There's a lot more nuance to this discussion than what I get into in this video. The real problem for me is this game's questing, pacing, cutscene direction, and lack of gameplay during the MSQ. If you liked it then don't let me stop you, this is all subjective. I'm not here to tell you you're wrong if you liked it. I just needed to rant about this and move on so I can stop thinking about it. Here's to hoping the patch story grabs me!
great video tank you very much! i love final fantasy since the very first FF1, it was really cathartic to listen to you rant about what i felt too in my heart and soul. I would've said that i can agree to 90%, but the more i think about it the more i realize that i hate everything about the MSQ. I never felt so disappointed and insulted even tho i had very little expectations. The Zones were kinda boring ngl, especially tuliyolal and the music there doesn't click with me, i just sounds wrong to have this goofy monkey jazz casino music and Solution 9 feels like a seizure for my eyes. Playing the msq felt like a really bad april fools joke and i genuinely feel insulted by this despicable crap that we got from a literall bilion dollar company who can do way better also Final Fantasy and especially we as the player / mc of FF14 deserves way better. The only fun and good part in Dawnfail is actually the battlecontent, but this doesn't save the expansion for me. I'll never buy an expansion ever again until i saw who the writers are and what the story is about. I just can't take this atrocious shit anymore and even tho i started to like Wuk Lamat in Endwalker i skipped many cutscenes and quest because i got fed up so much like every other normal human being. Even the little Arcadion Raid quest was a million times better than the msq. I still don't know how i made it through the msq without getting drunk or harming myself to either forget this absolute crap or at least have a literal reason to feel pain instead of being tortured by a despicably bad written and executed visual novel that took away around 3 days of my life where i hated not only myself but my character ingame because we were force to like and walk with Wuk Lamat, might could have been better for me if we had the option to go with Koana, Thancred and Urianger but i believe they would have fucked them over to with to much or to less good writing and development too. Anyways, i guess i'm done with FF14 for the next 2 years until the next expac comes out, and then we will see if FF14 is done for good or was able to recover from this astronomical failure of an expansion...
You mean the real problem wasnt that Emet Selch overlooked dimensional fusion tech in the 9th..... you know the one thing he wanted to do fuse the shards, he just overlooked that?
That is a lame and boring angle. The WoL needs to separate himself from the scions and anyone else and stsrt his adventure fresh, meeting new people. Kinda like ARR at the beginning where the Scions were not 24/7 inbilved in everything
@@Yokai_Yuri Too bad they were already involved. If you're going to have an aspect of the story be that Thancred and Urianger are helping a competitor, then we should have actually competed with them at some point. Instead Thancred just knocks some rocks down.
This exactly. I was so disappointed. :( I'm more ok with DT's MSQ than most, but this was such a missed opportunity. I'd have thought Thancred and Urianger would've tried tripping us up more, they're the two most cunning Scions and all they could do was collapsing a tunnel...?
I thought it was funny they threatened to kick Bakool out of the contest on several occasions, for refusing to participate (like cooking tacos.) But releasing a dragon deity and threatening the lives of residents and contestants ...."Nothing to see here, carry on."
@lostwoodsstudios8270 particularly when we see Zoraal Ja getting disqualified for taking a swing at an elector- right after we just dealt with Bakool Ja Ja freaking kidnapping one.
after this part of the story my immersion was permanently broken. Like he just released this calamity that we are told over and over nearly destroyed the entire population of this land, and he immediately walks off as if nothing happened and we continue on as normal.
@@Keira_Blackstonehold on, Bakool Ja Ja didn't kidnap an elector, he kidnapped a claimant. And while I would see that as still being disqualifying, messing directly with competitors is presumably fair game for Gulool Ja Ja or at least the Head of Resolve
"Smile" has turned into an inside joke between my friends and I. The fact that that song was composed, recorded, mixed/mastered, and put into the game blows my mind. Did not anyone, at any point during the process, ask if this song actually fit the game? Or how the song would be perceived by the playerbase? Or if it was actually any good?
I've played since 1.0, and after bout 20 hours as well, I just skipped everything I was done. I think wuk lamat is one of the worst characters in all of FFs
Yak Tel was where I realized these writers where not the same as the previous ones. There was so much potential here, and they used none of it. I was expecting the story to delve into racism and favoritism. Between pairing her with Koana, dropping hints about the recipe in ridiculously easy to figure out ways, and the obvious mirror to the mamoolja's tribe superiority complex. Seriously, for what other reason would the writers EVER think that pairing Wuk with Koana was the right choice there. The second I saw they were gonna make pairs I thought "Oh cool, we'll get to learn about bakool, or zarool". Then they threw a curve ball with Koana "Okay, damn! Let's see what u do!". Then the Hrothgars start glazing us like *crazy*, "Oh I see where ur going, there's still some bad blood between the Hroths and Mamoolja isn't there?". And then??? Nothing. They did literally nothing with this setup. The hrothgars are a perfect tribe, and only the mamoolja had any bad intentions. Even the mamoolja did a 180 on their beliefs after 30 seconds of Wuk's kindergartner-tier speech.
To me, the pairing was so predictable (as if they chose to take the safe route). A more interesting move would have been to pair Wuk with Bakool so we get to learn about him a bit more and make his later attempt at a redemption arc more believable
I read a really interesting idea where we should've had Wuk Lamat partnered with Zoraal Ja to further emphasize their differences. Perhaps we could've also gotten some additional characterization between both characters and possibly some gap moe with Zoraal Ja genuinely trying to cook. It also would've allowed Bakool Ja Ja to stay in the race longer as he would just lean on Koana to do everything. also we should've focused more on koana in shaaloni and beyond. We had all this build-up on Koana fetishizing technology, then we got a cyberpunk dystopia where the people are slaves to the perfect technology capable of giving them extra lives....AND KOANA WAS MISSING FROM ALL OF IT???? HE JUST GETS A VOICED CUTSCENE RECAPPING EVERYTHING LATER???
God this, the filler parts of MSQ. Even Heritage Found cause we get told "Oh yeah 30 years passed!" Sweet can we learn anything? "No" Hate so many people acting like disliking DT is cause. "Oh Shadowbringers was built up! Oh its the start of a new arc!" I would agree...except many times they bring up ShB and DT about the WoL, the fact we go from no threat to invasion on the Source to possibly every effing shard. ShB had The First and The Source be in danger, EW had possibly every shard be in danger. Here every shard is in possible danget and that happens NEAR THE END OF THE MSQ!!! You can't say "Oh it's the start of a new story". A start would be more like 1.0/2.0, here I just got EW vibes and even in the final trial just went "Oh so we're pulling a Endsinger again huh?"
@@TheUrbanLegend52 Hmmmmmmmmmm EW vibes was more of "Everyone we ever helped in previous expansions came together to help us and everyone realised the meaning of existing". DT was more of "we start a new dynasty, resolve the inheritance dispute by defeating an Evil Empire and live happily ever after". Which is very close to ARR "We unite a divided continent by defeating an evil Empire and a new democratic dynasty is started." That said, Sphene is quite similar to Endsinger, but she lacked teeth tbh. Endsinger was turning people into monsters irreversibly and that danger of turning into monsters included WoL and the Scions, but Sphene didn't have that kind of power and was simpler. How messy DT is because - this is total speculation and my opinion - the directors didn't want the events in DT to affect whatever is coming later so the writer was forced to wrap Tural quickly in a small package that doesn't affect the later expansions. I think the main writers weren't done prepping for the next large arc and needed to buy time, hence the side writer taking over this expansion while the main MSQ writers work on the new arc.
It was the writers who had a summer vacation. Also I did feel emotional on the Krile and Erenville scenes, but I also thought they were very manufactured and abrupt scenes. Very much "are you crying yet?" cynical type of writing. The writers can't write a cohesive narrative, so they have to resort to templates and tropes, even then doing them poorly.
That explains why I felt nothing except fed up by that point. Blatant attempted emotional manipulation just makes my emotions close off as a result, so all I had left was raw cynicism.
The lack of gameplay during MSQ was something I really really felt doing it. I started attacking open world mobs just to break up the monotony lol. It was such a drastic difference for me, as I went through it as Viper, so I spent the first few hours leveling Viper to 90, and then doing MSQ where I did no combat for so long.
I agree. So many cutscenes I was gearing up for a solo duty and they never came. There was a perfect moment near the end where they could have repeated the "control each scion" thing from the end of Shadowbringers... and they didn't? During the horrendous level 91 quests I Was expecting to assume control of Wuk Lamat to break free from the captives... and she didn't? Some of the lowest points of the game could have been fixed by making very minor changes.
The MSQ unironically would have benefited with a “Kill x amount of ____” quests. It’s low hanging fruit when it comes to mmo design, but it would have actually made you do something other than talk
This is definitely a CS3 issue. They also made Final Fantasy 16 which is a single player action game but it has the exact same issues with pacing and long stretches of just cutscenes or fetch quests. As well as narrative beats that just end to start new ones that are only loosely connected.
@@Absreal99 I think there's a much better balance of gameplay to cutscenes but there still exists big pacing issues. Some big examples would be gathering materials like dirt for Mid's airship after the Titan fight and having to go through so many hoops just to retrieve Goetz's stolen trading licence to enter the Sambreque Empire in the later half of the game.
@@thepeanutter9972 I agree with your points in the DT Story and I think that FF XIV always had a Problem with pacing but FF XVI hasn't. Some Fetch Quest are ok in my opinion, I always did all the side Quest before progressing with the Story and even then thought it could be more. More Hunts, More Side-Quest, More interesting Things to see in the World. Maybe you are burned out with FF XIV because that Game can just be a big Fetch Quest :D
Wuk Lamat is such a simplistic character that focusing on her instead of good ones with already interesting backstories (Krile or Erenville) makes you hater her even more. The last trial is the representation itself of Wuk Lamat as whole, steals the show and makes you hate her because she doesn't deserve it.
That last part of the final trial with her forcing her way into the fight pissed me off. I read that you can literally stop attacking to let her finish the last 30%. Like....what?
I hate her even more every time I queue into the final boss trial. I mean, the fight is good, but fuck them that they included unskippable cutscenes with Wuk Lamat in that trial.
I wasn't expecting ShB / EW story telling, but I didn't think it would be like THIS. It's clearly 2 stories smashed together. This really would have benefitted from being entirely about the rite of succession and not some shard hopping extravaganza. We should have spent more time learning about Wuk, actually training Wuk to fight, questioning Wuk's motivations / outlook. Instead we stand there like a cardboard cut out and it leads to some really frustrating points (Zarool Ja being able to leave the capital after committing Regicide, even though we've stopped people for way less is just nonsensical. Not to mention they seemed to have tried to severely limit how strong our character actually is with some off cut comments, blatant overuse of Dynamis (Wuk fight against Bakool Ja Ja and the final boss fight) Not to mention we were basically lied to in the marketing. This was not a Vacation/Beach episode at all. Whether that was lost in translation is up for debate, but this is not a good expansion in terms of MSQ. It's even worse considering the actual gameplay/combat is the best its been in a while...
I would have loved a vacation msq. Some low stakes, some friendly competitions with our friends, some indiana jones like adventures in old ruins, some scavenger hunt for information about the golden city and about kriles heritage, maybe some interference of a third party, flesh out the different people and culture of tural, some breathing worldbuilding. After EW i really didnt need another source threatening event but yeah... here we are again. from zero to doom within a handful quests. the only difference is the wold ending event in EW had a proper buildup whereas this event came out of the blue.
A big detail that explains the larger issue for me is the food scenes In previous expacs there often was a scene where you share a meal with the gang, it's a great way to do exposition that would otherwise be a bit boring, it's great character building, fun lighthearted moments, it really helps a lot with the pacing, setting the stakes, you know *why* you're fighting etc. Dawntrail talks so much about the food and the culture, it's probably 10 hours dedicated to world building that couldn't bring me to care about any of these people, zero payoff.
SOMA and Black Mirror had outstanding takes on the horrors of AI created by copying human minds. Dawntrail was no SOMA, was no Black Mirror. It had the chance to say something amazing and profound with such a storyline, and it dropped the ball hard.
They could have pivoted extremely hard into the AI being a horrific being aspect and turned the story on its head. Alot of the story is a missed opportunity where I kept making up scenarios in my head that would have worked better in the story from a writing perspective. Wuk was incredibly naive and sheltered, not having her morals or beliefs challenged, and her having to defend those beliefs to the point where she either second guessed herself or had to grow beyond them was just...crap.
SOMA was such a damn good game. I bring it up as well whenever someone talks about Heritage Found and Living Memory being written well (It's not). DT is what you get when you take the same premise and take all subtlety and nuance out of SOMA's story.
I think what's stood out the most for me this expansion is how little anybody has talked about the story now that we're through it. Shb? EW? my friends and I spent HOURS talking about the story for weeks after finishing MSQ. DT? At most, I've had people say if they like it or not and then move on to endgame content without much else said. The highlight of this expansion has been by far and away the combat and encounter design. Which as a raider I'm totally fine with the tradeoff, but still sucks that MSQ was such a letdown.
Actually yeah you make a good point. Fact of there's no real discussion I had with anyone that wasn't just "Oh I hate/love Wuk Lamat". Like...yeah EW and ShB had meat. Effing hell ARR had some semblance of meat given its not base game, 1.0 is. I love the encounters but it says a lot I can't think any good quotes compared to the last two expansions
Tbf, she didn't have many opportunities, given that she was there for mabye three fanservice scenes and a "We need 8 people for the trial" cardboard cutout for the rest
The ending zone where we kill a whole populated zone will never not rub me wrong, (new people built from the memories of the dead in EW got a restaurant and minizone but in DT got deleted???) but now that I’ve stewed on DT as a whole, they really screwed up the marketing. This was not the fun beach episode. The other scions were not our opponents and meaningful rivals in the competition. Krile and Erenville didn’t get character development beyond a few bits at the very end with dead parents. This story didn’t set up our next ten year plot like ARR had. Instead of building a new cast, it was all about Wuk Lamat and the scions being brought back to fill party slots. It felt like two tribe questlines were given a huge budget and badly stitched together and the devs called it a day.
I remember laughing at the cutscene at the very end that showed all the trailer moments, because it very much felt like it was only there so the the trailer didn't get them sued for false advertising.
