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MAY 28TH, 2007

Other Promathia toughts.

Unlike last week, this one wasnt really an amusing one. Been bored and got pissed by some various factors. Hope that soon I will feel ok again ._.;;

Regarding blog anyway, I am very surprised about the reaction I found in my last post. About cop, and the update.
I understand that the main problem is actually find people willing to set, and willing to sacrifice a little themselves to proceed on the story.
I don’t hide the fact that while doing Promathia I stopped doing EVERYTHING else: exp, idling with friends, helping them, do my own business and even stole a little of my sleeping time.
Wont mention the fact I lost thousands of exp.
I laughed, I’ve been angry, pissed, tired, happy, proud, stressed but in the end was fun. I even had a nightmares about Sacrarium and Fomors irl (lol ..) but when I recall my “cop set period” I feel happy. I met new friends, I did something way more interesting than just exp, and this also let me joining SpikeFlail.

I know some people say “it’s just a game, i want to be entertained, not to be stressed by it”, and I can understand. CoP IS stress, I cant deny it.
But then again when I saw people with sea I always tought “Ohhh he/she’s cool having sea! Wish I had that as well”. And that gave me strenght to proceed on fights!
The total opposite thing about sky. Probably coz I did that only one year ago, with no level limits and people with merits already.

I’m sorry for people who can’t find companions for missions. I would gladly help if you were in my server. And I’m saying this coz I would really help, like I already did. I redo Cop, ZM, and Rank things lot of times, so I wouldn’t mind.
I hope for you all to have more aid when the exp reward for REDOers will be introduced.

The only thing I hope is that sea won’t be crowded. Please, dont let it happen SE.

And last, happy birthday to me. And I love you monosomy for this. My girlâ™¥
I also modified the blog appearance again, hope you will like it. I’m not really sure if change that pinkysh-reddish color as title, but I really like it ^_^

18 Comments

By jtaru , 28 May 2007 @ 10:34, Monday

jowah is old!
but i like older girls :x :x :x

XD
By Jowah , 28 May 2007 @ 10:37, Monday

♥
By Eltharion , 28 May 2007 @ 13:35, Monday

Old chick makes good soup, at leats that’s what we say in Italy…
By Maiev , 29 May 2007 @ 7:43, Tuesday

Hay :) happy bday ^^;

Sorry I was goin dbox u a Kraken Club but…. ‘.’ it says not same server :((
By Verrick , 29 May 2007 @ 10:21, Tuesday

Happy happy birthday! Just you wait Maiv, she’ll transfer to your server for that K.club!
By Tog From Ifrit , 29 May 2007 @ 10:48, Tuesday

Happy birth day Jowah!!! I would make you something but I’m not that cool. We are both getting older >.>
By Jowah , 29 May 2007 @ 10:58, Tuesday

Thank you all ^.^
And lol! Jowah needs to be a Kraken WHM! Can give in server transfer yah ? :D
Meh, I need to come to Fenrir again I’m so negletting Mai :(
By Frohike , 29 May 2007 @ 18:26, Tuesday

Happy Birthday, Jowah ^_^

Love those gifts.
By raidenn , 31 May 2007 @ 0:51, Thursday

Happy Birthday! Wooo! *sacrifices 10000 goblins*
By Ciermel , 31 May 2007 @ 15:16, Thursday

omg Happy b-day! (‘-’)b

so yeah… Am I still in time to claim mai’s extra Kclub? *starts over from lv1 on fenrir @_@* XDXD
By Reiginsei , 31 May 2007 @ 19:10, Thursday

Happy birthday! :)

And dont worry, your gripe about the CoP change is your right. You achieved something special, this makes the achievment appear less when every noob under the sun will be flooding Lu Moria ; ;
By Jowah , 1 June 2007 @ 16:22, Friday

Meh I can understand your points of view. But I can’t still find those missions *that* difficult.
I am redoing the whole CoP a second time for my mule, and actually I’m having fun doing so. Each thing is now one thousand times easier and faster, since now I know what to do, where to go, when I have to something, and such.
Wish I could help you guys in your missions :( Could catch you with my mule ; ;
Mammets this week end I hope :)
By tsuki_no_onna , 1 January 1970 @ 0:00, Thursday

wiii tanti auguri donnina *!
By red_white_flag , 1 January 1970 @ 0:00, Thursday

I'm not sure if my comment was the one surprising you or not, but I'll probably elaborate a bit more on the CoP topic.

Now let's start by going back to the first expansion which ZM. It was seen by the players as “too easy” because there's no level cap and you can go through 90% of the missions so easily at 75. The only problem is Divine Might, even the final mission is said to be reasonably easy. So Square-Enix felt that they had to come up with something more challenging than that.

