The Negative Impact of Poor Character Writing on the Quality of Dawntrail's MSQ

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Even if G'ahara original time lined got erased, it will still be stupid to call his action genocidal. He didn't come up with the plan, he was entrusted with it by the very people at risk of being erased. This is like accusing a doctor who performing a consented euthanasia on terminally ill patients "murderer". Yes, someone people truly believe that, doesn't make them right.

But people always use the most extreme and hyperbolic words to push their message, what else is news?

Do you truly believe he got the permission of everyone in that timeline to wipe them out of existence? That no one, on any world, in that entire universe wanted to keep existing?

You didn't read the short story I linked, did you? I recommend going back to it.

I've obviously read the story because I referenced it when describing the state of the world he abandoned.

[SongOfTheWind]

But no, the past is the past. You must forge ahead and soldier on...unless the WoL drops dead then time to dropkick time and space into the trash bin because some things are more important than a timeline full of people. Am I right?

Pretty much this.

[Raven2014]

And your reasoning for justifying G'raha Tia's actions extremely easily applies to the Endless, which is my entire point.

Then I don't get your point. Unlike all the previous incarnation of the same theme, the Endless to me is a completely fail attempt to incite an argument that doesn't exist. The Endless is nothing more than projection of a self-serving AI that just happen to have a large amount of data to emulate a person. Say ... since we can already have almost a nominal conversation with chatGPT, and if MS decide to parterup with the people running Vocaloid ... in a decade we'll probably have something like the Endless. At that point, if MS decide to shut down chatGPT server would you be screaming bloody murder? I know I won't.

Do you truly believe he got the permission of everyone in that timeline to wipe them out of existence? That no one, on any world, in that entire universe wanted to keep existing?

And I'll bluntly tell you this kind of argument is ... , well I won't say it because it'll just be mean. But if you want to twisted into a form of universal consensus than:

- Not everyone want to die defending their country, so drafting in a defensive war is genocidal your own population.

- Not everyone want to obey or agree to the law, so the laws shouldn't exist.

- Not everyone want to die for a cause, so even a righteous revolution is a genocidal. Do you really think every single British colonists were all on board the American revolution, like every single one?

- Will you care about writing a story about the evil Washington who forced colonist to become independent from England?

The narrative you try to use here is like bringing a club and just blunt any story telling to death, no exception. The point of the narrative is G'ara was entrusted with the mission and carried the will of the people of his timeline. That's the motif necessary for the story to move forward. Now of course, there probably are 101 ways to poke hole at that story, I'm just saying yours is probably the worst way to do it.

[TELOS]

Then I don't get your point. Unlike all the previous incarnation of the same theme, the Endless to me is a completely fail attempt to incite an argument that doesn't exist. The Endless is nothing more than projection of a self-serving AI that just happen to have a large amount of data to emulate a person. Say ... since we can already have almost a nominal conversation with chatGPT, and if MS decide to parterup with the people running Vocaloid ... in a decade we'll probably have something like the Endless. At that point, if MS decide to shut down chatGPT server would you be screaming bloody murder? I know I won't.

The reason why I said what I said is because people are saying what happened to the Endless is sad because "they're people". I'm bringing up that the same thing applies to G'raha Tia's original timeline that he was willing to erase to say this is not an issue unique to Dawntrail. If you're not saying this, then obviously my point doesn't apply to you.

G'raha Tia was still happy to commit omnicide though.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

And I'll bluntly tell you this kind of argument is ... , well I won't say it because it'll just be mean. But if you want to twisted into a form of universal consensus than:

- Not everyone want to die defending their country, so drafting in a defensive war is genocidal your own population.

- Not everyone want to obey or agree to the law, so the laws shouldn't exist.

- Not everyone want to die for a cause, so even a righteous revolution is a genocidal. Do you really think every single British colonists were all on board the American revolution, like every single one?

- Will you care about writing a story about the evil Washington who forced colonist to become independent from England?

The narrative you try to use here is like bringing a club and just blunt any story telling to death, no exception. The point of the narrative is G'ara was entrusted with the mission and carried the will of the people of his timeline. That's the motif necessary for the story to move forward. Now of course, there probably are 101 ways to poke hole at that story, I'm just saying yours is probably the worst way to do it.

You are the one claiming that having the consent of a handful of scientists means that wiping out their universe is no longer omnicide. You are the one claiming that consent of a tiny group of people given the vastness of the universe removes responsibility for wiping out millions if not billions of people who did not consent and would have never had a clue who the WoL is.

