I love Dawntrail, you might like it too, or hate it, or somewhere in between, let’s talk about that.
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Good video, thanks!
Great video, thanks for posting!
Hello! Player of FFXIV since its early 1.0 days. Nice to hear a newer player's POV. I do feel Dawntrail was bad, the writing, the pacing, Wuk Lamat having zero growth, there being so many missed opportunities to make the story it better, all of it had so much wrong with it. It's not really about being new or not, imo, there just really are that many flaws with it. If you want an idea of why, I suggest you check Zepla's video on it, she explains it perfectly.
Combat wise I think people complain about it since back in the day, the jobs used to be much much more diverse and had a lot more going on that made them feel super different and unique. A lot of it has been dumbed down to the point of it all just feeling more similar to one another. I agree that they still feel diverse though, so I can see why you say they do too. But they don't as much anymore, they've certainly lost a lot of what made them truly feel very different, if that makes sense. So in this case, being newer definitely has made a different I think. On one hand, though, you've missed out on jobs being a lot more awesome. (Crafting used to be more intricate too on that note.) On the flip, at least you can be super happy with how it is now since you can't compare! I personally don't find it too big of a deal either way, I still enjoy the game. But I also think gamers just complain too much these days. Hey, it at least can never be worse than 1.0 was so there's that haha.
As to Wuk Lamat, I agree it's stupid to attack a VA. It's just never okay to do that. People online are unhinged. Seen this happen several times now. Big yikes. But, I do take issue, however, with how it feels they simply hired a transwoman to earn brownie points. It just feels so disingenuous cuz I don't think the VA did a good job at all. One should be hired for doing a good job, for being a right fit to the char they're to voice. I feel that didn't happen in this case. And that annoys me. Cuz I bet you they wouldn't have hired a man who came in to audition for Wuk's voice.
A badly written poorly executed story with really bad character development that leaves you just…hating…the character your forced to help. I would have LOVED competition between the scions and more involvement OF the scions in this because Wuk Lamat was just forced on us so hard and that character is just….horrible. She's an idiot, with no redeeming features, she's irresponsible, didn't care enough about her people to ever learn about them while she was growing up there, starts off arrogant and rude and pushy and completely cringe worthy and…the WOL is forced to help her and to take a back seat to her throughout a really disjointed and confusing story. Thank you for your video, I've played longer than you but not by too much…and…I love the dungeons, the raids etc for this expansion, the meat and potatoes are great…but ugh…I play FFXIV because I enjoy a good story…and Dawntrail had moments…Erenville and Krille definately saved me from just walking away from the MSQ more than once and both got just…shafted in favor of the insufferable moron that is Wuk Lamat….I…HATE that character, hate her…resent very much I was forced to help her through the story when I wanted to be on team Koana as soon as I knew there WAS a team Koana. I feel…my Warrior of Light…given the choice…would have turned her down flat…seen what an arrogant irresponsible childish brat she was and would have NEVER agreed to help her. I agree with you on several things too. The voice actress for Wuk Lamat did a great job…it wasn't her fault she was given a crappy character…that's on the writers…and picking on the actress seems pretty…foolish to m. I hope they can salvage it…it has potential…like you said…it's still fun…just…missed the mark. I think if they put Wuk Lamat aside, just…forget that character existed…let her go full background and focus on what people LIKED in this (The wild wild west zone, the Endless story around Sphene and bringing along the cyber and wild west parts? They'll win their fans back.
As a SCH main, I'm a bit sad that my job fantasy doesn't really exist in gameplay. It's just… put up shields. I'd love to have something based around mobility, warping people around (sort of like more "Rescue" type abilities), more geographic based shielding, SOMETHING for the fairy to do, etc. The job plays okay as is, but I'm sad that the lore of it doesn't match the gameplay.
Warrior is my secondary job. I'm a bit confused that WAR is the healing tank (even being able to heal other teammates), when its lore is "berserker." I'd love the job to be doing more damage or getting different abilities based on how high your health is, or getting bonuses based on how many enemies you have aggroed.
