Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ thoughts

[SarahWoof]

Wuk Lamat gave me some incredible Luffy energy, and by that I mean she was a perfect character and instantly skyrocketed to one of my favorite characters in the game.

I sincerely hope she sticks around and is a huge part of the story going forward. I want to see even more of her interactions with other scions and hope she doesn't become completely forgotten like Lyse was.

[Lyth]

There's nothing wrong with Lamaty'i as a character, but it's not at all surprising that the decision to utilize a proxy main character didn't go down well with players. GW2's writers discovered this about 10 years ago with Trahearne.

I'm not surprised that they did it, in order to avoid creating too much of a colonialist subtext. But using a proxy main character disconnects the player from the story. Part of the strength of Shadowbringers comes from the fact that our showdown with Emet feels deeply personal. Imagine the same climax, except with Raha holding the corrupted light aether and facing down Emet as the hero while we cheer him on from the sidelines. It's still an interesting story, but it just doesn't have the same storytelling impact. There's also this added feeling of 'we can easily defeat them if we wanted to, but we're just standing by as backup', which greatly diminishes the menace of the villains in this expansion.

I also think that in writing this story in the 'third person', Daichi Hiroi ignored a lot of opportunities to engage the player through dialogue options, and in the few cases that he did, they seemed to be added in just for the sake of it.

Either way, I think this is more of an story execution issue than a character/personality issue.

[NanaWiloh]

There's nothing wrong with Lamaty'i as a character, but it's not at all surprising that the decision to utilize a proxy main character didn't go down well with players. GW2's writers discovered this about 10 years ago with Trahearne.

I'm not surprised that they did it, in order to avoid creating too much of a colonialist subtext. But using a proxy main character disconnects the player from the story. Part of the strength of Shadowbringers comes from the fact that our showdown with Emet feels deeply personal. Imagine the same climax, except with Raha holding the corrupted light aether and facing down Emet as the hero while we cheer him on from the sidelines. It's still an interesting story, but it just doesn't have the same storytelling impact. There's also this added feeling of 'we can easily defeat them if we wanted to, but we're just standing by as backup', which greatly diminishes the menace of the villains in this expansion.

I also think that in writing this story in the 'third person', Daichi Hiroi ignored a lot of opportunities to engage the player through dialogue options, and in the few cases that he did, they seemed to be added in just for the sake of it.

Either way, I think this is more of an story execution issue than a character/personality issue.

Problem is players are Main Character drunk and use to the Main character being the center of attention. It was a nice change to not have the WOL hording the spot light at every turn for once, nothing wrong with letting another character take the wheel for a while.

[Cleretic]

Wuk Lamat gave me some incredible Luffy energy, and by that I mean she was a perfect character and instantly skyrocketed to one of my favorite characters in the game.

I sincerely hope she sticks around and is a huge part of the story going forward. I want to see even more of her interactions with other scions and hope she doesn't become completely forgotten like Lyse was.

My best guess is that she won't get stuck with Lyse, but will probably end up on a similar tier to Aymeric. FFXIV loves its heads of state (or as close as a nation's system of government can get), and I imagine Tural will be a really common touchstone for us as the overall story goes. The struggle Lyse faced was that she's not the only politician we know in Ala Mhigo, and the other one is a lot more closely associated with the stuff we tend to be in Ala Mhigo for, so she tends to be left by the wayside.

I highly doubt Wuk Lamat will get sidelined in future Tural stuff. Koana, though...

[honest_psycho]

Problem is players are Main Character drunk and use to the Main character being the center of attention.

I really don't understand the point of this argument. Why is it a bad thing?

A video-game is not real life.
I payed money to play an RPG, where the player character is usually the central piece, or at least an important part of it.
Why is a little self-indulgence in a fictional videogame something bad?
With this logic, playing an ego-shooter and feeling awesome and powerful makes one some kind of narcissist.

This is not real life, where I actually prefer NOT to be the center of attention (I'm actually very introverted).

And I'm not debating irl geo-politics here. I'm debating the writing in a videogame and our role in it.
But I get treated like I insulted someones religion, because I disagree with a fictional character.

[SannaR]

I really don't understand the point of this argument. Why is it a bad thing?

A video-game is not real life.
I payed money to play an RPG, where the player character is usually the central piece, or at least an important part of it.
Why is a little self-indulgence in a fictional videogame something bad?
With this logic, playing an ego-shooter and feeling awesome and powerful makes one some kind of narcissist.

This is not real life, where I actually prefer NOT to be the center of attention (I'm actually very introverted).

And I'm not debating irl geo-politics here. I'm debating the writing in a videogame and our role in it.
But I get treated like I insulted someones religion, because I disagree with a fictional character.

