"Equipment" in the way Ito used it sounded pretty broad; yeah the artifact weapons and artifact armors part of the quote seemed inconsistent with the way he said the rest of the details, he could've meant to cut the sentence short to include relic weapons+armor and empyrean armor+weapons to the mix.
Mythics for the 2 new jobs sounds stupid as hell :(. The lore of they mythics was all about Balrahn and the treasures he collected over the years. AU and Adoulin are sooooo far apart. Like literally the other side of the globe. There was no mention of Balrahn ever going out that far (especially when beastmen riddled the entire AU continent). That sounds really stupid to me. /shrug
That and I'm pretty sure I've never seen a Geomancer or Rune Knight anywhere in Aht Urghan... or anywhere else for that matter. Really interested to see how they write themselves out of this.
In retrospect, old school methods of travel (chocobo, airship, on foot) may have seemed like a gigantic waste of time, because we now have clear cut and straightforward objectives. Back when places were new, our objectives weren't as well defined or even known for that matter.
It gave us opportunities to learn and discover things within each and every zone. And it was justified because little was known, and things were actually new to us. It's only after that we have defined goals and after every stone and crevice has been unearthed that these landscapes become mere timesinks and objects interfering with our goals. But just consider that it was the very sense of adventure and discovery that helped shape and define your very objectives that you undertake, yet find lost time within.
For the most part I can tolerate a boring method of transport. What I will not forgive however, is an uninspired, boring, short, or simple flag quest for Geomancer and Rune Fencer. If it's anything like the BST flag quest where you fetch something at a specific time, while the cutscenes held little to no relevance to the class itself, then I will be... not very happy.
For what it's worth, I think most of the jobs tell their story through artifact quests, not the initial "joining the ranks" one.
I can't say that simple teleportation does not bode well for this expansion; I have my own reserves about it and honestly I think it will be a huge let down. On the other hand, COP was easily the best expansion all things considered and we didn't even get a new continent. So who knows? This boat point alone is not necessarily indicative.
edit: in between the double negatives there's some meaning to be had there... somewhere
True True. The dnc and sch ones weren't prevalent during AU time periods. Ok, but riddle me this then. Dancers and schs were very prevalent during the big war in WoTG. In the 4 major cities. Some of them migrated to AU after the big war (see Zazarg and Rangelouts). It's not THAT unlikely that schs and dncs made their way over to AU as well in this big migration. No mention of runic fencers or geos. It seems kind of stupid to me personally. Also I just assumed they were getting added to Burtgang and Yagrush respectively, but that wouldn't make sense as Yagrush enhances benison and DV. So they would have to be new relics. Seriously why not empy? That's dumb if they are going to have AF3...
They stated that the major theme of the expansion is "discovery". I just want to say that I really like that. If getting there is boring, so be it; if discovering an entire continent is boring, well, then it's a horrible expansion.
There's also no reason to believe that Balrahn, a collector of extremely rare artifacts, and who was an extremely well-known and repsected political figure, would have had no contact with people from Adoulin and would not have attempted to collect artifacts related to Geomancers and Rune Fencers.
Also just because we don't know of a job as a playerbase - to me, it's always been pretty apparent through FFXI's writing that there myriad other schools of magic, styles of combat, and as a result, classes that probably exist in Vana'diel which may or may not be known to NPCs but not necessarily to us.
Idk about that really. The job doesn't seem to be centered around DD at all, meaning it will have to rely on things like Hasso and have a low attack score out of the gate. Likely face the same issues that DRG has, except without jumps to help make up for it.
Yeah, it's meant to be a tank, just like how SAM was designed.
Idk about that really. The job doesn't seem to be centered around DD at all, meaning it will have to rely on things like Hasso and have a low attack score out of the gate. Likely face the same issues that DRG has, except without jumps to help make up for it.
Yeah, it's meant to be a tank, just like how SAM was designed.
The storyline for relics is that they were made during the crystal war yet dancer or scholar are not on relic dagger or staff.
So storyline has nothing to do with weapons what so ever
Idk about that really. The job doesn't seem to be centered around DD at all, meaning it will have to rely on things like Hasso and have a low attack score out of the gate. Likely face the same issues that DRG has, except without jumps to help make up for it.
Yeah, it's meant to be a tank, just like how SAM was designed.
My amazement is in how long it took for SE to embrace the playerbase's take on NIN. They were adamantly against it at the start and now they're calling RNF the "3rd tank job" which I just find hilarious.
