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[Draugoth]

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail released into Early Access last week, and while its servers have miraculously (bar one brief hiccup) held up, Dawntrail's reception has been decidedly divisive so far.

First off, the expansion has "Mixed" reviews on Steam. We can see far more controversy in discussion hubs, though. The official forum is a hive of complaints, with some calling its story underwhelming and a "disaster and a waste of potential".

On the game's main subreddit, the best you can really find in favour is that it gets better after a dozen hours or so. The more critical "ffxivdiscussion" subreddit is, well, more critical, and "shitpostXIV" is on top form by being contrarian and mostly positive about the expansion, twelve bless.

Source

 

[March Climber]

Who wrote the story for this expansion? Is it the same person from the last one?

 

[Doomtrain]

A lot of people seem to be upset that the story doesn't rise to the climactic, world-in-peril stakes that Endwalker had, which is odd because that's deliberately the point. Endwalker was the finale of the entire first story arc FFXIV has been building up for its entire lifespan, and Dawntrail is meant to be a summer vacation palette cleanser to give us a breather before the next major story arc.

For what it's worth, I personally think the storytelling in FFXIV has always been a glacial snoozefest, and Dawntrail feels about the same to me so far.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Who wrote the story for this expansion? Is it the same person from the last one?

Same peeps as EW and XVI. From what I've read it has similar issues with story pacing. Based on what I know I think it's because at least for the first half of the expansion the story comes off more as Anime Filler and prioritizes Wuk Lamat as a Protagonist then it does the player. In a similar notion like it was with Zero in 6.X 13th Shard arc.

Largely that the story is boring but the gameplay is fun. At least for the new jobs.

There is of course division on the treatment og Healer jobs and the pruning of other jobs to make them more rigid like Monk or Black Mage.

Ishikawa who wrote previous expansions became a supervision role for the new writers but they either gave up trying to write given most of their characters were killed off or they have limited say in what the new writing staff does.

 

[Dr. Claus]

The story gets much better as you move further on, but they stated from the outset that this is a much lower stakes narrative and more of a "vacation" for the Warrior of Light. This is more akin to A Realm Reborn in terms of stakes than the last few which involved galaxy-expanding evils.

Its fantastic for what it is doing and Wuk has some great character development. To minimize as much spoilers as I can, you see her as an idealistic joke and slowly come into her own by the end.

Gameplay is much the same as it has been for the better part of a decade and continues to remain fun. But the loud minority will continue to cry as they tend to do and make it appear much larger than they are in reality.

 

[Zephyranthes]

I'll reserve judgement until I get to the end (currently at lvl 92 MSQ), but the early story pacing is rather slow, even moreso than the early parts of Endwalker. I get that this was a deliberate choice to have a more relaxing adventure, but the nature of it is really fetch-questy. It's got enough fun moments to keep me engaged, and I fully expect that the pacing will pick up eventually.

 

[Ozzie666]

Difficult to follow up from conslussion of the main story. Travel the universe, defeat the big bad. Then go on vacaction? Talk about taking a step back from killing Gods to whatever. To me the game is done.

 

[semiconscious]

appropriate. by the time they introduced male viera, i'd had enough (3 months worth)...

 

[Meicyn]

Who wrote the story for this expansion? Is it the same person from the last one?

Nope. She announced during one of the fanfests that she is not in charge of the scenario. She is working on something new. My guess is she’s been given Final Fantasy 17.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

I was pretty happy with Endwalker but I had no real urge to dive into this one just yet. Doesn't look like you're missing anything at all.

 

[Majima Everywhere System]

I tried, but I know the lows this community has hand-waived anway and it is fucking bleak. Anything not received well must be garbage.

 

[Revolutionary]

- story is framed as a competition to crown the new emperor of a new continent
- have a trailer that shows combat between contestants
- first 5 hours of MSQ is learning about trading alpaca fur and improving crop quality

It's easy to see why many folks are disappointed with the start of the expansion.

