FFXIV Dawntrail is a test...

OF YOUR REFLEXES!

Wuk Lamat: "We're going to beat you with the power of Friendship!" Me, MCH Main: "And this gun I found!"

I loved Koana, they should have build a story around the scions helping out Koana on his journey, the guy had a fraction of Wuks screen time and so much more development in spite of it.

I was more invested in Erenville, Krile and Gulool Ja Ja than any other character in the story. Just my 5 cents

After the MSQ, I understand why Hydaelyn didn't have a rescue plan for Tural at End Walker.

My favorite part of the story was the last fight where she says you are the most dangerous and sends everyone else away, but then they screw it up by having you know who show up in the end to save the day.

Everyone has to act uncharacteristically stupid in order for the plot to move forward from start to finish including your own character the WoL and its usually in service to whatever Wuk Lamat wants and frustratingly it almost always works out for her in the end.

My favorite part was definitely the first half of Zone 4. Finally we got rid of Wuk Lamat and our WoL was doing meaningful things again, like picking up poop 👍

First half could be summarized as “we heard you like beast tribe quests, so here’s 6 at the same time.” Which is fine for getting to know the world and grow Wuk’s character. But my god, the amount of splinter cell 14 and fetch quests…. And unvoiced cutscenes…

I think the major flaw of the first part of dawntrail was they didn't fully commit to the contest aspect of it. I really do think we should have been paired with zoraal ja during second last keystone trial getting to learn more of who he was instead of having it all tossed out at the last second. It was a real missed opportunity to not fight thancred and urianger it would have made for a fun plot device. All and all the expansion was okay nothing to write home about but not terrible IMO. If I had to compare to anything it would be stromblood but I think a more fair comparison is A realm reborn due to the fact both are supposed to be the first chapters in a new story.

It's not fun. I don't like Wuk Lamat or the overly blatant 'friendship uber alles' themes. I vote we bring back some finesse and subtlety in storytelling. If I stick around it's more for the endgame content and the dungeon puzzles, not Wuk Lamat

As a writer and worked with other writers, you are right: this is a test. There are times when the creator of a story says, "Put A Fork In It, I'm Done", but sometimes a contract comes up from an investor, editor, boss or even fan demand that forces said creator to continue The story even though they said it's done. They will never admit it to the public because of a contract and maybe they will never say it no matter what. So in order to continue it, they end up posting a last minute story with plot holes and such which we all know as a "Filler Episode" to throw ideas at the wall to see what sticks. As we all saw by the results, looks like the First half didn't work and to be brutality honest, the second half has its issues, but a good number of it has already done in previous expansions and yet it still works; however we need to see what the Post-Dawntrail Story will bring in order to find out on what the writers will decide for the future of the game by listening to our feedback.

I know that i certainly dont want that everything gets overshadowed by one single character again, especially than that character overshadows the characters i actually care about.

I went from being disgusted by Wuk Lamat, to the. Liking her, and then disliking her character by the end of the MSQ…it felt like they are trying build powerful faction leaders like in WoW….it doesn’t work in FF14 when they made it clear for 10 years that ur avatar is the MC.

2nd story should have been Koana's journey. Take the lessons he's learned from his sister and move him to be a better Vow of Reason. It makes sense to the Vow of Reason face off against the Queen of Reason.