Cause we've been practically the main character and in the spotlight ever since the start really. I doubt they'll stay with sticking the WoL in the background or in the mentor slot. Though I swear the final cnj/whm capstone quest back in Shadowbringers did the mentor thing better. They gave us a Lyse 2.0 that showed us more of their growth as a character and how they by the end of the 1st half had learned how to be a good leader and where their weak spots are. It's fine for the WoL to take a short break from center stage. It's not as though those we were traveling with didn't know we could step in and deal with the problem. Heck we even had an option to say to Bakool Ja Ja to not worry about the scary adventure pulling any kind of tricks right before his fight with Wuk Lamat. Could they have done our mentoring better or given us better options to choose from? Sure. There were times I wanted a 3rd or 4th option that was different than the two or three that were given; there were even times I thought we were about to have a chance to say something but then just stood there with our mouth slightly agape. I do feel that it was more of a script failure than a failure with the character.

[Lyth]

Problem is players are Main Character drunk and use to the Main character being the center of attention.

The 'main character' is by definition central to the narrative of the story. This is a tautology.

You've missed the broader point. A stand alone story about Lamaty'i would be perfectly fine in itself. That's not the story we have in Dawntrail. Instead, we have a story about the Warrior of Light, shard of the seat of Azem, kingmaker, slayer of gods, defender of grapes, and savior of the known multiverse, where we powerlevel Lamaty'i so that she can defeat her Mamool Ja rival and his minions. There is no dramatic tension in this whatsoever, because the narrative still acknowledges that we could step in and squash both sides at a moments' notice.

There's nothing wrong with taking on an apprentice and powerlevelling them so that they can fight their own battles, either. We've done this before (see: 'Return of the Holyfist', Lv. 30). It just needs the right narrative context. Perhaps comedy would have worked better than drama.

One essential point worth remembering about storywriting in FFXIV is that the audience have lived in their characters for the better part of ten years now. Part of Ishikawa's storytelling genius was that she simultaneously acknowledged the player's desire to be 'heard' and her own role in carving a narrative, which she meticulously balanced through the construct of Azem.

'We are the stories we tell ourselves. The brave hero, the tortured soul, the altruist, the pragmatist. They tell you who you see, but you and you alone know who you are. I speak only for myself. If my words give you comfort, they are yours for the taking, but that is your choice. Now and ever after, as it has always been.

Now comes your part,
To cloak yourself in the fiction,
To breathe life into the dead,
To give a voice to the voiceless...'

Her words tell you everything you need to know, really.

[Fendred]

How can you say this when the just the spoken line distribution looks like this:



Even if you want to argue that this is just spoken dialogue, do you seriously think that Erenville and Krile have enough unspoken lines to even compete with Wuk Lamat? Keep in mind she will also have more unspoken lines to add to this tally.

What version of Dawntrail did you play, and where can I find it? Because all I got was the one where Wuk acted like a black hole for any and all characters around her. Even up to the final trial where she shoved herself into that, too. Deus ex machina style.

There was only one character and one story that mattered in this expansion, and it wasn’t Erenville’s or Krile’s. Their stories were ultimately condensed into the last couple of level 100 quests. Erenville had a little bit of the 4th zone, too—but not for long before Wuk Lamat had to be shoehorned into there, too!

I genuinely do not understand how you can say with a straight face that any other character had significant relevance in this story.

The imbalance is pretty big. It also shows they needed to write the story in such a way as to introduce Sphene far earlier. She needed at least as many lines as Wuk Lamat given how rushed her section of the story was. One could easily argue that the ending should have been different due to omission of the scions' and WoL's capabilities. The most particularly aggregious being Alisaie's ability to cure tempering and aether afflictions via Angelo. Not only can we rebalance aether, but we can edit memories as that's part of curing tempering. Or the fact that we've stored souls with their memories in personal possessions in Shadowbringers to bring the scions back to the source. The technology of Solution Nine and Living Memory are the same feat on a larger scale. Characters lost agency in such a way as to whitewash our capabilities because of this imbalance in the storytelling.

[honest_psycho]

The most particularly aggregious being Alisaie's ability to cure tempering and aether afflictions via Angelo.

Omg, I almost forgot about this.
Remember when we acompanied Sphene to that boy, who was paralized from birth because of lightning aether?
Allisae should 100% been able do do smth about that.
(I forgot, there was she in that moment?)

[Fendred]

Omg, I almost forgot about this.
Remember when we acompanied Sphene to that boy, who was paralized from birth because of lightning aether?
Allisae should 100% been able do do smth about that.
(I forgot, there was she in that moment?)

Yeah, I died a little on the inside when we didn't call Alisaie in for that. Sphene seeing a boy cured of the affliction that killed her in life would have been a deeply touching moment.

Edit: It also changes the ending. At the very least the dialogue would be different.