Zarchery
07-16-2013, 08:28 PM
I had really been looking forward to Seekers of Adoulin. I love to explore brand new areas and I love the promise of new storyline. My hopes were dashed after it became apparent that almost all of the new zones required constant end user maintenance. All because of colonization reives blocking the way.
It cuts people off from most of the zones most of the time. On Sunday, I decided to start doing the new missions. I also decided to go get the new key items that let you climb scalable walls. To accomplish this, I had to go through the following process:
1) Warp out to station 4 in Foret de Hennetiel which was fortunately still there and which I had obtained a few months ago.
2) Travel west toward Doh Gates, but UH OH! Reive blocks the way. Someone's gotta knock that tree down. I can't do it solo (I tried, didn't even come close). So I waited around a while, gave up, and logged out. Logged in twice on Monday; the second time I got lucky and the tree was down so I grabbed the opportunity to scurry across and head to Doh Gates.
3) Get to Doh Gates, try to make it through to Marjami Ravine. Uh oh! Another reive! And I'm all alone! Luckily for me a friend had already reached Marjami and was able to take the waypoint out there, backtrack, and tractor me past the reive. So I caught a break there.
4) Get to Marjami. Start the quest for climbing. Uh oh! There's a reive in place! Luckily this seems to be a popular one and there's a big group working to clear it. I made it through with the help of a bunch of strangers, but it took a long time... Probably at least a good half hour.
5) Continue onward... Uh oh! ANOTHER REIVE. Again I luck out because several people are in the same boat as me and this time the reive is completed pretty quickly.
6) I move through, find my way to the Velkk Cache and get the key item, return to base camp without trouble and complete the quest. Now it's time to return to the mission stuff.
7) I do a bunch of cutscenes in Adoulin and find out I need to go to a spot in Cirdas Caverns. So I set out on a treacherous journey. I get to use my newfound climbing skill to get through Moh Gates. There are a fair number of reives in Cirdas, but there are also a lot of paths, so I can walk around. Finally get to the spot where the Ergon Locus is supposed to be and.... you guessed it... ANOTHER REIVE.
I gave up and left at this point.
This is just ridiculous. Reives it seems can't be soloed. Judging from my experience at the first reive in Marjami, you need more than a full party of well geared people. Now I have no problem with this if you're fighting notorious monsters for cool and powerful gear, but we're talking simple sightseeing. We're talking accessing the new expansion. To make matters worse, the obstacles in the reives regenerate! This feels like Chains of Promathia, except after you cleared Promyvion, you only had access to the Tavnazia region for an hour and then if you left you had to clear all three Promyvion zones again.
Or it's like Garlaige Citadel before the pouch of weighted stones, except instead of 4 people you need 10, and instead of 3 banishing gates there are dozens, and instead of a little bit of your time you need a lot.
As far as missions go, I'm fine if there's combat involved. I can gather together a party to do a BC fight. But with these missions, you have essentially 5 fights (1 in Hennetiel, 1 in Doh, 2 in Marjami, and 1 in Cirdas), that seem to be to difficult for one party of moderately geared players. But that's not even the issue! If you even want basic access to the new zones for simple sightseeing, you need to fight your way through.
And the thing is, it's just going to get worse as time goes by and people lose interest in Adoulin. Look at Wings of the Goddess! Most of the zones are controlled by the beastmen because there's no incentive to do campaign. That's not a big deal because the zones are pretty much exactly the same regardless of who controls them. But in Adoulin, when people aren't doing reives any more, most zones are going to be impossible to navigate!
Can we please just get rid of the stupid reives? I know people need reives to harvest bayld for other Adoulin endgame activities. So maybe replace the colonization reives with lair reives that you can just walk around and avoid. Or put in place near the colonization reives some sort of NPC that will let you warp around them? Maybe for a nominal amount of gil or bayld? Sorta like those mandragora that warp you around in Battalia, North Gustaberg, and Garlaige Citadel.
