Thread: Patch 7.1 Discussions

Just finished MSQ - I don't think I'm quite as hot on it as some other people in this thread, but I liked it!

I honestly really love how mundane the answer to Gulool Ja's ancestry ended up being. Everyone was throwing around theories about him being a clone or something wild like that, turns out: nope, his parents just kinda sucked! That felt really real to me, in a way I wasn't expecting. Some really good acting from Zoraal Ja's VA in that little flashback, too - man has a complex, goddamn.

The stuff with Koana was some nice closure too, if a little overly neatly tied up. I think I would have preferred it if they'd left it more vague whether it actually was his parents that the guy was talking about, rather than everyone just immediately accepting it as fact.

Always good to see more Erenville (and his cute new keychain, which I can only assume will be on the merch store any minute now). I don't know if I like his new outfit though The gloves are a bit much.

Fake Sphene is interesting, especially given that, as WL points out, it seems to be acting in a way that's blatantly opposed to the original's ideals. That makes me agree with the others in this thread saying it's some kind of Preservation psyop, rather than a backup being activated or anything like that.

I do worry that this might end up feeling a bit like a do-over of Fake Ardbert from post-Shadowbringers (I was expecting one of the Scions to comment on the fact we'd dealt with something like this before, honestly), but I'll reserve judgement until next patch on that.

MSQ is on hold at least for the day because I'm trying to do a dumb thing and fill the entire key items list, and one of the early quests gave a "gather three notes" task and I need as many of those as I can get right now. (Really I should just put it aside and do it on an alt who hasn't cleaned up so many of the older sidequests, but eh...)

Pelupelu quests are unremarkable as of yet, and I was expecting something in Urqopacha with the Chirwagur, but should at least give some more language-translation trivia.


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.