SPOILER I'm not really feeling the Fruma story line.

yeah its not like Tasim was one of the first two people you met and learned about and it's not like you spent your first adventures with him or peered into his memories and be at the birth of his largest insecurity or anything and it's not we've stated that he's going to show up in Gavel quests when they're updated to match modern standards and thus be a present character in more than just the first and last quarter

 

OP I see what you mean by this now. That's my bad: I didn't understand. I think I was confused because you're making a different point than my initial conversation.

I still don't fully understand the general argument you're making here though... YOU are the PC, thus, the arguments you're making are fairly subjective. What the PC thinks and feels is partly what you think and feel. Further, people in the community _do_ care about Tasim based on the experiences of the player character. So why would they remove these dialogue options? What good would that do? Like I said, you can just not choose dialogue options that don't fit you! Funnily enough, I think I chose not to declare my friendship with Tasim when I played.

Deusphage already mentioned a few things but I want to add on. Much of Queen's Recruit is about building your connection with Tasim. In fact, if you tell him that you killed Aledar, it's pretty clear that you are now responsible for his emotional state. It makes him a bit deranged. That's a pretty good reason to be worried. After all, you and him are both soldiers on something of a mission. Losing focus on that when alone and vulnerable is dangerous.

 

And im talking about the current state of the game not about whatever state you are aware of. If the game changes my opinion will change. Saying that the team has plans to update quests is meaninglesswhen they havent been implemented.

 

That's only the very end bit that I tacked on as an extra, that was not intended to be the focus

 

I'm aware. The end bit was the only part i cared to respond to.

 

I haven't read any of the replies yet but I kinda really like the rewrite, this is pretty cool especially using the lighthouse to facenuke the Queen

________________________________

Nevermind I just read all the replies
The absolute warzone has just convinced me that I have terrible taste and zero media literacy

 

Let me put it another way:

My take on the overarching story of Wynncraft is that your player character is slowly going mad with power; not unlike Soosu. At the start, you're a blank recruit, stuck with two other blank recruits, making your way into a new, confusing, dangerous world. As time goes on, your adventures take you from helping a man clear out his farm, to saving kidnapped children, to clearing cursed sewers, all the way to saving provinces from powers beyond mortal control. You find out Death isn't just a thing that happens, but a literal, conscious force of nature, a genial host, and a generous god that lets you undo the ultimate fate if you're strong enough to resist. You realize that so long as you don't fight anyone too far above your station, you're effectively immortal. Stakes don't mean anything to you anymore, so as time goes on, you will, by all means, take time out of even the most dire situations to make irreverent jokes, observations, or just generally treat the world-ending threat like it's Tuesday. To boot, "your station" now includes Dernic abominations that would, and have, slaughtered countless before you with barely a thought.

By this point, you haven't seen Tasim and Aleidar in months? Years? You've met hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and killed multiple times more than that. You've made friend, enemy, war, peace, and everything in between. You might remember these two people fondly, but after all this time, do you really, truly care about them in any way anyone would consider human?

Let's put it yet another way: Tasim goes back to Ragni with you. Turns out you were powerful, but totally uncontrollable, and he was too weak. Would you, or your player character, have just decided Fruma was off limits? Would either of you have decided to sit this one out and wait until you were called again? No. You'd both sit around complaining that you got kicked out, and you personally would demand a way back in from the devs. I lean into it and admit that you're both in alignment on this: Nobody tells you what to do. There's a whole region to see, and you're going to do what you want, when you want, and not a single soul can stop you.

To give the actual story a reason to happen, I say the player character, separately from you, is personally upset that he's been snubbed, and all he could do was hold his tongue lest he cause a war with Fruma. He's gone mad, but he's not evil enough to endanger all these people in a war over his selfishness. Once the King gave him his tacit approval, it was go time. "I'm looking for my friend that agreed to be here" isn't a great motivation to begin with. Maybe a warm one, but it doesn't justify any of what happens. I say forget it and just take it for what it is: A tantrum that finds better excuses after the fact.

