ITT: Trolls Trolling Trolls

[Kipling]

its not an expansion for the millionth time its not expanding upon anything stop calling it a god damn fucking expansion

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...omi/u-mad1.jpg

[BRP]

When I bought this piece of horse armor it came with nothing but horse armor. What's the deal?

[Moosey]

Boring storyline, I like the potential rewards from the keys to the tenshodo chest though, body armor obviously a plus.

Want moar wotg story plz.

[Shassira]

So far it seems that the whole objective of this expansion was for us to apreciate WotG more, i'd say.

Anyway, i'll come back to rant about it when i'm actualy done! So far it's being pretty dull though.

[evilpaul]

@Neosutra in his OP, if the expansion only took 3-4 hours, I'd like a copy of your bot. I'm about 6 hours in, and have only defeated the three Goblin NMs because the fucking thing wasn't accessible as a result of server maintenance more than half the time since the update when it went live. And all the zones being like Dragon's Aery with fucktards chasing Orcish Grunts like they drop Ridills. Combined that with shitty droprates on the Rare/Ex items and "key item obtaining" rates and it's thoroughly shitty.

All the regular shit mobs people need to kill to do the expansion the first time aren't 100% drops either and the quests are repeatable daily with apparently good random rewards for doing so. So there's going to be a shitton of people doing them for the forseeable future.

SE should have had the forsight to pre-sell for $30 all three "mini-expansions", because unless the next one comes with tickets to have super models come to player's houses and perform congratulatory sexual favors for clearing them, I won't be pissing more money away on them.

40/100 for this update/expansion. Which is a functionally retarded student's math grade.

Fuck you Sage Sundi in your "What?"-hole.

[Patriclis]

Well I have to be completely honest, I bought the expansion for the end reward. Like a child buys cereal just to get the prize inside, so to speak; however, should i have been investing 10$ in a book with this story, I would probably regret my purchase XD.

[miokomioko]

Worst thread ever.

Aside from the attrocious bottleneck which is the first two quests of this storyine, I feel like it was very well implemented and I'm happy to say that the scenes, the great body armors, the endless augmented loot, the easy repeatability and incentive to do so was well worth two footlongs. I've spent much much much more money on much less entertainment.

[Colenzo]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...omi/u-mad1.jpg

lololololo

[Kaelen]

Completed this in an afternoon. I was expecting a little more, considering how SE built it up. But it kept me more entertained than a day at the movies.

I've bought other DLC that have given me more regrets. Yeah, I'm looking at you Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt.

[Sonomaa]

the problem with this expansion is not that it was released its WHEN it was released.

Why when? Simply put, the expansion we already bought a year and change ago isnt finished yet. Why are we paying for another part of an expansion when the last content we had available isnt even completed yet? Thats problem everyone is having, we paid 10 bucks for 12(?) missions that equal the reverse of the first part of CoP, which, by my belief, is the worst expansion that FFXI has seen (ToAU > RoZ > WoTG > CoP).

People dont like being charged for the next book in a series when the previous book they are still trying to read is mediocre and not even finished yet. This was all about timing and face it, the timing fucking sucks. The people who made this expansion should be working on giving us content for the game we already paid for, THEN they can feel free to release mini-scenarios and charge us 10bux for them. At least we dont feel like we are buying another chapter of a book we arent super impressed with now.

[The Blackrose]

@Neosutra in his OP, if the expansion only took 3-4 hours, I'd like a copy of your bot. I'm about 6 hours in, and have only defeated the three Goblin NMs because the fucking thing wasn't accessible as a result of server maintenance more than half the time since the update when it went live. And all the zones being like Dragon's Aery with fucktards chasing Orcish Grunts like they drop Ridills. Combined that with shitty droprates on the Rare/Ex items and "key item obtaining" rates and it's thoroughly shitty.

Assuming you waited a day or two to avoid the Dragon's Aery conundrum (pretty much the majority of my linkshell, including me, did thanks to the Qufim incident), we blew through the storyline in 6-7 hours. Your mileage may vary.