Bringing the Scions back straight after Endwalker was completely unnecessary (Some- or all of them shoud have died in EW, their story was finished and it would have been a great end... OR make them disappear for more than 2 expansions before letting them show up again, to make it more interesting, but no...), not enough happens with them. They were practically not needed and they could have just established new, fresh characters instead...
the issue with the last zone was that it actually had some heavy implications, we gotta erase them because they're actively syphoning souls from actual living worlds and has to keep doing that. but then it turns into "let's learn from their culture" (something we've been doing the entire MSQ) and then FUCKING ERASE THEM FOREVER. also, it was nice a vibrant, the music was nice, then after the MSQ it's just grey bricks everywhere, wish they would just go and make an option to turn it back on (leave the NPCs out maybe) and put a disclaimer that canonically it's disabled and turned off and for MSQ reasons the story won't see it as turned on.
Like wtf are they going to pull now for the next expansion? The only setup really is the azem thingamabob. I think they should just use the patch msq to tie up any loose ends, actually say goodbye to the scions, and then actually, like for real, start anew. New reflection, new characters, new team.
@@DarkDyllon While I agree that erasing them forever was terrible even though they're already living dead (WoL should have released the souls from the soul cells and terminals back into the aetheric sea as a symbollic gesture), I understand why they did it. It was the story playing off the Yok Tuy philosophy of honoring dead people by keeping their memories of them in people who're still living. Like if they're forgotten, then they're really dead.
Immediately after arriving in Heritage Found and talking to the locals, I was waiting for any of our companions to ask about or discuss amongst ourselves why everyone had tech strapped onto their brains, and how there was obviously some mind control or linked hivemind or nefarious thought conditioning going on here, but it never came. It wasn't exactly hidden away, it's glowing and everyone there's got one, but I guess the writers just never thought that, out of Wuk Lamat, Erenville, Alisaie, Krile, and G'raha Tia, *any* of them might be curious about what exactly is going on with the headgear. Krile even comments along the lines of, "And it appears that [Sphene] is well loved in turn..." while all the time I'm looking over at her and thinking, "Maybe because they're electronically compelled to? I dunno, there's SOMETHING weird going on with that." and it takes seemingly forever before anyone actually broaches the topic.
It may have been a careless act of terrorism on his part, but Bakool releasing Valigarmanda while the WoL was in the neighbourhood might be the most big brain move in the entire MSQ.
I think the fairly poorly paced story highlights the fact that the world of the game, more so than other MMORPGs, is mostly devoid of engaging gameplay. FATEs and Hunts can only get this game so far, and if there's anything I wish they would tackle, it's making the world content more engaging. I hope they can get to this at some point, even if it takes them a few expansions.
the story really made up for this up to this point, and the fact that this was made by so many talented people and looked at and approved by multiple people is so sad….
I remember being part way through MSQ and telling my FC I felt bad, cause I just didn't care about the story and I have been skipping cutscenes. Especially since FFXIV story has been fantastic up to this point. The response i got was my FC unanimously agreeing with me, so then I didnt mind skipping cutscenes after that. I really hope the story ramps up
I played through ARR 9 times without skipping cutscenes. I cried during the Sorrow of Werlyt and Endwalker's Urianger moment twice each. I uninstalled after one time in Dawntrail.
Minor point: we don't have the key to the golden city at the end of the Skydeep Cenote dungeon. Galool Ja Ja thinks he has it in a vault or whatever but Zoraal Ja's advisor guy snuck it out. It does sure give narrative blue balls in that moment though I agree
Dawntrail made me cry, but not for a good reason. The final zone where we had to erase everyone, it physically hurt to do. Not because I was invested but because I had my own unresolved grief from things that had happened to me irl. It picked the wound open again and I genuinely felt sick. This is the first time this has ever happened to me playing a game, or even in other forms of media. I've cried over XIV, but this is the first time it physically hurt me. I had been fairly neutral about Dawntrail up until that point; not loving it but not absolutely hating it either. But that last push? That last push completely killed it for me.
THANK YOU! We need Ishikawa back on the active team than in a supervisory one. The only thing that gives me hope is what Jesse Cox said in his media tour that Yoshi-P will look at what worked and didn't work in the story and pivot if needed. We'll be rid of Wuk Lamat yet, we just need to be patient.
From what I've heard, Ishikawa is right now working on new game that developed by CBS3 and she's credited for Supervisor in DT (rumor that she's not involve in any writing or offer any opinion in it.)
Wuk is just a symptom of the actual problem: Hiroi's writing is terrible. He treated Dawntrail like a theatre play: everything exists to get to specific story beats to elicit specific emotional reactions and nothing else matters. Characterization and plot holes mean nothing. Hiroi is completely unable to put himself in the shoes of the characters he writes, which is what Ishikawa excelled with, and is what made the story so damn good. Every single character was unique, had depth, and you could tell every sentence they spoke sounded like something they would say in accordance to that character's ideologies, personality, and life experiences. In Dawntrail everyone is replaceable because they all talk the same way.
46:29 "Talking to Wuk Lamat, I'd rather be picking up poop out in the overworld. At least you have to go look for it" Such a savage burn dropped so casually.
Deep-lore wise it was fine, but you're right. The pacing, the writing, the missuse of characters, the BIZZARE choices of the story beats just kinda left me scratching my head. There were so many missed opportunities, so many ways they could've done this better. Which left me a little dissatisfied and dissapointed in the end, because based on past expansions they CAN do better. 😞
Deep-lore wise, I don't think it was actually fine either. Living Memory's existence brings up a couple of issues, namely the fact that the 12th is still in existence somehow. Maybe the ascians brought another reflection to the brink with levin and it isn't actually the 12th and they just neglected to ever talk about it, actually finish the job, or mention that it was actually a total failure like the 13th was because you have people (albeit a fairly small population) breaking the lifestream cycle and ruining the flow back into the Source. Not even touching on the many troubling implications of using souls as an expendable resource when recycling and reincarnation is a key factor of the life cycle, but eh, it's better to become friends with the rogue AI trying to undermine its kindness routines.
@@zxcvbnmasdfghjkl3377I was also curious about that, but I partially glossed over it because I’m not sure exactly what a world is supposed to look like when the ascians are done with it. The void was 100% engulfed and that was deemed a failure. The 1st was nearly engulfed and deemed almost a success. The only thing I could say with certainty is the living memory zone, after all the lights are turned off, seems suspiciously devoid of any lightning aether in the sky. As for souls breaking free from the lifestream, I’d say them rejoining was inevitable. According to Sphene the population was declining and they were running out of souls. Which is why they had to invade other reflections (which was impossible until Jarool Ja gave them the key).
@@Death2all546 I'd imagine a proper rejoining would involve all aether, souls, whatever, coming back to the source after the flood of aether breaks down the walls enough for such to happen. Presumably the 13th failed because they didn't do enough prep work on the Source as there was no dark Calamity, and the deluge only destroyed the 13th, and not the barrier. It's certainly possible that the aftermath of a rejoining leaves a husk of a planet behind after all aether and souls are returned, but the 12th isn't a husk, at least not at the moment Alexandria was melded to the Source. Alexandria has it's fair share of living residents, and Heritage Found is now riddled with levin aether. Those citizens and aether certainly had to come from the 12th, which implies it wasn't dead like Living Memory currently is. Even with time dilation, that timeline is impossible and certainly doesn't make sense to me. I agree with the souls rejoining, but the process obviously does something to the soul that makes it unusable for repeated uses. It only makes sense that souls are "burned" up as a sort of mgaic fuel when they're used. Otherwise, there's no reason for them to actually have a shortage, as you could simply capture the souls again on the return to the lifestream. There's a lot of ways for them to write this off, like souls simply dissapate so thinly that it can't be captured again until reformed naturally, but it certainly didn't get the attention deserved for how fucked up it is in the context of XIV.
Tbh I liked the first “act” with the rite of passage. It was kinda nice to explore the world and encouraged to talk to people. But after the whole Valigamandra event and the massive tone shift, it just felt like the structure needed to change after the succession ended. But when everything is falling apart, we’re still leisurely running around. I just feel like when the stakes changed and picked up, so should the pacing. I also agree with the Wuk Lamat and her bio father take - not because that often adopted children aren’t interested, it’s IN Wuk Lamat’s character to be interested. The fact that she is not was interesting but I kind of would like to see some more involvement in her thoguhts there. Once Gulool Ja Ja dies, I’m surprised they didn’t atleast examine her feelings on her biological father after that because it’s in her personality to connect with people. I felt like such a loss would make her reframe her perspective. And I do think they missed out on not making a new team of people to better reflect her journey mimicking Gulool Ja Ja’s but it felt like a missed opportunity. A lot of missed opportunities I feel. But again, I think the story was best when it was at that lighthearted lax pace, but when the stakes picked up and the structure remained slow paced, I felt disconnected.
The story felt like going through an IRL boring job. A literal job. wtf. Get new writers for the next expansion square Enix lol. Wuk Lamat was written like Naruto but for children. Cringe af.most people who play this game are old teens to adults. Who were target audience- who knows! Not me! What a waste of an expansion. Holy moly.
I agree with your take and I appreciate your honesty.. some people have made ffxiv their identity and feel personally attacked by a negative review of something that they themselves did not create.. a truly sad and unhealthy reality of the ffxiv community… good on you sir, and may you endure the inevitable criticism
@SILVERONIN ShB killed the community by going main-stream. It's bad enough I wonder if WoW didn't make the worst Xpac possible just to send the casuals over to shit up XIV.
Something that bugged me about this expansion were all the parent storylines. Unless I wildly misunderstood I thought Wuk Lamat didn't know about her biological father at all, and yet she had little to no reaction to meeting him or the threat of losing him? Gulool Ja Ja's death was so poorly written and again, little to no reaction from anyone to his death. Erenville, while I understand is a little more reserved, didn't shed a single tear learning about Cahciua's fate and ultimately when he had to turn off the tower. Then Krile, who was supposed to get more development in this expansion finally meets her biological parents and then loses them like an hour later, again little to no reaction. I didn't feel a thing shutting down Living Memory, which is sad because it could have been a really tragic and bittersweet storyline.
Of all the characters, Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja are the two that we should be able to relate the most. one of them was bred to be the way he is and the other is an enigma and the direct son of the ruler and both were held to such high expectations and if any of them failed it would make everything for them worse. And the same thing could be said about the WoL, if at any point we had failed we would have let down so many people and the Crystal Exarch held us to such a high pedestal and the timeline where he is from venerates the WoL as a legend. There was a chance for us to bond with the other contestants, instead of focusing on Lamat, we should have travelled with Krile and Erenvile and met the others through the zones and only properly get together once a dungeon or trial would happen. It would also allow us to talk with Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja and get to know them better and make Bakool Ja Ja's 'redemption' more believable.
Your thoughts mirror mine. It's assuring there are others out there willing to speak out and not feel afraid to critize because of the many cultists online with a low bar for story telling quality. Props man, the whole video was well done.
Don't worry, a lot of other people don't like the MSQ either. MSQ skippers won this round. I'll definitely watch the entire video and see what snags you experienced.
Honestly, on the last fight against sphene I thought "FINALLY WUK LAMAT IS NOT HERE" and then she swoops in the end. The real warrior of light. God she couldnt let me have one moment not even in the end. Guess I had to talk to more villagers. 0/3
It is her story, not WoL, this is a main character syndrome complaint and not the kind of criticism that could've improved the story. The scene was silly, though, she technically should've been there from the beginning or having her own separate fight off screen instead of some "jail" that she mary sue'd through. Like if we were fighting in different fronts, it's a kind of like a computerized memory zone where they could be fighting multiple versions of the same computer and working together to win against it.
@@riel0563why not? They've never done this before in an expac- having a character be an MC with such little impact/input from the WoL. SB and HW and ARR were much more focused on ensemble casts that directly interacted with you and each other. Never has FFXIV ever had a character take over like Wuk Lamat, and it is worthwhile feedback to give the devs that it didn't work for a lot of players and not to do it again.
@@elationedge2516 Because the real problem is not that the story was written with Wuk Lamat as the main character, the problem was the execution of that story. Heck not even the basic concept of the story was bad, but they let slow parts drag on for way too much. Another problem unrelated to Wuk Lamat being the MC, but still related to her is that she's basically done by the end of the expansion. Just like Vrtra, Ryne, Lyse, Aymeric, after their sections of MSQ, they become extreme background characters instead of constant characters. This means we will never get to actually see a character like her have her Alphinaud moment, nope her development has to be rushed and Mary Sue-ish to have a conclusion. If, for example, the story was focused on a new character like her and that character joins the group or makes a new group with new, and some old, faces instead of being "kween", then it could've focused more on her imperfections and throughout MSQ, even beyond DT, we see her evolve. This happened with Alphinaud, Tataru, Krile who got done dirty this expansion, Alisaie, etc. Funny enough even what I said only fixes how they wrote Lamat, if they actually didn't focus so much on exactly the same thing for 99 levels, she could've been actually developed, but the whole story was: meet new village, speak to 3 people that hint about their culture, Lamat talks about her dad and understands culture. Even when we were in the enemy's zone, we were like: "so this is how you farm and you have pretty sprinklers" instead of actually moving the story forward. Ok I wrote way too much...
@@riel0563 dude… news flash, the wol IS the main character… like it’s the fucking player character The guy who killed like 50 gods Who travels thrue time and space The guy who existence is a crux point in time and it’s devopement
Bakool committed an unforgivable atrocity. I was unable to view him as any kind of ally after that. Even Toriyama didn't expect us to forgive Vegeta that fast.
I agree, the Golden Gate not being explored immediately was WEIRD af hahaha. And the Wild West town was not well done admittedly. Sigh. WoL could've fought more. I was quite annoyed at Gulool Ja Ja's death and the fact that we let Zoraal Ja walk away without another duel, but I guess they needed a way to show Zoraal Ja's new power and make us hate him and chase after him. It was disappointing how they didn't allow us to fight in the train sequence to Heritage Found though, I wanted to man the cannons.
Yeah.. the tone and pacing of the MSQ was all over the place for me.. They themselves create a sense of urgency and put everything on a timer in the final zone.. but then all of a sudden wuk lamat wants to talk to ppl and learn about the zone.. as if we're just on a holiday.. why create that sense of urgency when the subsequent quests are going to be exploration and learning about ppl and places
A friend said its suppose to show her growth and refer back to her trail and why she became Dawnservant which okay sure....BUT WE HAVE TO RUSH A WOMAN IS JUMPING SHARDS AND IS KILLING PEOPLE TO KEEP HERS "Alive"
This infuriated me, after the first terminal was turned off I expected massive retaliation but nothing happened. The terminals were not even guarded, Sphene never even reacted nor acknowledged that everyone of her people were gone. Also playing through the deactivated zones, no music, no combat music, mobs you needed to go out of your way to fight, it felt like playing in dead space. It doesn't help our characters are taking countless people off life support, defenseless, unaware, innocent people. And this was from the same writers who gave the the Twelve Raid, the single most depressive and wasted raid to do where you kill the gods and leave the heavens empty but somehow we are supposed to feel good about what happened.
