7.1 - More Wuk Lamat

[Mortex]

Again, you should've told the "past of Zoraal Ja" in the actual story, not the follow up for more of a resonance. This is a case of literally "Who asked" it's too late to flesh him out now in the story.

Fleshing out the Villain after a bad case of deadness is such a super amazing move “please do feel bad after it’s already too late tehe”. Why do that in the main story when you can talk about tacos/food and the power of friendship and paint him as a shitty father and a generic cheating bad guy.

[Raven2014]

There's one major difference that I'm thinking of here though.

He and whatever team he had with him back then, came in already knowing that 1.0 was a dumpster fire they had to put out. With DT, they didn't know Poochie was going to be a disaster until people who finished MSQ started sending in feedback.

He was brought in to save 1.0, and in the first year he came in that's what he did. It's not until when 1.0 stop being a dumpster fire that the team was split to start developing 2.0.

And if you look at the pattern in the last 2-3 years you would see my point with how the handle the AST remade (promised at the beginning of 6.0 for 6.3, then delayed to 7.0) or Viera's hat which has been "on the table" for about 4 years at this point. Ask yourself, do they really need a whole 2.5 years to come out with the AST change? Should it really take them 4+ years at this point to adapt hat to viera? My point is: they know these issue, the acknowledge it, and if FF14 is still as important to them as it was before, if Yoshi and his team is still invested in the game ... those issue would still be fixed in a blink of an eyes. Time is not an issue here, commitment on the hand ...

But I personally think that arguing whether or not we should or should not be getting her back in 7.1, it's rather pointless. She's gonna be there, it was mostly expected... might as well keep the feedback coming and get through it.

Oh I don't disagree, like you said I think most people fully expect nothing much will change in 7.1 or even 7.3 because given the energy you see them invested in the game, it's folly to expect anything more.

My previous post simply to point out that the reason we won't see meaningful changes any time soon not because it's an impossible task, but because the team simply don't have the agency to carry out the task.

[SWATomega]

The 7.x patches are not finished and are not even finalized yet. They are still maleable and can be changed with enough feedback from the community. That's the purpose of giving feedback on these forums. To get the Dev team and Community team's attention to tell them what players want, and they can make changes to reflect that.
That's how live service games work.

We want better writing and don't want any more of Wuk Lamat taking center stage over Krile, Erenville, and our WoLs, and are willing to unsub if it doesn't improve in 7.1. This thread is to convey that. It's not that complicated.

Feedback is one thing, constructive feedback is always good. However beating it like a dead horse then when people get a whiff of it agian (like a screenshot of 7.1) they begin the loop all over again, it has been acknowledged already.

By how some statements are here, they don't care about the writing anymore and will happily skip the post-MSQ plot points, they are beyond wanting better writing or if Wuk Lamat improves and some want the next expansion. Some are willing to play it out to see what happens then to jump ahead.

It may not seem to be complicated but the emotions are running high and minds are made up. DT left a bad impression on one part of the community and good on the another part. THe community is split.

[Archeron]

Fantastic guess we're going to skip every single cutscene again.

Doubling down on Wuk Lamat is a massive L. Yoshi P is completely out of touch to the point where I have to question if he is even vaguely aware of just WHY the expansion was controversial, or if he's just hiding from feedback and reading off a script to avoid confronting the truth. He's unfit to be the director if he can't take the game in a new direction.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Feedback is one thing, constructive feedback is always good. However beating it like a dead horse then when people get a whiff of it agian (like a screenshot of 7.1) they begin the loop all over again, it has been acknowledged already.

By how some statements are here, they don't care about the writing anymore and will happily skip the post-MSQ plot points, they are beyond wanting better writing or if Wuk Lamat improves and some want the next expansion. Some are willing to play it out to see what happens then to jump ahead.

It may not seem to be complicated but the emotions are running high and minds are made up. DT left a bad impression on one part of the community and good on the another part. THe community is split.

I will give feedback as I like, thanks. It ruined my morning seeing the brand new 7.1 site and being immediately affronted with Wuk pictures.

Given the info about the patch is new, it’s not a dead horse to talking about her prominent presence reconfirmed when many hoped she’d just take a back seat.

