Wuk Lamat is without a doubt the worse character to make protagonist

[Plushy]

I say protagonist because our own main character was a support/background character for this wuk.
I can't believe I'm saying this because I liked lyse but I think I understand. This is what people that didn't like lyse felt.
But I felt wuk was 10x worse...why? BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T LEAVE US ALONE.

We couldn't do a SINGLE thing without her being there with us.
Obviously spoiler ahead.
Lets split up! twin you go there, me and wol we go this way.
Lets split up! koana go with them, me and wol we go this way
repeat
repeat
repeat

Its so annoying.
Stormblood at least gave us time to shine and reminded us we're the main character, but dawntrail was basically the Wul Lamat show while WoL was the cheerleader. Hell...we didn't even get to talk to the final boss alone before wuk lamat shown up.
They shown WoL can have a heart to heart like in endwalker when we defeated the final boss.
Even though I didn't fully hate dawntrail story; I can say without a doubt, making WoL a side character to a unlikable character was not the play and I hope in 8.0 they don't repeat it.

SE...People want their WoL to be the main character, not a cheerleader or a background character.

People love FF14 story because THEIR character is the main character but in DT we just wasn't.
We wasn't the protagonist, we were a side character.
Please don't do this again. Make WoL the main character, make us feel important.
Endwalker did it right, Shadowbringers did it right...Heavensward did it right...Even Stormblood did it right, we had lyse with us but she wasn't overshadowing us like wuk did, she also wasn't buzzing around us like a fly or lost puppy like wuk was.

Dawntrail was suppose to feel like a summer vacation... I didn't think they meant make us the side character, is that what they meant by giving us a vacation? making us unimportant? Making us a background character?

The best part about DT was when wuk was away from us and we were in the wild west with erenville....
Also want to say her voice acting didn't help either, in fact it made it worse. Her english voice was so bad it actually made me play in japanese which made her character way more bearable.

Wuk english voice was a miscast....If you're going to make someone the protagonist. Hire an actual good voice actor, like the jp voices got popular anime voice actors...what the heck went wrong with the english cast?

[Lunaxia]

Thank goodness you made a whole new thread on this, there simply weren't enough already.

[Eyrilona]

I wouldn't mind playing the part of a supporting character per se, but not to a badly written character that takes away all our agency.

[Voidmage]

This is actually the biggest part of DT critisism.
Not the story itself, not the other characters even though both could use polishing.

The problem wouldn't even be Wuk Lamat herself but her overshadowing everything in the story.

I agree with your points. I play this game for my character to be the main character. Vacation or not, low stakes or not. I shouldn't be forced to spend every minute with one character. Even in our hotel room she comes to us it was terrible.
I have low hopes for 7.1 because it is probably already written.

I love the dungeons, I love the music and I love the zones but the story not.
Either they really thought most people would like it or something else was going on (I have my theories more and more tbh).
Really hope they read the feedback and give an actual response this time.

Even our dialogue choices and the nodding were a step back.

Edit because I forgot something and I trie to keep it spoilerfree.

In the last zone the little side quests for the eather currents were great. That's when the game showed it can still tell stories with us there. We don't stand in the spotlight but just help those people in a calm, experienced role.
That's how the MSQ should have been. Us actually mentoring Wuk Lamat without delegating us to nodding NPC's.

Do people not realize who Azem was? Why we got his stone and why Emet-Selch asked us to got out there and explore the world?

We as the WoL WANT to explore. Experience new things. See different cultures. The story even made that clear with our longing look at the bridge when we first saw the gate. The WoL doesn't want to be THE ONE to solve every single world ending problem. The WoL just wants to go out there.

And that is exactly what happened in this expansion.

I get that people expected something else and want to be the main character, but that is against everything that the WoL wants. Especially as we are a fragment of Azem.

I agree that the WoL wants to adventure and travel first and foremost. You are right there.
But in my opinion thats the problem. We don't really do that. It's Wuk Lamat who does. We just stand there.
It would have been different if we had more quests for ourself were we talk to those cultures and learn. That's what I criticise.
It didn't really happen this expansion.

We aree the Main character in this game. I don't see how that's at odds with being tzhe WoL or a fragment of Azem.
Being the MC just means the story moves with us and is experienced through us not that we go and fight world ending threats.

[Shialan]

Do people not realize who Azem was? Why we got his stone and why Emet-Selch asked us to got out there and explore the world?

We as the WoL WANT to explore. Experience new things. See different cultures. The story even made that clear with our longing look at the bridge when we first saw the gate. The WoL doesn't want to be THE ONE to solve every single world ending problem. The WoL just wants to go out there.

And that is exactly what happened in this expansion.

I get that people expected something else and want to be the main character, but that is against everything that the WoL wants. Especially as we are a fragment of Azem.

[Eyrilona]

I think we need to distinguish between two different meanings of main character. There is 'are we the main character to the overall narrative', and while this is kind of nice because it means our character will get a lot of recognition, its importance is actually much less than the second meaning, which is whether we are the main character of our own playthrough experience, our local narrative.

