Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[Verathel]

Also because we already have Alphinaud who owns his "naive" idealism perfectly. He does the exact same, but he's not an idiot. He doesn't almost always try to find common ground because he has deluded expectations, but because he genuinely believes it's the right thing for him to do regardless of the odds. He goes into so many situations fully understanding it's a futile effort to reason with half the people we end up fighting, but also that he'd quickly become a worse version of himself if he just launched WoL at the problem without even trying.

Which also plays into the relationship they wrote between WoL and Alphinaud, him first just seeing us as exactly that kind of blunt object. He's not written to be that character who steals the moment when he tells WoL to hang back to do his own thing, but someone who steps in exactly because he respects WoL too much to just use them as a tool of violence.

They used the characters to prop up each other and succeeded, while DT tries to do so at the other's expense and fails.

Also 100 percent this and a good reason why so far I consider ARR to be superior.

Taking founding the Braves for example, Alphinaud was naive, self righteous and wholly believing in the cause. He even did his own due diligence but severely underestimated the political game and power of the Syndicate and obviously paid for it. Sometimes it was shallow but there was intrigue, there was reason, there was depth to the story...You could see his naivety but at least respect his heart was in the right place.

We even got warned about the issues from outside sources...There is nothing to that extent with Dawntrail I see so far. It's why Wuk Lamat falls so flat for me. Sometimes her writing gets better but they never quite get to that point where I find good for long.

[LylyAmery]

Wuk Lamat the entire god damn expansion: I want to learn more about people's culture and history!

Sphene: I'm going to kill you and everyone you care about
Wuk Lamat: I just need to learn more about your people's culture and history

Krile: Wow I just met my parents for the first time, let's learn about my people's culture and history
Wuk Lamat: Ew no thanks

this frickin cat I swear to GOD

True! If there isn't any wet food involved this cat isn't interested! Wherever we go "I want to learn about their people's culture" is just a code for "I want to eat their food aaaaaaaaaa WoL please let me please I'm hungry"

[Verathel]

Her naivety gives her strength, the more stupid and in orange cat mode her brain gets, the more dynamis she generates and she gets stronger as a result, idk.

It's not like she grows physically stronger or more clever, she just gains power because plot and then Mary-Sues into keeping it.

People keep saying Wuk Lamat isn't a Mary Sue because she has flaws, but I really don't think there's a point in the story where her flaws cause her to fail and she has to deal with the consequences, her flaws just boil down to "ooooo silly girl, she hates boats" or "oooo, silly orange cat no like lava"

Edit: To add to this, her naivety does cause her to be "betrayed" by Sphene, but the only consequences of it basically boil down to "I'm gonna do the bad." "No! Don't do the bad, Sphene! Friendship, understanding, unity!"
It's just plain boring, flat writing with no character development, no nuance, just overly-preachy drivel. I'm not one to care too much about quality of writing normally, but I'm damn gonna be critical of it if a character is gonna shoehorn themselves into the spotlight of my own game and not even be well-written or entertaining

Honestly if they said that outright I would have found it more respectable than what I seen so far.

[AlexisLestrange]

The part in which you are comparing is the post-msq from the patches of ARR to the main-line story of DT, which aren't even fair comparisons because we haven't even had the patches for DT come out yet. Let it cook. Oy vey...

Zoraal Ja was probably one of the best characters symbolically and so many people aren't even batting an eye. It's absolutely wild.

[Ghuval]

I'm now halfway through the story. I've been taking my sweet time, and this has been the hardest story for me to go through in FFXIV. So many others have said it better than I could. Wuk Lamat is the lowest point of this expansion for me.

Overall, the story is not well written. There is no subtlety or nuance in the dialogue. This holds true especially for Wuk Lamat who comes across as a child who repeats exactly what they (and everyone else around them) just heard 10 seconds prior. The Hanuhanu may have the coloring of macaws, but Wuk Lamat is the true parrot here.

[Maxilor]

Wuk Lamat the entire god damn expansion: I want to learn more about people's culture and history!

