< can be counted on one hand. I just want to press my buttons, even if it's just against some trash mobs.
I would be mad at myself for clicking on that spoiler but then I remembered it's literally >!In the trailer!< and >!I really wanted to duel that guy after I walked in on him duelling Big E anyway!<
They’re probably trying to pack the story stuff more and more into skippable cutscenes so they don’t inconvenience the people who would bitch about having to do all the instanced battles on their 8 raiding alts
Same, I believe it's fine. EW also had a long introduction for nothing. ShB as well had little combat before the actual content but the story telling was a bit better.
My biggest issue is that it feels like one massive lore dump. I get it's a new area, but it really just felt like they were throwing walls of text at us like "This is our new area and this is all of its history". Sure other expansions did that, but it didn't always always feel like I was just bombarded with information to read. There were so many occasions I had to stop myself pressing the skip cutscene button.
ShB did this egregiously, and the Wabbits section did it as well, but yea. This time is very notable
Yeah *every* expac does it egregiously. Our brains just forget all the unnecessary lines of text that have to make the story appeal to idiots, by constantly recapping it and/or repeating it with more and more examples to explain it further, and use run-on style of dialogue at times. But we *all* remember the big hype moments. It's kind of like how when you add extra sentences and examples to a reddit comment, with run on sentences and, unnecessary commas, and keep reiterating the point, because our brains generally filter out information that is repeated when we grasp it, because it's unimportant to us when we understand a concept. We have a tendency to only remember hype moments, mostly due to our limited brain capacity of filtration of information, so the dopamine sections always stick out to us, since big cool thing = make brain happy, and even though our brains are logically taking in information, it filters out the parts we don't need to hear a second time, because extra info is just unnecessary. Our brains are wired in a way, to just skip and purge all data that is redundant, mostly due to evolution in progressive knowledge, because the human learning capacity is constructed in a way to build upon itself, by not needing to keep information inside the brain that we already understand. There's no need to remember what we already know, but the things that stand out as application of previous knowledge (sometimes referred to as a "payoff" or "hype" moment) It's just that whenever we are taught something, our brains have this wild ability to unconsciously filter out, and have almost no recollection of, needless information that completely negates the point of even processing it further, so we only remember the most impactful moments that have some relevancy to said needless information. (unjerk: OK I can't think of any more creative ways because at this point I'm boring my *own fucking self* and hurting my eyes making these run-on sentences and commas)
lol I totally only read the first 2 paragraphs and skipped to the end... kinda like what I did with the Bunny and Labyrinthos 2 section, or the Build-a-bitch section during ShB, or the faeries of the same expansion, or the... or the... or the... lol.
And let’s not forget how much of this is unnecessary. I feel like the world’s b*tch. Quest: I wanna clean my as* Objective: get 5$ from my wallet Go to the supermarket Bring me the paper Find 6 witnesses Take a selfie Wipe me Tell 7 of my friends It’s OKAY to do this but I feel like with the pacing it’s overdone in DT. So far , everyone I’ve asked felt this way.
Didnt buy It. Is it another movie expansion?
Well the duel in question is one of my favorite solo duties and the dungeons/trials have some mechanics I think are pretty interesting, so I'm inclined to say no, it's actually pretty fun where gameplay is involved. But I'm a filthy casul who barely raid so take from that what you will.
There are some very fun solo duties and the dungeons so far (I am level 98) have been _excellent_. But you are right there is very little combat in the overworld quests. It's all instanced.
Considerably overworld combat is mostly extremely boring so I'm not too heartbroken.
That solo duty has been my favourite in the entire game. Super fun and enthralling.
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This is unplayable, where are the family guy clips?
Literally unplayable. Took longer than 1 second to reach 7.58 from early access
I noticed there was almost enough extra exp for another class so I did dnc on the side, running a decent amount of fates + aethercurrent quest chains and maybe 6-7 side quests per zone gives you a decent amount of stuff to hit
Legitimately would play a coin run game in the Golden Saucer
I'll be honest, I am skipping most of the cutscenes and it doesn't prevent me to understand what's going on. Otherwise I would just fall asleep, there are so few voice lines..
This is a legit critic, there's sometimes 15 lines of dialog just to say simple things like "We need to setup a trap. I'll be the bait to attract the thing."
