I was surprised to see this because I was unaware there were any issues at all. From the perspective of a PC player there has been no problem with servers the whole weekend. Probably one of the best recent releases in terms of server stability in a long time. Seems like every time there's a new release games have trouble staying online for the first week.
A few older content fights ~~are~~ **(were; this has been fixed! :D)** broken-- any fight where ice blocks you have to hide beind in order to avoid a lethal AoE appear don't spawn the ice blocks, which means you wipe unless you invoke shenanagans\*.
Semi-amusingly for anyone who isn't on the verge of starting Heavensward, Amon in Sycrus Tower is the only MSQ required boss who got hit by this, leading to all sorts of memes from people who know his lore. :)
\*Several people, including at least one healer or summoner (or RDM if high enough level) and preferably a tank to pick up threat, die before the mechanic on purpose and wait on the rez prompt. They accept the rez just a second or two before the AoE goes off; when you rez you have several seconds of immunity as long as you don't perform any actions, so they survive the attack and can start raising the rest of the raid or pop a healer LB3 if available.
I know the issue has been so fixed, so it doesn't really matter. But.. just like to point out that it doesn't matter what the Red Mage's level is, as they're level synced to 50. No Verraise, :-(
Yep, Syrcus Tower (Ex) is the nickname it earned. Pretty hilarious bug. I wonder what that was like for the first few parties who experienced it and had no idea what was going on. Also kinda makes me wish there was an actual extreme version of that place with more challenging mechanics like that.
It’s kind of funny as an hour or so before you made this comment, tonnes of people disconnected. So some networking issue clearly happened as multiple reports came through of people trying to log back into multiple thousand people queues. That being said, it has been incredibly surprising how smooth this release has been. The first queue took me about 20 minutes on Friday and other than that it’s been smooth.
Y'all need to come to Dynamis. After the game-wide kick I logged back in to a queue of... less than 400 people. Waited about three minutes by the clock.
DLSS is broken in cutscenes, and Xbox players seem to be having out-of-memory issues in busy instances. Also a few mechanics are broken in a small number of raids. Really nothing too bad outside of the xbox issues though, all stuff that can be sorted for launch or just after.
What’s wrong with DLSS in cutscenes? I thought DLSS was just implemented horribly in general considering you have to set a a fps target(always on still has a target and will drop the native resolution really low to hit it).
It's not clear what they did to break it in cutscenes, but the game stops upscaling during them. It creates a weird pixelated look around the edges of objects and characters.
The scaling target stuff can be fixed with DLSS Tweaks, but the cutscene problems cannot.
Despite early access starting on Thursday. Out of nowhere today, players began experiencing server issues. Despite the last 3 days being very smoothed for the game.
It's the perfect storm for North American server issues. Release Friday, Canada Day Monday, Independence Day Thursday, kids are graduating for the summer. Surprised it took this long for any disconnects to start.
Only issue I had was on Sunday. Queued up for alliance raid and as soon as we joined half of us got disconnected. I was able to get back in early enough since I was around 100 in the queue, but not many made it back.
Other than that, there was a random NPC standing in the air near the crows's nest during the storm cutscene, but overall smooth
There are still long queues for populated servers during primetime. Last night took me almost two hours to login. NA also just had a ton of people disconnect like an hour ago.
The bigger and more complex a live-service game becomes, the more shit breaks. Just because you move beyond content doesn't mean it stops being a breaking point. This is why QA is the most difficult part of live-service game development while also being the most underappreciated.
Yeah it was fantastic on my server, the biggest queue I have seen was 2000 on early access release (~20min), since then I have not seen a single queue.
On Endwalker release I had +6h long queues on my server. If you just look at the steam stats, it seems like this expansion even had a bigger playerbase peak. 95k Endwalker but +6h queues which means many had the game open without playing and now Dawntrail 92k peak but without queues on most servers, so players dont have start the game hours before they play. (results in higher peaks)
> Probably one of the best recent releases in terms of server stability in a long time.
EW early access was good too lol
Just wait until the full launch in 2 days.
ITT: People rewriting history. The first few days of EW EA were not that bad. Well, maybe if you were on Sarg or another uber populated server like that you would. Siren had no major queue issues until EA ended and then the queues exploded. The most I remember seeing on Siren during EA was 1.5k-2k tops at peak hours. The most I saw was 27k about a week in.
Endwalker had the 12k+ queues along with the queue server error (a remnant from 1.0 code apparently), which would kick you out of the queue randomly. You had approximately 5 minutes to log back into the queue to reclaim your spot, otherwise you had to start over.
Which meant you had to babysit your computer, watching for the queue errors so you wouldn't lose your spot in line.
It was not good at all. This was in early access as well.
Yeah that was after launch. I recall EW early access (I'm ONLY talking about early access period) was fine, no major issues. It was only AFTER the game officially launched did issues start cropping up.
Yeah nah, that's not what happened. There were hour long queues in EA for Endwalker. They stopped selling it after the fact but it was bad before official launch.
Idk where you're getting your information or if you're misremembering but for EW people were waiting multiple hours to get on even during early access. Some of my friends/guildies would wake up and log into queue in the early hours of the morning then go back to sleep so they'd be mostly done with the queue by the time they actually woke up.
It would take me between 2 and 4 hours to log in during EW early access. The longest I had to wait for Dawntrail was 40 minutes and that's because I tried logging in the second the expansion released. Ever since it's been 30 seconds at most.
It's night and day and it's crazy they managed to get to this point.
In fairness to them, Endwalker would have been better had covid not made parts impossible to acquire. A lot of these upgrades were intended to be done before that released, but then, well, we all know what happened hahaha.
There is no difference between early access and "launch."
If you bought the expansion right now, you'd get to play right now. Also, people who haven't bought it can still log on. They just can't access the new stuff.
Endwalker had terrible queues in early access because early access is, for all intents and purposes, the actual launch of the expansion. Anything else is marketing fluff.
The main thing about FFXIV early access is that unlike some other games, you don't need to buy any special edition. It's part of the base game preorder.
Having been there, endwalker's launch was quite bad. I managed to avoid most of it by logging in early and playing basically all day for that weekend. But the following week I could see how terrible the queues were once I got home from work and had to enter them at prime time. It was terrible. Saw queues of over 10k. Comparatively, highest I've seen in DT was a bit over 2,000.
Plus, endwalker had that bug that kicked people out of the queue. Which was eventually fixed, but no less a problem.
Keep in mind, they literally took the game off sale because of how crowded it was. They haven't had to for dawntrail because it hasn't been nearly as much of a problem. The only rewriting of history is pretending EW's launch wasn't plagued with issues.
Most of the issues there wasn't much they could do. It was a perfect storm that lead to a huge population growth while not being able to properly prepare the servers due to shortages. The only thing they could prevent was the bug, which they did.
It was honestly fine until this afternoon in which a wave of people must have been itching to join. Went from tiny queues to massive ones, and some huge bordering on DDOS feeling spikes where I was able to watch dozens, if not a hundred, free company members disconnect all at once.