But I'm up to the level 96 quests and the story does improve. Quest structure, though? Not so much - it's the usual XIV fare sprinkled with a few new and returning gimmicks.

 

[Silver Wattle]

I can't even get the game to accept my steam decks controls as a controller.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The main story arc of over 10 years ended with Endwalker so I'm not sure what people were expecting here

After the main story arc of FFXI ended the same thing happened

 

[Dr. Claus]

- story is framed as a competition to crown the new emperor of a new continent
- have a trailer that shows combat between contestants
- first 5 hours of MSQ is learning about trading alpaca fur and improving crop quality

It's easy to see why many folks are disappointed with the start of the expansion.

But I'm up to the level 96 quests and the story does improve. Quest structure, though? Not so much - it's the usual XIV fare sprinkled with a few new and returning gimmicks.

Anyone expecting the quest structure to massively change or improve at this point needs to come back to reality. As much as I would love more instanced scenarios like the Thancred sneaking mission and the like, they will always be the special thing they do every once and a while. The majority will be the typical MMO fetch quests that *every single MMO* does.

 

[Revolutionary]

Anyone expecting the quest structure to massively change or improve at this point needs to come back to reality. As much as I would love more instanced scenarios like the Thancred sneaking mission and the like, they will always be the special thing they do every once and a while. The majority will be the typical MMO fetch quests that *every single MMO* does.

For those of us who have been playing from the beginning, 10+ years of fetch quests tends to wear thin. They occasionally try to spice it up with gimmicks, as I mentioned, but they usually aren't well received because the greater playerbase are only here for the story and pressing random buttons during combat. The reason why we won't get more Thancred MGS missions isn't because they're "special", it's because the aforementioned playerbase shuns when they try something new. Out In The Cold is probably the best MSQ instance they've ever done and it was hated by most lol

Anyway, I only brought up quest design because it's mentioned in the OP article, complaining about the stealth sections (surprise!).

 

[Raven117]

There wasn’t a chance this was going to live up to what Shadowbringers and Endwalker were building towards. (Just in terms of scale and story).

I’m looking forward to a fun vibe MSQ this go around.

Makes the stuff like Endwalker that much more potent. It can’t be all stakes all the time.

 

[JMZ555]

I was on the fence about picking the game up as I felt Endwalker was a great stopping point for me. But hype and fomo got the better of me.
Think I'm just at a stage where the zone to zone grind and general gameplay it provides is not enough for me anymore.

If anyone needs a cheap EU code for dawntrail send me a message, If i cant sell it i may just do a giveaway or something.

 

[Hudo]

My guess is she’s been given Final Fantasy 17.

Would be cool. I think she should definitely be part of FF17.

 

[Madflavor]

I tried, but I know the lows this community has hand-waived anway and it is fucking bleak. Anything not received well must be garbage.

FFXIV's fanbase has a genuine problem with toxic positivity. Many criticisms are handwaved away. You can see it on here.

"Oh well it's the vacation episode, the stakes are supposed to be low."

Ok but that doesn't mean it has to be boring, the pacing has to be worse than usual, and that it takes 20+ hours for the story to get interesting. Vacation episodes are supposed to be fun.

 

[West Texas CEO]

I can't even get the game to accept my steam decks controls as a controller.

 

[Dr. Claus]

FFXIV's fanbase has a genuine problem with toxic positivity. Many criticisms are handwaved away. You can see it on here.

"Oh well it's the vacation episode, the stakes are supposed to be low."

Ok but that doesn't mean it has to be boring, the pacing has to be worse than usual, and that it takes 20+ hours for the story to get interesting. Vacation episodes are supposed to be fun.

“Toxic Positivity” must be the new buzzword for “opinions that trigger me”.