Yeah I'm not hating the story so far, though I'm not far in, but it's been a thing with ffxiv for years now that you can cut off the voice lines halfway in and basically everything that needed to be said has already been said.
Huh? I'm only up to the festival right now but its literally been voiced lines left and right, idk what you mean.
I’ve never paid attention to the story but I was actually going to watch the cutscenes this time. Guess I won’t 💀
If you haven't followed the story so far, this definitely isn't the expansion to start imo. If ShB into Endwalker didn't lure you in, nothing will.
ShitpostXIV not reducing everything to hyperbole challenge: IMPOSSIBLE.
"Man r/ShitpostXIV ... I dunno man, it used to be cool.... but now it went too far. It made fun of something.. something I agreed with... and now, I just... I just don't know. I need time."
the other one should be soap cutting or family guys clips
People griping about the MSQ being slow. Damn, it really *is* Stormblood 2.0.
They forgot to bring back the gameplay part of Stormblood sadly. More like 1.3
All the jobs are so braindead. BLM and SAM were both lobotomized, and VPR is just "click the glowing buttons". Stormblood had great gameplay but Dawntrail has me very concerned on that front. Here's hoping the raid patch fixes things.
Play PCT then.
Unironically this. Its insane how dopamine addicted people are. They genuinely want world of warcraft where each threat is bigger and more world ending than the last and the spectacle is all that matters. I hope the devs never cave to these people and design the game for people with non-fried dopamine receptors
My problem is the lack of actual gameplay. Yes, EW was a visual novel as well but the high stakes made it interesting. Here we have lower stakes but no gameplay to ease it up.
With respect, my memory of basically EVER expac is that they're light on gameplay. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I don't think any of them have had thrilling gameplay outside of EX trials at the end of the expac
You can still make a better designed questline than literally repeating something for three-four times: Go to village, learn about problem, talk with people, learn local custom, solve problem, get gemstone. Pelu, Hanu and absolutely not goblins all followed this same structure. We get it the Pelu are traders, no need to stretch it over eight quests. If you want a visual novel then make it an interesting one: We got our asses handed to us in SB, Vauthry and Tesleens transformation in ShB, HW had Iceheart joining us on a camping trip and us being accused of heresy. We could have a literal Game of Thrones here, but the characters are boring and the story plays it absolutely safe with no surprises.
https://preview.redd.it/5oixcdfdjj9d1.png?width=934&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4ec28859140860475e1cc1cd385c5a667d162556 I don't need another big bad world ending threat. I was interested in the story at the start when it was just "let's go see this cool new country and get tacos!" But then it's literally ARR level 5 fetch quest objectives. Oh no, we need some rocks! Go get us these rocks from the river, WoL. Aw jeez, we need some leaves to trade with that merchant. Go get em! Like, we have a perfectly good thing to set up mystery and intrigue with in the story. It's just *not happening.*
As I’ve said in other comments I feel like this would be the perfect expansion to shake things up. Main story that has been building for a while is finished, our new journey is more focused on adventure and exploring new lands. I don’t need it to be WoW and leave you to your devices, but maybe give us some quests incentivizing exploring and discovering stuff, lets us fight a few new monsters and take in the sights.
This. I mean, for the first 4 hours of gameplay, the two big stakes were to tame a lama and repairing a wood sculpture...
Ya it's fuckin awesome lmao It also does a good job of showing Wuk Lamat's positives compared to her brothers
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Yeah I don’t need crazy high stakes, I just want it to be interesting. The first two zones so far have been meh
People just WoW style stories where things are "interesting" and you don't "fall asleep during cutscenes while a guy is speaking in broken english at a word a minute". smh
The last bit of the story gets better but yeah.
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If felt the same way about Endwalker until Garlemald, so I’m hoping it’s just another slow start like that.
People got spoiled the past four years with Shadowbringers and Endwalker being chock full of action and twists. What they fail to understand is that it was a culmination of the previous 6 years of world building through the other expansions and base game. I'll bet money a lot of the people complaining are those that joined at or around Endwalker launch and had 4 expansions plus a base game's worth of MSQ to blast through and are now upset that SQEX is starting a new story which, surprise, is gonna require more world building. I'm perfectly content with this expansion not being a "stop the ender of the universe" story again. I'm not even that far into 7.0 and I'm still enjoying it *because of that*.