I have played this game since beta, and my disappointment in the story is nothing short of massive. It truly took the wind out of my sails for this game, because the story is what keeps me around and has kept me around since ARR. Even SB was better than this, and it definitely had its problems. I appreciate this video detailing the problems with the story and I sincerely hope that the team takes these to heart, because I dearly love this game but to see the drastic drop in story quality is very concerning and has shaken my faith in this game. Keep up the good work on the videos, sir!
I skipped most of the unvoiced dialogue because overall you already know what it's going to be "OMG THIS SUCK" "OMG WUK LAMAT DOING IT? NO WAY!" "OMG GUYZ I COULDN'T DO IT WITHOUT POWER OF FRIENDSHIP" ... like literally that can sum up bunch of the unvoiced dialogue in every zone... Like all I had to see is their expression and I knew ...
Yes, but also I think people need to let the writers know so they can work on it. It is currently salvageable imo. But again by end of dt I will really realize how I feel.
it's not recoverable for me. they framed the entire MSQ and raid story as if I'm supposed to be totally cool being friends with and helping an entire city of soul cannibals. And since it's a core component of the raid story, the MSQ straight up cannot fix the issue to my satisfaction. It'd be like if everyone in Eulmore knew what meol was the entire time and continued to eat it even after 5.0, and the raid was you fighting in a gladiatorial arena where your opponents ate special meol that transformed them into different killer sin eaters. It's goes so shockingly against my personal moral intuitions that I don't even want to log in anymore.
@@Keira_Blackstone that is pretty straight forward take on it. I do agree. It's pretty much like being put in a city of cannibals and then saying you just don't understand the culture 😂
Speak with Wuk Lamat. Multiply that by 140, and you get the MSQ. Erenville and Krile got robbed; their story was offloaded to the back end of the MSQ which pissed me off. We were promised a fight against the Scions but never got it. There isn't a single solo instance in DT for thr WoL, but there's one for Wuk Lamat where we have to step aside for her. It was boring. Shaaloani was a relief, because we finally got a break from Wuk Lamat for ... half the zone The final zone having a happy Disney song as you are committing genocide was hilariously jarring
>There isn’t a single solo instance in DT for the WoL The fact that you FORGOT that we fight Gulool Ja Ja at Lv 91 is telling. As is also that it took me like 10 minutes to remember too
Yep, way too much Wuk Lamat, not enough of the other characters. Absolutely agree. The other Scions basically being on our side by level 92 was... not something I was hoping to see. Galool Ja Ja was a nice encounter, it was fun. I realize this expac our character was supposed to take a backseat so solo instances with us being sparse I figured. The MSQ really should have concluded with the Dawnservant coronation. It all seemed horribly rushed, I realize they had to do Solution 9 to give us Arcadion... but did they have to rush everything? The last zone could have very well been post-DT MSQ. I... really didn't like the song for the last zone. Not for the feel, because it's going for a bittersweet feel. But the song was *so damn repetitive* like... I legit think it was just a 16 bar motif that wasn't given a proper beginning or end. I actually had to mute the bgm and start up some youtube vids because of how monotonous it was. EDIT: WAY TOO MANY STEALTH QUESTS.
Yeah it was overall by far the worst MSQ experience FF14 has ever had. - The gameplay was almost nonexistent but good when it was there. - The pacing was horrendous. - They seemed to have no clue whether to have any kind stakes or not, cause when they should have been there we were on tours or eating fake ice cream. - The writing was horrendous. - We, the player character, had almost no reason to even be there for any of the story, and neither did the established cast. - Smile gave me an ear infection. - I'm so done with the constant nodding/punching my hands together, and the tedious trope of having every character spout some timewasting nonsense or further nodding while whatever that song is called plays in the background to indicate we're about to finally do something meaningful. - The characters were all bland, 2d cutouts of a single character trait and experienced almost no growth whatsoever. Wuk Lamat being the worst offender. She never had any real pushback for her dumb worldview of hand-holdy disney so happy together crap. Alphinaud learned this with his crystal braves and didn't even deign to speak up about it. - Living memory and Sphene are incredibly weak carbon copies of Amaurot and Emet Selch respectively. That one idiot exclaiming "wooow" at the dumb fountain did make me laugh though. - The voiceacting from the main character was apocalyptically bad, but now apparently when you point that out it's because you're not supportive of the hypothetical contents of the VA's underwear... Sincerely hope SE fires everyone involved. Especially the writing team and Wuk Lamat's VA. Waiting 2,5 years after Endwalker for this... it's hard to put into words just how catastrophically embarrassing this is.
I really hated Living Memory. A hero is supposed to save people, not delete them for the greater good. And yes I know that they weren't technically alive but I don't care.
Oh god yeah the part about crops in Heritage Found! Like, I couldn't believe it, after all the exposition we got in the first part of the game, knowing the stakes at this point with Zoraal Ja sending troops into Tuliyolal, that we're suddenly being given a tour and being told how they grow crops.... like WHY?!? It was such a waste of our time, why do these writers think we care about stuff like this? It's like they deliberately broke up the pacing, at that point it was like they were laughing at us. I did start to get a bit more invested when we were introduced to Gulool Ja the little boy and Ser Otis, things started to pick up at that point, but it was a bit too little too late, and talking about crops is such a poorly placed piece of filler. I mean we literally get introduced to the resistance during this zone against Zoraal Ja, it would have made more sense learning about them, making this about infiltration and toppling Zoraal Ja, but no we get so much dull filler and I really did not care to learn about how they grew crops whatsoever, I can't imagine many were invested at that point.
The quest design in this expansion was terrible. They need to invest in quest designers to make the story more engaging. The first time we had a quest with that purple shadow we had to click on to indicate an upcoming battle was way more exciting than it needed to be.
As much as I enjoyed it myself and had tons of fun throughout the MSQ, I totally see your standpoint and with many takes I can't help but agree. DT, MSQ-wise, is deffo not for everyone. Fire vid, Vit 🔥
On the Lo-Fi Smile in Solution 9 I was constantly having a The Sims vibe, I loved The Sims but it is not what I want to feel in FF14 :D I just finished watching all the video and really felt all the same issues and feelings (or better say lack of them) so thank you for posting this video to give voice to a critic this game deserves to improve as it was with the 1.0.
I think the hardest thing for me to believe was that Zoraal Ja was that mad for 30 freaking years. Like it seemed like a number they just pulled out of nowhere for dramatic effect without taking a moment to think like....bro why would he be mad for that long that is a long ass time
Zoraal Ja used the dimensional relic to gain the power to take over Tuliyollal. Of course he spent those 30 years becoming stronger and amassing an army so he could do what he set out to do.
@@notGeist I don't think you understood. I'm well aware that he was mad for 30 years. But they failed to properly establish a motive for him to be mad for that massive length of time.
Personally, I think it came down to how unhealthily motivated he was towards becoming dawnservant. His trial shows (a bit too late imo) that he was basically raised with the expectation of being dawnservant as a 'miracle child' since two headed mamool ja were thought to not be able to sire children. Because of this conditioning, he was so motivated that he did not think of anything beyond simply becoming dawnservant. No laws, changes, simply conquest and rule over Tural. Again, I think some of these should have been revealed sooner in thr msq like Yotsuyu, but I can see why, even after 30 years, he would be pissed
This is my dark take on Zoral and gull ja as characters. Absolutely terrible. And gull jaja by default is terrible. Raised his kid to murder him because of what he pushed on him. And you know I could get over that. I could also accept it as thinking of like star wars sith ref. But he cut down his own son. He saw a vision of his boy and murdered him in cold blood. As a father myself, That took his character from something maybe understandable to absolutely dog $h!t as far as the writing goes. I don't know what his character was supposed to be but certainly not relatable to anyone. I would say nearly all the villains before had something you could at least relate to. Just so disappointing.
Yeah you'd think becoming a literal King of a tech empire would sorta make you view becoming dawnservant and destroying a provincial city as far beneath you.
People are way too emotional attached to the game that they won't allow any criticism about FF. But for the first time they are seeing and noticing than more and more people voiced their problems with DT msq than other highly praised expansions. You can see it on steam and FF forums. Don't deny it. This msq had a lot of issues and it didn't uphold to the high standard we have seen before.
It's because a very large portion of the player base are total losers and this game is their life (not trolling). So you make fun of the game, you are making fun of their life.
@@providencebreaker1558 had a decent amount of people who said that Wuk wasn't that bad of a character, even though she just is. how the story was "thrilling" even though it's anything but thrilling.
I’d say most if not all your points have pretty much nailed my gripes with it. Really weird music choices for cutscenes, story beats that could’ve been story cuts, add “un-earned” to pretty much anything to do with Wuk Lamat and you’re bound to be right, so many points where interesting things could’ve happened that get resolved literally a chat box later, story structure that after 7 expansions is entirely predictable to the point of hindering pacing. It was just, not good. More so for a game sold and praised heavily based on its story. Game play keeps people playing but story brings people back.
02:48 Amazon's Hazbin Hotel. There you go. Dawntrail's pacing isnt as bad Hazbin's, but still is pretty bad. EDIT: Also, saying "Id rather pick up piles of shit with my bare hands than talk to Wuk Lamat' is such a wild statement. I am using that now.
I did my playthrough off stream and I'm glad I did, because boy did I take a lot of breaks. I only just finished MSQ yesterday. Literally the thing that pushed me through was getting the normal raids done before reset. It was a slog in a way that FF14 hasn't been since ARR and that's just sad.
I was so excited for the new world since before we knew we knew it was called Tural. The cities of gold is one of my favourite childhood cartoons and I love meso-American mythology and history. I loved Wuk Lamat in 6.55. I love FF9. It honestly felt like this expansion was made just for me... and then it turned out to be a huge drag.
I would argue there hasn't been good pacing in FF14 since Endwalker. Moments that feel like they should have had room to breathe feel rushed. Moments that are like "Why should I care?" drag on for far too long.
This was the first DLC of mine that I experienced from Day 1 and I told myself that I'd stop skipping cutscenes and enjoy the story. I couldn't keep up my own promise, somewhere around half time through the MSQ I had to give in and just skip because otherwise I would still be stuck doing it
i have never skipped a msq cutscene, not a one. i have championed, begged, and gifted the full game to people with sub time and expansions just to get them to play it. i skipped most of Living memory, and have actively been telling people to not resub as the story isnt worth it.
The structure of FF14's MSQ in recent years (yes even Endwalker), is "we need to do this big exciting thing ...... but not quite yet. Go do 3 or so random unrelated quests then come back and talk to me."
To be fair as a guy who started with Shb as current expansion at the time,it's only really noticeable if you do expansions day 1. Which is why it's being talked about now, also they promised this expansion would be new so using same old plot structure is not a good idea.
I started playing 14 during 6.2, and watched all the cutscenes, did all the normal trials and raids as I leveled each job to 90 before dawntrail came out. I started skipping about halfway through dt msq. Wanted to just get to the end so I could start gearing up and try my first on-content extremes and get ready for the raid series. Just couldn't do it. I came in expecting it to be slow since it's being pitched as a whole new section of the world/setting up the start of a new '10 year' story. I thought the first half of arr was bad when going through it, this might be worse lol
@@SeventyVelle but why should we compromise? why is it that 1 expansion the combat is brain dead, but the actual main MSQ (6.0 for example) is excelent. but then they get the combat so right and completely screw up the MSQ in such a spectacular way.
first part of arr is pure gem you have weird masked guys doing weird things mundane stuff to solve political intrigue who you are? why you are here? etc way better than DT in so many aspects
One thing to add to something you said during the Heritage Found/Solution 9 section. Waiting around and wasting time while there was the massive threat looming above was Wuk Lamat's ENTIRE "plan" on how to defeat Zoraal Ja by luring him out of the tower. Just for nothing to come of it and we had to climb the tower anyway, and putting who knows how many lives at risk
I wish I could thumbs up this video more than once. Almost everything you said, is what my brother and I said during and after completing the MSQ. The only thing I would add is if we went to Living Memory right after we found it, the story would've been much better. What's sad is just about everyone rightfully complaining about the MSQ keeps putting the blame on Wuk Lamat or the low stakes story. When the real culprit is the MSQ structure. If it was actually fun to play through, I guarantee most of the complaints wouldn't exist. Heck there would probably have been praises since it would've been new and different from other expansions (even with a lackluster story). The game got away with this trash structure before because the story was simply so good it made you overlook/forgive it. Now that it's not strong enough to do that, everyone feels the pain whether they realize what the actual problem is or not.
My days of hardcore MMOing are behind me I'm a turbo casual story enjoyer in XIV so Dawntrail was a literal 0/10 for me as I had no raiding or other end game to look forward to after the MSQ. To be honest it was probably a -2/10 since it cost me money and robbed me of time while providing disappointment instead of enjoyment. You were more charitable to Wuk Lmao than me. I was neutral on her going into DT since it takes me some time to get invested in a new character or story. I was beyond done with her by the time we were in the giant zone and it never recovered. I took a week break after the wild west, when I came back and slogged out the rest I actually started skipping ahead of voice dialogue for the first time ever and eventually started just quick skimming the text and clicking through. The moment the credits rolled and that horrible rendition of the song played I escaped out (first time credit skipping too) and immediately logged off and unsubscribed since SQEN has embarrassingly bad feedback channels, basically just the public forums, so all I can really do to share my opinion is not give more money. Normally I stay subscribed all expansion, just to support the game, even though I don't play much between story patches. I won't be resubbing for 7.1 or 7.2. Maybe 7.3 if I'm hearing good things. Might just wait until the last .5 patch so I can binge the whole thing. XIV built up a ton of good will with me over the years so I'm certainly prepared to give them a chance to fix this but if they don't sufficiently acknowledge what a catastrophe this expansion MSQ was and drastically alter course I may not stick around for this next saga and just leave XIV behind with the good memories of ARR to EW rather than sour them with the bitter aftertaste of a failed part 2.
