7.2 MSQ opinions (spoiler obviously)

[Hallarem]

snip

The bad:

- Wuk Lamat, I don't see a reason why she is there aside for the reason of her being the main character of this expansion. We shared a moment with Sphene, yet Sphene's whole "ask for help" scene is directed to Wuk Lamat to answer, not us.

- Poor Krile. Nameless side characters getting more voiced lines and scenes than Krile lol. The supposed "Shes gonna play more of a part in the expansion." Her calling Wukkie Lamatiyyy made me want to throw up.

- I like and dislike the villain, I hate that we might be going with the "trying to understand the emotions of an AI" route again, and I am fearing it's going to go to another Dawntrail special of trying to insert "Spene lissen to mee" instead of just realizing that this wizz-kid tech-emo needs to be kicked to the curb and shut down.

- I hope 7.3 shuts this whole plot down, while this patch seemed more mature, it still had some inkling of that "Lets write for teenagers" all over it.

- I still hate that we are glazing up the fake-Sphene AI computer program and treating them like a real person.



The good:

- I honestly like the actual Sphene, her story arc, they wrote an actual character with actual emotions and dialogue. Good job, I hope we get more of this character. I hope they don't dumb her down into a Wuk-Lamat fangirl or into an "I need to understand the emotions of everything even if they are clearly just out to destroy everything I cherish, because cultures and understanding and Dawntrail stuff, yo." - route. Or if that crown devolves into the obvious trap that it probably is.

My wish is that we would get to train her, as she wanted to grow stronger, have our actual mentor arc and Wuk Lamat stays as FAAAR AWAY from that phase of the story as possible.

- I think the combat animation cutscenes are great, and are showing promise of maybe us someday doing something in them other than a random offscreen slash and something falling down.

- While I still don't like the whole bumbling idiot citizen plotline full of "theme npc's" this added a bit of flavor to it. Pacing for this patch story was better.

- The first dungeon was kind of a nothingburger, the trial was fun. I wish Zelenia and Otis would've been longer lasting characters alongside of this Sphene.


I'd resub at 7.4 maybe 7.3 if it hinted at this arc ending.

[CNitsah]

The bad:

- Wuk Lamat, I don't see a reason why she is there aside for the reason of her being the main character of this expansion. We shared a moment with Sphene, yet Sphene's whole "ask for help" scene is directed to Wuk Lamat to answer, not us.

- I like and dislike the villain, I hate that we might be going with the "trying to understand the emotions of an AI" route again, and I am fearing it's going to go to another Dawntrail special of trying to insert "Spene lissen to mee" instead of just realizing that this wizz-kid tech-emo needs to be kicked to the curb and shut down.

I do agree with those point. The first one is linked to what I was saying about being in a weird place with WL. It feels like one scene they decide to shove her on the sideline, and the next scene, they want to put her in the spotlight. It really feels like they have those 2 options and can't chose, so they go with both and it feels weird.

I'm not a fan of the new bad guy either. He kinda lacks building. He feels more like a function in the story than a real character. Maybe next patch will make him meatier.

[Paintedtarget]

You summed up all of my views on the bad. Wuk is a damaged character that cannot be salvaged for me at this point. I hit space bar or skip cutscenes when she is in the game which is something I have not done since ARR started. I really hope we move on from that character or they drop her out of the MSQ as soon as possible.

[Sharindel]

You summed up all of my views on the bad. Wuk is a damaged character that cannot be salvaged for me at this point. I hit space bar or skip cutscenes when she is in the game which is something I have not done since ARR started. I really hope we move on from that character or they drop her out of the MSQ as soon as possible.

You are correct, Wuk is burned, she must be gone, most of the player base link her directly to the horrible add-on that dawntrail is!
I even suspect that Wuk is a self insert of one of the developers who want to be the one character that is superior to the warrior of light! She steals all the attention of the warrior of light, even to the point where she steal our boss fight. As example for what i expect of the warrior of light you should watch this https://youtu.be/XXsmvmlBiOA that is a story of the last patch of Wuthering Waves. You are the hero, you are the one who get it done. A thing Square Enix never had done. We are only be called the warrior of light, but in most cases we never be the bad ass god killing hero!