Tbh Dawntrail MSQ has _plenty_ of epic moments so far and meaningful stakes even though it's not a galactic apocalypse. I am level 99 now, about to finish zone 5, and the story has been _anything_ but dull. In fact the twists and turns have almost been jarring (but luckily not quite).
I am so glad this expansion is more chill after getting TWO EXPANSIONS IN A ROW of "earth ending" shenanigans. I don't feel bad taking it slow this time around.
Shadowbringers and Endwalker are both boring as shit for most of the story, people just only remember the hype parts
I remember this discourse when Endwalker was out and people were complaining about slow parts like the Lopporits and said that “Shadowbringers wasn’t like this” Like my brother in Christ do you not remember the trolley section or the pixies?
Man, the pixies bored me to tears. Haven't felt anything close to that level of boredom in DT so far; this expansion has been a slow, satisfying burn for me. Level 95-96 right now, and I've had two moments so far that hyped me up similarly to Ardbert's "our story" moment.
which two moments? I wanna like this stuff but I haven’t been feeling the hype, even after the 97 dungeon
The two solo instances in Yak T'el, pretty much back to back. I'll admit that narratively speaking, Wuk Lamat's story arc doesn't have *nearly* the same emotional impact as Ardbert's. But I felt the hype nonetheless, and her flashy custom moves definitely did some heavy lifting there. I think the only thing that would have made the latter solo instance even better would have been a player lb3, but we know why they still haven't done that lol Edit: It occurs to me that one of the biggest factors in the first of the two instances is the unique gameplay. For an npc solo instance, it actually had more going on than "press 1 for damage, 2 for heal, 3 for ranged damage" for five minutes. The dialogue was also *stellar*
I absolutely do not remember the trolley section
Exactly lol
Dude I got so irritated in shadowbringers doing all the chores for the different civilizations. Like they know I’m the warrior of darkness fated to save them all and I’m filling up jars full of water?
For me, Rak'tika was where I really had to force myself to go on. In Endwalker it was second visit to Sharlyan. The expansion that kept me decently engaged all the way through was actually Heavensward
The difference is that every slow paced part of Shadowbringers had an incredible and memorable pay off. People like to speak shit about the trolley but inmediatly after your are done comes the best Thancred moment in the whole plot.
>People like to speak shit about the trolley but inmediatly after your are done comes the best Thancred moment in the whole plot. Which had nothing to do with the Trolley. They basically do the Trolley plotline again with Chai-nuzz for the golem to get to Mt Gulg, but that time it actually has a payoff.
You could’ve taken out the entire trolley questline and still had the cool Thancred moment. This is just revisionist memory and selective memory of expansion MSQ
I'm not saying it was good, it was just better.
Okay but it didn’t have the payoff you claimed it had, be Thancred scene was just a cool scene that happens after that
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The MSQ since the very beginning has been like 75% pure filler. It *has* to be, otherwise people would blow through the major story beats in a couple hours and bitch about having to level up via other means to unlock the instanced content. It's extraordinarily difficult to tell a 40-hour-long story in this medium that constantly keeps players actively engaged. It's not like writing a book: words are free, so you can introduce and phase out characters, involved action sequences, and amazing environments and set pieces as easily as you can come up with them. In a video game, all of that stuff costs a lot of money. It is driving me insane to see people reminiscing about ShB/EW as if they were these ridiculous high-octane adventures from start to finish. Does nobody remember fixing a fucking trolley or building the Talos in ShB for like twelve interminable hours during which literally *nothing* of interest happens? Fucking around with the Pixies and the Nu Mou for hours? Reading books in Sharalayan, listening to Fourchenault and Varshahn blathering on about nothing for cutscene after cutscene after cutscene, dying for an excuse to unsheathe your weapon for any purpose, even for two seconds? This game has always been a game of ridiculously high highs and ridiculously low lows. I honestly think people are just tired with the formula. The cracks just took a long time to show -- we finally started seeing them towards the end of the EW cycle. I don't even think DT is that bad so far. The fetch quests feel like they're in service of the main narrative, and not just throwaway time-sucks, so I might even go so far as to say it's better than many previous expansions, but I'll wait until I'm finished with it to make that call.
