Player Opinions: ToAU

[Tadghostal]

Damn, I must be the only one who loved CoP.
I think they need to stick to that formula... but without level caps.

CoP was awesome, but as mentioned the zones left a bit to be desired.

If SE wants to fix that and throw the BLMs a bone at the same time, just have Sea mobs drop Beastmen and Kindred's seals as well as give a Sanction-type xp bonus.

[BRP]

(want to eat food? DENIED. Want to use that JA? DENIED.)

Both of these are used by monsters who are otherwise very easy to melee-down and kill. Instead of a powerful WS they get some annoying "enfeeble" type moves. It's an attempt at balance, but players will naturally see it as "I want my cake and eat it too".

[layoneil]

ToA fails on the missions IMO. The challenge is nill, the reward is crap.

CoP zones sucked, but the mission challenge was great, the story was good, and the reward was good. All the winy 'lil bitches' that couldn't do the missions successfully ruin the opportunity for others that look forward to that kind of challenge.

SE considers Assault part of ToAU missions. it's under the mission tab, your IS usage is linked to your Assault progress. there's a storyline associated with Assault, the rewards of Assault and IS combined with the main storyline missions make it substantially better.

BCNM, ENM, ISNM - ISNMs is a double-edged sword, Khroma Ore is $ for people who do it comparable to most ENMs and BCNMs, it completely destroyed the market for certain items like Dragon Talon, which is good for buyers bad for sellers.

Sky, Sea, Salvage - overall Salvage wins.

Dynamis, Limbus, Einherjar - Einherjar fails so hard CoP Dynamis was better.

some people would be inclined to switch Salvage and Einherjar for comparison purposes but personally, i'm comparing based on the lockout timer and the amount of time a player can spend doing each per week. there's no "endgame" area from this expansion but Salvage is the one that you can spend the most time doing if you wanted to.

ToAU world spawn HNMs fail in gear but that could be a good or bad thing. having lower incentive to do them is probably a good thing for the overall health of the population.

i don't think merit and job changes should be credited to the expansion, a lot of that stuff needed to happen with or without the expansion.

[Spira]

Ah... a retrospective. I've been hoping for a topic like this to appear for a while... I've really had alot of thought I'd like to put down about the ToA era and I thank you for giving this avenue (and format) for me to do so..

Jobs:
ToA brought life back to the job system, in my opinion. What it managed to do with the 3 new jobs was reinvent the playing table by allowing so many things that were once not possible or only possible given certain conditions, to be made easily accessible.
The 3 new jobs that came with ToA were refreshing, although the gap between the balancing of those jobs was unnaturally huge. Slowly though, I think they learnt how to tweak back the jobs to suit the gamers over the course of the months, bring PUP and COR to where they are now alongside BLU.
I think the ToA era also brought refreshing changes to all the existing jobs, firstly through job balancing and 2ndly through group 2 merits. The existing jobs were beginning to feel stuffy with some of them barely getting touched in months. The balancing also got rid of poor adjusting that had been put in place from earlier eras, such as the RNG and BST nerfs.

Events:
I'd say that ToA did rather well in this respect. Besieged, while it could have been better in design (less monsters, less players, less lag) was a giant step forward in cooperative multiplayer battles. Other than that, the general focus of events seemed to be on scaling down the required member size, most likely from player suggestions.
Einherjar's system, I still feel, is too much of a hassle for players to appreciate. Having to go through 9 successful clears to reach the end every single time seems like an unnecessary way to stretch out the event. Its like a nightmare of a requirement cross between Dynamis and Limbus.
Salvage is probably doing pretty well. The prices of crafting materials is likely to drop to allieviate concerns of crafting said Salvage Gear, quite similar to how Cursed equipment have all plunged in pricing.
Assault was one of the best features of ToA. Party-play content that gave instant and gradual rewards worked out pretty well - especially since their objectives were varied, interesting and unique instead of previous Kill X, Y ,Z type stuff that FFXI could only offer. I like how they used this to compartmentalize difficulty for story missions from just doing missions in general. However, I also thought that story missions were now too easy. This was especially since they introduced the no exp loss in story mission BC thing - its a good thing they added tho.

