Pleasantly surprised.

[Caketime]

Your eyes and my eyes see something totally different then! x_x

When I first saw it I asked why there was a Lemon Head stuck to the screen and got laughed at.

[Kincard]

Some very quick impressions of my own:

+ Monsters with a good balance in their stats means we have to reconsider some of our gear choices, at least with melee. I've had to swap to accuracy gear a lot more often now, and evade doesn't seem totally worthless on them. They balanced the combat aspect really well.
+ A return to more flexible group play is certainly welcome, and I'm glad they're focusing more on the ~6 or so group type of thing rather than either "duo everything with MNK and WHM" or "have a massive alliance of really strict jobs"
+ I'm enjoying RUN a lot
- As mentioned previously, the worst part of the expansion is the area design. While I love the city of Adoulin, the massive amount of corridors is incredibly disappointing. Basalt Fields is the only area with large open spaces. Literally every other area is basically just hallways and little rooms, with a lot of reused assets...I hope this sound familiar to you guys. :/
- In addition to being a bit of a bore to travel through, the areas look...familiar. The jungle areas feel a bit like a hodge-podge of Wajaom, Purgonurgo Isle and Yuhtunga. Moh Gates feel like Halvung. Sih Gates feel like...every cave area ever. Rala looks like Aqueducts. The only unique outside area is Foret, with its poisonous marshes. I need to explore a bit more before I draw any sort of final conclusion on this though.
- GEO is a rather disappointing job for the moment, but I recognize that that may change with their AF and future updates. I never accept "but they'll fix it later" as an acceptable excuse, at least with FFXI, though, how often have we heard that from the playerbase on just about every single thing? I'm interesting in hearing the dev's vision for the job.
● Reive is ultimately just a recycling of campaign but it is balanced better in my opinion, as far as actual combat goes, but they need to make it so that mages can get exp from it ASAP. Honestly, there's only so many things they can do to make combat feel "unique" with the stiff battle system XI has in place so I don't see much reason to complain.
● I (and every other person on the server so I don't get the negative feedback for this one) have barely gotten into the missions so I can't say anything positive or negative about them. I look forward to learning more about the secrets of the land, though. I remember that interview way back when when the graphics guy talked about how much work he put into Lilisette and her introductory dance. I just want to say I hope to see Arciele have the same effort put into her on a cutscene somewhere.

Overall, thus far I think the team is great at balancing their battle content, but I wanted a boxed expansion for a great new land to explore, and the areas themselves are really disappointing for me so far. I'm holding out cautious optimism for future updates. I'm looking forward to the expanding lore and story, but if this is really it for the new areas (Unless they're planning on adding new areas through patches, I'm not discounting that entirely since they've done it before with provenance) that aspect at least is a massive letdown.

Say what you will about Grauberg, Vunkerl Inlet and Fort Karugo-Narugo being few in number, but they were all quite unique, and it all led to Walk of Echoes which was also a unique area. TOAU just blows this expansion away in terms of areas because every beastmen's lair had a very unique style to it and all the areas were split into several pieces. Here, pretty much every area is a single map...I'm not going to hold my breath for them to surprise me and I'm not going to pull my punches in being relatively critical of the expansion because I already paid for it.

Score: 4.0/10
(That's a joke in case some of you don't get it, but it is halfway serious and I hope I made it clear why I feel that way)

[Shibayama]

Ok so here are some of my impressions on the expansion so far:

For the first time in years, I've been genuinely excited to play final fantasy. I look forward to logging on and playing Run and Geo, or experimenting with the Coalitions to try and get gear, or see how I can impact the further development with the land. For the first time since Aht Urghan I was struck with a sense of awe at seeing the city, exploring it and talking to all the NPC's. I really am having a hard time understanding why people are saying there's not much content - why, because people are really only doing colonization reives atm? There are other things to look into, such as getting new augmented weapons from revies and skirmishes (which as of yet, nobody really has done/knows how to do yet.) There are 3 new HNM's with some pretty damn good drops, and I believe that some of the skirmish augment weapons will have some real potential. IMO i'll be kept busy with trying to rank up in each of the coalitions to get better rewards from them, and making it so adoulin is more user friendly.

I don't even mind the narrow corridor style maps because that's kind of the point - you need to have multiple pathways to get around the map should one way be blocked off or something. And unlike campaign I feel like Co-Reives has an actual purpose in that it furthers every players overall benefits and progression through the area, so I actually really enjoy it.

So far I love Geo and Run as jobs. People seem to be giving geo a hard time but really, the job has been out for all of 5 days and cries of "fix it!" have been going up when almost nobody has capped skill for a skill reliant job or really knows how to play it yet. Did you know that with max skill + eccliptic contrition + Blaze of Glory, a geomancer's Geo-Frailty gives an undispellable, unresistable 22% defense down effect that stacks with angon, dia, box step, ect? And who knows what the 2 hour Bolster Does? Not me. Lets give some time for the job to be used in practical applications, and also maybe try adding more info to it so we can really know what the job is capable of less than a week later.

In any case - I really think that this is more than any of us were and could have expected from FFXI at this point in the game's life cycle. Obviously Adoulin was not made with the intention of attracting new players like XIV was, but this was clearly done for a devoted playerbase that have stuck with the game all this time and I couldn't be happier with it.

[Pebe]

Regarding the narrow corridors, I think you will like Morimar basalt fields, it is pretty open. But let us consider something for a moment...we are exploring a JUNGLE, idt their would be much open space to begin with imo. I think having morimar as the vast open zone is plenty enough. God I hate that zone,, SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BIGGGGG, and we only have access to the east half until more people get demolishing.

[Camate]

Hello everyone,

Below is a message from Producer Matsui in regards to Seekers of Adoulin a week after its launch.

Thanks for the feedback.
(And also thanks for starting a feedback thread.)

For the team is been roughly 6 years since they released an expansion, and it's my first expansion in my current position, and it has been a very hectic week.

I've heard from the lead that he created the quests placing a lot of importance on the world lore, and will be continuing to add more and more as we move forward, so we're hoping you're all looking forward to that.

Please continue to leave your feedback on the new jobs and monsters in the new areas. We are currently focused on pretty much everything since all the new armor hasn't been acquired just yet. There are a couple of tricks for playing as the new jobs, so please aspire to become a true rune fencer. (Not the noobie rune fencer I was during the YouTube stream...)

In regards to content balance, while it's still just the beginning, there are some aspects that are not going as planned. Also, there were some bugs that got through our testing, which I'm ashamed of.
I would like to apologize for this and any inconveniences they may have caused.

It's been pointed out to us that information was not being released the way it should have been, but we will strive to keep improving and would appreciate it if you could, as always, continue to submit your feedback.

[Mnejing]

Matsui's now a Mithra?

[Kalilla]

Camate just quoted the wrong person when building the post.

[Camate]

Haha, sorry...I reversed two of the numbers in the post quote. He is now his back to his original wyvern awesomeness.

[Mirage]

I liked him better as a mithra...

[Losie]

Oh hey... A snide, completely negative reply. What a shock.

I should just learn my lesson and stay away from these forums.

You can't find anything on forums except snarky comments and know-it-all sensationalist cries for everything being awful and everything needing changing, even though they still pay for the game. Constructive criticism and well thought-out posts with information and calmly stated opinions are few and far between - it's all just "the sky is falling" about how this or that is the worst thing ever complain complain etc. If it was -really- a 2/10 or 3/10 then those people all would have quit already, they're just complaining. This is hard, this is new, waah. It's hardly even been a week!