NPCs and WoL being super ignorant or out of character for plot to continue frustrates

[Minali]

[Dawntrail spoilers incoming]

Hi there,

I haven't entirely finished the expansion yet but I just did the Lvl 99 trial, so I daresay I know most of it.

I loved the first half of the story, and I am always up for learning more about the shards and previous calamities and what not. However, it has been rough to stay excited and that is not because of the general direction of the story or Wuk Lamat's character (I love her) or how we were more in a mentor instead of a hero role (I adore this).

No, it was because of a reoccuring "habit" in FFXIV storytelling I noticed lately moreoften. Moments where the only reason the situation in game went downhill because NPCs or the Warrior of Light or both were extremely passive, ignorant or acting completely opposite to their nature and habits.
We already had it in ARR a bunch of times, but it was on a smaller scale, very rare or happened in a way where one could argue for the characters it would make sense to expect certain things not to happen.

People actually climbing into the Abyss beneath the Steps of Faith to get Nidhogg's eyes out because they are already dead is an example where one can excuse NPCs for not expecting this in the heat of a moment.
Nobody doublechecking the finances of a private army built by a teenager is a tad harder to swallow. But hey, it's been over 10 years since these FFXIV plot points were written and since then we got a really deep and intense story with Shadowbringers and Endwalker, so it seemed to me the writing grow out of that or would use it sparingly.

Well. I was a bit annoyed when the Endwalker patches dropped and we defeated Golbez and he still managed to just walk away and make things worse while we were standing there and watching and waiting and letting it happen. But oh well, it's just patch story.


However, I was really surprised, to put it mildly, when we found the entrance to the Golden City and then just walked away with no explanation why or what's behind the door whatsoever and everyone was ok with that. I thought they might just have wanted to get the ceremony done so the formalities are clear and then we'll have a big cutscene with a big talk, but no. When we were asked after the coronation what we're up to now, we couldn't even mention checking out the Golden City. Nor was anyone else but Krile interested in this immense surreal archaelogical and historical find...? Finding and visiting the Golden City was one of the things they lured the WoL into all of this, an adventurer and explorer by nature, and yet they're just "you know, maybe I'll go on a road trip with Erenville, my schedule is free"? How about "maybe later"? It didn't bode well, but hey, I had trust in the writers to make it make sense in hindsight and all will be well.

Sadly.. it was not. What really frustrated in Dawntrail when we were standing in this throne room, with a seriously overpowered Zoraal Ja attacking an elderly former king. Yes, something something honor and burdens, but I'm pretty sure when it comes down to it, a person would rather like to lose their honor than their life, no? I get WoL's power level is hard to manage if others should have time to shine, but Zoraal Ja wasn't playing fair either. If you don't want WoL do kill a person, just give it a big electric high tech shield or so. We're strong, but we're still mortal and it's still fantasy tech. Instead we were just standing next to a regicide and didn't do a thing because of "honor"? And mind you this just happened because Ketenramm had spares for keystones in his home that were spread all over the place for a reason and then didn't immediately tell anyone after he noticed they were gone.

It put a huge dent into my mood and made it really hard for me to find any joy for the next steps, even though finding out more about the shards, the calamity lore and other civilizations is right up my alley.
Eventually I managed to pick myself up again as the story did the same and started to enjoy myself again. Not nearly as much as without these issues though, I felt like I lost trust in the writing being more creative than that big oopsie but I slowly got it back.

But then there is this Lvl 99 trial where Zoraal Ja disappears and the key to the universe, literally, is lying on the ground. Even if you don't know what it is, he had it on him and it looks important, so maybe don't ignore it entirely and let your enemy walk over to it, let them hold their villain monologue and then grab it in front of everyone.

Not to mention she was just a holoprojection on a bot, they could have just destroyed the bot and stopped her from disappearing with the key.

I will continue the MSQ, sure, but I am not looking forward to it anymore. I felt like these are conscious decisions done by writers of whom I know they can do so much better. And yet somehow they felt these were great ways of storytelling?

I'm sorry to say but... no, they were not. Letting us being a mentor and putting us on the sidelines for this during the journey in the first half? Sure, I loved fighting Bakool Ja Ja as Wuk Lamat for example! Relying more on teamwork? Awesome, we have done this a lot before anyway.

But making all characters including our own too stupid and desinterested because the writers couldn't come up with any other way to make this work... No. This is not fun. This is extremely frustrating and I hate how this ruined the otherwise really great and intriguing story for me.

Writers, I know you can do better.

Do better.

Edit: I like to clarify this is no "Everything was super bad about Dawntrail how dare you do (insert whatever)" thread, otherwise I would have posted it into the many other rage threads in General Discussion. This is about very specific situations where characters behaved very uncharacteristic, careless or passive when they really should know/can do better, from ARR to Dawntrail, like the ones I mentioned for example. I enjoyed Wuk Lamat's character development and us being a mentor for her, I don't mind stepping aside and helping other people grow. Our powerlevel of "we defeated the universe" can be daunting and hard to work with and becoming a teacher and example for others is a great way to deal with this. I also don't mind the whole succession rite and everything around it. I had an awesome time until we found the Golden City and everyone involved was just calling it a day.
You are welcome to see things differently and be super disappointed in many other aspects and are free to voice them in a feedback forum, but please do it in a thread more suitable for that. There are most certainly enough others around.

