[Taskmage]

Originally Posted by Neverslip

Have I even started aCP...? No I haven't.

Obviously not or you'd be done now! Ba-dum CH!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Ziero is reminding me why I shouldn't get tangled up in the quote fests, he really wants to believe that RoZ missions posed no challenge AT THE TIME they were released. Levels were still capped back then. Merits did not exist. They were a bit of a challenge since you couldn't be 75 if you wanted to do them at their debut.

RoZ is the epitome of why leaving all this stuff uncapped is a bad idea. They scaled these missions around the caps as they were undone. Only when you could do them all at 75 was when It became a joke. Even moreso after the point Merits debuted in CoP.

In case you haven't noticed, throughout the entire game - with the exception of ToA - every mission in the game is skewed to a very specific experience level. You couldn't even move on to RoZ without moving through Rank Missions to Rank 6 and until shortly after PC release, there were genkai caps that limited your growth, but they kept on unlocking the missions.

The them was constant in Rank, multiples of 10 were pretty much the minimum required to complete the missions until about rank 6 and level 60. Arguably, people are a little to heavy-handed about ranks 7 through 10 actually needing 75s. You don't, a group of 65s could complete them. And to complete them at such a level felt rather rewarding.

[Yellow Mage]

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

Also, going outside is overrated. The sun is the least of my concerns, its the fact that I live in the southeast and humidity is my personal kryptonite. I don't mind getting sweaty, I just prefer there be some effort on my part before it starts happening.

Off topic, but I just so happen to know this feeling all. Too. Well.

. . .

/panic

I, too, live in the southeast.

[Vyuru]

No offense to ACP, but when a mini expansion comes with gear I want, or a good storyline/missions then I will get it.

I doubt I will get ACP because the body armor that you obtain for the jobs I play (Blu and Drg) is really only good for if you don't or haven't done Nyzul or Dynamis. For how I play Blu, the Mirage Jubbah is probably better than the ACP piece that Blu gets, and the Askar body fits my Drg's TP build like a glove.

And this...this is just pure BS. All you need is the right jobs, the right items and half decent players who can follow simple strategy (something you should have for EVERY mission fight in this game). Of course if you base everything in this game on the lowest common denominator then every fight will be rough.

Having been in what, three maybe more? CoP statics, and I know for SURE that TGM can vouch for this, but yes, people do bungle what should be a simple easy mission. For the love of god, we spent over a frigging MONTH in Sea during CoP missions because one person, ONE PERSON was unreliable. And I'm talking about the stuff you have to do after you get Sea access and before you can get into Tu'Lia or whatever it's called.

The only exception is the majority of RotZ....because it's that simple.

I do agree with 'kitten, now it's that simple. Back when RotZ first came out it wasn't though. I'd wager that some of it was close to being CoP difficulty. Which isn't that bad, even when it first came out, but people do make things harder than they need to be.

I rather liked one guy's take on CoP missions. After reading many threads about the "only way" or the "best way" to win the fights, he told us to let him know if we ever found out a way to bring 2x Nin 4x Rng 4x Smn 6x Mnk 6x Blm 2x War/Nin and a smattering of healing power and bards into a six person BCNM fight.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I remember when there was the rush to get sky access because that was the thing to get for endgame.

I remember ZM4 and 5 rather vividly. I remember how many people didn't bring Sneak Oils or Powders to Den of Rancor and Ifirit's Cauldron, expecting RDM and WHMs to babysit them the whole fucking way. I remember the people who did not clear tonberry hate before the BCNM, i remember the people that reapplied sneak and invis spells around bombs.

i remember the people who didn't bring echo drops to Kam'lenaut (or, as I came to call him, "Camelnuts"), the BLMs who AMed him with the spell matching his elemental alignment because they thought that was what they were supposed to do.

People made RoZs hard, too.

And years after the content was old, I remember taking this NIN I didn't like on his run against the Antican BC. He wanted to show us NIN was so much more awesome than PLD that he could tank a PLD without shadows. So I told him the PLD was the one in the middle, which was a lie. It was clear as day there's an Antican on the left with a giant sword and shield and the one in the middle had a giant bow and quiver of arrows on his back. He ran in to tank the RNG in and ate a nice big EES cuz he said he could tank the PLD without Shadows.

We still won, but damn that was funny as hell. I gave him the stupidity test and he passed.

And somehow, that idiot got sea before sky. Mmmkay, I don't want to know what that experience was like for his parties.

[Aksannyi]

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

So I told him the PLD was the one in the middle, which was a lie. It was clear as day there's an Antican on the left with a giant sword and shield and the one in the middle had a giant bow and quiver of arrows on his back. He ran in to tank the RNG in and ate a nice big EES cuz he said he could tank the PLD without Shadows.

I think I love you.

