Granted, im not far into the story. But man, the Hanuhanu quests are rough to get through. Giving me huge ShB trolley questline flashbacks. Im still optimistic though. Looking back at the other expansions, I think the dual path questlines they give you towards the beginning are usually pretty slow.
Got the same impression, the saving grace this time was that the areas look STUNNING. Could be personal taste, but the flooded jungle forest and the alpaca zone hit just right. First time in ages that I really "explored" side zones, in ShB I honestly couldn't give a damn and just pumped through the Lahee Forest and the railroad desert. I guess people love every single second of ShB but I felt the constant urge to skip through these parts
I'm about 10 hours in now. It hasn't really gotten much better even after the Hanuhanu, it's very slow and dare I say bland. While I understand that's the intention of the game's direction to deliver a more laidback story, I'm finding that the lore and world building here is surprisingly mundane. The Hanuhanu are so far the only somewhat interesting beast tribe-esque faction we help out with their focus around >!wind magic!<. The rest are not particularly interesting with the >!Alpaca people being largely bartering focused!< and then the >!Goblins being crafting focused!<, which is fine but somewhat uninteresting as it's like saying Dan From Accounting's lore backstory is that he files tax reports and then writing a 200 page book detailing his daily 9-5. Having this be the MAIN FOCUS of the story is really a drag.
To be fair tho, most tribes people we come across in every expansion mainly feel like world building and filler (excluding the Loporrits and Omicron which I loved). Thats why I’m trying to reserve judgement until I get past the tribes people, and really get into the meat of the msq.
I didn't get that vibe at all. Shadowbringers trolley is one of my most hated quest lines, and I like the Hanuhanu introduction.
It didn't drag on too long, and the story made sense.
Too early for real reviews obviously but man i'm uh, unenthused so far. Feels like early DT (up through the first dungeon and post-dungeon scenes) relies a LOT on Wuk Lamat hitting as a character, and so far I'm finding Koana more interesting by a long shot. I remain unconvinced he isn't a wholly better candidate.
I'd not be surprised at this point if I end up agreeing with "mixed". I'm stopped playing for the day and I don't remember it ever being so easy to drag myself away during the story of any other xpac.
Listen I love me some power of friendship but girl I barely know you at this point. Give me something to work with here. Give me a reason I should see you as anything other than a slightly more annoying Lyse.
Wait she’s more annoying than Lyse????!!
Nooooooo….
Lyse is like a trigger word for me, as I hate that character so much.
I do not understand the propensity of square to put an annoying blond girl (or blonde cat girl in this instance) into every other expac, despite the fact the community feed back is always mixed at best to these characters.
I don't want to rip the expansion this early, but...the slow start complaints are 100% valid. I think I'm 6 hours in and I've been in a cutscene for 90% of it at least. I was trying to power through and get to the first dungeon but gave up for today. It's quite literally cutscene>two steps>cutscene>cutscene.
Yeah it took me about that long before I got to the first dungeon. I ended up doing other stuff after the dungeon for a few hours and then gave up on today. Going that long without even getting through my entire new opener was rough
You just described FF XIV. It's like that, it's a visual novel until the endgame. It's never changed and probably never will.
Is that fine? I think so yeah. Is that for everyone? Oh definitely not.
Endwalker it made some sense though. It's the culmination of things so it's definitely trying to wrap up plenty of loose ends. While it was sometimes slow going, it didn't feel as...drawn out. With DT, it really feels like you spend thirty minutes in cutscenes just to have a conversation about if Wuk Lamat's nails look pretty or something.
I can't comment yet since I just started the story and just entered Urqapecha or whatever it's spelled, but as long as it's interesting and not a slog like Azim Steppe, I'm good :P
Honestly, the complaints about it being slow to start are fair. I understand that it's meant to be a story-focused RPG, but at the end of the day, the G does stand for *Game*. I'm probably four hours in and still haven't experienced any gameplay unless you count a handful of trivial overworld encounters. That's two full movies. The exposition is fine, but they could do a better job interspersing gameplay into it.
Edit: a very easy fix here would have been to drop a dungeon before the story split. That way if players start feeling burned out on exposition, they could run the dungeon again, get a gameplay break, and still feel like they're progressing. Otherwise I think what you end up with is people getting bored and skipping important exposition because they're impatient to do something where they can actually interact with the game.
This has been a criticism for the game for years but often people get downvoted to oblivion for it so I suppose this "gameplay" is either favorable or the audience is very vocal. Most games reward you for a cutscene after doing gameplay/combat but this game does the opposite, you sit through long cutscenes and dialogue then get a fun dungeon for 30 minutes and then sit through more cutscenes and dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I love the story but I want to play my character.
I hate the story split. They shouldn't have had it imo. I get give the player a choice. But it's thr illusion of choice I would have rathered one path that led to a dungeon then the other path by itself
They don't need to do that with over 6 of each zone. And multiple worlds and they are able to create worlds and layers at a push of a button that was a actual quote for yoshi p to
And I get that. Main issue for me is still it isn't very satisfying story wise if both where 1/2 the length they where or it was broken up by a dungeon in the middle pacing could be better.
I could feel more immersed if the cutscenes actually had voice overs. But so many dont. And their choices on what scenes to voice and which ones to not leaves me frustrated.
First impressions are important and well...Dawntrail is very slow and boring to start. And Wuk Lamat isn't exactly interesting nor likeable
The writing team doesn't know how to write good slice of life/comedy and it shows. Just because we are not saving the world in a high stakes battle doesn't mean it has to be boring
They need to get inspiration for "cooldown" moments from series like Persona and Trails because those writers are extremely skilled at doing slice of life in the middle of a grander story without it detracting from pacing.
I don't know. It's actually what drives her in this rite of succession. She absolutely doesn't want for the first promise to win specifically because of his desire of contest. There is little know about his motivation, but he wants to teach a lesson everyone by making their life equally miserable- war in his eyes is a great tool and conquering whole world is his path to lasting piece. We, WoL and the company saw what war means already. Blue Alisae opposes this idea of war being a good lesson.
And look. It's about compassion. This is what the current ruler is taking about. He united all nations not through contest, but through friendship and compassion. I love this merchant side quest where they follow this idea as well. Instead of ditching uldah trader, they teach him a good lesson instead of making him miserable. And that's the whole perspective.
As a person living in a war thorn country I find this conflict unveiling nicely. Overall situation with candidates nicely delicts the world. Where people tired of piece are those that don't know war.
I understand that's the intent, but they are absolutely beating it into us relentlessly with how many cutscenes are solely dedicated to waffling on about peace. It's too much, by the 3rd or 4th beast tribe-esque story it was getting insanely repetitive, and it's hours upon hours of peace and compassion and more peace and more compassion. It's starting to become patronizing, as though we didn't get the concept in the first dozen hours of the expansion already, it's still waffling on about it at hour 20+.
There is also a whole theme going on where Wuk Lamat's skill is in getting to know people and valuing them. She doesn't go in with brute force, and she's a bit of a fraidy cat (though I'd still say she's brave), but people like her because she's kind, values what they have to offer, and doesn't treat anyone like they're beneath her. Even in the main city, a lot of people are dismissive of her chances, but they clearly still *like* her.
She needs to figure out how to get people to respect her, too, but considering that her father united a bunch of warring clans to create lasting peace, her skillset actually lends itself pretty well to maintaining his legacy.
Exactly. Compassion - this is what she has and others lack. But there was a nice scene when everyone walked out of the palace. The first promise showed something some might consider compassion as he listened to plea and promised to fix the issue. But it's more akin to Garlean rulers 😅
This was supposed to be an action filled adventure but all what we got is culture appreciation and emotional bs backstories of people from those cultures. WHY does someone ALWAYS have to be emotional? Can't we just have fun during this SUMMER EXPANSION?!?!
The slow pace of the game and overwhelming cutscenes are really killing the flow of the game for me. I reached level 100 now and I’m almost done with MSQ. I play a reaper and skill wise I only gotten a very minor increase of chain skills. Square really needs to rework the combat system, just dare to do something new and exiting for once. It feels just dull at this point no new improvements…sure the world looks amazing but one you done all the quests, it’s a shame you won’t really visit the new amazing world ever again for meaningful content, because it doesn’t exists….and then consider WOW for example, I guess even with the f ups that blizzard had with WOW, they at least tried innovate and move forward, FFXIV on the other hand is just stuck with the same generic formula…
I know capeshit is capeshit, but I can’t help but draw parallels to Avengers Endgame and Endwalker. I feel like we went through our Infinity War saga and now the game is struggling to find its footing. I’m going to be honest, it’s not looking good. FWIW I’m in the 4th zone and I thought it was starting to pick up pace and then they hit you with a quest line that feels out of nowhere and basically meaningless. It’s very hard playing this and seeing monotonous zones, fetch quests, and so on a week after having played and beaten Shadow of the Erdtree. The zones feel barren 80% of the time with a few cool things here and there.
im fine with games needing build-up for the big moments down the line or w/e but that doesn’t make an excuse to just pass out the game with boring shit lol
like ARR really wasn’t *that* boring as a JRPG MMO introduction to the world / city states. But to do it so many expansions in is crazy (Stormblood wasn’t that boring even if it’s also has mixed portions).
Whenever I see people on r/ffxiv talk about the characters I see nothing but praise, in my FC almost everyone kinda complained about Wuk Lamat. I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of her and the stakes are very low. Like, I'm not a horrible person, I want to help people - but she pretty much came out of nowhere and was like "ok so I'm funny and cute and 2m tall you help me get the throne okay? Ok! Let's head to Tural"
I feel a bit detached from the story. In my headcanon WoL doesn't know why they're there either, they might feel a bit empty now that the world doesn't need them anymore, so just following Emet's call for the Golden City or something. The slow start was okay because the visuals are IMPRESSIVE this time around, I love how they designed all the zones. The ShB parts in the Lahee forest and railroad desert bored me to death sometimes and I just rushed from one quest to the next, here I legit stop sometimes to look at how pretty everything is
But yeah, I can't really feel a connection to Wuk Lamat and don't really care. Yet. Bakool is funny and I like Wuk's daddy.
I agree with the bad reviews. I am a bit before the 2nd dungeon and I actually weigh my options to stop playing because IT’S SO BORING 🥱. It’s my time after all…I cannot remember an expansion being that bland and dull to be honest. I even liked ARR more than his. And for everyone claiming ‘well it get’s better later’ so you have to suffer through a video game? Seriously? No thank you. There are so many out there that are AMAZING actually.
