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xyzzysqrlSo today I took a few minutes to look over the FFXI Job Quest List and scanned down the list of things you need to do to make the various jobs available. We qualify for fewer of them than I thought, and while I'd like to show off a few of the various unlockable job classes and get a couple levels under Xenosa's belt, I thought now would be a good time to bring up a pertinent question:
What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?
Final Fantasy XI has a number of storylines, each one give-or-take as long as your average Final Fantasy game. It used to be that you were tuned to take months to progress through each new expansion (in part because they release them in serialization, one part at a time), but we intend to make it more like taking one character at max level through a series of campaign modules.
Let's run through them. I am not an expert. I know mostly what I read on the internet.
FFXI Original Campaign: This is what we're doing now. City-based stories building into a bigger overarching plotline. We're on the Bastok track, but San d'Oria and Windurst both have their own story arcs. (Windurst actually has two.) These stories branch together into the main plot, which as you may have gathered revolves around the beast tribes and the Shadow Lord's return.
We are up to Mission 4-1, which means the first mission of Rank 4. The main plot goes up to 9-2, with two missions in each rank tier post-4. Thus we are perhaps a third of the way through the main storyline of original-flavor FFXI.
I've heard very little reaction to this storyline on the net. The general impression is that it is functional and there, but mostly a building block for --
Rise of the Zilart: This unlocks around mission 6-2 of the Original Campaign. We discover the Entity Behind The Entity of the Shadow Lord and begin working to shut them down as well.
Rise of the Zilart has 18 missions, a large number of which are cutscenes and boss fights. It seems to be the widely-accepted consensus-reality that if FFXI had launched in America without Zilart, it would have been a crashing failure, because this is where the plot and battle team knuckled down and got serious.
If that was the game-saver, then the game-changer was --
Chains of Promathia: Where you OF COURSE! trot off to kill a God, for uhm... Reasons. It's sorta required by JRPG law. CoP has eight chapters of between three to five missions each, as well as a number of optional quests for y'all lore junkies and detail hounds.
Promathia is The Big One. This is the one that really drew me in, this is the shining grail. I can find very few ill feelings against this storyline. If FFXI has a fandom peak, it lies in Chains of Promathia.
I have technically triggered the first and second cutscenes of this by accident, but I will replay them when the narrative calls for it.
After such a high, it's only natural there might come kind of a slope...
Treasures of Aht Urhgan: In which you travel off to a vaguely arabian desert land and become mercenaries for the crown. Aht Urhgan has 48 missions, a large number of which are cutscenes. This expansion pack was popularly nicknamed "Treasures of Japanese Midnight" because a high percent of the missions end with "...and then you go away and come back after real-time Japanese midnight to see a cutscene and get a new mission."
It was not a gating mechanism that was beloved by the fandom. Then again, I'm led to believe heavy US FFXI players found themselves slowly attuning to Japanese time anyway, which played hell with high school, college, or work.
I'm glad I'm not doing that. Anyway. Aht Urhgan ... I... I have never heard word one about the plot of Aht Urhgan except that the Blue Mage job quest is kind of a character-derailer if you care about roleplay. We'll see when the time comes. Playing Blue Mage is a goddamn complicated fussy mess anyway and I don't really want to deal with it.
Then the upswing came again...
Wings of the Goddess: WotG has 54 missions, again a number of which are boss fights and cutscenes, and a small number of which branch depending on which city you align yourself with... IN THE PAST! That's right, it's time travel time, baby! We're going back to the Crystal War to fight to protect the past to save our future!
This is the OTHER big one, the OTHER one fans seem to adore. While the pacing is a little ... off, I'm told, the plot itself is hot stuff and there's a lot of complex boss fights and basically the dev team decided not to hold back anything.
And then everyone quit because the game got too easy or something. Everyone was sort of stunned when S-E announced another new expansion, and apparently this one is very plotful...
Seekers of Adoulin: With five chapters and a whopping 105 missions, this thing is FRICKING HUGE... although easily 2/3rds of those are "watch this cutscene".
