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

100 replies. That's insane.
The only things really hateabke about fruma are how comically buff the models appear (which is more funny than hateable), and the fact that all of them are just tanks

 

1 positive vote...

 

|cinema|

 

I'm confused by this bit. Could you explain a bit more? This is an outline of the changes I would make, not a scene-by-scene script; anything I haven’t addressed is assumed to remain intact. Zhiraok can still be the same dutiful overachiever with the same mannerisms and speech pattern. Rex can still be mad at us and talk about her brother. It might just happen at the end of a cave or something after you bond through some reluctant training.

Now I have to push back. The latter half of the story line is the player specifically being humbled again and again. The fight that's set up with Soosu is Yusanu's idea of getting you to utterly destroy her forces. But what ends up happening is you match her minimum-effort response—the golem army—before ultimately being repelled. Then when you fight the Queen, you find out the only reason you're even nominally a threat is because she's outright choosing to stay in range voluntarily and not instantly vaporize you. Then the third and fourth Sovereigns you see outright call you stupid for thinking you could solve all your problems by coming in and strong arming everyone into compliance to soothe your petty ego, post-hoc rationalizations be damned.

You come in thinking you can "change" things, you make things worse, get smacked down by the actual juggernauts of the province, and by the end you have to finish what you unintentionally started with the help of the people you've unwittingly egged on with your actions; hence the need to carry out a full plan to kill the Queen beyond "Just get her alone with the player."

It's the fact that their first move is to attack you, lose, then double down like they're holding all the cards. But hey, Rurie is Rurie. God forbid there be a cocky asshole once in a while. And he ultimately turns out to be a competent man who, if anything, is more understanding of you and your situation underneath it all.

Also, if I had to list anyone as a male romanceable option, wouldn't it be Rurie himself? He seems a bit focused on his work, but a fit, competent, confident man isn't exactly unattractive.

Who said I removed Elise? I said Syndra's relationship to her doesn't take center stage in the quest. I point out you can read the letters on the table and find out Syndra's been writing her. The letter could be an impassioned love letter to a status update. The point is that however important the relationship was, she's had more in the coming years, and The Roughworks have taken them all from her. Meanwhile Syndra's here looking for her and trying to take revenge. Literally everything but the exact sequence of the quest can stay the same for all it matters, with Syndra still being tasked with killing her, refusing, etc. It's just that once you find the woman, your entire quest line doesn't boil down to "Oh wow, and today just so happened to be the day the Inquisitor decided to kill her. Thank goodness she remembered Syndra before she died, though!"

She's old. She says she's been alone as long as she can remember. She sees the confusing letters. She asks for help remembering. It helps a little bit, but the most she's able to remember clearly is the special spot. She knows it's special, and she comes to make peace with the fact that she's never been alone. Halfway through, the Roughworks comes to add insult to injury

 

Please don't lock this thread this is the most active the forums have been in years

 

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I wish I had something more meaningful to add but it mostly has been said already and I really miss when forums were more active so I'm just shitposting here

 

You missed a spot on the right lol

 

fixed it thanks

 

ok. to be fair, dialogue options have existed since like, 1.20.3. i forgot about those. but i think the point still stands? because those were not really integrated into any large scale questlines prior to fruma. beyond those, there wasn't any canon dialogue for the player. you could headcanon lines for the player if you wanted but that was about it

no idea which part of my response you're even referring to. the murder hobo thing? i gleaned that from your apparent perception of what the player is

i didn't feel a need to rehash the same points others had made about your initial post and didn't feel that there was anything to add. anyway, i find your point about the romances to be absolutely baffling. i don't understand the idea that there aren't allowed to be romances in the game unless the player can also have them. i don't know about you but i'm not sitting in front of all the romance scenes in wynn just aching with envy and wishing that my pixel character could fall in love with another pixel character. and no, before you accuse me of making up things about you, i'm not saying this is definitively the case, but if it isn't, then i cannot fathom any other reason why you would feel so averse to the concept of characters having romances when the player doesn't. romance is a powerful narrative tool and it is one we will continue using because like why wouldn't we.

