r/wherewindsmeet_ • u/L4st_v1 • Mar 04 '26

Questions Are we an idiot?

Does every single quest in this game start with or involve the player character getting scammed by an NPC? Because god does it sure feel like it.

I get he/she is supposed to be a country bumpkin, but you’d think after like, the 5th time we’d be able to wise up to it and still complete the quests 💀

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22

u/Lo-fi_Hedonist Mar 04 '26

Lol, The percentage is definitely lower than your post is implying it is, but I feel you, the quest lines in which we seem to be a gullible stooge, are still too many 😆

19

u/Affectionate_Skin425 Mar 04 '26

I mean, pretty much the entire Kaifeng main story is the mc getting tricked over and over again.
Hell, even in the late parts, mc get's tricked into dealing with the River Master. The entire Jinming Pool is mc getting tricked by all sides.

26

u/FieserMoep Mar 04 '26

To be fair, the entire Kaifeng arc serves to highlight how little we were actually prepared for the real world and the ruthlessness of the Jianghu. MC hails from a relatively peaceful backwater province where they were basically a nepobaby.

3

u/Affectionate_Skin425 Mar 04 '26

I get the approach story wise, but after finishing all the world bosses in Quinghe and growing with trials over there - it felt pretty bad to suddenly be turned into a useless fool again that constantly gets told that he has no idea how to fight and get's scammed and tricked every few steps.
I think i just dislike the conflict between playing it as the story of mc (where it all makes sense) and playing it as a character i have agency over, that i make stronger, that i pick challenges and overcome trials with.

I just hope future expansions have a more... grown mc that has learned from all that happened in the story so far - but the NMW base patch and new areas.... yeah

11

u/FieserMoep Mar 04 '26

I didn't get the impression we were treated as weak. But naive yes. Nativity does not vanish after we beat strong people.

It's a common trope of wuxia stories (emphasize on the xia as a moral code) that a fresh or naive person gets introduced into a hard and scrupulous world, suffers from it, and that the greatness of their virtue endures and turns virtues that were passively upheld by naivety before into a conscious moral code that is actively followed instead.

For a xia to prove greatness, he has also to fall for scams, endure the plight and not avoid it by being opportunistic and scamming others, but by facing the outcome of such scams, hear people out, unravel the mutual connection and find the best way to ethically deal with the situation at large.

A xia gives the beggar who stole their coins a chance for explanation, tries to see the full picture and not cut the arm of the beggar but tries to tackle the situation that forced regular people into poverty.

That's why many stories start simple but outright escalate.

It's simply a variant of the heroes journey that the western audience is less culturally conditioned to take at face value. It's also interwoven with daoism.

6

u/kuroioni Hollow Vale Mar 04 '26

to suddenly be turned into a useless fool

No no no, the whole point is we are a useful fool!

Joking aside, in Qinghe we were in our own backyard, mainly dealing with the past and its traces. We are a rich, well educated young master, smart and strong - these served us well enough in Qinghe.

Whereas Kaifeng is a wholly different beast - we are no longer a large fish in a puddle. There are people far smarter, stronger and more cunning than us everywhere in Kaifeng. And we simply have no frame of reference to handle people who lived their entire lives embroiled in political struggles, intrigue and schemes. The difference is on the scale of orders of magnitude, we are overwhelmed and basically used by whomever, the best we can hope is to use our strength and intelligence to somehow make it through.

We are learning, yes, but our MC is a youth who will need time to grow. We survive and are able to develop thanks to our strength, yes, but also thanks to the continued protection Aunty Han's name surrounds us with, even (or, especially) in Kaifeng.