Watched the whole video and I can't believe how much I resonated with your views. Using that city as an analogy for Dawntrail was spot on. Also your experience with Wuk Lamat had me cackling. We're just living in Wuk Lamat's world. Maybe the post expansion story will redeem her. 🥴
8:52 They were here the legally obligated amount of time required to put as heavily into the marketing as they were without triggering false advertising thresholds is how it felt. Tis a shame, but you can replace Thancred and U-dawg (yep, I call him) with any other random NPCs, and, regrettably, nothing about the present story would change other than 'you dont recognize them'. They are just that not-important. I was okay with that, as I was expecting a slow, 'set the stage', but its poor narrative construction for dang sure.
my fix for the story is let wuk lamat be with her people after the attack on her people we team up with bakool and his redemption arc to beat zoraal make sphene an actual hivemind with no real body< who controls people as this evil queen eldritch horror thing then last arc we focus on krille and erenville and the theme is "what makes us who we are is it the soul or is it the memories" with tzhat sphene as a hivemind controlling peoples memories etc would fit in with the wol who also looks into diffrent memories
I'm so glad it wasn't just me having the irrational annoyance from Wut Lamat being the tank in Duty Support 😂 I was the same; I did not want to see her again. Solid vid though, and the one I resonate with the most so far: most of your views and angles on DT parallel mine. Let's hope this is just a stumble...
I got to the western zone...and then the quest started to be ABOUT Wuk Lamat even though she wasn't even there now and I was done. I put the game down, let my sub lapse and am letting my houses be demolished... Yoshi-P clearly demonstrated a lack of understanding of the criticism, so I have no anticipation of returning. This game was a huge part of my life for 14 whole years... i began in 1.0 open beta when it was still in Tanaka's hands. I stuck by it the whole time... and now I watched it abruptly die... Watching other people who agree with me that the story sucked is cathartic, and a part of my grieving process as I learn to let go of something that was so important to me...
Who did the environment design on Kozama'uka? The environment looks like someone just stuck trees together randomly and thought, "Job done, that looks like a forest." If I compare to the forest design of Janthir Wilds those look like forests rather than trees planted randomly. Then there's the matter of clusters of trees near each other that would supposedly be of the same species of tree with different pastel-coloured leaves despite supposedly getting their water source from the same spot. How? Has whoever designed this visual mess ever been to a park and seen trees? Even if it is a fantasy word things still have to make sense and those trees make none. The two-tone trees are valid if it's a fall situation, except no other foliage than that specific kind shows any sign of being affected by fall. If all the trees had that red/green foliage then they would at least look cohesive. I could buy that the trees with faded yellow foliage were further along the cycle than the red/green ones, except then you have verdant trees mixed into them and the extremely weird green/pink trees that make no sense when you consider the other trees. What really stands out to me is that one level further down you do have the cohesive trees you would expect from a forest. The palm trees all have the same tint of foliage and they're placed in a way you'd expect trees to be with wild forest on the edges and trimmed and cleared tree growth where people are supposed to live and walk.
They had this whole tural vidraal thing, they shouldve used it more in the story. Like when valigarmanda got released a lot of other vidraal woke up to compete with the valigarmanda and we'd have to hunt them down using erenville's gleaner knowledge and the scions. Krile got done dirty her story arc and the whole ff9 reflection deserved its own place like post content for example. They tried to cram too much in the MSQ leaving a lot of just content to read and move on to the next thing to read. They shouldve picked a few elements related to actually tural and save the rest for later.
I didn't mind the story, but that's still a massive step down from previous expansions where it's *still* fun to go back and watch people react to certain cutscenes. Absolutely nothing landed in Dawntrail. Bakool Ja Ja's big reveal is undermined by us having already seen that he is really average at best which makes the practice feel stupid and hollow in the first place. Gulool Ja Ja's death misses the mark because we apparently just allow it to happen. Sphene should have been just as heartbreaking as Elidibus as they play incredibly similar roles, unable to allow emotion to interfere with duty, but Elidibus shows us that emotion while Sphene just... clenches her fist, hesitates, then apologizes. If only they had made it obvious that Bakool Ja Ja was as strong as Zarool Ja and as smart as Koana, easily on track to win without cheating until we find out he doesn't want to win because he knows it will only encourage more death. If only Gulool Ja Ja took the fatal blow during a solo duty, protecting Wuk (or a downed party since everything was cliche this expansion, but father protecting daughter scene would be fitting too). Dunno how to adjust the Sphene plot. Probably a mix of pacing and sympathizing. Elidibus had a decade of pacing and a utopia to sympathize with. Sphene had 3 MSQ levels and a dystopia. I have no easy fix for that in the time it took me to type this out.
The issue with the Mamool Ja is that their existence is impossible with the conditions given. They constantly exist on resource scarcity, yet they had enough children to use one for a 1 in 100 chance while STILL giving birth to enough children to have their civilisation continue.
A couple major problems I had with dawntrail were with how we just sat on the sidelines. I enjoyed stomping bakool ja ja as Wuk Lamat, but other than that it was a slog. I do believe in second chances, but I don't believe that every person can be redeemed. We are the warrior of light, we smashed interdimensional menaces and we've been to the end of the universe. Why couldn't we just have killed him and took back the keystone? He threatened to kill Wuk Lamat afterall. Setting free Valigarmanda on purpose to me should have been a death sentence. Just. Kill. Them. Separately when you kill Zoraal Ja and your character did not PICK UP THE KEY! I was screaming at the screen for the first time in my life saying "There's loot! PICK IT UP!!" It was so infuriating to see Sphene just slowly walk over and pick up the dimensional rift key. That was 100% was preventable. Our character showed pure stupidity there and it was at that point I stopped caring. Wuk Lamat "I want to learn about everyone, even my enemies" Not me. Especially when the giants wanted to get in your way of fighting Valigarmanda and tried to kill you? Just. Kill. Them. Kill them and be done with it.
One duty, ONE where we took control of Wuk Lamat. If they wanted her to be the protagonist so damn much they should have given us more solo duties as her.
@@Mitheledh I still think it would have been less frustrating if instead of cutscenes watching her do stuff we controlled it. Obviously the ideal scenario would be just less Wuk Lamat in general, but if we're gonna have her forced down our throat I'd rather get some game play out of it instead of... sitting and watching.
i 100% agree, i was waiting for us to just kill bakool and take back everything. like oh he kidnapped her, cool beat his ass. he unleashed a minor diety on the city...kill him? threatened to kill another person in OUR DIRECT CARE...now we have to kill him. nope plot armor too thick
The biggest misdirection in marketing was Krile getting more of a spotlight in DT.....like....they did her so dirty. SO SO SO SO dirty :( The battle content, map design, and most of the music are the only things carrying this expansion. Edit: I feel ya on all of your points, while I did take my time to explore each zone, chatting with npcs, taking pics, fate farming, etc. to really drag it out as long as I could. Even I was just left upset with how the MSQ was handled....it had some good moments, but then had bad moments that just....really overshadowed those few good ones. For me, the MSQ has been done with the Zod/Hyda arc and completely okay with the rest of the world being a mystery so long as the battle content and side content continue to be as good as it has been with DT. Again, the battle content is truly carrying this expansion. And if the patch content continues to be as bad as base DT....I'm right there with ya on being a skipper. Usually I don't agree with skipping, but it's becoming likely I start doing that come 8.0. These patches determine it all in terms of my care for the story.
The story's pacing was constantly shooting itself in the foot. Whenever something excited was presented, the story said "now let's take forever to get to the fun thing!" WHY did we find the city of gold's entrance only to not go inside it immediately? That was such a stupid move.
Leaving the gate and going straight into the ceremony and the first use of "Smile".... I literally thought whatever was behind the gate had fucked with our minds and it was all a hallucination. It was so bizarre, so cringe, so nonsensical. Going from there into the Wild West with Erenville was the cherry on top. I just accepted that the story was a mess at that point.
@@DFell3 Yup it was such a horrible and honestly nonsensical decision. We were searching for it most of the story and then we find it, and delay going inside for as long as possible to the point the villain goes inside first. The entire second half of the story wouldn’t have happened like it did if we just WENT INSIDE once we found the place.
I feel all they needed to do in last zone is to make interaction with the Endless meaningful. As if Sphenes computing would negatively affect us as we are living beings in a virtual world. And we had the need to flip the switches to be on par with her. The switches then could require that we should soothe the woes of surrounding endless to be able to turn them off without them suffering for example. Or more like to leave a memory of ourselves, so we could belong in this virtual world without any trouble. Make it a quest like our light crystal shards in heavenward. Granted, that could make Aether currents quest and every other quest in the zone be mandatory for msq, but it would bear more sense than dilly-willy stroll in the park as it was.
At this point, the core of DT's issues could've been avoided if the Alexandria arc either: A) Got more time. The rite was such a slog, and I would HAPPILY bisect it for the better arc of this story. B) Was cut out completely, give the writers more room to flesh everything out. Wuk Lamat had no real business being the MC during Alexandria/S9. She just didn't fit in, and had an obligation to the people she harped about being dedicated to. C) Made into a separate expansion. Or at least, post-DT or raid(because Eden similarities are craaaaazy). From here, they can branch out to other problems in the story and characters.
Shaaloani was so disappointing. I took my first step into the region and just enjoyed the awesome zone music for a moment, excited to experience some story without Wuk Lamat in the spotlight. And we got this half-baked plot line with boring characters. The most hype moment was Estinien standing in the saloon doorway. Real bummer.
I was as well, like okay cool we left her behind now lets see whats next, then she comes bumbling in like a damn out of control idiot and just stumbles through the story and falls into all the right solutions.
This expansion feels like they wanted to make 2 different expansions, then Yoshi-P said no, we can't work on 2 at once, combine them and cut the needless stuff, and then frankensteined some monstrosity to fit the 1 expansion model. It obviously does not work
Bakool Ja Ja would have been executed much better if we were given more to relate to his character early on. They went with a full flip of his personality from cartoonishly evil to your friend in an extremely sudden way. Like with valigarmanda it perhaps would have made more sense if he released it by accident, or was pushed into doing it, or better still perhaps Zoraal Ja could have had a hand in it in an attempt to sabotage Bakool Ja Ja or something. But he released valigarmanda all by himself, knowing full well what the consequences would be, not thinking twice, no doubt in his mind, just going ahead with it, and it really takes you out of it, it not only makes you wonder how did he become a candidate in the first place but also why is he not in prison after that point, let alone not kicked out of the running. I thought the motivation behind his character was good and well written and I did like that reveal but it was executed so poorly with Bakool Ja Ja at that point. I also got annoyed that shortly after Koana just removes himself from the competition all of the sudden because he's just decided Wuk Lamat is better than him, for reasons I have yet to figure out. I get that he is effectively co-ruler so he does get some redemption there, but still that part where he shoots his own tablet to remove himself from the running just annoyed me.
I really cannot state how much i hated Living Memory and the entire quest there. It felt so rushed and yet so foot-dragging at the same time. We are in this area where we know that they will be fusing their shard with ours and are on a very definite time crunch. and yet we go off and eat popcorn, find ice cream, take in the sites, hell we even have time to stop and do a quiz game. then at the very end they say something like oh we made it just in time. I open palm slammed my desk and yelled, "NO SHIT WE HAD TO STOP AND BE FUCKING TOURISTS INSTEAD OF DEALING WITH A WORLD ENDING THREAT!" i gave 0 fucks about krile and eren's story here because i was just so torn out of it. I really think they should of moved this from the msq to the patch content and really given us time to explore the area and flesh out the story but instead it is a whole bunch of hurry up and wait. it felt like i was back in the military with being told hey this needs to be done and done now but btw before doing that go do these other non-essential things first. but make sure you do that other thing asap.
anybody else notice that if you just avoid dying, you can do any of the solo instances (where the warrior of light actually fights) without ever hitting an attack? So, does the warrior of light have to be there at all? nope.
There's a lot more nuance to this discussion than what I get into in this video. The real problem for me is this game's questing, pacing, cutscene direction, and lack of gameplay during the MSQ. If you liked it then don't let me stop you, this is all subjective. I'm not here to tell you you're wrong if you liked it. I just needed to rant about this and move on so I can stop thinking about it. Here's to hoping the patch story grabs me!
I enjoy gameplay and questing but pacing, cutscenes and direction is a problem too imo.
@marksconplaystasy7328bro you keep commenting this get a life lol
great video tank you very much!
i love final fantasy since the very first FF1, it was really cathartic to listen to you rant about what i felt too in my heart and soul. I would've said that i can agree to 90%, but the more i think about it the more i realize that i hate everything about the MSQ. I never felt so disappointed and insulted even tho i had very little expectations. The Zones were kinda boring ngl, especially tuliyolal and the music there doesn't click with me, i just sounds wrong to have this goofy monkey jazz casino music and Solution 9 feels like a seizure for my eyes. Playing the msq felt like a really bad april fools joke and i genuinely feel insulted by this despicable crap that we got from a literall bilion dollar company who can do way better also Final Fantasy and especially we as the player / mc of FF14 deserves way better. The only fun and good part in Dawnfail is actually the battlecontent, but this doesn't save the expansion for me. I'll never buy an expansion ever again until i saw who the writers are and what the story is about. I just can't take this atrocious shit anymore and even tho i started to like Wuk Lamat in Endwalker i skipped many cutscenes and quest because i got fed up so much like every other normal human being. Even the little Arcadion Raid quest was a million times better than the msq. I still don't know how i made it through the msq without getting drunk or harming myself to either forget this absolute crap or at least have a literal reason to feel pain instead of being tortured by a despicably bad written and executed visual novel that took away around 3 days of my life where i hated not only myself but my character ingame because we were force to like and walk with Wuk Lamat, might could have been better for me if we had the option to go with Koana, Thancred and Urianger but i believe they would have fucked them over to with to much or to less good writing and development too. Anyways, i guess i'm done with FF14 for the next 2 years until the next expac comes out, and then we will see if FF14 is done for good or was able to recover from this astronomical failure of an expansion...
The main town theme gives me flashbacks of 1990s chips ahoy commercials. Look one up and three seconds in you will get what I mean.
You mean the real problem wasnt that Emet Selch overlooked dimensional fusion tech in the 9th..... you know the one thing he wanted to do fuse the shards, he just overlooked that?
The fact that there isn't a boss fight with Thancred and Urianger, even for a dungeon, is such a missed opportunity.
Exactly. We were promised a fight against the other scions. Thancred and Urianger just peace out, and Yshtola disappears entirely.
That is a lame and boring angle. The WoL needs to separate himself from the scions and anyone else and stsrt his adventure fresh, meeting new people. Kinda like ARR at the beginning where the Scions were not 24/7 inbilved in everything
@@Yokai_Yuri Too bad they were already involved. If you're going to have an aspect of the story be that Thancred and Urianger are helping a competitor, then we should have actually competed with them at some point. Instead Thancred just knocks some rocks down.
@@MurakamiTenshi Seriously while doing MSQ, I was fantasizing about a cool trail where I fight koana, tancred and Urianger. That would have been dope.
