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The thing about Wuk Lamat for me is, they should've had her make her debut sooner in the post-Endwalker patches, it would've eased off so much of the exposition/character-building heavy-lifting that Dawntrail had to do which inevitably made the story pace a bit of a slog.

A random list of MSQ "issues" that bothered me, in no particular order:

  • When leaving Earthenshire (the moblin village) and Wuk Lamat got kidnapped, our WoL as well as Alphinaud & co. just simply stood there for over an hour waiting for her without ever entertaining the idea of going back to check up on her. Also how did a lowly bandit manage to kidnap Wuk Lamat, who is clearly physically superior than most other beings? At that point in the story, you would think she'd become a bit smarter about the multiple foul plays that Bakool Ja Ja had employed previously. 

  • I didn't think we really needed the Scions in Tural, like, at all. It almost felt like their inclusion was out of obligation due to Trust/Duty Support. 

  • Even when we did needed a professional's opinion regarding all the reflection shenanigans and we employed the help of Y'shtola and G'raha who came to Tural at our behest, Y'shtola seemed so impassive and bored about the going-ons and simply parroted her lines as if reading from a template.

  • The actual plot beats that I was invested in, such as Krile's origins and Erenville's mom, were thrown in so late into the story it almost felt like Zone 6 was made specifically to fill in the gaps left behind by how thin the plot was, and as an afterthought of, "Oh right, I guess we can talk about Krile and Erenville here".

  • The redemption of Bakool Ja Ja should have never happened. I don't care, he threatened to kill so many people, released a world-ending entity, all because of dead babies lmao.

  • The game's attempts to make me feel bad for Zoraal Ja is such a low blow to the integrity of the writing team. At the beginning, I felt that perhaps he had his own compelling reasons to such radical views, and I kept waiting for when those reasons would be explained, but it never did, or it did but it wasn't compelling. Also, that transition cutscene in his fight where he cuts down the mirage of his own son made me seethe so hard, it destroyed whatever remaining shred of "I guess we could forgive him". At that point I was 100% for destroying that blue lizard into oblivion.

  • So that part where Gulool Ja Ja died... there were at least 7 other competent people standing right in that room who could've prevented it from happening. And then the script writers had the gall to write Wuk Lamat lamenting about interfering with her father's duel and "honour" when clearly, her father thought the duel had ended, Zoraal Ja just used cheat.exe to get in a sneaky low-blow. How is that interference when the enemy clearly cheated and caught your dad unaware??? Literal brainrot moment

  • I'm gonna be That GuyTM and say outright that I hated Sphene. The expansion was already throwing Saturday morning cartoon villains at us left and right, I would've liked her so much better if she turned out to be unrepentantly evil the entire time. Instead, when we first meet her, everyone took her words at face value even though she was the queen of the army that literally had murdered innocent civilians. And we should... just do that because she's sorry?

  • The residents of Solution Nine at the end of the story should have realised that their regulators feed on... well the unethical harvest of souls, and yet despite this horrifying discovery, continue to use them post-7.0 MSQ like it was never an issue in the first place. To be fair, I believe future patches would most likely broach this quandry, but it still feels stiff and... weird.


Story-aside, I agree that the combat, the dungeons, and the EX trials have all been amazing. EX1 has been so fun so far. Genuinely looking forward to the raid tier when it comes out.
last edit on Jul 7, 2024 14:21:35 GMT by ninelie
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sometimes, things that are edgy are cool
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The thing about Wuk Lamat for me is, they should've had her make her debut sooner in the post-Endwalker patches, it would've eased off so much of the exposition/character-building heavy-lifting that Dawntrail had to do which inevitably made the story pace a bit of a slog.

A random list of MSQ "issues" that bothered me, in no particular order:

  • When leaving Earthenshire (the moblin village) and Wuk Lamat got kidnapped, our WoL as well as Alphinaud & co. just simply stood there for over an hour waiting for her without ever entertaining the idea of going back to check up on her. Also how did a lowly bandit manage to kidnap Wuk Lamat, who is clearly physically superior than most other beings? At that point in the story, you would think she'd become a bit smarter about the multiple foul plays that Bakool Ja Ja had employed previously. 

  • I didn't think we really needed the Scions in Tural, like, at all. It almost felt like their inclusion was out of obligation due to Trust/Duty Support. 

  • Even when we did needed a professional's opinion regarding all the reflection shenanigans and we employed the help of Y'shtola and G'raha who came to Tural at our behest, Y'shtola seemed so impassive and bored about the going-ons and simply parroted her lines as if reading from a template.

  • The actual plot beats that I was invested in, such as Krile's origins and Erenville's mom, were thrown in so late into the story it almost felt like Zone 6 was made specifically to fill in the gaps left behind by how thin the plot was, and as an afterthought of, "Oh right, I guess we can talk about Krile and Erenville here".

