For a start, I know there's plenty of different mmos that use micro transactions, but both these MMOs have different mindsets, or at least they did at the begining, but now they seemed to have moved into milking us for all the money they can through in game items.

So anyway I was just doing my daily news catch ups and this popped up;
WoW are now selling pets in game for $10 real world money, the price seems awfully coincidental for starts, but it's startling how these things seemingly do...nothing? Think yourselves lucky, at least we get some flashy stats on our items...or is that a bad thing, because we're almost being forced to buy it maybe?

Good Thing? Bad Thing? What do you all think.

Source

How are we being forced to buy it? The things SE have added on lately you dont need to play the game. Hell you can still do the bcnm's for the mini expansions even if you dont have them.

If we must have any paid items at all, I'd rather they be statless. Paid items that are better raise the bar upward, both in the minds of the playerbase and among the developers who have to balance for stronger characters. Once that happens, the cash-grab pattern becomes established and it becomes very hard for the dev team to say "no" for the executives when they want more. When that happens the game has set forth on the road to ruin. There are thousands of recreational activities already where more money buys better results (to say nothing of life in general; we play games to escape from that stuff!) We don't need any more. And those of us--like me--who deliberately choose to avoid that kind of crap have excellent reason to bitterly resent it when all our hard work is invalidated by having the game changed into one we never would have gotten into in the first place.

Hate to burst your bubble, but I am currently enjoying the CoP storyline very much thank you. Is there a reward at the end? Sure, but I'm not doing the missions just for that one item.

Also, CoP actually added new zones/jobs/armor. None of the new mini-expansions have done that, they only added a few Cut-scenes and one piece of armor.

I liked CoP for it's story and the challenge. I know it's hard to believe, but some of us like our games to have something resembling a challenge, instead of it rolling over for us and dropping an item after just running to different spots watching a CS.

Don't insult anyone again on here - Vlorsutes

Edited, Nov 5th 2009 9:58am by Vlorsutes

I'd just like to throw my name in with the "masochists". Between my own run through, pickup groups, and leading several groups through CoP, I have done the missions roughly seven times each (up to about fifteen for some [these are descrete groups by the way, not attempts or runs]). I also always ask to be allowed to go in with the groups so that I can be part of the challenge again. Running Mammets, U/O, and Moblins (common it's just a funny BC) are among my favorite memories in all of FFXI.

More to the point, what most people pay for is content, not everyone but most. I personally do not define a shiny new toy at the finish line to be content, although I suppose I can see how some would disagree. When I pay money for something I expect a journey. That being said, I'm really not sure where I stand on the micro transaction argument, seeing as I would likely never buy one on general principal, so I'm not sure what to think about them.

Edited, Nov 4th 2009 9:08pm by Hulan

Edited, Nov 4th 2009 9:12pm by Hulan

Guess what most of CoP was? Yeah, it was running to different spots and watching cutscenes.

Finally beating CoP, after gods know how many hours, days spent getting there, is still my single happiest accomplishment in FFXI. Standing in Blueblade Fell getting that last CS, all the effort felt totally worth it.

Those fights were hard, and I was enormously proud and satisfied when I finally finished them. Getting my CoP ring (and after Limbus was added, getting my Homam gear, and later still getting my BLU spells) was certainly icing on the cake, but I thought CoP had a cool story and amazing, varied challenges that are still among the most interesting in the game, imo.

I remember the day we did nothing all day but throw ourselves at Ultima and Omega over and over and over again. I'm not even sure that was the day we eventually beat it. Sure felt good when we finally did, though.

I started COP because I wanted the reward. But after struggling to get through it and finally completing it a year later (2005-2006), I realized that the new areas, CS, and experience in general (good and bad) formed fond memories of FFXI with some of my best friends in the game.

Please understand, Ken, not everyone who plays this game is a loot whore like you.

Just FYI.

Edited, Nov 5th 2009 2:31am by Kragorn

Am I missing exactly how CoP consisted of "running around and getting cutscenes with the occasional challenging fight".

I could see if you were describing ToAU but... CoP?

You're talking about CoP right? The missions that required finding your way around places like the promyvions, the aquaducts, sacrarium, riverne A/B, Hu'xzoi and Ru'hmet...