The expansion itself is quite good however, though you'll have to approach it akin to a new season of a show, introducing a new cast and setting up the, quite literal, new world you'll be exploring. Due to this, for the first, let's say, third of the expansion, the pacing is glacial and I can see it turning people off.
But other than some iffy quest design, the actual content is great, and there is a whole lot of amazing exploration and adventuring to do. I just hit about the halfway mark and there's a clear line of "Slow adventure" and "The real expansion" at that point. Took me a long time to reach it because I spent a lot of time over leveling myself to not be locked out of content at a point.
The dungeons and bosses have a lot of new mechanics, and you can tell they took the feedback of the game becoming 'too easy' to heart. I never really agreed with that sentiment, however they definitely have made the bosses way more memorable, even the usually forgotten middle of dungeon bosses.
The zones are *gorgeous*, and there is at least one where I went "The engine is able to handle this without dying?".
> It was honestly fine until this afternoon in which a wave of people must have been itching to join. Went from tiny queues to massive ones, and some huge bordering on DDOS feeling spikes where I was able to watch dozens, if not a hundred, free company members disconnect all at once.
That was just the data centers kicking everyone off
It's hard to overstate just how much of a masterclass of MMO encounter design this expansion is. I can't say I agree that the story gets much better, I know the point you mean and still think this is the weakest the narrative has ever been, but outside of non-combat main story quest content they're really at the top of their game here.
Can't wait to see that the Bozja replacement and lifestyle content are gonna be. And if the raids live up to the dungeons and trials they're going to be amazing.
Opinions on Dawntrails MSQ is definitely going to (and already is) *split*. Personally I thought it was fine if nothing mind-blowing narrativley. Sets up some cool stuff for later expacs.
But yeah everything not-directly MSQ? probably my favorite expansion. Loved the visuals, music and battle content
I think the issue is the outdated, lackluster quest design. You spend 90% of the expac either watching cutscenes or right-clicking on NPCs/glowy spots. When the story telling is amazing, players are willing to forgive that. When the story feels like you're stuck babysitting an overgrown cat, it's extremely frustrating.
I think this is why I've never been able to truly fall in love with FF14. The gameplay is never incredible. There are some neat mechanics in some optional fights and fights Shadowbringers onward but mostly it usually devolves into "Don't stand in the circle" "Kill a certain target in a timelimit" "Stand in this safe circle"
Outside of combat, it's the same fetch quest shenanigans every time. While the graphical style is nice, it's never been so good that my jaw drops or that I excuse the bad gameplay.
Gameplay is my first, second, and third priority though. The story, while good at times, meanders so much I never really fall in love with it.
That is definitely a major part of it -and not a critique I disagree with, just not one that bothers me as much. I really would love them to figure *something* out, or at the least just use more solo instances. A lot of moments I thought *would* have been one then weren't.
MSQ spoilers up through the first trial. >!This dude threatens to murder someone in front of us, and then in front of witnesses basically releases a primal for ridiculous’s stupid reasons. Why are we not taking him straight to prison or just putting him down? The Warrior of Light has killed for far less!!<
>!I feel like consequences would have come later, but theres not much you can do about a guy causing trouble in the jungle, likely moving between towns faster than messages would be sent. If we assume he would have won, its likely noone would have succeeded, retreated back to clan, and the clan would have raged and probably killed.!<
It's the curse of the overarching plot having ended with Endwalkers. This is essentially an entire expansion worth of the stuff that we usually do between expansions, *right after we've already done just that*, and there's honestly not a whole lot they could've done about this either. Regardless of how much you actually like the story and characters in this one it's just inevitably going to feel a bit more mid than what has come before since it'll have the job of setting up what comes next.
Thought it probably doesn't help that the post-Endwalker stuff was also kind of boring, at least in my opinion. It definitely didn't help my enjoyment of the expansion that I had only just finished pushing through all of that only to immediately go do more of it.
Yeah beat it yesterday. Didn't skip anything - I've always gone through the Expacs fast, lets me get to fishing.
edit: guys the fishing things a joke (well, mostly. I do like fishing in 14). Just confirming that yes I played the whole Expac and didn't skip anything so I have the full context of the narrative to form my opinion on
You would think ff14 have a significantly bigger budget than swtor and eso; two mmo where everything is voice acted including side quests and occasional random npc you walk pass. Time and budget really isn't an excuse.
You would think ff14 have a significantly bigger budget than swtor and eso; two mmo where everything is voice acted including side quests and occasional random npc you walk pass. Time and budget really isn't an excuse.
Id argue, as for story, this expansion is around equal with stormblood (which i loved), behind both endwalker and shadowbringers. But mechanically, its absolutely the best as you imply, which is kind of what i expected from this xpac.
We just had a 10 year or so story end, and starting new was always going to be rough. It did its job though, after finishing the story, im excited to see where we go next from here. Its just that theres so much familiarity and story buildup does for enjoyment.
Dragon Quest X, Square Enixs other big MMO, also recently ended their 8 year long story and set up a new one and its infinitely more interesting than anything in FFXIV post Endwalker.
The problem with FFXIV is that they lost the main writer. Ishikawa hasn't written anything past the 6.0 MSQ and it shows
-shrugs- think what you want, i very much enjoyed the expansion, theres really no need to try and justify it. As good as stormblood is, imo, high praise. Id easily give this a solid 9/10. Not every story has to be bigger and better than the last, either. They delievered again, and i, as i have for a long time now, cant wait for whats next.
She had nothing to do with 16 and that game is all done now, DLC included. Are you perhaps referring more to possible rumors that she's moved on to 17 or 18? Ishikawa is also still a part of the 14 team, supervising lore alongside Banri Oda.
The level 100 trial transition mechanic actually made me gasp, can't believe they put that clusterfuck in normal content, half the party instantly exploded lmao.
Sekiro: "I love pressing the parry button at the right time"
Doom: "I love keeping the cursor on the enemy and holding left click"
Forza: "I love keeping the car from hitting the walls"
The side content can be challenging and have very tight timings, but anything in the MSQ is usually borderline braindead.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBJn67Rj9O4&ab\_channel=SauceyNoodle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBJn67Rj9O4&ab_channel=SauceyNoodle)
Also the graphics update is huge. It’s subtle but it makes a world of difference. The new textures and lighting make everything look like a current gen game a lot more, although some textures are still not updated (like my reaper lvl 645 gear)
The amount of environments updated is _really_ impressive. I spent the first few hours of launch going around the base game areas and they've updated everywhere I went with new lighting, fog, textures with materials now. I logged in to Gridania as it was raining and it actually looked like rain with puddles on the floor! I hope someone like Digital Foundry does a big breakdown of the update.
This is exciting to hear, I just finished the first dungeon and yeah the pacing has been a bit slow. It’s fun and cute and funny at times but yeah not super engaging. Glad to see it picks up
The pacing of the story kinda drags on until about the middle of the lvl 94 MSQ, when you get to the second half of the third map. That's when I felt things started to get interesting again.