If you don’t like it, cool. Sucks for you, but not every expansion is for everyone. I didn’t like Stormblood so I quit and played other games for a while. Personally, I enjoy DawnTrail. I like the slower pace (which does not mean poorly paced), and the Lower stakes (which again, does not mean no stakes). I enjoy Wuk’s character growth and the new cast. I like the revelations and mysteries.

I will say that the English voice acting for Wuk is fucking terrible. Thank god I play in JPN.

 

[Madflavor]

“Toxic Positivity” must be the new buzzword for “opinions that trigger me”.

If you don’t like it, cool. Sucks for you, but not every expansion is for everyone. I didn’t like Stormblood so I quit and played other games for a while. Personally, I enjoy DawnTrail. I like the slower pace (which does not mean poorly paced), and the Lower stakes (which again, does not mean no stakes). I enjoy Wuk’s character growth and the new cast. I like the revelations and mysteries.

I will say that the English voice acting for Wuk is fucking terrible. Thank god I play in JPN.

It's not a buzzword, Toxic Positivity has been around for awhile, and people within the fanbase have been criticizing the FFXIV community for having this mindset for years. So far Dawntrail's MSQ reception has been mixed, more so than any other expansion. So maybe there's something to people's criticisms. You can enjoy it on a personal level, but if a lot of people are disliking the direction the story took, the pacing, the formula being stale, the reluctance to take risks, and the finale being another retread of ShB and EW's final hours, then that should be something worth exploring. One of the most common sentiments I've been seeing from this expansion is the amount of people saying they're either been tempted to, or have actually started skipping cutscenes because of how bored they are with the MSQ. That's not good.

You're definitely right that every expansion is not for everyone. But it seems like Dawntrail missed the mark with a lot more players than usual.

 

[Zephyranthes]

“Toxic Positivity” must be the new buzzword for “opinions that trigger me”.

What is the value of dismissing valid criticisms? They quite often lead to improvements, and this applies to game development as well. I recently played Octopath Traveler 2, and that is a much better game than the first one because the developers took the criticisms to heart and took specific actions to address them. If the fan community is taking it too easy on their game of choice, then the developers will have less feedback to work with, which can lead to stagnation, and I would agree that there are elements of FFXIV that have grown stale and need to be challenged.

Funnily enough, one of the themes of Dawntrail is about self-reflection and being open-minded to constructive criticism.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

FFXIV's fanbase has a genuine problem with toxic positivity. Many criticisms are handwaved away. You can see it on here.

Oh I'm glad people are becoming more aware of this. This is also true for FF16 and FF7R.

Back when these games were released you could not make a single negative comment about them otherwise people would just shut you down.
People dismiss your comments as nostalgia, or that these older games were never good, or that every FF entry was a different genre, or that you're simply a negative, frustrated person.

Funny that a lot of those "positive" people can be more negative than those that get labeled as such.

 

[Mossybrew]

the storytelling in FFXIV has always been a glacial snoozefest,

Truth.

 

[Valt7786]

The first half is a completely uninteresting slog to get through. Once you get past the 95 dungeon it picks up and gets interesting again but it just takes a long time to get there.

I love the game generally but its time it had a big shake up in terms of quest mechanics and its main scenario stuff. Most of the main quests are always just "Go here, talk, go 25 feet over there, cutscene where nothing happens for 5 minutes" rinse and repeat.
And the endgame loop needs a rework too, it's been exactly the same for 10 years now.

 

[Revolutionary]

“Toxic Positivity” must be the new buzzword for “opinions that trigger me”.

What a joke. Toxic positivity has been an integral part of the XIV fanbase for the better part of a decade. There's nothing new about it.

I will say that the English voice acting for Wuk is fucking terrible. Thank god I play in JPN.

Careful, criticizing her English voice will get you labeled a transphobe by the positive community.

 

[Dr. Claus]

What a joke. Toxic positivity has been an integral part of the XIV fanbase for the better part of a decade. There's nothing new about it.

Careful, criticizing her English voice will get you labeled a transphobe by the positive community.