  • The redemption of Bakool Ja Ja should have never happened. I don't care, he threatened to kill so many people, released a world-ending entity, all because of dead babies lmao.

  • The game's attempts to make me feel bad for Zoraal Ja is such a low blow to the integrity of the writing team. At the beginning, I felt that perhaps he had his own compelling reasons to such radical views, and I kept waiting for when those reasons would be explained, but it never did, or it did but it wasn't compelling. Also, that transition cutscene in his fight where he cuts down the mirage of his own son made me seethe so hard, it destroyed whatever remaining shred of "I guess we could forgive him". At that point I was 100% for destroying that blue lizard into oblivion.

  • So that part where Gulool Ja Ja died... there were at least 7 other competent people standing right in that room who could've prevented it from happening. And then the script writers had the gall to write Wuk Lamat lamenting about interfering with her father's duel and "honour" when clearly, her father thought the duel had ended, Zoraal Ja just used cheat.exe to get in a sneaky low-blow. How is that interference when the enemy clearly cheated and caught your dad unaware??? Literal brainrot moment

  • I'm gonna be That GuyTM and say outright that I hated Sphene. The expansion was already throwing Saturday morning cartoon villains at us left and right, I would've liked her so much better if she turned out to be unrepentantly evil the entire time. Instead, when we first meet her, everyone took her words at face value even though she was the queen of the army that literally had murdered innocent civilians. And we should... just do that because she's sorry?

  • The residents of Solution Nine at the end of the story should have realised that their regulators feed on... well the unethical harvest of souls, and yet despite this horrifying discovery, continue to use them post-7.0 MSQ like it was never an issue in the first place. To be fair, I believe future patches would most likely broach this quandry, but it still feels stiff and... weird.


Story-aside, I agree that the combat, the dungeons, and the EX trials have all been amazing. EX1 has been so fun so far. Genuinely looking forward to the raid tier when it comes out.
wholeheartedly agree that if wuk lamat was introduced earlier she would have probably had a better reception. it might have solved some issues with the VA having more time to grow into her role as wuk instead of having some very flat delivery when she's angry (yelling in lower case i've seen it called and i can't agree more!) i do like the worldbuilding that they did in the first half, but i feel like it did outstay it's welcome. there's been a marked decrease in solo duties - out of the cold comes to mind as the single most interesting thing that has ever happened aside from traditional content and there was nothing like in dawntrail which disappointed me .

between this & the void that really disappointed me as someone who loves the void & has been interested in the 13th for a long time,,, i kinda have to say i just think that xiv's writing team r not hitting for me at the moment. im hoping that this is the soft reset and i think --- spoilers below



solution 9 sets up an interesting framework going forward! i am interesting in visiting different worlds and seeing the things that destroyed them and how it affected the populace. i did enjoy the morality 101 of alexandria and solution 9 but i do think it's very strange that it's "going to go back to normal with no changes to life" as if they're not popping souls like tictacs and that isn't sustainable? what about the people with levinsickness as well, we have a way to cure sineater/tempering so surely we're going to help them to cure levinsickness? it seems strangely cruel to leave a child in charge (that the people dont want) and not change anything?

i still think that koana was the far better choice for dawnservant. his arc was far more compelling to me as it's someone who has an actual goal (using the technology of different lands to improve the life of people in his own) and i'm very disappointed he didn't come with us to shaaloni and solution nine because. i just like him better and i want to see him talk about the things that he's done to make people's lives better!!! plus there's the dangling thread of being abandoned by the htetsarro that is just left dangling whereas miss lamat gets to meet her father.

agreed that i think krile/erenville were left out in the cold for too long. erenville to me has been a breath of fresh air as someone completely uninvolved in combat and being a guide. i would have preferred him to take the front seat in pt2 and again, wuk lamat stay home. i get that she had to fight zorral ja but i will be honest with you, he was an awful villain. he felt an arbiter from halo to me and im just not interested in him at all. sphene was a great villain though, immediately knew she was bad news, it frustrated me that wuk lamat kept trying to reach a compromise with her when? obviously that won't happen with someone wfho needs to burn souls to keep her nation alive.


this is all to say: when will we go to Meracydia. i want to see the first brood. i want to free tiamat.

edit: ex2 is horrible. actually awful. i feel like im back in light rampant not knowing where i went wrong with certain mechanics. im not bad at the game (ultimate raider btw) but like. i just hate the design philosophy behind it. ex1 is a masterpiece tho love it.

last edit on Jul 7, 2024 15:20:09 GMT by safi'jiiva
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wholeheartedly agree that if wuk lamat was introduced earlier she would have probably had a better reception. it might have solved some issues with the VA having more time to grow into her role as wuk instead of having some very flat delivery when she's angry (yelling in lower case i've seen it called and i can't agree more!) i do like the worldbuilding that they did in the first half, but i feel like it did outstay it's welcome. there's been a marked decrease in solo duties - out of the cold comes to mind as the single most interesting thing that has ever happened aside from traditional content and there was nothing like in dawntrail which disappointed me .
I heard that they had decided to hire talent in Los Angeles instead of London for Dawntrail (which makes somewhat sense to me, since Tural = Central/South America and there's a huge diaspora of Latin American talent they can hire in the States) but I have to be honest, I think they hired the wrong VA for Wuk Lamat on top of just generally bad voice acting direction.

