Honestly I've sort of floundered the past two years in terms of trying to write and gather muse for roleplay, and that was because someone very close to me had died and I've come to realize how deeply it had affected me. And it wasn't just with my muse for writing, but I found it really hard to find joy in most of my other hobbies because I was still grieving—and I still am to this day.

I think about this person everyday, but I also think about how much I missed rping and that alone still gives me enough motivation to at least try.

On a lighter note, my sweet fat chungus-shaped cat is finally coming home this Saturday. The lil trooper had flown all the way from Canada to Australia and he's finishing his quarantine soon. The facility workers told me he's been doing so well. It's been over a year since I've seen him and I honestly can't wait until I get to inhale that sweet kitty smell again. 🥹

This IC thread can be archived, thank you.

Jul 7, 2024 14:39:06 GMT safi'jiiva said:

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.

SPOILER: Click to show

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!

Jul 7, 2024 14:39:06 GMT safi'jiiva said:

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 ):

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:

SPOILER: Click to show

• 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 Guy^TM 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.

Somewhat of a spoiler for FFXIV: Dawntrail's story (I'll be keeping this vague as possible):

I'm a bit disappointed with the 7.0 FFXIV MSQ story. It felt like a lot of the "show, don't tell" subtleties from Shadowbringers and Endwalker was lost in this patch. So many strange plot holes or questionable situations that the Scions would be wise enough to ask or resolve, brushed under the rug for the sake of moving the plot forwards. Yoshida advertised the new expansion as "a summer vacation getaway" but it felt a lot more like our WoL babysitting Wuk Lamat under great duress the entire time.

Speaking of which, it felt like Wuk Lamat had many chances to undergo development throughout the story, but her naivete and "leap before you look" recklessness always goes unpunished, as some form of deus ex machina comes into play to solve her problems with no repercussions. It's clear that the writers wanted to revisit all the good parts of previous expansions (Stormblood's theme of leadership through liberation, Endwalker's themes of "gone but not forgotten") and yet, the story executed such themes rather superficially making it difficult for me to feel any emotional attachment or even care by the trailing end of the main story quests.

Finding out that Ishikawa was just supervising and not the main scenario writer made me realise why I thought Dawntrail was missing that "FFXIV story magic". Sincerely hoping that future patches would have a better digestible story than what was given so far.

Edit: Also, the story had so many Chekhov's guns you might as well have stepped into Chekhov's armory.

I finally stopped procrastinating (mostly threatened with the dawning realisation that FFXIV will be under maintenance soon for the new expansion) and logged in and just... cleared out my inventory and organized my retainers. I guess I'll redecorate my hoarder estate house (it's just a dumping grounds for all the seasonal/event housing items now tbh) some other day and make it look pretty... but that day is not now