I'm usually a very patient man when it comes to this game, and am pretty apologetic to SE.. but this is really absurd. It doesn't even anger me, it just depresses me, to know there's this great big world out there and fun new missions, but I'm cut off from all of it.
It cuts people off from most of the zones most of the time. On Sunday, I decided to start doing the new missions. I also decided to go get the new key items that let you climb scalable walls. To accomplish this, I had to go through the following process:
1) Warp out to station 4 in Foret de Hennetiel which was fortunately still there and which I had obtained a few months ago.
2) Travel west toward Doh Gates, but UH OH! Reive blocks the way. Someone's gotta knock that tree down. I can't do it solo (I tried, didn't even come close). So I waited around a while, gave up, and logged out. Logged in twice on Monday; the second time I got lucky and the tree was down so I grabbed the opportunity to scurry across and head to Doh Gates.
3) Get to Doh Gates, try to make it through to Marjami Ravine. Uh oh! Another reive! And I'm all alone! Luckily for me a friend had already reached Marjami and was able to take the waypoint out there, backtrack, and tractor me past the reive. So I caught a break there.
4) Get to Marjami. Start the quest for climbing. Uh oh! There's a reive in place! Luckily this seems to be a popular one and there's a big group working to clear it. I made it through with the help of a bunch of strangers, but it took a long time... Probably at least a good half hour.
5) Continue onward... Uh oh! ANOTHER REIVE. Again I luck out because several people are in the same boat as me and this time the reive is completed pretty quickly.
6) I move through, find my way to the Velkk Cache and get the key item, return to base camp without trouble and complete the quest. Now it's time to return to the mission stuff.
7) I do a bunch of cutscenes in Adoulin and find out I need to go to a spot in Cirdas Caverns. So I set out on a treacherous journey. I get to use my newfound climbing skill to get through Moh Gates. There are a fair number of reives in Cirdas, but there are also a lot of paths, so I can walk around. Finally get to the spot where the Ergon Locus is supposed to be and.... you guessed it... ANOTHER REIVE.
I gave up and left at this point.
This is just ridiculous. Reives it seems can't be soloed. Judging from my experience at the first reive in Marjami, you need more than a full party of well geared people. Now I have no problem with this if you're fighting notorious monsters for cool and powerful gear, but we're talking simple sightseeing. We're talking accessing the new expansion. To make matters worse, the obstacles in the reives regenerate! This feels like Chains of Promathia, except after you cleared Promyvion, you only had access to the Tavnazia region for an hour and then if you left you had to clear all three Promyvion zones again.
Or it's like Garlaige Citadel before the pouch of weighted stones, except instead of 4 people you need 10, and instead of 3 banishing gates there are dozens, and instead of a little bit of your time you need a lot.
As far as missions go, I'm fine if there's combat involved. I can gather together a party to do a BC fight. But with these missions, you have essentially 5 fights (1 in Hennetiel, 1 in Doh, 2 in Marjami, and 1 in Cirdas), that seem to be to difficult for one party of moderately geared players. But that's not even the issue! If you even want basic access to the new zones for simple sightseeing, you need to fight your way through.
And the thing is, it's just going to get worse as time goes by and people lose interest in Adoulin. Look at Wings of the Goddess! Most of the zones are controlled by the beastmen because there's no incentive to do campaign. That's not a big deal because the zones are pretty much exactly the same regardless of who controls them. But in Adoulin, when people aren't doing reives any more, most zones are going to be impossible to navigate!
Can we please just get rid of the stupid reives? I know people need reives to harvest bayld for other Adoulin endgame activities. So maybe replace the colonization reives with lair reives that you can just walk around and avoid. Or put in place near the colonization reives some sort of NPC that will let you warp around them? Maybe for a nominal amount of gil or bayld? Sorta like those mandragora that warp you around in Battalia, North Gustaberg, and Garlaige Citadel.
I'm usually a very patient man when it comes to this game, and am pretty apologetic to SE.. but this is really absurd. It doesn't even anger me, it just depresses me, to know there's this great big world out there and fun new missions, but I'm cut off from all of it.