Activities:

Each expansion era seems to add something to the game that is often not related to the game at first glance. The whole chocobo raising thing was pretty well thought out, but it would seem that most of the new activities have not really caught on with the general public. Especially not racing. I'd felt that SE could have done a better job by making the side activities more relevant to the game itself, such as with Fellowship NPCs from CoP, which you could use to directly aid you in the course of the game. Chocobos by whistle managed to accomplish this as far as breeding was concerned. I feel that Racing and Pankration could use more incentives.

Notorious Monsters/Monsters:

NMs. I felt that ToA actually added very few NMs to the game, especially when compared to CoP. The 3 big HNMs were implemented fairly well, with them not being too hard, and yet dropping things rather worthy of their effort. Square-Enix does need to do something about the reward:effort ratio tho (will elaborate below).
As for other NMs, many of them were not very successfully implemented because of the way they were put into the game. Awkward spawn conditions or ridiculous locations added to this, especially when what they dropped were not always of considerable worth. More popped monsters would have been nice, although it could be said there wasn't such a necessity because they had a whole bunch of new avenues to put equipment in. There are still a bunch of areas in ToA that have not been utilized - the 3 tablet-things that lead to 3 islands, 1 in troll/undead/mamool territory each.

Equipment:
ToA addressed concerns for new equipment well, imo. They added a grand total of.. 13 end-game equipment sets (if i didn't count wrongly) but balance was missing as some jobs quite obviously made it better off than others. In making all those sets that catered to multiple jobs a once, the jobs that required specialized equipment to make a difference were getting the short end of the stick. Yet, alot of the equipment they added were not particularly accessible because of the whole luck factor involved in it. I say this especially of Assault appraisal items, because the rate of which ypu can get a good item is horribly low. Instead of having the appraisal list be something like {1. Uber item, 2. Crap, 3. Crap, 4. Crap, 5. Worthless Crap) they could have made an effort to implement tiers of equipment, like a good in between the uber and crap which would occur more commonly than uber obviously.
Generally, equipment was implemented fairly well for most of ToA. The 3 new jobs that came with ToA however, could have used more equal treatment as far as getting to wear older equipment was concerned. BLU got to wear like 1 abjuration and both limbus equipment sets. Corsair only got 1 and PUP was left with nothing. I'd say, no foresight in planning options for gear on the new jobs.

Enemies:
One of my biggest gripes about monsters is that they were not commonly used enough. Many mobs in ToA are often exclusive to 1 event, and beyond that theres even a chance you might never come across that monster in that event (Nyzul Isle for eg). They could have put in more of such monsters, or made them non-NMs or non-besieged/nyzul/salvage only.
However, the effort they put into making mobs unique was quite noticeble. They took many new 'concepts' from CoP (that many people didnt realise even existed) and introduced them more generously in ToA. Then there are other unique additions from monsters, like spawning other monsters through TP moves, setting mines, breaking weapons, conditional killing and new form of aggro. Some of these innovations were implemented pretty well and no doubt we'll be able to see more creative ways in which the monsters can interact with players in future. It is a sign of progression, just as CoP progressed from Zilart, and so on.

Accessibility and Travel:
ToA did something to FFXI that would change the way people felt about this game more than ever before. This game in the form of accessibility and ease of travel. Before ToA, FFXI was like a stick in the mud as far as ridiculous time-consumption simply while travelling was concerned. It still is sometimes, but they've alleviated alot of this through the choco gals at Yhoat, Altep and Leypoint, chocobo whistle, Warp taru (to Jeuno/Outpost). Warp NPC to Aht Urhgan, Olduum ring, sky teleport, lowering of OP requirements, Runic portals and so on. I foresee further progress in this aspect as greater accessibility makes players feel greater convenience which seems to be something that is almost expected of an MMORPG these days.

I'd like to add 2 sectiosn, Areas and Music as well.