Tell you what: When he shows up more than once or twice in the entire journey, we'll have a talk about it. But for now, I'm sticking to "The player's gone mad with power, he cares about Tasim in some non-human way, and Fruma is you and the character both deciding nobody tells you what you can and can't do."

Why didn't you vote "No"?!

 

You do know he shows up in 5 quests prior to Fruma, right ?

In game, right now, before Fruma even released.

 

Yes, I'm aware he shows up literally more than two or three times. Let's not quibble over obvious figures of speech here.

He shows up for a few short beginner quests, then for 98.5% of the entire game, if not more, we get no word from him until he's suddenly the most important thing in the world.

I'm glad you've gotten so attached to a minor, one-off character, but narratively, there's no reason for the player character to care beyond "Oh hey, it's that guy I spoke to years ago."

You've already made it clear you understand the problem with him being entirely absent throughout the entire rest of the game, so what's all this about?

 

MINOR ONE OFF CHARACTER

________________________________

nahhh this shit is BAIT

 

Bruh. 116 words written; 113 ignored.

 

Oh I forgot the votes existed sorry lol

But also because I'm kinda conflicted now, I'm not sure what to think?
I did agree with a lot of stuff you said but now I'm thinking that I might have heavily misunderstood some things

________________________________

My brain's probably too small for this conversation I'll just leave the discussion to you all lmao

 

First off the vibes are really weird here. As the #1 leading example of a guy who talks really abrasively about the games that I play, this just comes off as... spiteful? It doesn't feel like someone who just "doesn't get" the Fruma questline, and it certainly doesn't feel like the "abrasive-but-also-not-hostile" style of writing that I do, it just feels like it comes from someone with actual genuine vitriol towards Fruma's storyline. And frankly I don't understand why you feel that way.
In my opinion Fruma's story is unequivocally the absolute best that Wynncraft has ever had, and it's not even close.
I would describe Wynncraft's story before Fruma as "bad to decent" with some small sparks of "good".
I'd describe Fruma's story however as "great to amazing" with some small sparks of "Shadowbringers".
I think anything that I can reasonably (and positively) compare to the quality of FFXIV expansions is automatically good.

The Fruman military literally doesn't care. Aside from the fact that you aren't supposed to go back in the first place because it goes against their plan, you're also "cursed".
This is a common theme in media: an empire that is based on Nazi Germany and/or other fascist governments, fictional or not, and view the player and other groups as "undesirables"; or in this case "cursed".
Fruma has a lot of parallels to such governments; it particularly brings to mind the Garlean Empire, a heavily industrialized empire which very similarly treats those who possess magic as "savages".

While I don't exactly agree with your, uh... mindset, this is pretty much the only valid point you have, even though it's not even the point you were trying to make.
Wynncraft had the task of having to make Fruma's relationships out of literally nothing. Before Fruma, the only relationship you have with other NPCs is with Aledar and Tasim... and also Lari, I suppose; but for those two, it's not because they're particularly interesting or compelling characters, it's because they're simply from the tutorial and that's kinda... it. The reason why Aledar is chosen to be the guy for A Journey Further is simply because there wasn't anyone else who could fill that role other than "that one guy from the tutorial" since Wynncraft characters didn't have relationships with the player at the time.
I would love for them to properly flesh out both of them via more early quest dialogue reworks and/or more quests featuring them in a more cohesive and continuous "main" questline (or two, one for Wynn and one for Gavel).

Also this is an off-topic tangent and I might be having a schizo moment here but it seems to me that they're leaning towards Tasim and Aledar having some weird romance and I honestly really hate it. The idea of a best friend you'd do anything for is way better than some cliche romance especially when the theme of platonic love perfectly fits in and parallels with their relationship to the player... or at least it will when they're better fleshed out in pre-Fruma content.
I could be 100% be reading that wrong though and I'd love to be corrected.