I think it is the issue with banking the MSQ so much on the story over actual gameplay. Story good? MSQ good. Story bad? MSQ gets _really_ bad and becomes a slog.
>otherwise people would blow through the major story beats in a couple hours and bitch about having to level up via other means to unlock the instanced content I honestly wouldn't be opposed to them trying this formula. I understand the absolut shitstorm that would come from it though
This is what I was gonna say but I'm not far enough in msq to know. Some of the comments are people saying how the first 4 to 8 hours of DT have been slow. I'm currently running through HW right now, which to my understanding is many people's favorite expac, and the first like 10-15 hours of it is basically all fetch quests around the city and is pretty slow. Don't get me wrong I love the story so far, but there is like 140 ish missions in every expac, ain't no way its going to be a adrenaline joy ride the whole time.
To curb your expectations, the formula for exposition thru fetch quest happens in every expansion in almost every single zone. Very rarely do you get to a new zone and something really cool happens at the start. But like you said, you love the story so far, so you'll be fine if you don't mind that cadence.
I haven’t finished EW yet but HW is definitely my least favourite expac. I seriously don’t get the love for it, the story just isn’t very good in my opinion. Very few people agree with my, but I think the writing massively improves in Stormblood. The quest structure never really gets better, sadly, and large swathes of the story of each expac are inevitably slow and boring, but the good parts are often pretty good.
There were some boring parts yes but the pacing was generally well done, no super long shortages of action or twists, and the down times also had a lot of interesting lore drops. Like the whole Elpis arc in Endwalker was boring quests and playing tag with a bird girl but there was so much interesting lore dropped throughout that whole section that people forget how long and slogging that section of the MSQ really was. We learned a lot about the Ancients' civilization, how the Final Days came to be, and a lot about the convocation of fourteen. Even about prototype monsters and how the stuff we fight in the world now came to exist. It was a lot of great learning during possibly one of the sloggiest parts of Endwalker Compare it to Stormblood or ARR in terms of pacing and I'd say EW and SHB are a lot more fun
Elpis was the culmination of like ten years of backstory and is maybe the best zone in the entire game because of it, you absolutely cannot just in a vacuum say "they should make more stuff like Elpis"
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Agree on the Endwalker side. Just didn’t care about any bit of it.
EW levels of MSQ is not expected as mentioned due to the 10 years of story building but DT just lacks good writting and intrigue, for example look at HW where there is not a decade of building and its simply about a town fighting dragons, pretty low stakes but its written in a way where ur interested in Aymeric, Ysayle, Haurchefant and Estenien and the ppl of ishgard in general. In DT they do not spend any effort to raise the importance of their quest to its extent its simply "I want to be queen cuz others bad." And thats just lazy story telling.
Heavensward was also a bit of an anomaly lining up with the other expansions as it was, for the most part, its' own self-contained story. So far in DT (I'm only on the level 92 quests, shortly after the first dungeon so still early on) I feel like they've started to explain why "others bad" in a good way that's not just "cuz bad". Like they've compared >!Zoraal Ja's desire for war and conquest to the failed Garlean Empire!< and even showing how >!The young people don't remember times of war and how it affected everyone while just seeing it as an opportunity for profit!<. This can also be a >!loosely conveyed commentary how in this current day and age in different parts of the world young people are embracing a rise in fascist ideologies because they don't know better. The people who were alive for the rise and fall of the Nazi regime are almost all dead so first hand witnesses to the atrocities they committed are dwindling.!< I dunno I don't feel like this expansion is poorly written at all it's just not hitting those dopamine receptors that are burned out lmao.