I may just skip the story in its entirety (I’m a story player…this is so sad…) and hope the next one is not a snooze fest. But after the patches in Endwalker (they were so bad as well) I am not sure. Shadowbringers & Endwalker were the greatest things I ever played in my life and I did play Baldur’s Gate the masterpiece.
So disappointed in FF 😭😭😭
removing wuk lamat and having the story follow koana and his character growth instead would be 1000% better
having a lyse 2.0 that only knows how to repeat "i want peace, i want peace" or showing how she is useless everytime she is on screen is super lame and gets boring fast
Ew, bad take. Koana is so one note so far. If you want to reduce Wuk Lamat down to “I want peace, I want peace” Koana is just “I want technology, I want technology.”
Wuk Lamat learning how to push past things she simply doesn't like or understand because it's part of the culture of the land that she has to accept if she dares to rule, where Koana just shows up and "well get this! your rain dances are STUPID because i made a rain potion, your culture has been solved, please enjoy doing nothing"
I would have much preferred teaching Koana the value of culture and traditions after our 10 years of experiencing various cultures and traditions and show him how these things can go hand in hand
…over teaching Wuk Lamat how to gather wool and not be a moron who suddenly cares about culture because now it’s crunch time and oh not someone is a wanna be warlord.
I would of LOVED to be on Koanas team then. Why were we told that this was going to be a summer vacation type of expansion when all we're getting is culture appreciation and that emotional underdog "I'm not worth it at first but I get confident as the story continues" storyline? They had the story ready to become an action filled adventure but instead we're learning about cultures that are mundane af. Koana knows what's up.
it’s crazy to me how they could make huge mistakes like that. Everyone hated the Lyse story (including me, good it was bad and Lyse 🤦🏻♀️). Stormblood was only saved by Kugane Story really. Than 90% is not voiced…we have 2024 EVERY game voices at least the main story. So disappointed ☹️
It's most certainly a slow start. I'm finished the MSQ now and I'm falling asleep at the wheel. I am not one bit interested in the rite of succession. This isn't a holiday, it is torture!
That being said, I think the issue is the characters, and the lack of agency in the questing. Wuk is just your typical naïve annoying, a lot growing to do character, and her arc is predictable from about the 2nd quest she is involved in. I think she is suppose to be endearing but she's one note. The 3 "rival" characters have very little depth and you can clearly tell what role they fit in the story without much complexity. One of them in particular is horrendously simple, and is just an a-hole for the sake of being one!
As for the questing, the "trials" are cringe and it is clearly set up as busy work to build Wuk Lamat up rather than actually evenly test the other claimants despite them all being bad choices. They all do have separate solutions to the problems they are facing, but I've seen only two of them actually do anything on screen? The entire thing makes little logical sense, but I suppose that's the culture. As you progress things do improve, but it's not going to blow you away. It will always struggle to compete with the world ending saga we had before.
If you don't like Wuk Lamat, this entire experience falls flat on its face... at least for now.
Just hit heritage found (early lv 97) and most of the story has been incredibly boring. It’s made both me and the friend I was playing it with start skipping cutscenes when we’ve never even thought of it before
This^^ I'm at the same point and doing the same thing.
I never skip story, but holy shtt this expac is boring AF. Stop sidelining the scions for Llama-face cat lady. I'm so sick of her being around us 24/7.
Getting "Only Monika" vibes from Wuk.
Give me Ystola making fun of Thancred plz.
Honestly this story has been ass. Wuk Lamat is so incredibly lame and it feels like we are just getting nothing but exposition dumps left and right, but they're boring af. Im about to skip the rest of the cutscenes and just play the dungeons bc this ain't it.
I think the complaints are valid. I’m nearing the end (have the level 100 trial to go) but so far this story is feeling filler.
The best comparison I can give is that the first half feels like what the patches between expansions should have been.
I finished it earlier this morning and honestly the pacing felt extremely disjointed and kind of all over the place? Like the overall story itself is fine, but moments in-between had me tilting my head wondering what the hell the writers were thinking. Krile was billed as an important character but for 90% of the story she could be cut out and nothing different would happen.
It also doesn't help they were promising a lower-stakes adventure and look how that turned out...
man i knew from the first dawntrail trailer that this dlc would be bad. Idk why they decided to change the main quest writer when they were releasing banger after banger msq wise
Anyone else feel like they took this storyline way to laid back. It feels like nothing but filler story telling I only just got done the first dungeon.... and who ever wrote wuk lamat.... it's like 2 people wrote the story and didn't talk about what they Included... the Idea that wuk lamat has never been to the zones ever in her life after living in the new world? That's ridiculous lol it's slow and boring so far. All we are doing is playing crafter and gatherer for tribes lol
So far I’m just a little past the first dungeon and I’ll admit the story isn’t insane so far in in my personal opinion, shadowbringers had this almost horror esque vibe to the beginning with the music and light warden transformations that immediately got me hooked and endwalker wasn’t quite as immediately hooking but I found it to be pretty good, heck even stormblood which apparently isn’t as popular I liked more with the unwinnable Zenos fights I thought that really helped the atmosphere, but dawntrail is just kinda ok so far, story feels very basic and unoriginal and currently lacks any intrigue kinda feels just like a feel good chill slow burn, Im really am hoping it gets more epic instead of feeling like an anime Indiana Jones spinoff,
On the other hand while they are still very confusing the two new jobs are dope the pictomancer animations are very unique and while vipers animations very generic looking the fast pace feels clean, and the maps so far are beautiful on everything expect this dora the explorer storyline it’s a 10/10 so far
Oof. Was just starting to look forward to this. At 90 hearing that it "starts slow" for like, the fourth time in this game's history... It just isn't pulling me back. I wasn't super interested in the new classes already, but I'm shocked my OCD brain doesn't desperately want to get to 100 after waiting this long.
I think this game killed fetch quests for me, killed that MMO format of questing. I put up with it again in EW hoping all the reviews would catch up to me, but I was really bored. I just can't do them anymore and the graphical upgrade is so minimal that I can't put myself through a bunch of poorly animated cutscenes with a lackluster anime story when I could be playing Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate, or literally any other game made in the last few years lol.
Mixed because is very bad story telling and world building... is just plaing boring.... wuk lamat is just Jar Jar Binks and the MSQ is worst than ARR.
Fetch quest after fetch quest...
at time of the thread being created, which is less than a day after expansion launched. Most negative reviews are due to people disliking the new msq character wuk lumat, or the story being too boring or slow. Mind though, with how short of a timespan it's been since expansion was available, this means the reviewers are either only in the earliest parts of the msq, or blazed through it so fast that it would be difficult to understand a lot of nuance and context of different scenes.
So many of the negative reviews are about the 'slow' start of the story, and that they hope it picks up, but I don't quite understand why you'd even review it when you haven't even finished the story.
first impressions mean a lot to some people. my wife who has played through every expansion says the story so far is very bad and very slow.
she is saying she is very disappointed in the story.
As someone who did ARR and all expacs in 3 months last year (new player) literally every expac is like this aside from ShB.
Heavensward was where "it gets good", yet that expac opened with branching quest paths exactly like DT.
If reviews were based on first impressions, every expac msq would have gotten mediocre reviews at best.
I would def say that at least going into each xpac there was an interesting plot. This plot is just dragging, also I feel like there’s a distinct lack of voice-acting while there is an abundance of exposition being told vs shown. Which really doesn’t help the immersion or connection with any of the relatively unknown characters.
It’s 2024. We have hundreds of books on story writing and each and every editor, write, story producer, craft book, etc- will tell you that the first impressions are vital to maintain interest and get your readers for views to suspend disbelief and follow along for the ride…. And they fumbled. you have to hook people with risk-want- and misbelief.
A story should NEVER have its main character be a semi passive observer. We are not cameras. The main character is not supposed to be the lens from which the story unfolds as we watch. We are meant to BE the story.
First impression is often the most vital to storytelling.
Because "But wait it gets better" is never good. First Impressions matter.
Personally I find myself more interested in the supporting cast rather than Wuk. Promised a vacation, only to get stuck with Babysitting duty. With the lack of intrigue of Shadowbringers, or the Urgency of Endwalker, you are left with an oddly familiar Cheese and Wine feeling questline from level 30 ARR.
What they could've easily done was make paying attention actually matter. A pop quiz on the statues early on that rewards you with a minipet, would easily change the outlook early on. Instead of the extreme illusion of choice this expansion offers in the first half. Where normally we would at least get a unique piece of dialogue, you are instead met with "No" as a choice gets removed.
So far for me the best part of expac has been the bugs. Syrcus Savage, Groomer Detection Pizza emote, Black Gil, Glowing Elbows, Funni AoE sizes.
If I picked up Elden Ring and the first 6 hours of it were walking from cutscene to cutscene while my character sits in the background watching people speak I'd leave a negative review too. "It gets good 10 hours in" is an awful philosophy.
Even if it get's good and becomes suddenly brilliant after what, 10-20 hours, that's "work" you need to put into the game before you get an enjoyable experience.
Some people may just not feel it's worth that much money for a game they need to invest considerable time into before any kind of payoff.
This is expansion, so this doesn't apply 1:1 in this case, but majority of people give new game only first 2 hours before they decide whether they drop it or keep playing.
First impressions are extremely important, whether it's game or TV show, they always try to give their best at the start (if not, then that's pretty bad misunderstanding of their profession), so if this best is not good, then it's gamble whether the rest will end up decent.
3 episode rule has always been popular for this reason. Berserk starts after Golden Age arc, and after it gives readers good idea what the story is, then it starts chronologically from start. Oshi no ko made a amazing first episode. Psycho Pass' first episode shows one criminal case start from finish to get you hooked and show you how it all works. Shows that don't do this and end up good are more of an exceptions.
> This is expansion, so this doesn't apply 1:1 in this case, but majority of people give new game only first 2 hours before they decide whether they drop it or keep playing.
While I agree the same rules likely don't apply to an expansion as people will already be somewhat invested from the base game (presumably), it is also a game you need to pay a subscription for to play. People will judge the time they spend more harshly when they know they very literally are paying for every second they are playing.
I mean.. I hoped EW's post-MSQ would get better but it never did and apparently DT is by the same writers
That said, bitching about it this early does indeed reek of ''my instant gratification waaah''
Tbf this is a game asking for minimum $40 + monthly subscription cost. I wouldn’t say instant gratification is necessary but there def should be a selling point other than “give the game 10+ hours then it gets good”.