[ovIm]

I would disagree with this assessment if Yoshi's and his team are the same people from 8-10 years ago. Or if FF14 still command the respect of a flagship tittle it used to have. Don't forget:

- 1.0 version shut down on November 2012
- 2.0 was launched in August 2013 - 11 months later.

Even if we pad in another 3-5 months to assume the 2.0 developement had begun prior to 1.0 shut down. That's still ~15month for them to create a 40-60h of content that was packed in the 2.0 launch.

So the notion of 4-5 months is too short for them to change what would be ~1h of MSQ because it's an unreasonable and impossible task ... yeah I don't buy it. Even if they only work HALF as hard as they did during the 2.0 launch cycle, changing the MSQ content of DT shouldn't be anything resemblance an impossible task.

But given the current energy and effort being invested into the game these days ... yeah, what you say would be a fair assessment. I don't think they're ignoring the feedback, but to be clear: they don't change it not because they're unable to. It's simple because they probably believe they don't need to or don't want to.

There is something to consider here though, in terms of software development cycles:

While yes, the rewrite did happen quickly, this was before the project started being as cyclical as it is now. Once the ball for the 3-monthly (now 4-monthly) patch got rolling, CBU3 has trapped themselves in their development structure just how they trapped class design with the 120s burst stencil. Additionally, the teams most likely have changed, and they are far less flexible now than they were during the 2.0 development.

As for the last portion of your statement, I do agree. Feels like they have gotten complacent with the current position of FF14 on the market. Yoshi-PR's response is very much damage control, trying to paint what we will get in a good light pre-emptively. I wonder if we get another "what character said how many lines" for 7.1 MS, and how that will look.

[Jeeqbit]

I would disagree with this assessment if Yoshi's and his team are the same people from 8-10 years ago.

A lot of them actually started moving away during Heavensward and Stormblood. They began just overseeing and training new staff to work on Stormblood onwards, while the rest of them were working on FF16. Yes, they were doing FF16 that long ago, contrary to all who believe they only did this during Endwalker. FF16 was more or less complete by Endwalker and its team largely disbanded during Endwalker leaving a smaller team to make the DLC.

Even if we pad in another 3-5 months to assume the 2.0 developement had begun prior to 1.0 shut down. That's still ~15month for them to create a 40-60h of content that was packed in the 2.0 launch.

That's a wholly unfair comparison:

• They got their best staff from across Square Enix to suspend their other projects to frantically adapt their new engine (meant for Single Player games) to work for an MMORPG.
• They had so many staff working on it that they worked on 2.0 while still making patches for 1.0. In a way they kept up this habit by making patches for expansions while working on the next expansion.
• Yoshi-P kept a spreadsheet of how long they took to do tasks that accounted even for bathroom breaks and mathematically optimized it so they could remake the game in just 2 years (it normally took longer to make a good game, especially an MMORPG). This wasn't healthy for his team (most likely why after 10 years he decided to increase the gap between patches).
• They reused a lot of assets and salvaged lore and designs. Let's be honest - this is what made it possible to finish ARR as quickly as they did. Things like the Twelve were designed going back to 2005. Many of the ARR dungeons, textures, models, area concepts, characters and feature inspirations were salvaged from 1.0.

[Iscah]

Again, you should've told the "past of Zoraal Ja" in the actual story, not the follow up for more of a resonance. This is a case of literally "Who asked" it's too late to flesh him out now in the story.

Lots of people have asked. I think it's one of the biggest common comments on Dawntrail that I've seen: Zoraal Ja needed more context, and yes it should have been given in the 7.0 storyline, but it wasn't – so better late than never.

As for the larger theme of the thread here... whether players like her or not, Wuk Lamat is an important person in the space where the story is currently operating, and I would much rather see her participation brought to a logical conclusion than swept away prematurely in response to complaints.

[Reinha]

I bet they have a Wuk magnet, plushie and statue ready to ship, and now they are trying to keep her in the cast in order to get the merch to sell.

[CamuiKushi]

I honestly don't mind if the writing is at least decent. My biggest beef with Wuk Lamat was how she was utilised by the story. It was never really her that was the problem, but the contrived events surrounding her.