CoP is FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR from a "run around getting cutscenes" expansion. It's the "work your ass off running around in places where everything wants to kill you AND have to get through challenging fights" expansion.

CoP is like the antithesis of all other expansions and add-ons.

While I myself enjoyed the CoP storyline (the final CSs were the best I've ever experienced in this game), I only did it because I wanted access to Sea and the gear I could get there (along with my Rajas). Just because you continually access the expansion and do events to get the gear instead of spend a few days finishing it off for one piece of gear doesn't change the fact that, now that the missions themselves are done, you bought the expansion for the gear you're working for.

I honestly think that the ToAU storyline is a much better example, since most endgame content for that expansion is unlocked fairly early and easily in the mission line, and the reward, while good, isn't quite as game breaking as Rajas was, making the storyline itself really unnecessary if you didn't want to do it for the experience, but even that is a moot point since the expansion itself is much more than the story.

I think Fynlar said it best.



You didn't buy the gear from these expansions outright, you still had to go through the missions. Whether or not you liked the missions themselves doesn't change the fact that you bought an expansion. It's been ages since I've been in a CoP area outside of events where I'm trying to get armor or gil, but I don't regret spending 30 bucks on it.

And, personally, I liked AKE. So did I spend 10 bucks on a hat? No, I spent 10 bucks on a storyline and got a hat as a bonus...money well spent.

Yeah, CoP has a few challenging fights, so do these add-ons. I haven't won every round I've had against the Seed Crystal, and from what I've heard both of the AMK fights can be pretty challenging, but I've yet to find that out firsthand.

You can go ahead and list all the names of all the dungeons you crawl through in CoP (which will be rather extensive, because 1. CoP is longer than the add-ons and 2. CoP actually made use of what were entirely new zones at the time) but you're still ignoring the fact that a whole sh*tload of it is the same thing that people are blasting the add-ons for -- running around and/or getting cutscenes.

Here, I'll even list all the examples of CoP missions that consist entirely or almost entirely of just running around and getting cutscenes.

1-1
1-2 (sort of, the Promyvions are essentially all part of 1-3)
2-1
2-2
2-4
3-1
3-2
3-3 (yeah, I'm counting this one. Wimpy uncapped joke NMs don't count as a fight, right? Most people don't "count" them for the add-ons, so it's only fair)
3-4
4-1
4-4
5-1 (another wimpy uncapped NM)
6-1
6-2 (more uncapped NMs, not quite as easy anymore, but still soloable by most 75s)
6-3
7-1
7-2
7-3

With a few potentially arguable ones, all of those are *entirely* cutscenes and running around. Even though all of the other missions might have fights, a lot of them also contain lots of cutscene surfing themselves, such as Three Paths. If you ask me, that's a huge chunk of CoP.

Now I'm not saying that cutscenes and sh*t are *bad*. Due to the fact our role in this game is "random Vana'dielian adventurer/clone" and not something like "Cloud Strife", it's sort of necessary. What I do think, though, is that people are being downright hypocritical in saying that the add-ons fail for having too much emphasis on cutscenes, while at the same time they're giving accolades to the CoP missions, even though in my eyes they exhibit the same "problem".

Try taking the rose-tinted goggles off, folks.



This whole game, addons or not, is a game where you pay money to buy the time to possibly get "better" if you so choose.

Better?

ACP CON's:- Run around 6 year old zones killing monsters 50 levels below you for a key item that wont drop after 2 hours.
- Horrendous quasi-fanfiction cutscenes reminiscent of a sh*tty Stephen King novel adapted into a sh*tty Stephen King movie .
- No actual character development, no climax to the story, no satisfying resolution, and possibly the blandest villain with generic evil intent ever spawned.
- Augmented gear that is horrible 90% of the time.
- Climbing Delkfutt's Tower level capped.
- Boss fight where the majority of job combinations will be discriminated against.

ACP PRO's:
- The one redeeming factor, a 10$ body piece with some great stats (which will probably be rendered useless soon with evolith equipment)
- One new enemy model, not counting the seed miasma around existing enemies.


