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

[Souljacker]

It seems the WoL just being a bystander was planned and it really seems that they thought Wuk Lamat was going to be almost universally liked because she is a”character unlike anything before”.

Unlike anything before where? Have these folks literally never picked up a book? Do they think that FFXIV is the only media content that folks have ever consumed? Or is this a symptom of younger folks thinking that they've invented everything?

I just don't even know how to interpret that statement. They are truly in a bubble there if they think anything about Wuk Lamat was groundbreaking.

Y'all at SE wanted her to be a universally liked character? Take her out of the spotlight, the WoL passes on wisdom as we quest together, teaches her to lead based on how we've guided the three nations to coexist with the beast tribes on our continent. Write fewer, but more impactful lines for her, and for the love of all things holy, craft an actual identity for her and get an actress that can more naturally nail the accent you want the character to have. There are hundreds of thousands of actresses from all parts of the world, including ones close to the dialect you were going for.

Yoshi-P needs to stop dismissing Americans as "noise" and maybe start consulting with folks who make blockbuster movies in Hollywood, since SE seems so hell bent on making movies instead of games.

[Isala]

Unlike anything before where? Have these folks literally never picked up a book? Do they think that FFXIV is the only media content that folks have ever consumed? Or is this a symptom of younger folks thinking that they've invented everything?

I just don't even know how to interpret that statement. They are truly in a bubble there if they think anything about Wuk Lamat was groundbreaking.

Y'all at SE wanted her to be a universally liked character? Take her out of the spotlight, the WoL passes on wisdom as we quest together, teaches her to lead based on how we've guided the three nations to coexist with the beast tribes on our continent. Write fewer, but more impactful lines for her, and for the love of all things holy, craft an actual identity for her and get an actress that can more naturally nail the accent you want the character to have. There are hundreds of thousands of actresses from all parts of the world, including ones close to the dialect you were going for.

Yoshi-P needs to stop dismissing Americans as "noise" and maybe start consulting with folks who make blockbuster movies in Hollywood, since SE seems so hell bent on making movies instead of games.

The thing that gets me, is that he literally saved this game by copying what American MMOs, mostly WoW, were doing at the time, and now that the game has become popular, they seemed to have gotten their ego trips of "We know what the players want better than they do!" that caused them to make the dumpster fire of 1.0 back. It's the 11 > 14 transition all over again. 11 good, so they can do no wrong. 1.0 happened. ARR and HW good, so they can do no wrong. The last 3 expansions have happened, leading up to this absolute trainwreck.

[TheDustyOne]

it really seems that they thought Wuk Lamat was going to be almost universally liked because she is a”character unlike anything before”.

So to paraphrase; original character, do not steal.

[Voidmage]

Please don’t forget that I used google translate on my phone. So some things like universally liked could be a translation thing but all in all the meaning is clear I think.

[Tethan]

Please don’t forget that I used google translate on my phone. So some things like universally liked could be a translation thing but all in all the meaning is clear I think.

Regardless of the specifics of translation or that interview, the way the character is handled speaks for itself. If they had anything less than 100% faith in her ability to carry the entire story, they wouldn't have pushed her so hard.

[Malthir]

Considering the quality of the EW patch writing, you'd think that would have been the test run for the writer that they failed and even more reason not to give them an entire expansion. Especially considering it's completely separate storyline. It's fine to give a new writer side content or an interlude storyline to give them a chance to prove themselves and get settled in, but here it feels like they simply assumed they would without ever checking the work and just gave them control automatically.

I don't know, maybe the positivity squad was still drowning out all criticism in 6.X? But then again, I wasn't really paying attention to the story feedback and even I heard some complaints. Like particularly about Zero being a very flat character and too central - So you'd think the editors would have been extra diligent when Wuk Lamat was pitched. There's a clear pattern of hyperfocusing on the writer's pet character emerging here.

Maybe they recorded all the lines super early and could no longer course correct, I don't know.

I mean to a degree they might not have had the staff or budget to do much double checking. Teams scale up and down on skillset for what's needed. This expac was covering a graphics update a large portion of their budget would have been all the technical/engine artist that would have been involved, the writing team probably had substantially less budget aka dev time, that's going to have an impact on proof reading editing etc. You can see little mistakes in some cutscenes too likely for the same reason.