Its true that they do start explaining why they do what they do more, and there are certain revelations you havent reached yet that further solidifies your point, my grime is more with how they handled the characters rather than the overall world building. >!I understand how they want to build on the new characters but I hate how the scions, the champions that saved the entire star, are just there in the background without much role or impactful opinions, how Wuk Lamat, having spent her whole life in Tural not even heard of certain animals that serves as a very common way of transportation, how Bakul Ja Ja is simply evil for being evil and does horrible actions that at the end of the day everyone is simply annoyed about and forget like "oh Bakul Ja ur so silly" instead of taking him for the life threatning person he is, his character is evil for the sake of evil with no motivation behind it until later on where its convenient (again spoilers for parts u havent reached). Going from writing like EW where there are themes of suicide and ShB and HW where people sacrafice themselves to save what they love, DT just seem like an adventure of a few youths messing about. Sure they didnt have to put the entire star at risk again but it wouldve been nice to have the characters take their situation a bit more seriously instead of just another goofy adventure. !<
> The people who were alive for the rise and fall of the Nazi regime are almost all dead so first hand witnesses to the atrocities they committed are dwindling. the only way to solve this is to directly expose new people to similar atrocities, leading to a fully culturally fluent generation. Unfortunately, that'll probably suck for a few people, but they'll get over it.
That is basically >!one of the villains' motivation, funnily enough. Inflict enough pain on the world until everyone unites because they're sick of war.!<
Right, I absolutely agree, there’s just nothing particularly interesting about these new characters
We didn't get our vacation in post-Endwalker patches like we were supposed to have, I'll take the taco vacation.
This. There are plenty of games and series that skip straight into the high stakes stuff. And you never hear people talking about them except when talking and how bad it was.
Such as?
Nothing wrong with the story itself imo. Just the presentation is bad and certain characters get grating fast. Video games are an interactive medium, so it is a bit of a shame that Square doesn’t wanna try more with that then they usually do. Take the part with the pillars that you have to click that talk about the feats of Gulool Ja Ja for example. They could’ve made little cutscenes with voice acting in the style of the pillar’s art for example, or even just a quick flashback to the event. Instead it’s still images of the pillars with a lore infodump for each one. I know this is how it’s always been in previous expacs, but it really sticks out in a story with low stakes and no interesting story hook/mystery to keep you invested. But then again I do have adhd so 🤷♀️
High stakes = Good story, low stakes = bad story. They teach this at good story school
I know this is sarcasm, but *it's insane* how many people can't fathom stories can be smaller in scope and still be good.
I haven't seen anyone actually complaining about the story being low-stakes. I've seen *plenty* of people complaining about "people complaining about the story being low-stakes," on the other hand.
There's someone in this very thread lmao
Ok, I'm sure that person was speaking in hyperbole when they said "haven't seen *anyone*" Count the upvotes on the 2 types of posts that they're referring. I've been avoiding reddit for 2 days now and just in 3 hours of reading discourse about the story across /r/ffxiv, /r/ffxivdiscussion, and now shitpost: there's wayyyyy more comments/posts that support what they said. The vast majority of the complaints regarding DT story are not about high stakes, everyone says it's just fuckin' boring and a slog to do and the villains are dumb.
This is what annoys me about the ffxiv community. We basically make people up who have an obtusely dumb opinion, and disagree with that rather than actual people. It's the same with people who dislike Solution nine "FFXIV has always had sci-fi" is a refutation to an incredibly dumb argument a small amount of people made.
Me watching *Before Sunset* and being utterly gripped by two people walking and talking for an hour and a half about their lives and the mundane more than any action or thriller has ever gripped me. I'm only 91 in DT, I'm sure the dungeon is soon, but so far I'm loving it. I'm so excited to go to new zones and just learn and soak it all in without feeling rushed along. I hardly remember exploring the EW zones, most were just "places where X event happens" in my head (sans Garlemald, I really enjoyed Garlemald despite not loving their unceremonious collapse in 5.x), but right now I've basically just been learning about different peoples and how they operate in their lands, their cultures, and their desires. And the character writing's been pretty dang solid, except for maybe Wuk Lamat, who just feels a bit oblivious, even if she shows promise deep down that I hope it capitalized upon. She just needs a good moment to open up and explain why she believes what she believes, otherwise we're basically just bodyguards shrugging and following a good-natured doofus.
This mindset is my nemesis when it comes to games. I like stuff that is smaller in scope and often it's either Stardew/Animal Crossing/Harvest Moon clones or indie adventure games or nothing.
The problem is regardless of the scope of the threats, where I'm at currently (just before 95 dungeon I think) the story has been sucking ass.
And that's your opinion, it's fine. I'm having a blast (at still L90), just vibing around, catching FATEs and currents on my way to the next quest, etc. I'm having early SB vibes, it's true, but with *much* better character work
Glad you're liking it!
