I’m Apprehensive That Sq. Enix Is Over-Correcting With Dawntrail

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Highlights

• Remaining Fantasy 14’s Dawntrail growth acquired blended reactions, with some gamers disliking the brand new major protagonist and slower narrative pacing.
• Sq. Enix plans to simplify Viper’s rotation as a result of suggestions, inflicting disappointment amongst followers.
• Each gamers and Sq. Enix ought to give Dawntrail time and let the mud settle earlier than attempting to sort things that are not essentially damaged.

Final Fantasy 14’s Dawntrail growth has launched to a lukewarm reception from players, with many voicing their dislike of the brand new major protagonist Wuk Lamat and the slower narrative pacing. Whereas I’m still unconvinced that all of the negativity is warranted, there’s a clear case for a number of the criticism focused in direction of what gamers at the moment are referring to as ‘Yawntrail’. After the latest announcement in regards to the deliberate job modifications, I’m now involved Sq. Enix is feeling the warmth a bit an excessive amount of from the less-than-favourable critiques and is over-eager to win gamers again.

There are at all times job tweaks after an growth drops. I’ve stated this earlier than and I’ll say it once more: the group can’t check for each doable final result or state of affairs and uncover all the problems in the identical manner that hundreds of individuals enjoying it at launch can. All of us anticipated some job modifications post-launch to finetune a number of the points that undoubtedly arose, and Pictomancer with the ability to manually disable Subtractive Palette and Aetherhues is a good instance of a real, unplanned downside that the group is fixing.

Nonetheless, the true level of competition right here is that Sq. Enix will probably be simplifying Viper’s rotation due to “suggestions pertaining to the busyness of their talent rotation”. For the reason that announcement, many fans have expressed disappointment at these new changes, and I can’t assist however really feel this transfer on Sq. Enix’s half is as a result of it’s attempting to over-correct to try to rebalance the notion of a launch that’s presently a sore spot.

Having performed Viper, I didn’t have any bother understanding Viper’s rotation. I’m not probably the most expert participant, both. Sure, you’re doing so much, however that’s the purpose, proper? It’s a quick-moving, fast-action function. Having a flurry of actions to hit in fast succession is a part of the attraction. As with most FF14 jobs, if unsure, simply press the button that’s glowing and you’ll’t go that mistaken as you be taught to excellent your most popular rotation.

Even when the vast majority of followers dislike the “busyness” of this function, and Sq. Enix feels this can be a professional criticism, certainly it’s a must to enable a while for the training curve? It’s been per week because the sport launched in early entry, lower than per week since full launch. Are many gamers actually going to have mastered Viper in that point? No. Ought to we maybe have waited till folks had extra of a really feel for it earlier than altering it? Sure.

This quickdraw response to what appears like a non-issue, particularly in comparison with actual problems being addressed in the same notes, appears like Sq. Enix is simply too desirous to please. Old style Viper rotation has gone the best way of Ugly Sonic. My actual concern is that this would be the first of many concessions the group makes to try to regain the favour of its fanbase because it flounders within the wake of a fan reception that’s possible far much less enthusiastic than it anticipated. That’s a slippery slope. When you begin making so many modifications on the whim of followers, the place does it finish?

Dumbing down Viper isn’t going to alter fan notion of the narrative or new characters. Sq. Enix ought to have caught to its weapons on this and saved the job because it meant, at the least for lengthy sufficient to make sure a extra correct gauge of how folks really feel about it.

I used to be already of the opinion that gamers simply wanted to offer Dawntrail time, not solely by way of the growth itself (the narrative does decide up within the latter half) however as a complete. That is the beginning of a brand new ten-year arc, it must construct itself up over that decade, so it’s not going to race out of the gates on par with the likes of Endwalker’s thrilling finale.

Now I realise it’s not simply followers who want to offer the sport a while to breathe, however Sq. Enix too. Let the mud settle, and see what followers actually suppose after they’ve had some correct time with Dawntrail earlier than leaping in and fixing issues that aren’t damaged. Listening to fan suggestions is essential, however you may’t soar in on the first tremble of a criticism. Many of those may fade away given a bit time for gamers to easily modify to all the brand new content material anyway.