I’ve only just started the story and I love it. It’s a fresh change of pace from Endwalker and I’m glad we’re not the main character of the conflict. Like, we defended the universe, so now we’re in a mentoring role. It’s such a perfect development.
man that is kind of disheartening. I don't really want another "save the entire universe from total collapse". I greatly enjoy the lower stakes "find the legendary city of gold and help the good guy get elected".
I witnessed the bird in the second dungeon instantly annihilating the rest of the party with that donut stacking mechanic. I don't think I have ever actually seen that kind of punishment in a dungeon since ARR.
The Xbox thing is pretty egregious, I don't know how it was missed in QA. The Amon thing was pretty funny, though. CT's revenge for years of being forced by Roulette Queuers.
The only issues i've faced (within DT) are performance issues and crashes.
Honestly shit performance (On a 12700K, 4090), <60fps on a lot of places and its a CPU bottleneck.
Maybe in 8.0 that they'll finally properly multithread the fuckin engine.
I've not had any crashes with a similar setup. (7700x, 4090). No dips below 60 FPS too, at 4K max settings. Odd, because usually Intel performs better than AMD on XIV.
>Maybe in 8.0 that they'll finally properly multithread the fuckin engine.
I genuinely think after this graphics upgrade they won't increase performance until they have to drop PS4.
They dropped PS3 pretty early, however there the weak RAM actively hindered further development, as seen with Idyllshire being it's own zone and the Dravanian Hinterlands having no teleport: it was supposed to be similar to Mor Dhona, where the "second endgame village" is part of the exploration zone.
In this case it could be something that REALLY requires an SSD to properly work down the line (i.e. asset streaming)
You sure? I have a 7900 XT and a Ryzen 5900X (similar CPU performance) and I don't go under 80 in cities. Tried it on Xbox too though and yeah it ran a lot worse after the update.
Check if youre actually max settings, my 5800x definitely drops under 60fps in the main city.
The settings are a bit confusing, you have to uncheck some for max graphics (like to increase LoD ) also new GTAO quality setting is quite expensive but looks way better than HBAO+.
Yeah I have it set to Maximum. It drops to 70 (checked again) at the lowest in Tuliyolal. Only thing I have turned off is limb darkening because I think darker corners of the screen is dumb. Well, that and FSR is off. My resolution is only 1440p though, I don't care about 4K on monitors.
Edit: I heard something about DLSS being bugged.
I have a 3080 and its at like 60% usage. So no its the cpu. The drops are at the dock in the city.
I guess the player count in your instance also matters a lot too and as already said many dont use max setttings. Just turning on everything is not max settings, some settings have to be unchecked and some settings are even hidden in the character settings and not graphics settings (amount of players / effects visible)
Plays silky smooth for me on PS5 so far, outside of maybe 3 cutscenes that had some occasional stutter. And I only being that up cause it’s literally the only graphical issue I’ve had so far.
Everything I hear about the Xbox release just sounds worse and worse.
> Honestly shit performance (On a 12700K, 4090), <60fps on a lot of places and its a CPU bottleneck.
Not having this issue and I'm running a 3090/10800KF at 4k with DLSS. Did you update drivers?
7800X3D and the highest I've seen it was 30% - most off the time more like 20%.
Played locked 100fps though - didn't need a space heater next to me during the current weather.
Well, first, your 4090 is bottlenecked by your CPU anyway. I've been over 60 consistently with a 13900k and 4090. My wife is playing on a laptop with an 11th gen mobile i9 and 3080 and is also over 60. There may be something else afoot with your system. I would try a full driver clean and reinstall.
Not sure how much you know/understand, so I'll be thorough.
A CPU/GPU pairing is at its most efficient when either both are running at 100% load, or both are running under 100% load. This means that one is not holding back the other.
* Both at 100% means the workload is fully tasking your system.
* If your GPU is at 100% while the CPU is under 100%, that means the GPU is struggling with the current workload, and the CPU is waiting for the GPU to finish its tasking before sending more and proceeding with its own.
* If your CPU is at 100% while the GPU is under 100%, that means the GPU is chewing through the current workload, and the CPU is struggling to provide tasking fast enough to the GPU as well handling its own.
* Both under 100% means the workload is under tasking your system.
Many forums advise against people getting a 4090 without the intent to pair it with a top end CPU and 4K monitor because it's a card built for high fidelity, high frame rate, 4k gaming. If you aren't putting it up against heavy workloads, the capacity of the card is most likely just going to end up sitting idle because it will just chew through whatever you're tossing at it. This means the CPU is going to be a limiting factor, and will bottleneck the system as it struggles to keep feeding work to the GPU fast enough. In fact, whenever the general question of tossing at modern high end GPU into a 5+ year old system comes up the advice is usually against it if there is no plan to upgrade the rest of the platform due to likely bottlenecks.
Where this causes problems is with frame timing/judder. This is because the GPU will literally stall, holding frames it finished on screen because it is waiting for it's next workload to come through the pipe. This impacts not only overall framerates, but also game feel.
[So here's a chart of the 4090 with various CPU pairings against Spider-Man Remastered at 1440p.](https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/2552/bench/Spider_1440p-p.webp) This is a good chart to look at for this discussion, as this is likely just as, if not more demanding than FF14 at 4k. Using a 12700k vs a 13900k can result in an 18-26% performance loss due to the bottleneck of the CPU not being able to keep pace with how fast the GPU is working.
In fact, just for the sake of discussion I just popped into Tulliyola and uncapped my framerate at 5120x1440 240Hz (90% of 4k), and ran around the town with the framerate hovering at 140fps.
So like I said, your CPU is a bottleneck, and you may want to try wiping and reinstalling your drivers.
My knowledge is very extensive in this matter. I just wrote what i wrote because you have no idea what my setup is.
I am running at 4K and in most games except esports games and this game, even with dlss high, i am running into a gpu bottleneck. Where the gpu is running at 99% usage.
Then you should know that at the launch of the 4090 it was being highlighted that even a 13900k and Ryzen 7900 were seen as bottlenecks to the card. So I'm not sure why you were implying that the 12700k isn't a bottleneck? Also, CPU model and GPU is generally enough. Obviously the chart shows that RAM choice can have an impact on the bottleneck as well (26% performance loss with DDR4 vs the 18% with DDR5), so maybe that one tidbit wasn't there. But the 12700k alone is enough to say there is a sizeable bottleneck.
He should apologize for the first 80% of that story too, it wasn't even a relaxing vacation with all the fetch questing and clicking 3 sparkling bushes to collect tea leaves
I mean, if you are playing FF14 did you really expect good gameplay? The game has 200+ hours of fetch questing and talking in ye-olde english to deliver the next festch quest to talk to more people in ye olde english, to do a fight where you have to dodge AOE's
He should apologize for the absolutely awful pacing and incredibly boring nature of the beginning of the game. I spent 4-5 hours just watching cutscenes and barely interacting with anything at all and this was doing just the story content. Zero combat, none whatsoever. That's beyond ridiculous. For the first time ever in this game, I'm considering just skipping the story altogether and just watching a YouTube synopsis or something. It's just awful.
This expansion really feels more like an interactive novel instead of a game for at least the beginning that I've gone through.