And they should really really stop give us even less than a visual novel, in a visual novel we have choices and bad endings. But in this game we are have not even a choice and now they even cut us out of the story. We are only the mentor, the obi-wan of luke or should i say the WoL of WuK? The story must be around US the players protagonist, the WoL, everything must be the story of the WoL not the scions, they are only the addition to the WoL.

[AshtonCrowe]

The bad:

- Wuk Lamat, I don't see a reason why she is there aside for the reason of her being the main character of this expansion. We shared a moment with Sphene, yet Sphene's whole "ask for help" scene is directed to Wuk Lamat to answer, not us.

- Poor Krile. Nameless side characters getting more voiced lines and scenes than Krile lol. The supposed "Shes gonna play more of a part in the expansion." Her calling Wukkie Lamatiyyy made me want to throw up.

- I like and dislike the villain, I hate that we might be going with the "trying to understand the emotions of an AI" route again, and I am fearing it's going to go to another Dawntrail special of trying to insert "Spene lissen to mee" instead of just realizing that this wizz-kid tech-emo needs to be kicked to the curb and shut down.

- I hope 7.3 shuts this whole plot down, while this patch seemed more mature, it still had some inkling of that "Lets write for teenagers" all over it.

- I still hate that we are glazing up the fake-Sphene AI computer program and treating them like a real person.



The good:

- I honestly like the actual Sphene, her story arc, they wrote an actual character with actual emotions and dialogue. Good job, I hope we get more of this character. I hope they don't dumb her down into a Wuk-Lamat fangirl or into an "I need to understand the emotions of everything even if they are clearly just out to destroy everything I cherish, because cultures and understanding and Dawntrail stuff, yo." - route. Or if that crown devolves into the obvious trap that it probably is.

My wish is that we would get to train her, as she wanted to grow stronger, have our actual mentor arc and Wuk Lamat stays as FAAAR AWAY from that phase of the story as possible.

- I think the combat animation cutscenes are great, and are showing promise of maybe us someday doing something in them other than a random offscreen slash and something falling down.

- While I still don't like the whole bumbling idiot citizen plotline full of "theme npc's" this added a bit of flavor to it. Pacing for this patch story was better.

- The first dungeon was kind of a nothingburger, the trial was fun. I wish Zelenia and Otis would've been longer lasting characters alongside of this Sphene.


I'd resub at 7.4 maybe 7.3 if it hinted at this arc ending.

People laugh when i say Lamat is a dev insert, But she 100% is and is their version of "Sylvanas" from WoW, Those characters are bad for the story you slowly get phased out of relevancy till it's just "Lamat and her trusty sidekick!" Then you get phased out of all actual story and only appear when combat is relevant.


They brought back Sphene cause that's the only character who was well received by majority of their population, IT's equivalent to Blizzard bringing back Arthas Menethil cause they needed to milk playerbase numbers. Then they killed him off cause "Sylvanas" didn't get her 5s of clout.

They'll do the same thing to Sphene, Or phase her out like Lyse then push even more lamat into 8.0 they very clearly want Lamat as a focus.

Though, I'm sure the cultists will defend it as usual.

[Zackneifein]

They brought back Sphene cause that's the only character who was well received by majority of their population, IT's equivalent to Blizzard bringing back Arthas Menethil cause they needed to milk playerbase numbers. Then they killed him off cause "Sylvanas" didn't get her 5s of clout.

They'll do the same thing to Sphene, Or phase her out like Lyse then push even more lamat into 8.0 they very clearly want Lamat as a focus.

Look, if you go to my posts or if you had access to my reddit account, you would know that I'm someone that as been very critical of Dawntrail, of Wuk Lamat, of how the WoL was treated or of the pacing. Some here may think that I'm just a hater (which I'm not, just disappointed).