Enter the Chains of Promathia. Filled with A LOT more missions than before, and the level cap ensured that you can't just power through with level 75 jobs and win easily. Good on paper, but faulty implementation. The biggest problem with CoP is that it is very heavy-investment expansion. You need to have cap 30-40-50-60-uncapped gear which is eating away your precious inventory space. When people have got a job to 75, more often than not, they don't really want to “save capped gear just in case they're doing CoP”. People might have capped gear for certain BCNMs, but that's different because they know specifically which ones they're doing and what they need to have. It's not like everyone is doing every BCNM20, BCNM30, BCNM40, BCNM50, BCNM60 in the game. So for those who like that Peacock Charm BCNM, they only need to have cap40 gear, and that's about it. But with CoP, you need to have all cap 30-40-50-60. That's very inconvenient, not only for your inventory space (which later on somewhat “solved” with Mog Locker), but also the fact that by saving the gear, you can't sell them for money.

Then enter another problem, CoP can be very expensive. You might need Silent Oil and/or Prism Powders, Icarus Wing, Yellow Liquid, Hi Potions, Hi Ethers, Reraise Earrings, etc. And after buying all those, you went in, and ….. you lost. WTFBBQ#&%(#%))$&@(%&) You just spent a lot of money, and for nothing? That's another reason why people are at times unwilling to do more CoP missions. Majority of the people don't want to spend a lot of money all the time trying 5 times until they finally “win” a mission. And when they win, they don't want to have to go through all that again. Even worse if they've spent a lot just to help others and they lost for some obscure reason (e.g.: the tank D/C midfight).

That's the initial CoP missions are like. Even Square-Enix admitted that CoP was a “failure” in a sense that it didn't do as they wanted it to be. Imagine if you play Suikoden VI which is made to be much harder than the previous 5 easy games, but not only that it's much harder/more challenging, you're made to be very poor in the game too. Suikoden V had this “everyone joined at level 1 weapon” which costs a lot already. Imagine if Suikoden VI would have “sharpening weapon now costs three times more expensive, everyone joins at level 1 weapon, and no battle gives more than 10,000 potch”. You'd become frustrated easily. Yes, CoP is by far more challenging than Zilart. But it's also disheartening to many players who are “casual players” that were forced to miss out on CoP simply because lack of monetary and player support.

By lowering the level of difficulty in CoP, S-E expected players to become more involved in CoP missions. This might indeed lead to more people having access to sea. However, the number of people having access to sea doesn't matter much unless it's also accompanied by the increase of sea Linkshells or they are RMTs looking to exploit sea.

Personally, I just think that S-E got it wrong by how they made CoP to begin with. The concept was wrong. They intended so that CoP can also be done by lower level people (e.g.: people at level 30 doing Promies, etc). But seriously, I doubt anyone actually ever does that. Due to the cost and preparation, CoP missions are not meant to be for newbies (how the heck would they know what to do in promies if they're new?). However, I'm happy with how S-E handled ToAU overally. Expansion should focus on high-level activities, and that's what happens in ToAU. I'm hoping that WoG would also be like that.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnddddddddddd ……… HAPPY BIRTHDAY ^__^
By tdizzle00 , 1 January 1970 @ 0:00, Thursday

I had sea over 1 year ago, does that make you think I'm cool? <3

I agree with you pretty much. But I am kinda sad they're making the game easier for people who complained. Honestly it's really not hard to get through COP. We did snoll with thf rdm mnk rng rng blm set up. I mean if you can get a thf in there (who wasnt even me since I went rng) and complete it I dont want to hear about other people crying.

Sea felt like an accomplishment when I did it. It was challenging, rewarding, often times annoying but in the end I felt like I accomplished something by getting through it. Now they're making the fights easier and no more exp loss so people will be more likely to help others.

I dont have so much an issue with the no exp loss and the exp rewards or even the ability to buy items off the AH. I wish these were all in place way back when I did it. But I do have issue with them making the fights easier. Thats a bit much. They're introduced new gear that we didn't have back in the day and we did just fine with the old system with old gear, so why cheapen our accomplishment by making it a lot easier for people now?

Thats my only real complaint. Now there is the very real possibility of having 'newbs' in sea cluttering up the place like sky is/was. I bet they'll have difficulty with jailors and make those easier too now…
By red_white_flag , 1 January 1970 @ 0:00, Thursday

Regarding the difficulty being made easier, I can understand your point. But at the same time, I can also understand the opposite thought. Another thing about CoP is that due to the cost (money and time), people tend to not want to try different setups (why bother experimenting at that cost?). The most common one is of course the “must have SMN to beat promies” which is obviously not true. And on the flip side, many people won't bring certain jobs on certain missions, which can really screw you up if you only have that job. Of course not everyone is like this, but in general, people are like that. By making the difficulty easier (I don't know how much easier), it would encourage people to be more open-minded in how they approach the fights.