Sure, but with the amount of powercliffing out character possesses, having defeated Omega and Endsinger, we NEED to be threatened in order for us to feel like it is worth a damn. We are pseudo-gods at this point, and never once felt like there was an issue we couldn't solve lol.
Yes, this is exactly the problem with always rising stakes. It's also exactly why Dawntrail is *low* stakes : to pull everything back and allow them to ramp things back up in the future. You do a solvable problem now that open towards seemingly insurmountable problem(s) later. Otherwise, you run into exactly what wow did, which is the 'but there's a bigger bad' around the corner, and *that* is tiring to a whole other level. You don't *have* to like Dawntrail, Wuk Lamat's story, etc. I'm enjoying myself but I'll recognize that yeah, it's slow. *However*, I'll also flat out say that people who are complaining about the danger levels of Dawntrail being too low flat out don't understand the mechanics of storytelling.
I think everyone is glancing over just how terrifying that first trial is in terms of lore. Which leads me to I don’t think it’s a matter of fighting stakes, it’s a problem with character stakes. There have been a few less then desirable writing choices that lead too, some rather flat character moments. Overall I’ve been quite enjoying myself, but I’d be lying to myself and everyone else if I just pretended the flaws weren’t there. Combat wise tho for dungeons/trials ost and fight designers have done a stellar job.
And I'll tell you that I've been creating a conworld for over 18 years and have been researching storytelling for half of that, and you are oversimplifying this in order to make a point that does not have*much any relevancy here. It isn't an issue with rising stakes, it's an issue with poor storytelling. You absolutely, cannot have a story that never feels like a threat to a player character. There is no tension, no stakes. The Villain may parade that they are going to destroy the World, but we've already killed an Interdimensional Superweapon, a Time-Distorting superweapon, a pseudo-god that was going to flood the world with his darkness that we struggled to overcome, and a universal threat that we technically died to, followed up with a second battle that again we died twice to. It's bad story telling. We both can be right here. Furthermore, the "Threat" at the end of the expansion, comes out of nowhere with regards to how much story we've gone through. All of the sudden, world threat. No. Not good storytelling, pacing, anything.
So what you're saying is it's impossible to continue the story at this point, and just say fuck it and wipe everything (lore wise) and start clean? Like getting "metroided" where you lose your powers at the beginning of the game in a lot of sequels? I'm not criticizing you, and if my tone sounds like that, I apologize. I actually agree with you. It's kinda lazy doing the 'metroided' thing, but it allows a story to continue. I feel that needs to happen in FFXIV, like a sort of 2.0 thing where our canon-WoL goes on a vacation and we create a new character and everything, starting at level 1 as another WoL style person on one of the shards. I dunno, I'm not a story writer, but something along those lines.
You can absolutely still have high stakes even with our prominent stature. A common trope you mentioned, disempowerment— I'm not a fan of disempowerment because...ironically, it is lazy, but the story had an easy route to this with Hydaelyn's death. It itself wouldn't explain the disempowerment, but you'd be surprised how quick ideas stick when you through them on the wall. We could have accepted this pseudo-side adventure *because* we are disempowered, and figured it could be a way to ease the stress of not being what we were, knowing that we may not be capable of contending with major threats. That lowers the scale, but keeps the stake high, AND sets up future story arcs. With that said, I feel like you may be confusing the scale of the conflict with the high/low stakes it may offer. You don't need to one-up the previous grandeur, as long as the pace the tension presents is sensible, and not having a threat in any sense, breaks that pace irreparably... especially if the threat appears suddenly during the >!last moments of the story!<.
I'm sure they also teach that reusing generic by-the-numbers trading-up plots is the way to go at Good Story School as well. You can lower the stakes but you need to keep it kinetic and interesting. IDK, I'm typically a big proponent of "you can make saving a town feel as important as saving the universe" in writing. Like to give an example, half the stuff that went on in the first season of The Mandalorian was a million times more interesting than whatever the they were doing in the star wars sequels even though it didn't have shit for stakes comparatively. But early Dawntrail isn't really doing it for me... I'm really hoping that it grows on me in the back half.
I'm surprised fucking Azeroth hasn't just fucking imploded at this point with all the insane shit that has happened to it.
