FFXIV: No-Spoiler Patch 7.3 Impressions
Posted on August 10, 2025 by Aywren
I finished up most of the content in the newest FFXIV Dawntrail patch over this past week. I wanted to talk a little bit about what I thought about all of it – no MSQ spoilers, just overall impressions here.
I haven’t written a post like this in a while because, frankly, since Dawntrail dropped, I’ve not been happy with the quality of writing we’ve gotten out of the new expansion. I talked about this a little bit in posts about Dawntrail and about Patch 7.1. And while I’ve refrained from being outright negative about it – I really don’t like to make my posts here negative if I can help it – my engagement with my favorite MMO has been spotty at best over the last year.
I see that mirrored in social media sites, in which I’m deeply involved, considering I administrate the FFXIV Community on Tumblr now. It’s just far quieter now days than it used to be in the FFXIV fandom realms. That’s not a surprise, given the census details at Lucky Bancho have indicated there’s been a significant drop in active players since Dawntrail.
Trouble with Writing Quality
Now, I was never expecting Dawntrail to match the two expansions that came before in terms of plot – it’s hard to ramp things back down after having gone to the edge of the universe and back. But that’s not really my complaint with the expansion. The writing voice and tone, and the way things have been written to repeatedly drive the same message home over and over, have been far more juvenile and practically eye-rolling – especially when the story is trying to tackle deep and mature themes.
Unfortunately, they haven’t let up on trying to tackle these big universal themes despite it feeling as if the writers are too young to bring the experience to the table to achieve this in a satisfying way. However, I will say that each patch has seen improvements over the last, and it’s been obvious that player feedback has been taken into consideration.
In fact, while some folks may have groaned at the reveal in the final cutscene for 7.3, I was actually excited to see a certain something return. I just feel like shouting at the writing team:
“Stop trying to tackle huge questions of existence - such as the meaning of life, death, the question of souls vs. memory, and all that. This is an MMO! We don’t need all that drivel (especially if you can’t do it right). JUST GIVE US A GOOD, SOLID FANTASY ADVENTURE AGAIN!”
I suppose I’m hoping that the ending reveal will lead to just that – a solid, fantasy adventure. That’s what I crave from my MMOs. If they want to sprinkle in deeper meaning here or there, I’m fine with that. But it’s been obvious when they make a grand universal theme the complete focus of the plot, they don’t have the means to tell that story with any authority.
I really do feel that we have a team of younger writers attempting to hash out big themes without the life experience to really speak to these things. The way they touch on grief and loss and death… I’m not saying none of them have ever experienced these things in their time, but it’s done in a way that tells me there may not be a lot of familiarity with it.
Basically, write what you know. And if you don’t know, or haven’t had the life experience to write to something, don’t try to fake it. It becomes painfully obvious.
Overall Patch Feelings
After completing it through twice, I feel like Patch 7.3 was an okay patch. The writing was better than previous patches, and is now hopefully going in a more interesting direction. Some of the new things they tried – the puzzle aspects – were interesting, and I approve (though they are a pain to speed through on alts). Calyx has turned out to be a pretty interesting villain in the scope of things, and it seems like the community likes him more often than not.
I’m not a fan of them forcing dungeons and trials in the same patch, which they have done twice (and seem to intend to do going forward). Thankfully, this time around, you can Trust the trial, so it’s not so bad going through on alts for me.
The dungeon was serviceable, but I wish they’d stop trying to tell a story during a dungeon because I can’t focus on both battle and story at the same time, and story always suffers. Though that second boss was quite tricky for me on my first try. I’ve heard feedback from other gamers who are having trouble getting through the second boss, especially with Trusts, and I understand why. I’ve even seen first-hand someone else struggle with it during an Expert roulette yesterday, and express their frustrations.
In contrast, I felt like the trial was the easiest trial we’ve had this expansion (I’m not complaining). It might just be me, though, but I picked up the fight mechanics quickly, and had little issue beating it both with real players and a Trust.
The Alliance raid, however, is a different story. I know it was just week one, but I feel like this is one of the harder Alliance raids we’ve had in a while. Jeuno was tricky in the learning phase, but not bad once you got the hang of it – I’ve even run it on healer a few times lately. This raid requires a lot of arena-wide recognition and awareness, which is always difficult for me, as well as bit of memorization. So, I see this Alliance will be a struggle for me to come to terms with.
Plus, there was no bagpipe music for San d’Oria! ☹
Leveling and Alt Plans
I’m also back to daily Frontlines PVP for yet another outfit I’m interested in, on two characters. I’m not sure why I put myself through this (aside from the fact I also want Allagan Node mounts), since now, if you’re patient enough, old series rewards are in the shop for trophy crystals.
Frontlines is a very good way for me to level my remaining jobs, coupled with daily beast tribe quests. I still have a handful of tanks and melee that I want to get to 100, and I don’t like running dungeon roulettes on jobs I’m not comfortable playing, so Frontlines is my best bet.
I’m also starting to dabble with moving other alts through the Dawntrail MSQ now. I’ve held off on this because the content is frankly exhausting to me. However, I feel like if I want to get this done on other characters, I’d better start this now before the amount of post-patch content piles up so much that it becomes a much larger task than it already is.
The crafted battle gear available is more than enough at level 100 to carry characters through patch 7.3 at this point. Seeing most of my alts are sitting on a good chunk of gil, gearing up won’t be much of an issue for them to move through MSQ.
We’ll have to see how it all shakes out, though!