Let's borrow from the average shonen isekai, because a lot of people are calling DT a shonen episode. There is usually a "Hero Party", and that is usually five or six people, typically Hero, then a strong second fighter good at tanking damage, a priestess, a mage, and --if there are six-- a scout type. The Hero and their mission to (again, usually) defeat some demon king or whatever being the undoubted main character to the overall narrative structure. Often in games, we would play the Hero. But I could quite easily write the script for an entirely satisfactory game where we would play the role of one of those other supporting members of the party. You would be completing your own small side missions, and even when you share the stage with the Hero, you would be busy doing your own part of everything. You would be in control of your character, accomplishing the goals set for your character, and getting the rewards and satisfaction of doing your part well. There is nothing wrong with your objectives revolving around helping the Hero succeed, as long as they are your objectives, they give you a stake in doing something, and they are your accomplishments when you do them.

But that is not what Dawn Trail does. In a lot of cases, we do not have objectives. Wuk Lamat has objectives. And we are not achieving our own goals, we just run back and forth clicking things and sit through cutscenes to watch Wuk Lamat achieve her objectives. In this case, we, the player, are not only not the main character of the overall narrative, we are also not the main character of our personal local narrative - we have gameplay in the sense that we are pressing buttons to make things happen, but we are not in any control of our own playthrough, and get little or no personal satisfaction, no recognition when we did a good job. We just.. watch cutscenes in which we are systematically always bystander, and then we are made to tell someone else that they did a good job.

Now THAT is a problem in game design.

[Rolder50]

Do people not realize who Azem was? Why we got his stone and why Emet-Selch asked us to got out there and explore the world?

We as the WoL WANT to explore. Experience new things. See different cultures. The story even made that clear with our longing look at the bridge when we first saw the gate. The WoL doesn't want to be THE ONE to solve every single world ending problem. The WoL just wants to go out there.

And that is exactly what happened in this expansion.

I get that people expected something else and want to be the main character, but that is against everything that the WoL wants. Especially as we are a fragment of Azem.

But we don't get to explore. We have to be Wuk's babysitter and carry her through the rites. Exploration comes secondary.

If anything, Estinien is the one doing the exploring. Comes in, fights the king for fun, leaves before all the political junk happens. Wish that was us.

Edit: And the point about solving the world ending problems is amusing considering we do that in the end ANYWAY.

[VerdeLuck]

Do people not realize who Azem was? Why we got his stone and why Emet-Selch asked us to got out there and explore the world?

We as the WoL WANT to explore. Experience new things. See different cultures. The story even made that clear with our longing look at the bridge when we first saw the gate. The WoL doesn't want to be THE ONE to solve every single world ending problem. The WoL just wants to go out there.

And that is exactly what happened in this expansion.

I get that people expected something else and want to be the main character, but that is against everything that the WoL wants. Especially as we are a fragment of Azem.

If you write a character that wants to be a background character in their own story, then expect people to not like it.
I play this game for the story and I don't want to play a supporting role in an RPG. I want to be the one doing cool things and exploring and performing awesome feats.
There was a rule for the longest time in game dev which was that if there is something cool, the player gets to do it. You don't have an NPC do it, you don't have it in a cutscene, you have the player do it themselves because that feels good.

The story here feels like the exact opposite from this rule, most daring or cool feats are done by Wuk Lamat and we are just the tough guy who stands on the side and nods approvingly like an NPC.

[HyoMinPark]

Do people not realize who Azem was? Why we got his stone and why Emet-Selch asked us to got out there and explore the world?

We as the WoL WANT to explore. Experience new things. See different cultures. The story even made that clear with our longing look at the bridge when we first saw the gate. The WoL doesn't want to be THE ONE to solve every single world ending problem. The WoL just wants to go out there.

And that is exactly what happened in this expansion.

I get that people expected something else and want to be the main character, but that is against everything that the WoL wants. Especially as we are a fragment of Azem.

The only time we got to really explore and just be an adventurer was in the Wild West zone with Erenville. Which was my favorite part of the expansion because that was what I had in mind when it came to a “low-stakes new journey/adventure/vacation”. Not following around an annoying idealist cat woman who shoves the concepts of “peace and love and friendship” down your throat as if you’ll forget about it otherwise.

We weren’t adventuring. We were a pretty set dressing for another character.

Edit: And the point about solving the world ending problems is amusing considering we do that in the end ANYWAY.

Also this. For everyone saying Dawntrail is supposed to be a low stakes vacation-type reboot of FFXIV, I’m just sitting here thinking about the ending where it was anything but low stakes.

Chill a sec from being the MC all the time peeps, it's been 10 years of that, this MSQ sets the tone for later plot points, some exposition was needed, and i enjoyed it personally.

There have been other expansions where we weren’t “the main character” all the time, and they were far better written than Dawntrail. I never felt completely irrelevant and like the plot would have zero change/impact to it if the WoL had been replaced with Random NPC #2737473 when I was the sidekick to Lyse or Hien in Stormblood. And neither of them took away from the stories of the other characters around them. Erenville and Krile were done dirty, since their stories and resolutions were wrapped up in a handful of quests right at the end. All to make sure Wuk Lamat got to have her 99% spotlight uptime.

[Vhein]

Chill a sec from being the MC all the time peeps, it's been 10 years of that, this MSQ sets the tone for later plot points, some exposition was needed, and i enjoyed it personally.