The Actual Problem With Dawntrail

[Swordsman]

This may or may not be me about the kick a hornet's nest but I'll say it anyway.

I think a lot of players are missing the forest for the trees. Wuk Lamat isn't the problem.

If she wasn't around during most of the scenes where she is then it'd look like she's just sitting on her hands and doing nothing. The first half is her journey to leadership and the second half is how she handles leading. We can help her but we can't do the job for her. She has to be the driving force. When the game tried something like this in Stormblood there weren't many scenes showing Lyse's skills as a leader until the patches, and players thought she was unqualified because of it. The writers didn't want to repeat that.

I think the actual problem is this: Dawntrail is too short. 2.0 had about 160 quests (even more originally) to reintroduce players to Eorzea. 7.0 has only 100, even though we're exploring a whole new landmass and a nation from another shard. That's why these players feel exhausted. Everything is crammed together and there's not enough time to fully explore what the writers want to explore. Wuk Lamat takes the blame for this larger issue because she's the most prominent character.

Dawntrail isn't a bad expansion and the patches might improve it, but Square Enix should be less afraid to make longer expansions. I know a lot of people dislike A Realm Reborn for being tedious, but in the case of Dawntrail I think that kind of length could help.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. Asking the writers to create a story with a longer runtime isn't suddenly going to improve their writing skills. It's just gonna end up being more of the same.