I'm not asking for higher stakes, but the loredumping is getting a bit much. Every quest group a new location with a new character soup, and I already forgot all of them because it's just too many and it ends up in a blur of "the birds" in "the river area" and "the x-2 guy" and "the other goblins" instead of whatever names they gave things.
Right because after we save the whole universe, it's IMPOSSIBLE to recreate those same stakes. I just got to Mamook so idk yet how much the story changes, but the whole point of dawntrail is to prevent everything we worked towards from being undone while also showing the beauty of diversity. People think it's just ARR 2, but what ARR did right was show how what the wol did changed them. Here we see how Wuk Lamat is changed by everything she does and it genuinely feeds into who she is as a person. We see how each trial is meant to teach her to be a better leader as well as show us how Tural became united. It's not supposed to be this super huge world ending thing like every other expac, although the threat IS there. It's supposed to be Wuk Lamat growing as a leader while we prevent the world from falling out of peace. It also expands on previous expacs ideas of peace where it was just "no conflict". Now it's showing that peace isn't enough and we can always push for further understanding and betterment of our lives
Exactly my point, but sadly thats what people expect every sequel to be these days, unless you can one-up yourself and raise the stakes people lose interest.
It's like the Avenger movies where no one really cares after Endgame. Like yeah people care about it, it still makes money, but after ten shows and 40 movies of lower stakes no one cares
Avengers was what instantly came to my mind as well. Perfect example of people losing interest as soon as the stakes and spectacle cant be raised any more
I was thinking exactly of this and how glad I am they’re choosing to build a new story rather than go the warcraft route. They’re setting up new characters etc, the only thing I do think this story will need eventually is a nanamo-cup moment to kick it into gear. Not yet though.
This is not profitable and therefore not in the company’s best interests. The LCD is always where the money lies.
Dudes want Shadowbringers and Endwalker payoff without the build-up
I’ll take something like Heavensward stuff. That didn’t have decades worth of build up and still told a compelling story.
If heavensward came out today people would call the first half “slow”, especially the moogle section People only remember the hype parts of each expansion
People would be rioting in the streets at how the Ul'dah plot was resolved.
Its almost like people have been saying that since ARR that SE needs to start pacing their story better
When they do that people call it “rushed”. See Garlemald and Doma arcs for examples
The moogle filler happens right after we storm and kill Nidhogg's mate. It then directly leads into us "killing" Nidghogg. DT starts and stays with Moogle type filler for pretty much the first half of the game.
DT is a lot more interesting so far than the moogle filler due to world building and the new characters being pretty memorable
Still hating on wow. If people are addicted to dopamine, then you are addicted to serotonin you get for trashing other games and communities...
Bro ive played wow myself for years, the game has its strong point but story telling is absolutely not one of them and it hasnt been for over a decade
Unironically, this post speaks from my soul. I'm about to become a gatekeeper and embrace the most toxic parts of the GCBTW. People really be out here suckin' off Emet-Selch for his proto-fascist rhetoric and then balk at being a conquistador.
Wut
Something I don't think people are fully grasping is that Endwalker was the END of an entire era, it answered all the questions that had been building up for years and gave us (imo) an incredibly satisfying ending to the Ascians and their arc. Like of COURSE Dawntrail isn't going to be as exciting as the literal end was, think of it more like ARR 2.0 where things are just starting all over again. *We will get our epic heroics, just let the slow burn take place like it did with previous expansions.*
2.0 2.0
When the game doesn't start with a 2 hour quicktime events with flashy explosions and a world ending threat -> refund
Can I get a car that gets driven down a bunch of half pipes suspended in midair while Neil Degrasse Tyson ruins space for me?
I unironically like it better than endwalker.
more like yawntrail, i expected actual adventure and finding new and unknown things instead i just repair a ship for a festival and do some linear trading. doing menial tasks, i don't feel like a adventurer at all
The problem is I feel like a side character again. Everything is about Wuk Lamat. This feels like WOW, you're a random adventurer following the exploits of a named hero.
