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Aside from the pelupelu quests going too repetitive, I like dawntrail. I end it with "SE made more tear jerker than endwalker." Players need to take this expansion for what it is, a start of something new. SE can go anywhere they want with it. Dawntrail follows a realm reborn strategy with the player not being the center focus, but scions of 7th dawn. There are parts of each expansion I don't like, however i like the overall of each. I wish people would not be so hyper critical and remember speculation leads no where.

🤨Hmm I mean i am really exited for the future Story that the Key and Azem Crystal seem synergis. And also that we go finally in diffrent Reflections. I hope the writer don’t stay or he learns from his mistakes. We know that the old writer left because he told what he wanted tell. You see it clearly that the new writer don’t know his character. I mean I am the Warrior of Light who defeated Gods and then I can’t stop Zoral Jaja from killing his Dad that felt rly weard and there are many moments like that 😅.

"Different dimensions parallel to each other" "Promathia's will driving these worlds rejoin to bring back his shattered world." "Reabsorb their scattered essences to join into one place." Man. Never noticed this before, but there are some oddly familiar parallels with FFXIV's story here.

I think the idea with Wuk Lamat is that we're supposed to take the mentor role and she's our protégé, but her growth is haphazard at best, we don't seem to have much influence on it per se, and when she finally shows that she's achieved her "final form" in the last trial, standing at the front and tanking the boss for us, it feels rushed and unearned, which in turn means we as mentors failed. And that just feels bad.

I feel like the writing team is gonna be benched for a while.

I felt exactly like this!! Especially in the cowboy zone. I literally recommended my friend to skip all the cutscenes until you get to the train cause of how boring it was.

While i agree with most of what you said, some of the things you got confused about are explained or touched upon in the cutscenes you skipped. It is one thing to critize that the story is so boring that you started skipping cutscenes and it is another to dismiss whole plotpoint just because you missed how it came to be. (Wuk Lamat's "mom" was introduced at the very beginning of the expansion, you even spent time helping her during the filler arc in the wild west land, not that she's the most beautifully written character ever but it definitely wasn't a one off character written to die) If something doesn't make sense to you as you are reviewing a story and you skipped a sizeable amount of cutscenes, do a bit of research before judging something you dont understand completely.

8:45 Shadowbringers would like to have a word

Tbh I think one of my biggest issues is no one really wants to prog, every PF is just “hector strats, watch vid” meanwhile hectors videos do absolutely nothing for me because I need to actually experience a mechanic to understand it

THANK YOU, I thought I was the only one who thought the second half of the story was a sinkhole of lost potential, and it saddens because there is a good story in there, but the writers simply chose not to tell it. The first few hours of Heritage Found were fantastic, setting up really interesting ideas involving the consumption of souls that have a real moral ambiguity...and it is discarded for a plotline that is far less interesting and one that relies on appealing to emotions over telling a coherent narrative. Heck, even the appeal to emotions does not really land when one considers that the story is trying to tell a story about loss, yet it is too afraid to kill off any character that the player cares about, or even knows at all (still baffled that we never got a chance to interact with Cachiua while she still lived).

The problems of dawntrail are the same problems that plagued stormblood. It's two experiences squished into one.

During the marketing for DT, I was actually looking forward to a contest for the throne. It's perfect for lower stakes. I was expecting a fierce political battle in which all opponents would have to compete through actual fighting contests, political warfare and alliance-building (a great way to lead into new zones). Maybe you wouldn't have a set mentee from the beginning and eventually decide on one yourself. What if the rivalry between Scions got more tense over time as the differences in political and phylosophical views begot more and more tension until things escalate once the political back-stabbing begins? What if some relationships permanently change, evolve or completely dissolve? Aaah, so much potential and all of it wasted! The Alexandria plot really wasn't needed to make things interesting if they had only had more confidence in one single concept and actually hired competent writers.