ARR at least had the “discovery” moments due to leveling up class(es) and significantly new biomes to explore. Even if the story dragged a bit.
Steam reviews love to kneejerk, but this expansion definitely looks to be a slower burn one after the highs that Shadowbringers and Endwalker had.
Like it's *very* hard to top those two because they had *years* of buildup. This is a mostly fresh story as far as we know, and I bet no one's really hit the bigger twists and turns yet in their reviews.
but there is no reason whatsoever to make it that boring. If they did not have a compelling story like others just make it shorter. Why bore the players to death? I will probably not even continue with the story and I even loved ARR story. And then it’s not voiced 90% …FF still lives in 2014 quite literally
Our whole premise for coming to Tural was largely to support Wuk Lamat's junk. But then there's also the quieter plot of Krile trying to figure out what happened with her grandfather, and that is probably going to become a big aspect of the greater story. Plus if you watch the launch trailer there's obviously more stuff to it than Monkey D. Naruto wanting to become Dawnwhatever.
Not to mention the flow for story beats the last few expansions has been getting your feet wet in two areas that won't be revisited til later levels, going to do the first dungeon, then going off to the first zone to fully go through. The only issue is that the story was much more engaging/interesting the last two expansions because of everything at risk. This expansion has no such risk established yet, so it's going to be slower building.
Not really sure what you or others complaining were expecting. You can't just pull a brand new story out with only a tiny bit of buildup and expect it to be super engaging/crazy right away like the past two expansions.
Wasn't really ever a vacation as the premise, unless you solely watch the cinematic, maybe. The whole pretext has been to go on new adventures and explore this whole new region, and *probably* help Wuk Lamat out because of the adventure potential to come from it. As well as remembering Emet-selch's bit about all the places we haven't seen yet.
I played all of FF more than once. And I liked ARR and just really hated the start of Stormblood. But it was not that long. This story is much worse than all of the others. Wuk Lamat seems to be even dumber than Lyse. I like Koana but the story is just so boring over all. I am past the first Dungeons like I wrote. I am actually shortly before the second. Still bored out of my mind. I cannot understand how so many people think it’s fine to ne bored by a game that long.
If you have nothing interesting to tell in the beginning scrap it. If the story is boring just leave it and either write something different or make the story shorter. It’s really not that hard. So many games do it way better
not even trying to be too mean but I think most ff14 superfans really just have too much free time lmao (due to the game having an insane time commitment)
I think FF biggest problem is exactly that: superfans who praise everything even if it‘s totally stupid. Games, companies and people in general only get better when they hear critic from others. Not hate but honest critic is how to get better. I am almost done with the story now and it only gets better at around Lvl 96 of the story. I would recommend skipping most of the cutscenes until then.
I'm a little over 50% through the MSQ, about 8 hours in. 8 hours is more than enough time invested to take measure. Frankly, it's just not good to me.
As others stated the story suffers from poor pacing. Wuk lumat is pretty horrible and so is the English voice acting cast. Erenville and Wuk stand out.
The writing is worse. Zone design, uninspired. Music, bland ( I did enter one zone and the music was pretty good there.)
The FFXIV formula is definitely at play.. I mean, it's what we expected. On launch you get MSQ, FATE, PVP, and guild levels for crafting/gathering. No surprises, zones are large, sterile, and empty. No danger or reason to explore aside from collecting aetherytes and currents. They try hide how barren the zones feel with oversized assets and giant mobs to fill space.
I'm not a fan of several class changes.
I'm also a veteran player. Lowkey,I wish I sat this one out.
Its insane to me to have the first dungeon be lvl 91, but naturally youll get there and be 92-93.... Like clearly the dungeon can go earlier. Or the "story" quests can be cut down
I’m barely starting out so my opinion is pretty useless. But I think there are things people should keep in mind I think:
Considering this is a very story driven MMO there are inherent problems/negatives that can be apart of it. This is the start of a new almost from scratch story arch. With the exception of core characters we now know, this is as close to a 1.0 start as you can get. This means a slow start right off the bat as far as getting to conflict and issues. Just like ARR…where we had a pretty generic start until we hit post 2.0 content.
I think time will tell if this game’s story indeed is good and better overall. Just like any book/tv/movie series. You are going to start slow, ramp up, and dip and dive even as you move forward in some cases.
FFXIV’s success is a curse in that way. Even WoW suffered that post Lich King with Pandaria and that expansion is now deemed amazing compared to what followed.
This is the risks and way of MMOs and anything tied to a heavy storyline.
Not that I’m saying anyone’s wrong, I just don’t currently feel this is a terrible game or expansion. Nor is it amazing and stellar. But I also don’t expect it to be at this point. We got great quality of life updates finally, new nice areas, solid new classes, and are getting more stuff that all seems good. Story wise, it’s going to take time and will require some patience to see if these setups and low key hints and foreshadowing pays off.
But I do generally come from reading a lot of sagas and books where the first book isn’t always that great or original, but does a fine job with keeping me at least interested before the “holy shit” moment.
So I’d say it’s just understandable that this isn’t fire compared to Shadowbringers or Endwalker
I definitely feel the slow start, but having a scaled back early story does feel needed after so many people complained about how we go from one world ending event to another. The World building is nice if not running on a bit long.
Wuk Lamat is fun and I really like her.
I honestly don't care about the story complaints and the "pacing". I can live with that.
For me (new as of April) I care about the gameplay and **lack of it** specifically.
I thought I liked dungeons because dungeons are fun but they aren't even that much fun. I like dungeons because you get to play the game, you get to press the 36+ buttons they give you and funny things happen like your teammates get launched off the map.
Why does FFXIV have such a lack of gameplay content ? It feels like 95% of the game is just talking to NPCs.
Speaking about dungeons. I'm new here, but seriously: Every dungeon is exactly the same. I really don't understand how SE is okay with copy pasting dungeons. They don't even have layouts they're just trash mob rooms to boss room and rinse and repeat.
Back to the story: Honestly I don't hate it, I've been through ARR and Post-ARR and Post-ARR had my mouse cursor on the uninstall button. DT is nowhere near as bad. That being said I am new, I think my experience with ARR is fresh on my mind and people have forgotten just how bad XIV can be.
TL;DR: Stories not amazing, it's ok. Content is literally rinse and repeat the same stuff XIV has had since release, and I'm baffled that no one really seems to care about this.
Well people dont like to be taken hostage into cutscene jail for hours without playing the actual game killing some bad guys or running an good old dungeon or anything but watching tiger lady be cringe... at least the dungeons and ex trials are fun and nicely done.
This is what happens when a big saga ends. People will complain that the story is boring or feels like a filler. Of course it is, it is a new expansion with no build up. Coming from shb and ew storylines people will definitely shit on this.
I've had a great time with the expansion so far. 10/10 for me. The story starts off a little slow but it's a good way to get you familiar with an entirely new continent and people. You have to actually learn to give a rats ass about them before any other story beats will matter and that takes time and can't really be forced. It goes pretty hard later on. The dungeons along the way have been really fun with some new mechanics. Both the new jobs are a blast to play. The graphical update is gorgeous and the new zones and creatures are really nice.
Honestly one of the smoothest technical launches for any mmo or expansion, so add to that the fact that the content is well done and you can tell it's made by and for people who care about the characters and world they have built and I'm pretty impressed.
Just throwing that out there since I was confused to see there's so much negativity. I understand the dissenting minority is usually the loudest voice, and everyone else is in the game actually playing and enjoying it. Not saying that anyone is wrong if they don't enjoy it but from everyone I've talked to that's playing it, they are all loving it so your mileage may vary.
The story is superb, and I’m kind of shocked from reading these comments how all of you had the patience to play through ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker with your opinions about pacing and character driven narratives. Try approaching the MSQ with a more open mind and focus on what’s being told about the characters and setting. This is an expansion about world building, not a power fantasy where you kill God for the 15th time.
I was thinking the same thing. Like the game has always been pretty slow with it's story? I think some people are just rushing through it and aren't wanting to take time to really engage with it. It's way better than people are giving it credit for.
Honestly, I've been enjoying the slower low stakes story the MSQ starts off as. Good palette cleanser after two expansions with world ending threats back to back.
I can see how it could be for those who want a more traditional style of excitement. I love travel, anthropology, and fantasy worldbuilding, so I'm enjoying exploring a new place and learning about its culture.
Thank god, was hoping it’s just a slow burn. Just tired of carrying this bumbling fool around after I just saved everyone and every shard and bested the 12. Now I’m just some chaperone for a kindergarten field trip to the zoo.
This is what I needed to hear, thanks. 🙏
I mean, I'm literally halfway through the story and its still meaningless blabbering about peace and inner growth and bla bla bla with nothing remotely interesting or dynamic happening.
When is it supposed to "get good"? At the last 20 quests?
IMO, and I'm still very early into the MSQ.
I feel like I'm joining in on a presidential candidate's country tour to convince the states to vote for them. What I mean is we're meeting a bunch of new people, I'm learning random tidbits of their life and culture which I (sorry) don't give a shit about, and then we give our presidential speech about how we're for peace blah blah blah...every. single. time. Wuk Lamat does not say anything different ever, and right now there is 0 more to a character (I accept that that can change).
So I draw this parallel to a president visiting states on a campaign tour, because that's what we're doing. Except there are 0 stakes that I'm involved in and I had no decision in the matter. So it comes across as repeating the same shit over and over and over again, instead of a cause I actually believe in and have some personal stakes in, and in a land I understand. Gotta say, I really don't care about the political environment of a landmass I didn't even really know existed until this expansion.
Anyways, ontop of that. They didn't change anything, and honestly I'm getting a little tired of the cutscenes, even voiced ones, and general forumlaic nature of it all. I feel like 90% of the ones I watched so far could have been left out, or regulated over to side quests or something, idk. Anyways, Endwalker, I wanted lots of cutscenes because stuff was happening and since we're at the conclusion a lot of story is happening and I want to see everything in full cutscene glory....right now very little story is happening, just exposition. exposition. exposition. I don't really want cutscenes. Furthermore, the voiced vs. non-voiced cutscene feels entirely random, and honestly non-voiced cutscenes are starting to feel really, really awkward to me. I feel like I'd much prefer pretty much all non-voiced cutscenes so far to just be normal click on NPC talking.