“Toxic positivity” is like “toxic masculinity”. It doesn’t exist.

 

[Revolutionary]

“Toxic positivity” is like “toxic masculinity”. It doesn’t exist.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

FFXIV's fanbase has a genuine problem with toxic positivity. Many criticisms are handwaved away. You can see it on here.

"Oh well it's the vacation episode, the stakes are supposed to be low."

Ok but that doesn't mean it has to be boring, the pacing has to be worse than usual, and that it takes 20+ hours for the story to get interesting. Vacation episodes are supposed to be fun.

Right on. I hate this “you just didn’t like it because you were expecting the wrong thing” excuse. From the first Dawntrail reveal they made it clear this would be a more “vacation” experience with lower stakes. I don’t think anyone was expecting something different.

Could it be that there was nothing wrong with players’ expectations, and that the execution just wasn’t that great?

 

[Dr. Claus]

 

[Madflavor]

“Toxic positivity” is like “toxic masculinity”. It doesn’t exist.

It absolutely exists. When you have a lot of loud people that reject, avoid, and suppress any valid criticisms, it creates an echo chamber of nothing but positivity, to which the creator can't see or hear the issues that are rising with the game and the community. This is bad for the overall longterm health of the IP, which makes it toxic. See Disney Star Wars. Any valid criticism is being rejected and suppressed as just a bunch of racists and misogynists who only hate Disney's take on Star Wars because of diversity.

What FFXIV is going through right now is a canary in a coal mine situation. The game is in no real danger of bleeding subs and losing a ton of players, at this time. But if they don't do better with the story, and they don't start addressing people's concerns with the game, their insistence of avoiding the issues and reluctance to shake up the formula will catch up to them.

 

[Dr. Claus]

It absolutely exists. When you have a lot of loud people that reject, avoid, and suppress any valid criticisms, it creates an echo chamber of nothing but positivity, to which the creator can't see or hear the issues that are rising with the game and the community. This is bad for the overall longterm health of the IP, which makes it toxic. See Disney Star Wars. Any valid criticism is being rejected and suppressed as just a bunch of racists and misogynists who only hate Disney's take on Star Wars because of diversity.

That isn’t evidence of “toxic positivity”. That is evidence of an echo chamber lead by ideological cunts. You can still be negative, just toward the “right” things.

What FFXIV is going through right now is a canary in a coal mine situation. The game is in no real danger of bleeding subs and losing a ton of players, at this time. But if they don't do better with the story, and they don't start addressing people's concerns with the game, their insistence of avoiding the issues and reluctance to shake up the formula will catch up to them.

Not really. The early access “reviews” have are mixed for many reasons not related to the narrative. Some are pissed about the graphics update “ruining their characters”. Others are crying about “yet another furry race”.

Others are crying that Wuk Lamat is played by a trans actress in the EN dub, while others are angry that Wuk didn’t come out as a Trans character. Both are opinions that should rightfully be mocked.

Some have issues with the stability, increased requirements, and lower frame rate because of it.

As for the narrative, it is mixed at worst. Some hate it, some love it, some are indifferent. All perfectly valid opinions. Not all stories are for everyone and that is fine. I can enjoy the story, you can hate it. It’s as simple difference of opinion.

However, trying to use idiotic terms like “toxic positivity” or vice versa is nothing but a sad, childish attempt at trying to dismiss and label anyone who doesn’t share their opinion. You can think the story is crap and others can think it is great. Trying to dismiss said praise/criticism using made up terms just comes across as sad and pathetic on all sides.

 

[Doomtrain]

I love the game generally but its time it had a big shake up in terms of quest mechanics and its main scenario stuff. Most of the main quests are always just "Go here, talk, go 25 feet over there, cutscene where nothing happens for 5 minutes" rinse and repeat.
And the endgame loop needs a rework too, it's been exactly the same for 10 years now.