[Cesaria]

I've just typed a wall-o-text over on alla about the same thing and since I'm lazy I'll copy/adapt it here.

SE talked about the scenarios developing out of potential quest storylines they felt too long to be added to the game as simple quests. That's why myself and my fiance (he's more of a FF story nut than me to be honest) really went for the expansion - we were anticipating a story on a par with something like the Serpent Generals quests and something length-wise along the lines of the whole sleepga2+prerequisites arc. I don't really think that was an excessive expectation considering what they said in the interviews.

Certainly we weren't expecting new areas, jobs or anything like that, and we weren't expecting body armour as good as the reward can potentially be (the ghetto valor surcoat etc, although I got a body with pet augments for my BST and I'm impressed with that) but we were expecting what SE is known for - a heck of a good questline with a nice story (that actually made sense) and a couple of days' amusement working through the quests together.

I've seen year 4 kids I've taught come out with a story that made more sense (and I'm a seasoned SE player so I know the required level of suspension of disbelief required). None of it made sense - it was sold as being something to tie up some of the loose ends from the opening movie - it didn't. It just plonked a character model there, and expected you to believe that this was X and that X and Y just accepted this with no background at all. My issues with the scenario is purely that - the storyline wasn't a storyline really, it was just bleh.

In my mind what SE could have done for an add-on scenario that would have been better recieved, although it would have tied them in to owning an expansion which they seem to be trying to avoid (I essentially regard Zilart as part of the base game as it was from NA release onwards), would have been to use something like the Serpent Generals quests as their own independent scenario with some tweaking to add some BCs in there, and perhaps have the fanfest BC where you fight them all as the final fight - something like that would have been value for money in terms of the depth of the storyline given, without adding new zones or jobs or anything - just a very very solid questline and a justifiable cost for the tenner charged (or whatever the equivalent is in dollars/euros etc).

The timing also helped to leave a bad taste in people's mouths as it came just along the same time that people were paying for the security token - so it seemed like SE were suddenly really becoming money-grabbing because of that.

[Kimkytaru]

Well I think it's worht the 10 dollars we paid, just for the snatchel, enhanced security and the new body's. I have to admit story and fight were ridiculously easy and short.

Also Killing bst and gobs was the worst experience in my ff life since quite some times. I was feeling like beeing back at Dio farming pre-change where you were competiting against 3 other ls for 1 Aura statue pop.
Mandy fight was fun but too easy, they could have been a bit higher.
Climbing Delfkutt was kinda fun I think. Makes you feel like a newbie again.
First BCNM was too easy honestly while 2nd was kinda without story since it went so smooth for us.
In the end I get 70 inventory + a new body piece for my mnk until I get Usukane so I'm really happy with it so far. But yeah story wise it was sucky and painfull to do.

+

new Body
inventory +70 (in a week)
More security for your account

-

Poor story
Easy fight
short time (but at least no waiting till jp midnight)

[Kaylia]

If it's worth 10$, how much a game like FFXII or FXIII worth? 470$?

[Kryssan]

Meh, I'm not all that disappointed. I wasn't expecting that much. I've always looked at the expansionettes as nothing more than extended quests so it felt about right.


I think one of the reasons for making it so short was also due to how you acquire the key items for getting augments. They made it so you can get one of each a day and then made it so it was feasible for you to get all the keys in a day in a relatively short amount of time all by yourself. The only *difficult* one is the Delkfutt climb, which isn't honestly all that difficult, especially if you dual box it with a 75 character. Granted, I'm sure this doesn't excuse the fact of how they made it, and I am disappointed you don't get to choose your augments for equipment ~ but we all also knew SE wouldn't make it that nice, because well, it is SE we're talking about here. With more testing regarding how 'random' the augment process is with the key items, perhaps we'll be able to get better equipment more often out of it.


The only fight worth it I think is the end fight, which is a mini-Alexander fight for all intents and purposes, and I had fun on PLD/RDM, it isn't often I get to use that in any situation that isn't solo~ and personally I think the new armor is pretty if nothing else. 10$ really isn't breaking anyone's bank I don't think, you pay more a month for just playing the game, and it's not like they're charging you for it monthly, it's a one time payment. SE could have always just tacked on an extra dollar or two to the base payment for FFXI and done it that way, making a lot more in the process.