The storyline for relics is that they were made during the crystal war yet dancer or scholar are not on relic dagger or staff.
So storyline has nothing to do with weapons what so ever
No I think they were USED during that time, weren't they? Passed down through the Hydra Corps, no? I haven't seen much history on relics myself so this could just be what I thought when skimming those articles of lore SE used to put out.
<npc> Welcome to the the Adoulin shipping inc. main office.
<you> I would like to go to Adoulin.
<npc> Oh i am sorry we dont ship people.
<you> Ok....../em walks away
<thug> psst i can get you on that ship for a price of 10000 gil. just stepthis way.
(wack) <you> is knocked out
<you> wake up in a shippng box with a glowing item around your neck.
/em bright flash of light <you> are shot up into the sky and throwen towards the open ocean.
<you> see land appear but you show no signs of slowing.
/em bam you crash head first in to a wall of a ruined fort.
Welcome to Adoulin
I think that will work. Sorry for mistakes on tablet so hard to type.
I still want a boat ride where something tragic happens and you wash up onshore.
People gather at port, talk to the NPC, boat is permanently docked... every 2-3 minutes a boat departs, or whenever the queue fills up (say six people), a boat departs via cutscene...
Few minutes of typical boat ride stuff, cutscene... chaotic ***happens... epic familiar music starts...
5 minute timed BC on the boat w/ all passengers, but pretty much it's an autofail... against this guy...
Ship gets destroyed, you wash up on the shore somewhere... major villains of the expansion are identified as Cagnazzo, Scarmiglione, Barbariccia and Mf-cking Rubicante.
Unless there's a cutscene of us flying through the clouds like Superman and having wyverns drive by fire breath us, or Megashark from the abyss of the ocean jumping 15,000 feet in the air to bite our *** while narrowly escaping death, I have a hard time finding anything remotely exciting about a teleport.
Looks like my theory wasn't too far fetched after all, lol >.>
I still want a boat ride where something tragic happens and you wash up onshore.
People gather at port, talk to the NPC, boat is permanently docked... every 2-3 minutes a boat departs, or whenever the queue fills up (say six people), a boat departs via cutscene...
Few minutes of typical boat ride stuff, cutscene... chaotic ***happens... epic familiar music starts...
5 minute timed BC on the boat w/ all passengers, but pretty much it's an autofail... against this guy...
Ship gets destroyed, you wash up on the shore somewhere... major villains of the expansion are identified as Cagnazzo, Scarmiglione, Barbariccia and Mf-cking Rubicante.
Unless there's a cutscene of us flying through the clouds like Superman and having wyverns drive by fire breath us, or Megashark from the abyss of the ocean jumping 15,000 feet in the air to bite our *** while narrowly escaping death, I have a hard time finding anything remotely exciting about a teleport.
Looks like my theory wasn't too far fetched after all, lol >.>
Wasn't the dragon attacking a ship in the original concept art of ffxi? I always remember seeing it when I installed the game.
Why would it matter when they started development on this new expansion? It's A FULL DISC EXPANSION! Be happy we have it? Bitching about how you're "glad you're not playing anymore" really is odd, don't ya think?
My amazement is in how long it took for SE to embrace the playerbase's take on NIN. They were adamantly against it at the start and now they're calling RNF the "3rd tank job" which I just find hilarious.
giving up because you cant control people isn't acceptance :<
SE has always been slowly curbing NIN back towards what its supposed to be. Same with SAM.
RNF being ability based is WWWAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY better than consumable tools again. And now they are adding enhancing skill too to further make it the PLD noone is ever going to use after the first week :<
A month ago, Square Enix rocked the Gigas Socks off players during VanaFest 2012 by introducing “Seekers of Adoulin” the fifth expansion for Final Fantasy XI which is celebrating ten years of service. New jobs, new continent, new UI… even with all the information released at the event, people still wanted to know more! We had a chance to get some of our questions answered straight from the source.
Read on for our interview!
GE- It’s great to see that a new expansion is on the way! It’s been quite awhile since Wings of the Goddess came out. Why was there such a long period of time between expansions? When did development begin on Seekers of Adoulin?
SE- While we were planning the release of Wings of the Goddess, we realized that there wouldn’t be enough room in the future to create the amount of additional maps needed for a full disc expansion. With that in mind, we decided to do what we could by using existing areas for add-on scenarios and the addition of a few areas for the Abyssea battle area add-ons. During that time, we continued researching and revamping the system to allow us to increase the number of maps that we could implement, something that was previously impossible. With the revamp completed it became possible for us to increase the map capacity around the middle of 2011 and then we started planning for Seekers of Adoulin.