the first two zones... they were too long. Think of ShB where we get a feel of the people and their problems. Here we only got an introduction of two (!) different tribes and their situation, by no means an introduction of Tural as a whole. It was too little, or to quote Bilbo: "like butter stretched over too much bread". The story would've been served better if it was either really something like ARR where we explore new cultures and people or if the trial would've been condensed over two or three levels - and not six as it were. The first two zones felt stretched while everything that followed was felt... Then the writing: ARR had a character like Lolorito, someone we needed two expansions till we got a begruntled truce with. In DT everything is just too easy: the Pelu trade was like "putting the square into the square-shaped hole", the hanu was "click shiny thing"... and when we make it to Mamool (loved the Bakool Ja Ja part, though it was too short... again: pacing) everything is just over before we even get started... and then we "find" the Golden City, though "find" is the wrong word: we didnt need to find anything. When we start DT, we get the promise of a beach vacation: okay, I can live without that, we get lovely zones after all. But the second promise from both the trailer and the benchmark is a treasure hunt. I thought we'd actually have to really find the city, and not stumble over it. Also, the Scion bit was totally misplaced, though I expected that (they said the same thing about "meaningfull choices" about the last part of Bozja/Zadnor story, and it didnt matter at all); I didnt expect that we wouldnt see them at all though... Namikka... ... That wasnt about the regulators... That part was the build-up for the reunion in Living Memory. 24:31 --- You lost me here... Why dont you just say that Sphene worked with Zoraal Ja because he is ruthless unlike her, and gets the souls she needs? This has nothing to do with some wicked technology, is has to do with "how far are you willing to go for the benefit of your people?" - which is where Wuk Lamat's story comes full circle. - This is a video about the DT MSQ, its a spoiler video, there is no need to be vague.

Sound is way too low for listening on headphones outside.

What do I do if I'm in a wheelchair then? xD I cant exactly just get up and walk about~

Obviously, since I'm not on the writing team, I can't say for sure this is the case, but the MSQ this time felt like it suffered from way more corporate meddling than any of the previous expansions. It's most noticeable that the Scions are featured front and center in the trailer, yet have so little impact on the narrative that they may as well have not been there. It feels like so much was held back on because the marketing department decided that including characters we already like and playing it as safe as possible was the only way to sell an expansion, which feels even more bizarre when you notice how the encounter design DID take some risk and became better for it. Tbh I was cautiously optimistic because imo the writing quality really took a dip around 6.2 or 6.3 and hasn't recovered since. I wasn't expecting anything to blow me away, yet somehow they still managed to disappoint me. Also, I see a lot of people pointing out how "this is supposed to be ARR 2 so it's unfair to expect much," which is kinda fair, but I still can't get behind that reasoning completely because ARR was developed under completely different circumstances. I don't think they could've faithfully simulated the starting experience 5 expansions later, at lvl 100, no matter how hard they tried, and so I'm going to critique it based on it being an expansion just like the rest of them.

Amazing video! This helped me some, but I think what gives me the most anxiety is finding the right people. Others who are patient to prog. I dont have many friends who have time or want to do savage content so I can't exactly form a static. Yes, I'm aware you find and join some, but those usually have some expectations and/or past experience? I feel like pf is more or less the same. That's probably all thats stopping me from trying savage content. Personal feelings aside, thank you again for the video! I may find myself coming back to it in hopes to finally get the nerve to push through and do it. ❤

I just get high as balls and vibe

Dawntrail was everything I expected. Didn't expect a great story. My only two gripes are 1. No beach day scene 2. Replace the scions with new characters. We didn't need them in this one.

I've been trying to get the nerve to jump into a pf for a savage raid for so long. This right here is what i needed to hear.

You don't get good to raid. You raid to get good. As long as you have a drive to get better, you can do it! Ain't nothin' to it but to do it.

