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. 💙
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.
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.
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.
yeah after putting a pretty healthy amount of hours into this game, combat is always my biggest grumble. i truly hate the fight design and lack of personalization and build variety. you get into harder content proper and you have to realllly start playing exactly how everybody else plays samurai for example. especially on other, more team buff oriented dps jobs, doing strict obtuse rotations so you don't drift abilities during buff windows while trying to memorize fights and mechanics just feels like mind games. the difficulty seems to come from overstimulation and i've never once appreciated that. guild wars 2 is amazing btw
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.
@@kyra_2001 I think the team could be more creative with how they handle the rotation to give the façade of a non repetitive gameplay. I gave the example of a summoner having a multitude of summons to do in between fillers while also keeping up with the 2 min meta. Other avenues could be to expand the filler to be a bit more diverse. Maybe the filler is meant to feed into the 2nd set of filler. This way it could be something to the realm of.. [intro burst] [ filler setup ] [2 min burst] [filler finish] [ 2 min burst] [ filler setup] etc.. Alternatively, they could introduce a skill tree and have the concept of a balanced 2 min meta as a default or let people go crazy and choose to break away from the 2 min meta by manually choosing what skills they want to take. They could even build their own 2 min bursts. Granted, there could be a warning that the builds are more experimental and less balanced but I’d say that could appease just about everyone atp.
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.
@@kyra_2001 Yeah only social experiance was from person who gifted me this game, but he also was feeling lost and when learning about sub demand he left. So I would be returning to nothing now. I would think of trying FFXIV if it chose to overhaul whole experiance, I normally never skip dialogue but I found myself skipping dialogues when I realized all quests I pick up are fetch quests.
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.
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.
I enjoyed reading this, this is what I was hoping for. Thanks for giving such an in depth explanation about how you feel. Wuk Lamat and I have a strange relationship, it was somewhat cute to be a bit of a baby sitter to what felt like leading a Sprout through the game. Though I wish she stayed out of areas where she didn’t need to be in. The final fight for sure didn’t really have to have her involved. I see a lot of people compare her to Lyse, which I don’t see cause I love Lyse dearly like legit one of my favorite stories I followed. Lyse doesn’t join and claim that your fight with Zenos was “our” fight when you did all the work. So I totally get it.
Your post is a pretty decent summary of how I feel about the msq. I absolutely despise Wuk Lamot. Many will try and misrepresent my stance on purpose regarding Wuk and her voice actor to try and paint me as a transphobe for it when my issue is the writing of the character and that's what makes talking about the msq so nerve racking sometimes. These tiny brained Wukcultists aren't even worth engaging with cause all they wanna do is villify anyone who isn't of like mind and opinion. And don't get me started on how they RUINED CC in PvP. Crowd control feels worse than it ever has.
OH! And Kriles story was so rushed it felt awful. Wuk stole her spot light and I hate her for that too. Basically, At this point. I want SE to let me kill Wuk Lamot to satisfy me.
I disagree about the voice actress, she did a awful job, same with erinvilles mom. For a game that generates so much revenue for square I'm so confused to how someone gave the green light on the msq. It should have been on par with heavensward as it was essentially the start to a new story that had a base to build off. It's unfair to compare it to ARR as the team was under immense pressure to fix that game.
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.
Yup. Honeymoon ended and lots of people joined the disgrunted veterans club. And since the story wasn't great for lots of people, they became more open to see how many issues FFXIV have, and they can't justify it by saying Story is amazing tho! etc.
@Caladir I started in Stormblood and I felt the honeymoon phase end in endwalker already...I just find so many decisions and half assed implementations frustrating. Has so much potential but its just not being used fully
@@kyra_2001 its not burnout though, people want to play but there just is not any content. You need to wait for half a year for content to release on the newest expansion. Apart from raiding there is no content at all in DT. Only collecting tomes, leveling and crafting.
@@kyra_2001 and if you keep playing the same old content with the same old stale design classes for the same upgrades you got a billion times already before its just so boring.
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.
@@kyra_2001 i want it to be more related to combat. Ability to create more slot by gathering. Basically , i like to see more different type of build instead all go for highest crit gear. In my opinion "stats" need to overhaul
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.
Dawntrail’s Story was lack luster, agreed. And if that’s what you’re looking for I totally get being disappointed coming out of Endwalker and Shadowbringers
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.
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
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.
Ok im trans and ive seen a lot of nastiness about Dawntrail. I absolutely disagree with companies being purposely inclusive just to say we are inclusive. It shouldn't even be a thing. IMO the best person for the job should get the job , not absolute political bs to prove something. Of course i fully understand the complaints about DT and i agree. I don't like Wuk, she has no depth of character and she is mentally, emotionally immature. What i do absolutely disagree with and it should stop is the people going after the voice actors and staff and getting personal about them in detrimental ways, like wtf is that? Its a game, criticise the game, not be nasty about individuals. Ive been playing for 3 years and im still playing every day. All my crafters/gatherers are 100 and im levelling all the jobs. I think the game overall is just the best out there and partly because it is so multi faceted. Im also fully aware that there are people out there eho claim to support LGBTQ and are accusing people of things they aren't. It's not just FF, it's everywhere. Honestly being Trans these days is not a good thing.
