So, reforging AF armor requires CoP?

[Zarchery]

The harsh reality of end game after that is yet to come, but requiring CoP and other things is just cruel. It takes far too long to get going in this game, and simple things like this just make it worse. There was no reason they had to make this a requirement; they just did, and they shouldn't have.

I thought you ragequit this game months ago after your last bout of "OMG FFXI SUCKS IT'S LIKE BEING CASTRATED WITHOUT ANASTHESIA" posts.

[Crevox]

So it makes logical sense to upgrade the same armors further using those Sea NPCs.

And yet there was still no reason to require near entire completion of the story of an expansion from 2004 to upgrade armor to modern day. They literally could have used the same NPCs and let you do it anyways, or just add a NEW NPC from "the near east" if they really wanted to keep the lore intact. Nothing was stopping them from doing so, they simply chose to keep the requirement in place.

This is a roleplaying storyline game, you play the storylines because they are part of the roleplaying world. Some items and armors are tied to those storylines. It would suck if you could just buy AF 119 in a shop for gil. Its much more fun to make some armors storyline-related and you need to play the roleplaying game storyline to unlock those armors.

Except upgrading the armor has absolutely nothing to do with the story of CoP. Unlocking sea just makes you look "impressive" or something to those craftsmen so then they want to talk to you. It doesn't feel like an achievement because it isn't. There is nothing difficult about completing that story, and for people who actually care about the story, they can enjoy it any time they want. There was just no reason to gate that armor upgrade requirement behind content from 2004. In the end, all it is is just one more thing that SE forces players to do for no reason to be caught up with everyone else and actually get the armor that they can easily get the materials for without even touching that 2004 content.

In my personal opinion, the entire thing is a massive pain, taking hours of your life away without being able to play an MMORPG with anyone else. Run here, run there, alt tab every 5 seconds and read a guide because the in-game descriptions are extremely poor or sometimes even lie to you. I know I'm not alone either, because multiple friends of mine quit playing the game because they couldn't stand it. They loved the game (jobs, battle system, gear, everything) but this is all just tedious and not worth the time investment (some of them don't even have that time to spend). Any time they did login we'd rather have fun going out and leveling, fighting tough monsters and getting loot, than running around watching cutscenes for hours.

Like I said, CoP is just one of many of these silly requirements that shouldn't just exist any longer in 2014. What's worse, is that obviously they don't always have the time to go back and adjust old content to speed it up or remove the requirements, but here they added the armor upgrade and purposely chose to have that requirement. They were developing it, and they had the choice right there, and chose to go with it anyways. It only leads to grim tidings about future additions.

Did I enjoy the story? Sure, it was alright, and I might've done it at some point, but being forced to complete it so prematurely for such a simple, core thing that is basically required in order to play in endgame took all the fun right out of it, if there was even going to be any to be had.

[Stompa]

In my personal opinion, the entire thing is a massive pain, taking hours of your life away

Well, this is where we disagree. I really enjoyed all the FFXI expansion missions, all of them, especially WOTG. And WOTG had huge extra legwork because you were going from the past to the future a lot, and then "her memories" where you went to get the same CS's again. And I enjoyed all those storyline missions, in every expansion.

Those missions, they all took hours of my life away. So does delve, VW, rieves, dyna, - and they are boring and grindy as hell and they take hours of your life away without any cute Cutscenes with cool FFXI hero characters talking to you.

Going to work takes hours of my life away, so does shopping and housework. But I do them because they are required. Just like playing required storylines in RPG games.

And my final point before I go, COP is not only for Rajas ring and reforged armors. SE are now adding Version 2.0 hard battlefields for the various missions TOAU ZM COP. You need to beat those original mission expansions to be able to take part in the V 2.0 hardmode battlefields - with their very nice treasure drops. Going further, SE may well add Last Boss v 2.0 hard mode battlefields for COP TOAU WOTG, and wouldn't you want to fight those last bosses on hard mode, and obtain some maybe uber drops? But you couldn't do that if you hadn't made the effort to do the now-very-easy-to-solo Storyline missions first. I totally reject that COP is only for the old rings, or even for the reforged, it is a core Storyline and SE are adding hardmode battles to keep it relevant. I got the WS-acc headset from Tenzen v2.0 - that item alone was worth doing COP missions for.

[Karbuncle]

Everything you do in or out of the game takes hours of your life away.

If you attempted to find joy in it it would be worth the time.

[Crevox]

Everything you do in or out of the game takes hours of your life away.