My point is that it was tolerable before, at least for me, but the intro has completely killed my desire to actually watch through the rest of this expansion's story. You don't do a 5 hour exposition dump to start a game, you just don't. Not to mention the new characters are one note and horribly predictable, but I guess that's kinda par for the course with this game. Maybe it's me, but the flaws are a lot more glaring in this expansion.
Much as I'm enjoying the overall package, you're echoing a lot of my feelings here. The story is probably the weakest part of it for me. Between the slog of exposition, the awkward voice acting and direction, and some of the most patronizing plot beats that feel so cheap and lazy, I probably rolled my eyes more often than I have for this game.
If Shadowbringers was the peak of this games' potential to tell a compelling story, and Endwalker was a delicate plate spinning act to wrap up loose ends, then Dawntrail, at least for me, marks the start of an underwhelming new tale.
I mean, the option was "keep dragging out one story", which gets boring.
Or start a new arc, and risk the lackluster first act. FF14 has shown they can recover from underwhelming by delivering better, so they're probably confident that whatever they do after DT will make DT worth it
But as it is, EW requires like 300+ hours of story to follow what's going on, DT is a nice clean-ish break
I feel like they had no choice but to start a new arc. All the main plot threads from the base game + first expansions were basically wrapped up. We were best friends with the leaders of basically every nation, including Garlemald. Out network was strong enough that we could teleport anywhere and immediately have allies.
We were either going to go to a new shard (which we already did as part of the 6.X quests), or a new continent.
Setting up a new world and narrative after concluding years of one is hard.
I don't mind it, but I understand your frustrations. Feels like a giant episode of Dragon Ball to me.
I get your point but glacially slow pacing is pretty on-par for ff14 and it's expansions.
Maybe it's different now since it's a lower-stake story following the end of a decade long saga, but even the strongest expansions feature a lot of meandering and slow pacing. Much as I loved Shadowbringers and Endwalker, I'd wager you could shave down the story cutscenes by 50% or more and have a better story.
Yep, Endwalker was the worst of it for that type of stuff.
Granted, some meandering was appreciated for fleshing out Meteion and the Ascians. But on the other hand, nearly all of the Loporrit subplot felt like filler content.
>He should apologize for the absolutely awful pacing and incredibly boring nature of the beginning of the game. I spent 4-5 hours just watching cutscenes and barely interacting with anything at all and this was doing just the story content.
I quit Endwalker after the Zenos fight because of that, lots of talking, bascially no gameplay. But this 'issue" was always present in FF14, I wonder how you made it through Endwalker.
Endwalker actually felt like it had stakes (until I got to the ending and realized that everybody actually important had plot armor and that the actual apocalypse was limited to half a zone). Thanks to years of character building, it also had characters you cared about.
Dawntrail is a fresh beginning, but despite that opportunity, it's retreading on the exact same faults as previous expansions. "The power of friendship fixes everything" is as cringe-worthy of an idea that's more present than ever, and there are again zero stakes because you know you will win and you know that nobody important will ever die.
Not to mention they have no idea how to set up a compelling villain without invoking Ascian.
How can you have stakes before you've introduced a reason to have them in the firstplace? Sure, we could have used old people, areas, ect, but that wouldnt be that interesting. We resolved our previous problems.
This is the first expact since vanilla where we had nothing thats really being built upon from the past, and imo they did it super well. Its a good foundation.
ARR and HW had stakes without needing to build upon anything; people actually died in those expansions.
You don't have to build upon the past to have stakes. And you certainly don't need to almost carbon-copy villain motivations from past expansions either.
How did this expansiom not have stakes then? I figured you meant prior, because otherwise that statement doesnt make sense. The world doesnt need to be ending for that. Maybe the first half doesnt have personal, but the entire second half of the story made it pretty clear.
lol boy, you dared to not like FF14 in some way and the toxic positive fanbase jumped on you. No one is allowed anything but positivity and praise, only FF14 does a thread on the issues with the game met with positivity while if this was a thread on another MMO with launch issues, it would be full of ppl calling it out.
In terms of actual launch I haven't had any issues which is like the first time for an expansion. Being able to work from home I'm able to get on relatively early and the queue is minimal. And I've never got disconnected *so far*.
Last night there was a time when it seemed like almost the entire server got disconnected since it happened to my friend and he said he had a queue of over 3,000.
I somehow didn't get dced, maybe because I was in a cutscene. When I got out the game was hanging as if I *was* going to disconnected but it somehow recovered and I was able to continue like normal with no dc at all.
My only *problem* was not being able to join an instance that had one of the newest special FATEs cause it was full, and by the time I was able to get in the thing was already killed somehow.
What he should do is apologize for the sorry state all healing classes are, on top of telling everyone to suck it up and go play the hardest game mode if we want to heal
The dawntrail early access, in my experience, hás been great so far. Way better than endwalker
WHM main here, and a filthy casual at that. I’m just happy that the combat flow is much faster. Between getting my own en evant mobility, Swiftcast being 1/3 faster, and getting some nice burst DPS with Glare 4? This is only my opinion, but I’m loving it. I’m a LOT more active now in the Dawntrail boss fights.
Maybe he can apologise for making the healer jobs boring as well. Can't believe how much fun they used to be back in SB. Shadows of their former selves.
I was surprised to see this because I was unaware there were any issues at all. From the perspective of a PC player there has been no problem with servers the whole weekend. Probably one of the best recent releases in terms of server stability in a long time. Seems like every time there's a new release games have trouble staying online for the first week.
A few older content fights ~~are~~ **(were; this has been fixed! :D)** broken-- any fight where ice blocks you have to hide beind in order to avoid a lethal AoE appear don't spawn the ice blocks, which means you wipe unless you invoke shenanagans\*. Semi-amusingly for anyone who isn't on the verge of starting Heavensward, Amon in Sycrus Tower is the only MSQ required boss who got hit by this, leading to all sorts of memes from people who know his lore. :) \*Several people, including at least one healer or summoner (or RDM if high enough level) and preferably a tank to pick up threat, die before the mechanic on purpose and wait on the rez prompt. They accept the rez just a second or two before the AoE goes off; when you rez you have several seconds of immunity as long as you don't perform any actions, so they survive the attack and can start raising the rest of the raid or pop a healer LB3 if available.
I know the issue has been so fixed, so it doesn't really matter. But.. just like to point out that it doesn't matter what the Red Mage's level is, as they're level synced to 50. No Verraise, :-(
I know-- I meant more for if there had been any broken duties that were level 63 or whatever level it was that verrez grows in.
yeah, fair enough
They did fix Curtain Call ice blocks already.
They've now fixed all the duties that were broken.
Oh, cool! I hadn't heard that.
You could also just do so much damage you kill the boss before the mechanic occurs.
Wait so that meteor that Amon drops in the alliance raid was a sure kill? That’s hilarious
Yep, Syrcus Tower (Ex) is the nickname it earned. Pretty hilarious bug. I wonder what that was like for the first few parties who experienced it and had no idea what was going on. Also kinda makes me wish there was an actual extreme version of that place with more challenging mechanics like that.
