Forge Ahead in the Next Version Update! (04/18/2014)

[Ligray]

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics...2284/12284.jpg

The next version update is scheduled to descend from the mountains in mid-May.

Enjoy a wide variety of new features, including the all new Mog Wardrobe system, which makes storing equipment a breeze, and new ways to enjoy solo play, as fellows can now level up to 99 and will be empowered by player item levels.

In terms of other content, expect an expansion to the job point system, other job adjustments, new high-tier mission battlefields, mythic-equivalent weapons for geomancers and rune fencers, and-most of all-the continuation of the Seekers of Adoulin mission storyline as it prepares to reach the climax!

The development team is currently hard at work bringing you the latest in Vana'dielian goodness. We hope to see you on the other side!

[Draylo]

Climax already? Seems either they have huge amount of missions or this is the shortest storyline ever lol

[Prothescar]

To be honest we're already like 40 missions in. Problem is, 95% of them are cutscenes, mostly low budget ones, with very little to no plot development so far. I'm quite disappointed in how they've handled it, tbh. Fact of the matter is we've had more backstory and lore from sidequests than the actual missions lol.

[dasva]

Climax already? Seems either they have huge amount of missions or this is the shortest storyline ever lol

No they are preparing to reach the climax... which I translate to mean we finally actually make real progression into the storyline. I mean basically all we've gotten so far is a huge backstory. It's been a decent one but still just a backstory.

[Prothescar]

This is kind of annoying me the more I think about it actually, I really hope they manage to stuff a LOT into these last sets of missions, because yeah.

1) Arciela. She's fucking boring. She's the most bland character in all of FFXI's major spotlights, arguably. Even if we just count heroines, compare her to Prishe, Narashima, Lilisette... fuck, even Lion has more personality and she only appears in like 3 cutscenes. She's a pretty horrible character and requires some major development over the next stages of the story for her to stand out.

2) The lack of major characters. Every single expansion prior to SoA had a large cast of memorable characters with unique, mostly charming personalities. What do we have in SoA? Arciela... whatever the vampire duke guy's name is (I can't remember since it's like 6 months in between mission installments). Uh... yeah. Do we count the leaders of the other Orders of Adoulin? I sure as fuck don't, they don't contribute fuck all to the story barely. Everyone is a background character. They also require major development before the end.

3) Lack of substance and variety in missions. We get cutscene after boring cutscene, only twice have we had any actual involved missions, and one of them was like 1/4 of a meeble mission. Come on now, SE. Come on now. Really hoping this set changes that.



Really hoping we get some backstory on Ra'Kaznar, too, but I'd settle for any interesting plot or character development at this point. So far this has been the weakest of the FFXI Expansions by a significant margin in terms of storyline.

[Sechs]

1) Arciela. She's fucking boring. She's the most bland character in all of FFXI's major spotlights, arguably. Even if we just count heroines, compare her to Prishe, Narashima, Lilisette... fuck, even Lion has more personality and she only appears in like 3 cutscenes. She's a pretty horrible character and requires some major development over the next stages of the story for her to stand out.

I pretty much disagree with this.
I mean, it's not a matter of right vs wrong but more about personal tastes, but while I concur with you Arciela definitely needs more developments, for me it's already much better than that annoying idiot Lilisette, arguably Lion. With Narashima you meant Nashmeira/Aphmau? If you do, I like Arciela more than her as well. Prishe, and other female characters, I evaluate above Arciela of course but not the rest of what you listed.

2) The lack of major characters. Every single expansion prior to SoA had a large cast of memorable characters with unique, mostly charming personalities. What do we have in SoA? Arciela... whatever the vampire duke guy's name is (I can't remember since it's like 6 months in between mission installments). Uh... yeah. Do we count the leaders of the other Orders of Adoulin? I sure as fuck don't, they don't contribute fuck all to the story barely. Everyone is a background character. They also require major development before the end.

