Lyse vs. Wuk Lamat

[Isala]

Y'shtola always seems bland to me. Her best quality is being in some way related to Granny Matoya whom I love very much.
To this day I don't understand people's fixation with moonbird (moanbryda)

Tataru is great.
Alisae is great.
Ysayle was... alright I guess.

Yda/Lyse was fine enough they didn't need to create some convoluted back story that Yda was Lyse's older sister who died and then Lyse took her place pretending to be Yda all this time fooling everyone and the only one in the know was Papylimo.
Like that was needlessly complex.
How Lyse became the leader of the Ala Mhigans - was stranger still but I understood what the story was going for.

I have to agree with Turtle I don't understand the fixation on Wuk Lamat. There are many minute flaws that collectively are head scratchers but not the worst I've seen from FF14.

The fixation on Wuk Lamat is due to the fact that the game itself is fixated on Wuk Lamat. You cannot escape her terrible character, even in a zone she's not even in. We finally get a break from her in the cowboy zone, except suddenly, the MSQ still has you hunting down her bracelet, instead of doing literally anything else, and then it's right back to Wuk Lamat. You want to do the final trial, and save everyone like the WoL you are? Nope. Here comes Wuk Lamat to save you from the spotlight. The story has to make every single thing about that stupid cat. Literally the only time that any other character gets development is while she's off screen, but you better believe she'll hurry to fix those mistakes as fast as she can, because you can't have the Wuk Lamat expansion without Wuk Lamat.

Take, for instance, when she gets Princess Peached. You get to hang out with Koana. Who is competent, and interesting, and has character growth and motivation. The very instant they free her? Everyone, him, you, the Scions, immediately become 1D caricatures again, so that Wuk Lamat can be the self insert MC again.

[Reimmi]

I don't understand the hyper focus on Wuk Lamat. Whether it's Koana, Zoraal Ja, Bakool Ja Ja, Ketenramm, I can't even remember Erenville's mom's name, etc. You're talking about all the same things. And the few times they do come up against challenges or have development, it's so ham fisted and cliche.

This fanbase has a weird obsession with criticizing female characters and comparing female characters.

Bakool Ja Ja gets away with releasing a deadly beast...we turn off the Endless just because Erenville's mom wants to and thinks it might help defeat Sphene (it doesn't and who would even think that?)...Zoraal Ja gets disqualified but just goes into a room and steals and artifact...dawntrail just sucks guys, I'm sorry.

Wuk lamat is 95% of the screen time this expansion.
It should not be surprising she's the majority of criticism with Dawntrails writing

[ForteNightshade]

The thing that stands out to me about the difference between the two is that when Lyse is stupid, it leads to consequences for her being stupid, and no matter how much she talks about "freedom and liberation" just saying those words do not really change the situation.

When Wuk is stupid, its just a funny slapstick moment, and otherwise she's written as a near-untouchable writer's insert. She can go on and on about how much she loves her "papa and peace", and everyone is just in awe of her. She's never truly challenged, not outside of the Saturday morning cartoon villian that is part 1 Bakool anyway and its not like that amounts to anything. We don't even get to see her paired up with Zaraal or Bakool in the Team Good Guys vs Team Bad Guys cooking competition. The contest she brought us over resulted in two of the contestants forfeiting, to support her. And the last one just kinda left.

Lyse is incredibly more nuanced while Wuk is a flat line.

I've long argued Lyse suffers from the story being told around her. She's blindly idealistic and the narrative is guilty of supporting her stance when it should really take a more neutered perspective. You see this more in the second half of Ala Mhigo. They also didn't setup her leadership ascension well whatsoever when Raubahn is widely the superior candidate based on the narrative we're given. I know it's a typical Japanese trope the young upstart is made leader over the "old" veteran but it really didn't work. That being said, Lyse, herself, is a perfectly fine character. More importantly despite the occasional favoritism, she repeatedly fails. Heck, if it wasn't for us stepping in Fordola had her dead to rights and Zenos would have killed before the plot even kicked off if Y'shtola hadn't jumped in. 4.1 has her made an incredibly naive decision, which I don't think from a writing perspective seeing it feels like she forgot tempered beings can't be reasoned with but at least the narrative doesn't hold back calling out how dumb the decision was.

Contrast all of this with Wuk Lamat and it's a night and day difference. She literally never fails once the entire expansion. Her moments of insecurity don't feel like genuine attempts at character building but rather tossed in to portray a very surface level of "weakness" in an otherwise nearly perfect character. It doesn't help she keeps bringing them up again and again. All while everyone tells her how incredible she is. It's noticeable how much more the Scions fawn all over Wuk compared to Lyse despite the latter being a friend and colleague for much longer.

I don't understand the hyper focus on Wuk Lamat. Whether it's Koana, Zoraal Ja, Bakool Ja Ja, Ketenramm, I can't even remember Erenville's mom's name, etc. You're talking about all the same things. And the few times they do come up against challenges or have development, it's so ham fisted and cliche.

This fanbase has a weird obsession with criticizing female characters and comparing female characters.

Bakool Ja Ja gets away with releasing a deadly beast...we turn off the Endless just because Erenville's mom wants to and thinks it might help defeat Sphene (it doesn't and who would even think that?)...Zoraal Ja gets disqualified but just goes into a room and steals and artifact...dawntrail just sucks guys, I'm sorry.