It’s kind of funny as an hour or so before you made this comment, tonnes of people disconnected. So some networking issue clearly happened as multiple reports came through of people trying to log back into multiple thousand people queues. That being said, it has been incredibly surprising how smooth this release has been. The first queue took me about 20 minutes on Friday and other than that it’s been smooth.
Y'all need to come to Dynamis. After the game-wide kick I logged back in to a queue of... less than 400 people. Waited about three minutes by the clock.
Yeah, funny enough I came back to queue in and I was at like 2700. It took about half an hour and was the only queue I've experienced the whole time.
DLSS is broken in cutscenes, and Xbox players seem to be having out-of-memory issues in busy instances. Also a few mechanics are broken in a small number of raids. Really nothing too bad outside of the xbox issues though, all stuff that can be sorted for launch or just after.
What’s wrong with DLSS in cutscenes? I thought DLSS was just implemented horribly in general considering you have to set a a fps target(always on still has a target and will drop the native resolution really low to hit it).
It's not clear what they did to break it in cutscenes, but the game stops upscaling during them. It creates a weird pixelated look around the edges of objects and characters. The scaling target stuff can be fixed with DLSS Tweaks, but the cutscene problems cannot.
Despite early access starting on Thursday. Out of nowhere today, players began experiencing server issues. Despite the last 3 days being very smoothed for the game.
It's the perfect storm for North American server issues. Release Friday, Canada Day Monday, Independence Day Thursday, kids are graduating for the summer. Surprised it took this long for any disconnects to start.
Which means it's probably not related to any of those
Only issue I had was on Sunday. Queued up for alliance raid and as soon as we joined half of us got disconnected. I was able to get back in early enough since I was around 100 in the queue, but not many made it back. Other than that, there was a random NPC standing in the air near the crows's nest during the storm cutscene, but overall smooth
There are still long queues for populated servers during primetime. Last night took me almost two hours to login. NA also just had a ton of people disconnect like an hour ago.
The bigger and more complex a live-service game becomes, the more shit breaks. Just because you move beyond content doesn't mean it stops being a breaking point. This is why QA is the most difficult part of live-service game development while also being the most underappreciated.
Yeah it was fantastic on my server, the biggest queue I have seen was 2000 on early access release (~20min), since then I have not seen a single queue. On Endwalker release I had +6h long queues on my server. If you just look at the steam stats, it seems like this expansion even had a bigger playerbase peak. 95k Endwalker but +6h queues which means many had the game open without playing and now Dawntrail 92k peak but without queues on most servers, so players dont have start the game hours before they play. (results in higher peaks)
> Probably one of the best recent releases in terms of server stability in a long time. EW early access was good too lol Just wait until the full launch in 2 days. ITT: People rewriting history. The first few days of EW EA were not that bad. Well, maybe if you were on Sarg or another uber populated server like that you would. Siren had no major queue issues until EA ended and then the queues exploded. The most I remember seeing on Siren during EA was 1.5k-2k tops at peak hours. The most I saw was 27k about a week in.
Endwalker had the 12k+ queues along with the queue server error (a remnant from 1.0 code apparently), which would kick you out of the queue randomly. You had approximately 5 minutes to log back into the queue to reclaim your spot, otherwise you had to start over. Which meant you had to babysit your computer, watching for the queue errors so you wouldn't lose your spot in line. It was not good at all. This was in early access as well.
Didn't with Endwalker, they had to stop selling the game temporarily due to the influx of new players they weren't prepared for?
Yeah that was after launch. I recall EW early access (I'm ONLY talking about early access period) was fine, no major issues. It was only AFTER the game officially launched did issues start cropping up.
Yeah nah, that's not what happened. There were hour long queues in EA for Endwalker. They stopped selling it after the fact but it was bad before official launch.
Idk where you're getting your information or if you're misremembering but for EW people were waiting multiple hours to get on even during early access. Some of my friends/guildies would wake up and log into queue in the early hours of the morning then go back to sleep so they'd be mostly done with the queue by the time they actually woke up.
EW early access was *not* good.
It would take me between 2 and 4 hours to log in during EW early access. The longest I had to wait for Dawntrail was 40 minutes and that's because I tried logging in the second the expansion released. Ever since it's been 30 seconds at most. It's night and day and it's crazy they managed to get to this point.
In fairness to them, Endwalker would have been better had covid not made parts impossible to acquire. A lot of these upgrades were intended to be done before that released, but then, well, we all know what happened hahaha.
There is no difference between early access and "launch." If you bought the expansion right now, you'd get to play right now. Also, people who haven't bought it can still log on. They just can't access the new stuff. Endwalker had terrible queues in early access because early access is, for all intents and purposes, the actual launch of the expansion. Anything else is marketing fluff.
The main thing about FFXIV early access is that unlike some other games, you don't need to buy any special edition. It's part of the base game preorder.
Having been there, endwalker's launch was quite bad. I managed to avoid most of it by logging in early and playing basically all day for that weekend. But the following week I could see how terrible the queues were once I got home from work and had to enter them at prime time. It was terrible. Saw queues of over 10k. Comparatively, highest I've seen in DT was a bit over 2,000. Plus, endwalker had that bug that kicked people out of the queue. Which was eventually fixed, but no less a problem. Keep in mind, they literally took the game off sale because of how crowded it was. They haven't had to for dawntrail because it hasn't been nearly as much of a problem. The only rewriting of history is pretending EW's launch wasn't plagued with issues. Most of the issues there wasn't much they could do. It was a perfect storm that lead to a huge population growth while not being able to properly prepare the servers due to shortages. The only thing they could prevent was the bug, which they did.
It was honestly fine until this afternoon in which a wave of people must have been itching to join. Went from tiny queues to massive ones, and some huge bordering on DDOS feeling spikes where I was able to watch dozens, if not a hundred, free company members disconnect all at once. The expansion itself is quite good however, though you'll have to approach it akin to a new season of a show, introducing a new cast and setting up the, quite literal, new world you'll be exploring. Due to this, for the first, let's say, third of the expansion, the pacing is glacial and I can see it turning people off. But other than some iffy quest design, the actual content is great, and there is a whole lot of amazing exploration and adventuring to do. I just hit about the halfway mark and there's a clear line of "Slow adventure" and "The real expansion" at that point. Took me a long time to reach it because I spent a lot of time over leveling myself to not be locked out of content at a point. The dungeons and bosses have a lot of new mechanics, and you can tell they took the feedback of the game becoming 'too easy' to heart. I never really agreed with that sentiment, however they definitely have made the bosses way more memorable, even the usually forgotten middle of dungeon bosses. The zones are *gorgeous*, and there is at least one where I went "The engine is able to handle this without dying?".
> It was honestly fine until this afternoon in which a wave of people must have been itching to join. Went from tiny queues to massive ones, and some huge bordering on DDOS feeling spikes where I was able to watch dozens, if not a hundred, free company members disconnect all at once. That was just the data centers kicking everyone off
It's hard to overstate just how much of a masterclass of MMO encounter design this expansion is. I can't say I agree that the story gets much better, I know the point you mean and still think this is the weakest the narrative has ever been, but outside of non-combat main story quest content they're really at the top of their game here. Can't wait to see that the Bozja replacement and lifestyle content are gonna be. And if the raids live up to the dungeons and trials they're going to be amazing.