If you attempted to find joy in it it would be worth the time.

No matter how much of an attempt you make to find joy in something, it doesn't make it fun to everyone. I do not enjoy doing that content, but I enjoy doing the battles that I need gear and credit from CoP to do, so I don't have a choice. You play games to have fun, and requiring hours and hours of complete and utter boredom (worse than boredom, it feels like work) in order to gain access to the fun you know (or think) is on the other side is terrible. I can spend hours having fun on a game, that's fine, but I do not like spending hours doing what is complete and utter tedium to me. I don't really have a choice in the matter either; if I want to do any of the end game content, I have to waste away those hours solo, and for many people that have nowhere near as much free time as me, that's completely unacceptable.

The game basically comes with a big time sink cost that must be invested into before you can actually start playing it with everyone else. It would make sense if I was actually fighting tough mobs for the gear or something, but no, 99% of it is running and cutscenes. Why should items that enhance your character's performance in battle for 2014 content be gated behind 2004 content that, for the most part, requires no battling at all?

In the past it may have been a group endeavor, but now, it is purely solo content in the midst of an MMORPG, yet is required to be completed in order to access end game content. Such content is about 10 years old now, yet is still required in order to participate in content they are adding in 2014. There is nothing wrong with leaving it there for people to complete when and if they desire to do so, but requiring completion for something so core and critical to your character's growth is a major flaw. There was no reason for them to make it a requirement when they made the armor; it's unhealthy for the game and makes it very hard for new players to catch up to everyone else.

And for clarity's sake, because some people may not know, I did CoP after realizing this terrible thing. It was even worse than I thought it was going to be, and I had to take a break from the game for months after doing it, because I just couldn't stand it anymore. I came back, and now I'm doing high tier battlefields, Delve, and all kinds of fancy end game content. All of this is fun, but nothing short of like a Mythic weapon being given to me would make me go back and do CoP over again.

[Karbuncle]

COPs pretty terribly long, cutscene driven, and a lot of walking. No denying it, and its much less fun without friends to help you.

Just saying, finding fun in things? That shits fun.

[Xantavia]

COPs pretty terribly long, cutscene driven, and a lot of walking. No denying it, and its much less fun without friends to help you.

Just saying, finding fun in things? That shits fun.

The walking part is much shorter now than it used to be. With HP warping, getting back to Cid is a snap. If you find you aren't strong enough to win a fight because you try to do it while leveling up, I found a bunch of HP crystals outside of several BCNM zones (in Riverne by Monarch Linn, entrance to Mineshaft #whatever, and right before Diablos). Took me about 2 months to finish CoP starting from scratch (which is 7 1/2 weeks too long for a lot of people), but this also included me leveling solo 1-95 (along with several jobs at 50), doing all limit breaks, and getting a Rank 10 nation.

So yes, while travel can be tedious for CoP, a lot of the time it is a one-time thing, then you warp nearby if you have to go there again later.

[Crevox]

Just saying, finding fun in things? That shits fun.

And some things, you just can't. :\

No denying it, and its much less fun without friends to help you.

Friends cannot help you run around. They're not helping me by doing so, and I'm only making them have to do it as well, which I couldn't do to someone else.

[Lithera]

And some things, you just can't. :\



Friends cannot help you run around. They're not helping me by doing so, and I'm only making them have to do it as well, which I couldn't do to someone else.

Because a friend who might be really bored and have free time wouldn't want to help you or if they haven't done it yet they at least someone else they can talk to in party chat. If you played XIV you seem like the type that would kick a poor new person doing praetorium because they wanted to watch their CS instead of skipping them and watching them at their inn room. Only because you couldn't be bothered to wait to start a fight while they did so. The game btw gives you enough time that you would be able to complete the instance even with someone who reads slower than me (I read fairly slow), on a PS3 with a lot of lag and a pretty bad group.

Oh and if they're friends who have done it already they can help you run around by omg giving you directions. Though I guess you're going to say that doesn't count.

[Karbuncle]

Friends cannot help you run around. They're not helping me by doing so, and I'm only making them have to do it as well, which I couldn't do to someone else.

I beg to differ. Friends making everything more fun and can help you run around. Ignoring the fact a friend can Mazurka, Bolters, or Teleport you around, and WARP! Talking with eachother and being in eachothers company makes even the dullest of events more fun... and i consider making dull things fun helpful

Plus, friends will help friends even if its dull, I do it all the time, and others for me... thats what friends are all about.

As far as not being able to find something fun? Yah, I know, subjective and such.