It's not that these jobs play poorly, but I'm a lore nerd and the gameplay may as well exist in a different world from the lore. I understand that giving weird abilities to a bunch of jobs will make balancing difficult, but I'd prefer to feel like I'm doing something uniquely SCHOLAR or WARRIOR or REAPER instead of "healer/tank/melee DPS." I did some monk and it played really similar to reaper while leveling. I wasn't as good with it because the buttons operated a bit differently, but they felt like the same thing in spite of that.
Another issue I have with the gameplay is the rote memorization. I got into extreme and savage in this expansion and quit pretty quickly. Most of that has to do with my FC static being waaaaay too casual for me (if I'm gonna practice, I want to PRACTICE and not joke around – I enjoy joking around, but there's a time for it), but the lack of dynamic strategy in fights sucks the fun out for me. I can play the Souls games and have a blast fighting Orphan of Kos or Dancer of the Boreal Valley, because every micro-change I make in a fight alters how it works. In FFXIV, it is a memorization game (usually after watching a guide). If it's just "step here at this time" for every mechanic, I don't see the point of attempting it. I was super excited to get in, but this is no different from playing one of those awful 2d platformers that require muscle memorization instead of any dynamic thinking. Some of this would be okay, but bosses have a total lack of dynamic or random attacks. Sometimes – sometimes! – the order of attacks will change, but it will still be from the same selection of three options, that require a memorization of where to stand for each tell. Bosses are almost always centered in the arena or on a wall, so positioning doesn't matter. Partners can be chosen ahead of time for pretty much all mechanics, so no dynamic thinking required if you did prep work. It's infuriatingly one-note, and comes down entirely to muscle memorization. Which I could learn if I wanted to… but I don't want to. It's boring.
The story is a complete disaster. There is nothing it does right. I'm not being hyperbolic when I call it the nadir of the whole FF franchise (I have played V-XIV, not counting XI). It is objectively awful, with a Black Hole Sue MC, a bunch of scions that have had their personalities and agency removed, and a world that makes less and less sense the more you look at it. I LOVE FFXIV AND ITS WORLD. I love the lore and exploring (although exploring isn't any fun in this game because you just fly/teleport everywhere after walking along a road one time). I love the mature, thoughtful stories we got with Fordola and Quintus and Vauthry and Nanamo and so many others (I'm mentioning fairly minor characters to emphasize how well even the small people are written in this game). There are low points, for sure. But there's never been anything as insulting childish as DT, and following such great storytelling as we have had on a pretty consistent basis, this hurts. I don't want to explore Tural, because everything I saw in the MSQ was so shallow. All of the nations we saw before were so much dirtier and less clear cut. Ul'dah had its class inequality and even an attempted revolution. Limsa had its antagonism towards the kobolds and sahagin. Ala Mhigo had its history of religious fundamentalism and takeover by Garlemald, and the more immediate history of people like Fordola that see themselves as more Garlean than Ala Mhigan. So on, so forth. I could pull out my Encyclopedia Eorzea and walk into these nations reading about the cultural significance of this statue or that lake, and soak in this rich world. But Tural's peoples are so simplistic that I just can't care at all.
I let my subscription run out on Christmas because I just… didn't want to be around Tural. Sure, there's the rest of the game, and I still love those zones and those memories. But Tural did sour my experience. I will come back, at some point. But right now, I need to step away, because I feel like the writers just spat in my face for wanting some character complexity and cultural complexity. And though the base gameplay is fun – if you're running roulettes, you're unlikely to remember the dances necessary for bosses from ShB onwards (everything before that is very simple after experiencing the wilder boss mechanics of later expansions), so I often find myself relearning on the fly – it is one element of the experience. The world and characters held up the game for me, and now they've been destroyed.
I'm starting Guild Wars 2, now. I came to XIV as a fan of Final Fantasy with no MMO experience. I think it's time that I try something else in the genre to see how it compares.
After ShB , everything is on repeat from crafting combat leveling gathering.
I was expecting stat would be overhaul but I got burnout so quick
Started in SHB because of the NieR collab. I hate DT because we're just stuck babysitting Wuk Lamat. I wouldn't have minded a slow story ala ARR to set something up for the next expacs. It was really just being stuck with Wuk Lamat that rubbed me the wrong way.