[Feba]

If it makes you feel better, BBQ, while I was making my Sky run, the guy who was technically the leader was similarly stupid. Actually bragged about how he bought (as in, RMT) some of his equipment. The real breaking point was after repeatedly stressing to pick up sneaking supplies in Norg, he wanted me to cast sneak/invis for him instead of using powders/oils.

In Ro'fucking'Maeve.

Don't remember clearly exactly how I managed it, but I got the entire party to disband and form a new party, sans dickface, and went on to get Sky without him. I like to imagine him wandering Ro'Maeve, repeatedly killed by weapons, although I know that's sadly not the cast. Really, though, I rarely used magic to get myself through Ro'Maeve, and he wanted me to manage him and myself.

[Ziero]

I've done RotZ missions with groups of people in their 60s and 70s, not just full pts of 75s. Hell, I was only 70 when I did the entirty of RotZ the first time, and the main tank was a late 60s Pld. Doing it with AH geared, unmerited, less-then-75 players was still easier then any other mission chain I've done.

When you base difficulty around bad players of course the missions are going to be tough. Stupid people do stupid things and stupid things get everyone else killed. If your ZM missions were hard because people refused to Sn/In themselves, then it wasn't the mission that caused the difficulty, it was stupid, lazy players. Though I do agree that missions like that should be capped. Hell I been saying for years, even before I even fought him myself, that the SL fight should be capped. At most to 55.

But the lack of level caps isn't what makes ACP suck, it's the lack of actual content. Yes, the repeatable reward system is nice and all, but all other expansions have given us something similar and then some. All while giving far more mission content as well. Buying all three mini-expansions will end up costing the same as a full sized one, yet the actual content we get won't even be a fraction of it in comparison. It's using this comparison that makes me feel that these smaller add-ons just aren't worth it.

[Karinya]

I think you're wrong. ACP is, by price, about 1/3-1/4 of a normal expansion. It has two serious (or potentially serious) BCNM fights, assuming we're not counting mandies. How many expansion storylines have 6-8 real fights?

RotZ: If you count the 5 AAs separately as 5 fights, then it has that many, but that's sort of cheating, even if you're not doing DM. Tonberries, ants, Kam, AAs, Eald is only 5 (and headstones are exactly the kind of running around killing small stuff that you're so down on when ACP does it).

CoP: Still famous for its massive amount of mission content. There's no doubt that ACP has less than 1/4 the mission content of CoP (which is too bad, when you consider that many full-size expansions also have new zones, mobs, and even jobs, and ACP is really *just* about its mission storyline and the few pieces of gear introduced through it). But not every expansion is CoP.

ToAU: Khimaira, Gessho, mamool ja, flayer, Alex. That's only five fights and some of them aren't so tough.

WotG: WotG has a lot of quest content that is semi-connected to missions so it's hard to know how to count it, but as far as actual *missions* there's only the dragon, the tree, and the Battle of Jeuno, so far, IIRC. Although presumably more will be added in the future and you do need to progress in at least one past nation's quest line.


I do have to say, though, if there really are two dev teams and the same one is responsible for RotZ, ToAU and ACP... it's definitely not their A team. The two best expansions to date (IMO) have both come from the other team.

[Taskmage]

It's a rather incomplete assessment of each of those expansions to measure them only by the fights in their story. Those all added new areas, new jobs except for CoP, new gameplay types, new BC sets and hours of additional content. ACP has just the story, as you note less than half as much story by fights and I would say less than a quarter of the story by plot.

[Darkhound]

While I think that ACP was "good" it was short and a bit too weak for what we had to pay.
I hope that Se "learned" from this and that the new addons are more rich in content and story

[Taskmage]

It seems like there wasn't much for them to learn if the poll so far is any indication. 6/10 of us are still going to buy it sight unseen. If half the playerbase bought aCP that's about $2.5M free money. If a third of those people were put off by aCP and the other two thirds still buy that's $1.7M free money for a fraction the amount of development resources needed to make a real expansion.

[Raydeus]

Man that's a really bad precedent.

But if SE can throw anything they like knowing people will buy it then I don't see why they would go back to making expansions. 1/100 the content (and a gimmicky piece of gear) for 1/3 the price seems like something very profitable to me.

[Yellow Mage]

Originally Posted by Ziero

Though I do agree that missions like that should be capped. Hell I been saying for years, even before I even fought him myself, that the SL fight should be capped. At most to 55.

While I fully agree with the sentiment, this just isn't complete without requesting that the missions also be freely repeatable without needing someone who hasn't done them yet. Though, I'm sure that's been mentioned before.

[Mhurron]

Originally Posted by Raydeus

Man that's a really bad precedent.

But if SE can throw anything they like knowing people will buy it then I don't see why they would go back to making expansions. 1/100 the content (and a gimmicky piece of gear) for 1/3 the price seems like something very profitable to me.

Non sequitur. Simply because most people will buy the other 2 scenarios does not mean that SE would stop essentially all further development on the game or that those same people would be happy with no more full expansions.