Tbh other than all that, I can't really offer any more constructive criticism that hasn't already been said by someone else, much of which was said several days ago.
I realize how rich this is coming from me, but this seems like a needlessly long read for what this review actually offers. Especially one that with such thinly-veiled hatred towards the story that also ultimately just... misses the point.

 

You're reading too much into it.

There's been a grave misunderstanding here. Let me rephrase the problem:

Thanos himself decides he's going to walk into a kindergarten. There's an unarmed "security officer" at the door who grabs him by the arm and says "I'm sorry, buddy, I can't let you in here. Come with me so I can ask you some questions."

Does thanos:

A) Surrender peacefully.

B) Surrender and wait to be taken to a room with backup before resisting.

C) Smack the guy in the face and keep moving.

I wasn't implying that the Fruman military should aware of, or impressed, by your accolades, I was saying you are a god to them, and there's nothing they could possibly do to stop you. You're not here with intent to spare them either, so why are you letting a bunch of nameless, faceless peons arrest you in the first place? It would be a different story if you just broke through, but you sat down and massacred them, as far as it seems.

You say "no". When they try to stop you, you kill them. And when their friends try to stop you from leaving, you kill them too and blow a hole in the wall with a spell. And if they try to chase you, you spell away because you literally cannot be bothered to so much as think about them now that the real obstacle, the literal wall, is gone.

It's weird to me that somehow you think the point I'm trying to make isn't the one I'm trying to make, and the one I'm not is.

Yes. The reason you go back to Fruma starts because The Guy From The Tutorial decided to voluntarily join the sovereign of the kingdom he was born in. The rest of the story pretends this is the most meaningful relationship in your life. I say that's ridiculous and rewrite the thing to fit with the kind of personality your player actually has.

The frequent inclusion of romance in these quest lines, especially in Fruma, just feels jarring. At this point, it's starting to feel like the player's being left out. I could tolerate Death having an off-screen wife as a gag, or the guy married to the chicken, but more and more it seems like everyone and their dog is now having an on-screen romance and it's feeling a bit insulting to the guy who's apparently cursed to wander the earth in power-mad solitude forever.

The closest thing you get to love interests are Ava, Lari, and Sui. And the only one that maybe kind of sort of shows any signs of anything more intimate than "Thanks for helping with this thing I'm fucking up" is Sui when she specifically notes you're there before the Majin fight.

It'd be nice if two people could just hit it off and, you know, have a bromance or something. But the idea of intimate friendship seems to not cross the writers' minds very much.

I think we have very different ideas of what "constructive criticism" is.

 

No you're really not.

hit you in the back of the head while you're not looking, surprise attack you, use any blessings they may have been granted, poison (ooh, that would've been cool if the caravan driver offers you wine but he laced it with poision so you fell poisoned but he was fine because mithridatism). Even if we were a god, gods can still be bested by Mortals, especially when they some advantage like surprise. We're mortal, just like them. Idk about you but I would most certainly hide my weapon and wait while I was being escorted with a dagger digging into my side.

idk man, go find a gf or something.

Also that would be hella weird.

And, if you accept some philosophy, there are multiple kinds of love. Sure there's romantic, but there's also like familial and platonic. Arguably you have some form of the latter two with Aledar and Tasim, or at least that's what I felt lol. Though I do find their relationship a little weird given I had a sense of the fraternal love sustained between brothers-in-arms.

:skull emoji:
No. Just no.
I have never really understood the attraction some have to them but to each their own.
Still no.