[DeathNoodles]

Yes I enjoyed a lot of the same things, I found it easybto criticize some of the Succession Rite, I personally felt like the player has zero agency in who they support. IMO Wuk-Lamat grew in a time frame that is just very unrealistic, and they moet definitely should have expanded on the education and life these adopted children had. Like how Zoraal Ja came out a seething psychopath when all we've heard the worst of was some tough warrior training. It felt rushed, I agree. I'm letting this expac cook like ARR did to see if it gets better during patches. I believe based on final cutscenes that there are questions we will get answered.

[Minali]

Yes I enjoyed a lot of the same things, I found it easybto criticize some of the Succession Rite, I personally felt like the player has zero agency in who they support. IMO Wuk-Lamat grew in a time frame that is just very unrealistic, and they moet definitely should have expanded on the education and life these adopted children had. Like how Zoraal Ja came out a seething psychopath when all we've heard the worst of was some tough warrior training. It felt rushed, I agree. I'm letting this expac cook like ARR did to see if it gets better during patches. I believe based on final cutscenes that there are questions we will get answered.

Maybe I phrased things in a way they can be misunderstood, English is not my first language and it was 2 am in the morning right after a challenging fight. I apologize if I caused some confusion. Because by what you write, I don't have the feeling you enjoyed the lot of the same things I did, quite the opposite. At no point did I say I felt like it was rushed or shallow. Although I would have appreciated more time to get to know Zoraal Ja during the Succession Trials, maybe by being paired in the cooking contest or so, I am fine with the concept and Wuk Lamat's character development. The whole first half was an exposition to the peoples in Tuliyolal and meeting them together with her was a great opportunity to learn about them without being an obnoxious respectless tourist or a walking White Saviour trope.

That's why I hate it even more how a few single moments in the middle of the game and near the end at crucial moments ruined this story for me, because without these scenes I would have enjoyed it a great deal from the beginning to the end. If anything I would consider it a bit too compressed, like they would have tried to put to many different things into the plot to appeal to many different audiences. Tying it up to one character who isn't the perfect woman was sadly bount to cause tension, going by the experience with Stormblood. (And don't come at me with "it's not sexism at all, you are diminishing other people's feedback about a shallow character", because going by characteristics she'd be a mirror to Estinien and people love him no matter how much he says himself he has no clue of what is actually happen in the MSQ as long as he can hit things.) But as said, personally I liked her very much and I enjoy stories where it's not just about praising our WoL into oblivion and letting us solve every problem of the planet singlehandedly. Several expansions have done exactly that and Dawntrail wasn't even short on acknowledging this either, we simply weren't the main person in the spotlight and that's fine by me, especially after we have been the fabled hero for two whole expansions + patch MSQ.

So if your criticism is not about specific big moments throughout the game about that specific kind of storytelling I described in my post, please voice it in one of the other threads way more suitable to this, there are plenty of others around. I am not saying your criticism isn't valid or anything and you shouldn't state it, mind you. This thread is simply not the correct place for it.

[Railynx]

This was something that irked me the entire way through.

None of the Scions acted like themselves, and I genuinely believe it's because they're incredibly well written characters, who are, as a result, very difficult to properly write for someone who is lesser skilled

(Alisae is usually my least favorite Scion, but in DT, she was my favorite character, and I think that's just because she was the Scion who felt slightly less like a knock-off brand of herself, than everyone else)

This expansion had a massive fucking treasure trove of simple storytelling/writing failures, and it relied on some of the most overused and uninteresting archetypes/cliches to portray it's characters/plots. It had extremely infantile, irrelevant, or just blatantly wrong philosophies and morals. And where it didn't reuse story tropes that are frequently found in children's shows, it instead tried to rehash and reuse the selfsame story beats that previous expansions had used. The entire thing with Sphene was just Emet-Selch's story done incredibly poorly.

The main villains made no sense and were extremely unthreatening, and when the expansion began to stretch on to the final ~30 quests, and the writers realised they're written the entire thing up to that point with filler, they tried to force in some kind of emotional substance by enacting pacing far worse than what your average 12-episode Netflix anime employs. The attempt to brute force us into feeling anything at all just came off as obnoxious and insulting, like the writer genuinely expects to be able to play some shitty music track or make the player choose between three god-awful Marvel movie quips, and then have the viewer feel anything other than second-hand embarrassment for playing the game.

It was all terrible, and I think it's in large part due to the team in charge of writing the MSQ being pitifully under qualified for handling XIV the story they were given, and the localisation team for the English version as well, did an absolutely terrible job. I've been told that the stupid quips, weren't quite so insufferable in other languages.

So with all that said, it's not at all surprising that the characters were acting like cardboard cutouts with "plot-device" written on their backs, instead of feeling like human beings.

[ThorneDynasty]

The "let the ruler candidate walk away with a stranger into a van with a puppy and candies" part was perhaps the lowest point in the story for me. How many assassination attempts has WoL witnessed directly or indirectly by now? In many ways it feels like the cutscence/scenario writing regressed all the way back to ARR days in terms of how passive and useless they made WoL out to be.

It does not help that after an entire expansion of WoL not doing anything and the player being forced to stand back, because Wuk Lamat needs to be the main character, even in the final trial it has to be Wuk Lamat who shows up to save the day. We are supposed to be the greatest warrior of the world now - Why has the writing regressed WoL to being a hapless adventurer again? Just having the villain pay lip service to how badass we look doesn't cut it.