This exactly. I was so disappointed. :( I'm more ok with DT's MSQ than most, but this was such a missed opportunity. I'd have thought Thancred and Urianger would've tried tripping us up more, they're the two most cunning Scions and all they could do was collapsing a tunnel...?
The ones who got a vacation were the MSQ writers
LMAO damn...
i thought the exact same, their brains went on vacation, not us, probably chat gpt writing...
@@bamboozled_again It's completely different (new) writers, the one that was the mastermind behind ShB and EW basically retired.
@@KainsAddiction Isn't it the same writer as Stormblood?
@@SotheAlbion No, Yoshi P said they are novice writers that worked on the beast tribe quest lines for Endwalker
I thought it was funny they threatened to kick Bakool out of the contest on several occasions, for refusing to participate (like cooking tacos.) But releasing a dragon deity and threatening the lives of residents and contestants ...."Nothing to see here, carry on."
That was so odd
@lostwoodsstudios8270 particularly when we see Zoraal Ja getting disqualified for taking a swing at an elector- right after we just dealt with Bakool Ja Ja freaking kidnapping one.
after this part of the story my immersion was permanently broken. Like he just released this calamity that we are told over and over nearly destroyed the entire population of this land, and he immediately walks off as if nothing happened and we continue on as normal.
Lol this, exactly. I was amazed that Gulool Ja Ja didn't fight him for doing that. Would've loved to see a fight between Gulool Ja Ja and Bakool Ja Ja
@@Keira_Blackstonehold on, Bakool Ja Ja didn't kidnap an elector, he kidnapped a claimant. And while I would see that as still being disqualifying, messing directly with competitors is presumably fair game for Gulool Ja Ja or at least the Head of Resolve
"Smile" has turned into an inside joke between my friends and I. The fact that that song was composed, recorded, mixed/mastered, and put into the game blows my mind. Did not anyone, at any point during the process, ask if this song actually fit the game? Or how the song would be perceived by the playerbase? Or if it was actually any good?
I don't think anything about this expansion was subjected to those questions
@@masterjoda999truer words have never been written😂
As an overall FFXIV story lover, this is the first expansion I was jealous of cutscene skippers.
I enjoy the story but this was an easy skip. Wuk Lamat is insufferable
@@cashman1228 it's the first time since 2.0 that I've skipped MSQ. I made it about 20 hours before I just couldn't take it anymore.
I've played since 1.0, and after bout 20 hours as well, I just skipped everything I was done. I think wuk lamat is one of the worst characters in all of FFs
I feel like an idiot for not skipping it.
I became a cutscene skipper by the end, Jesus Christ.
Yak Tel was where I realized these writers where not the same as the previous ones. There was so much potential here, and they used none of it. I was expecting the story to delve into racism and favoritism. Between pairing her with Koana, dropping hints about the recipe in ridiculously easy to figure out ways, and the obvious mirror to the mamoolja's tribe superiority complex. Seriously, for what other reason would the writers EVER think that pairing Wuk with Koana was the right choice there.
The second I saw they were gonna make pairs I thought "Oh cool, we'll get to learn about bakool, or zarool". Then they threw a curve ball with Koana "Okay, damn! Let's see what u do!". Then the Hrothgars start glazing us like *crazy*, "Oh I see where ur going, there's still some bad blood between the Hroths and Mamoolja isn't there?". And then??? Nothing. They did literally nothing with this setup. The hrothgars are a perfect tribe, and only the mamoolja had any bad intentions. Even the mamoolja did a 180 on their beliefs after 30 seconds of Wuk's kindergartner-tier speech.
To me, the pairing was so predictable (as if they chose to take the safe route).
A more interesting move would have been to pair Wuk with Bakool so we get to learn about him a bit more and make his later attempt at a redemption arc more believable
@@DilzwieldKingthey desperately needed to show Bakool have a soft spot for children before hand or something to elude to his background lol
I read a really interesting idea where we should've had Wuk Lamat partnered with Zoraal Ja to further emphasize their differences. Perhaps we could've also gotten some additional characterization between both characters and possibly some gap moe with Zoraal Ja genuinely trying to cook. It also would've allowed Bakool Ja Ja to stay in the race longer as he would just lean on Koana to do everything.
also we should've focused more on koana in shaaloni and beyond. We had all this build-up on Koana fetishizing technology, then we got a cyberpunk dystopia where the people are slaves to the perfect technology capable of giving them extra lives....AND KOANA WAS MISSING FROM ALL OF IT???? HE JUST GETS A VOICED CUTSCENE RECAPPING EVERYTHING LATER???
God this, the filler parts of MSQ. Even Heritage Found cause we get told "Oh yeah 30 years passed!"
Sweet can we learn anything?
"No"
Hate so many people acting like disliking DT is cause. "Oh Shadowbringers was built up! Oh its the start of a new arc!"
I would agree...except many times they bring up ShB and DT about the WoL, the fact we go from no threat to invasion on the Source to possibly every effing shard. ShB had The First and The Source be in danger, EW had possibly every shard be in danger.
Here every shard is in possible danget and that happens NEAR THE END OF THE MSQ!!!
You can't say "Oh it's the start of a new story". A start would be more like 1.0/2.0, here I just got EW vibes and even in the final trial just went "Oh so we're pulling a Endsinger again huh?"
@@TheUrbanLegend52 Hmmmmmmmmmm EW vibes was more of "Everyone we ever helped in previous expansions came together to help us and everyone realised the meaning of existing". DT was more of "we start a new dynasty, resolve the inheritance dispute by defeating an Evil Empire and live happily ever after". Which is very close to ARR "We unite a divided continent by defeating an evil Empire and a new democratic dynasty is started."
That said, Sphene is quite similar to Endsinger, but she lacked teeth tbh. Endsinger was turning people into monsters irreversibly and that danger of turning into monsters included WoL and the Scions, but Sphene didn't have that kind of power and was simpler.
How messy DT is because - this is total speculation and my opinion - the directors didn't want the events in DT to affect whatever is coming later so the writer was forced to wrap Tural quickly in a small package that doesn't affect the later expansions. I think the main writers weren't done prepping for the next large arc and needed to buy time, hence the side writer taking over this expansion while the main MSQ writers work on the new arc.
It was the writers who had a summer vacation.
Also I did feel emotional on the Krile and Erenville scenes, but I also thought they were very manufactured and abrupt scenes. Very much "are you crying yet?" cynical type of writing. The writers can't write a cohesive narrative, so they have to resort to templates and tropes, even then doing them poorly.
This right here, it felt like a 'gotcha moment' meant to make players cry
Like, why were there 3 family/mother scenes IN A ROW? 🤔
That explains why I felt nothing except fed up by that point. Blatant attempted emotional manipulation just makes my emotions close off as a result, so all I had left was raw cynicism.
The lack of gameplay during MSQ was something I really really felt doing it. I started attacking open world mobs just to break up the monotony lol. It was such a drastic difference for me, as I went through it as Viper, so I spent the first few hours leveling Viper to 90, and then doing MSQ where I did no combat for so long.
There was so little gameplay that by the time a dungeon would roll around I would legit be rusty with my class
I agree. So many cutscenes I was gearing up for a solo duty and they never came.
There was a perfect moment near the end where they could have repeated the "control each scion" thing from the end of Shadowbringers... and they didn't?
During the horrendous level 91 quests I Was expecting to assume control of Wuk Lamat to break free from the captives... and she didn't?
Some of the lowest points of the game could have been fixed by making very minor changes.
I do FATEs when I come across them, since that's basically the only action you get outside of dungeons.
The MSQ unironically would have benefited with a “Kill x amount of ____” quests.
It’s low hanging fruit when it comes to mmo design, but it would have actually made you do something other than talk
The one who got a real vacation and new adventure is Estinien
This is definitely a CS3 issue. They also made Final Fantasy 16 which is a single player action game but it has the exact same issues with pacing and long stretches of just cutscenes or fetch quests. As well as narrative beats that just end to start new ones that are only loosely connected.
I don't think ff 16 hast a Problem with pacing imo
@@Absreal99 I think there's a much better balance of gameplay to cutscenes but there still exists big pacing issues. Some big examples would be gathering materials like dirt for Mid's airship after the Titan fight and having to go through so many hoops just to retrieve Goetz's stolen trading licence to enter the Sambreque Empire in the later half of the game.
@@thepeanutter9972 I agree with your points in the DT Story and I think that FF XIV always had a Problem with pacing but FF XVI hasn't. Some Fetch Quest are ok in my opinion, I always did all the side Quest before progressing with the Story and even then thought it could be more.
More Hunts, More Side-Quest, More interesting Things to see in the World.
Maybe you are burned out with FF XIV because that Game can just be a big Fetch Quest :D
FF16 was made by the team that made Heavensward, supposedly
@@Absreal99I’ll have to agree with him in ff16. It’s either huge climatic set piece battle or boring fetch quests. There is no inbetween
the best part of having finished DT msq is that now you can watch others reviews putting the words of the frustration the story of DT leaved on you
Wuk Lamat is such a simplistic character that focusing on her instead of good ones with already interesting backstories (Krile or Erenville) makes you hater her even more. The last trial is the representation itself of Wuk Lamat as whole, steals the show and makes you hate her because she doesn't deserve it.
I can't even begin to express how annoyed I was when she forced her way into that fight.
That last part of the final trial with her forcing her way into the fight pissed me off. I read that you can literally stop attacking to let her finish the last 30%. Like....what?
@@Mitheledh an amazing fight ... phase switch and you hear fucking Wuk yell in lower caps and be like "why"
@@DarkDyllon I've been playing with Japanese audio since Stormblood, so the voice acting isn't an issue for me. I still can't stand the character.
I hate her even more every time I queue into the final boss trial. I mean, the fight is good, but fuck them that they included unskippable cutscenes with Wuk Lamat in that trial.
I wasn't expecting ShB / EW story telling, but I didn't think it would be like THIS. It's clearly 2 stories smashed together. This really would have benefitted from being entirely about the rite of succession and not some shard hopping extravaganza. We should have spent more time learning about Wuk, actually training Wuk to fight, questioning Wuk's motivations / outlook. Instead we stand there like a cardboard cut out and it leads to some really frustrating points (Zarool Ja being able to leave the capital after committing Regicide, even though we've stopped people for way less is just nonsensical. Not to mention they seemed to have tried to severely limit how strong our character actually is with some off cut comments, blatant overuse of Dynamis (Wuk fight against Bakool Ja Ja and the final boss fight)
Not to mention we were basically lied to in the marketing. This was not a Vacation/Beach episode at all. Whether that was lost in translation is up for debate, but this is not a good expansion in terms of MSQ. It's even worse considering the actual gameplay/combat is the best its been in a while...
I would have loved a vacation msq. Some low stakes, some friendly competitions with our friends, some indiana jones like adventures in old ruins, some scavenger hunt for information about the golden city and about kriles heritage, maybe some interference of a third party, flesh out the different people and culture of tural, some breathing worldbuilding. After EW i really didnt need another source threatening event but yeah... here we are again. from zero to doom within a handful quests. the only difference is the wold ending event in EW had a proper buildup whereas this event came out of the blue.
A big detail that explains the larger issue for me is the food scenes
In previous expacs there often was a scene where you share a meal with the gang, it's a great way to do exposition that would otherwise be a bit boring, it's great character building, fun lighthearted moments, it really helps a lot with the pacing, setting the stakes, you know *why* you're fighting etc.
Dawntrail talks so much about the food and the culture, it's probably 10 hours dedicated to world building that couldn't bring me to care about any of these people, zero payoff.
I also almost spit out my food when you said "this could have been an email" 🤣
SOMA and Black Mirror had outstanding takes on the horrors of AI created by copying human minds. Dawntrail was no SOMA, was no Black Mirror. It had the chance to say something amazing and profound with such a storyline, and it dropped the ball hard.
They could have pivoted extremely hard into the AI being a horrific being aspect and turned the story on its head. Alot of the story is a missed opportunity where I kept making up scenarios in my head that would have worked better in the story from a writing perspective. Wuk was incredibly naive and sheltered, not having her morals or beliefs challenged, and her having to defend those beliefs to the point where she either second guessed herself or had to grow beyond them was just...crap.
SOMA was such a damn good game. I bring it up as well whenever someone talks about Heritage Found and Living Memory being written well (It's not). DT is what you get when you take the same premise and take all subtlety and nuance out of SOMA's story.
I think what's stood out the most for me this expansion is how little anybody has talked about the story now that we're through it. Shb? EW? my friends and I spent HOURS talking about the story for weeks after finishing MSQ. DT? At most, I've had people say if they like it or not and then move on to endgame content without much else said. The highlight of this expansion has been by far and away the combat and encounter design. Which as a raider I'm totally fine with the tradeoff, but still sucks that MSQ was such a letdown.
Actually yeah you make a good point. Fact of there's no real discussion I had with anyone that wasn't just "Oh I hate/love Wuk Lamat". Like...yeah EW and ShB had meat. Effing hell ARR had some semblance of meat given its not base game, 1.0 is.
I love the encounters but it says a lot I can't think any good quotes compared to the last two expansions
Yeah, it was like finishing your job for the day, "so that's done now, moving on" 😢
Im just so proud of my self-ending cat, yshtola. Finally choosing not to end herself for one whole expansion 😂
Right? I mean our girls got like 6 more lives (cat facts) we'll see how long her streak goes!
Tbf, she didn't have many opportunities, given that she was there for mabye three fanservice scenes and a "We need 8 people for the trial" cardboard cutout for the rest
HAhaha I guess she got a vacation instead of us 🤣
The ending zone where we kill a whole populated zone will never not rub me wrong, (new people built from the memories of the dead in EW got a restaurant and minizone but in DT got deleted???) but now that I’ve stewed on DT as a whole, they really screwed up the marketing.
This was not the fun beach episode.
The other scions were not our opponents and meaningful rivals in the competition.
Krile and Erenville didn’t get character development beyond a few bits at the very end with dead parents.
This story didn’t set up our next ten year plot like ARR had.
Instead of building a new cast, it was all about Wuk Lamat and the scions being brought back to fill party slots.
It felt like two tribe questlines were given a huge budget and badly stitched together and the devs called it a day.
I remember laughing at the cutscene at the very end that showed all the trailer moments, because it very much felt like it was only there so the the trailer didn't get them sued for false advertising.