 

feels like you don't really understand the like... point of the player character. the player character is not really a unique character in the world, pre-determined by the writers. they are whatever you want them to be. it's why you're referred to with they/them pronouns, you can mentally replace them with whatever feels best to you. because of this approach to writing the character, we, for one, do not do big story arcs based on their nature as "chaotic good" or whatever you have been saying to this effect, because that would not align with some people's view of their character. it is for this reason that we also do not write in love interests for the player. i find it interesting that all the 3 love interest candidates you listed are women. lets say we made one of those characters get into a romance with the player as part of the storyline. would this fit with the character of a straight woman or gay man? what about someone who's aroace? you seem to purely consider your own personal perspective on the player's identity as the definitive canon one for like, a lot of this thread, when we have designed it to be a lot more abstract than that. it's why there are dialogue options to let you choose whether or not you actually care about tasim. we could hypothetically add optional romance with some characters but we probably won't do that because, among other things, it would be the kind of choice you can make with a character that would have a major impact on any future interactions with them, and we don't want to overcomplicate our own workload in that way. we did it with the tasim alt route and that alone was very difficult to pull off.


also i think its funny that your criteria for "closest thing you get to love interests" seems to just be "i find them attractive and they interact with me in any way," as if that isn't extremely subjective to begin with

 

Your understanding of who the player character is seems to be based on the "old lore". Firstly, the game is introducing a ton more dialogue choices that you the player use to shape the personality of your character. But besides that, the player character as I understand it seems to have a struggle with being "human" but still seems to be trying, which is why a deliberate point during the Fruma story is Tasim criticizing you for that.

I think this itself is meant to be a meta reference to how in old Wynncraft, dialogue choices and choices in general didn't even exist (An Iron Heart being the exception), and the quest designs were so outlandish that they'd have you massacreing people that literally did nothing wrong or were just defending themselves. Not that I think the Fruma military is innocent by any means, mind you.

I kinda share this opinion, but it's not a valid criticism. It's a suggestion that is disguised as criticism. While I personally think romance is cool in any video game and would definitely be awesome to have in Wynncraft (and I would most definitely like to rizz up some Wynncraft characters), that really isn't an obligation from the devs nor is it an actual realistic criticism in the same way as, like, "this quest is bad and needs to be reworked".

If Wynncraft had a gigantic focus towards NPC characters having complex relationships to the player (which perhaps it will Soon™), then it might have been a valid criticism; to put into perspective, the lack of romance in Marvel's Midnight Suns is a great example of that: a noticeable void and wasted opportunity.
I have somewhat similar opinions for FFXIV, but I digress.

I would still do diabolical things to see romance implemented though.

 

Instead of “nuh uh,” point to the ordinary Fruman force that can actually compel the player to surrender.

Fort Torann had him inside a fortified position, surrounded by its own soldiers, on terrain it controlled. It still couldn't stop him from killing his way out. That establishes the relevant power scale locally: ordinary Fruman troops cannot physically arrest this person unless the story gives them some exceptional mechanism—suppression magic, poison, a Sovereign, a Queen-granted blessing, something.

Then there are The Eye and the Nameless: How many Fort Toranns do you think it would take to beat either of them? We already know one fort wasn't enough to defeat the person who defeated them.

I'm not saying the player immune to every conceivable ambush. I'm saying that an ordinary guard cannot put a hand on him and enforce an arrest through implied physical force.

How many armed people does the player have to kill at once before you stop answering “a mortal could theoretically surprise him” and admit that routine soldiers can't take him into custody?

None of that happened.

They didn't ambush me, poison me, suppress my magic, or deploy a Sovereign. They openly took me into custody, brought me into the middle of their fortress, surrounded me with soldiers, and still failed to stop me from killing my way out.

You're not defending the scene as written. You're inventing better versions of it.

And the ordinary “blessings” don't solve this. Syndra walks Zeph through the same process when teaching him to use a focus. That's ordinary Wynn-style magic, not some special royal weapon capable of neutralizing the player. The genuinely exceptional power is concentrated in the Sovereigns, and no Sovereign performs the arrest.

So again: "What force actually present in that scene could compel the player to surrender? Not a hypothetical poisoner somewhere else. Not a possible ambush that never occurred. The four guards who physically approached him, from the front, at the train."

