Patch 7.1 Discussions

Extra thing on Vana'diel:

Is Alxaal supposed to be filling an existing role? I had assumed he was being a WoL-insert character but then Prishe was muttering about someone else in a clearly-talking-about-the-WoL sort of way. Unless there's going to be a "multiple simultaneous identities of the WoL" meta-joke going on or something.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Extra thing on Vana'diel:

Is Alxaal supposed to be filling an existing role? I had assumed he was being a WoL-insert character but then Prishe was muttering about someone else in a clearly-talking-about-the-WoL sort of way. Unless there's going to be a "multiple simultaneous identities of the WoL" meta-joke going on or something.

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It's a bit of an enigma even to FFXI-knowers, as far as I can tell.

The best guess people have right now is basically what you said, that he's essentially the FFXI Meteor equivalent, standing in for the player character, but Prishe's asides are throwing a wrench in the works there (and doing the same 'conditional based on player gender' as Azem, to boot).

It's possible they're having their cake and eating it too, somewhat; that Alxaal is a FFXI player stand-in, but not explicitly That Guy so people who internally believe that their female Tarutaru is the FFXI protagonist don't get told 'no'. Which would essentially make him the Ardbert here; a 'hey you get the reference' without actually breaking the illusion.

ok, I have to ask : it's a spoiler thread, why are you all putting your opinion in spoiler tags. I really makes the thread a pain to read.

For the rest, I kinda liked the Gulool Ja part, despite thinking this whole "who is his mom" was not such an important mystery (I mean people were "we didn't see any mamool ja". Sure, but we also saw on part of the city in a 12 level tower, so not seeing them doesn't mean they don't exist), and having a line that say there were a few mamool ja locked inside the dome and his mother would have been sufficient for that "mystery".

The second part is... more of DT writing problem. I mean it's rushed, it features a barely believable U-turn, it yells that naive "I want peace philosophy", there is a stupid as fuck scene that's so stupid it ends being unwillingly funny... I laughed at the stupidity of Koana jumping before the crystal Tyranosaurus screaming he's gonna save all the Cows. I have no words for this scene

The cliffhanger kinda makes me curious, but since we haven't had a good patch since 6.2, trust is not there, and I'm more cautious than exited.

Overall there was good things and bad things here. I feel like they tried to listen to the feedback (I'm pretty sure that time when you're sent alone to the outskirts should have been a "go with Wuk Lamat" time), but the problems are still there. But by the time feedback arrived, patch was probably too far into the production pipeline to massively change things. They've shown me enough to think they might maybe turn thing for the best, but not enough to will do it.

Overall I think it would have been an OK X.1 patch if it wasn't build on the terrible 7.0. 6.X and 7.0 have pretty much eroded all the goodwill they build over years, and just an ok patch won't really start to rebuild it at this point.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

ok, I have to ask : it's a spoiler thread, why are you all putting your opinion in spoiler tags. I really makes the thread a pain to read.

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It's so that people can avoid spoilers for the parts of the patch they haven't played yet. It's nice to be able to discuss the MSQ without worrying about spoiling yourself on the alliance raid, or the tribe quests, or the Pandaemonium epilogue, and so on.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Alliance raid

The XI connection isn't a drawcard for me so the raid itself just feels really disjointed. Not too excited by the outfits so I might be sitting this one out and not bothering with the weekly run.

Plot-wise... I knew there was a good chance Sareel Ja wasn't dead, but wasn't expecting him to turn up here. It also tells us a bit more about the gate, which I had assumed was a direct portal to the Ninth, but it seems you end up in the larger rift along the way? If it wasn't for the external context I might assume that the world he had visions of was the Ninth before the apparent Flood of Lightning, though the different names for races would suggest not.

I like the detail of Alxaal ending up with a Mamool Ja name (more or less) because he was named by one, though I assume it is somewhat coincidental that it looks like a name and not just a word. (Mamool Ja names in Japanese don't have the final "L" they have in English, but Alxaal still does.)

The auction felt so wedged in for the sake of it. Was it some kind of nostalgia hit for XI players or just an unnecessary tone shift?

