Please remove COP requirements on reforged relic and AF

[Anishia]

Getting thru the CoP storyline is not nearly as bad as it used to be. I finally did it myself recently and did the majority of the storyline (from chapter 4 onward) in about 3 days. All the bcnm battles were a joke with bought spark gear, including the final fight as a 99 rdm. I went into it not knowing how easy it would be to solo and I think I only had to recast stoneskin once during the final boss. The storyline is really enjoyable too, and another reason to do it.

[Zarchery]

With the login events its possible to upgrade a lot of relic to +2 without even ever entering dynamis.

Anyway, I am just looking for more options for folks like me to get some up-to-date job specific gear without a ridiculous block in the way. I was really looking forward to looking like a bst again. As soon as I found out I was blocked from further progress... well I haven't logged on since. It's really killed my joy in the game.

Okay you're just not getting this. You're not blocked from anything. Pretty much the entirety of CoP is soloable by any melee job at level 99 in Sparks gear.

A THF who wants to build a Mandau 119 but who can't get get a party together for a successful Delve win or SKCNM D/VD win is blocked.
A MNK who has a 90 Verethragna and wants to unlock Victory Smite for all weapons but can't get help with Voidwatch city wins is blocked (some folks say you can solo cities with enough phase displacers though I'm still kinda skeptical).
A BST like you who wants to build Totemic Attire set but hasn't finished the Chains of Promathia storyline is NOT blocked on ANYTHING because he can do that alone, at his leisure.

It has nothing to do with enjoying the storyline. I agree with a previous poster who said that a player begrudgingly doing missions after being forced into them is not going to enjoy the story. But your entire reason for wanting this restriction removed is not "it's too difficult". It is simply "I don't feel like it". Which is not a good reason. Some people don't feel like farming Dynamis currency to build a relic. Should we eliminate that step for them? Or should we do the more fair thing and say "Okay, if you don't feel like putting in the effort to meet the requirements, you don't get the reward."? I also want reforged relic, but truth be told I really don't feel like farming sparks or putting together Ark Angels groups. Should we get rid of that and just have the Rem's chapters drop off regular monsters or get sold for gil by an NPC?

[Twille]

"Okay, if you don't feel like putting in the effort to meet the requirements, you don't get the reward."

Quoted for truth.

[Leonardus]

I was really looking forward to looking like a bst again.

Then, start acting like one, Olor- CoP, a Rajas Ring, a Brutal Earring and the achievement of wearing enhanced Artifact Armor is yours for the taking.

The only thing you have to do, is listen to a part of Vana'Diel's story, wear RoE Equipment and call one of the new jugpets if something along the way tries to stop you.

I can understand it takes time, but that's how FFXI was built, unfortunately. I didn't have teleport earrings and Home Point warps when I did it. Come on, I know you can do it, and while you're at it, you should work on WotG, the Moonshade Earring is very useful for BST (You might need a friend to duo the later battles).

Good luck, and maybe SE will let you skip it after all (But you really shouldn't!).

[Crevox]

I can understand it takes time, but that's how FFXI was built, unfortunately.

Hence the thread requesting the removal of the requirements.

"Okay, if you don't feel like putting in the effort to meet the requirements, you don't get the reward."

Can you really call it a reward at that point? There is absolutely no difficulty. There is no "challenge" to overcome here. You are not "accomplishing" anything. All you're doing is a gigantic chore that for some reason, is still enabled and required.

I found out I had to do it, I thought it was stupid that I was forced to. People told me "you should it for the story anyways omg it will be so great!"

I did it, it took forever and it was stupid. There were only a few interesting cutscenes and I could've youtubed them, stretched across all of the other stuff the game forces me to do. I hated that I had to do it, I hated doing it, and after doing it, I still think it was a gigantic time sink that shouldn't exist.

The story was good. I could've read it or watched it on youtube within 1 hour. Too bad in game it took me ridiculously longer than that for all the wrong reasons. The story is actually really short too, it just feels long due to the huge amount of time it takes to do everything in between the cutscenes.