He did not carry out "the will of the people" he carried out the will of one group of people on one continent, on one shard, which ran the risk of wiping out an entire universe. And again, that's not my issue, my issue is how preachy we get about moving forward and not looking back, when one of our friends risked wiping out an entire universe to keep us around. But when it comes to any other people "that's against nature" "we are meant to live and die." Yeah, no one was making that speech when they were inventing timetravel so that we would have the "natural" death we were "meant" to have.

[vonKlippe]

This was such a cool discussion until the regulars got here.

[Bhearil]

Even if G'ahara original time lined got erased, it will still be stupid to call his action genocidal. He didn't come up with the plan, he was entrusted with it by the very people at risk of being erased. This is like accusing a doctor who performing a consented euthanasia on terminally ill patients "murderer". Yes, someone people truly believe that, doesn't make them right.

But people always use the most extreme and hyperbolic words to push their message, what else is news?

Graha's timeline still exists but is kinda of a dead end timeline. It was actually mentioned that even if Graha changes the past their "present" would not change at all telling the player that is basically a new timeline that diverged from when Graha appeared in the past.

They just tried to give one world a chance even if theirs is kinda done for no matter what

[Raven2014]

You are the one claiming that having the consent of a handful of scientists means that wiping out their universe is no longer omnicide. You are the one claiming that consent of a tiny group of people given the vastness of the universe removes responsibility for wiping out millions if not billions of people who did not consent and would have never had a clue who the WoL is.

I'm sorry, but did you play the same expansion I did? Or were you a cutsceen skipper?

- His timeline were described as completely broken, there was no way just a "tiny group" of people, no matter how smart can accomplish the project.

- Rather, it was described it was a pan-generational projects that were only realized by a collective effort of the people of that time line.

- And the thread that tied the world together were the legend of the WoL.

- His timeline wasnt on a mission to erase itself. They are on the mission to revive the one figure that they believe can delivery them. Erasure wasn't the goal, it was just an accepted risk.

- Just like when you try a dangerous procedure that may kill the patience, the doctor is not accused of murder when the treatmeant went wrong.

He did not carry out "the will of the people" he carried out the will of one group of people on one continent, on one shard, which ran the risk of wiping out an entire universe.

Now you're just reaching. Should we start discussing quantum physic next? The heck is this entire universe thing come from.

Did you forget that in his time line, the First already cease to exist and merge into the source? Can genocide a world that's already no longer exist. Even if you try to argue intention, it doesn't change the fact his mission gave an entire Shard a chance it would never have otherwise.

They just tried to give one world a chance even if theirs is kinda done for no matter what

Exactly

His mission if success, at worst would be able to spare the First from annihilation at the cost of their own. And at best, it will save both if that's what they dare to hope for.

[All_Nonsense]

I think a lot of the issues people have taken with how the WoL is handled is how stripped of character they were this expac. I'll elaborate on one example of this.

One of the things I can't shake and troubles me greatly is how quickly our WoL is made to defy their pre-established philosophy. I want to bring you back to Shadowbringers for a quote:

Emet-Selch: "I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you."

I don't need to get into the details - we all played ShadowBringers and know what happened there. So why then do we - the great heroes who oppose this philosophy then go to Living Memory and murder the last traces of human life on one of the Source's reflections? Because we don't consider them to be truly alive; ergo, we're not guilty of murder for killing them? Why was the solution to the last vestiges of humanity on a reflection clawing onto anything they could for dear life killing them? Because Sphene was being bad? Because the "low stakes" we were promised are actually the highest they've ever been since blasphemies literally almost wiped out The Source? Because we went from "haha rite of succession" to "all life on the source will be wiped out in 10 minutes better hurry lol?" Was there really no other solution there? It's truly baffling to me how we made that logical and philosophical leap with little to no exploration of the situation at all minus G'raha's musings on the boat ride.

The way the story as a whole was handled is baffling to me moreso than anything else. I can't make sense of most of it.

[vonKlippe]

I think the lowest level of all of this -- below character depth and development, cutscene torture, plot holes, etc. -- is that the Dawntrail writer(s) had absolutely *no* respect for the people who were expected to pay to experience this story.

I take back what I said before about no one at Square saying "this is awful, we can't ship this." Now I think that probably a lot of people who worked on this expac thought and maybe even said "I really don't like this game, but our target audience will." They thought it was crap, but they thought we'd *love* it. Maybe they wrote it for kids and they think kids are too stupid to comprehend and enjoy a rich and detailed story with a cast of extraordinary characters, or maybe they wrote it for all of us and they think we're all a bunch of cheap Anime-worshipping morons who will just buy whatever they sell. Whomever they imagined the audience to be, the people at Square thought very, very little of them.