This is just silly rage bait nonsense. Lyse and Wuk Lamat are two divisive characters who lead their respective expansions. Of course they're going to be compared against one another whether fairly or unfairly. It has nothing whatsoever to do with them being female. The "hyper focus" on Wuk Lamat is because she's front and center for nearly the entire story. She has more spoken lines than every character you listed combined. Naturally, she's going to be the focal point of criticism. That tends to happen in any medium where you prop a single character up as the "lead", and said character is poorly received.

With that said, I'd argue Koana is the only character you've listed that is largely consistent from beginning to end. In fact, I'd argue the story would be significantly better if told from his perspective. We actively see growth and change from his "technology and advancement above all else" to "accepting and embracing culture alongside those advancements."

[ZephyrMenodora]

I liked Lyse. Easy on the eyes and ears, and we have known her since ARR. She also did not follow us around the entire expansion and steal all our moments from us. She had relatively minimal screentime.

Also her intro cinematic with the WoL was awesome; would like to think that my WoL spent some time sparring with her.

[Fawkes]

The main problem with Lyse was always her convoluted backstory. Having there be a "real" Yda that we never met who died was pointless. If they wanted her personality to become more serious and less ditzy then they should have given her a big moment with Papalymo's death or something, instead of the idea that her dead sister was a ditz and she was just pretending to be her to trick ONLY US, who never even met her sister.


I assumed all the comparisons to Wuk Lamat were just wishful thinking that she'd similarly disappear from the story forever.

[Boblawblah]

Both controversial female characters who took the lead role for an expansion, both written a bit..amateurishly, Lyse disappeared almost immediately when it was clear to the devs that we hated her....not looking good for Wuk's future.

[koichiresh]

For those that don't like Lyse, I have to admit there were some moments where she was a little rough around the edges in terms of delivery, but I think Lyse isn't a bad character at all. It's how the stories are written.
I liked Lyse's charm and to be honest, her voice actor was really great. It doesn't feel over the top and she does have moments where she makes the wrong decision and it shows. I didn't see Lyse to be super powerful either regarding her battle or decision-making skills, but let's be real... if you never played or seen Lyse/Yda in 1.0 you really wouldn't know how much of a competent fighter she was. She can fight. She was much more involved, whereas her ARR involvement was far less.

I think one thing about Wuk Lamat that needed better reworking was, as someone mentioned, seeing Wuk Lamat never learned from mistakes. Wuk's convictions were never challenged, and she continued with the friendship conquers all narrative. I think we needed something more nuanced in character development. Even near the end, she was the same as she began.

I don't hate either character, I think the whole character comparison debate is kind of silly. Totally different storylines, backgrounds, motivations, etc. Are we really going to keep doing this dance every expansion?

[Gortys]

The problem with Lyse is the writing. She went from being a silly, but strong person who witnessed Alphinaud screw up with the Crystal Braves, has seen the monetarists try to frame her and her fellow scions for supposed regicide and yet is still somehow ignorant of how governments and politics work. She's also ignorant of how citizens work and thinks just declaring who she is should be enough for people to want to follow her.

The problem with Wuk is we have no real backstory at all, but we are somehow supposed to feel close to her or think she is the best leader. We see that many people don't support her at all in the beginning, but then suddenly at the end everyone is so happy she won?

Both are poorly written, but with DT it is partially the story itself (coupled with gameplay) that is the problem. The character is just a symptom of that problem since she's not the only poorly written character in DT. In Stormblood our time was split between Lyse and Hien. This is why I constantly say that if our character had been more "neutral" and split between the 3 contestants, DT would have probably been better. Constantly being faced with Lyse 2.0 is the problem since we don't have a Hien (Koana for example) to occasionally learn about.

[Nadda]

I'd like to point out that many people didn't like Alphinaud in 2.0 found him to be obnoxious and annoying for similar reasons but for entirely different types of personalities.

That said I have no dislike of Wuk Lamats character and I liked Alphinaud and Lyse also.

What I do think is that the story failed to make better use of her and Zarool Ja.

I believe post Zarool Ja's death Wuk Lamats role in the story should have been over.

I think that's fair - I was very confused by others reactions to Wuk Lamat in the MSQ mostly because even while completing the MSQ in the first three days of Early Access I took my time to absorb the story and do myriad of sidequests in between, and many fates. I don't know and can't judge how others play the game - but I get the feeling like if you just barrel through the expansion just doing MSQ you're gonna have a bad time. Because I really didn't notice anything wrong with Wuk Lamat outside her obvious character flaws which everyone in the story itself picks up on. I mean outside having Krile, Alphinaud, Alisae and Erenville just sort of be around was odd... but maybe if people hated Wuk Lamat from the offset they just weren't gonna have a good time.

I liked being sidelined letting people sort out their business in a controlled environment without my direct intervention as a positive guiding force.

This is a bit off topic but I find it funny how in some MMOs people will be upset that their character is perceived as "The Champion" or "Chosen one" wanting only to be an adventurer and then in this case if you're adventurer helping someone through their own story they feel like they've been sidelined... Like as Warriors of Light we're the strongest people in the whole world now. People know what we're about, it wouldn't be interesting if we were always at the center of things. I like that things don't have to revolve around me in spite of how powerful I am.

I think the reason people are making Stormblood comparisons is not in ways Lyse and Wuk Lamat are alike (as they are different characters clearly) but because they are two expansions that follow an inexperienced female entering into a leadership role without really having a good grasp on what that means. It's not really about the Warrior of Light, it's about the countries and peoples we're interacting with and that bothers some people. Dawntrail does take a noticeable decline in quality specially post solution 9 tour I could go on about but I find the disdain for Wuk Lamat to be a bit too undeserved.