Bringing the Scions back straight after Endwalker was completely unnecessary (Some- or all of them shoud have died in EW, their story was finished and it would have been a great end... OR make them disappear for more than 2 expansions before letting them show up again, to make it more interesting, but no...), not enough happens with them. They were practically not needed and they could have just established new, fresh characters instead...
the issue with the last zone was that it actually had some heavy implications, we gotta erase them because they're actively syphoning souls from actual living worlds and has to keep doing that.
but then it turns into "let's learn from their culture" (something we've been doing the entire MSQ) and then FUCKING ERASE THEM FOREVER.
also, it was nice a vibrant, the music was nice, then after the MSQ it's just grey bricks everywhere, wish they would just go and make an option to turn it back on (leave the NPCs out maybe) and put a disclaimer that canonically it's disabled and turned off and for MSQ reasons the story won't see it as turned on.
Like wtf are they going to pull now for the next expansion? The only setup really is the azem thingamabob. I think they should just use the patch msq to tie up any loose ends, actually say goodbye to the scions, and then actually, like for real, start anew. New reflection, new characters, new team.
@@DarkDyllon While I agree that erasing them forever was terrible even though they're already living dead (WoL should have released the souls from the soul cells and terminals back into the aetheric sea as a symbollic gesture), I understand why they did it.
It was the story playing off the Yok Tuy philosophy of honoring dead people by keeping their memories of them in people who're still living. Like if they're forgotten, then they're really dead.
Idk why but I was mad when errenville mother just ignored him till the end after being dead for three years and not telling him . Mad me mad af
Immediately after arriving in Heritage Found and talking to the locals, I was waiting for any of our companions to ask about or discuss amongst ourselves why everyone had tech strapped onto their brains, and how there was obviously some mind control or linked hivemind or nefarious thought conditioning going on here, but it never came. It wasn't exactly hidden away, it's glowing and everyone there's got one, but I guess the writers just never thought that, out of Wuk Lamat, Erenville, Alisaie, Krile, and G'raha Tia, *any* of them might be curious about what exactly is going on with the headgear. Krile even comments along the lines of, "And it appears that [Sphene] is well loved in turn..." while all the time I'm looking over at her and thinking, "Maybe because they're electronically compelled to? I dunno, there's SOMETHING weird going on with that." and it takes seemingly forever before anyone actually broaches the topic.
a huge step back in writing quality
It may have been a careless act of terrorism on his part, but Bakool releasing Valigarmanda while the WoL was in the neighbourhood might be the most big brain move in the entire MSQ.
I think the fairly poorly paced story highlights the fact that the world of the game, more so than other MMORPGs, is mostly devoid of engaging gameplay. FATEs and Hunts can only get this game so far, and if there's anything I wish they would tackle, it's making the world content more engaging. I hope they can get to this at some point, even if it takes them a few expansions.
the story really made up for this up to this point, and the fact that this was made by so many talented people and looked at and approved by multiple people is so sad….
I remember being part way through MSQ and telling my FC I felt bad, cause I just didn't care about the story and I have been skipping cutscenes. Especially since FFXIV story has been fantastic up to this point. The response i got was my FC unanimously agreeing with me, so then I didnt mind skipping cutscenes after that. I really hope the story ramps up
I played through ARR 9 times without skipping cutscenes. I cried during the Sorrow of Werlyt and Endwalker's Urianger moment twice each.
I uninstalled after one time in Dawntrail.
Minor point: we don't have the key to the golden city at the end of the Skydeep Cenote dungeon. Galool Ja Ja thinks he has it in a vault or whatever but Zoraal Ja's advisor guy snuck it out. It does sure give narrative blue balls in that moment though I agree
Dawntrail made me cry, but not for a good reason. The final zone where we had to erase everyone, it physically hurt to do. Not because I was invested but because I had my own unresolved grief from things that had happened to me irl. It picked the wound open again and I genuinely felt sick. This is the first time this has ever happened to me playing a game, or even in other forms of media.
I've cried over XIV, but this is the first time it physically hurt me. I had been fairly neutral about Dawntrail up until that point; not loving it but not absolutely hating it either. But that last push? That last push completely killed it for me.
THANK YOU! We need Ishikawa back on the active team than in a supervisory one. The only thing that gives me hope is what Jesse Cox said in his media tour that Yoshi-P will look at what worked and didn't work in the story and pivot if needed. We'll be rid of Wuk Lamat yet, we just need to be patient.
From what I've heard, Ishikawa is right now working on new game that developed by CBS3 and she's credited for Supervisor in DT (rumor that she's not involve in any writing or offer any opinion in it.)
The good news is that the Japanese are fucking pissed about this too. They HATE Wuk, and feel this entire Xpac is terrible.
Wuk is just a symptom of the actual problem: Hiroi's writing is terrible. He treated Dawntrail like a theatre play: everything exists to get to specific story beats to elicit specific emotional reactions and nothing else matters. Characterization and plot holes mean nothing.
Hiroi is completely unable to put himself in the shoes of the characters he writes, which is what Ishikawa excelled with, and is what made the story so damn good. Every single character was unique, had depth, and you could tell every sentence they spoke sounded like something they would say in accordance to that character's ideologies, personality, and life experiences. In Dawntrail everyone is replaceable because they all talk the same way.
46:29 "Talking to Wuk Lamat, I'd rather be picking up poop out in the overworld. At least you have to go look for it"
Such a savage burn dropped so casually.
Deep-lore wise it was fine, but you're right. The pacing, the writing, the missuse of characters, the BIZZARE choices of the story beats just kinda left me scratching my head. There were so many missed opportunities, so many ways they could've done this better. Which left me a little dissatisfied and dissapointed in the end, because based on past expansions they CAN do better. 😞
Deep-lore wise, I don't think it was actually fine either. Living Memory's existence brings up a couple of issues, namely the fact that the 12th is still in existence somehow. Maybe the ascians brought another reflection to the brink with levin and it isn't actually the 12th and they just neglected to ever talk about it, actually finish the job, or mention that it was actually a total failure like the 13th was because you have people (albeit a fairly small population) breaking the lifestream cycle and ruining the flow back into the Source. Not even touching on the many troubling implications of using souls as an expendable resource when recycling and reincarnation is a key factor of the life cycle, but eh, it's better to become friends with the rogue AI trying to undermine its kindness routines.
@@zxcvbnmasdfghjkl3377I was also curious about that, but I partially glossed over it because I’m not sure exactly what a world is supposed to look like when the ascians are done with it.
The void was 100% engulfed and that was deemed a failure.
The 1st was nearly engulfed and deemed almost a success.
The only thing I could say with certainty is the living memory zone, after all the lights are turned off, seems suspiciously devoid of any lightning aether in the sky.
As for souls breaking free from the lifestream, I’d say them rejoining was inevitable. According to Sphene the population was declining and they were running out of souls. Which is why they had to invade other reflections (which was impossible until Jarool Ja gave them the key).
@@Death2all546 I'd imagine a proper rejoining would involve all aether, souls, whatever, coming back to the source after the flood of aether breaks down the walls enough for such to happen. Presumably the 13th failed because they didn't do enough prep work on the Source as there was no dark Calamity, and the deluge only destroyed the 13th, and not the barrier. It's certainly possible that the aftermath of a rejoining leaves a husk of a planet behind after all aether and souls are returned, but the 12th isn't a husk, at least not at the moment Alexandria was melded to the Source. Alexandria has it's fair share of living residents, and Heritage Found is now riddled with levin aether. Those citizens and aether certainly had to come from the 12th, which implies it wasn't dead like Living Memory currently is. Even with time dilation, that timeline is impossible and certainly doesn't make sense to me.
I agree with the souls rejoining, but the process obviously does something to the soul that makes it unusable for repeated uses. It only makes sense that souls are "burned" up as a sort of mgaic fuel when they're used. Otherwise, there's no reason for them to actually have a shortage, as you could simply capture the souls again on the return to the lifestream. There's a lot of ways for them to write this off, like souls simply dissapate so thinly that it can't be captured again until reformed naturally, but it certainly didn't get the attention deserved for how fucked up it is in the context of XIV.
Tbh I liked the first “act” with the rite of passage. It was kinda nice to explore the world and encouraged to talk to people. But after the whole Valigamandra event and the massive tone shift, it just felt like the structure needed to change after the succession ended. But when everything is falling apart, we’re still leisurely running around. I just feel like when the stakes changed and picked up, so should the pacing. I also agree with the Wuk Lamat and her bio father take - not because that often adopted children aren’t interested, it’s IN Wuk Lamat’s character to be interested. The fact that she is not was interesting but I kind of would like to see some more involvement in her thoguhts there. Once Gulool Ja Ja dies, I’m surprised they didn’t atleast examine her feelings on her biological father after that because it’s in her personality to connect with people. I felt like such a loss would make her reframe her perspective.
And I do think they missed out on not making a new team of people to better reflect her journey mimicking Gulool Ja Ja’s but it felt like a missed opportunity. A lot of missed opportunities I feel.
But again, I think the story was best when it was at that lighthearted lax pace, but when the stakes picked up and the structure remained slow paced, I felt disconnected.
The story felt like going through an IRL boring job. A literal job.
wtf. Get new writers for the next expansion square Enix lol.
Wuk Lamat was written like Naruto but for children. Cringe af.most people who play this game are old teens to adults. Who were target audience- who knows! Not me!
What a waste of an expansion. Holy moly.
I agree with your take and I appreciate your honesty.. some people have made ffxiv their identity and feel personally attacked by a negative review of something that they themselves did not create.. a truly sad and unhealthy reality of the ffxiv community… good on you sir, and may you endure the inevitable criticism
Sadly it’s become the paradise for people with weird sexual kinks and like to portray them in the shout chat
@SILVERONIN ShB killed the community by going main-stream.
It's bad enough I wonder if WoW didn't make the worst Xpac possible just to send the casuals over to shit up XIV.
Something that bugged me about this expansion were all the parent storylines. Unless I wildly misunderstood I thought Wuk Lamat didn't know about her biological father at all, and yet she had little to no reaction to meeting him or the threat of losing him? Gulool Ja Ja's death was so poorly written and again, little to no reaction from anyone to his death. Erenville, while I understand is a little more reserved, didn't shed a single tear learning about Cahciua's fate and ultimately when he had to turn off the tower. Then Krile, who was supposed to get more development in this expansion finally meets her biological parents and then loses them like an hour later, again little to no reaction. I didn't feel a thing shutting down Living Memory, which is sad because it could have been a really tragic and bittersweet storyline.
Of all the characters, Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja are the two that we should be able to relate the most.
one of them was bred to be the way he is and the other is an enigma and the direct son of the ruler and both were held to such high expectations and if any of them failed it would make everything for them worse.
And the same thing could be said about the WoL, if at any point we had failed we would have let down so many people and the Crystal Exarch held us to such a high pedestal and the timeline where he is from venerates the WoL as a legend.
There was a chance for us to bond with the other contestants, instead of focusing on Lamat, we should have travelled with Krile and Erenvile and met the others through the zones and only properly get together once a dungeon or trial would happen. It would also allow us to talk with Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja and get to know them better and make Bakool Ja Ja's 'redemption' more believable.
Your thoughts mirror mine. It's assuring there are others out there willing to speak out and not feel afraid to critize because of the many cultists online with a low bar for story telling quality.
Props man, the whole video was well done.
Don't worry, a lot of other people don't like the MSQ either. MSQ skippers won this round. I'll definitely watch the entire video and see what snags you experienced.
Honestly, on the last fight against sphene I thought "FINALLY WUK LAMAT IS NOT HERE" and then she swoops in the end. The real warrior of light. God she couldnt let me have one moment not even in the end. Guess I had to talk to more villagers. 0/3
It is her story, not WoL, this is a main character syndrome complaint and not the kind of criticism that could've improved the story.
The scene was silly, though, she technically should've been there from the beginning or having her own separate fight off screen instead of some "jail" that she mary sue'd through. Like if we were fighting in different fronts, it's a kind of like a computerized memory zone where they could be fighting multiple versions of the same computer and working together to win against it.
@@riel0563why not? They've never done this before in an expac- having a character be an MC with such little impact/input from the WoL. SB and HW and ARR were much more focused on ensemble casts that directly interacted with you and each other. Never has FFXIV ever had a character take over like Wuk Lamat, and it is worthwhile feedback to give the devs that it didn't work for a lot of players and not to do it again.
@@elationedge2516 Because the real problem is not that the story was written with Wuk Lamat as the main character, the problem was the execution of that story. Heck not even the basic concept of the story was bad, but they let slow parts drag on for way too much. Another problem unrelated to Wuk Lamat being the MC, but still related to her is that she's basically done by the end of the expansion.
Just like Vrtra, Ryne, Lyse, Aymeric, after their sections of MSQ, they become extreme background characters instead of constant characters. This means we will never get to actually see a character like her have her Alphinaud moment, nope her development has to be rushed and Mary Sue-ish to have a conclusion. If, for example, the story was focused on a new character like her and that character joins the group or makes a new group with new, and some old, faces instead of being "kween", then it could've focused more on her imperfections and throughout MSQ, even beyond DT, we see her evolve. This happened with Alphinaud, Tataru, Krile who got done dirty this expansion, Alisaie, etc.
Funny enough even what I said only fixes how they wrote Lamat, if they actually didn't focus so much on exactly the same thing for 99 levels, she could've been actually developed, but the whole story was: meet new village, speak to 3 people that hint about their culture, Lamat talks about her dad and understands culture. Even when we were in the enemy's zone, we were like: "so this is how you farm and you have pretty sprinklers" instead of actually moving the story forward.
Ok I wrote way too much...
@@riel0563 dude… news flash, the wol IS the main character… like it’s the fucking player character
The guy who killed like 50 gods
Who travels thrue time and space
The guy who existence is a crux point in time and it’s devopement
@@riel0563 We LITERALLY are the main character. What the fuck are you talking about?
Bakool committed an unforgivable atrocity. I was unable to view him as any kind of ally after that. Even Toriyama didn't expect us to forgive Vegeta that fast.
I agree, the Golden Gate not being explored immediately was WEIRD af hahaha. And the Wild West town was not well done admittedly. Sigh. WoL could've fought more.
I was quite annoyed at Gulool Ja Ja's death and the fact that we let Zoraal Ja walk away without another duel, but I guess they needed a way to show Zoraal Ja's new power and make us hate him and chase after him. It was disappointing how they didn't allow us to fight in the train sequence to Heritage Found though, I wanted to man the cannons.
Yeah.. the tone and pacing of the MSQ was all over the place for me.. They themselves create a sense of urgency and put everything on a timer in the final zone.. but then all of a sudden wuk lamat wants to talk to ppl and learn about the zone.. as if we're just on a holiday.. why create that sense of urgency when the subsequent quests are going to be exploration and learning about ppl and places
I was so mad when that happened.