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 concur. The reason people are loud is because they care. The MSQ of DT is the worst in FF history (I have played V-XIV, not counting XI). And it is part of a continuing narrative that has always been much better. (Well, ARR was awful, but nowhere near this level of awful. It was just boring, not insulting.) The job system has catered to balance over all else, which has pros and cons, but I'm not a fan of it. The fights are very fun at first, but they're strict memorization. People saying these things aren't grifters, they're passionate.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 For sure. And being critical of FFXIV may lead to not getting invited for the next media tour which is a big deal for content creators. Risking that would be the worst grift move possible. But passionate people would risk it if they believe the game they love is in trouble.
There’s a difference between voicing your concerns, which I did in this video, and using fear for views. You must understand your power to sway public opinion via your platform. I don’t have an issue with people voicing concerns, I have an issue with clickbait content claiming a game with hundreds of thousands of players is dead.
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.
OH LET ME TELL YOU! When the scions “died” at Endwalker, I was so relieved. I got annoyed with the amount of times I was forced to hangout with them. That’s why I didn’t pay much mind to Wuk Lamat’s presence because I’ve been through it before. The only difference is that instead of it being like 5 rotating characters to spend time with it was mostly Wuk Lamat.
I agree and disagree. I think the Scions should be doing their own stuff elsewhere, but that isn't the issue here. They're present and do nothing. They're filler for trusts. They don't exist in any meaningful way in the story. They don't have any personality. They could have been entirely new characters and not a single thing would have changed in any of the scenes. The world bending over for Wuk Lamat's every whim is the real issue. Every character talks about how great she is incessantly. Every time she has a struggle, the universe contorts to support her (the giants getting attacked by a monster out of nowhere so she can prove she's a good person, the Feat of Reeds needing "people to be happy!" to solve the problem of failing crops, etc.). If the story was better, the Scions would be a problem, because there is no reason for them to be here. But there are sooooooo many other issues (don't get me started on how moronic the kingdoms of Tural and Alexandria are) that they don't even rank among the problems in the MSQ.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 I genuinelly don't care about Wuk Lamat's presence. I've been complaining about the scions uncapable presence since post-EW, where i also felt like the game just throw us inmediately back at them after we've been told to say goodbye to them. And right at the end of Post-EW the twins decide to slam the door at us and go "Hello Wol, let us force ourselves into this narrative because we want to" At least Wuk Lamat will be exclusive to this expansion alone, the scions are a presence that follow our every direction on every expansion and will keep doing so after Dawntrail is over. And i really want to go back to pre-shadowbringers where each expac had it's own set of characters who would tag alongside us, and not just the scions. I can take Wuk Lamat, i was already tired of the scions before she even existed though, and DT didn't help.
I mean, that's the main cast, of course they're going to show up, you're one of them and have been one of them. The issue isn't that Wuk Lamat is there, it's that she's always there and her character is kind of insufferable, if she was made to be a likable character they didn't really succeed, an that's not even just my opinion as that seems to be the overall sentiment of the player base when it comes to the story. And I mean of course you can have your own view on the game and the story, nobody can really tell you otherwise, but if you're looking at the problem with the game in it's current state as a whole, with respect, I don't think you're personal issue is the common sentiment, or what most people have an issue with the game right now.
@@Gelgumi We're pretty well agreed (although I despise WL... but she is just one symptom of far deeper issues). The Scions should have been gone here. They should have died in EW, or at least some of them. I'd be happy to see Krile and Estinien show up (if they actually got anything to do). But they've been shoved in where they don't belong. I don't mind them being present, but the twins should be dealing with Garlemald, Urianger should be dealing with the loporrits, etc. So long as the characters have a purpose in the story, I'm not too upset with their presence. I'd be happy to see them abandoned entirely though, to focus on a new cast.
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
Speaking of HW uniqueness, if BRD wasn't changed to be more like MCH (becus roles have to be the same i guess?) Machinist would have been a stand out class in its own regard (caster phys ranged with rng mechanics to skip cast on successive combo) and DRK didn't have agro gen stance until lvl 30 (also heavy mage tank vibes)
@@lillymon712 DRK and WAR had their aggro stance at 30 PLD was the one having it later. Also it wasn't really a mage tank it had some wierd ideas how it wanted to work. It sure had dark mind, but it also had dark dance buffing parry and dodge and some skills procced off parry. Realistically ppl praise HW deisgn but, here's the thing. Ppl didn't like plating HW and it is still the expansion with the lowest playerbase to date. Like calling Astro the epitome of class design is quite the rewriting of history, it was an underpowered healer than needed plenty off buffs to make it worth it both from the healing perspective and from the card perspective.