Can't say I agree with your take on the VA; the guy has been attacking and gaslighting other VAs and the audience for not liking Wuk Lamat, the song SMILE, or voicing particular characters 'correctly'. Equal rights, equal fights, and it was handled poorly. But that's my opinion.
Never trust a Youtuber's opinions. They make shit for content. When they whine and complain, it is for content. Even when there's a bit of truth to something they say, or they genuinely share their opinion, it will still be overblown for content. It is frustrating when they don't care about or will willingly abuse the influence they have over people that will watch their videos and accept what they say without thought.
No, XIV is not dying. Yes, Dawntrail was below average. Yes, there's a bit of a content drought/a lot of same-y stuff. The devs do care, and they do see what people say. FFXIV is an over-time game, things will not change quickly, we have to sit with disappointments for a while. Guess what? There's a whole rest of the world to interact without outside the game while we wait, even other games. If you can't get behind what XIV has at this moment, you can say your piece for the devs and then move on until the next update. It is not the end of the world or the game.
I ironically have a different perspective on the whole Wuk Lamat issue.
With me, i feel the problem with the narrative is the character bloat it has, mainly with the inclusion of the Scions which were completely unnecesary, and that the game would be better off if they didn't come at all minus Krile.
For all people complaining about Wuk Lamat never leaving us alone, i feel that with the Scions, whose story is already over, yet they keep showing up for every story that doesn't involve them in any way because it feels like the writters don't think we can pay attention if the story doesn't come from characters that we already have a prestablished appreciation of…
No, Alphinaud and Alisaie, i don't want to be dragging you like a puppy for another expansion, i thought you already came onto your own in the last one, let me have my adventure with my new friends who are having their own story, and let Krile be the one scion of this story to stick around, since she deserves that spotlight for once.
I don't even dislike the scions, but i feel i'm growing sick of their unscapable presence even after their development was over, now they just feel they're here just to be here and never leave us alone.
i caught the tail end of 1.0 and played since with 2.0 to current. My personal gripes are that the classes have essentially become the same as others of it's type with minor flavor differences with Heavensward being IMO the peak of character design. Tanks actually had to manage aggro by switching targets within the combo, taunting with Paladin flash, and doing more than standing still waiting for mechanics. The epitome of unique class design was Astrologian.
With Astrologian It's card mechanic then was more complex allowing for some amazing combinations. group wide damage coming? Use Spread to save a Bole, then before it happens use Royal Road and turn that single target mitigation boost into an AOE. Since Heavensward class designs have become more and more dumbed down to fit into a specific timeframe window that started at about the same time as a test. So it's rather sad to see how much they have changed, and the how same issues still plague them like healers where it's rare to ever use a GCD heal so they're stuck hitting 1 or 1-2 over and over.
To the Dawntrail story, to me it was a massive miss. I can be ok with a naive princess type character we teach or guide, but there has to be some actual growth and learning from it. Everything that happened with Wuk ended with 'it's ok cause the power of friendship'. She as a character never really grew. We provided no real guidance only nodded, making us being there no different from a cardboard cutout. We've done the mentor thing before back in 2.0 with the crystal braves. It was short only for a couple quests, but that felt like we were actually mentoring people. This…this just felt like I was watching a disney movie or Yu-gi-oh. Almost expected someone to yell about the power of the cards lol.
With the second half it was better with the intro to the cyberpunk-ish style which i loved. At least until you get to solution 9, and learn about how they deal with the souls. After the time in Shadowbringer and Endwalker how our character learns about the souls that should have been an instant negative, but again 'friendship' rears it's head. It also bothered me to see how empty the place was. For such a big area there were very few NPC's there moving about which just made it feel underused. Would love to have a house there.