* Goes to land where nobody knows you * Isn't treated as the main character because nobody knows you * They treat person everyone knows as the main character mfw
mfw when you travel to a different world and you're still the main character and people started calling you "Warrior of Darkness
Mfw people still disregarded who the WoL was in Shadowbringers until they proved through their feats against world ending threats and were accompanied by legends foretelling their arrival. Also the major leader of 1 out of the 2 cities already knowing who they were and telling people to revere them as their only hope of survival in a previously doomed world. Also that story being on the comeuppance of a major climax and now were in the world building stage of ours and should give it more than 5 minutes without expecting a nation who knows 0 zilch about the WoL to be sucking them off.
It can both make perfect sense in the context of the story *and* be a bit of a drag to be fair. I like Wuk Lamat and think she's kinda fun but we are spending a lot of time as her cheerleader thus far (I'm not that far in).
Fair. I think the problem is coming from people waiting so long after endwalker for a world building expansion. If you just finished endwalker, this would make for a nice break. It's my hope (because they've proven it before) that the expansion will be better in hindsight when future releases build upon the world they've established and shine more of a light on it. I liked and respected stormblood alot more after beating Shb and EW than I did playing through it at first because so much tied back into it.
That was the intention. I think the flaw is in the way what you actually do plays out, not really the story.
WoW hasn't been like that for well over 10 years, my man.
Yeah now you're a no name champion whose every achievement happens next to a major lore character conveniently there to hoover vacuum up the credit. Wait.
when you go to a land where literally nobody has heard your name and aren't treated like the main character for 5 minutes:
I'm sorry but what he described is exactly what happens in WoW. Most of the time your character doesn't even show up in important cutscenes. lol
I could do without having to /cheer on a NPC
Idk I just did the first trial and I’m not really super invested. I guessed the ending about 10 quests in and the way the story is progressing I’m sure I’m right. It’s a highschool government class combined with a coming of age story with a sprinkle of colonalism for flavor. I’m really hoping the back half grabs me more than the first half has. >! I swear to Christ if the golden city is the friends we made along the way I’m uninstalling. That or if Krylies grandfather is trapped in the golden city like UCOB. !<
Ffxiv ended on Endwalker. Fight me
Unironically bored out of my mind with the story. Starting to just skim dialogue because my god do I not give a shit about any of this(just got to second dungeon).
fake there is a family guy episode missing
It's weird that the shitposting sub became the dickrider sub, it's usually the other way around
I love (not) this subreddit lmao you guys spend 3 years shitting on Endwalker deservedly for being a boring shitty slop with barely any gameplay, just to go "well akshually lack of gameplay is good and you are just dopamine addicts >:c"
When I was playing through the MSQ the thought that came to mind is that they have to come up with a different formula. It's too predictable, do half of a zone, do another half currents, next zone... A bunch of samey quests, follow an npc, fetch something, oh new town talk talk talk, fetch....
First time I've ever skipped the story. I put the cutscenes on auto at first but then noticed I was picking up my phone every time...
Nah you know the expansion is bad when even the main sub is complaining about it lol
I managed to time my meal breaks in tune with the voiced cutscenes, it was glorious. And in the boring cutscenes that were voices it was pretty much, stretch time and walk around lol.
someone go write a plugin that replaces the black bars on my ultrawide with subway surfers
Honestly the complaints are valid. I'm in the 96 quests rn and people just do not fucking shut up. I feel like I've already had more cutscenes than the entirety of 6.0
Very skibidi
No I'm glad to go back to ARR content with zero gameplay and any stakes in the story.
My sibling in Hydaelyn one claimant offers Garlemald 2.0 and one other literally has no afterplan if he claims the throne, both possibly wiping out entire Tural population
Unlike ARR which famously never featured any Garlemald.
The problem is players have no attachment to tural or it's people so they couldn't care less if the entire continent is wiped off the map.
I think that's what the early quests are meant to build up, big dazzling city and then out into the hinterlands to get a look at its peaceful people and their funny local traditions. Getting to know them and realise they're important and their way of life deserves to be protected from the people who want to drag them off to war.
early quests are supposed to create the setting yes, but the execution is poorly done and players aren't even interested by the introduction to begin with.
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ARR had you fighting stuff within the first 5 minutes
No it didn't.
Dawntrail's story can be as slow as square enix wants, but it's still boring even on climatic segments of the expansion. I simply do not care about this fight for succession or w/e, or the newly introduced characters that behaves like a Disney sock puppet.