also, i understand that this isn't exactly relevant to your original post but i dont think that means that i cant respond to it either. i'm quite bothered by the fact that you chose to entirely write syndra and elise's romance out of the story and this is adjacent to that, so i wanted to respond to this in particular

i mean, sure, that's your perspective on it. i myself dont make up my own details for my characters because i'm not someone who likes to build my own details on top of things, i don't view it as a valid way for me to engage with the original work. but with wynn we deliberately left it open for people to do that with if they want to. there are other reasons why we wont do it. for example, you mention that we want to have more impactful player choices and this could work for that, but the truth is that doing impactful player choices is hard and we don't even know if we will go any further than we already did with fruma. having an entire character change to be a romantic interest for the player would be a lot of work. we also dont want to have characters who have, you know, a Whole Other Point To Them, have that entire thing just kind of overshadowed or undermined by the option to romance them. if we were to ever do romance options we'd probably want to design the characters with that in mind first. there is nothing i hate more in media than actual compelling characters who enter a relationship with x other character and suddenly are demoted to Housewife (ok, well probably a few things i hate more than that, but it's up there)

 

I think it really funny that the guy writing revert Fruma back to old writing that make most of the villain characters nothing but obstacle with Zhiraok being the prime victim of the butchery in the scale of closet to literature gore. The rewrite pretty much remove everything I seen that people enjoy about Fruma which is its character so I just really find it funny how much reversion of quality this rewrite is. Like this is probably a banger questline if we go back in time in Gavel reborn and drop whatever this is to the community. People probably like it IDK lmao.

 

Bro's in so deep that he could say smth as innocuous & undebatable as 2+2=4 and everyone would still grab him by his throat for it and squeeze with all their might

 

Stylization thing, but understandable if you don't like it

 

I’ll agree those lines and actions don’t characterize the player if you’ll agree that’s probably the weirdest possible way to read them. I’d honestly find “We changed our goals, so the old quests aren't canon anymore
and we’ll rework them over time” less strange than “The player canonically said and did all of this, but none of it tells you anything about them.” or "Everything your player says and does is headcanon, and so are the descriptions about him.

This isn't being used as a narrative tool to begin with. Even ignoring older quest lines for a moment, what does Yuman and Zeph’s romance actually add? It doesn't meaningfully alter either character, create conflict, produce a payoff, reveal something that their existing interactions couldn't, or lead to anything later. They could be close friends or acquaintances and the story around them would function almost identically. Elise and Syndra's relationship at least served as a narrative catalyst for her search, and the justification for her to request passports to the Roughworks from Zhiraok.

But even then, almost every step of Elise's quest advances because of Syndra: the memories, the inquisitor, the authorities, the special place, and the final emotional resolution. The rest of Elise’s life after Syndra effectively becomes a waiting room until the player arrives and restarts that old story. That makes Elise feel less like a person who lived an entire life in the Roughworks and more like the unfinished half of Syndra’s backstory.

It wasn't, though. It's still in the story. In fact, for ease of implementation, you can probably keep the cutscenes in and just have her specifically almost remember Syndra after reading a letter. But the story doesn't amount to "Syndra's the reason the government is hurting you" and "Wow, thank goodness you remembered Syndra there! Now your life is complete and you can die in peace!"

Elise doesn't need to recover the exact identity or nature of the relationship for it to matter. The story already depends on her memory being damaged. Keeping the person in the flashbacks vague, then allowing the letter to suggest afterward that it was probably Syndra, preserves the romance without letting it take the focus away from Elise, her condition, and the life she lived after Syndra was gone.

It's all still there, there's just no point in adding in Zhiraok's cutscenes, for example, to say "And the cutscene stays exactly the same".

 

I think, and correct me if I am wrong here, but what he means is that it isn't very impactful, unlike in Fruma, and were more than likely a gag or joke.