GE- In North America Seekers of Adoulin will not be available for the PlayStation 2. Can you tell us what lead to this decision? It seems a bit odd to increase HDD capacity for the game on the console then only release the expansion in one territory. Why not release the expansion digitally?
SE (Answered by Square Enix, Inc.)- In evaluating the North American release of the expansion across all platforms, we needed to consider multiple factors, including the number of players exclusively on the system, and the costs associated with publishing or developing a stand-alone download. Regrettably, these two factors greatly determined our final decision to support the PC and Xbox platforms exclusively. However, we remain committed to supporting FINAL FANTASY XI on the PlayStation 2 platform for the foreseeable future.
GE-How will players first arrive in Adoulin? Where will they depart from and what kind of prerequisite will need to be met before travel to Ulbuka is possible?
SE- For Seekers of Adoulin, we didn’t create a map for an ocean route, so we’re planning to make the main mode of transportation a teleport-like warp. We are planning to make this extremely convenient, and as players progress further with pioneering, the number of areas that they’ll be able to warp to will increase. We can’t say too much, but yes, there will be a quest requirement similar to the one to use the boat to travel to Aht Urhgan.
GE- How many types of Runes and Luopons will there be? Will they be a consumable item that players will have to carry around with them? Or will they be a spell or ability?
SE- Runes will be activated through the use of abilities. As mentioned at VanaFest, there are both offensive and defensive types of runes. Offensive runes will mainly be used against enemies dealing elemental damage and such, while defensive runes will mainly be used on yourself and party members to reduce elemental damage.
Rune fencers will also be able to utilize enhancing magic, so like paladins they will also utilize and consume MP.
GE- How will the new jobs play into current relic, mythic and empyrean weapons? Is it safe to assume that they’ll have relic and empyrean armor as well?
SE- Rune fencers and geomancers will have Artifact equipment, Artifact weapons, Relic Equipment, Empyrean equipment, and Mythic weapons.
GE- With Seekers of Adoulin, players will receive private islands that they can use like a farm. How similar will these be to the Mog House? Can other players visit your island? Will you be able to furnish any parts of the island?
SE- As there will be rental houses for players within the town of Adoulin, the islands will not be too similar to Mog Houses. Imagine the island as a specialized area for procuring materials. From a system perspective it is difficult to invite other players to your island, but that’s not to say that we have completely given up on it. Since you won’t be able to alter the layout of this area like you can inside of a Mog House, it won’t really be possible to decorate it. However, there will be visual variations that can be made, such as farmland expansions, in order to increase the amount of materials that you can procure.
GE- At VanaFest you said that you’re looking into changing some of the core coding for the game to deal with issues such as the limit on recast timers. Are there any other things that the coding will make possible that you can tell us about?
SE- We’re not actually changing the code itself but expanding on the character-related data. This update will enable the addition of new jobs, as well as the expansion of various other facets of the game, but we have not yet fully planned out exactly what we will be doing with this. To start out we will first be expanding job-related aspects, such as new jobs and recast timers.
GE- It’s been mentioned that plug-ins might be supported with the new PC user interface. Can you tell us more about what tools will be made available to the community, what type of plug-ins will be allowed or forbidden, and if there will be some type of approval process?
Using a tool we’re internally calling “Schemer,” we will be making it possible to freely customize and arrange existing functions with the graphics of your liking. We are currently looking into the overall approval process.
GE- Final Fantasy XIV has been picking up some steam lately while heading towards the launch of 2.0. Now, Final Fantasy XI has a new expansion pack coming out next year. Have you thought about a permanent discount or a bundled subscription to both games so that players don’t have to pick one over the other?
SE- This is currently undecided.
GE- This year marks the 10th anniversary of Final Fantasy XI. What are some of your favorite memories since the project began? Is there anything you would have done differently?
Mizuki Ito- Well, one of the most memorable things for me recently is the announcement of Hiromichi Tanaka’s retirement. While I was saddened by that fact that he is retiring, I feel very proud and fortunate to be a developer at the same company with a person who retired while being loved by many of the fans.
Yoji Fujito- When I think about memorable things in the history of the game, I would have to say the earthquake on March 11, 2011 and how its influence reached FFXI had a major impact on me. There hasn’t been an example in the past where service had to be halted for a long time and when I think about the fact that there were players who were affected by the disaster, I feel that this was a major event for both us and players alike.