Then I know my reward for all of this is 3 copy paste dungeons and a copy paste trial with a copy paste similar type quest for the alliance raid and a copy paste quest series for the normal raids. I am excited for the Bozja-esque content...didn't really get to experience that or Eureka. But man, I feel like the money towards some of these voiced cutscenes and non-voiced cutscene development and a lot of this story would have been better spent on more unique dungeons or something new! I feel like this was the opportunity to really revitalize things and its just missed; I'm not sure what and its really not my job to come up with that....but damn, idk if something doesn't change I might not even bother with the next expansion.
Players: "I hate Wuk Lumat and Zero was boring. These new characters suck."
Also Players: "Why do the devs only focus on the Scions. I want some new characters with different personalities."
People are never happy.
to be fair, these characters all hit similar story beats with "we will save you with the power of friendship and happiness!!", meanwhile we've barely even met these people. Why are we going so hard for Lamat? She should've been introduced way earlier imo, or at least write the story in a way where we don't decide to support her until after we see Tural. Devs seem to think they can just throw a character and make people love them at first sight for the same reasons we like the other ones, that's not quite how it works.
I honestly don't care at all about Lamat and the whole rite thing so far, I'm just supporting my girl Krile. If it wasn't for her I honestly think I'd have skipped some CS.
> Why are we going so hard for Lamat?
basically what i've been wondering since 6.55. Thus far the answer seems to be "because Krile (and Erenville kinda) vouches for her" which would be a good reason to invite someone to a DnD group, but is not a good enough of a reason to go full on in trying to put them on the throne of an entire nation
>Why are we going so hard for Lamat?
Because if we don't there's the possibility of a global-scale conflict with Tural. It was stated in 6.55 and again in the Intro of Dawntrail that should the First Promise take the throne he plans on completely moblizing the nations military and taking it East. Mainly for Garlemald, and more than likely starting conflicts with the Eorzean Alliance and Radz-at-Han, as both are assisting and maintaining the territory of Garlemald.
Your options are help her and maintain Global peace, or don't help her and risk an actual World War.
I mean, Koana doesn't seem like he's interested in warmongering, and at least he seems to have some sort of plan for what he's gonna do once he's ruler.
That's still just taking a gamble. While it's a slightly better odds of Koana winning, it's the same risk. What if he doesn't win? The only influence you have over the outcome is by helping Wuk Lamat
As powerful as we are, being invited and then the first part of the xpac could be spent learning about the 3 promises + two-headed white dragon; maybe even give agency on who you support even if in the end it all shook out the same.
I'm not a fan of Wuk Lamat's character type and appearance, but I don't hate her either. But what I don't really get is why people hated Lysed so, so much and praise Wuk Lamat now. On the sub here I see nothing but high praise for her and I don't really get it
What no one really talked about with Lyse was that we actually had a nice motivation to beat the Garleans and help her, sicne we saw how bad they were. It was in our interest too, and Lyse was a friend. Wuk Lamat needs time to grow on me, right now she's just the random person that came out of nowhere and was like "ok so you help me get the throne right? I'm cute and silly but also very deep for sure as you'll soon find out". It feels a bit off to me and I didn't really have these issues with Lyse. ;w;
But I'm not someone who played Stormblood on release, so the flow was much better I guess. At some point I hope we'll go to Hingashi and Yugiri, Lyse etc. will come back and get improved for it
It’s not wrong to want an interesting story. They can give the players what they want but still fail to make it compelling. lol @ blaming players, touch some grass friend.
Players want characters who feel interesting. Zero was fine, but Wuk Lamat feels like something I could easily come up with myself. Actually, the entire MSQ that I've played so far is the same. The only redeeming quality is the beauty of the maps.
How about we give some love for the other side characters that's been introduced in the story in the past? Id much prefer to go on an adventure with yugiri instead of some porter who did something for us in Endwalker and some strangers who I'm supposed to help take claim of a kingdom.
im at the halfway point of this expac, and i was seriously concerned in the beginning, but i dunno guys...this shit is FIRE right now. try sticking with it
The slow start complaints made me glad I decided to start skipping cutscenes when I did. I tried to hold out before the first dungeon, but I just couldn't. But hey, at least I managed to finish the rest of MSQ on the first day!
TBH I expected the rite to happen later but the story quickly follows the main announced attraction - rite of succession. No fillers, just let's do it. So I am surprised how fast it happens.
And so far two stories I've seen are good. They are very in line with current ruler perception. And they give exposition for our contenders and how different they are.
Can't wait for the story to unfold. But I want to take it slow and easy. I don't want to finish it in a week and then wait months for more.
I think the game is great. Pacing is fine. Breath of fresh air after all the world being on fire.
It's also setting up a whole new arc. So there's that.
Kind of glad that for once it's just us being a bunch of adventurous fellows doing our thing (at least as far as I've made it).
As for our newest NPC? Adore her.
She's fine imo as a side character, but as the driving force of the plot gets old fast for some of us. We here babysitting her instead of having fun on "our own adventure".
If it wasn't for my girl Krile I wouldn't care at all about the whole thing
Because she’s basically Hildibrand, but we’re suppose to take her seriously. That’s the best way I can describe her character so far. Hopefully something happens like gets injected with some super soldier serum or something.
I mean the game was eating for 3x expansions, it’s ok to get just above average reception. Hopefully endgame is good and next expansion has more engaging story
Is there any exciting new armour or is it just same Old boring stats? Seems like ff14 lost its way after stormblood, seems to just be same shit different expansion
The first half was dull and boring it only begins to pickup around the 25hr mark the second half non spoiler of course get better can't say I rate this the highest expansion experience but it was an ok ending definitely not up there with the last two expansions but definitely higher than storm blood.
I don't know, I kinda like it so far. It follows the same recipe as always. I think I have prepared myself psychologically this time, so I am enjoying.
The only MSQ that was actually really really good so far was Shadowbringers.
Dawntrail is like if you were expecting to go on a sweet island vacation, but the whole time, you have to babysit your annoying, adopted sister. It's just not good.
I walked into this expecting this to not have to an over arching doom so I'm not really disappointed. It's something I expected. I'm just enjoying new content and muh graphics.
I feel like I'm in the minority on this one. But I'm having a hard time leaving my controller. I have my complaints, wuk Lamat isn't one, so far. I'm about to get to the 2nd dungeon myself. But considering how everyone is saying the start is too slow or so, feels like my reaction is different from everyone else's. We'll see in a few more days when I finish it. Irl gets in the way sometimes lol
It gets a lot better. I think this expansion just starts much slower since it’s a brand new story arch with a lot of new characters. Not going to lie, the first 5 hours were pretty rough to get through haha.
You're an awful player if you think the MSQ dungeons are savage. Just fyi. They stepped up the difficulty "slightly" but are no where close to savage. You are not qualified to speak on high level content. So don't.
I'll take the first few hours of dawntrail so far over the cringe sadboi "woe is me" storyline of endwalker, along with endwalker having the most abysmal post expansion content the game has ever seen. Most of the playerbase not playing the game for a year because there's nothing to do seems like a bigger issue than some long cutscenes in msq.
All the reviews I've read that were negative, and i read a lot of them, where people who barely played the story and just whining. None of the reviews had substance. "I didn't like it" or "it was bad" but no real reasons. So, people just want to be assholes and not give anyone who might actually be looking into it a reason not to.
This is my stance on any game or any review. If you're going to take the time to put out a review, at least say something worth a damn and don't just "it was shit" and leave it at that. I disregard every single bad review i see on literally anything unless it has substance. Otherwise, I assume they're just butt hurt about something and wanted to bitch. lol. (obviously, that's just my opinion)
The music is god awful so far the quests are shit the 1st dungeon was terrible it feels like post EW quests as a expansion it better get better cz after post EW I had all but forgotten about the game
The only people hating the expansion are those that aren't done with it or can't look past 1 character. Only a moron would trust steam reviews in 2024. Anyone can make a review there even weirdos who think playing 10 hours of a 50 hour story justifies them making a review of a game despite not being even close to done.
Dumb take. Of course, if the first 10 hours are bad, it needs to be in the review. From what I have seen from the reviews, the story itself 'can't look past one character
The fact that 4 morons upvoted your garbage take makes me scared for the future of gaming. A "review" is a full review. Steam is a meme. Anyone with a brain knows this. The fact that you aren't even aware of this makes anything you have to say void.
Waiting on Wuk Lamat to reveal we're out of margarita mix to finally create some tension.
Granted, im not far into the story. But man, the Hanuhanu quests are rough to get through. Giving me huge ShB trolley questline flashbacks. Im still optimistic though. Looking back at the other expansions, I think the dual path questlines they give you towards the beginning are usually pretty slow.
Got the same impression, the saving grace this time was that the areas look STUNNING. Could be personal taste, but the flooded jungle forest and the alpaca zone hit just right. First time in ages that I really "explored" side zones, in ShB I honestly couldn't give a damn and just pumped through the Lahee Forest and the railroad desert. I guess people love every single second of ShB but I felt the constant urge to skip through these parts
> Giving me huge ShB trolley questline flashbacks. Just you wait
I'm about 10 hours in now. It hasn't really gotten much better even after the Hanuhanu, it's very slow and dare I say bland. While I understand that's the intention of the game's direction to deliver a more laidback story, I'm finding that the lore and world building here is surprisingly mundane. The Hanuhanu are so far the only somewhat interesting beast tribe-esque faction we help out with their focus around >!wind magic!<. The rest are not particularly interesting with the >!Alpaca people being largely bartering focused!< and then the >!Goblins being crafting focused!<, which is fine but somewhat uninteresting as it's like saying Dan From Accounting's lore backstory is that he files tax reports and then writing a 200 page book detailing his daily 9-5. Having this be the MAIN FOCUS of the story is really a drag.
To be fair tho, most tribes people we come across in every expansion mainly feel like world building and filler (excluding the Loporrits and Omicron which I loved). Thats why I’m trying to reserve judgement until I get past the tribes people, and really get into the meat of the msq.
I didn't get that vibe at all. Shadowbringers trolley is one of my most hated quest lines, and I like the Hanuhanu introduction. It didn't drag on too long, and the story made sense.
Nowhere close to that.
Too early for real reviews obviously but man i'm uh, unenthused so far. Feels like early DT (up through the first dungeon and post-dungeon scenes) relies a LOT on Wuk Lamat hitting as a character, and so far I'm finding Koana more interesting by a long shot. I remain unconvinced he isn't a wholly better candidate. I'd not be surprised at this point if I end up agreeing with "mixed". I'm stopped playing for the day and I don't remember it ever being so easy to drag myself away during the story of any other xpac.