But you just can't say that about 7.2. Wuk Lamat, while being present, is irrevelant in the plot, her spot being taken entirely by Real Sphene and this Sphene doesn't have the same personnality nor the same "connexion" with Wuk Lamat that the old one had. If there is one character with which she gets closer to, it's the WoL. And from what we have seen, she is one of the best character intruduced since a while.

The WoL is, alongside Real Sphene, at the center of the story and the villain objective is the WoL, not Wuk Lamat nor even Real Sphene, he doesn't care about both (debatable for Real Sphene, but for now he doesn't seem to).

Wuk Lamat is being pushed away without any kind of doubt, as expected from the beginning. She always was destined to get the Lyse Treatment, and now I'm just sad that's it's also probably Real Sphene destiny.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Most of it was rather uninteresting, though having the real Sphene try to understand and come to terms with suddenly finding herself 400 years in the future was the first time the DT MSQ made me feel anything other than boredom outside of the reveals related to Bakool.

[KillaKilala]

The story is very good, but the writing is very bad. It's very inconsistent for instance when we got teleported Wukie didn't notice that, but then an hour later when we inspect a pile of dust, she says that if someone took the body people would've noticed that... How did she not think that it could've been teleported the same way? Why can Calyx teleport us but not the key out of our pockets, AND WHY DO WE EVEN CARRY IT? Why not hide and guard it? I still enjoyed the story, almost cried a few times during the first hour, but it's such a shame, it could've been so much better. I feel like if Sphene had as many lines as Wukie and the story focused more on Alexandria, it would've been better than EW and ShB. I feel bad that the next patch is the last piece of this story after which we'll be getting a buildup to the next expansion. I want more Alexandria.

[Basteala]

I do agree with those point. The first one is linked to what I was saying about being in a weird place with WL. It feels like one scene they decide to shove her on the sideline, and the next scene, they want to put her in the spotlight. It really feels like they have those 2 options and can't chose, so they go with both and it feels weird.

I'm not a fan of the new bad guy either. He kinda lacks building. He feels more like a function in the story than a real character. Maybe next patch will make him meatier.

I think the first point is a step in the right direction, though. They couldn't just full on sideline Wuk Lamat--not just because it would piss off people that do like her for some reason, but also the fact that it would kind of muddle with the sort of continuity of the story and its characters as is. We're looking at FF14, not the Star Wars Sequels. Sphene--Endless Sphene, at least, and Wuk Lamat, had a good relationship (even if it felt a little contrived with the short timeline), so it makes sense that the real Sphene, who Endless Sphene's memories were borne from, would connect with her too. But we weren't completely marginalized and Sphene was allowed to get the detail needed for her story without Wuk Lamat upending it. So progress!

New bad guy...honestly I expected someone from Preservation to make an appearance, although no mention of the guy was kind of a miss. I put that blame more on the previous patch and on MSQ main in particular not the current patch.

AND WHY DO WE EVEN CARRY IT? Why not hide and guard it?

I asked myself that same question...but it should be noted that canonically, Azem can be kind of an idiot, sometimes, in terms of common sense like that.

It does kinda knock the writing down to HW/SHB tier rather than SHB tier, because of little details like that. And some people might say it's not even as good as HW/SHB, but I feel better that I think you could argue it's closer to that rather than weeeellll below ARR.

[IndraSyngiwyb]

I'm not gonna lie. After 7.0, I lost almost ALL my faith in the devs and their ability to keep writing good stories for this game.

This patch has returned to me a bit of that faith. They're treating the serious topics with the weight they deserve instead of the "sugar coat everything to make it less discomforting" crap they pulled in 7.0.

Wuk Lamat is doing what she SHOULD have been doing after she became Dawnservant. Largely staying the hell out of the way and tending to her "royal" duties. Giving the real Sphene far more time to shine, develop, and come into herself. I'm cautiously optimistic and looking forward to where they're gonna go with her character.

I really hope they keep up what they're doing with her because it's REALLY working for me.

Congrats, Square. You might have just earned my retainers back.