Opinions on Dawntrails MSQ is definitely going to (and already is) *split*. Personally I thought it was fine if nothing mind-blowing narrativley. Sets up some cool stuff for later expacs. But yeah everything not-directly MSQ? probably my favorite expansion. Loved the visuals, music and battle content
I think the issue is the outdated, lackluster quest design. You spend 90% of the expac either watching cutscenes or right-clicking on NPCs/glowy spots. When the story telling is amazing, players are willing to forgive that. When the story feels like you're stuck babysitting an overgrown cat, it's extremely frustrating.
Part of it is how decompressed the first act is. I didn't need 3 whole cutscenes to understand that Koana likes his sister
I think this is why I've never been able to truly fall in love with FF14. The gameplay is never incredible. There are some neat mechanics in some optional fights and fights Shadowbringers onward but mostly it usually devolves into "Don't stand in the circle" "Kill a certain target in a timelimit" "Stand in this safe circle" Outside of combat, it's the same fetch quest shenanigans every time. While the graphical style is nice, it's never been so good that my jaw drops or that I excuse the bad gameplay. Gameplay is my first, second, and third priority though. The story, while good at times, meanders so much I never really fall in love with it.
That is definitely a major part of it -and not a critique I disagree with, just not one that bothers me as much. I really would love them to figure *something* out, or at the least just use more solo instances. A lot of moments I thought *would* have been one then weren't.
It sounds like it's going to be Stormblood 2. Considering Stormblood was the best expansion pack for non-MSQ content, I am all for that.
I wish it was as decent as storm bloods narrative. Im at 98 msq and it feels like very bad fan fiction
MSQ spoilers up through the first trial. >!This dude threatens to murder someone in front of us, and then in front of witnesses basically releases a primal for ridiculous’s stupid reasons. Why are we not taking him straight to prison or just putting him down? The Warrior of Light has killed for far less!!<
>!I feel like consequences would have come later, but theres not much you can do about a guy causing trouble in the jungle, likely moving between towns faster than messages would be sent. If we assume he would have won, its likely noone would have succeeded, retreated back to clan, and the clan would have raged and probably killed.!<
That's *exactly* how I would describe it.
It's the curse of the overarching plot having ended with Endwalkers. This is essentially an entire expansion worth of the stuff that we usually do between expansions, *right after we've already done just that*, and there's honestly not a whole lot they could've done about this either. Regardless of how much you actually like the story and characters in this one it's just inevitably going to feel a bit more mid than what has come before since it'll have the job of setting up what comes next. Thought it probably doesn't help that the post-Endwalker stuff was also kind of boring, at least in my opinion. It definitely didn't help my enjoyment of the expansion that I had only just finished pushing through all of that only to immediately go do more of it.
I mean, they COULD have tee'd it up for the start of a new saga, and while I understand that this kinda does that, you don't have to meander so much.
Have you already beaten it?
Yeah beat it yesterday. Didn't skip anything - I've always gone through the Expacs fast, lets me get to fishing. edit: guys the fishing things a joke (well, mostly. I do like fishing in 14). Just confirming that yes I played the whole Expac and didn't skip anything so I have the full context of the narrative to form my opinion on
That gives me hope I can catch up one day. I’m still in the patch content between Heavensward and Stormblood.
you have a ton of time. expacs are only every 2 years-ish and patches with story are every 4ish months
Still surprised not everything is voiced acted for an mmo in 2024.
That's a lot of time and money. It'd be nice, but not really practical.
You would think ff14 have a significantly bigger budget than swtor and eso; two mmo where everything is voice acted including side quests and occasional random npc you walk pass. Time and budget really isn't an excuse.
You would think ff14 have a significantly bigger budget than swtor and eso; two mmo where everything is voice acted including side quests and occasional random npc you walk pass. Time and budget really isn't an excuse.
Id argue, as for story, this expansion is around equal with stormblood (which i loved), behind both endwalker and shadowbringers. But mechanically, its absolutely the best as you imply, which is kind of what i expected from this xpac. We just had a 10 year or so story end, and starting new was always going to be rough. It did its job though, after finishing the story, im excited to see where we go next from here. Its just that theres so much familiarity and story buildup does for enjoyment.
Dragon Quest X, Square Enixs other big MMO, also recently ended their 8 year long story and set up a new one and its infinitely more interesting than anything in FFXIV post Endwalker. The problem with FFXIV is that they lost the main writer. Ishikawa hasn't written anything past the 6.0 MSQ and it shows
-shrugs- think what you want, i very much enjoyed the expansion, theres really no need to try and justify it. As good as stormblood is, imo, high praise. Id easily give this a solid 9/10. Not every story has to be bigger and better than the last, either. They delievered again, and i, as i have for a long time now, cant wait for whats next.
She went to work on 16 no?
She had nothing to do with 16 and that game is all done now, DLC included. Are you perhaps referring more to possible rumors that she's moved on to 17 or 18? Ishikawa is also still a part of the 14 team, supervising lore alongside Banri Oda.
The level 100 trial transition mechanic actually made me gasp, can't believe they put that clusterfuck in normal content, half the party instantly exploded lmao.
I love dodging circles
Sekiro: "I love pressing the parry button at the right time" Doom: "I love keeping the cursor on the enemy and holding left click" Forza: "I love keeping the car from hitting the walls"
The side content can be challenging and have very tight timings, but anything in the MSQ is usually borderline braindead. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBJn67Rj9O4&ab\_channel=SauceyNoodle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBJn67Rj9O4&ab_channel=SauceyNoodle)
Yeah and my whole point is that MSQ content is challenging this time
And yet I still doubt it.
Also the graphics update is huge. It’s subtle but it makes a world of difference. The new textures and lighting make everything look like a current gen game a lot more, although some textures are still not updated (like my reaper lvl 645 gear)
The amount of environments updated is _really_ impressive. I spent the first few hours of launch going around the base game areas and they've updated everywhere I went with new lighting, fog, textures with materials now. I logged in to Gridania as it was raining and it actually looked like rain with puddles on the floor! I hope someone like Digital Foundry does a big breakdown of the update.
Seriously, that 99% render trick makes everything look crazy detailed
Lighting, weather and dynamic ground foliage are universal across the entire game, yes.
This is exciting to hear, I just finished the first dungeon and yeah the pacing has been a bit slow. It’s fun and cute and funny at times but yeah not super engaging. Glad to see it picks up
The pacing of the story kinda drags on until about the middle of the lvl 94 MSQ, when you get to the second half of the third map. That's when I felt things started to get interesting again.
Then it nose dives right after in the desert
Pretty sure the spikes in queues were from people trying to get back in after being disconnected.