To finish the rambling, Dawntrail missed not because it wasn't a Shadowbringer or Endwalker hype, but because it wasn't a ARR either. ARR may be a bit dry, but it set up the world, it's rules, and lore very well. The characters were well defined even if the ascians were a bit cartoony. I stopped playing after completing 7.0. I hope they make changes that make me want to go back as there are far more pickings now-a-days than there used to be. Good video though, loved the yapping, subbed. 🙂
No the game wouldn't be different if they didn't "update" the graphics and add extra temp servers, thats why you got the the graphics "update" so they have an excuse for their lackluster expansion due to working "so hard" on changing lighting and textures a little bit (i'm a modder, i know exactly what they have and haven't done) and even then they failed the faces and had to update them and give another fantasia out for free.
I dont think I need to add anything, you pretty much hit the nail on the head there. And for the record, I play for almost five years now. Did I like DT? It was… okay. It had its issues, I dont like the whole Solution 9 part (simply because I dont like SciFi – it took me years to warm up to the whole magitech stuff and this just isnt my cup of tea – which wouldnt be so bad if I didnt have to go there every day for my collectables -.-), I'm at odds with DT's childish writing (there is not a single ambiguous character, everyone is either good or bad – and if they are "bad" they'll turn good before long because Wuk Lamat just makes friends with everyone – and no, this is no critizism of the VA, who did a fine job most of the time, this is critizism of how the character was written), but overall… it was fine. It set the stage. DT is what ARR was: it introduced a new world, or at least a new continent. I would've preferred if the story would lead us elsewhere like the middle and southern Ilsabard or Meracidia, but hey, Tural has been on the menu for a decade, too, and I suppose we'll see the rest at some time.
I also dont think the game is "dying". After all, we just got brand new content: harder 24man raids have been a community request for years now, and though the patches take longer now… unless you have a house, there is no need to stay subbed the whole time. And there is enough to do. It might not be for everyone but lack of content is the least of FF14s woes.
the issue is that the honeymoon phase for alot of people has ended since alot of them caught up with the legacy content and the current release schedule is just way too slow.
It all depends on what you are looking for in an MMORPG. Me personally I want open world stuff, character building/progression and player interaction. While I love FF14's story, it does not hit these marks for me. To be fair, very very few MMOs do this right, especially the modern ones.
They call it "Yawntrail" beacause we're still waiting for the content lol. What I mean is it's a wonderful expansion, but the story was weak. The raids are amazing as well, even the new chaotic alliance raid! But waiting for months on months for even the slightest trickle of content I actually want to do is crazy! The only content at the end of DT currently is just catered to the high-end raiders. Like I'm casual and did all the extremes (Sphene EX is BS) but now there's kinda nothing to do. Farm wings that won't ever drop for me? Farm the raids for some meh armor and a mount? I'm just leveling all my jobs and even that's getting boring. I just want something to hook me in again, to make me want to play. And I don't mean more chores like island sanctuary.
It might truly be a lack of experience, but it is refreshing to hear someone not complain about Jobs 'being too similar'.
I play this since ARR. I agree with most of the comments regarding the Story line. Its boring compared to HW or ShB. But this game is already part of my life. Imagine 10+ years playing this game-Its hard to let go. The first thing I like about FfXIV is the music. ARR is very boring and because of the good music I was able to push through up to the end game and I never regret it. For Dawntrail-it maybe the worst expansion for most but it has a special place in my Heart. My favorit Final Fantasy is Ff9 and Dawntrail is a big tribute to Ff9 (The nostalgia!). Aside from that, I worked in a Home care before with lots of Dementia Patients and the "Living Memory Part" hit me BIG time to the point it made me very emotional. So I dont dont know with you guys. I love Dawntrail. SE is still cooking/baking the storyline so I am looking forward to the future patches.
The thing about "ok, so the story is over and here's some raids and, well, there's not that much endgame content" is the usual design. Dawntrail is my third "live" expansion and this is just how it goes; there's people who can tell you from memory what patches will bring which kind of goodies (dungeons, tribes, craftable equipment).
Many of us are used to games where expansions would be a single huge patch followed by some bug fixes. The next expansion, single huge patch etc. FFXIV works in a more staged way.
When people talk about play style similarities within the jobs, they mean the song and dance to appease the 2 min meta.