I guess jury is still out for me, I'm really waiting to see what testing reveals in getting/acquiring decent augmented equipment. I've seen some nice rings and earrings for sure coming out of it, so its not all bad.

[miokomioko]

If it's worth 10$, how much a game like FFXII or FXIII worth? 470$?

And how much have we all paid in total to be playing FFXI for how many years? I know I've put at least 6 years of $13 or so every month. $10 is nothin'.

[Silenka]

Worth 10 bucks? If you like shiny armor and random augments.

I feel pretty much the same way as most others -

Key system: pretty cool, but the rewards are too random to be worth it all
the time.

Storyline: albeit not done with it yet but considering the WotG windy quest I just did made me cry for the first time ever at a FFXI CS, going to have to say the ACP mission story is just bland.

Farming: This is utter and complete bullshit. Bull. Shit. This is one of the worst ways (maybe the worst) they could have gone about mission advancement. This could have been so easily remedied just by upping the droprate (which I think they'll do in a future patch) or making the key item from the gobs drop for everyone in the party at once. Simple fix, too stupid to do it.

End reward: Depends on what you make of it and what you can get out of it. Sorely needed for pet jobs like smn, a lot of jobs will get great use out of it but if your job isn't one of them then of course you're going to feel dicked.

Bottom line really is there is good and bad about this expansion just like there is about everything else in the world, whether it's 'worth' it or not is what you make of it, story is eh but reward is yay.

[Zumi]

This really felt like it should of been a part of the normal updates. What is this Xbox live? They love charging $10 for shitty add ons on there. It kind of reminded me of the time when I paid $10 for the Fable 2 addon which I beat in 2 hours and didn't touch since. I know SE is a business and they want to make money but I can't help but fell ripped off. They really should of released a higher quality product. I am up to the tower fight and the story isn't even as good or up to the same standards they would put in their other games. Can't say I am not disappointing. But I probably will buy the other 2 add ons anyway just for completeness.

[Aemora]

Looking at it from a progressing point of view, the missions, like CoP, progress in difficulty so that even though a Lv1 mule can get the initial cutscene, the rest of the missions require a little more leveling the more you progress. From this point of view, SE made it so that in order to advance with the Add-on, you'd have to progress yourself level wise. I think this is what they meant by "Will take the players a few weeks!". Somewhere along the line they forgot that about 90% of the player base already has at least 3 Lv75 jobs and will do this shit in 6 hours.

The storyline... What storyline? It was so pathetic... Ffs, the female NPC didn't even have the same bloody name at any point. The "revelation" of the final BC was booooooooooooooooooring (No-where near the revelations of ToAU omggg), although I did gasp at one point, I can't remember where, but I fell asleep during that tour of Vana'diel cutscene after you win, you know, the one that lasts 8 minutes and does absolutely nothing for you. My only solace is that through-out the entire time I was in the last BC, my GF was naked playing with a Vibrator taunting me with her lewd ways.

BUT The reward is fucking win, that you cannot deny. It's a shame that the only things this "Expansion" (i.e. paid quests) brought on were 3 Lv75 bodies that are fucking win, depending entirely of course on your job. I got my Cor QD Body and I look so hot, you could rub tomato chutney all over me and I'd still find me attractive.

And the first 2 quests are the most annoying thing ever.

[Spira]

I quite enjoyed this add-on.

Storyline: it felt abit shaky because it was overall very abrupt and short.. posing more questions than answering in the process...
to be honest, part of the story leaves a question mark. whether or not you do anything to fight he crystal, the antiphon appears out of the people of vana'diel itself.. so its almost as if you do nothing at all..
I'm not fond of the way young aldo told us to do this and collect that. A bit too straight forward, almost didnt make sense as he would suddenly be so well versed in the workings of the world..
The resolution of aldo and emeline was necessary and would be one of the most redeeming things about the story. I like how it also tied back to the opening CS. That was very very nostalgic.