Sphene: I'm going to kill you and everyone you care about
Wuk Lamat: I just need to learn more about your people's culture and history

Krile: Wow I just met my parents for the first time, let's learn about my people's culture and history
Wuk Lamat: Ew no thanks

this frickin cat I swear to GOD

She did that to Krile?

Bro...

[Aerstzwyn]

Orange cat bad

But nah, seriously. She would've been fine if she took a backseat after the coronation. Let the Scions do Scions stuff, defend your city, maybe show up with reinforcements at some point but let the Scions and especially the WoL do the thing they are here for. Your screen time is used up, you did what you needed to do, now sit down.

[Dogempire]

Orange cat bad

But nah, seriously. She would've been fine if she took a backseat after the coronation. Let the Scions do Scions stuff, defend your city, maybe show up with reinforcements at some point but let the Scions and especially the WoL do the thing they are here for. Your screen time is used up, you did what you needed to do, now sit down.

She needs an actual character arc, I can see they at least attempted it when she had trouble with boats, had a false bravado, and was pretty naive in the beginning, but her biggest issue is both the fact that she never overcomes any actual, tangible problems, and that she shows no interest in us besides "Hey buddy, thanks for helping me out" and the game makes us follow her around.

For the first issue, she needs to face actual, tangible consequences from her flaws, maybe she's overly trusting and THAT'S why she gets kidnapped because of her overly-trusting nature and desire to get along with everyone, so she has to learn to balance that out. Hell, make Sphene's betrayal actually hurt her, make it so that because of Wuk Lamat being too lax with Sphene and letting her do what she wants because Wuk REALLY wants to be friends with her, that Sphene actually gets a chance to start harvesting souls from Tuliyollal, making it so that she fails to protect her people as Dawnservant.

Also make it so that even when she becomes Dawnservant, she's initially pretty bad at it, and because of that, she begins to doubt herself and if she has the ability to live up to her father, and then let's compound that with her being in awe of just how important and accomplished the people she's hired are, that these people are helping someone like her, wasting their time and energy on a silly succession trial when there are probably far more important people out there who deserve the help more.

Let's make her failures cause her slowly begin doubt herself and her philosophy, she should be awfully quiet in the final zone and rather zoned out because Sphene's betrayal was a breaking point for her, and she's questioning if every person is really worth saving, and if it's really worth trying to trust and understand people when they could very well just betray her. Let her speak with Alphinaud and have him tell her about the Crystal Braves, about the incident that nearly got the scions killed and also caused Shinryuu.

Wuk Lamat seems awfully thrilled to learn about the history and culture of the people inhabiting her nation, but it's weird because she's just so darn disinterested in learning about events that dictated the fates of literal worlds and nations, and even existence when it comes to us and the Scions.

Just, ugh, SE had a decent concept but they woefully underutilized it by making the character perfect from the get-go and pushing everyone else down to prop up the perfect character. I doubt SE meant to give Wuk Lamat a flat character arc, but that's what they did.

[Colt47]

If I recall, the authors who did the MSQ this time around were the ones who did Wylert and the four Auspices, but that is coming from something mentioned ages ago by Natsuko Ishikawa so who knows. What is really upsetting on this whole thing is there isn't a way to fix this problem like there was with Zenos. At least with Stormblood it was largely a boring main villain cast. In this particular case, there isn't any way to fix the blunders of the MSQ without taking a butcher knife to the current lore to make it fit the narrative. I just hope they don't end up doing that...

[Souljacker]

She needs an actual character arc, I can see they at least attempted it when she had trouble with boats, had a false bravado, and was pretty naive in the beginning, but her biggest issue is both the fact that she never overcomes any actual, tangible problems, and that she shows no interest in us besides "Hey buddy, thanks for helping me out" and the game makes us follow her around.
...

It's baby's first fiction. That's really the only explanation - so much is derivative that it reads like someone in high school writing their first papers. Hasn't quite developed a personal style just yet, no original ideas.

Folks like that can cut their teeth on writing side quests, not the main scenario. Lady who wrote Shadowbringers needs to take the reins back and maybe mentor some of the new folks a little more.