The meta follows: [intro burst] [filler] [burst at 2 min mark] [filler] [burst at 2min].. and you’re stuck doing this until the fight is over. The issue is the filler skills sometimes being brain dead and repetitive might feel similar in other classes even though it’s executed differently. You’ll notice it once you’re more experienced.
I personally don’t mind the 2 min meta but the team could be better about how to create skills that you don’t notice the repetition. I.e: summoner could’ve had more summons to alternate after every 2 mins that play differently instead of the current 3.
In terms of the other 2 classes: if you play healer, they’re all pretty homogenized with the exception of Astro (maybe) but even then in DT they tweaked it to play similar to the other healers. It’s so bad that pure healers gained shields and shield healers gained pure healing spells. Sage’s kit looks and works exactly to Scholar’s except you deploy smaller shields much quicker and you 1v1 heal with Kardia instead of random party heal with the Faerie. Even scholar gained the ability to become a white mage for 20 seconds with seraphism? It’s weird. Not to mention that the dps requirement is so minimal and the healing requirement is also minimal that playing healer doesn’t feel good unless you’re very new to the game.
Tanks all self heal, aggro, er.. do a small combo and rinse repeat. (I don’t play much tanks because it doesn’t interest me no matter how much I tried but it’s basically that.)
But yeah, this is just a somewhat condensed version of what people mean when they talk about the homogenization on the jobs.
Thank you! The game is fine. No expansion is perfect and Dawntrail is the beginning to another 10 years of playing, people need to learn to take a long term view rather than cry about what they don't have right now. The team has done amazing and ok things in the past, have some faith in them that they will do the best they can. Honestly with the story I think a lot of people who were used to being the center of attention were upset that another character was now on center stage making an ascension to something more. I personally think the juxtaposition of our perspective was really interesting. Is that how we appeared to the scions? Other people in life have their ladder to climb too, and maybe we should help them. This goes for real life as well as fantasy. Sometimes in life we're the main character, sometimes we're a POV character. Will things stay like this forever? Of course not, the game is a living game, constantly changing. When it comes to patches, they come out a little less frequently than before Endwalker, and that's fine too. All this content comes from people who have families and lives, I want them to not have to work Japanese work culture levels of hours just to feed the fanbase beast by burning their lives. I can be patient. Maybe people won't be satisfied until AI takes over all of gaming development so there's no end to content but not me. Things are fine, it's a game, a fun game even. If someone isn't having fun, there are other games, find what's fun for you. The drama reflects more on the community and their lack of maturity than the design team IMO. I Unsubbed from all the doomer weirdoes but you sir have gained a sub.
My honest of the game, excluding story.. I think the game content wise is better. I think this time they are trying to maintain people between major patches by adding the new chaotic raid. It is really fun imo, brings a challenge, nice rewards and good replaybility. I feel that I am so disconnected from the world tho, the game is hardly open world tbh, but still. A lot of things can be reworked or added to improve the out world content. Yea hunts are world content but thats and bicolor gems too, but come on, I can think of so many good things to be added for the world. It just feels dead to me. But anyway, the game is in a better place nonetheless, imo ofc.
As someone that has played a little longer than you, the doomers seem to always come out almost every 3-4 months after a patch comes out. I’m not happy with DTs story or content right now now, but it’s still a good game.
6:13 – On the subject of the combat feeling weird, it’s a few different things. The biggest of these things is Dawntrail’s dungeon bosses and Trials, for the first time in the game’s lifespan, started throwing out mechanics that expected players to know what hitbox snapping is, which is a technique that you, up to this point, did not need to know unless you were a Savage or Ultimate Raider. It’s been in the game since ARR and is one of the most important techs to understand if you’re a Black Mage player, but you were never asked to be capable of implementing it for story content until Dawntrail. If you see anyone say “Dawntrail is too hard”, that’s usually what they’re referring to.