Area and design:
ToA took area design one step further than previous expansions, adding more locked doors, traps and pits to dungeons, as well as expansive-looking areas and so on. I'd say it didn't disappoint to some extent, but to other extents, some of these areas were particularly annoying and almost seemed to dissuade players from going there (not because it was scary, but because it was a hassle). The redeeming point of this would probably be that all the areas were aesthetically pleasing and very rich and realistic. Granted I felt many zones didn't have the grandiose effect of CoP or even Zilart counterparts, they did their part in portraying the ToA's new influences. This was also presented very well through the monster design, equipment design, flavor text, NPC names, cultural references and so on. So far, SE has not disappointed when it comes to setting up the atmosphere (i dont want to compare it with that other cartoony mish mash MMORPGs)

Sound and Music:
Technically not very important, but I enjoyed most of it. The near eastern influences were definitely there, and helped to set the tone of the expansion. Some areas became chillingly scary due to the music (Arrapago) and others gained momentum from the adrenalin the muisc provided. Naoshi Mizuta did rather OK in ToA, but I wouldn't say the music was quite as memorable as the majority of other era entries.

Square-Enix:
Has definitely opened up to its gaming audience. SE seems to have finally understood that MMORPGs are about 2 way traffic communication. Both the developer and the gamer must communicate to make the game become a success. The developers cannot always push for what they want the game to be (by design) and the gamers cannot always push to have certain things tweaked this way or that. However, the fact that they have responded at all to suggestions and feedback now as compared to before shows marked improvement on their part. If they keep this up, FFXI will definitely become a much more polished game for all to enjoy.

General:
ToA was a resounding success. It pretty much under-promised and over-delivered on every aspect which gamers take note of, and I wouldn't say that the sour taste that CoP left in the gamers had nothing to do with it either. ToA was by far a more balanced package and its era was filled with many bold and successfully implemented moves. In comparison to CoP, it did much better because it didn't promise as much as CoP seemed to have when it overhyped much of its events and made parts of the game actually miserable to play for some (and this has since been tweaked)

Criticisms:
I suppose I'd come back to the reward:effort ratio thing I mentioned earlier. One thing that has been plaguing much of the content in FFXI is that the reward:effort ratio is awfully unbalanced especially with major HNMs such as the 3 ToA fiends and even Einherjar and Nyzul Isle. This extends back to CoP wyrms and even Zilart kings, which both show polar opposite examples of how reward:effort ratio is skewed. Square Enix needs to understand that to please the gamers, they need to fit the reward:effort ratio more towards what gamers think is worth it, instead of what they as developers think is worth implementing. For some reason, they must have a sadist working on their team if they can come up with BS like 'do all this shit, then do all that shit, and pray that you hit a 1/30 chance" of something happening. While I'm not asking them to start handing out Ridills to the moghouse, they really need to consider how to properly dangle the carrot for gamers to bite. Too hard monsters for slightly better or even lousy equipment is pure inattractive for gamers and they often get so frustrated because of this.

Oh yea, and fix Absolute Virtue.

[Plow]

My only complaints are these 2:

Assault should be waaaaay less restrictive on when you can do it. If all I wanna do is assault all day, I should be able to do it dammit. And if I wanna take a week and a half off then do 10 in a day that should be fine too.


They really, really need to stop making these stupidass giant mobs that 99% of people will never fight be like that because the spawns are retarded. If cerb/hydra/khim sat up all day cuz hardly anybody could kill em (think AV as it is right now -bene) that would be cool. The fact that most people will never touch em because they don't wanna leave their character online in bumfuck nowhere doing nothing for days at a time is retarded.



Other than those things and PUP, everything gets a huuuuuge thumbs up from me. PUP still deserves at lease a pretty good one for the simple fact that while people complain about the dmg not being enough, I honestly have yet to hear someone complain about not having fun playing it.



edit: oh yeah as far as the missions go, true the difficulty was somewhat disappointing, but really looking back at cop, zilart, all the hnm's these days, limbus, dynamis, salvage, it's pretty clear that the only ways they've figured out to really challenge people is to take away their abilities and gear and stuff via level caps or salvage crap or whatever. I say give em time to work it out, they're still adjusting somewhat to how strong the average 75 has gotten these days, and have always relied heavily on level caps.

[Linsivi]

Damn, I must be the only one who loved CoP.
I think they need to stick to that formula... but without level caps.

All I like from ToAU is not taking forever to get anywhere.

I think CoP was awesome. :/

[Meloria]

ToA definitely had its pros and cons, which have already been mentioned.

The pld and 2-hander updates were definitely needed.
The faster xp is wonderful for meriting.
Yes Besieged can be a lagfest, but I think its a good concept.