@@neobahumuth6 And whos problem is a class being under powered? the players or the people designing and balancing classes? A class can be amazing but be weak because the developers suck at making classes, just look how PCT is now the king of the game and any other class is just a support compared to them. MCH was also dog water until about 3.4 (getting buffs every patch) and BRD(which they gutted just so MCH was viable on launch) had to get buffed in 3.5 to compete with MCH. Class balance is inherently bad because when classes reach parity (typically .5 of an expansion so they can go ahead and be ruined the next expansion) then you can't work on them anymore and then SE would get exposed very quickly for not adding anything new even tho they now have resources that are freed up.
@@neobahumuth6 TBF i never said astro was peak design i said it was the epitome of unique design which it was. compared to the current version it could be peak depending on your taste in RNG if we are talking about specifically the card system. I also said that Heavensward was the peak in general of class design because after that the classes started being homogenized. Side note: knocking Heavensward for a low player base 'to date' is a bit meh considering the only thing you could compare it to is ARR since comparing it to 'current' would be massively unfair.
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.
@@alyssamurakami8558 She would sound like someone who can emote ;) She's far from the worst actor in DT though, she just gets hate because she has sooooo many lines.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 more like bad writing issue. When you cater to a certain character too much and made her yap a lot but still ended up a shallow character you know you f*cked up. It's more about the writer instead of the character itself. Otis only need 10 minutes of screen time and a few line to become a far more interesting than 90% of any other characters including the scions and wol.
@@pastaboy1338 The writing is terrible, yes. But the acting is almost equally awful. She has the same vocal inflection for *everything.* She gets all the hate because she's the face of DT, but it's honestly deserved for that pitiful performance. All of the folks in Wild West Country are worse, but that is no praise to Bryer's performance.
Thank you for your perspective on the jobs. For Wuk Lamat, what they've been doing outside of the game is dumb. And they can be rightly judged for that. I don't mind the voice. I mind the direction. Some of the improvements they made with the newest voice changes helped. I hope they can either redeem her moving forward or just move on to the next story beat.
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.
Yeah the babysitting is strange. Apart of me didn't hate it? I was just sorta checked out about it. Apart of me wants to see like, the next few patches try to redeem her, if possible.
@kyra_2001 DT ruined Wuk Lamat for me. It doesn't help that the rest of the Scions aren't in support of her as well. Call me racist but her race also isn't doing it for me either. The disconnect between her appearance and personality(?) goes far beyond gap moe. If she was a Lalafel or a Miqote, yeah sure. Au Ra or Viera is pushing it but would still work I think. Hrothgar is just... Nah. When her character design was released I thought she was an elder sister type if not a mothering type. Not... Not a manchild.
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.
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.
I'll be honest, but ambiguous characters have been run their course, there's so much you can take of a character saying "oh I'm like this because I had a bad day" and quite frankly Zenos had a 4th wall in Endwalker when talking to Jullius, to the point I think it was Ishikawa telling ppl that it's not motives that actually make a character writing good. But really I believe we need a palate cleanser after all of that and some simpler characters are needed for the story, some ppl ends up just being assholes afterall and they can be entertaining if writtten well which isn't bound to them having or not relatable reasons. Grante sometimes ppl really don't understand where a writing is going, for example ppl think Xenoblade 3 mobiuses to be very simple and forgettable, however that's the whole point of mobius itself oh welll.
@ I meant normal NPCs. Everyone we meet is good and helpful and has no personal stakes whatsoever. Even the lizards turned around way too fast, and no word about the dead babies. Or look at the Pelu who just want to spread happyness, like... the hell is going on? Then we have the latest story with Koona. Its almost cult-like, child-like. characters like Ilbert or Lolorito or Hancock have way more depth than anyone we meet in DT.
@@markup6394 But that's not true? The pelu for example swindle us the moment they realize we aren't working with Zoraal'Ja. Besides not even the past expansions had this huge amount of depths in NPCs, most of the characters are useful for the plot progression and not much else. Like you bring Hancock but any semblance of depth it got was in Endwalker and I'd argue it wasn't even that good as the other 2.....I dunno they are pretty paper-thin and tropey as far as characters go, the friend turned traitor and the cunning businessman.
@@neobahumuth6 That was one of them. And it wasnt even a swindel. It would've been if he'd change his mind a second time, which he didnt, he accepted the deal and was happy with it. I'm not saying the characters I named are perfect, I'm saying they are better than any DT delivered. Sure, some new characters arent imediately on our side, but they are after a quest or two. No matter which quest you do, MSQ, side quests, job quests, its like dealing with mental toddlers (especially the job quests).