– Another bit is that, on Dawntrail’s release, some of the Jobs had very weird or very clunky rotations that they simply didn’t back in Endwalker. Dragoon is one of them, and that one in particular got directly addressed in a later patch to make it more in line with the expectation of the Job’s combat flow. Another example is Black Mage, which its mains feel lost its flexibility with how the entire kit got reworked for Dawntrail. It also doesn’t help that, in addition to this loss of playstyle flexibility, its damage output is so much worse than Pictomancer. You feel like you’re putting in more work for less output when Black Mage has always provided the opposite experience prior to this.
8:00 – On the subject of “everything being DPS focused”, this is a necessary evil of FF14 that cannot be understood without context. You’re gonna hear a lot of people talking about job identity, praising skills that objectively need to be reworked or straight up overhauled, and even entire rotations being laborious for no payoff, and giving those things a pass because they are “unique”. In my experience, these individuals were not around when FF14 had a distinct focus on job identity, and how adherence to that focus almost killed the game as early as Heavensward.
– Dark Knight is the main punching bag for this, as its mitigation options were primarily for incoming sources of magic damage. OK, cool, but what if this raid doesn’t have outgoing magic damage? Do you just not bring Dark Knight? What about players who exclusively run Dark Knight? Do they just go kick rocks? These questions don’t matter in Shadowbringers – Dawntrail because content is streamlined. It doesn’t matter if your mitigation buttons don’t work, your Healers are so bloody good at their jobs that they’ll take care of you so long as you don’t die in one hit. These questions mattered back then because the raid scene was disproportionately difficult. You were not about to walk into a raid like Gordias Savage with any Job Class that could be considered dead weight. Not saying Dark Knight was specifically useless there, but you get the idea.
– The other side of this is the DPS focus. In the days of yore, the DPS jobs actually had to manage their own enmity, Healers too! You couldn’t unleash burst window after burst window with impunity. Doing more damage and accruing more aggro than the Tanks could keep up with would cause the enemy to shift its interest to you. Same with Healers; if you spammed heals, the amount by which you overhealed your comrades got converted into additional enmity. You’d either get a skill that outright reduced your enmity, or you’d get one that functioned the way Shirk does now. Aggro used to be a team responsibility; now the Tank just pops Tank Stance and, so long as you’re clicking buttons, you’ll never drop aggro.
The homogenization of this game was inevitable if it was to survive as a product. Regardless of my personal feelings on what older aspects should have remained and which should have gotten the axe, I do believe that, objectively speaking, most of the changes we saw from back then were necessary for the health of FF14. “Uniqueness” and “Job Identity” should never be synonymous with “bad game design” or “awful player experience”. We know the devs are capable of balancing Job Identity with competent design and gameplay feel because Dragoon’s been consistent for years now. Black Mage too…up until Dawntrail happened.
There is a lot to comment on about how the story of Dawntrail has been handled thus far, but I am not about to do that you or anyone else in this comments section. This post is already too long.
Wuk's VA is an idiot but it's not her fault that the character is written poorly or that the sound directors were incompetent, hope she becomes a more sensible person.
The game needs a bit more love especially when the game is squares cash cow it should have more quality content and less cash shop items. there should not be long waits between releases of content.
I really want to read and comment on every comment people make but I was ready for maybe at most 100 views and 10 comments so if I'm a bit slow trying to digest all these comments I apologize. Thank you all for sharing your viewpoints. 💙
I love this game i play it everyday. Been playing since 1.0. Yes dawntrail story sucked so i skipped it. But the game itself is fun. Im not a hardcore player and i dont need to be to enjoy my time in the game. Im excited to see where the next expansion takes us and the story. Yes im hoping itll be much better. Excited about beast master whenever that shit comes out. Soon hopefully
My current issue with ffxiv as a players whos been around since the beginning is that for the past probably 6 years they have released the exact same content, on the exact same release schedule; to the point you can perfectly predict every single piece of content we will get. The fact that trials, dungeons, raids, deliveries is all we get from this company is an absolute joke. With other mmos creating new fun content (i'll give the example of wow adding a battle royal) ffxiv just feels like the same old same old every single expansion with absolutely nothing new to offer. That should be viewed as unacceptable and i dont understand why we can go 6 years doing the same thing without complaining.
Some people really love the game and are worried about it (and they've been playing it far longer than you) and when they voice their concern you wanna call them a youtube grifter and to sit down and shut up? okay.