I don't think Jailers would be made easier at all. CoP is understandable due to the fact that they're missions of an expansion. Jailers are just NMs. There's no reason to make NMs easier.
By kamaliitaru , 1 January 1970 @ 0:00, Thursday

I think you really nailed it with the time and money costs. I have found that, sadly, people tend to be much more risk averse in this game than I have seen in a long time. I think the a majority of people that are now complaining about CoP have not even really tried it. They read the guides or lolallah and say – oh, I don't have a job on that list, I'm screwed. Then, rather than actually trying the missions, they spend their time and energy whining that it can't be done.

I've helped quite a few people through some missions (there are others that I simply won't do aka Aquaducts or Sacranium just because those places give me nightmares). Sometimes we didn't do so well, other times, we did really well and succeeded on DRY RUNS. And, they weren't the perfect setups – no SMN on Prommies, PLD on airship fight, etc. etc. Now, of course, that was when I was losing XP in a promy, and I tied some major strings to my participation (i.e. be prepared), but the end result, pretty much without exception, was the eventual win of that mission. After all, when it comes down to it, its just a BC.

As far as the changes, I don't have issue with being able to purchase items from the auction house. I do, however, have issue with them not being rare. Of the items that have a rare tag are aminas and CCB – the rest I think are just EX. Removing the rare from these, well, I've already commented on that. Makes the BCs a total joke if this is what is going to happen.

I don't think I'm upset about the CoP changes. I am disappointed though. It seemed that CoP had gotten easier and easier every time I did it, and now it becomes easier still. Its one of the last remaining beatable challenges in the game, and its going away. I know its “just a game” and all, but I enjoy the challenges it provides. That is one of the reasons I still play – for the challenges that are there. I'm kind of disappointed that my set my mule is in won't feel that extreme sense of accomplishment and pride that I had when I first finished CoP.

I think this may signal a trend from SE that all of CoP, including Jailors are made easier. SE recently changed it where deeds and virtues were 100% drop, and that was a step in a good direction, but lets face it – if a majority of players basically got CoP toned down due to continued complaining, whats next? This could be the continuation of a very long trend, since its my personal belief that CoP has gotten easier as time went on.

I really wonder, after these changes, how long it will be before there are other changes to sea. Lets face it, the rules change in Sea – things aggro from the sea and from the sky that you don't even really know are there unless you are paying attention. Lots of mobs have special aggro conditions (i.e. flowers aggro when you are in certain areas, balls don't aggro, but birds and spiders do, and pots are a whole different story).

More people using limbus means that there will be conflict over time and space for that resource. Since 3 BLM can take quite a few zones, does that mean they will have to yield because 18 people want to use it?
By red_white_flag , 1 January 1970 @ 0:00, Thursday

If you are looking for challenge, I think there are other things that can be challenging outside CoP for sure. CoP itself isn't exactly *that* challenging either. Level of difficulty in CoP is often exaggerated more because of idiots involved rather than the difficulty of the mob itself.

The most obvious example is Diabolos fight at 3-5. Some people would complain at how hard it is with Diabolos having that cheatmove Nightmare (yes, I say it's a cheat move simply because DoT not waking us up … DoT should wake us up no matter what, but hey ..). But at the same time, Diabolos is very easy if you have a good stunner or two who is always ready to stun him. So what is the “difficulty level” of CoP 3-5? Is it hard? Is it easy? The answer is “depends on your party's skill”

Most likely, it's the same case for other CoP missions too. It simply depends on how good/bad your party is at playing the game. So if you're good, then it's not challenging because you know how to beat it. But if you're bad, then it's only challenging because you're not good. [note: You = people in general, and not you as a person]

If you want “challenge”, I would suggest for you to look forward to the next update for Einherjar. I think that would be the perfect thing for challenge due to the random occurance of the mobs which would prevent players to plan ahead and easily beat the mobs in there like Dynamis/Limbus/Assault where people already know inside-out of every single thing in there and can easily win. Of course, it could end up being a disappointment if S-E dropped the ball on Einherjar, but I think it could be promising if they do it right.

As far as the Limbus thing, conflict over time and space is definitely expected if there are more people doing Limbus after this. But it's not exactly anything new, no? You can't expect to monopolize an area in the game just because you have sea access first and have been doing Limbus at X-day Y-hour for Z-months. Obviously newer Limbus groups should be corteous, but if not, then it's not like they're obligated to anyways. It's just one of those things that you just have suck it up and move on.

Other Promathia toughts.

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