Theodor is a badass, we've also seen quite a few of other interesting characters lately, like the mysterious Morimar, the golden Tiger, Rosulatia etc.
I do count the leaders of the order and other characters.
I mean, if we were to consider STRICTLY just the main story I could probably agree with you, but when you factor in the Vana'diel tribune-like articles, mostly about Melvian and charcters around him (he's got a pretty cool in-game model too).
We've got special sidequests involving coalitions leaders and Cid's son.
We got the exorcists (one of which recently become a Trust and saw some important behaviour change under the spotlights) etc.

I think they did a marvelous job building up the premises up to this point using different means (main story, side quest, POL articles) at the same time.
Of course, from now on all these premises have to lead to somewhere. If they just end up being loose ends... then I'll probably agree with you.
For now I'm enjoying this story much more than WotG, which had some really epic parts here and there but overall suffered of too many retcons, lack of overall project coherence (too many different stories written in different styles with different approaches by different people who didn't always merge up together) and too scarce updates (it's definitely not every 6 months like you said for SoA btw).

I mean, so far Adoulin story seem to integrate much better with the old FFXI stories, without building up too many (bad) retcons and at the same time feeding players up with a loooot of interesting backstory.
Thumb up for me so far.

3) Lack of substance and variety in missions. We get cutscene after boring cutscene, only twice have we had any actual involved missions, and one of them was like 1/4 of a meeble mission. Come on now, SE. Come on now. Really hoping this set changes that.

This I can agree with. There is a lack of variety, missions/BC/Fights suck, but at this point the game has change a lot since the day of CoP (which for me remains the peak of FFXI story missions), they definitely need to improve under this aspect but we can't expect them to do things the same way they did in the past. Game (and player base) changed too much.

[Sechs]

More than WotG, for now, and arguably more than ToAU as well which built up incredible expectations to me, but then it all fell up with a disappointing and super-rushed ending part (that's the impression I got at the time at least).
Also, in spite of participation from old FFXI characters (Trion, Volker, Shantotto) the expansion overall felt too much of a ... "side story" compared to what we had seen 'til then.

SoA feels much more integrated into "Vana'diel". Altough I cannot explain why I get this feeling, maybe it's just my personal bias but it's how I feel about it atm.

[Malithar]

SoA feels much more integrated into "Vana'diel". Altough I cannot explain why I get this feeling, maybe it's just my personal bias but it's how I feel about it atm.

Only integration I feel SoA has with the rest of Vana'diel is the Blackthorn Coven and the Exorcists (Halloween event), and that somehow, the Zilart had knowledge of the elemental runes that Rune Fencer makes use of. There was really no explanation of why Adoulin wasn't open to outsiders pre-SoA release, and there's been no explanation yet as to why we're really there. Sure, the country needed pioneers. Just like Aht Urhgan needed mercs? Lots of other things that stand out as annoying that I won't bother to go into detail about, but needless to say, there's lots of loose ends to tie up and flesh out.

There's a lot more to explore within the storyline. Really hoping by climax they just mean getting to what's really going on with Adoulin, and not the climax of the missions. Going to really feel cheated from a storyline perspective if we're that close, unless these final batches of missions have tons of content/longevity/story to em.

[Seha]

I mean, so far Adoulin story seem to integrate much better with the old FFXI stories, without building up too many (bad) retcons and at the same time feeding players up with a loooot of interesting backstory.

Lol, really? What happened to the land of dragoons? Not only we haven't seen any dragon(except the brief apparition of the white thing), but no one has even ever mentioned it. The exorcists are the only thing(and honestly I was enjoying the Coven sidestory more than the actual main plot..)
I don't know how you can call this better than..any of the other expansions, sure it's still ongoing, but it better step up its game cause so far it was very shallow.

I hope "preparing for climax" means we're no further than 50% of the story...and also that missions will come out a lil bit faster.
I hope the coalition leaders will become a bit more important.
I hope that Siren won't be just a picture in a cs and we actually get to meet her(and fight her).
And I really hope the story will actually move me like CoP, AU and WotG did.

[Sechs]

Going to really feel cheated from a storyline perspective if we're that close, unless these final batches of missions have tons of content/longevity/story to em.