But she has the strongest ability. The power of love and friendship /s
Listen I love me some power of friendship but girl I barely know you at this point. Give me something to work with here. Give me a reason I should see you as anything other than a slightly more annoying Lyse.
Wait she’s more annoying than Lyse????!! Nooooooo…. Lyse is like a trigger word for me, as I hate that character so much. I do not understand the propensity of square to put an annoying blond girl (or blonde cat girl in this instance) into every other expac, despite the fact the community feed back is always mixed at best to these characters.
She has abs.
I THOUGHT YUO SAID IBS LMAO
I don't want to rip the expansion this early, but...the slow start complaints are 100% valid. I think I'm 6 hours in and I've been in a cutscene for 90% of it at least. I was trying to power through and get to the first dungeon but gave up for today. It's quite literally cutscene>two steps>cutscene>cutscene.
I didn't even mind the Amount of cutscenes but by God each quest has a feature film in it
Glad other people feel the same about the beginning, once you start the dungeons/trials it gets a little more interesting as you go d:
Yeah it took me about that long before I got to the first dungeon. I ended up doing other stuff after the dungeon for a few hours and then gave up on today. Going that long without even getting through my entire new opener was rough
Took me two hours to get to the first dungeon even skipping every cutscene and dialogue, that blew my mind lol. Luckily the dungeon was nice!
You just described FF XIV. It's like that, it's a visual novel until the endgame. It's never changed and probably never will. Is that fine? I think so yeah. Is that for everyone? Oh definitely not.
I do feel like it's getting worse, though. Endwalker was especially egregious with it and it seems nothing has changed in Dawntrail.
Endwalker it made some sense though. It's the culmination of things so it's definitely trying to wrap up plenty of loose ends. While it was sometimes slow going, it didn't feel as...drawn out. With DT, it really feels like you spend thirty minutes in cutscenes just to have a conversation about if Wuk Lamat's nails look pretty or something.
Generally speaking I agree, however I maintain we could have cut the entirety of Labyrinthos and nothing meaningful would have been lost.
I can't comment yet since I just started the story and just entered Urqapecha or whatever it's spelled, but as long as it's interesting and not a slog like Azim Steppe, I'm good :P
Honestly, the complaints about it being slow to start are fair. I understand that it's meant to be a story-focused RPG, but at the end of the day, the G does stand for *Game*. I'm probably four hours in and still haven't experienced any gameplay unless you count a handful of trivial overworld encounters. That's two full movies. The exposition is fine, but they could do a better job interspersing gameplay into it. Edit: a very easy fix here would have been to drop a dungeon before the story split. That way if players start feeling burned out on exposition, they could run the dungeon again, get a gameplay break, and still feel like they're progressing. Otherwise I think what you end up with is people getting bored and skipping important exposition because they're impatient to do something where they can actually interact with the game.
This has been a criticism for the game for years but often people get downvoted to oblivion for it so I suppose this "gameplay" is either favorable or the audience is very vocal. Most games reward you for a cutscene after doing gameplay/combat but this game does the opposite, you sit through long cutscenes and dialogue then get a fun dungeon for 30 minutes and then sit through more cutscenes and dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I love the story but I want to play my character.
RIGHT I sat in nothing but wuk lamat explanation cutscenes for like 4 hours before killing a monster I eventually said f it unlocked viper lol
I hate the story split. They shouldn't have had it imo. I get give the player a choice. But it's thr illusion of choice I would have rathered one path that led to a dungeon then the other path by itself
the split is less about player choice and more about spliting the initial wave of players so the servers do not get overwelmed
They don't need to do that with over 6 of each zone. And multiple worlds and they are able to create worlds and layers at a push of a button that was a actual quote for yoshi p to
And I get that. Main issue for me is still it isn't very satisfying story wise if both where 1/2 the length they where or it was broken up by a dungeon in the middle pacing could be better.
I could feel more immersed if the cutscenes actually had voice overs. But so many dont. And their choices on what scenes to voice and which ones to not leaves me frustrated.
First impressions are important and well...Dawntrail is very slow and boring to start. And Wuk Lamat isn't exactly interesting nor likeable The writing team doesn't know how to write good slice of life/comedy and it shows. Just because we are not saving the world in a high stakes battle doesn't mean it has to be boring
They need to get inspiration for "cooldown" moments from series like Persona and Trails because those writers are extremely skilled at doing slice of life in the middle of a grander story without it detracting from pacing.
Wuk lamat sucks. Her voice is cringe too it's like nails on a chalk board for me
I am Wuk Lamat's number one hater
You are?
Erenville’s voice is grating my ears, too.
MSQ convinced me to grind bozja for entertainment
Yeah, so far, this has been like watching paint dry.
THIS 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Seriously this has been 90% cutscenes of Wuk blathering on about peace. Its so tiring.
I don't know. It's actually what drives her in this rite of succession. She absolutely doesn't want for the first promise to win specifically because of his desire of contest. There is little know about his motivation, but he wants to teach a lesson everyone by making their life equally miserable- war in his eyes is a great tool and conquering whole world is his path to lasting piece. We, WoL and the company saw what war means already. Blue Alisae opposes this idea of war being a good lesson. And look. It's about compassion. This is what the current ruler is taking about. He united all nations not through contest, but through friendship and compassion. I love this merchant side quest where they follow this idea as well. Instead of ditching uldah trader, they teach him a good lesson instead of making him miserable. And that's the whole perspective. As a person living in a war thorn country I find this conflict unveiling nicely. Overall situation with candidates nicely delicts the world. Where people tired of piece are those that don't know war.
I understand that's the intent, but they are absolutely beating it into us relentlessly with how many cutscenes are solely dedicated to waffling on about peace. It's too much, by the 3rd or 4th beast tribe-esque story it was getting insanely repetitive, and it's hours upon hours of peace and compassion and more peace and more compassion. It's starting to become patronizing, as though we didn't get the concept in the first dozen hours of the expansion already, it's still waffling on about it at hour 20+.
There is also a whole theme going on where Wuk Lamat's skill is in getting to know people and valuing them. She doesn't go in with brute force, and she's a bit of a fraidy cat (though I'd still say she's brave), but people like her because she's kind, values what they have to offer, and doesn't treat anyone like they're beneath her. Even in the main city, a lot of people are dismissive of her chances, but they clearly still *like* her. She needs to figure out how to get people to respect her, too, but considering that her father united a bunch of warring clans to create lasting peace, her skillset actually lends itself pretty well to maintaining his legacy.
Exactly. Compassion - this is what she has and others lack. But there was a nice scene when everyone walked out of the palace. The first promise showed something some might consider compassion as he listened to plea and promised to fix the issue. But it's more akin to Garlean rulers 😅
This was supposed to be an action filled adventure but all what we got is culture appreciation and emotional bs backstories of people from those cultures. WHY does someone ALWAYS have to be emotional? Can't we just have fun during this SUMMER EXPANSION?!?!
The slow pace of the game and overwhelming cutscenes are really killing the flow of the game for me. I reached level 100 now and I’m almost done with MSQ. I play a reaper and skill wise I only gotten a very minor increase of chain skills. Square really needs to rework the combat system, just dare to do something new and exiting for once. It feels just dull at this point no new improvements…sure the world looks amazing but one you done all the quests, it’s a shame you won’t really visit the new amazing world ever again for meaningful content, because it doesn’t exists….and then consider WOW for example, I guess even with the f ups that blizzard had with WOW, they at least tried innovate and move forward, FFXIV on the other hand is just stuck with the same generic formula…
Maybe that opens their eyes for the next expansion or change stuff up with upcoming patches and not do the same formula every single time.
I know capeshit is capeshit, but I can’t help but draw parallels to Avengers Endgame and Endwalker. I feel like we went through our Infinity War saga and now the game is struggling to find its footing. I’m going to be honest, it’s not looking good. FWIW I’m in the 4th zone and I thought it was starting to pick up pace and then they hit you with a quest line that feels out of nowhere and basically meaningless. It’s very hard playing this and seeing monotonous zones, fetch quests, and so on a week after having played and beaten Shadow of the Erdtree. The zones feel barren 80% of the time with a few cool things here and there.
im fine with games needing build-up for the big moments down the line or w/e but that doesn’t make an excuse to just pass out the game with boring shit lol like ARR really wasn’t *that* boring as a JRPG MMO introduction to the world / city states. But to do it so many expansions in is crazy (Stormblood wasn’t that boring even if it’s also has mixed portions).
Whenever I see people on r/ffxiv talk about the characters I see nothing but praise, in my FC almost everyone kinda complained about Wuk Lamat. I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of her and the stakes are very low. Like, I'm not a horrible person, I want to help people - but she pretty much came out of nowhere and was like "ok so I'm funny and cute and 2m tall you help me get the throne okay? Ok! Let's head to Tural" I feel a bit detached from the story. In my headcanon WoL doesn't know why they're there either, they might feel a bit empty now that the world doesn't need them anymore, so just following Emet's call for the Golden City or something. The slow start was okay because the visuals are IMPRESSIVE this time around, I love how they designed all the zones. The ShB parts in the Lahee forest and railroad desert bored me to death sometimes and I just rushed from one quest to the next, here I legit stop sometimes to look at how pretty everything is But yeah, I can't really feel a connection to Wuk Lamat and don't really care. Yet. Bakool is funny and I like Wuk's daddy.
Dawntrail (so far) is so extremely boring. It really feels like a chore to play. I'm having a hard time staying motivated to keep playing it.
I agree with the bad reviews. I am a bit before the 2nd dungeon and I actually weigh my options to stop playing because IT’S SO BORING 🥱. It’s my time after all…I cannot remember an expansion being that bland and dull to be honest. I even liked ARR more than his. And for everyone claiming ‘well it get’s better later’ so you have to suffer through a video game? Seriously? No thank you. There are so many out there that are AMAZING actually. I may just skip the story in its entirety (I’m a story player…this is so sad…) and hope the next one is not a snooze fest. But after the patches in Endwalker (they were so bad as well) I am not sure. Shadowbringers & Endwalker were the greatest things I ever played in my life and I did play Baldur’s Gate the masterpiece. So disappointed in FF 😭😭😭
removing wuk lamat and having the story follow koana and his character growth instead would be 1000% better having a lyse 2.0 that only knows how to repeat "i want peace, i want peace" or showing how she is useless everytime she is on screen is super lame and gets boring fast
Ew, bad take. Koana is so one note so far. If you want to reduce Wuk Lamat down to “I want peace, I want peace” Koana is just “I want technology, I want technology.”