@@markup6394 I mean he accepted the deal because he had been had at his own game, yes they could've made him childish and put a tantrum but in the end they are profit driven. I think you really are looking at past characters with rose tinted goggles because in fact they all have about faces faster than DT, in fact one of the jokes a friend makes is that Wuk Lamatt doesn't anything more than what we obtained with a clenching of fist and a nod. Like I'm sorry to burst ppl ideas of XIV pre-DT being somewhat shakespeare, but no, it wasn't it's been like this since forever.
Never trust a TH-camr'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.
FF14 has less content in the start of a new expansion then WoW. Defending everything ff14 dev do is more harm then good. The game is bland and boring the Island we got in endwalker was boring and nothing special. Dawntrail story is worse then ARR the excuse of it being a start for the next 10 years is shit. But go ahead defend this boring mess.
@@albedo7113 The Issue with Dawntrail besides the story is that it's trying to make up for the mistakes of Endwalker. Endwalker's major issue is that it had no meaning casual content that the community could get behind. Dawntrail is going to end up fixing that (assumingly) cause it's adding stuff already introduced in Endwalker, but making new stuff. Is the game dying? Depends on the decisions that SQEX has been making recently, but content wise I think the game is fine as it is.
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.
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.
for example they changed the faces texture layout, they used to be different for every race but now they have a standard orientation and uniform texture pixel count with the exception of Au Ra which get their horns moved into a bigger pixel count (base is 1024/512 au ra is 1024/1024 pixel count) it makes modding between races easier cus you can almost just slap texture mods from any race on another while before you had things like mi'qote with 45degree diagonal faces (who knows why) they changed the skeleton! the face used to be very simplistic, 2 bone controlled each lip and and i think cheeks only had 1 bone per side, now cheeks have 3 each and lips have 8 bones per lip, they added the tongue and "jaw only" bones(jaw only is useless, maybe very odd use cases in some obscure animations) the tongue has 3 bones. for posing the lips change absolutely sucks. they changed the overall material structure and how textures interact with shaders. materials now have alot more information included like metalness, roughness ect so you can change how shiny and metallic parts of outfits or things are, each "information" row now has a secondary structure for more dye customization (eg; dual channel) they changed the original specular map to the mask map for textures, specular would be an orangey to white texture that dictated glossyness and shine, mask retains that feature but is now pinkish to reddish for customization options and added a new ID map for easier(i think?) dyability setting (eg: green makes the part dye and red makes the part static or something like this i haven't done anything with these yet) theres probably more but i cant think of it for now
And wuk in 6.5 already had these skeletal changes on her model cus i have a screenshot from jan 2024 that has the same skeletal structure that we have now minus the tongue bones because they didnt have animatable tongues then.
Yeah, I'm a modder aswell and I agree. The graphics update wasn't even worth it. Was the addition of tongue bone was neat and fun. Yeah I guess But it doesn't off set it making every sculpt I have unusable. I play lalafell and they messed up our faces. I realize SE has no responsibility to keep the game in a state that doesn't affect my mods but darn I still hate that it happened.
@@ProjectBongo whats funny is there was a tongue mod released probably during endwalker for all races and had 4 main bones with 2 split ending bones for like snake tongue mods so the customizability decreased which is so typical but because we're not meant to see that stuff its all fine and dandy
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.
I did specifically say, "attack them for the character," is stupid. All the stuff they've done outside of the game makes them fair game. So I'm with you on that.
pity that what they said about SMILE turned out to be true considering Soken's comment about Blues brothers when thinking of situations where ppl would wound up singing. So yeah...If anything blame Soken for cultural appropriation and Ishikawa for asking a song piece like that which I need to remind she was the one approving all BGMs used. Also badly disguised transphobia by calling Sena a guy. It just shows the true face of most of he community /shrug oh well
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
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.
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.
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.
That said, the issue to me is mostly that playing a healer is largely uninteresting. We really need a bit of rework of the trinity (or make healing more a support role and give them more interesting DPS kits)
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. 💙
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.
Thank you for talking about the combat. Learning more about what people want to see changed/what is different from the past is important to me.
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.
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.
yeah after putting a pretty healthy amount of hours into this game, combat is always my biggest grumble. i truly hate the fight design and lack of personalization and build variety. you get into harder content proper and you have to realllly start playing exactly how everybody else plays samurai for example.
especially on other, more team buff oriented dps jobs, doing strict obtuse rotations so you don't drift abilities during buff windows while trying to memorize fights and mechanics just feels like mind games. the difficulty seems to come from overstimulation and i've never once appreciated that.
guild wars 2 is amazing btw
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.
Yeah the 2 minute window is common among almost everything. How do we address that though?
@@kyra_2001 I think the team could be more creative with how they handle the rotation to give the façade of a non repetitive gameplay.