I share this sentiment and from this perspective I agree with you and Prothescar.
But I simply refuse to believe that with "climax" they mean we're getting that close to the end, because the story so far doesn't feel that far at all, it feels like it just started or it's about to start.
I interpret that "climax" as "setting the wheels in motion".

If it's really going to be the worst scenario that someone hypothized in this thread... then yes, I'll be the first to be greatly disappointed by this exp's storyline.

[Byrthnoth]

I bet it's just a shit translation, but "the climax" is a pretty unambiguous way to refer to the conclusion of the mission line. If they said "a crescendo" or "a climax" then I could see the argument for just a local-maximum of excitement, but they said "the climax," which implies the absolute maximum.

[JSHidaka]

Preparing.... doesn't mean that will end next update, its the same "soon" of blizzard...
And BTW reforged empty gear.... please -_-

[Kincard]

Yeah, I too am pretty disappointed with the Adoulin storyline. There are elements I like, but it feels like almost nothing has happened, so it's surprising that it's nearing it's end so soon already. If Adoulin truly is coming to an end soon ("soon" probably means like another 6 months anyway), I wonder what will come next?

Nevertheless, I are hype. Mog Wardrobe and new Job Points. I've always liked using my Fellow too, but they really need to add more customizing options for it to make it relevant again. Upping the level alone won't really help much.

[Byrthnoth]

Apart from upping the level and, uh, hopefully making them useful, SE needs to remove the XP penalty when using Adventuring Fellows.

[Sechs]

And BTW reforged empty gear.... please -_-

June!

(just my hunch, nothing confirmed)

[Kyte]

I'm hoping it's just translated poorly and they mean "a" climax, since technically a story can have more than one.

1) Arciela. She's fucking boring. She's the most bland character in all of FFXI's major spotlights, arguably. Even if we just count heroines, compare her to Prishe, Narashima, Lilisette... fuck, even Lion has more personality and she only appears in like 3 cutscenes. She's a pretty horrible character and requires some major development over the next stages of the story for her to stand out.

I'm sorry, what were you saying?

[Edelweiss]

I'm sorry, what were you saying?

There are far better pairs of tits in Vana'diel - and i'm not talking about the borderline furry race.

[ronin sparthos]

https://bucket.bluegartr.com/c830f2debaccf53e877c8d7a4369a4b3.png[/img]

I'm sorry, what were you saying?

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...SLKLMY8020.jpg

Lilisette was far more interesting than Arciela and looked better to boot. A pity, she could have been the true heir to Prishe if she wasn't stuck in Wings of the Goddess. We laughed, we cried, we kicked ass then she went to the future.... for Vana'diel!

[Ophannus]

Still waiting for some quest or appearance of Achetelle, the Adoulinian npc drg from wotg that was the first to mention Adoulin at all. Her dialogue could have insinuated dragons and dragons were plentiful in Adoulin, though lore-wise that would be odd(at least for the drgs) since drgs were special knights of Sandoria and Adoulin was founded by a Hume and he wasn't of royal blood until he *made* himself king when he pioneered Ulbulka. I was hoping there'd be a final zone for the 7th Naakual and the theme would be dragons. Dragons are associated with light and would be the foil to demons. Undead<>Arcana (dark vs light) and dragons<>demons (light vs dark). We have a zone full of umbrils which are demoesque the zone has frequent dark weather, perfect for a "omg the legend says there were only 7 naakuals but wait there's a hidden/lost/forgotten 8th(duh 8 elements)". Seeing as how that wyrm we saw in the last cs embodies ligh, there's probably a dark based Naakual too. Then the 7th delve area could be chock full of puks and Wyrms and Shadow Dragons lol.

But seriously, I'm sure there's an 8th Naakual especially when you have a paradigm of ele mentally aligned beasts and one is conveniently left out so they could troll you with a plot twist at the end.

[Edelweiss]

Lilisette was far more interesting than Arciela and looked better to boot.

And her adult form actually incited some catty jealousy among the women in my old XI LS. There's some humor there.