I didn't skip any cutscenes, in fact, I not only did every single side quest, but I talked to every single NPC. I even read all the speech bubbles of the ones I couldn't engage directly. Every item description and even F.A.T.E. descriptions and dialogues. The world building is really good. There are some very interesting NPCs in side quests. I will say, it seems everyone who rushed through the story had a much harder time than I did. I had early access and slowly worked through the story and it took me about a month to finish it(literally just finished yesterday) I also took a break to do all the role quests as soon as they became available, and cleared all maps of all quests and Shared F.A.T.E.s before leaving each zone. So the pacing wasn't so harshly felt. That's not me excusing it, it's just my perspective. Contrived is very much an apt way to describe this expansion. Events don't have a natural flow to them. Many times it felt like things just happened just to progress the story. It's like they had the ending written and had to force the journey. Where each prior expansion had a more natural flow to them because they didn't know where it was going and thus a 10 year epic journey unfolded. But with Dawntrail it seems like they just wanted to get to the end part where the music plays and we cry over a tragic villain. It's like when a television show has a new director who has never seen it, but they read descriptions of the most popular episodes and just try to jam familiar things into the story expecting it to have the same emotional impact without the arc building up to what made those popular episodes so great. It's like, "Here's Wuk Lamat, she's kind and wants peace, so you like her." "Here's Sphene, she's like Emet-Selch, just trying to protect her people. So you like her now. Plot twist, she is actually kind of like Meteion because she is just an out of control A.I. collecting remnants of a fallen civilization. You still like her and you also feel bad about defeating her." Motivations were also so vague. Zoraal Ja was like Zenos if he had even less of a personality. He even killed his own father who was the leader of the faction like Zenos. Zenos wanted to cause suffering in hopes of forging worthy prey. At first Zoraal Ja wanted people to know war so they could appreciate peace. Then he wanted to kill everyone so he could rule them? Then he just wanted to prove himself better than Gulool Ja Ja? He has like five lines of dialogue so it's kind of hard to discern exactly what his deal was. Bakool Ja Ja was just a Snidely Whiplash-esque cartoon villain. I'm surprised he didn't tie Wuk Lamat to train tracks when he kidnapped her. And his face turn was abrupt and unnatural. Sphene was just an A.I. that was designed to make paperclips and concluded that the iron in human blood could be used to make paperclips. Overall, the world building, environments, mechanics were fun to experience and explore. The story and characters were competing with ARR in their flatness and lack of development. Definitely weakest expansion in my opinion.

As a friend of mine told me few years ago when I had anxienty of savage/ults: "just fucking do it!" And since then I love savage/ults. It took me a while but men, its best content for me since then.

I make this comment on every "Getting into Raiding" video I encounter: Some of you are scared because you think everyone else is better than you and you don't want to drag anyone down and you don't want to be a burden. But just try difficult content ONCE and you'll see that there are people FAR WORSE than you and THEY don't even have the fear you have which will drive you to improve. But if you never start, you'll never know this and actually improve. So just do the damned thing!

Nice video, I shall leave a like and comment.

There were a few characters I really liked but they're dead before I got a chance to truly develop relationship with them, thus defeating the purpose of accepting loss.

Bakool Ja Ja was written so poorly. One a analogy that I can think of is a ball being thrown up into the sky but caught before it could reach the sky while also not beling allowed to land. Dawntrail: A massive waste of potential. I predicted most of what was going on the entire time. There where mysteries that weren't mysterious because all the world building was rushed and the narrative was seen from a mile away.

I think reclears give me more anxiety than prog parties TBQH.

TAKE THE GOD DAMN ROSE TINTED GLASSES OFF YALL. THE GAME IS RINSE AND REPEAT. FOR ONCE, BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF AND REALITY......

Great vid. Really like your content and have seen all your vids so far and I hope you get more exposure so others can enjoy it too.

Hi, good video and I appreciate your insights. I raided for about 5 years. I take raid and social anxiety discussions within MMOs with a big grain of salt at this point. I think they overlook a problem within MMO communities. The difficulty of fights mechanically is quite limited, especially at the level most of us (not world first etc.) play. (There is only so much the devs can do to give us the feeling we are conquering new heights.)The real Gate is the people. It is us. And we tend to put the onus on new comers to overcome their anxiety or their resistance to learning. But if you are someone who regularly and comfortably gives talks in public for example, or participates in school seminars, goes out and talks to people easily in the real world or in your job, but you are too "anxious" to find a raid team, or you are starting to feel like maybe I don't want to log in and raid tonight - then I begin to wonder whether you have social anxiety or whether too many MMO groups are just not that fun to learn content with. Just my take on all this and ymmv. Happy Dawntrail!

