#WukLamatMustDie

[ViaDesperare]

Statement:
We have deduced that Wuk Lamat is a huge problem in the FFXIV story, causing the game to go against the wisdom used to rebuild it. The narrative and gameplay quality of the Dawntrail MSQ has shifted towards the direction that insults the player’s ability and comprehension. Thus, it is that we wish for the character of Wuk Lamat to no longer appear in the future.

Reasoning:
It has come to be that the Story of Dawntrail, and the gameplay of the MSQ, is in a horrible state and needs to distance itself from the players due to the following points:

1. Wuk Lamat is a Black Hole Sue [1]
The main character of the expansion, Wuk Lamat, is a terrible trope that brings down the story and characters new or old. Personalities, such as Alisae of the Scion and even our own MC, calling her "LlamaTea" are out of character due to never calling other friends in a similar manner and in such a short time period. Y’shtola calling Wuk Lamat by Linkpearl to give us, the WoL, a message is not something that should’ve happened.. She absorbs all the spotlight in the expansion, to the point where the Wild West zone has to be about her, with the bracelet given to her wet nurse, even though she's not present and jumping in during the final trial to kill steal the boss from the player, which makes little sense to how she can do so alone when she's weaker and less knowledgeable than Graha, and makes the victory feel unrewarding.

Wuk Lamat takes up a huge amount of dialogue as shown with the collected lines. [2]
This is detrimental to the growth and characterization of the native inhabitants of the New World and other characters like Erenville and Krile, who mainly had a bit of a scene during the final zone. Wuk Lamat is also in the sidequests and levequests, there is no escape from people worshiping her. [3]

2. False Marketing
We were told that Dawntrail would be a low stakes adventure with rivalry with the Scions, but we ended up worshiping Wuk Lamat throughout the whole experience instead. The Scions are used for the Dawntrail Trailer, but they barely show up and barely have lines. Erenville and Krile were supposed to have a focused feature in this expansion but we only had very few scenes and lines from them, with Wuk Lamat attached to most of those scenes. We were told that we'd have a vacation, but we ended up watching Wuk Lamat deal with a world-ending threat, Sphene. We also embarked on an adventure that we've already seen, Stormblood and Shadowbringers. [4]

3. Awful MSQ design
The MSQ objectives of Dawntrail has us talk to Wuk Lamat around 139 times, compared to the following: 48 speak with Erenville, 16 speak with Krule, 4 singleplayer duty, 17 defeat monsters, and 9 clear dungeon/trials. The MSQ is stunted in design. Dialogue options are built to favor her. The MSQ revolves around Wuk Lamat, where pretty much anything you do has to be about Wuk Lamat and being forced to like her. [5]

[ViaDesperare]

Resources
[1.1] Black Hole Sue
[1.2] GDC Slides
[2] Lines
[3.1] Sidequest
[3.2] Levequest
[4] DT Main Site
[5.1] Quest Objectives
[5.2] MSQ
[6] Zestiria

—
Personal Thoughts:
To avoid another Tales of Zestiria Rose and Alisha controversy [6], Wuk Lamat should be removed permanently. It’s a waste of our money, the players' money, to support YoshiP to have a rewriting or fixing the MSQ similar to ARR or Tales of Zestiria X. The best way to remedy the horrible DT experience is to change the story going forward OR to give us a free Dawntrail Skip Potion, since the MSQ is mandatory. Players shouldn’t be forced to go through this horrible expansion or have to buy a skip potion from the Mog store for a problem that YoshiP created.

The English voice acting is also horrible, and the culture appropriation is pretty racist, but we have to live with that. We have to live with the Lore writer characterizing Latin American culture as Tacos. That they’d have amateur American voice actors do bad-fake accents for representation instead of hiring actual people from South America OR voice actors that can actually do the accent needed. The money we put into the game should've been used to make the game great and not to fix the blatant racism, laziness, and incompetence.

[Manamaru]

Personal Thoughts:

What Squenix team should've done was pad out the time of actually getting to know Wuk Lamat in more of the EW patches than when she was introduced and with how quickly they tried to speed date us with her. You could practically see the squenix dev team in a corner begging you "So you're going to like her, right? Please like her". Again, it put us at an unnatural pace to develop a bond and relationship with her. What we have with the first half of the expansion is that attempt to continue forming a bond playing catch-up with a naive shut-in princess wanting to become the next hokage.

The claims of racism are not only unfounded but also unnecessary if you thought it was to add more what was a good argument. A voice actor/actresses circumstance and who they are should not and does not have any sort of impact of their VA work; if anything only their voice range. What truly matters is the direction and writing with them.

now that i think about it, this expansion makes me think of a wow expansion. we just kind of stand off to the side while the important lore npcs do all of the work or come in at the last second to take credit. the only time i didn't feel like i was being talked at was during the stretch of story in shaaloni

7.0 Really seemed to have us playing the role of "Warrior of Likes to Watch"

[Dorito_Burrito]

You are soft.

[Swordsman]

Original Post

You are soft.

Give us a show, titanmen!

[jdtuggey]

You are soft.

This is the best post on this forum. Square, please frame it for us and make it a furniture item. ;D
I have no comments on wuk lamat. She's clearly the centerpiece of this particular story and I don't mind.
(At least the first half, she becomes very secondary after that, Erenville, Sphene and Cachiua take over)
Think she'll fade a little bit into obscurity like Ryne moving forwards.
Story is like... 1% of my gameplay on this game, and the actual gameplay sure is a step up.
I didn't feel like any character was overbearing, and man, Erenville sure got a lot of character growth and I've become very fond of him.
So happy he played such a huge part. #PositiveThoughts

I feel like this wuk lamat criticism is a bandwagon and a major part of this is being influenced by others, cause she sounded like a lot of decent but not great JRPG protags.
Nowhere near as grossly offensive as people make her to be. Maybe am wrong.

[Kohl]

You are soft.

You are correct.

[Dorito_Burrito]

Here before the legion of fence sitters comes to say something like "Oh good, a post that mentions Wuk in the title, that means it can be ignored"

I just don't see the point in continuously winding oneself up over a character that kinda sucks but probably won't be seen again until maybe late autumn at the earliest. Just makes it seem like outrage is all you live for.

Also, killing off Wuk Lamat so abruptly would just make a good chunk of the Dawntrail MSQ thus far even more pointless in hindsight. I'd rather the writers at least try and salvage what they've written (if such a thing can be done) before bringing out the nuclear option.

[CaptainLagbeard]

I just don't see the point in continuously winding oneself up over a character that kinda sucks but probably won't be seen again until maybe late autumn at the earliest. Just makes it seem like outrage is all you live for.

Also, killing off Wuk Lamat so abruptly would just make a good chunk of the Dawntrail MSQ thus far even more pointless in hindsight. I'd rather the writers at least try and salvage what they've written (if such a thing can be done) before bringing out the nuclear option.

It just kinda goes to show how much she's singlehandedly hurting the DT's story that she floods into absolutely everything that people consider to be wrong with it.

But yea, probably shouldn't literally kill her off, but just not have her make any more appearances without any explanation would definitely be an improvement.