I don't really get your point? By that logic, What does the king of Ragni being adopted add to the story? What does Detlas having a council add to the story? What does the Ragni ball add to the story? And the random NPCs in vilages/towns with only some dialouge, what do they add to the story? What does Detlas and Selchar being sister Cities with sand hourglasses add to the story? What does The Long Winded and Very painful Death of Sweeny S. Greenvile add? It can be cool little easter eggs, atomosphere, or realism.

I'd disagree, it eels more like a person who just so happened to know Syndra. Isn't the whole Syndra thing only revealed towards the end?

 

That'd be for him to correct. But either way, it's in the story, and a lot of these can't even be waved away as optional bits of dialogue. The whole part where King Draani considers you to be a danger is forced dialogue: You finish the grappling hook puzzle, then come back in as whimsical a way as possible. Then the man takes it back from you, fearing what you would do with the full power of a grappling hook in your hands. Funny? Sure. Optional? Absolutely not. Are these really supposed to be a series of Big-Lipped Alligator moments? I'm supposed to ignore them because the writers privately wanted to be able to ignore this when it was inconvenient?

I don't know what you mean by the King of Ragni being adopted, or about any Detlas council.

The Ragni ball is literally an optional easter egg that mocks you for completing a task that even the maker agrees is pointless and was made for the express purpose of it.

If you're talking about random NPCs in towns you visit and talk to outside of quests, that's background flavor.

Selchar and Detlas aren't mentioned as being sister cities in any quest.

The Sweeny text is brought up while an obvious weirdo is trying to distract you from searching around his home and convince you that he is, in fact, a cool guy, and not a weirdo at all. It could have been anything in there, because the point isn't literally what he says, it's to fill time with dialogue that only convinces you he's not helping his case. The easiest way to do it is to use the bookshelves to make a library and have him ramble on about books. I assume halfway through that, the writer had a little book he liked and threw it in there as a reference.

No. Halfway through the presence of the inquisitor all but gives it up, if you hadn't already caught on. Then her memory loss is the old Fruma memory bleach, followed by a whole thing about Syndra. The connection is finally made to Elise specifically at the end when she remembers and the story basically says "Yay! She finally remembered why she matters to the story!" Which feels disrespectful to the character.

 

WynnexD.

Sea skipper

same seaskipper

Sweet S greenville is mentioned multiple times

 

Looked it up and agreed: It came out of nowhere, did nothing for the story, it's so fleeting I didn't even remember it, and it never comes up again.

Reminder that I'm saying things shouldn't be included in quests that don't add to the quest. Joking around with the people you're interacting with?" Characterization. They tell you they're adopted? This better be leading towards something. A new couple? I better be attending the wedding at some point. Maxie and Rhay getting married off screen and the letter hasn't reached me? My BiC, just let it reach me after the quest is done and prank me by telling me the wedding's over after I go all the way back.

 

Hence my point that as long as they are well written, nobody has to suffer that. Also I'm not really suggesting marriage... like, at all. At least, not for Wynncraft because I think player-NPC marriage would create a huge ton of problems in the lore.
But anyways I too would hate if x character suddenly changes their entire personality to be a romance option, which is why you don't have to do that.

I wouldn't ever suggest Rex for example to suddenly becomes quieter and less tomboyish because frankly that would completely ruin her character. I know I can't speak for everyone but if I had the ability to have my character romance, say, Y'shtola from FFXIV, I'd feel quite a bit betrayed if they suddenly took away her sass.

What I meant when I said romance is the most innocent form of fanservice is that when done right, it can leave a lasting impression and be beautiful. Yesterday I beat Slay the Princess and it left me in fucking shambles. I cried for much, much longer than I'd like to admit, and that's my example of that.
Off topic but it's a breathtaking game btw with a beautiful story, and I can't recommend it enough.

 

Would you be satisfied with future interactions with certain NPCs just including a one-sided nod towards your character? Like a meek "Hi..."?

 

Don't misunderstand me, my suggestion is one that I will fiercely advocate for, but it's still just that: a suggestion, not a demand.
But to answer your question, if such a system were to be added, I'd want it to be properly implemented; not made haphazardly or, as you put it, just a meek "Hi..." towards your character.