Do you think it's fun to run across fields for hours on end? There is no thinking involved here; it's brain dead travel from place to place with occasional bumps that make it even more annoying (go climb up that mountain, oops you fell too bad). This is not fun. There is no fun to be had in any of CoP. You are doing work for no pay, just running after a dangling carrot on a stick in the form of an invisible character flag that enables you to do something that should already be available. You also get a really good ring, which for some reason is still better than level 99 rings that require actual real effort to obtain (battle, strategy, thought, character power, cooperation).

Like, seriously? After doing it, my god, I hope they remove that as a requirement. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. You want to subject people to doing that? It feels like torture. Is it because you know it's that bad that you think it deserves a "reward" after it's done? I really am just not understanding the logic here, how anyone can think that it's a good idea for something so monotonous and painful to exist and be required for every character in the game to complete. Yeah, I know it's not "required" hur hur hur, you only need to do it if you want some of the best armor in the game (if not THE best for a lot of classes) and one of the best rings in the game.

It's like the same logic that people use for why Mythic weapons shouldn't be any easier to get. "You want that weapon? You SHOULD have to waste months of your life doing brainless solo content to get it."

What the heck is wrong with this community? Did you guys just like forget what a game is? Did you forget what "fun" is too?

I didn't have teleport earrings and Home Point warps when I did it.

And I'm really sick of this too. "When I did it, it was so much harder! You shouldn't be complaining!" That doesn't make it any better. It's still terrible.

And yes, I know back in the day it was fun and it was the current content and it was a team effort and blah blah blah. Welcome to 2014. This shouldn't be required for content released in February 2014. It's decisions like these that make Square Enix take 1 step back from getting new players (or returning players) when doing an update.

[Draylo]

Why are you still here? WoW is the perfect game for you man. You can even buy a character that is already at max level and such from what I hear.

[Imakun]

This has to be the most stupid (and long) rant about CoP I have ever seen in my XI life.
Upgrading AF and relics always required access to Lumoria. Even new RUNs and GEOs have to go through CoP to get their 119 AF/Relic sets.
You can roflstomp through CoP on basically ANY job at 99 with free Sparks gear. And if you don't want to deal with missions, storylines and quests then maybe this isn't the right game for you.
This is how XI works, and it is the reason most of us still play XI instead of some other MMO.

We've been playing a "dead game" for the last 7-8 years and.. news flash: we don't mind.

[Crevox]

You can roflstomp through CoP on basically ANY job at 99 with free Sparks gear.

I love how this is the excuse every time. Yes, we know it's easy. Difficulty was never the issue. The issue is the huge amount of time it takes, and how boring it is.

By deciding to do CoP, you basically prevent yourself from playing with any friends in an MMORPG for quite a long period of time, just to get that done. Yes, believe it or not, people have friends, and this is a multiplayer game. Too bad the game requires a large sum of hours played solo.

And if you don't want to deal with missions, storylines and quests then maybe this isn't the right game for you.

The issue is that these ones we are talking about are no longer relevant by a long shot, and yet they are still required for current content. In addition to that, they require vast amounts of time that people should not have to expend. It would be different if it was actually fun, but that's just not the case.

Why are you still here? WoW is the perfect game for you man. You can even buy a character that is already at max level and such from what I hear.

Sorry, I enjoy actually doing something difficult for my gear. I enjoy actually thinking, I enjoy doing battles, I enjoy strategy. I see that you enjoy the casual side of gaming, doing braindead running around and getting free stuff handed to you. Then you go and say you "worked for it" and put forth "effort."

Pretty funny. You're clearly super skilled and a better gamer for having more time than everyone else to just throw out the window. It's also humorous that anyone who has a different opinion than you should just "quit and go play WoW." Why are you still here? Farmville is the perfect game for you man. See? I can do that too.

And since that's the extent of your intelligence, I'm done reading your posts.

[Demonjustin]

Upgrading AF and relics always required access to Lumoria.

Please, remind me what part of the Relic upgrade to +2 required any amount of progress in CoP. You said always, well, there was a time, specifically when you would upgrade Relic gear to 90, when CoP was completely irrelevant to the upgrade, the only thing that mattered was having the original piece, and the Forgotten items required to upgrade it, nothing more.