A friend said its suppose to show her growth and refer back to her trail and why she became Dawnservant which okay sure....BUT WE HAVE TO RUSH A WOMAN IS JUMPING SHARDS AND IS KILLING PEOPLE TO KEEP HERS "Alive"
This infuriated me, after the first terminal was turned off I expected massive retaliation but nothing happened. The terminals were not even guarded, Sphene never even reacted nor acknowledged that everyone of her people were gone. Also playing through the deactivated zones, no music, no combat music, mobs you needed to go out of your way to fight, it felt like playing in dead space. It doesn't help our characters are taking countless people off life support, defenseless, unaware, innocent people. And this was from the same writers who gave the the Twelve Raid, the single most depressive and wasted raid to do where you kill the gods and leave the heavens empty but somehow we are supposed to feel good about what happened.
I have played this game since beta, and my disappointment in the story is nothing short of massive. It truly took the wind out of my sails for this game, because the story is what keeps me around and has kept me around since ARR. Even SB was better than this, and it definitely had its problems. I appreciate this video detailing the problems with the story and I sincerely hope that the team takes these to heart, because I dearly love this game but to see the drastic drop in story quality is very concerning and has shaken my faith in this game. Keep up the good work on the videos, sir!
I skipped most of the unvoiced dialogue because overall you already know what it's going to be "OMG THIS SUCK" "OMG WUK LAMAT DOING IT? NO WAY!" "OMG GUYZ I COULDN'T DO IT WITHOUT POWER OF FRIENDSHIP" ... like literally that can sum up bunch of the unvoiced dialogue in every zone... Like all I had to see is their expression and I knew ...
As a major FF fan I agree. Although I do think it’s more than recoverable so there’s that
Yes, but also I think people need to let the writers know so they can work on it. It is currently salvageable imo. But again by end of dt I will really realize how I feel.
it's not recoverable for me. they framed the entire MSQ and raid story as if I'm supposed to be totally cool being friends with and helping an entire city of soul cannibals. And since it's a core component of the raid story, the MSQ straight up cannot fix the issue to my satisfaction. It'd be like if everyone in Eulmore knew what meol was the entire time and continued to eat it even after 5.0, and the raid was you fighting in a gladiatorial arena where your opponents ate special meol that transformed them into different killer sin eaters. It's goes so shockingly against my personal moral intuitions that I don't even want to log in anymore.
@@Keira_Blackstone that is pretty straight forward take on it. I do agree. It's pretty much like being put in a city of cannibals and then saying you just don't understand the culture 😂
@@Keira_Blackstone People being this incredibly dramatic never fail to amuse me. You don’t want to log in because of story you didn’t like…? Lmao
buckle up bois, New vit video
Speak with Wuk Lamat.
Multiply that by 140, and you get the MSQ.
Erenville and Krile got robbed; their story was offloaded to the back end of the MSQ which pissed me off.
We were promised a fight against the Scions but never got it.
There isn't a single solo instance in DT for thr WoL, but there's one for Wuk Lamat where we have to step aside for her. It was boring.
Shaaloani was a relief, because we finally got a break from Wuk Lamat for ... half the zone
The final zone having a happy Disney song as you are committing genocide was hilariously jarring
>There isn’t a single solo instance in DT for the WoL
The fact that you FORGOT that we fight Gulool Ja Ja at Lv 91 is telling. As is also that it took me like 10 minutes to remember too
Yep, way too much Wuk Lamat, not enough of the other characters. Absolutely agree.
The other Scions basically being on our side by level 92 was... not something I was hoping to see.
Galool Ja Ja was a nice encounter, it was fun. I realize this expac our character was supposed to take a backseat so solo instances with us being sparse I figured.
The MSQ really should have concluded with the Dawnservant coronation. It all seemed horribly rushed, I realize they had to do Solution 9 to give us Arcadion... but did they have to rush everything? The last zone could have very well been post-DT MSQ.
I... really didn't like the song for the last zone. Not for the feel, because it's going for a bittersweet feel. But the song was *so damn repetitive* like... I legit think it was just a 16 bar motif that wasn't given a proper beginning or end. I actually had to mute the bgm and start up some youtube vids because of how monotonous it was.
EDIT: WAY TOO MANY STEALTH QUESTS.
@@Demon_of_Razgriz The only solace for the stealth quests is the absurdity of doing them while riding a huge mount
They were memories. Doesn’t count as genocide. All we did was turn the lights off
If future expansion continues to be like this, then for some people, free to play up to Shadowbringer if not even endwalker would be the way to play.
Sphene! Listen to me. You are breaking the car Sphene!
Yeah it was overall by far the worst MSQ experience FF14 has ever had.
- The gameplay was almost nonexistent but good when it was there.
- The pacing was horrendous.
- They seemed to have no clue whether to have any kind stakes or not, cause when they should have been there we were on tours or eating fake ice cream.
- The writing was horrendous.
- We, the player character, had almost no reason to even be there for any of the story, and neither did the established cast.
- Smile gave me an ear infection.
- I'm so done with the constant nodding/punching my hands together, and the tedious trope of having every character spout some timewasting nonsense or further nodding while whatever that song is called plays in the background to indicate we're about to finally do something meaningful.
- The characters were all bland, 2d cutouts of a single character trait and experienced almost no growth whatsoever. Wuk Lamat being the worst offender. She never had any real pushback for her dumb worldview of hand-holdy disney so happy together crap. Alphinaud learned this with his crystal braves and didn't even deign to speak up about it.
- Living memory and Sphene are incredibly weak carbon copies of Amaurot and Emet Selch respectively. That one idiot exclaiming "wooow" at the dumb fountain did make me laugh though.
- The voiceacting from the main character was apocalyptically bad, but now apparently when you point that out it's because you're not supportive of the hypothetical contents of the VA's underwear...
Sincerely hope SE fires everyone involved. Especially the writing team and Wuk Lamat's VA. Waiting 2,5 years after Endwalker for this... it's hard to put into words just how catastrophically embarrassing this is.
I really hated Living Memory. A hero is supposed to save people, not delete them for the greater good. And yes I know that they weren't technically alive but I don't care.
Oh god yeah the part about crops in Heritage Found! Like, I couldn't believe it, after all the exposition we got in the first part of the game, knowing the stakes at this point with Zoraal Ja sending troops into Tuliyolal, that we're suddenly being given a tour and being told how they grow crops.... like WHY?!? It was such a waste of our time, why do these writers think we care about stuff like this? It's like they deliberately broke up the pacing, at that point it was like they were laughing at us. I did start to get a bit more invested when we were introduced to Gulool Ja the little boy and Ser Otis, things started to pick up at that point, but it was a bit too little too late, and talking about crops is such a poorly placed piece of filler. I mean we literally get introduced to the resistance during this zone against Zoraal Ja, it would have made more sense learning about them, making this about infiltration and toppling Zoraal Ja, but no we get so much dull filler and I really did not care to learn about how they grew crops whatsoever, I can't imagine many were invested at that point.
The quest design in this expansion was terrible. They need to invest in quest designers to make the story more engaging. The first time we had a quest with that purple shadow we had to click on to indicate an upcoming battle was way more exciting than it needed to be.
Lol so true 😂
It’s sad I know exactly what quest you mean man
We were robbed of a cooking mini game and im still upset about it
As much as I enjoyed it myself and had tons of fun throughout the MSQ, I totally see your standpoint and with many takes I can't help but agree. DT, MSQ-wise, is deffo not for everyone. Fire vid, Vit 🔥
I should have just watched your video instead of playing through the MSQ. It sums it up perfectly.
Krile should have had more screen time or she should have been the main character.
On the Lo-Fi Smile in Solution 9 I was constantly having a The Sims vibe, I loved The Sims but it is not what I want to feel in FF14 :D
I just finished watching all the video and really felt all the same issues and feelings (or better say lack of them) so thank you for posting this video to give voice to a critic this game deserves to improve as it was with the 1.0.
I think the hardest thing for me to believe was that Zoraal Ja was that mad for 30 freaking years. Like it seemed like a number they just pulled out of nowhere for dramatic effect without taking a moment to think like....bro why would he be mad for that long that is a long ass time
Zoraal Ja used the dimensional relic to gain the power to take over Tuliyollal. Of course he spent those 30 years becoming stronger and amassing an army so he could do what he set out to do.
@@notGeist I don't think you understood. I'm well aware that he was mad for 30 years. But they failed to properly establish a motive for him to be mad for that massive length of time.
Personally, I think it came down to how unhealthily motivated he was towards becoming dawnservant. His trial shows (a bit too late imo) that he was basically raised with the expectation of being dawnservant as a 'miracle child' since two headed mamool ja were thought to not be able to sire children.
Because of this conditioning, he was so motivated that he did not think of anything beyond simply becoming dawnservant. No laws, changes, simply conquest and rule over Tural.
Again, I think some of these should have been revealed sooner in thr msq like Yotsuyu, but I can see why, even after 30 years, he would be pissed
This is my dark take on Zoral and gull ja as characters. Absolutely terrible. And gull jaja by default is terrible. Raised his kid to murder him because of what he pushed on him. And you know I could get over that. I could also accept it as thinking of like star wars sith ref. But he cut down his own son. He saw a vision of his boy and murdered him in cold blood. As a father myself, That took his character from something maybe understandable to absolutely dog $h!t as far as the writing goes. I don't know what his character was supposed to be but certainly not relatable to anyone. I would say nearly all the villains before had something you could at least relate to. Just so disappointing.
Yeah you'd think becoming a literal King of a tech empire would sorta make you view becoming dawnservant and destroying a provincial city as far beneath you.
People are way too emotional attached to the game that they won't allow any criticism about FF. But for the first time they are seeing and noticing than more and more people voiced their problems with DT msq than other highly praised expansions. You can see it on steam and FF forums. Don't deny it. This msq had a lot of issues and it didn't uphold to the high standard we have seen before.
I don't know who's disagreeing with you, but maybe i'm not looking hard enough or it's entirely on twitter.
It's because a very large portion of the player base are total losers and this game is their life (not trolling). So you make fun of the game, you are making fun of their life.
Are you just looking at twitter? Because obviously it's a completely different dimension. A lot of people everywhere I see criticise it.
@@providencebreaker1558 had a decent amount of people who said that Wuk wasn't that bad of a character, even though she just is.
how the story was "thrilling" even though it's anything but thrilling.
I’d say most if not all your points have pretty much nailed my gripes with it. Really weird music choices for cutscenes, story beats that could’ve been story cuts, add “un-earned” to pretty much anything to do with Wuk Lamat and you’re bound to be right, so many points where interesting things could’ve happened that get resolved literally a chat box later, story structure that after 7 expansions is entirely predictable to the point of hindering pacing.
It was just, not good. More so for a game sold and praised heavily based on its story. Game play keeps people playing but story brings people back.
02:48
Amazon's Hazbin Hotel.
There you go. Dawntrail's pacing isnt as bad Hazbin's, but still is pretty bad.
EDIT: Also, saying "Id rather pick up piles of shit with my bare hands than talk to Wuk Lamat' is such a wild statement. I am using that now.
I did my playthrough off stream and I'm glad I did, because boy did I take a lot of breaks. I only just finished MSQ yesterday. Literally the thing that pushed me through was getting the normal raids done before reset.
It was a slog in a way that FF14 hasn't been since ARR and that's just sad.
I was so excited for the new world since before we knew we knew it was called Tural. The cities of gold is one of my favourite childhood cartoons and I love meso-American mythology and history. I loved Wuk Lamat in 6.55. I love FF9. It honestly felt like this expansion was made just for me...
and then it turned out to be a huge drag.
I would argue there hasn't been good pacing in FF14 since Endwalker. Moments that feel like they should have had room to breathe feel rushed. Moments that are like "Why should I care?" drag on for far too long.
This expansion made me into a msq skipper and I didnt skip anything till DawnTrail happened...
This was the first DLC of mine that I experienced from Day 1 and I told myself that I'd stop skipping cutscenes and enjoy the story. I couldn't keep up my own promise, somewhere around half time through the MSQ I had to give in and just skip because otherwise I would still be stuck doing it
i have never skipped a msq cutscene, not a one. i have championed, begged, and gifted the full game to people with sub time and expansions just to get them to play it. i skipped most of Living memory, and have actively been telling people to not resub as the story isnt worth it.
Good video. Best part is you saying "type... stuff" instead of cursing ; charming!
The structure of FF14's MSQ in recent years (yes even Endwalker), is "we need to do this big exciting thing ...... but not quite yet. Go do 3 or so random unrelated quests then come back and talk to me."
Thats a realm reborn lol
The City of Gold being denied to us after everything we sat through to get there SUCKED.
Ikr, and zoraal ja came and claimed "reward" from us :(
TBH after playing the last zone i kinda wish it remained denied to us ._.
I always said the games flaws would come to the surface if the story ever nosedived. I didn't think it would happen this soon, though.
To be fair as a guy who started with Shb as current expansion at the time,it's only really noticeable if you do expansions day 1. Which is why it's being talked about now, also they promised this expansion would be new so using same old plot structure is not a good idea.
I started playing 14 during 6.2, and watched all the cutscenes, did all the normal trials and raids as I leveled each job to 90 before dawntrail came out. I started skipping about halfway through dt msq. Wanted to just get to the end so I could start gearing up and try my first on-content extremes and get ready for the raid series. Just couldn't do it. I came in expecting it to be slow since it's being pitched as a whole new section of the world/setting up the start of a new '10 year' story. I thought the first half of arr was bad when going through it, this might be worse lol
My exacts thoughts
@aykan5621 I will say though, I'll take the 3-5/10 story in exchange for this great fight content we've gotten lol
@@SeventyVelle but why should we compromise?
why is it that 1 expansion the combat is brain dead, but the actual main MSQ (6.0 for example) is excelent.
but then they get the combat so right and completely screw up the MSQ in such a spectacular way.
first part of arr is pure gem
you have weird masked guys doing weird things
mundane stuff to solve
political intrigue
who you are? why you are here?
etc
way better than DT in so many aspects
One thing to add to something you said during the Heritage Found/Solution 9 section. Waiting around and wasting time while there was the massive threat looming above was Wuk Lamat's ENTIRE "plan" on how to defeat Zoraal Ja by luring him out of the tower. Just for nothing to come of it and we had to climb the tower anyway, and putting who knows how many lives at risk
I wish I could thumbs up this video more than once. Almost everything you said, is what my brother and I said during and after completing the MSQ. The only thing I would add is if we went to Living Memory right after we found it, the story would've been much better.