I liked the storyline but the missions were ridiculously easy. I wasn't thrilled with the rewards either. I still haven't picked out a ring.

It did make blms obsolete. It really needs another camp for 75 manaburning.

I didn't like the level capped missions of CoP, but definitely had a feeling of accomplishment once I beat it. If only I could have all that xp back from losses XD. Can't say I really felt like I accomplished anything when I finished ToA.

[superfob]

Damn, I must be the only one who loved CoP.
I think they need to stick to that formula... but without level caps.

All I like from ToAU is not taking forever to get anywhere.

I think CoP was awesome. :/

Agreed, although I was lucky to do CoP with a static group and not random retards which was a plus. Finishing CoP with them is still one of my most memorable moments in game.

ToAU put FFXI on easy mode for levels 50+, but overall success I guess. I really do miss the old zones though.

[Lyramion]

I loved CoP missions soooo much. Starting with a whole ally and ending with 12 people in sea - as the second group on our server. The level cap area were a hugh adventure... sort of like old dungeon crawlers back then.

ToAU Missions arent bad but they are nothing special, nothing of a real Adventure. Rewards were fine really.


But seriously.... if someone would start over now catching up in CoP missions would be much easier than catching up ToAU. Sure ToAU Missions you can do fast but catching up Assault ranks takes ages and the most fun things in ToAU are all centered around Assault Tags.



The biggest fail in ToAU were all those nicely designed items with ASSAULT ONLY and BESIEGED ONLY tag. Some are sure nice but.... NO... ! WTF! I really fear SE will continue this and add many too many items with "PAST ONLY" and "CAMPAIGN ONLY" tags in the next expansion......

[Cheech]

wtf? When did the BG community learn to articulate coherent, cohesive thoughts?
*insert crickets*

Before anyone gets overly defensive, I'm hardly flaming in any sense of the word.. keep up the great work!.. This has been rather enjoyable to read and I look forward to more productive, stimulating contributions like this one.ˆˆ <3

/ducks.

[Not Kuno]

I think I made a long post about this a while ago. >.>

I don't like how there is no "sky" area with HNMs to fight. Each expansion has brought 3 things, live HNMs, an instanced zone, and some sort of god thing. ToAU, like CoP, have retarded ass HNMs that most people don't fight. The problem is though ToAU has no sea area and the instanced zones are either too small (salvage/nyzul) or uses a completely retarded system (Ein Feathers).

So seeing as how ToAU completely dropped the ball on 2/3 parts of expansion endgame, and usually the funnest/fairest/reliably done ones, I think it failed in terms of HNM LSes.

[layoneil]

They really, really need to stop making these stupidass giant mobs that 99% of people will never fight be like that because the spawns are retarded. If cerb/hydra/khim sat up all day cuz hardly anybody could kill em (think AV as it is right now -bene) that would be cool. The fact that most people will never touch em because they don't wanna leave their character online in bumfuck nowhere doing nothing for days at a time is retarded.

you can fight them in FL Assault, fight them in Nyzul Isle, fight them in Einherjar, the fact that the world spawn version drops mostly crap making people not wanting to fight them is a good thing for most people.

Can't say I really felt like I accomplished anything when I finished ToA.

i feel pretty accomplished for my Captain rank though.

[Vedder]

Overall, ToAU gets a very solid passing grade. It would have been bad if they just added "more of the same"... but in reading the summary of all that was added, there was really some groundbreaking stuff added to the game in this expansion.

I'd agree with the sentiment that it doesn't do much for HNM LSs... but it does tons for "end-game" LSs. And with the huge influx of 75s as a result of the easy raking of XP, there had to be more various activies for 75s added... and they did.

[Spira]

I think I made a long post about this a while ago. >.>

I don't like how there is no "sky" area with HNMs to fight. Each expansion has brought 3 things, live HNMs, an instanced zone, and some sort of god thing. ToAU, like CoP, have retarded ass HNMs that most people don't fight. The problem is though ToAU has no sea area and the instanced zones are either too small (salvage/nyzul) or uses a completely retarded system (Ein Feathers).

So seeing as how ToAU completely dropped the ball on 2/3 parts of expansion endgame, and usually the funnest/fairest/reliably done ones, I think it failed in terms of HNM LSes.