You can roflstomp through CoP on basically ANY job at 99 with free Sparks gear. And if you don't want to deal with missions, storylines and quests then maybe this isn't the right game for you.
This is how XI works, and it is the reason most of us still play XI instead of some other MMO.

Really? You think most people still play this game because we had to do CoP to get to Sea? Because we had to do RotZ to get to Sky? Because we had to do all of Jeuno VW as well as the original 3 cities in order to reach Providence? Because we had to do almost completely unrelated content in order to upgrade a piece of gear or participate in an event almost entirely unrelated to what we are trying to do? Funny.

Seems to me, that has nothing to do with the game after you complete those few things that require it, once you complete every expansion, you really don't have a lot of other content that requires these kinds of things, which means these are only ever something you really deal with in the game for a short time. They are hardly the reason why 'most of us still play XI instead of some other MMO', if anything, I would place my bets that the majority of us are here because of friends, investment, and the gameplay, nothing at all even close to the fact that we have to do some long convoluted quest or mission line to do something so basic as make a piece of level 50 or 75 gear worth using again, even when everything else required is already in our possession.

We've been playing a "dead game" for the last 7-8 years and.. news flash: we don't mind.

People do mind however when the content drys up, updates slow down, and the game becomes stagnant and boring, look at how the game was before Adoulin came out, when people did nothing but NNI, Salvage II, and Legion besides their hopeless runs at VW for a piece of 1% or 0.1% drop rate gear. Most people who were on the upper end of the community were bored out of their minds, they had nothing to do, for all the bad it brought SoA did make us have to do something every month to say caught up and gave us things to do constantly, still is, but we still blow through it quickly.

As much as we all can say we don't want things to change over and over again, if we had more players we might see more updates, and more content, which means a better game, sure, we have been playing a 'dead game' and don't mind much, but it's not as though getting more people is bad, or losing people is good, it's the exact opposite way around. The fact SE doesn't try to get more players and simply lets the game dwindle most the time isn't actually a good thing, and changes to make the game better or more friendly to new players isn't a bad thing, after all, really look at what you're talking about here, you are arguing that it's best to keep things how they are when the only people it hurts is new players.

But I guess we don't care, lets just push away more new players with this stuff, right?

[Zarchery]

Can you really call it a reward at that point? There is absolutely no difficulty. There is no "challenge" to overcome here. You are not "accomplishing" anything. All you're doing is a gigantic chore that for some reason, is still enabled and required.

A reward means something received for doing an activity. It doesn't have to be commensurate with the effort. Some of the most aggravating Records of Eminence objective reward you with a paltry few hundred sparks. The easier one give you more sparks. In real life, the reward for spending a few minutes buying a lottery ticket can be millions of dollars.

I found out I had to do it, I thought it was stupid that I was forced to. People told me "you should it for the story anyways omg it will be so great!"

I did it, it took forever and it was stupid. There were only a few interesting cutscenes and I could've youtubed them, stretched across all of the other stuff the game forces me to do. I hated that I had to do it, I hated doing it, and after doing it, I still think it was a gigantic time sink that shouldn't exist.

The story was good. I could've read it or watched it on youtube within 1 hour. Too bad in game it took me ridiculously longer than that for all the wrong reasons. The story is actually really short too, it just feels long due to the huge amount of time it takes to do everything in between the cutscenes.

The cutscenes measure out to about 8 hours in total. But you keep missing the point. "I don't feel like doing this" is not an excuse for getting out of something. If you don't feel like doing Chains of Promathia, don't act entitled to the related rewards. Get sparks gear, or Skirmish gear, or Delve and WKR gear. You keep going on and on like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka. "I WANT IT I WANT IT I DESERVE IT GIMME GIMME GIMME". I want these requirements to stay because I don't think players should be rewarded for laziness.