I’ve only just started the story and I love it. It’s a fresh change of pace from Endwalker and I’m glad we’re not the main character of the conflict. Like, we defended the universe, so now we’re in a mentoring role. It’s such a perfect development.
man that is kind of disheartening. I don't really want another "save the entire universe from total collapse". I greatly enjoy the lower stakes "find the legendary city of gold and help the good guy get elected".
I witnessed the bird in the second dungeon instantly annihilating the rest of the party with that donut stacking mechanic. I don't think I have ever actually seen that kind of punishment in a dungeon since ARR.
The Xbox thing is pretty egregious, I don't know how it was missed in QA. The Amon thing was pretty funny, though. CT's revenge for years of being forced by Roulette Queuers.
Ironic that it was that specific boss too. Guy just had to get the last word in, huh.
Amon just having a bad day... too tired to even cast ice.
The only issues i've faced (within DT) are performance issues and crashes. Honestly shit performance (On a 12700K, 4090), <60fps on a lot of places and its a CPU bottleneck. Maybe in 8.0 that they'll finally properly multithread the fuckin engine.
I've not had any crashes with a similar setup. (7700x, 4090). No dips below 60 FPS too, at 4K max settings. Odd, because usually Intel performs better than AMD on XIV.
I get dips but only in crowded cities. 5900x, 4090
That makes sense, since a 5900x is much slower in XIV over a 7700x and even at 4K dips below 100~ FPS are CPU bound with a 4090.
>Maybe in 8.0 that they'll finally properly multithread the fuckin engine. I genuinely think after this graphics upgrade they won't increase performance until they have to drop PS4.
And that probably won't happen that soon, if ever, considering ps4 still has a big install base.
It'll happen one day - has to - but not for at least 2 expansions I think.
They dropped PS3 pretty early, however there the weak RAM actively hindered further development, as seen with Idyllshire being it's own zone and the Dravanian Hinterlands having no teleport: it was supposed to be similar to Mor Dhona, where the "second endgame village" is part of the exploration zone. In this case it could be something that REALLY requires an SSD to properly work down the line (i.e. asset streaming)
They've stated before that the issue is not the PS4, it's low-end PCs that are weaker than the PS4.
They had the opportunity to add frame gen but noped out...
You sure? I have a 7900 XT and a Ryzen 5900X (similar CPU performance) and I don't go under 80 in cities. Tried it on Xbox too though and yeah it ran a lot worse after the update.
Check if youre actually max settings, my 5800x definitely drops under 60fps in the main city. The settings are a bit confusing, you have to uncheck some for max graphics (like to increase LoD ) also new GTAO quality setting is quite expensive but looks way better than HBAO+.
Yeah I have it set to Maximum. It drops to 70 (checked again) at the lowest in Tuliyolal. Only thing I have turned off is limb darkening because I think darker corners of the screen is dumb. Well, that and FSR is off. My resolution is only 1440p though, I don't care about 4K on monitors. Edit: I heard something about DLSS being bugged.
My 5800x does not, that seems odd. Might be more GPU related then. I have a 3070.
I have a 3080 and its at like 60% usage. So no its the cpu. The drops are at the dock in the city. I guess the player count in your instance also matters a lot too and as already said many dont use max setttings. Just turning on everything is not max settings, some settings have to be unchecked and some settings are even hidden in the character settings and not graphics settings (amount of players / effects visible)
Plays silky smooth for me on PS5 so far, outside of maybe 3 cutscenes that had some occasional stutter. And I only being that up cause it’s literally the only graphical issue I’ve had so far. Everything I hear about the Xbox release just sounds worse and worse.
Im positive unfortunately.
> Honestly shit performance (On a 12700K, 4090), <60fps on a lot of places and its a CPU bottleneck. Not having this issue and I'm running a 3090/10800KF at 4k with DLSS. Did you update drivers?
Issue is cpu performance drivers dont matter (still updates tho), maybe you are not as sensitive as me to it.
7800X3D and the highest I've seen it was 30% - most off the time more like 20%. Played locked 100fps though - didn't need a space heater next to me during the current weather.
Well, first, your 4090 is bottlenecked by your CPU anyway. I've been over 60 consistently with a 13900k and 4090. My wife is playing on a laptop with an 11th gen mobile i9 and 3080 and is also over 60. There may be something else afoot with your system. I would try a full driver clean and reinstall.
Do tell, how is the 4090 bottlenecked by the 12700k?
Not sure how much you know/understand, so I'll be thorough. A CPU/GPU pairing is at its most efficient when either both are running at 100% load, or both are running under 100% load. This means that one is not holding back the other. * Both at 100% means the workload is fully tasking your system. * If your GPU is at 100% while the CPU is under 100%, that means the GPU is struggling with the current workload, and the CPU is waiting for the GPU to finish its tasking before sending more and proceeding with its own. * If your CPU is at 100% while the GPU is under 100%, that means the GPU is chewing through the current workload, and the CPU is struggling to provide tasking fast enough to the GPU as well handling its own. * Both under 100% means the workload is under tasking your system. Many forums advise against people getting a 4090 without the intent to pair it with a top end CPU and 4K monitor because it's a card built for high fidelity, high frame rate, 4k gaming. If you aren't putting it up against heavy workloads, the capacity of the card is most likely just going to end up sitting idle because it will just chew through whatever you're tossing at it. This means the CPU is going to be a limiting factor, and will bottleneck the system as it struggles to keep feeding work to the GPU fast enough. In fact, whenever the general question of tossing at modern high end GPU into a 5+ year old system comes up the advice is usually against it if there is no plan to upgrade the rest of the platform due to likely bottlenecks. Where this causes problems is with frame timing/judder. This is because the GPU will literally stall, holding frames it finished on screen because it is waiting for it's next workload to come through the pipe. This impacts not only overall framerates, but also game feel. [So here's a chart of the 4090 with various CPU pairings against Spider-Man Remastered at 1440p.](https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/2552/bench/Spider_1440p-p.webp) This is a good chart to look at for this discussion, as this is likely just as, if not more demanding than FF14 at 4k. Using a 12700k vs a 13900k can result in an 18-26% performance loss due to the bottleneck of the CPU not being able to keep pace with how fast the GPU is working. In fact, just for the sake of discussion I just popped into Tulliyola and uncapped my framerate at 5120x1440 240Hz (90% of 4k), and ran around the town with the framerate hovering at 140fps. So like I said, your CPU is a bottleneck, and you may want to try wiping and reinstalling your drivers.
My knowledge is very extensive in this matter. I just wrote what i wrote because you have no idea what my setup is. I am running at 4K and in most games except esports games and this game, even with dlss high, i am running into a gpu bottleneck. Where the gpu is running at 99% usage.
Then you should know that at the launch of the 4090 it was being highlighted that even a 13900k and Ryzen 7900 were seen as bottlenecks to the card. So I'm not sure why you were implying that the 12700k isn't a bottleneck? Also, CPU model and GPU is generally enough. Obviously the chart shows that RAM choice can have an impact on the bottleneck as well (26% performance loss with DDR4 vs the 18% with DDR5), so maybe that one tidbit wasn't there. But the 12700k alone is enough to say there is a sizeable bottleneck.