For example, in one of the early scenes in the throne room, everyone has a small idle animation of little arm movement etc, Alisaie is literally locked in a pseudo "tpose" zero motion to her what so ever. Then there's the animation in the tank role quest, near the end a character jobs backwards and clearly someone forgot to add the startup to the jump animation because she doesn't crouch or make any startup movement just just moves vertically and then cuts to her landing properly. We all no about the pizza face and dance issues. Also some of the writing shows these editorial mistakes, people have mentioned before some big goofs in the dialogues in cutscenes, using the wrong name for things or lore mistakes. When you focus on one thing the budgets taken from elsewhere and that means mistakes are bound to happen. Sadly the biggest department to get savaged by this is normally QA.

[MatthiusAbysswalker]

Judging from X (i know cardinal sin) most people either want to smash Wuk or are so toxically positive it's nauseating.

[fioravictorine]

Wuk is unlike any character they made before alright, in the wrong way

[Souljacker]

The thing that gets me, is that he literally saved this game by copying what American MMOs, mostly WoW, were doing at the time, and now that the game has become popular, they seemed to have gotten their ego trips of "We know what the players want better than they do!" that caused them to make the dumpster fire of 1.0 back. It's the 11 > 14 transition all over again. 11 good, so they can do no wrong. 1.0 happened. ARR and HW good, so they can do no wrong. The last 3 expansions have happened, leading up to this absolute trainwreck.

I agree the egos there have really inflated since YoshiP took over and copied WoW's formula. We might have a very different game if Tanaka was still in charge.

If you were there back then, you know that Tanaka had the direction of making an experience as "unlike FFXI as possible" - leading to generic classes, generic enemies, generic copy-pasted locations. Leveling up had diminishing returns, and they actually told us that was because they wanted us to play this for a little while and then log out and go back to FFXI. *They actually said that*.

So, the target audience was maybe vaguely 'everyone', but XI players were the folks they actively advertised to and the folks who immediately jumped to it when we had the chance. We were the ones they were trying to hook. And we all told them to take the steaming pile of shit and shove it. It was nothing like what we were expecting, which was an upgraded FFXI experience with maybe some new systems.

Enter Yoshi-P who interpreted our dislike for what was done as us expecting "WoW", and he went after a new target audience. Made an FF WoW clone. And yes, it worked. It's got a lot of subscribers who liked the flashy graphics and new lore to experience.

But I'd argue it's a weaker game with weaker systems and less soul than XI had. He has so many opportunities to improve it even in just small ways, and takes the path of least resistance every. single. time. It's a game without an identity - just an amalgamation of FFXI and WoW, taking systems from both but missing the soul that made each game great in its own right.

[Malthir]

I agree the egos there have really inflated since YoshiP took over and copied WoW's formula. We might have a very different game if Tanaka was still in charge.

If you were there back then, you know that Tanaka had the direction of making an experience as "unlike FFXI as possible" - leading to generic classes, generic enemies, generic copy-pasted locations. Leveling up had diminishing returns, and they actually told us that was because they wanted us to play this for a little while and then log out and go back to FFXI. *They actually said that*.

So, the target audience was maybe vaguely 'everyone', but XI players were the folks they actively advertised to and the folks who immediately jumped to it when we had the chance. We were the ones they were trying to hook. And we all told them to take the steaming pile of shit and shove it. It was nothing like what we were expecting, which was an upgraded FFXI experience with maybe some new systems.

Enter Yoshi-P who interpreted our dislike for what was done as us expecting "WoW", and he went after a new target audience. Made an FF WoW clone. And yes, it worked. It's got a lot of subscribers who liked the flashy graphics and new lore to experience.

But I'd argue it's a weaker game with weaker systems and less soul than XI had. He has so many opportunities to improve it even in just small ways, and takes the path of least resistance every. single. time. It's a game without an identity - just an amalgamation of FFXI and WoW, taking systems from both but missing the soul that made each game great in its own right.

100% this expac has revealed something that's been brewing for awhile, a massive lack of GAME in the game. Endwalker was just as a bad for it, you were basically just walking point a-b watch cutscene with very little action. The main difference is the good writing made up for it, you were engrossed so you noticed it less. The post patch stuff didn't have this level of writing so the player starts getting bored and realises they haven't actually had any gameplay for about 40m now. Cutscene's should be short sweet surgical strikes to emphasis a point not long winded dialogues talking at the player player. Go through all the other FF games, their best games had about 20s long cutscenes, with all the other narrative being given to the players through interaction and playing the game.

It makes me think of ff8 the sequence when you run from the spider bot ending with quistis blasting it with the machine gun. Most of that sequence is us, running and fighting enemies trying to get away, you feel engaged. The cutscene comes at the end and is 10s long.

If this team had made that sequence it would have all been done in a cutscene from the second you beat the boss at the satellite dish

Call me an old fogie but I miss my games having gameplay I can play.