Zoraal Ja Ja 2024
Wuk Lamat learning how to push past things she simply doesn't like or understand because it's part of the culture of the land that she has to accept if she dares to rule, where Koana just shows up and "well get this! your rain dances are STUPID because i made a rain potion, your culture has been solved, please enjoy doing nothing"
I would have much preferred teaching Koana the value of culture and traditions after our 10 years of experiencing various cultures and traditions and show him how these things can go hand in hand …over teaching Wuk Lamat how to gather wool and not be a moron who suddenly cares about culture because now it’s crunch time and oh not someone is a wanna be warlord.
I would of LOVED to be on Koanas team then. Why were we told that this was going to be a summer vacation type of expansion when all we're getting is culture appreciation and that emotional underdog "I'm not worth it at first but I get confident as the story continues" storyline? They had the story ready to become an action filled adventure but instead we're learning about cultures that are mundane af. Koana knows what's up.
it’s crazy to me how they could make huge mistakes like that. Everyone hated the Lyse story (including me, good it was bad and Lyse 🤦🏻♀️). Stormblood was only saved by Kugane Story really. Than 90% is not voiced…we have 2024 EVERY game voices at least the main story. So disappointed ☹️
It's most certainly a slow start. I'm finished the MSQ now and I'm falling asleep at the wheel. I am not one bit interested in the rite of succession. This isn't a holiday, it is torture! That being said, I think the issue is the characters, and the lack of agency in the questing. Wuk is just your typical naïve annoying, a lot growing to do character, and her arc is predictable from about the 2nd quest she is involved in. I think she is suppose to be endearing but she's one note. The 3 "rival" characters have very little depth and you can clearly tell what role they fit in the story without much complexity. One of them in particular is horrendously simple, and is just an a-hole for the sake of being one! As for the questing, the "trials" are cringe and it is clearly set up as busy work to build Wuk Lamat up rather than actually evenly test the other claimants despite them all being bad choices. They all do have separate solutions to the problems they are facing, but I've seen only two of them actually do anything on screen? The entire thing makes little logical sense, but I suppose that's the culture. As you progress things do improve, but it's not going to blow you away. It will always struggle to compete with the world ending saga we had before. If you don't like Wuk Lamat, this entire experience falls flat on its face... at least for now.
Just hit heritage found (early lv 97) and most of the story has been incredibly boring. It’s made both me and the friend I was playing it with start skipping cutscenes when we’ve never even thought of it before
This^^ I'm at the same point and doing the same thing. I never skip story, but holy shtt this expac is boring AF. Stop sidelining the scions for Llama-face cat lady. I'm so sick of her being around us 24/7. Getting "Only Monika" vibes from Wuk. Give me Ystola making fun of Thancred plz.
Honestly this story has been ass. Wuk Lamat is so incredibly lame and it feels like we are just getting nothing but exposition dumps left and right, but they're boring af. Im about to skip the rest of the cutscenes and just play the dungeons bc this ain't it.
Not surprised when the story is such a huge step down from ShB and EW.
Forget those two. Someone needs to write Stormblood an apology.
I am an old player of FFXIV and so far the start is far TOO slow.
I think the complaints are valid. I’m nearing the end (have the level 100 trial to go) but so far this story is feeling filler. The best comparison I can give is that the first half feels like what the patches between expansions should have been.
I finished it earlier this morning and honestly the pacing felt extremely disjointed and kind of all over the place? Like the overall story itself is fine, but moments in-between had me tilting my head wondering what the hell the writers were thinking. Krile was billed as an important character but for 90% of the story she could be cut out and nothing different would happen. It also doesn't help they were promising a lower-stakes adventure and look how that turned out...
man i knew from the first dawntrail trailer that this dlc would be bad. Idk why they decided to change the main quest writer when they were releasing banger after banger msq wise
When I heard that Natsuko Ishikawa was not on the helm anymore, I knew that we're doomed.
Anyone else feel like they took this storyline way to laid back. It feels like nothing but filler story telling I only just got done the first dungeon.... and who ever wrote wuk lamat.... it's like 2 people wrote the story and didn't talk about what they Included... the Idea that wuk lamat has never been to the zones ever in her life after living in the new world? That's ridiculous lol it's slow and boring so far. All we are doing is playing crafter and gatherer for tribes lol
Its a slow start, and honestly cringe af
I found the cringe unbearable last expansion and that one people raved about. Not a good sign.
I've had to take more cringe breaks than any other ff game. I've been playing these mf for 30 years
So far I’m just a little past the first dungeon and I’ll admit the story isn’t insane so far in in my personal opinion, shadowbringers had this almost horror esque vibe to the beginning with the music and light warden transformations that immediately got me hooked and endwalker wasn’t quite as immediately hooking but I found it to be pretty good, heck even stormblood which apparently isn’t as popular I liked more with the unwinnable Zenos fights I thought that really helped the atmosphere, but dawntrail is just kinda ok so far, story feels very basic and unoriginal and currently lacks any intrigue kinda feels just like a feel good chill slow burn, Im really am hoping it gets more epic instead of feeling like an anime Indiana Jones spinoff, On the other hand while they are still very confusing the two new jobs are dope the pictomancer animations are very unique and while vipers animations very generic looking the fast pace feels clean, and the maps so far are beautiful on everything expect this dora the explorer storyline it’s a 10/10 so far
Oof. Was just starting to look forward to this. At 90 hearing that it "starts slow" for like, the fourth time in this game's history... It just isn't pulling me back. I wasn't super interested in the new classes already, but I'm shocked my OCD brain doesn't desperately want to get to 100 after waiting this long. I think this game killed fetch quests for me, killed that MMO format of questing. I put up with it again in EW hoping all the reviews would catch up to me, but I was really bored. I just can't do them anymore and the graphical upgrade is so minimal that I can't put myself through a bunch of poorly animated cutscenes with a lackluster anime story when I could be playing Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate, or literally any other game made in the last few years lol.
Mixed because is very bad story telling and world building... is just plaing boring.... wuk lamat is just Jar Jar Binks and the MSQ is worst than ARR. Fetch quest after fetch quest...
at time of the thread being created, which is less than a day after expansion launched. Most negative reviews are due to people disliking the new msq character wuk lumat, or the story being too boring or slow. Mind though, with how short of a timespan it's been since expansion was available, this means the reviewers are either only in the earliest parts of the msq, or blazed through it so fast that it would be difficult to understand a lot of nuance and context of different scenes.
I love wuk lamat. She likes tacos.
I like wuk too, but I liked lyse in stb and I hated graha in ew so I must be very different from the regular audience
We very much the small audience here
its also only 68 reviews which is nothing
So many of the negative reviews are about the 'slow' start of the story, and that they hope it picks up, but I don't quite understand why you'd even review it when you haven't even finished the story.
first impressions mean a lot to some people. my wife who has played through every expansion says the story so far is very bad and very slow. she is saying she is very disappointed in the story.
As someone who did ARR and all expacs in 3 months last year (new player) literally every expac is like this aside from ShB. Heavensward was where "it gets good", yet that expac opened with branching quest paths exactly like DT. If reviews were based on first impressions, every expac msq would have gotten mediocre reviews at best.
I would def say that at least going into each xpac there was an interesting plot. This plot is just dragging, also I feel like there’s a distinct lack of voice-acting while there is an abundance of exposition being told vs shown. Which really doesn’t help the immersion or connection with any of the relatively unknown characters.
It’s 2024. We have hundreds of books on story writing and each and every editor, write, story producer, craft book, etc- will tell you that the first impressions are vital to maintain interest and get your readers for views to suspend disbelief and follow along for the ride…. And they fumbled. you have to hook people with risk-want- and misbelief. A story should NEVER have its main character be a semi passive observer. We are not cameras. The main character is not supposed to be the lens from which the story unfolds as we watch. We are meant to BE the story. First impression is often the most vital to storytelling.
welcome to a realm re-reborn
Because "But wait it gets better" is never good. First Impressions matter. Personally I find myself more interested in the supporting cast rather than Wuk. Promised a vacation, only to get stuck with Babysitting duty. With the lack of intrigue of Shadowbringers, or the Urgency of Endwalker, you are left with an oddly familiar Cheese and Wine feeling questline from level 30 ARR. What they could've easily done was make paying attention actually matter. A pop quiz on the statues early on that rewards you with a minipet, would easily change the outlook early on. Instead of the extreme illusion of choice this expansion offers in the first half. Where normally we would at least get a unique piece of dialogue, you are instead met with "No" as a choice gets removed. So far for me the best part of expac has been the bugs. Syrcus Savage, Groomer Detection Pizza emote, Black Gil, Glowing Elbows, Funni AoE sizes.
If I picked up Elden Ring and the first 6 hours of it were walking from cutscene to cutscene while my character sits in the background watching people speak I'd leave a negative review too. "It gets good 10 hours in" is an awful philosophy.
Even if it get's good and becomes suddenly brilliant after what, 10-20 hours, that's "work" you need to put into the game before you get an enjoyable experience. Some people may just not feel it's worth that much money for a game they need to invest considerable time into before any kind of payoff.
This is expansion, so this doesn't apply 1:1 in this case, but majority of people give new game only first 2 hours before they decide whether they drop it or keep playing. First impressions are extremely important, whether it's game or TV show, they always try to give their best at the start (if not, then that's pretty bad misunderstanding of their profession), so if this best is not good, then it's gamble whether the rest will end up decent. 3 episode rule has always been popular for this reason. Berserk starts after Golden Age arc, and after it gives readers good idea what the story is, then it starts chronologically from start. Oshi no ko made a amazing first episode. Psycho Pass' first episode shows one criminal case start from finish to get you hooked and show you how it all works. Shows that don't do this and end up good are more of an exceptions.
> This is expansion, so this doesn't apply 1:1 in this case, but majority of people give new game only first 2 hours before they decide whether they drop it or keep playing. While I agree the same rules likely don't apply to an expansion as people will already be somewhat invested from the base game (presumably), it is also a game you need to pay a subscription for to play. People will judge the time they spend more harshly when they know they very literally are paying for every second they are playing.
This reminds me of THAT YouTuber who skips all the MSQ and then complained that the game has no interesting plot.
You can say LazyPeon. He's not Voldemort.
More like I don't remember his name at all.