CoP PRO's: - Interesting characters you actually care about.
- A complex plot enjoyable to follow if you don't like having plots spoon-fed to you.
- Frequent difficult battlefield fights with enjoyable cutscenes such as all 4 promyvions, Diabolos, Omega and Ultima,
- TONS of beautiful new areas to be explored during the missions.
- Many cool new enemy models like the Yovra, Taurus, and Aerns
- Many new HNMs, NMs, and pop NMs (several in each of the 25 new zones added) with great equipment drops.
- New summon, Diabolos
- Limbus, Sea gods, CoP dynamis, Wyrms, ENMs, etc. as new endgame content
- Many new synthesis recipes for crafters
- Tons of great new songs
- Epic final boss battle
- The best FFXI cutscene ever as a reward for totally completing CoP missions
- The Bahamut quest series
- A new city Tavnazia, and many side-quests involving it to be done.

CoP CON's: - A complex plot drawn out over several years can be hard to follow (if you can't take an hour to watch the cutscenes again at cutscene NPCs or on youtube.)
- Difficult fights can mean that some players will never be able to complete all of the missions, especially before the easy mode updates
- Lots of traveling back and forth between zones and waiting for JP midnight to continue.



It's like saying "I don't see the difference between the old and new Star Wars movies, they all involve space, jedis, bounty hunters, and light sabers why aren't they all equally good?"

The reason ACP fails so hard is that it is not supplemented by any of the essential pros I've listed for CoP. It might have been a good or even great add-on if the missions took place in one or two new zones with one or two new enemies with a well-written story. Is that really so much to ask for when we paid 1/3 as much for it as CoP? Instead we get nothing new but body armor and a seed crystal model.

Just because both expansions take place in FFXI and they both have FFXI style quests and missions (go to A then B then C then fight D) doesn't make them equivalent.

Well, it's an entirely diffirent thing.

In the case of WoW, you are not -forced- in a way to buy the pets, plus you are supporting a charity.

In the case of FFXI, the over-the-top rediculous buffs that you dont want to go without force you in a way to buy the "Scenario", while offering you very little outside of that in return for the money spend. Mirke can be top choice for a lot of jobs as DD body. Fast cast and similar buffs are something an EG tank finds hard to go without. Plus there's the domino effect of having to buy it because if you dont, someone with the gear is more powerful than yourself.

But to comment on the completely drifted off conversation, ACP keeps you busy for at most a day (outside of that rediculous last boss) for a price tag of $10. CoP has kept most of us busy for over two years for a price tag of $30. While offering new EG area's and regular area's (hello Limbus and everyone else around Tavnazia), new gear (hello, Limbus gear/sea rewards/ABC's), interesting boss fights (Airship, Tenzen, Promathia), interesting characters and developments (Prishe <3) and a "decent" story.

ACP features none of those, at all. No area's, no EG, three pieces of gear, the most rediculous and unfair frustrating and lame boss fight ever (hurray, floating rock that seems to want to kill you), no new characters at all, well actually, a re-used CoP model at that. And lets not even begin about the failure that the story is, the conflicting nature of another crystal, the fact that no one ever heard about it, cares about it or finds it interesting, and the fact that it looks like a 12 year old wrote it, which might even be offensive to 12 year olds, are all things that should completely turn you off from it.

ACP was nothing but a test for SE to see to what lengths we would go to obtain gear. We paid them for frustation of lv 1 climbs, unfair boss fights, rushed and malfunctioning contend that required a lot of maintenance, and a story one of the directors let his kid write. And you know what? We passed with flying colours. SE now knows we're willing to endure whatever sh*t and crap they throw at us, they dont even have to try, as long as it gets us gear.

Lets face it, ACP, you buy the gear, that's it.
CoP, you buy a large increase to your game world/lore/gear/fun.
WoW, you donate to a charity and get a little reward for doing so, incentive or not.

No matter how i look at it, i cant seem to find a fault with WoW's approach. While SE's way of making them money with minimum development time still disgusts me.

SE would have been better off just selling us the gear straight up. I for one would have been a lot happier with that. After 20 climbs with pick-up groups i just threw in the towel. Not only did i pay them for no content, i never got any gear out of it either. Never bought MKE, heard it was only a minor failure. And seeing the track record, there's nothing in this world that will make me want to buy Shantotto's either...

Get your facts straight.