To say nothing of the slippery slope effect. Any time SE gives in on something, players want more. Abyssea made the level grind from 1-99 a breeze... you could just get to 30 and then leech in Abyssea. But now for a growing number of players even getting to 30 is too much. People have asked for SE to remove the level 30 minimum. I'm constantly seeing players ask "hey can someone power level me to 30?". Or inventory. Every single time SE gives us more inventory space, you have people asking for even more within a month. If they eliminated the CoP requirements for this reforged stuff because certain players don't feel like doing it what's next? Remove rank 6 and Zilart mission clears for Ark Angel fights because people don't feel like it? Remove TOAU mission clears for mythic because people don't feel like it?

I keep saying this but it's not sinking in. You do not have a God-given right to reforged artifact/relic or any piece of equipment in this game. Either meet the prerequisites or don't.

Do you think it's fun to run across fields for hours on end? There is no thinking involved here; it's brain dead travel from place to place with occasional bumps that make it even more annoying (go climb up that mountain, oops you fell too bad). This is not fun. There is no fun to be had in any of CoP. You are doing work for no pay, just running after a dangling carrot on a stick in the form of an invisible character flag that enables you to do something that should already be available. You also get a really good ring, which for some reason is still better than level 99 rings that require actual real effort to obtain (battle, strategy, thought, character power, cooperation).

If you're not having fun, don't do it. But don't act entitled to the rewards for it. I don't do Delve because the few Delves I did sucked. But I don't scream and holler for SE "remove the requirement to beat Tojil before I can acquire Tojil's drops". I simply live without Tojil's drops.

Like, seriously? After doing it, my god, I hope they remove that as a requirement. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. You want to subject people to doing that? It feels like torture. Is it because you know it's that bad that you think it deserves a "reward" after it's done? I really am just not understanding the logic here, how anyone can think that it's a good idea for something so monotonous and painful to exist and be required for every character in the game to complete. Yeah, I know it's not "required" hur hur hur, you only need to do it if you want some of the best armor in the game (if not THE best for a lot of classes) and one of the best rings in the game.

It's like the same logic that people use for why Mythic weapons shouldn't be any easier to get. "You want that weapon? You SHOULD have to waste months of your life doing brainless solo content to get it."

What the heck is wrong with this community? Did you guys just like forget what a game is? Did you forget what "fun" is too?

Now you're just being melodramatic.

To go back to Wildkeeper reives.. do I find them fun? No. I go to them, and it's the same thing. Get within 20 yalms of the boss and get nailed by some awful AoE. I sit around killing adds while summoners send out disposable avatars to chip them away. You know what my solution is? Don't go to the reives, then refrain from complaining that I don't get the stuff from reives.

This is getting tiresome. All I see is a couple of children complaining "I want this and I deserve this!!!!" The adults say "Okay, but you have to do this. It's a simple task. Do that and you can have this." And the children just say "NO NO NO!!! I want this! Give it to me now!!!"

Suppose they did get rid of these requirements. Now suppose I want a pair of Hesychat's Gloves +1. Explain to me now why I should be required to gather, say, the following items:

Melee Gloves
2 Hundred Byne Bills
10 Copies of Rem's Tale Chapter 3
1 Griffon Hide
1 Vial of Black Beetle Blood
8 Copies of Rem's Tale Chapter 8
1 Kaggen's Cuticle
1 Bztavian Stinger

Supposing that I find any of the following processes boring

Doing SKCNM fights
Doing Ark Angel Fights
Farming sparks to avoid these fights
Farming the crafting items
Farming gil to buy the crafting items.

Why shouldn't I just be able to get the Hesychat's Gloves +1 without doing these things? Your very logic (I find CoP boring so I shouldn't have to do it) dictates I shouldn't have to do that.

And don't try to bluff me by saying that these activities are okay because they're challenging. They're really not. SKCNM fights are really quite easy, and sparks farming is about as mindless a grind as you can get.

So to summarize, once more, even though you're too stubborn to get it:

Completing Chains of Promathia is a requirement for reforging relic and artifact armor. If you don't do this, you don't get to reforge. If you don't feel like doing this, you don't get to reforge. Deal with it and stop demanding that the world bend to your laziness.