Another thing I think was really clever was the use of the theme of Final Fantasy as the antiphon to Memoro de la Stono. Firstly for the fact that the song is now finally in the game. Seeing as how Memoro has been with the game since the beginning and has huge significance throughout the game, calling something its antiphon kinda places theme of FF on an equal standing, which is also true to a huge extent.
Symbolically, and this is somewhat of a joke, Final Fantasy is the only element strong enough to redeem the darkness that is FFXI, lol. sometimes true. Its whats unique to FF that keeps this game special and running strong...

Cutscenes: The quality of the CS is a lot lower than i would have expected. I'd say this is mainly due to the fact that the add on project was outsourced and not handled by the 2 main development teams. That said, I'd place it at a status between Zilart CS and CoP CS, but by far paling in comparison to WotG CS quality, of which the latest additions to nation quests alone can already clearly outshine the competition. I would expect this to get better in the next 2 add-ons as experience by the Matrix team would mean they get to improve further.

Gameplay: Was kinda short. With the length taken into consideration they really could have done well to balance the difficulty scaling of the whole thing... Understandably its all cake to 75s.. but it didnt seem to progress too well. I'm guessing by the way the rewards are tiered, its meant to be lv30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 75 progression.. or something like that...
The bottle necks for farming Seedspalls are annoying but it has less to do with the game than the rush to go through the missions. Understandably, they coulda expanded the number of mobs that dropped the items further.. but I think its actually not that bad as is.
Feiyin's collect-the-seed thing was fun. I really enjoyed it. Its a relatively easy quest but you still have to work towards it, which makes the process rather fun. Same goes for the Delkfutt tower climb. I like the whole Lv30 cap thing and the fact that theres no exp loss for dying during the climb - they should put the no-exp loss thing to all mission NMs outside BCs too. Its somewhat nostalgic to go thru a zone and think like a lv30 again. It seems a bit tedious but its not so bad at all. I also like how anyone who hasn't done the missions can help out, its kinda nice considering in the past people would have to work with limited jobs/people due to no one reaching the same point in the story yet.

-what I would have done to take gameplay further really would be to implement a time trial mode for feiyin/delkfutt quests.. maybe yielding a better key that allows u to choose an augment from a chest item instead of it being random... that way it would kinda test players and allow them to take on more difficulty at their own will, but reap the rewards accordingly.

The add-on does seem to fulfil part of the general plan to rejuvenate old core FFXI areas tho, with more people going to far-out Fei'Yin and Delkfutt, as well as killing mobs in 6 zones around jeuno... the fact that the quests are repeatable for more keys/rewards helps to perpetuate people doing them in order to get items/gear.. some of which are pretty good.

The BC fights were good. QuBias was ok.. rather easy with a balanced setup.. whereas Stellar Fulcrum was actually quite strategic, which is nice.. kinda seldom we get BCs which need the level of strategy from CoP BC stuff.. it gives a greater sense of achievement from winning too. Its annoying to lose, but all BCs are, honestly.. For this, i really like the fight, it gives an epic end to the add-on in spite of the short content span.

Rewards: Great. Awesome. the 3 body pieces are revolutionary to the game.. and as with the augments thing, those are pretty damn good too. the key system is nice.. it gives people a reward for doing missions again.. but from a reward pool so varied that they can just keep trying again and again.. FFXI needs more of this in the core game, more reason for players to help other players and to do missions again...

Music: Stellar. Altho its 2 new tracks only, they're both really good.
BC track.. i like the style of setting the piano prelude right into the track, it starts off gentle and calm (almost like the nature of a crystal) and then slowly works up into a grandiose battle theme with the adding of violins and drums... before finally looping back into the piano. fitting piece for the battle.

Final Fantasy theme. I'm glad they finally added this to XI. FFXI had pretty much every FF tradition save for this for a long time. I like XIs version as its quite different.. it doesn't try to be too stirring, but more calming... which is a first for the track...

overall, im satisfied with the add-on. It could be better, but seeing as its a first attempt at this, I'd say it was pretty well executed, save for the glitches.