I think this game could review new player experiance in general. When I was trying it for two days, the experiance was just not fun. Especially coming out of ESO it was just .. awful. I never thought the one thing that would stick out like a sore thumb would be lack of zone chat, but because FFXIV has some sort of weird system .. the game had players in city standing and doing next to nothing, and only chat activity in two days I played was a guy offering to give away a spare carpet because they made two by mistake. The explained very little of it's combat, all side quests I did were essentially fetch quests … I was really dissapointed when even supposed class quest revolved around "Go find x monster few times and bring me trophies". Between all problems like lack of voice acting yet having cutscenes (I am not cutscene person), game not explaining much to me in good manner (text dumps are quite bad), not having any social activity to see (I didn't play free trial, I was gifted FFXIV) .. the game just appeared deserted. So I left and let my free month run out.
I get not liking Wuk Lamat for her inclusion within the story not good she's not interesting and her Voice acting for the Eng side is pretty bad (no shade on the VA personally) but i also look at DT like i did ARR and its the start and can build to something great.
A story driven mmo where the story fell off basically makes the players look at the other parts of the game with a more critical eye…and when the end game content doesn't take, comparatively, that long to complete before new content drops….you're going to have people drop off the game. FFXIV has had these problems for a while now and the story has had some downs before, but not to this extent. So now the problems with the game are more apparent then they were before since the game has lost the trust from it's community.
Also jobs being easier to play is because that means they can make the endgame content itself harder and more mechanically in-depth, I'm not saying I agree with doing it that way, but it does make sense.
DT story is pretty good, sure some of the dialogue is clumsy and the cutscenes definitely can be trimmed down, but people acting like the characters and story are terrible and full of plot holes are media illiterate.
To me it feels like they did a bunch of rewrites and things didn't gel, but someone (executives) forced it out the door.
I totally agree, thank you for sharing all that. I’ve played WoW, GW2, ESO and BDO, FFXIV still grabs me more than others.
I don’t think playing something else while stuff comes out is a big issue. They even encourage it.
I started playing the game when Shadowbringers released. During that time, I had learned that the community was really kind, helpful, and they didn't blow their lid if you messed up mechanics, you'd just try again if there was a wipe or something. around 2-3 years ago though, I noticed a huge tonal shift. People were becoming less patient with new players, there's been more and more of an expectation that even in the most casual content, you have to know mechanics even if it's your first time. I would see new players ask questions and instead of giving actual answers, people would tell them to google it and stop wasting everybody's time. It's kind of rare these days to see groups actually allow new players to watch cutscenes, because there's this weird sense of entitlement, when it used to be just common courtesy to wait and allow people to watch. Where I used to feel like everyone was joined in loving the game and helping each other, now it feels like people don't give a shit if you enjoy the game or not. Now it seems like if I join a daily roulette, there's always someone complaining about what duty we get, there's always someone trying to call out another player for messing up mechanics even if they're brand new to it. FC's feel disjointed, quiet, almost dead no matter where you go. I know that not all FC's are like that, but it seems like every time I join one, even if it had been going strong for years up to this point, it just falls apart in a couple weeks with fights among leaders and their officers, etc. Long story short, I kinda feel like the community has lost their patience, willingness to help, and understanding of the new player experience.
Classes in MMOs typically get overhauled or get cool mechanics and goodies when a big expansion drops. Best we get is a damage button usable once every 2 min. We also have no agency in how classes are played. It's literally just ''memorize your rotation until it autopilots'' and then do mechanics right. There's no experimentation or fun builds to try out with friends. Let people be creative when they want to, and let optimization folks play meta when they want to clear hard stuff.
To share a perspective, the last time I experienced FFXIV having good writing was when 6.0 dropped at the end of 2021.
At this point, it’s been a full 3 calendar years (2022, 2023, 2024) of CBU3 producing very unremarkable writing and… I just don’t care anymore. I’ve moved on to other books, movies, TV etc and CBU3 has completely fallen off my radar as far as storytelling goes. I can’t comment too much on the gameplay