I feel like a great many of the MSQ issues could have been resolved by taking away some of the attention and spotlight from Wuk Lamat, who hogs the attention for the *entire expansion*, and give it to someone else. Krile got done dirty. Erenville was for the most part just an exposition machine. The Scions, more than any other expansion, mostly just sat on the side filling a gap in the party. Koana, Thancred and Urianger were not rivals like they were supposed to be, they spent most of the expansion cooperating with and praising Wuk Lamat. Zoraal Ja didn't have his motivations properly explored until *his literal deathbed*. Sphene only got ONE zone for us to get to know, which is nowhere near long enough for a proper sympathetic villain to be fleshed out, she wasn't even around for 90% of the last zone! Many plot points were just forgotten about or casually dismissed off-hand, like Kemretten being attacked turning into just "Oh, Zoraal Ja robbed me" later on, or Sareel Ja having obvious motivations and goals for reaching the Golden City, then he just dies and is forgotten about. Heck, I think they missed a great opportunity with the cooking trial. They went with the safe option, pairing Wuk up with Koana, so he could praise her and gush over how amazing she is, when she should have been paired up with Zoraal Ja, who would challenge her ideals and offer us some deeper insight into his motivations earlier on. Wuk Lamat was an ok character, but that's it. Just ok. She was no where near good enough to carry an expansion. She didn't earn being front and center. She didn't earn her save-the-day moment in the final trial. She didn't earn her heart to heart with Sphene while we stood off to the side like a Scion of the Seventh Dawn. I'm fine with the first half of the story focusing on her, as that was her journey. But the moment a transdimensional world-ending threat rocks up, sure she could be around since Tural was at stake too, but it should have been the WoL and the Scions leading the charge. Not the house cat.

I appreciate your cope, but I think the first half of DT's story is bad because it was just written horribly. If it was truly a test they wouldn't have made it so unnecessarily long either. They could have just done chill shorter stories in a more HW/SB length MSQ, DT has no business being nearly as long as EW. (For reference, HW and SB had around 10 hours of cutscenes, EW and DT are both around 20 hours of cutscenes).

Nobody said we will buy a test. I am expicting finished well writen and fun game! I see two huge flaws. The first flaw is that Dawntrail is the start of a new long, several years at least, Story. And the start must be majestic. First impression is important, we know. First part of the story was a drag and mostly stupid. Imagine teaching Hanuhanu how to do their own ritual... The second flaw is the execution. Way too many plot holes and dumb decisions. Zones feels empty and dead. Just look at Solution 9. Empty city. Nothing happens there. Only pretty pictures here and there. If you remove the several merchants from the zone then it will look like something from pre-alpha version of the game. The last zone is the most epic fail i have ever expirienced as part of a game that is considered VERY important. Helping a ghost to find his ring so he can propose to his beloved one and then 2 minutes later delete everyone. WTF was that? Krile part was good. Cahciua was Ok. Dungeons and Trials are pure magic. I enjoyed all of them. Challenging and fun with very good aestetics content. I couldn't ask for more. The start of the expansion feels very rushed to me. That being said (alsmost) everything will change, IMO. Yoshi-P said "i heared you guys liked the story of Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga" (or something like that). We have a better one! He also said that the start of the expansion will give them a giude of to where the story should go based on players opinion. He said that the start of the expansion is something like a test (not directly). So, they are basically not sure about the direction they should take. All that means 7.1 to 7.3 patches are going to be a lot better. I strongly believe in that. Overall i have fun in Dawntrail and that is important despite the fact i expected a lot more as a start.

Personally I don't mind if they want to make a more light hearted story. But God, just write it well. Wuk Lamat is just annoying.

While I do think the two halves of Dawntrail are intentionally different, I'm not entirely sure it was a "test" from the developers about how it would be received. It seemed to be more about setting up the ideals of Wuk Lamat before changing gears drastically to greater highlight the contrast between the two halves. Sphene seems to be a very deliberate foil to Wuk Lamat, as they seem to hold the same principles/ideals but are forced into very different situations; with Sphene in particular being a tragic character with the classic fatal flaw coming from a place with good intentions. It could also be some brute-force plot de-escalation, using the excuse of Wuk Lamat being the protagonist (for the time being) to get away from the "save the world" stuff. It's kind of like a Hildibrand-lite questline (remember, the WoL takes a backseat during those as well), if not quite as dense & wacky to better fit in with the rest of the main story. Still, the lukewarm and occasionally contested reception is feedback they'll likely take into account for the game going forward. People want more of the more nuanced (and often darker) storytelling often featured in ShB and EW.