Intent or none, the quests already characterize the player heavily. Even if we pretend optional dialogue can just be safely ignored by the player if it's not picked, plenty of obligatory lines, sequences, and gameplay loops give the player hundreds of hours of clear characterization. In my case, I square the circle by saying he's gone mad with power and is slowly becoming detached from the rest of humanity, with only a good nature holding him back from becoming a new terror outside of Fruma.

You keep replacing what I actually wrote with a more embarrassing claim that's easier to dismiss. I did not say “these women interacted with me, therefore they are love interests.” I called them the closest candidates because they receive more sustained personal attention from the player than almost anyone else. “Closest” explicitly means the game never develops any of them into an actual love interest.

Now, I know you’re going to read that and say, “Aha! You’re trying to turn the scene into a romance even though we didn’t mean it that way.”

Again: not the point.

Writing carries implications beyond what the author consciously intended. Sui being specifically relieved to see the player, after everything they have been through together, is a more intimate, player-directed moment.

If we ranked every character by how personally close they are to the player—and therefore how plausible they would be as a potential love interest—Sui would be near the top at that moment.

The scale can still canonically top out at “we’re good friends. :)” I'm not claiming that Sui is secretly in love with the player. I'm explaining why calling her one of the closest things the game has to a love-interest candidate is not remotely equivalent to “I think she’s attractive and she spoke to me once.”

Also, it's weird how when other people, like Yuman and Zeph, interact, we can put on the romance goggles, but when it's the player, you insist suddenly every interaction is maximally neutral, and we're dumb for even considering more.

 

"Old lore” is still lore until it's explicitly retconned. A change in writing philosophy isn't itself a retcon. For better and for worse, we've got a circle to square. This includes the protagonist canonically stealing (even in Fruma), being irreverent, having no respect for trespassing laws (again, canonically, in Fruma) and occasionally being monstrous. We're in alignment on the character's struggles with his humanity, but we clearly don't agree on the source of it.

I'm actually suggesting there be less romance in the story. It's fun to include once or twice, but I can set my clock to the new characters being in some kind of relationship, and it mattering barely at all to the story. Syndra, for all my complaints, at least had her relationship do something for the story. I think it didn't do enough to justify its existence, but so be it. Zeph and Yuman? Why?

Same with Maxie and Rhay. They married off screen. The Breaking Point actually stopped dead in its tracks to make it a whole deal. Why? The letter comes after the quest anyway, so why not just have Maxie and Rhey sit around in Corkus after the fact and point out the wedding's already over? The whole Maxie/Rhey "Look, you're really hard to get a hold of" conversation could have still happened, just in a place where it doesn't need to justify itself narratively. You got the letter late. You go back to attend, thinking it's a whole event, and the game fakes you out by admitting you're too late, and the wedding is old news by this point. If anything, I might find it funnier to get a wedding invitation, think there's an event, only to be hit with the logistical reality of being a wandering mercenary.

 

the player has never spoken until fruma, so prior to now i would absolutely not agree with the idea that the player is "heavily characterized." even if they come off that way, that's not the intention, and not something we want to embrace. and as i believe many have stated throughout this thread, the gameplay loops of wynn have absolutely zero lore relevance, which you could make a good argument is a bad thing, but the point stands that the player is not intended to be characterized by those actions. the story is not about the player being a psychopathic murder hobo and we are not going to make it about that. it is to be fair a common example of ludonarrative dissonance in mmorpgs that wynn is also victim to, but we aren't going to change it, because how would we do that without changing the entire idea of the story?

no one is stopping you from headcanoning that your player character is romantically involved with ava and writing a fanfic about it, it's just not something we're going to put into the game itself (we may also add elements in the future that contradict your headcanons but this is not done with the intent of ruining peoples fanfics ofc). like i never said that youre not allowed to imagine that for your character. i literally said in the comment youre replying to that we try to make the player somewhat of a blank slate so people can write their own stories around them. honestly if you really want youre allowed to think of your player as an insane detached murder hobo like i mentioned in the previous paragraph, it's just that we're never gonna make that the point of the story either