I gave the example of a summoner having a multitude of summons to do in between fillers while also keeping up with the 2 min meta.
Other avenues could be to expand the filler to be a bit more diverse. Maybe the filler is meant to feed into the 2nd set of filler. This way it could be something to the realm of..
[intro burst] [ filler setup ] [2 min burst] [filler finish] [ 2 min burst] [ filler setup] etc..
Alternatively, they could introduce a skill tree and have the concept of a balanced 2 min meta as a default or let people go crazy and choose to break away from the 2 min meta by manually choosing what skills they want to take. They could even build their own 2 min bursts. Granted, there could be a warning that the builds are more experimental and less balanced but I’d say that could appease just about everyone atp.
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.
If I didn’t have friends helping me through I’m sure I wouldn’t have gotten far. I 100% agree the new player experience needs to be worked on.
@@kyra_2001 Yeah only social experiance was from person who gifted me this game, but he also was feeling lost and when learning about sub demand he left. So I would be returning to nothing now. I would think of trying FFXIV if it chose to overhaul whole experiance, I normally never skip dialogue but I found myself skipping dialogues when I realized all quests I pick up are fetch quests.
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.
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.
I enjoyed reading this, this is what I was hoping for. Thanks for giving such an in depth explanation about how you feel.
Wuk Lamat and I have a strange relationship, it was somewhat cute to be a bit of a baby sitter to what felt like leading a Sprout through the game. Though I wish she stayed out of areas where she didn’t need to be in. The final fight for sure didn’t really have to have her involved. I see a lot of people compare her to Lyse, which I don’t see cause I love Lyse dearly like legit one of my favorite stories I followed. Lyse doesn’t join and claim that your fight with Zenos was “our” fight when you did all the work. So I totally get it.
Your post is a pretty decent summary of how I feel about the msq. I absolutely despise Wuk Lamot. Many will try and misrepresent my stance on purpose regarding Wuk and her voice actor to try and paint me as a transphobe for it when my issue is the writing of the character and that's what makes talking about the msq so nerve racking sometimes. These tiny brained Wukcultists aren't even worth engaging with cause all they wanna do is villify anyone who isn't of like mind and opinion. And don't get me started on how they RUINED CC in PvP. Crowd control feels worse than it ever has.
OH! And Kriles story was so rushed it felt awful. Wuk stole her spot light and I hate her for that too. Basically, At this point. I want SE to let me kill Wuk Lamot to satisfy me.
I disagree about the voice actress, she did a awful job, same with erinvilles mom. For a game that generates so much revenue for square I'm so confused to how someone gave the green light on the msq. It should have been on par with heavensward as it was essentially the start to a new story that had a base to build off. It's unfair to compare it to ARR as the team was under immense pressure to fix that game.
Great video, thanks for posting!
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.
Yup. Honeymoon ended and lots of people joined the disgrunted veterans club. And since the story wasn't great for lots of people, they became more open to see how many issues FFXIV have, and they can't justify it by saying Story is amazing tho! etc.
@Caladir I started in Stormblood and I felt the honeymoon phase end in endwalker already...I just find so many decisions and half assed implementations frustrating. Has so much potential but its just not being used fully
Yeah, I totally get it. I try not to play for hours everyday to avoid burnout.
@@kyra_2001 its not burnout though, people want to play but there just is not any content. You need to wait for half a year for content to release on the newest expansion. Apart from raiding there is no content at all in DT. Only collecting tomes, leveling and crafting.
@@kyra_2001 and if you keep playing the same old content with the same old stale design classes for the same upgrades you got a billion times already before its just so boring.
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.
After ShB , everything is on repeat from crafting combat leveling gathering.
I was expecting stat would be overhaul but I got burnout so quick
Yeah I haven't delved much into crafting/gathering, the only thing at 100 is Mining. I don't know much about that world.
Lol poser it's been like this since ARR. It didn't suddenly just happen in EW with repetitiveness the new FFXIV DT hate is wild.
@@kyra_2001 i want it to be more related to combat. Ability to create more slot by gathering. Basically , i like to see more different type of build instead all go for highest crit gear.
In my opinion "stats" need to overhaul
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.
Dawntrail’s Story was lack luster, agreed. And if that’s what you’re looking for I totally get being disappointed coming out of Endwalker and Shadowbringers
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.
Sometimes people get life outta being upset about something, it’s very common nowadays. But their concerns are still valid.
Let’s face it.. ESTINIEN GOT THE BEST VACATION .
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
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.
Good video, thanks!
Ok im trans and ive seen a lot of nastiness about Dawntrail.
I absolutely disagree with companies being purposely inclusive just to say we are inclusive. It shouldn't even be a thing. IMO the best person for the job should get the job , not absolute political bs to prove something.
Of course i fully understand the complaints about DT and i agree. I don't like Wuk, she has no depth of character and she is mentally, emotionally immature.