The mog satchel was free. You paid for the token, and the satchel was an incentive for players to get it, since SE was getting tired of people posting their login data for anyone to grab then blame SE for their shoddy security. (Because it's totally SE's job to protect player systems against all threats from the web. Hell, SE should pay the players for forcing them to play that damn game!)

Also, inventory is still capped on 80 and it's that they said wouldn't change. The satchel is merely a mogsafe you can access anywhere. SE could just as easily have made the mogsafe, mogstorage and moglocker accessible anywhere in the field, but they don't like breaking canon just because it's convenient for players.

Guys, there's been some insults being thrown back and forth in here, so I'm going to say this once. If you're going to bash anything in this topic, keep it in line with what the OP's topic was about. There's no need to insult a member's personal viewpoints just cause they don't agree with yours. If I see it any more in here, I'll lock this and suspend the people involved.

To be fair, I think most people who bought ACP before it came out bought it for the story. They didn't know what it would end up being when they bought it. At least that's what I think

peace,
CR

I'm just a bit surprised that anyone can even think of comparing any of the Add-Ons to CoP. By default there is no comparing an actual full on expansion that added a bunch of new areas/monsters/jobs/storyline/items/endgame and so on vs something that adds storyline and a handful of items.

Not that I'm bashing any of the expansions. My indifference to ACP's storyline aside, I've enjoyed both and am greatly looking forward to Shantotto's time to shine. Both CoP and each of the Add-ons shine for their own reasons, but yes, it pretty much is like trying to say that the new trilogy is even fit to shine the shoes of Empire Strikes Back.

Caesura Wrote:


A bit embarrassed to admit, but I had tears when I watched that final CS. Listening to the music, seeing the goodbyes, I was thinking - all has come to the end, I will no longer see Tenzhen etc. NPCs who had accompanied me along this long and hard journey, and this is farewell.

Some of the CoP fights were not easy, some took quite a few tries, and we had gone through some hardships to complete it. But oddly enough, I had much more satisfaction after wining a hard battle. Thus, CoP will always be my favorite mission line.

So for TOAU, only the gears fight and alex fight were memorable. I tanked Alex on Nin and won, that really made me feel good.

The current WOTG mission/quest lines are just too easy so far, kinda lukewarm. ( I am on mission 19). The only satisfaction I have out of it is that I solo'ed a few earlier quests.

I only have ACP so far, only the last battle was somewhat fun. Don't know if I want to buy the later two yet. Kinda feel meh. Helped with one Moogle fight, too easy.

Nope. Maybe I'd been spoiled by years of writing little adventures gaming elsewhere, but at its simplest, I'd call CoP's story something you could expect to see from an average high school student that could actually type in more than just netspeak and emoticons.

I think part of the time FFXI's story potential gets held back because of cutscenes. They've spoiled people. Instead of describing a vicious battle, they have to see it, and that naturally takes a lot more time from the devs where the balance of what stays and what goes is a reality.

Being a voiceless spectator doesn't help a whole lot, either. Too often I've seen myself knocked out or forced to reply in a manner I wouldn't have just because we have to. I figure I'm having conflicts with the story's progression, then perhaps it's not been logically constructed.

That, and I felt like I had to speed through the CS's so that people wouldn't start drifting off and leaving before the next step in the mission, or arranging the next mission day.

Or, you know, you can have some self control.

You know what's better than travelling to all those spots to relive cutscenes because you gave up on them for a year? Not sucking and getting it done a year ago.


The CoP story was fantastic, and some dumbass saying that a teenager could write it with emoticons and sh*t, is just retarded. Maybe half the sh*t went over your head, or you just didn't pay attention, or follow through all the story lines, but that sh*t ran deep, tied together with RotZ extremely well, and had a few pretty @#%^ing awesome twists.

You learn about the Twilight god, the emptiness, the Zilart King, the missing mother crystal, the real Dark entity that gave the Shadowlord his power, the moblins, etc., and in a few cutscenes, not all mission related, we get glimpses of the future with Aht Urghan related sh*t such as a hinted avatar and Blue Mages.

The story was huge and expansive and had many offshoots, tied together extremely well with the previous one, and foreshadowed the successor.

doubla postu

Edited, Nov 7th 2009 9:28am by Deadgye

It's too bad that when it comes down to it, your own "skill" at the game was really a marginal factor in getting CoP done.