The forum has been too much negativities lately

[Malthir]

You mean subjectively

No it's objectively poorly written, there are standards to good story telling that are taught very early on in creative writing, this story fails almost all of them

Here are some examples of that I mean:

• Static Characters: Wuk,Bak,Koana and to a degree Zorall do not have any character developments, instead the character personalities snap back and forward depending on how they are needed in a particular plot thread, which brings me to the next point
• Poor Pacing: This isn't just about the way they dragged out and belaboured the same dialogue continuously. It also covers pre-emptively closing plot threads, which impacts the previously talked about point affecting character development. While some parts of the story are dragged out with many of the cutscenes in the first act repeating the same points established in previous cutscenes; For example the number of times Wuk states she loves her people. The 4 different cutscenes explaining the traders love of fair trade and lama's, which all could have been established in 1 3m cutscene and then gameplay. Pre-emptively closing plot threads on the other hand, is another sign of poor pacing. This is probably the biggest flaw the game has. Closing plot threads before they have chance to fully mature, completely removes any emotional feedback/payoff the players would receive, as the plot points ended before you can truly explore it. This has massive impact on character growth, as the characters don't have time to go through the problems before they are resolved. An example of this, Bak. He goes from a complete and utter monster of a person to a self-sacrificing but misunderstood boy in 1 3-5m cutscene. His actions prior to this have been monstrous, but suddenly he has a complete change of heart in 3-5m. There's no contemplation, no stages to the emotional journey, just bad guy good guy. This happens to all the characters in the plot making it the primary cause of the static characters. Likely the root cause of why people seem to hate this MSQ as a whole.
• Showing not telling: This is arguably the most unforgivable of the issues, purely as this is literally taught to everyone who learns any creative writing, almost immediately. They continue to break this rule throughout the entirety of the first arc, examples being Wuks constant repetition of how she loves her people, everyone's repeatedly telling you how impressive or amazing Wuk is. At no point do they show you any of this. The wild outlaw west, you're told it's wild and practically lawless, yet no where in the zone other than the brief MSQ plot do you see this. It's only due to Erenville literally telling you that it has an issue with lawlessness, that you even know that. A lot of places in the game do this, I literally don't have the character count in a reply to list them all.

That's not opinion, it's a fact that the story does those things. Which is why it's objectively poorly written. That doesn't mean people can't enjoy it, lots of people enjoy poorly written media. However the fact remains it's been botched.

[Kalocin]

A lot of people like me who generally like the MSQ aren't bothering with the forums so usually the loudest voices are the negative ones. I only logged in because I don't want them to make viper easier.

For the MSQ, I think the only real complaint is that there isn't enough gameplay between cutscenes which seems to be at least a pretty common understanding. They've been pretty good in the past about it so hopefully future content will have some variation. For myself I've been sprinkling in fates and leveling other jobs, doing pvp etc.

[Musashidon]

No it's objectively poorly written, there are standards to good story telling that are taught very early on in creative writing, this story fails almost all of them.

everything is subjective the stardards made are made based on peoples opinions. there is no objectively correct writing.

[ShariusTC]

A lot of people like me who generally like the MSQ aren't bothering with the forums so usually the loudest voices are the negative ones. I only logged in because I don't want them to make viper easier.

For the MSQ, I think the only real complaint is that there isn't enough gameplay between cutscenes which seems to be at least a pretty common understanding. They've been pretty good in the past about it so hopefully future content will have some variation. For myself I've been sprinkling in fates and leveling other jobs, doing pvp etc.

ironically, you are posting in THE FORUM, lmao

[TBerry]

Instead of gaslighting people, telling them that what they feel is wrong and bad, do you have anything constructive to say about the topic?
Why DT is such a good expansion in your eyes, for example? Or what the dev team did right? Why the story was great in your opinion, and how Wuk Lamats character isn't as bad as people make it out to be?

Anything? At all? No?

I thought so.

Spotted the red flag.
In my eyes, from what I experienced from the MSQ so far, they went to push Wuk Lamat as a kind of "people's person", with a bit of Naruto Uzumaki on the side. My main takeaway is each of the promises has a certain objective for why they want to become the new ruler. Without going too much into spoilers these objectives are an aggressive expansion, technical innovation, a better life for their own people, and... being there for all the people.
Of course, none of these objectives and motivations alone would be enough to rule a whole continent. This expansion is about the journey of the promises. And we, and the scions, are to Wuk Lamat what the scions were to us. The only thing missing really was "Pray return to the cabins". From what I've heard so far, this is likely the typical "Starts light, stumble over something more sinister" storyline.
Aside from that the dawnservant himself outright told us the plan. Whether that was good or bad writing is up to debate.

That being said

I am currently the cooking questline, and I call bull. With a nation of so many cultures I find it hard to believe that a dish from a village hasn't made it's way to the capital one way or another, and people haven't heard about it.
I can also see why people took issue with the reed quest.

[Daralii]

I don't think it is an overreaction. The expansion is just that bad.
The MSQ in particular is the worst it's been since 2.0. I know they had a new lead writer, but there were still tons of other people working on it and I'm honestly baffled that they could all look at it and be like "Yeah, this is fine."
Hell, if you ignore all the fetch quests/filler and look at just the raw story, I think 2.0 might have actually been significantly better than this.

And that's just the story. There's also the terrible Disney music randomly thrown into places, especially the epilogue, the massive empty towns, and the criminal voice direction.

This is the slide they showed during a live letter for the person who received the position Ishikawa had for Endwalker. I don't know what happened.

[Palladiamors]

You mean subjectively

No it's definitely objective, it ticks so many boxes for bad writing and presentation. Subjectively speaking you can like it all you want but objectively, particularly in regards to being a video game story oriented on the player character, the writing is demonstrably bad.

[Gr1mwolf]

everything is subjective the stardards made are made based on peoples opinions. there is no objectively correct writing.

That's a terrible take. That's the same as saying that a stick figure on a napkin is just as good as the Mona Lisa because art is subjective and not everyone likes the same stuff.

[Musashidon]

That's a terrible take. That's the same as saying that a stick figure on a napkin is just as good as the Mona Lisa because art is subjective and not everyone likes the same stuff.

yes. what?! if someone hates the mona lisa it doesn't invalidate it sorta like if more people like it than a stick figure on a napkin it doesn't invalidate it.

you can objectively say it's harder to paint the mona lisa but you can't straight up say it's better and say its a fact.

[IvoryHawk]

People love the game enough to say when something/s are wrong, it's the only good way to make change, the only other way is to stop playing, that tends to come when the devs just refuse to listen and then start wondering why people are leaving.