What i do absolutely disagree with and it should stop is the people going after the voice actors and staff and getting personal about them in detrimental ways, like wtf is that?
Its a game, criticise the game, not be nasty about individuals.
Ive been playing for 3 years and im still playing every day. All my crafters/gatherers are 100 and im levelling all the jobs. I think the game overall is just the best out there and partly because it is so multi faceted.
Im also fully aware that there are people out there eho claim to support LGBTQ and are accusing people of things they aren't. It's not just FF, it's everywhere.
Honestly being Trans these days is not a good thing.
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 concur. The reason people are loud is because they care. The MSQ of DT is the worst in FF history (I have played V-XIV, not counting XI). And it is part of a continuing narrative that has always been much better. (Well, ARR was awful, but nowhere near this level of awful. It was just boring, not insulting.) The job system has catered to balance over all else, which has pros and cons, but I'm not a fan of it. The fights are very fun at first, but they're strict memorization.
People saying these things aren't grifters, they're passionate.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 For sure. And being critical of FFXIV may lead to not getting invited for the next media tour which is a big deal for content creators. Risking that would be the worst grift move possible. But passionate people would risk it if they believe the game they love is in trouble.
There’s a difference between voicing your concerns, which I did in this video, and using fear for views. You must understand your power to sway public opinion via your platform. I don’t have an issue with people voicing concerns, I have an issue with clickbait content claiming a game with hundreds of thousands of players is dead.
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.
OH LET ME TELL YOU! When the scions “died” at Endwalker, I was so relieved. I got annoyed with the amount of times I was forced to hangout with them. That’s why I didn’t pay much mind to Wuk Lamat’s presence because I’ve been through it before. The only difference is that instead of it being like 5 rotating characters to spend time with it was mostly Wuk Lamat.
I agree and disagree. I think the Scions should be doing their own stuff elsewhere, but that isn't the issue here. They're present and do nothing. They're filler for trusts. They don't exist in any meaningful way in the story. They don't have any personality. They could have been entirely new characters and not a single thing would have changed in any of the scenes.
The world bending over for Wuk Lamat's every whim is the real issue. Every character talks about how great she is incessantly. Every time she has a struggle, the universe contorts to support her (the giants getting attacked by a monster out of nowhere so she can prove she's a good person, the Feat of Reeds needing "people to be happy!" to solve the problem of failing crops, etc.).
If the story was better, the Scions would be a problem, because there is no reason for them to be here. But there are sooooooo many other issues (don't get me started on how moronic the kingdoms of Tural and Alexandria are) that they don't even rank among the problems in the MSQ.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 I genuinelly don't care about Wuk Lamat's presence.
I've been complaining about the scions uncapable presence since post-EW, where i also felt like the game just throw us inmediately back at them after we've been told to say goodbye to them.
And right at the end of Post-EW the twins decide to slam the door at us and go "Hello Wol, let us force ourselves into this narrative because we want to"
At least Wuk Lamat will be exclusive to this expansion alone, the scions are a presence that follow our every direction on every expansion and will keep doing so after Dawntrail is over.
And i really want to go back to pre-shadowbringers where each expac had it's own set of characters who would tag alongside us, and not just the scions.
I can take Wuk Lamat, i was already tired of the scions before she even existed though, and DT didn't help.
I mean, that's the main cast, of course they're going to show up, you're one of them and have been one of them. The issue isn't that Wuk Lamat is there, it's that she's always there and her character is kind of insufferable, if she was made to be a likable character they didn't really succeed, an that's not even just my opinion as that seems to be the overall sentiment of the player base when it comes to the story.
And I mean of course you can have your own view on the game and the story, nobody can really tell you otherwise, but if you're looking at the problem with the game in it's current state as a whole, with respect, I don't think you're personal issue is the common sentiment, or what most people have an issue with the game right now.
@@Gelgumi We're pretty well agreed (although I despise WL... but she is just one symptom of far deeper issues). The Scions should have been gone here. They should have died in EW, or at least some of them. I'd be happy to see Krile and Estinien show up (if they actually got anything to do). But they've been shoved in where they don't belong. I don't mind them being present, but the twins should be dealing with Garlemald, Urianger should be dealing with the loporrits, etc. So long as the characters have a purpose in the story, I'm not too upset with their presence. I'd be happy to see them abandoned entirely though, to focus on a new cast.
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.
And to anyone thinking they might fix the hat problem, they promised us smn pet glam since HW and here we are. Just a posibility ofc but who knows.
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.
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.