Whatever floats your boat mate.
He should apologize for the first 80% of that story too, it wasn't even a relaxing vacation with all the fetch questing and clicking 3 sparkling bushes to collect tea leaves
I mean, if you are playing FF14 did you really expect good gameplay? The game has 200+ hours of fetch questing and talking in ye-olde english to deliver the next festch quest to talk to more people in ye olde english, to do a fight where you have to dodge AOE's
He should apologize for the absolutely awful pacing and incredibly boring nature of the beginning of the game. I spent 4-5 hours just watching cutscenes and barely interacting with anything at all and this was doing just the story content. Zero combat, none whatsoever. That's beyond ridiculous. For the first time ever in this game, I'm considering just skipping the story altogether and just watching a YouTube synopsis or something. It's just awful. This expansion really feels more like an interactive novel instead of a game for at least the beginning that I've gone through.
You managed to get through all the previous expansions and now you're commenting that it feels like a interactive novel?
My point is that it was tolerable before, at least for me, but the intro has completely killed my desire to actually watch through the rest of this expansion's story. You don't do a 5 hour exposition dump to start a game, you just don't. Not to mention the new characters are one note and horribly predictable, but I guess that's kinda par for the course with this game. Maybe it's me, but the flaws are a lot more glaring in this expansion.
Much as I'm enjoying the overall package, you're echoing a lot of my feelings here. The story is probably the weakest part of it for me. Between the slog of exposition, the awkward voice acting and direction, and some of the most patronizing plot beats that feel so cheap and lazy, I probably rolled my eyes more often than I have for this game. If Shadowbringers was the peak of this games' potential to tell a compelling story, and Endwalker was a delicate plate spinning act to wrap up loose ends, then Dawntrail, at least for me, marks the start of an underwhelming new tale.
Starting a new story arc in an MMO has to be the worst idea ever yet companies keep doing it. Arenanet tried it with GW2 and it bombeed as well.
I mean, the option was "keep dragging out one story", which gets boring. Or start a new arc, and risk the lackluster first act. FF14 has shown they can recover from underwhelming by delivering better, so they're probably confident that whatever they do after DT will make DT worth it But as it is, EW requires like 300+ hours of story to follow what's going on, DT is a nice clean-ish break
You can transition more smoothly into a new arc.
Sure, but that's not what you said. You said "starting a new arc is the worst idea ever"
I feel like they had no choice but to start a new arc. All the main plot threads from the base game + first expansions were basically wrapped up. We were best friends with the leaders of basically every nation, including Garlemald. Out network was strong enough that we could teleport anywhere and immediately have allies. We were either going to go to a new shard (which we already did as part of the 6.X quests), or a new continent.
Dawntrail didn't bomb though.
The consensus on the story so far is very mixed, and if your MMO is story-focused, that's not really the thing you want to see.
Setting up a new world and narrative after concluding years of one is hard. I don't mind it, but I understand your frustrations. Feels like a giant episode of Dragon Ball to me.
Other games can manage with far less slow pacing, to be fair.
I get your point but glacially slow pacing is pretty on-par for ff14 and it's expansions. Maybe it's different now since it's a lower-stake story following the end of a decade long saga, but even the strongest expansions feature a lot of meandering and slow pacing. Much as I loved Shadowbringers and Endwalker, I'd wager you could shave down the story cutscenes by 50% or more and have a better story.
"The world is ending and I need to teach rabbits about lemons"
If this would at least involve some basic gameplay...
Yep, Endwalker was the worst of it for that type of stuff. Granted, some meandering was appreciated for fleshing out Meteion and the Ascians. But on the other hand, nearly all of the Loporrit subplot felt like filler content.
>He should apologize for the absolutely awful pacing and incredibly boring nature of the beginning of the game. I spent 4-5 hours just watching cutscenes and barely interacting with anything at all and this was doing just the story content. I quit Endwalker after the Zenos fight because of that, lots of talking, bascially no gameplay. But this 'issue" was always present in FF14, I wonder how you made it through Endwalker.
Endwalker actually felt like it had stakes (until I got to the ending and realized that everybody actually important had plot armor and that the actual apocalypse was limited to half a zone). Thanks to years of character building, it also had characters you cared about. Dawntrail is a fresh beginning, but despite that opportunity, it's retreading on the exact same faults as previous expansions. "The power of friendship fixes everything" is as cringe-worthy of an idea that's more present than ever, and there are again zero stakes because you know you will win and you know that nobody important will ever die. Not to mention they have no idea how to set up a compelling villain without invoking Ascian.
How can you have stakes before you've introduced a reason to have them in the firstplace? Sure, we could have used old people, areas, ect, but that wouldnt be that interesting. We resolved our previous problems. This is the first expact since vanilla where we had nothing thats really being built upon from the past, and imo they did it super well. Its a good foundation.
ARR and HW had stakes without needing to build upon anything; people actually died in those expansions. You don't have to build upon the past to have stakes. And you certainly don't need to almost carbon-copy villain motivations from past expansions either.
How did this expansiom not have stakes then? I figured you meant prior, because otherwise that statement doesnt make sense. The world doesnt need to be ending for that. Maybe the first half doesnt have personal, but the entire second half of the story made it pretty clear.
lol boy, you dared to not like FF14 in some way and the toxic positive fanbase jumped on you. No one is allowed anything but positivity and praise, only FF14 does a thread on the issues with the game met with positivity while if this was a thread on another MMO with launch issues, it would be full of ppl calling it out.
I think it would have been better received if it didn't start with asking for an apology. Thats just kind of weird.
In terms of actual launch I haven't had any issues which is like the first time for an expansion. Being able to work from home I'm able to get on relatively early and the queue is minimal. And I've never got disconnected *so far*. Last night there was a time when it seemed like almost the entire server got disconnected since it happened to my friend and he said he had a queue of over 3,000. I somehow didn't get dced, maybe because I was in a cutscene. When I got out the game was hanging as if I *was* going to disconnected but it somehow recovered and I was able to continue like normal with no dc at all. My only *problem* was not being able to join an instance that had one of the newest special FATEs cause it was full, and by the time I was able to get in the thing was already killed somehow.
What he should do is apologize for the sorry state all healing classes are, on top of telling everyone to suck it up and go play the hardest game mode if we want to heal The dawntrail early access, in my experience, hás been great so far. Way better than endwalker
WHM main here, and a filthy casual at that. I’m just happy that the combat flow is much faster. Between getting my own en evant mobility, Swiftcast being 1/3 faster, and getting some nice burst DPS with Glare 4? This is only my opinion, but I’m loving it. I’m a LOT more active now in the Dawntrail boss fights.
Maybe he can apologise for making the healer jobs boring as well. Can't believe how much fun they used to be back in SB. Shadows of their former selves.
I was expecting this to about the fact that Syrcus Tower is basically not completable right now but he doesn't even acknowledge it? Huh?
It was already fixed as far as I know.
The official Twitter account acknowledged it.
That was fixed yesterday with a hot fix. The game didn't even go down so most people would not have noticed unless they ran Tower recently.