Why capitalize the word THAT, then?
Nothing in particular
I mean.. I hoped EW's post-MSQ would get better but it never did and apparently DT is by the same writers That said, bitching about it this early does indeed reek of ''my instant gratification waaah''
Tbf this is a game asking for minimum $40 + monthly subscription cost. I wouldn’t say instant gratification is necessary but there def should be a selling point other than “give the game 10+ hours then it gets good”. ARR at least had the “discovery” moments due to leveling up class(es) and significantly new biomes to explore. Even if the story dragged a bit.
Apparently it’s by SB & Werylt writers which explains…a lot.
Steam reviews love to kneejerk, but this expansion definitely looks to be a slower burn one after the highs that Shadowbringers and Endwalker had. Like it's *very* hard to top those two because they had *years* of buildup. This is a mostly fresh story as far as we know, and I bet no one's really hit the bigger twists and turns yet in their reviews.
but there is no reason whatsoever to make it that boring. If they did not have a compelling story like others just make it shorter. Why bore the players to death? I will probably not even continue with the story and I even loved ARR story. And then it’s not voiced 90% …FF still lives in 2014 quite literally
Our whole premise for coming to Tural was largely to support Wuk Lamat's junk. But then there's also the quieter plot of Krile trying to figure out what happened with her grandfather, and that is probably going to become a big aspect of the greater story. Plus if you watch the launch trailer there's obviously more stuff to it than Monkey D. Naruto wanting to become Dawnwhatever. Not to mention the flow for story beats the last few expansions has been getting your feet wet in two areas that won't be revisited til later levels, going to do the first dungeon, then going off to the first zone to fully go through. The only issue is that the story was much more engaging/interesting the last two expansions because of everything at risk. This expansion has no such risk established yet, so it's going to be slower building. Not really sure what you or others complaining were expecting. You can't just pull a brand new story out with only a tiny bit of buildup and expect it to be super engaging/crazy right away like the past two expansions.
Help Wul Lamat? Because I was told it was a vacation. So is it a working vacation?
Wasn't really ever a vacation as the premise, unless you solely watch the cinematic, maybe. The whole pretext has been to go on new adventures and explore this whole new region, and *probably* help Wuk Lamat out because of the adventure potential to come from it. As well as remembering Emet-selch's bit about all the places we haven't seen yet.
I played all of FF more than once. And I liked ARR and just really hated the start of Stormblood. But it was not that long. This story is much worse than all of the others. Wuk Lamat seems to be even dumber than Lyse. I like Koana but the story is just so boring over all. I am past the first Dungeons like I wrote. I am actually shortly before the second. Still bored out of my mind. I cannot understand how so many people think it’s fine to ne bored by a game that long. If you have nothing interesting to tell in the beginning scrap it. If the story is boring just leave it and either write something different or make the story shorter. It’s really not that hard. So many games do it way better
not even trying to be too mean but I think most ff14 superfans really just have too much free time lmao (due to the game having an insane time commitment)
I think FF biggest problem is exactly that: superfans who praise everything even if it‘s totally stupid. Games, companies and people in general only get better when they hear critic from others. Not hate but honest critic is how to get better. I am almost done with the story now and it only gets better at around Lvl 96 of the story. I would recommend skipping most of the cutscenes until then.
I'm a little over 50% through the MSQ, about 8 hours in. 8 hours is more than enough time invested to take measure. Frankly, it's just not good to me. As others stated the story suffers from poor pacing. Wuk lumat is pretty horrible and so is the English voice acting cast. Erenville and Wuk stand out. The writing is worse. Zone design, uninspired. Music, bland ( I did enter one zone and the music was pretty good there.) The FFXIV formula is definitely at play.. I mean, it's what we expected. On launch you get MSQ, FATE, PVP, and guild levels for crafting/gathering. No surprises, zones are large, sterile, and empty. No danger or reason to explore aside from collecting aetherytes and currents. They try hide how barren the zones feel with oversized assets and giant mobs to fill space. I'm not a fan of several class changes. I'm also a veteran player. Lowkey,I wish I sat this one out.
Its insane to me to have the first dungeon be lvl 91, but naturally youll get there and be 92-93.... Like clearly the dungeon can go earlier. Or the "story" quests can be cut down
I was 91 at the dungeon, idk what you're talking about.
homie probably turned in two khloe journals lmao "92-93"
69-nice
I’m barely starting out so my opinion is pretty useless. But I think there are things people should keep in mind I think: Considering this is a very story driven MMO there are inherent problems/negatives that can be apart of it. This is the start of a new almost from scratch story arch. With the exception of core characters we now know, this is as close to a 1.0 start as you can get. This means a slow start right off the bat as far as getting to conflict and issues. Just like ARR…where we had a pretty generic start until we hit post 2.0 content. I think time will tell if this game’s story indeed is good and better overall. Just like any book/tv/movie series. You are going to start slow, ramp up, and dip and dive even as you move forward in some cases. FFXIV’s success is a curse in that way. Even WoW suffered that post Lich King with Pandaria and that expansion is now deemed amazing compared to what followed. This is the risks and way of MMOs and anything tied to a heavy storyline. Not that I’m saying anyone’s wrong, I just don’t currently feel this is a terrible game or expansion. Nor is it amazing and stellar. But I also don’t expect it to be at this point. We got great quality of life updates finally, new nice areas, solid new classes, and are getting more stuff that all seems good. Story wise, it’s going to take time and will require some patience to see if these setups and low key hints and foreshadowing pays off. But I do generally come from reading a lot of sagas and books where the first book isn’t always that great or original, but does a fine job with keeping me at least interested before the “holy shit” moment. So I’d say it’s just understandable that this isn’t fire compared to Shadowbringers or Endwalker
I definitely feel the slow start, but having a scaled back early story does feel needed after so many people complained about how we go from one world ending event to another. The World building is nice if not running on a bit long. Wuk Lamat is fun and I really like her.
I honestly don't care about the story complaints and the "pacing". I can live with that. For me (new as of April) I care about the gameplay and **lack of it** specifically. I thought I liked dungeons because dungeons are fun but they aren't even that much fun. I like dungeons because you get to play the game, you get to press the 36+ buttons they give you and funny things happen like your teammates get launched off the map. Why does FFXIV have such a lack of gameplay content ? It feels like 95% of the game is just talking to NPCs. Speaking about dungeons. I'm new here, but seriously: Every dungeon is exactly the same. I really don't understand how SE is okay with copy pasting dungeons. They don't even have layouts they're just trash mob rooms to boss room and rinse and repeat. Back to the story: Honestly I don't hate it, I've been through ARR and Post-ARR and Post-ARR had my mouse cursor on the uninstall button. DT is nowhere near as bad. That being said I am new, I think my experience with ARR is fresh on my mind and people have forgotten just how bad XIV can be. TL;DR: Stories not amazing, it's ok. Content is literally rinse and repeat the same stuff XIV has had since release, and I'm baffled that no one really seems to care about this.
That's why I ended up going back to FFXI. This game just gets boring. Story is fine and even great at times but the gameplay...
Well people dont like to be taken hostage into cutscene jail for hours without playing the actual game killing some bad guys or running an good old dungeon or anything but watching tiger lady be cringe... at least the dungeons and ex trials are fun and nicely done.
About standard for most MMO's on steam.
I can’t remember the last MMO thing on Steam that hasn’t been mixed. Every ESO expansion too.
This is what happens when a big saga ends. People will complain that the story is boring or feels like a filler. Of course it is, it is a new expansion with no build up. Coming from shb and ew storylines people will definitely shit on this.
I've had a great time with the expansion so far. 10/10 for me. The story starts off a little slow but it's a good way to get you familiar with an entirely new continent and people. You have to actually learn to give a rats ass about them before any other story beats will matter and that takes time and can't really be forced. It goes pretty hard later on. The dungeons along the way have been really fun with some new mechanics. Both the new jobs are a blast to play. The graphical update is gorgeous and the new zones and creatures are really nice. Honestly one of the smoothest technical launches for any mmo or expansion, so add to that the fact that the content is well done and you can tell it's made by and for people who care about the characters and world they have built and I'm pretty impressed. Just throwing that out there since I was confused to see there's so much negativity. I understand the dissenting minority is usually the loudest voice, and everyone else is in the game actually playing and enjoying it. Not saying that anyone is wrong if they don't enjoy it but from everyone I've talked to that's playing it, they are all loving it so your mileage may vary.
The story is superb, and I’m kind of shocked from reading these comments how all of you had the patience to play through ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker with your opinions about pacing and character driven narratives. Try approaching the MSQ with a more open mind and focus on what’s being told about the characters and setting. This is an expansion about world building, not a power fantasy where you kill God for the 15th time.
I was thinking the same thing. Like the game has always been pretty slow with it's story? I think some people are just rushing through it and aren't wanting to take time to really engage with it. It's way better than people are giving it credit for.
Honestly, I've been enjoying the slower low stakes story the MSQ starts off as. Good palette cleanser after two expansions with world ending threats back to back.
Yep. The story is horrendously boring
I can see how it could be for those who want a more traditional style of excitement. I love travel, anthropology, and fantasy worldbuilding, so I'm enjoying exploring a new place and learning about its culture.
The whole thing to 100?
Nope, around 95 there is a huge change. I didn't like some of the earlier parts but it did pick up a looot
Thank god, was hoping it’s just a slow burn. Just tired of carrying this bumbling fool around after I just saved everyone and every shard and bested the 12. Now I’m just some chaperone for a kindergarten field trip to the zoo. This is what I needed to hear, thanks. 🙏
mfs complaining about the story are gonna make memes Brooklyn 99 memes with Rosa before the end of next week
Damn you finished the story before they even released it? Howd you do it?
I mean, I'm literally halfway through the story and its still meaningless blabbering about peace and inner growth and bla bla bla with nothing remotely interesting or dynamic happening. When is it supposed to "get good"? At the last 20 quests?
Ngl I am having a hard time not to feel sleepy atm, but I hear it get interesting later on... so yeah...