Indeed everyone has their own difficulty and its like this statement is forgotten within the fanbase now about DT for casual content acting like soulsborne fans. "Get good" "DT isnt hard" despite some fans saying other wise, so it is harder for some. I dont have the mental bandwidth anymore to deal with savage/EX current content sadly. I wish I did, i want the black wing mount so badly.

Charm was not automatic, there was a lot of RNG in it, also no warning when the critter decided to turn against you and cause instant death My longest was 5 min the shortest was 15 seconds.. Jug pets became popular when 1) you could not find a creature to charm, 2) you needed one in an area and had been pulled clean by a higher Bst leaving nothing for the lower level characters. 3) people complained about inconsistent Pets and jugs provided consistency. Bst was envisioned as a solo play job for people that didn't like to depend on a party. While it was allowed in zones like Dynamis and Abyssia it was not allowed in a regular dungeon or trial. The mage attacking the fighting dummy was a summoner, not a BST. My husband played exclusively BST in FFXI, it will be interesting to see what he does in FFXIV. Bst wore Monk/ninja type clothing in XI. --- it was announced that BST will not be released til 7.5...

This expansion was designed to appeal to woke minded people, the alphabet crew, and young people, to get more subs in. Clearly. This expansion was NOT created for the enjoyment of existing players who've been here since ARR. The pacing and epicness is gone from the game with DT, and it's really depressing.

to all the people putting ishikawa on a pedestal over this: she is like, still the boss. In fact, she is in a higher position of authority than she has ever been. It’s not like they wrote Dawntrail under her nose and she just had to shrug and accept the outcome lol The lyrics to that song everyone hates, Smile? pretty sure she wrote them I’m not saying that her involvement means you ought to love Dawntrail or anything, far from it. It’s just that I think there is something more systemic wrong with the MSQ writing process. I didn’t like Endwalker either, and part of that was because i felt from the outset that the story had been changed many times to accommodate demands from outside the writer’s room. I get the same vibe from DT. I feel like it’s precisely because Shadowbringers exists and is so beloved that we won’t get another Shadowbringers.

Whats the ending song?

I really liked the Dawntrail MSQ, it saddens me that many people couldn't feel the same enjoyment... QnQ

The MSQ was a miserable experience, but Otis and lil Galool Ja were alright.

ff14 to me was only the story, i didnt care about the mmo stuff, with DT, im just going to pretend FF14 ended with ENDwalker... I suppose having bad MSQ for DT and beyond wont hurt ff14 too much, as most new players would HAVE to go through NuARR to Endwalker (the good bits), but this is where I get off cause I don't see a good story even beyond DT...maybe if in 2 expansions they pivot hard...but for now its goodbye :(

As a player since 2013 I need to say that ARR is way superior to this story the problem is that too many that started playing later cannot fully get, for historical reasons. ARR had to be slow on purpose because there was nothing at all. They had to rebuild a game fast and furious to save the company from closing due to the disaster of the 1.0 so they slew the pace to have time to code things and they had not that many resources. Now they have 10 years of coded things and a lot more money to invest and this is a result. To mention how wrong this story is just rewatch the attack cutscene, we are in the middle of nowhere talking the order to strike is given and after all the battle cutscenes we go back to that middle of nowhere were we still were 5 minutes before and the enemy army has been wiped. Felt so ridiculous that this potencial super threat is not more than a firework. For the first time I had to stop many times to play that took me 10 days to find the will to finish this upsetting, unemotional and boring plot.

tl;dw - sorry your main character syndrome was snubbed in favor of telling a mentor story.