100%. I still enjoy XIV well enough, but it needs to try some new things, and Dawntrail would've/should've been the perfect opportunity to do it.

 

[wvnative]

Gotta admit it's been really boring thus far. I'm pretty bored. Hope to god it picks up. This would have been a great opportunity for them to improve pacing which has been an issue the entire game, yet it feels worse here.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

The reception seems pretty positive on the thread here.

 

[Zathalus]

Main complaints on Steam seem to have a recurring theme; bad story and pacing, stale game mechanics, and way too much focus on Wuk Lamat.

 

[squidilix]

Perfect...
mixed reviews = very good expension for me.

For me, Stormblood is my best expension with Heavensward. (Shadowbringer is very good but don't like the isekai settings and Endwalker... well... is okay but both are overated).
For many people, Stormblood is "the worst expension", really bashed for some reason. For me, this is a good surprise.

An excellent adventure, a great trip to Middle-East and Asian countries. An odyssey with a lot of legend. Lots of varied environments, my best trial primal (Lakshmi and Yotsuyu is fabulous). The extension with the most artistic idea. Antagonist was pretty well writted (Yotsuyu and Fordola is good and people bashing Zenos but I think Zenos is good and terrifing on 4.0, it's just a clown after that)


And I really liked the end of the patch which introduces Elmet, puts redemption on Gaius and ends in a critical moment in the story, the perfect cliffhanger. Only Lyse is bad writing (saddly) and Alamhigo treatement was a bit step backward... wich it's show how this extension was so ambitious.

But that show people don't like "too many political text and character developpement"... people want just Edgy character shit with hard rock music and Miquote girl...

Dawntrail is just a new arc... of course they not gonna unleashe all the plot.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Main complaints on Steam seem to have a recurring theme; bad story and pacing, stale game mechanics, and way too much focus on Wuk Lamat.

I mean if the game played like Granblue Relink it would be the best instanced arena fighter ever but eh. I'm having fun by giving my self a couple months worth of content by taking a 2 year break from the game. Probably only playing the new jobs this Expansion cycle.

Probably plan on doing NG+ after DT for a full refresher.

Core issues are as you said. Bad writing structure, bad pacing and stagnant gameplay that isn't evolving in a meaningful way. Very much chasing that WoW money.

I don't think DT will set up another long story arc. I'd expect each expansion to be it's own story without being held back by an Ascian narrative.

 

[RuneFactoryFanboy]

On the game's main subreddit, the best you can really find in favour is that it gets better after a dozen hours or so​

This cracks me up because it was outright comical how many different players fed me the same line when I tried FF14 years ago. "Keep going, it gets better".

I foolishly bought that encouragement for 100+ hours until I got to the first expansion. It never got better, it remained the same experience throughout.

 

[Dr. Claus]

This cracks me up because it was outright silly how many different players fed me the same line when I tried FF14 years ago. "Keep going, it gets better"

I foolishly bought that encouragement for 100+ hours until I got to the first expansion. It never got better.

Then it just isn't for you. ARR isn't bad, it was a nice breath of fresh air at the time as WoW continued to flounder at the time with incredibly long content droughts between expansions (Around the time SoO was out and we would have that for 13 fucking months), and it was a much improved version of FFXIV 1.0.

Now though? ARR is just boring. Its all set up with very little pay off until 2-3 expansions later. HW was good, but still had a ton of the mediocre bits of ARR in terms of game design. Stormblood improved the gameplay and general content, but had a weaker narrative. I would argue it wasn't really until Shadowbringers that we had an amazing narrative and fantastic content in the game from raids to dungeons, to all the side content.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Sub_Level]

I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. Did the 2nd dungeon yesterday and should be able to do the first Trial tomorrow. The field battle theme is one of the best in the series!

Also can we talk about the Role Quests? The villains are actually fun lol

 

[SRTtoZ]

Wow I had no idea it was even out yet. They did a terrible job with marketing it because I remember trying to preorder it months ago and you couldn’t and now it’s out??? What’s the window from preorder to release? Like a month maybe???