What's sad is just about everyone rightfully complaining about the MSQ keeps putting the blame on Wuk Lamat or the low stakes story. When the real culprit is the MSQ structure.
If it was actually fun to play through, I guarantee most of the complaints wouldn't exist. Heck there would probably have been praises since it would've been new and different from other expansions (even with a lackluster story). The game got away with this trash structure before because the story was simply so good it made you overlook/forgive it. Now that it's not strong enough to do that, everyone feels the pain whether they realize what the actual problem is or not.
My days of hardcore MMOing are behind me I'm a turbo casual story enjoyer in XIV so Dawntrail was a literal 0/10 for me as I had no raiding or other end game to look forward to after the MSQ. To be honest it was probably a -2/10 since it cost me money and robbed me of time while providing disappointment instead of enjoyment. You were more charitable to Wuk Lmao than me. I was neutral on her going into DT since it takes me some time to get invested in a new character or story. I was beyond done with her by the time we were in the giant zone and it never recovered.
I took a week break after the wild west, when I came back and slogged out the rest I actually started skipping ahead of voice dialogue for the first time ever and eventually started just quick skimming the text and clicking through. The moment the credits rolled and that horrible rendition of the song played I escaped out (first time credit skipping too) and immediately logged off and unsubscribed since SQEN has embarrassingly bad feedback channels, basically just the public forums, so all I can really do to share my opinion is not give more money.
Normally I stay subscribed all expansion, just to support the game, even though I don't play much between story patches. I won't be resubbing for 7.1 or 7.2. Maybe 7.3 if I'm hearing good things. Might just wait until the last .5 patch so I can binge the whole thing. XIV built up a ton of good will with me over the years so I'm certainly prepared to give them a chance to fix this but if they don't sufficiently acknowledge what a catastrophe this expansion MSQ was and drastically alter course I may not stick around for this next saga and just leave XIV behind with the good memories of ARR to EW rather than sour them with the bitter aftertaste of a failed part 2.
you have to kill exactly 25 enemys during the msq outside solo instances and dungeons/trails
Watched the whole video and I can't believe how much I resonated with your views. Using that city as an analogy for Dawntrail was spot on. Also your experience with Wuk Lamat had me cackling. We're just living in Wuk Lamat's world. Maybe the post expansion story will redeem her. 🥴
8:52 They were here the legally obligated amount of time required to put as heavily into the marketing as they were without triggering false advertising thresholds is how it felt. Tis a shame, but you can replace Thancred and U-dawg (yep, I call him) with any other random NPCs, and, regrettably, nothing about the present story would change other than 'you dont recognize them'. They are just that not-important. I was okay with that, as I was expecting a slow, 'set the stage', but its poor narrative construction for dang sure.
my fix for the story is let wuk lamat be with her people after the attack on her people we team up with bakool and his redemption arc to beat zoraal make sphene an actual hivemind with no real body< who controls people as this evil queen eldritch horror thing then last arc we focus on krille and erenville and the theme is "what makes us who we are is it the soul or is it the memories" with tzhat sphene as a hivemind controlling peoples memories etc would fit in with the wol who also looks into diffrent memories
I'm so glad it wasn't just me having the irrational annoyance from Wut Lamat being the tank in Duty Support 😂 I was the same; I did not want to see her again.
Solid vid though, and the one I resonate with the most so far: most of your views and angles on DT parallel mine.
Let's hope this is just a stumble...
I got to the western zone...and then the quest started to be ABOUT Wuk Lamat even though she wasn't even there now and I was done. I put the game down, let my sub lapse and am letting my houses be demolished... Yoshi-P clearly demonstrated a lack of understanding of the criticism, so I have no anticipation of returning.
This game was a huge part of my life for 14 whole years... i began in 1.0 open beta when it was still in Tanaka's hands. I stuck by it the whole time... and now I watched it abruptly die... Watching other people who agree with me that the story sucked is cathartic, and a part of my grieving process as I learn to let go of something that was so important to me...
Who did the environment design on Kozama'uka? The environment looks like someone just stuck trees together randomly and thought, "Job done, that looks like a forest." If I compare to the forest design of Janthir Wilds those look like forests rather than trees planted randomly.
Then there's the matter of clusters of trees near each other that would supposedly be of the same species of tree with different pastel-coloured leaves despite supposedly getting their water source from the same spot.
How? Has whoever designed this visual mess ever been to a park and seen trees? Even if it is a fantasy word things still have to make sense and those trees make none.
The two-tone trees are valid if it's a fall situation, except no other foliage than that specific kind shows any sign of being affected by fall. If all the trees had that red/green foliage then they would at least look cohesive. I could buy that the trees with faded yellow foliage were further along the cycle than the red/green ones, except then you have verdant trees mixed into them and the extremely weird green/pink trees that make no sense when you consider the other trees.
What really stands out to me is that one level further down you do have the cohesive trees you would expect from a forest. The palm trees all have the same tint of foliage and they're placed in a way you'd expect trees to be with wild forest on the edges and trimmed and cleared tree growth where people are supposed to live and walk.
They had this whole tural vidraal thing, they shouldve used it more in the story. Like when valigarmanda got released a lot of other vidraal woke up to compete with the valigarmanda and we'd have to hunt them down using erenville's gleaner knowledge and the scions.
Krile got done dirty her story arc and the whole ff9 reflection deserved its own place like post content for example.
They tried to cram too much in the MSQ leaving a lot of just content to read and move on to the next thing to read. They shouldve picked a few elements related to actually tural and save the rest for later.
Absolutely great video dude. Dawntrail is the worst story of FFXIV for me, and very easily.
I didn't mind the story, but that's still a massive step down from previous expansions where it's *still* fun to go back and watch people react to certain cutscenes. Absolutely nothing landed in Dawntrail. Bakool Ja Ja's big reveal is undermined by us having already seen that he is really average at best which makes the practice feel stupid and hollow in the first place. Gulool Ja Ja's death misses the mark because we apparently just allow it to happen. Sphene should have been just as heartbreaking as Elidibus as they play incredibly similar roles, unable to allow emotion to interfere with duty, but Elidibus shows us that emotion while Sphene just... clenches her fist, hesitates, then apologizes.
If only they had made it obvious that Bakool Ja Ja was as strong as Zarool Ja and as smart as Koana, easily on track to win without cheating until we find out he doesn't want to win because he knows it will only encourage more death.
If only Gulool Ja Ja took the fatal blow during a solo duty, protecting Wuk (or a downed party since everything was cliche this expansion, but father protecting daughter scene would be fitting too).
Dunno how to adjust the Sphene plot. Probably a mix of pacing and sympathizing. Elidibus had a decade of pacing and a utopia to sympathize with. Sphene had 3 MSQ levels and a dystopia. I have no easy fix for that in the time it took me to type this out.
The issue with the Mamool Ja is that their existence is impossible with the conditions given. They constantly exist on resource scarcity, yet they had enough children to use one for a 1 in 100 chance while STILL giving birth to enough children to have their civilisation continue.
A couple major problems I had with dawntrail were with how we just sat on the sidelines. I enjoyed stomping bakool ja ja as Wuk Lamat, but other than that it was a slog. I do believe in second chances, but I don't believe that every person can be redeemed. We are the warrior of light, we smashed interdimensional menaces and we've been to the end of the universe. Why couldn't we just have killed him and took back the keystone? He threatened to kill Wuk Lamat afterall. Setting free Valigarmanda on purpose to me should have been a death sentence. Just. Kill. Them.
Separately when you kill Zoraal Ja and your character did not PICK UP THE KEY! I was screaming at the screen for the first time in my life saying "There's loot! PICK IT UP!!" It was so infuriating to see Sphene just slowly walk over and pick up the dimensional rift key. That was 100% was preventable. Our character showed pure stupidity there and it was at that point I stopped caring. Wuk Lamat "I want to learn about everyone, even my enemies"
Not me. Especially when the giants wanted to get in your way of fighting Valigarmanda and tried to kill you? Just. Kill. Them. Kill them and be done with it.
One duty, ONE where we took control of Wuk Lamat. If they wanted her to be the protagonist so damn much they should have given us more solo duties as her.
@@ScerttleNo, thank you. I was annoyed with her enough as it was by the end of the Msq. The last thing I needed was more of her.
@@Mitheledh I still think it would have been less frustrating if instead of cutscenes watching her do stuff we controlled it.
Obviously the ideal scenario would be just less Wuk Lamat in general, but if we're gonna have her forced down our throat I'd rather get some game play out of it instead of... sitting and watching.
i 100% agree, i was waiting for us to just kill bakool and take back everything. like oh he kidnapped her, cool beat his ass. he unleashed a minor diety on the city...kill him? threatened to kill another person in OUR DIRECT CARE...now we have to kill him. nope plot armor too thick
The biggest misdirection in marketing was Krile getting more of a spotlight in DT.....like....they did her so dirty. SO SO SO SO dirty :( The battle content, map design, and most of the music are the only things carrying this expansion.
Edit: I feel ya on all of your points, while I did take my time to explore each zone, chatting with npcs, taking pics, fate farming, etc. to really drag it out as long as I could. Even I was just left upset with how the MSQ was handled....it had some good moments, but then had bad moments that just....really overshadowed those few good ones. For me, the MSQ has been done with the Zod/Hyda arc and completely okay with the rest of the world being a mystery so long as the battle content and side content continue to be as good as it has been with DT. Again, the battle content is truly carrying this expansion. And if the patch content continues to be as bad as base DT....I'm right there with ya on being a skipper. Usually I don't agree with skipping, but it's becoming likely I start doing that come 8.0. These patches determine it all in terms of my care for the story.
The story's pacing was constantly shooting itself in the foot. Whenever something excited was presented, the story said "now let's take forever to get to the fun thing!" WHY did we find the city of gold's entrance only to not go inside it immediately? That was such a stupid move.
Leaving the gate and going straight into the ceremony and the first use of "Smile".... I literally thought whatever was behind the gate had fucked with our minds and it was all a hallucination. It was so bizarre, so cringe, so nonsensical. Going from there into the Wild West with Erenville was the cherry on top. I just accepted that the story was a mess at that point.
@@DFell3 Yup it was such a horrible and honestly nonsensical decision. We were searching for it most of the story and then we find it, and delay going inside for as long as possible to the point the villain goes inside first. The entire second half of the story wouldn’t have happened like it did if we just WENT INSIDE once we found the place.
I feel all they needed to do in last zone is to make interaction with the Endless meaningful. As if Sphenes computing would negatively affect us as we are living beings in a virtual world. And we had the need to flip the switches to be on par with her. The switches then could require that we should soothe the woes of surrounding endless to be able to turn them off without them suffering for example. Or more like to leave a memory of ourselves, so we could belong in this virtual world without any trouble. Make it a quest like our light crystal shards in heavenward.
Granted, that could make Aether currents quest and every other quest in the zone be mandatory for msq, but it would bear more sense than dilly-willy stroll in the park as it was.
102:30 Heritage Found and Otis should have absolutely been introduced sooner so we could get to know them better.
At this point, the core of DT's issues could've been avoided if the Alexandria arc either:
A) Got more time. The rite was such a slog, and I would HAPPILY bisect it for the better arc of this story.
B) Was cut out completely, give the writers more room to flesh everything out. Wuk Lamat had no real business being the MC during Alexandria/S9. She just didn't fit in, and had an obligation to the people she harped about being dedicated to.
C) Made into a separate expansion. Or at least, post-DT or raid(because Eden similarities are craaaaazy).
From here, they can branch out to other problems in the story and characters.
It’s better to pick up poop than speak to wuk Lamat (one more time). 😅 I agree
Shaaloani was so disappointing. I took my first step into the region and just enjoyed the awesome zone music for a moment, excited to experience some story without Wuk Lamat in the spotlight. And we got this half-baked plot line with boring characters. The most hype moment was Estinien standing in the saloon doorway. Real bummer.
I was as well, like okay cool we left her behind now lets see whats next, then she comes bumbling in like a damn out of control idiot and just stumbles through the story and falls into all the right solutions.
This expansion feels like they wanted to make 2 different expansions, then Yoshi-P said no, we can't work on 2 at once, combine them and cut the needless stuff, and then frankensteined some monstrosity to fit the 1 expansion model. It obviously does not work
Bakool Ja Ja would have been executed much better if we were given more to relate to his character early on. They went with a full flip of his personality from cartoonishly evil to your friend in an extremely sudden way. Like with valigarmanda it perhaps would have made more sense if he released it by accident, or was pushed into doing it, or better still perhaps Zoraal Ja could have had a hand in it in an attempt to sabotage Bakool Ja Ja or something. But he released valigarmanda all by himself, knowing full well what the consequences would be, not thinking twice, no doubt in his mind, just going ahead with it, and it really takes you out of it, it not only makes you wonder how did he become a candidate in the first place but also why is he not in prison after that point, let alone not kicked out of the running. I thought the motivation behind his character was good and well written and I did like that reveal but it was executed so poorly with Bakool Ja Ja at that point. I also got annoyed that shortly after Koana just removes himself from the competition all of the sudden because he's just decided Wuk Lamat is better than him, for reasons I have yet to figure out. I get that he is effectively co-ruler so he does get some redemption there, but still that part where he shoots his own tablet to remove himself from the running just annoyed me.
I really cannot state how much i hated Living Memory and the entire quest there. It felt so rushed and yet so foot-dragging at the same time. We are in this area where we know that they will be fusing their shard with ours and are on a very definite time crunch. and yet we go off and eat popcorn, find ice cream, take in the sites, hell we even have time to stop and do a quiz game. then at the very end they say something like oh we made it just in time. I open palm slammed my desk and yelled, "NO SHIT WE HAD TO STOP AND BE FUCKING TOURISTS INSTEAD OF DEALING WITH A WORLD ENDING THREAT!" i gave 0 fucks about krile and eren's story here because i was just so torn out of it. I really think they should of moved this from the msq to the patch content and really given us time to explore the area and flesh out the story but instead it is a whole bunch of hurry up and wait. it felt like i was back in the military with being told hey this needs to be done and done now but btw before doing that go do these other non-essential things first. but make sure you do that other thing asap.
I miss Ishikawa’s writing. This MSQ felt like it was written for children.
DISNEY song kinda confirms it
I, too, was going nuts with the pacing of the MSQ. It was so painful.
anybody else notice that if you just avoid dying, you can do any of the solo instances (where the warrior of light actually fights) without ever hitting an attack? So, does the warrior of light have to be there at all? nope.
I miss lyse now. I took her for granted. Smh