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. :)
Speaking of HW uniqueness, if BRD wasn't changed to be more like MCH (becus roles have to be the same i guess?) Machinist would have been a stand out class in its own regard (caster phys ranged with rng mechanics to skip cast on successive combo) and DRK didn't have agro gen stance until lvl 30 (also heavy mage tank vibes)
@@lillymon712 DRK and WAR had their aggro stance at 30 PLD was the one having it later. Also it wasn't really a mage tank it had some wierd ideas how it wanted to work. It sure had dark mind, but it also had dark dance buffing parry and dodge and some skills procced off parry. Realistically ppl praise HW deisgn but, here's the thing. Ppl didn't like plating HW and it is still the expansion with the lowest playerbase to date. Like calling Astro the epitome of class design is quite the rewriting of history, it was an underpowered healer than needed plenty off buffs to make it worth it both from the healing perspective and from the card perspective.
@@neobahumuth6 And whos problem is a class being under powered? the players or the people designing and balancing classes? A class can be amazing but be weak because the developers suck at making classes, just look how PCT is now the king of the game and any other class is just a support compared to them. MCH was also dog water until about 3.4 (getting buffs every patch) and BRD(which they gutted just so MCH was viable on launch) had to get buffed in 3.5 to compete with MCH. Class balance is inherently bad because when classes reach parity (typically .5 of an expansion so they can go ahead and be ruined the next expansion) then you can't work on them anymore and then SE would get exposed very quickly for not adding anything new even tho they now have resources that are freed up.
@@neobahumuth6 TBF i never said astro was peak design i said it was the epitome of unique design which it was. compared to the current version it could be peak depending on your taste in RNG if we are talking about specifically the card system. I also said that Heavensward was the peak in general of class design because after that the classes started being homogenized. Side note: knocking Heavensward for a low player base 'to date' is a bit meh considering the only thing you could compare it to is ARR since comparing it to 'current' would be massively unfair.
@@lillymon712 Not sure why you believe I said it was players fault how they turned out to be
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.
I'm sorry, do you know what a 6 foot tall cat princess sounds like in real life?
@@alyssamurakami8558 She would sound like someone who can emote ;) She's far from the worst actor in DT though, she just gets hate because she has sooooo many lines.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 more like bad writing issue. When you cater to a certain character too much and made her yap a lot but still ended up a shallow character you know you f*cked up. It's more about the writer instead of the character itself. Otis only need 10 minutes of screen time and a few line to become a far more interesting than 90% of any other characters including the scions and wol.
@@pastaboy1338 The writing is terrible, yes. But the acting is almost equally awful. She has the same vocal inflection for *everything.* She gets all the hate because she's the face of DT, but it's honestly deserved for that pitiful performance. All of the folks in Wild West Country are worse, but that is no praise to Bryer's performance.
Thank you for your perspective on the jobs. For Wuk Lamat, what they've been doing outside of the game is dumb. And they can be rightly judged for that. I don't mind the voice. I mind the direction. Some of the improvements they made with the newest voice changes helped. I hope they can either redeem her moving forward or just move on to the next story beat.
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.
Yeah the babysitting is strange. Apart of me didn't hate it? I was just sorta checked out about it. Apart of me wants to see like, the next few patches try to redeem her, if possible.
@kyra_2001 DT ruined Wuk Lamat for me. It doesn't help that the rest of the Scions aren't in support of her as well. Call me racist but her race also isn't doing it for me either. The disconnect between her appearance and personality(?) goes far beyond gap moe. If she was a Lalafel or a Miqote, yeah sure. Au Ra or Viera is pushing it but would still work I think. Hrothgar is just... Nah.
When her character design was released I thought she was an elder sister type if not a mothering type. Not... Not a manchild.
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.
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.
I'll be honest, but ambiguous characters have been run their course, there's so much you can take of a character saying "oh I'm like this because I had a bad day" and quite frankly Zenos had a 4th wall in Endwalker when talking to Jullius, to the point I think it was Ishikawa telling ppl that it's not motives that actually make a character writing good. But really I believe we need a palate cleanser after all of that and some simpler characters are needed for the story, some ppl ends up just being assholes afterall and they can be entertaining if writtten well which isn't bound to them having or not relatable reasons. Grante sometimes ppl really don't understand where a writing is going, for example ppl think Xenoblade 3 mobiuses to be very simple and forgettable, however that's the whole point of mobius itself oh welll.
@ I meant normal NPCs. Everyone we meet is good and helpful and has no personal stakes whatsoever. Even the lizards turned around way too fast, and no word about the dead babies. Or look at the Pelu who just want to spread happyness, like... the hell is going on? Then we have the latest story with Koona. Its almost cult-like, child-like. characters like Ilbert or Lolorito or Hancock have way more depth than anyone we meet in DT.
@@markup6394 But that's not true? The pelu for example swindle us the moment they realize we aren't working with Zoraal'Ja. Besides not even the past expansions had this huge amount of depths in NPCs, most of the characters are useful for the plot progression and not much else. Like you bring Hancock but any semblance of depth it got was in Endwalker and I'd argue it wasn't even that good as the other 2.....I dunno they are pretty paper-thin and tropey as far as characters go, the friend turned traitor and the cunning businessman.