IMO, and I'm still very early into the MSQ. I feel like I'm joining in on a presidential candidate's country tour to convince the states to vote for them. What I mean is we're meeting a bunch of new people, I'm learning random tidbits of their life and culture which I (sorry) don't give a shit about, and then we give our presidential speech about how we're for peace blah blah blah...every. single. time. Wuk Lamat does not say anything different ever, and right now there is 0 more to a character (I accept that that can change). So I draw this parallel to a president visiting states on a campaign tour, because that's what we're doing. Except there are 0 stakes that I'm involved in and I had no decision in the matter. So it comes across as repeating the same shit over and over and over again, instead of a cause I actually believe in and have some personal stakes in, and in a land I understand. Gotta say, I really don't care about the political environment of a landmass I didn't even really know existed until this expansion. Anyways, ontop of that. They didn't change anything, and honestly I'm getting a little tired of the cutscenes, even voiced ones, and general forumlaic nature of it all. I feel like 90% of the ones I watched so far could have been left out, or regulated over to side quests or something, idk. Anyways, Endwalker, I wanted lots of cutscenes because stuff was happening and since we're at the conclusion a lot of story is happening and I want to see everything in full cutscene glory....right now very little story is happening, just exposition. exposition. exposition. I don't really want cutscenes. Furthermore, the voiced vs. non-voiced cutscene feels entirely random, and honestly non-voiced cutscenes are starting to feel really, really awkward to me. I feel like I'd much prefer pretty much all non-voiced cutscenes so far to just be normal click on NPC talking. Then I know my reward for all of this is 3 copy paste dungeons and a copy paste trial with a copy paste similar type quest for the alliance raid and a copy paste quest series for the normal raids. I am excited for the Bozja-esque content...didn't really get to experience that or Eureka. But man, I feel like the money towards some of these voiced cutscenes and non-voiced cutscene development and a lot of this story would have been better spent on more unique dungeons or something new! I feel like this was the opportunity to really revitalize things and its just missed; I'm not sure what and its really not my job to come up with that....but damn, idk if something doesn't change I might not even bother with the next expansion.
Players: "I hate Wuk Lumat and Zero was boring. These new characters suck." Also Players: "Why do the devs only focus on the Scions. I want some new characters with different personalities." People are never happy.
to be fair, these characters all hit similar story beats with "we will save you with the power of friendship and happiness!!", meanwhile we've barely even met these people. Why are we going so hard for Lamat? She should've been introduced way earlier imo, or at least write the story in a way where we don't decide to support her until after we see Tural. Devs seem to think they can just throw a character and make people love them at first sight for the same reasons we like the other ones, that's not quite how it works.
I honestly don't care at all about Lamat and the whole rite thing so far, I'm just supporting my girl Krile. If it wasn't for her I honestly think I'd have skipped some CS.
> Why are we going so hard for Lamat? basically what i've been wondering since 6.55. Thus far the answer seems to be "because Krile (and Erenville kinda) vouches for her" which would be a good reason to invite someone to a DnD group, but is not a good enough of a reason to go full on in trying to put them on the throne of an entire nation
>Why are we going so hard for Lamat? Because if we don't there's the possibility of a global-scale conflict with Tural. It was stated in 6.55 and again in the Intro of Dawntrail that should the First Promise take the throne he plans on completely moblizing the nations military and taking it East. Mainly for Garlemald, and more than likely starting conflicts with the Eorzean Alliance and Radz-at-Han, as both are assisting and maintaining the territory of Garlemald. Your options are help her and maintain Global peace, or don't help her and risk an actual World War.
I mean, Koana doesn't seem like he's interested in warmongering, and at least he seems to have some sort of plan for what he's gonna do once he's ruler.
That's still just taking a gamble. While it's a slightly better odds of Koana winning, it's the same risk. What if he doesn't win? The only influence you have over the outcome is by helping Wuk Lamat
As powerful as we are, being invited and then the first part of the xpac could be spent learning about the 3 promises + two-headed white dragon; maybe even give agency on who you support even if in the end it all shook out the same.
If you think those are the only two options you didn't pay attention during cutscenes.
I'm not a fan of Wuk Lamat's character type and appearance, but I don't hate her either. But what I don't really get is why people hated Lysed so, so much and praise Wuk Lamat now. On the sub here I see nothing but high praise for her and I don't really get it What no one really talked about with Lyse was that we actually had a nice motivation to beat the Garleans and help her, sicne we saw how bad they were. It was in our interest too, and Lyse was a friend. Wuk Lamat needs time to grow on me, right now she's just the random person that came out of nowhere and was like "ok so you help me get the throne right? I'm cute and silly but also very deep for sure as you'll soon find out". It feels a bit off to me and I didn't really have these issues with Lyse. ;w; But I'm not someone who played Stormblood on release, so the flow was much better I guess. At some point I hope we'll go to Hingashi and Yugiri, Lyse etc. will come back and get improved for it
Cant we compromise and get good new characters?
It’s not wrong to want an interesting story. They can give the players what they want but still fail to make it compelling. lol @ blaming players, touch some grass friend.
Players want characters who feel interesting. Zero was fine, but Wuk Lamat feels like something I could easily come up with myself. Actually, the entire MSQ that I've played so far is the same. The only redeeming quality is the beauty of the maps.
The maps are truly gorgeous
and them donkey kong beats
Just because they are new characters doesn't mean we have to settle for something uninteresting...lol
I mean, they could write some decent characters for a change? It's not a crazy want.
How about we give some love for the other side characters that's been introduced in the story in the past? Id much prefer to go on an adventure with yugiri instead of some porter who did something for us in Endwalker and some strangers who I'm supposed to help take claim of a kingdom.
im at the halfway point of this expac, and i was seriously concerned in the beginning, but i dunno guys...this shit is FIRE right now. try sticking with it
The slow start complaints made me glad I decided to start skipping cutscenes when I did. I tried to hold out before the first dungeon, but I just couldn't. But hey, at least I managed to finish the rest of MSQ on the first day!
TBH I expected the rite to happen later but the story quickly follows the main announced attraction - rite of succession. No fillers, just let's do it. So I am surprised how fast it happens. And so far two stories I've seen are good. They are very in line with current ruler perception. And they give exposition for our contenders and how different they are. Can't wait for the story to unfold. But I want to take it slow and easy. I don't want to finish it in a week and then wait months for more.
I think the game is great. Pacing is fine. Breath of fresh air after all the world being on fire. It's also setting up a whole new arc. So there's that. Kind of glad that for once it's just us being a bunch of adventurous fellows doing our thing (at least as far as I've made it). As for our newest NPC? Adore her.
[удалено]
People don't like Wuk Lamat, and are bouncing off the story in general. I've seen her called "The worst character in FFXIV ever" in other threads.
But why? I love her
She's fine imo as a side character, but as the driving force of the plot gets old fast for some of us. We here babysitting her instead of having fun on "our own adventure". If it wasn't for my girl Krile I wouldn't care at all about the whole thing
Because she’s basically Hildibrand, but we’re suppose to take her seriously. That’s the best way I can describe her character so far. Hopefully something happens like gets injected with some super soldier serum or something.
I mean the game was eating for 3x expansions, it’s ok to get just above average reception. Hopefully endgame is good and next expansion has more engaging story
Is there any exciting new armour or is it just same Old boring stats? Seems like ff14 lost its way after stormblood, seems to just be same shit different expansion
The first half was dull and boring it only begins to pickup around the 25hr mark the second half non spoiler of course get better can't say I rate this the highest expansion experience but it was an ok ending definitely not up there with the last two expansions but definitely higher than storm blood.
Opinion on Dawntrail.. is that so far everything is terrible as I won't be able to play it until they fix the payment issues. If they ever so..
The AI is about to start a war and destroy our cities and lets go and have some ice cream with my AI parents... sigh... who did this?
I don't know, I kinda like it so far. It follows the same recipe as always. I think I have prepared myself psychologically this time, so I am enjoying. The only MSQ that was actually really really good so far was Shadowbringers.
Personally, I really enjoyed the HW MSQ as well.
I mean yeah HW was incredible. Probably my favorite expansion to date, or maybe tied with Shadowbringers.
some of those negative reviews are just "revert black mage" lmao
Dawntrail is like if you were expecting to go on a sweet island vacation, but the whole time, you have to babysit your annoying, adopted sister. It's just not good.
It's more FFXIV and I love it.
I walked into this expecting this to not have to an over arching doom so I'm not really disappointed. It's something I expected. I'm just enjoying new content and muh graphics.
I feel like I'm in the minority on this one. But I'm having a hard time leaving my controller. I have my complaints, wuk Lamat isn't one, so far. I'm about to get to the 2nd dungeon myself. But considering how everyone is saying the start is too slow or so, feels like my reaction is different from everyone else's. We'll see in a few more days when I finish it. Irl gets in the way sometimes lol
It gets a lot better. I think this expansion just starts much slower since it’s a brand new story arch with a lot of new characters. Not going to lie, the first 5 hours were pretty rough to get through haha.
[удалено]
You're an awful player if you think the MSQ dungeons are savage. Just fyi. They stepped up the difficulty "slightly" but are no where close to savage. You are not qualified to speak on high level content. So don't.
Players when their story focused MMO is story focused.
That’s not the problem. The story is slow, bland and boring.
This expansion is Dogshit!!
I'll take the first few hours of dawntrail so far over the cringe sadboi "woe is me" storyline of endwalker, along with endwalker having the most abysmal post expansion content the game has ever seen. Most of the playerbase not playing the game for a year because there's nothing to do seems like a bigger issue than some long cutscenes in msq.
All the reviews I've read that were negative, and i read a lot of them, where people who barely played the story and just whining. None of the reviews had substance. "I didn't like it" or "it was bad" but no real reasons. So, people just want to be assholes and not give anyone who might actually be looking into it a reason not to. This is my stance on any game or any review. If you're going to take the time to put out a review, at least say something worth a damn and don't just "it was shit" and leave it at that. I disregard every single bad review i see on literally anything unless it has substance. Otherwise, I assume they're just butt hurt about something and wanted to bitch. lol. (obviously, that's just my opinion)
The music is god awful so far the quests are shit the 1st dungeon was terrible it feels like post EW quests as a expansion it better get better cz after post EW I had all but forgotten about the game
The only people hating the expansion are those that aren't done with it or can't look past 1 character. Only a moron would trust steam reviews in 2024. Anyone can make a review there even weirdos who think playing 10 hours of a 50 hour story justifies them making a review of a game despite not being even close to done.
Dumb take. Of course, if the first 10 hours are bad, it needs to be in the review. From what I have seen from the reviews, the story itself 'can't look past one character
The fact that 4 morons upvoted your garbage take makes me scared for the future of gaming. A "review" is a full review. Steam is a meme. Anyone with a brain knows this. The fact that you aren't even aware of this makes anything you have to say void.
Sure genius