Bakool Ja Ja feels... flat? I guess the writers may have had to work out what to do with a character who was more popular than they anticipated, but he's just feeling very utility-story-driving now.

As others have noted, Prishe and Alxaal are now wandering. I've only seen them in Earthenshire so far.

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About the auction

I feel that he only looks over at the auction house in hopes of an idea of how do we go about obtaining the electrope. There were two others interested in it and we didn't have an idea of how much they were willing to spend on it. The XI tie in is the auction house is XI's market board. But interested of being able to see how many of an item is put up and for how much you could only see how much the last few were bought for. Let's say you wanted to sell a stack of HQ coffee biscuits back in ShB. In XI they would have a going price dictated by the playerbase. There would be times when someone would try to raise the going price of an item but it tended to not last long. The most "interesting" thing about the auction house is you also had people who wanted to plummet the going price and would sell them at a cheaper price. Then there would be times when someone made a mistake in setting the selling price and end up selling a hot ticket item for 1 gil. So smart and sometimes broke players would try and fish from time to time to try and buy something at a more affordable price.

Thinking about the drama that can occur by effectively having three version of the same character.

Assuming that the woman shown staggering though Living Memory is Sphene, the original Sphene then we have three Sphenes who could be in conflict with each other.

So like we have this woman who is likely the Original Sphene show up and very likely looks, and acts very differently from Skynet Sphene or Fake Sphene. Thinking about she could oppose the use of regulators, and the existence of Living Memory, and how she would be completely unrecognizable to Alexandrians despite being the Original Sphene.

Also

Gonna bet that everyone using one of the black neo regulators is gonna be used to create/summon Necron down the line.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Thinking about the drama that can occur by effectively having three version of the same character.

Assuming that the woman shown staggering though Living Memory is Sphene, the original Sphene then we have three Sphenes who could be in conflict with each other.

So like we have this woman who is likely the Original Sphene show up and very likely looks, and acts very differently from Skynet Sphene or Fake Sphene. Thinking about she could oppose the use of regulators, and the existence of Living Memory, and how she would be completely unrecognizable to Alexandrians despite being the Original Sphene.

Also

Gonna bet that everyone using one of the black neo regulators is gonna be used to create/summon Necron down the line.

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Considering what we saw in the lab and what they were experimenting on people for....

I think things may end up all Resident Evil as the story goes on but instead a virus that spreads to the living, anyone with a Neo regulator will become a "infected" but those who don't are going to be targeted to be turned into a "infected" by having their regulators corrupted to become a Neo Regulator.

Some many even go full mutation.

This maybe Fake Sphene's method to kill everyone in solution 9 to power her new Endless world. Thus causing a entire Racoon City incident with Solution 9 and having the hub zone being the only "Safe spot" from the infected parts where we cannot explore.

Pandaemonium

I have to give it to them, each time I think I've set the lowest bar for expectations possible, they keep finding a way to limbo under it.

I don't really have much to say except that was some genuinely awful writing. Endwalker was bad, and the Void quests were even worse, but I put at least part of it down to both arcs being rushed. Is the whole of DT like this? Everyone sounds so painfully stiff and awkward.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

Pandaemonium

I have to give it to them, each time I think I've set the lowest bar for expectations possible, they keep finding a way to limbo under it.

I don't really have much to say except that was some genuinely awful writing. Endwalker was bad, and the Void quests were even worse, but I put at least part of it down to both arcs being rushed. Is the whole of DT like this? Everyone sounds so painfully stiff and awkward.

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Dawntrail is the best expansion in my book; I don't think you'll take that as a vote of confidence, but there you go. But is the Pandaemonium bonus quest really the only part of Dawntrail you've done? Because I feel like this question can only exist in those conditions, and those conditions are baffling, especially given that I don't think you actually liked Pandaemonium.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Dawntrail is the best expansion in my book; I don't think you'll take that as a vote of confidence, but there you go. But is the Pandaemonium bonus quest really the only part of Dawntrail you've done? Because I feel like this question can only exist in those conditions, and those conditions are baffling, especially given that I don't think you actually liked Pandaemonium.

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To be fair, the Pandaemonium capstone quest is level 90. It's very possible to have it unlocked without reaching Dawntrail.