Solid take - agreed

The first half of Shaaloani was actually my favorite, because it was finally just us being an adventurer and not a glorified camera man. I liked the last zone, because I liked Erenvile, Krile, Otis and G'raha and they had all interesting parts there. The last trial, I was hyped when I saw my wol pull out Azem's crystal and I was so excited to play it, and then in the middle of the trial Wuk appeared and compeltely ruined the single best moment and I skipped all cutscenes afterwards.

I was telling my buddies that the story felt like the movie Hancock. You get the most slow motion whiplash half way through the story because it resets and has to rebuild.

I may be in the minority, but i expected more from Ketenramm when he got introduced to the story. Him being the legendary explorer we have been hearing about since Arr, and he was just there to tell a bit about Krile, hopefully we'll see more of him in the patch quests. Also his voice is one of the standouts alongside Otis which they did dirty btw.

You know shit isn't good when I can truthfully say Stormblood would be a welcome improvement. At the very least, we had the Yotsuyu to Tsukuyomi pipeline. We watched a villain relive her life of abuse and worthlessness, only to then give in when her own brother sabotaged her one last time. She was the unassuming villain I wish Sphene would be; her story gave life to an otherwise questionable expansion. Wuk Lamat is unbearable to me and the story should have been about Alexandria start to finish, seeing as the rest had zero stakes anyways.

WHEN THE THEME IS ABOUT LETTING GO HAVING THE PLAYER DO JUST THAT IS IMPORTANT AND GOOD. I went into living memory with the initial thought of "these people aren't real they're just robots beep boop" but this is "I wish i got to spend one last evening together with someone I love" that feeling that everyone feels when a loved one dies. That want to have just one more lunch were nothing eventful happen. one more walk in the park, one more play that you go to and sit in silence and enjoy it with someone you care about. That is what Living memory is. Of course you don't care you skipped it YOU CHOOSE TO NOT ENGAGE WITH THE STORY BEING PRESENTED. And then you have the gaul to be upset that you didn't connect with the themes of letting go. You see this the most with Wuk Lamat with her foster mother and Eranville with his mother. Both characters were not granted the opptertunity to say goodbye to them. The foster mother couldn't even recognize Wuk Lamat when we got to Heratige found and Eranville's mother had been dead. You can't just hang on to the dead forever, you can't let yourself be stuck in the past with the dead. To move on with your own life you will have to let them go, let their memory carry you instead of chaining you down. Like what do you want all of the story points were there and you simply choose to not engage, skipped it and said it's bad and that you didn't connect.

Dunno if you'll read this, but you say Zoraal Ja's motivation was similar to Emet Selch's and I don't think that's very accurate. It felt more closely related to Varis to me. Unite the world through military might to achieve some form of peace through might. Meanwhile, Sphene, is much closer to Emet Selch. Both are trying to sacrifice living people to save the memory of the people they cared for. Also, I feel like the quests between the level 93 dungeon and trial were the most hair pulling, horrible time I've had. Having Erenville's stupid cursor pointing at the wrong monster and two holes in the ground is beyond dumb, only to be like "Well duh they would go there it's the only place that makes sense." Eugh. Multiple of my friends skipped cutscenes and dialogue when we got to the texas part. I would just read it and TL;DR it for my friends and you didnt miss much. I did screenshare that final cutscene for my friends since they all also got jumpscared. As for the turtle boss, it sucks so bad that I normally ask a melee DPS to LB it, lol. I am also a healer, so I just ask the tank and melees to stay in to attack instead of dodging out. Also, living memory stays dead but you can go back to get screenshots with New Game + and turn it on and off whenever.

Just because it's a new adventure for the WoL doesn't mean it has to be like ARR or worse,but looks like the devs think otherwise.Nevertheless i'll wait until Dawntrail is completely finished in term of MSQ to give my score tbh.I'm super glad that there's ALOT of players who think like this though!

Your take on the representation part is wrong(talking about the south america), but yes MSQ is really bad and the combat is one of the most fun till now, for me at least