Thankfully, Wuk Lamat's JP VA gave so much energy to the role that while I was tired of Wuk Lamat by the time Zone 4 rolled around, I wasn't irritated, just simply tired at the over-the-top genki-ness emanating from her.

Koana was so underused. Instead they downplayed his involvement to the point where he was only there to make Wuk Lamat shine
(and also have the community make fun of him by calling him "the siscon") and honestly, yeah, the story could've gone in a great direction if it flexed more into his proposed policies and the moral dilemmas of cultural erasure that came with the innovation he promised. But instead, he quickly seemed to understand his own flaws rather quickly which prevented any sort of meaningful confrontations he could have had with Wuk Lamat. It would've been so much more compelling.

All in all, we didn't get the adventure or the summer vacation we were promised. If anything, I think Estinien got the adventure we wanted, LOL!

safi'jiiva Avatar
edit: ex2 is horrible. actually awful. i feel like im back in light rampant not knowing where i went wrong with certain mechanics. im not bad at the game (ultimate raider btw) but like. i just hate the design philosophy behind it. ex1 is a masterpiece tho love it.
SE patched out the death wall cheese strat ):
last edit on Jul 7, 2024 15:53:01 GMT by ninelie
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idm wuk lamat's va in general, but i did notice she always speaks with the same sort of cadence no matter what emotion she's supposed to be portraying. and yea every time she was supposed to be angry and yelling was a bit of a letdown. it probably would've been more tolerable if wuk lamat wasn't the character speaking on screen the most.

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edit: ex2 is horrible. actually awful. i feel like im back in light rampant not knowing where i went wrong with certain mechanics. im not bad at the game (ultimate raider btw) but like. i just hate the design philosophy behind it. ex1 is a masterpiece tho love it.
SE patched out the death wall cheese strat ):


honestly .... i dont think ex2 is that bad... the cheese strat isn't super necessary either (i am pretty good at reading the swords and finding safe spots)

as for koana... spoiler for end of the story:
koana couldn't have a big presence in the story cuz he would just shoot sphene in the head LMAO. only wuk lamat would want to believe in sphene over and over again. i do find it a bit ridiculous that sphene is literally trying to kill the party and wuk lamat still tries to reach out to her and act like she understands her
last edit on Jul 7, 2024 16:41:00 GMT by xeno
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Why does Penacony's story feel unnecessarily long :sigh:

Edit: Thank goodness it finally picked up at the end.

Edit again: I have massive criticisms of the story and its awful pacing + its attempt at having so many characters in one huge storyline that the POV function felt messy and extra.

Walked away from the quest finding myself more interested in Sunday and appreciating his character arc the most.
last edit on Jul 12, 2024 18:05:38 GMT by merri
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mankind, be vigilant; we loved you.
playing nobody wants to die rn and where did this game even come from? sci-fi neo-noir cyberpunk that gives with a disco elysium-esque plot is so good, i love indie games
last edit on Jul 21, 2024 9:52:10 GMT by CEL



coming soon.
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sometimes, things that are edgy are cool
> ucob prog, for real this time 
> the weapon's refrain
> dragonsong's reprise
> the epic of alexander 

??
how did i end up in every ult but ucob.
last edit on Jul 21, 2024 21:25:10 GMT by safi'jiiva
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> ucob prog, for real this time 
> the weapon's refrain
> dragonsong's reprise
> the epic of alexander 

??
how did i end up in every ult but ucob.


tea prog (wipes to hand of prayer) (wipes to hand of parting) (wipes to hand of prayer) (wipes to hand of parting)
sdkvnklweanl;
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emotional over wallace event/alt
pokemon emerald rogue has tsken over my life (when im not reading manhwas)

made worse by the fact that for some reason i refuse to play it at any other difficulty but hard (soft nuzlocke rules) when i still cant figure out to this day what fairy type’s weaknesses are

And the sableye, a gen 3 pokemon, doeS, in fact, have a weakness now (i keep forgetting and losing my prankster setter and disrupotr is my constant run killer)
last edit on Jul 24, 2024 17:46:05 GMT by regressor volo


【 POKEMON EVOLUTION: TERRORS 】
(latest update: 8/28 wall of update)
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one spark baby!
me: running through dungeons with my partner to quickly level up
me: haha at this point I'm gonna hit 70 tonight!
me: /checks my character
me: partner? I don't know when but I'm already 70

I think we ran through the last 2-3 dungeons and I had already hit max level haha!