Anyway how are the improved visuals?? That’s my main selling point. Are they much improved or barely noticeable? From the previews screens it seemed like they didn’t improve that much.

 

[Valonquar]

Story is trash, main scions are barely present, protag is a mixed bag. The combat however is fun.

 

[Zephyranthes]

Anyway how are the improved visuals?? That’s my main selling point. Are they much improved or barely noticeable? From the previews screens it seemed like they didn’t improve that much.

Basically it looks like a mid-gen PS4 game now instead of looking like a late-gen PS3 game. The lighting and foliage improvements are very noticeable, but other than that the changes are fairly subtle. FFXIV's visuals have always been carried by its art style rather than high fidelity graphics, and that is still the case now.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Story is trash, main scions are barely present, protag is a mixed bag. The combat however is fun.

The biggest question for me is:
will Alphinaud barely be present?

If so, the expansion is already a 9/10 to me.

Had some issues with getting access to my account, but since that has been resolved, I'm looking forward to playing Dawntrail.
Let's see what all the fuzz is about.

 

[Thabass]

That isn’t evidence of “toxic positivity”. That is evidence of an echo chamber lead by ideological cunts. You can still be negative, just toward the “right” things.


Not really. The early access “reviews” have are mixed for many reasons not related to the narrative. Some are pissed about the graphics update “ruining their characters”. Others are crying about “yet another furry race”.

Others are crying that Wuk Lamat is played by a trans actress in the EN dub, while others are angry that Wuk didn’t come out as a Trans character. Both are opinions that should rightfully be mocked.

Some have issues with the stability, increased requirements, and lower frame rate because of it.

As for the narrative, it is mixed at worst. Some hate it, some love it, some are indifferent. All perfectly valid opinions. Not all stories are for everyone and that is fine. I can enjoy the story, you can hate it. It’s as simple difference of opinion.

However, trying to use idiotic terms like “toxic positivity” or vice versa is nothing but a sad, childish attempt at trying to dismiss and label anyone who doesn’t share their opinion. You can think the story is crap and others can think it is great. Trying to dismiss said praise/criticism using made up terms just comes across as sad and pathetic on all sides.

This right here. I enjoyed the majority of the story, does it reach the highs of Endwalker/Shadowbringers, nope. But, maybe because I didn't expect it to the game pleasantly surprised me on how decent the story was, at least in my opinion. Though, I do admit a bit of bias due to the vast amounts of

Spoiler

FFIX references

the game contains. Also I decided to level up Viper to do the main scenario from the outside and I think I may like it more than Samurai and Ninja.

While I'm still not done with the main scenario (I'm at the final area, dungeon and boss), I don't think it was bad and was quite fun. But, I don't think anyone has "toxic positivity" especially among my friends who have played the game since 2.0. There maybe some of that in the community, but it's far from the majority.

Also

Spoiler

Vanguard may just be the best dungeon in all of the expansions

 

[Revolutionary]

But, I don't think anyone has "toxic positivity" especially among my friends who have played the game since 2.0. There maybe some of that in the community, but it's far from the majority.

It may not be the majority but it's still a sizeable and intrinsic portion of the community.
Here's 10+ years' worth of discourse regarding the toxic positive element of XIV's community for you to peruse (which you'll probably ignore):

ffxiv "toxic positivity" - Google Search

Denying its existence is just sticking your head in the sand, as I implied in another post in this thread.

The fact that we're even having this discussion is evidence of its existence. Like, no one is saying Dawntrail is awful - they're mostly complaining that the pacing at the beginning of the expansion is just way too slow (and they're right). But even a milquetoast opinion like that is enough to raise the ire of Square Enix defenders lol. Some people just obsess over the game too much and consider it a slight against them, as a person, when someone criticizes the game. It's both absurd and sad, really.