I totally agree about the no "sky" thing..
figuring out Sea and understanding the whole sky structure thing was one of my favourite parts of Zilart and CoP endgame. The fact that they were linked to some rich real life mythos/thingy was extremely cool too.
The other thing I liked about it was that there was 1 uber popped NM that would drop rather amazing stuff and a bunch of lesser NMs that would do the same.

For some reason I still believe that ToA isn't fully over yet. Maybe its because I don't want to believe it is, that I expected it to give something more in its end-game respect. Perhaps it might be possible that the last of ToA might even come in November, together with WotG stuff. I kinda remember the developers saying that there will be some form of overlapping because although ToA is mostly done, there was abit more, i think..

Also, that WotG was to be released latest by January or so, but they pushed it forward to meet Christmas sales, or something. WotG could have come later if they wanted it to. If they had planned it that way from the start, it might explain why it seems like ToA still has 1-2 loose ends (cos it does). CoP on the other hand, was totally spent way before ToA. They actually added a Zilart-only quest and a quest that extended CoP and Zilart missions to kinda act as filler.

[Sonomaa]

FFXI was saved by toau, there is no question about it. COP had players bleeding from the game, toau brought many back as well as new blood. Players still quit because the single biggest problem (roz still being the endgame thing to do) and toau didnt fix that per se, but it gave minor equivalents to it that kept some busy. Leveling is easier now, much easier, not a bad thing, I love 10-12k an hour exp pts on lesser colibri. If ein had a better drop rate the problems would be 100% solved, now its just solved for those who can manage the absolutely insane hardness level it requires to achieve odin.

[Tomino]

Relic Armors, please.
AF+1, please.

They are needed, first to give these jobs some sort of goal, second to improve their resources.
I fear there won't be any more ToAU oriented updates aside from the november one so... does this really means 3 jobs got nothing?

[The Stig]

ToAU brought out some involving/awesome quests, even if the reward wasn't that good (2 Gold Coins?). It all kinda added up, but it was involving indeed. I particularly enjoyed the quest regarding the generals, and was thrilled to have someone let me know the "final" part of the quest with the Mithra (I originally complained that why there isn't a quest for the Mithra). :D (until the update)

[Septimus]

I find it funny when I hear people waxing poetic about how great CoP missions were as my second character sits stalled at 5-3. Any time I try to get people together to do CoP missions I hear people grumble something about their Aunt being on fire or having to take their poodle to the airport if I am not outright ignored. On the other hand, when someone asks for help on a ToAU mission it is generally easy to get volunteers to help out with the BC fights. From my perspective which do you suppose is the failure: the expansion where my second character is stuck spinning his wheels, or the one where my second character has a Glory Crown and Captain rank?

Anyway in my opinion the only massive flaw in ToAU is the Einherjar system. It had the potential to be so good, and the missed the mark so hard with it. I know that they don't want abjurations to be easy to get, but the drop rates are so absurd and the pieces in the two new abjurations sets range between "ok" to "utter trash". (Not to mention that you have to spam points in Einherjar to even get the materials to craft them, but on the other hand many of the point items for Einherjar are amazing, like Morganna's Choker.)

They did so much good in this expansion that it gives me hope for the next one. And I hope that the people who came up with the level capped areas and missions in CoP were sent to some horrible dungeon somewhere where they are tortured endlessly for their crimes against humanity.

[Cadsuane]

Dragoon had several tweaks including 2-hour and jump recast changes. A new level of accuracy trait added, and the healing rates of wyverns were increased.

Edit: yes they were!

[Charismatic]

I find it funny when I hear people waxing poetic about how great CoP missions were as my second character sits stalled at 5-3. Any time I try to get people together to do CoP missions I hear people grumble something about their Aunt being on fire or having to take their poodle to the airport if I am not outright ignored. On the other hand, when someone asks for help on a ToAU mission it is generally easy to get volunteers to help out with the BC fights. From my perspective which do you suppose is the failure: the expansion where my second character is stuck spinning his wheels, or the one where my second character has a Glory Crown and Captain rank?

I'd say that's a problem with the company you keep, I've helped several people through CoP and enjoyed doing the stuff over again, then when they added an EXP bonus to completing the missions I was even happier to help people with them.

I know a good few people who feel the same.