@@neobahumuth6 That was one of them. And it wasnt even a swindel. It would've been if he'd change his mind a second time, which he didnt, he accepted the deal and was happy with it. I'm not saying the characters I named are perfect, I'm saying they are better than any DT delivered. Sure, some new characters arent imediately on our side, but they are after a quest or two. No matter which quest you do, MSQ, side quests, job quests, its like dealing with mental toddlers (especially the job quests).
@@markup6394 I mean he accepted the deal because he had been had at his own game, yes they could've made him childish and put a tantrum but in the end they are profit driven. I think you really are looking at past characters with rose tinted goggles because in fact they all have about faces faster than DT, in fact one of the jokes a friend makes is that Wuk Lamatt doesn't anything more than what we obtained with a clenching of fist and a nod. Like I'm sorry to burst ppl ideas of XIV pre-DT being somewhat shakespeare, but no, it wasn't it's been like this since forever.
Never trust a TH-camr'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.
FF14 has less content in the start of a new expansion then WoW. Defending everything ff14 dev do is more harm then good. The game is bland and boring the Island we got in endwalker was boring and nothing special. Dawntrail story is worse then ARR the excuse of it being a start for the next 10 years is shit. But go ahead defend this boring mess.
@@albedo7113 ?
@@albedo7113 The Issue with Dawntrail besides the story is that it's trying to make up for the mistakes of Endwalker. Endwalker's major issue is that it had no meaning casual content that the community could get behind. Dawntrail is going to end up fixing that (assumingly) cause it's adding stuff already introduced in Endwalker, but making new stuff.
Is the game dying? Depends on the decisions that SQEX has been making recently, but content wise I think the game is fine as it is.
>actress
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.
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.
for example they changed the faces texture layout, they used to be different for every race but now they have a standard orientation and uniform texture pixel count with the exception of Au Ra which get their horns moved into a bigger pixel count (base is 1024/512 au ra is 1024/1024 pixel count) it makes modding between races easier cus you can almost just slap texture mods from any race on another while before you had things like mi'qote with 45degree diagonal faces (who knows why)
they changed the skeleton! the face used to be very simplistic, 2 bone controlled each lip and and i think cheeks only had 1 bone per side, now cheeks have 3 each and lips have 8 bones per lip, they added the tongue and "jaw only" bones(jaw only is useless, maybe very odd use cases in some obscure animations) the tongue has 3 bones. for posing the lips change absolutely sucks.
they changed the overall material structure and how textures interact with shaders. materials now have alot more information included like metalness, roughness ect so you can change how shiny and metallic parts of outfits or things are, each "information" row now has a secondary structure for more dye customization (eg; dual channel) they changed the original specular map to the mask map for textures, specular would be an orangey to white texture that dictated glossyness and shine, mask retains that feature but is now pinkish to reddish for customization options and added a new ID map for easier(i think?) dyability setting (eg: green makes the part dye and red makes the part static or something like this i haven't done anything with these yet)
theres probably more but i cant think of it for now
And wuk in 6.5 already had these skeletal changes on her model cus i have a screenshot from jan 2024 that has the same skeletal structure that we have now minus the tongue bones because they didnt have animatable tongues then.
Yeah, I'm a modder aswell and I agree. The graphics update wasn't even worth it. Was the addition of tongue bone was neat and fun. Yeah I guess But it doesn't off set it making every sculpt I have unusable. I play lalafell and they messed up our faces. I realize SE has no responsibility to keep the game in a state that doesn't affect my mods but darn I still hate that it happened.
@@ProjectBongo whats funny is there was a tongue mod released probably during endwalker for all races and had 4 main bones with 2 split ending bones for like snake tongue mods so the customizability decreased which is so typical but because we're not meant to see that stuff its all fine and dandy
@@lillymon712 Oh yeah, I member it. I had it loaded into pnumb but rarely needed its use for posing.
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.
I did specifically say, "attack them for the character," is stupid. All the stuff they've done outside of the game makes them fair game. So I'm with you on that.
pity that what they said about SMILE turned out to be true considering Soken's comment about Blues brothers when thinking of situations where ppl would wound up singing. So yeah...If anything blame Soken for cultural appropriation and Ishikawa for asking a song piece like that which I need to remind she was the one approving all BGMs used. Also badly disguised transphobia by calling Sena a guy. It just shows the true face of most of he community /shrug oh well
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
It might truly be a lack of experience, but it is refreshing to hear someone not complain about Jobs 'being too similar'.
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.
I started at the end of EW and I loved every expansion….. but then hated DT with a passion.
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.
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.
That said, the issue to me is mostly that playing a healer is largely uninteresting. We really need a bit of rework of the trinity (or make healing more a support role and give them more interesting DPS kits)