The plot that I know of? A new land is discovered! GO THERE! ... That's literally all I got. Nobody on the Internet seems to care much about this one. I do however know that if I plan to go adventuring in Adoulin outside the town gates, I'm going to need a level 99 character in level 100+ gear. The New World does not dick around.
So there's the plots and the five expansions. Of them, my interest/intents can be laid out thusly:
Very Interested In: Zilart, Wings, Chains.
Kinda Intrigued By: Original Plot.
If It's On The Way: Treasures.
This Will Kill Me So Hard I Will Die In Real Life: Seekers.
I will be delighted if I can narrate this blog through just one of the top-level expansions. Anything more is pure bonus.
...but wait, what about those other scenes we've seen? Well, they also put out a number of mini-sodes, short stories instead of novels. Let's look at those.
A Moogle Kupo d'Etat: 15 missions, most of which are fetch quests. It all began with a raindrop, or so the legend says. We've seen the first cutscene of this. It deals with strife and unrest among mooglekind...
A Shantotto Ascension: 15 missions, most of which are battles. Shantotto, rhyming black mage and supergenius, conjures up a portal and begins trying to take over the world. Can she be stopped? Should she be stopped? Yes. Also, yes.
A Crystalline Prophecy: 12 missions. This one wraps up the intro cutscene by following the story of Aldo a little further. I want to sit on this one until we've at least met Aldo in the main plot narrative again. (uh spoiler we meet Aldo again). I did some recording tests with the intro to this, so y'all may have seen it already.
Visions/Heroes/Scars Of Abyssea: Ugh shut up no one cares. Floating thingies have appeared all over the map. (This is what that "Cavernous Maw" business was about. The floating seashell I wanted to pay Naji to shove his arm into? Yeah.) They lead you to deadly battlefields in a shadow realm where you fight monsters and grind to level 99.
I will, if I'm lucky, end up in an Abyssea Party to get everything over level 75 because if I don't that may be a long painful grind.
I don't think any plot's attached to them. I don't really feel the need to document Dark Reality Grinding all that hard. Maybe it'll surprise me. I'm doubtful.
I want to do all three of the main minisodes and I don't give much of a crap about Abyssea but it is an evil I can live with.
Ahem.
Any questions?
What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?
Final Fantasy XI has a number of storylines, each one give-or-take as long as your average Final Fantasy game. It used to be that you were tuned to take months to progress through each new expansion (in part because they release them in serialization, one part at a time), but we intend to make it more like taking one character at max level through a series of campaign modules.
Let's run through them. I am not an expert. I know mostly what I read on the internet.
FFXI Original Campaign: This is what we're doing now. City-based stories building into a bigger overarching plotline. We're on the Bastok track, but San d'Oria and Windurst both have their own story arcs. (Windurst actually has two.) These stories branch together into the main plot, which as you may have gathered revolves around the beast tribes and the Shadow Lord's return.
We are up to Mission 4-1, which means the first mission of Rank 4. The main plot goes up to 9-2, with two missions in each rank tier post-4. Thus we are perhaps a third of the way through the main storyline of original-flavor FFXI.
I've heard very little reaction to this storyline on the net. The general impression is that it is functional and there, but mostly a building block for --
Rise of the Zilart: This unlocks around mission 6-2 of the Original Campaign. We discover the Entity Behind The Entity of the Shadow Lord and begin working to shut them down as well.
Rise of the Zilart has 18 missions, a large number of which are cutscenes and boss fights. It seems to be the widely-accepted consensus-reality that if FFXI had launched in America without Zilart, it would have been a crashing failure, because this is where the plot and battle team knuckled down and got serious.
If that was the game-saver, then the game-changer was --
Chains of Promathia: Where you OF COURSE! trot off to kill a God, for uhm... Reasons. It's sorta required by JRPG law. CoP has eight chapters of between three to five missions each, as well as a number of optional quests for y'all lore junkies and detail hounds.
Promathia is The Big One. This is the one that really drew me in, this is the shining grail. I can find very few ill feelings against this storyline. If FFXI has a fandom peak, it lies in Chains of Promathia.
I have technically triggered the first and second cutscenes of this by accident, but I will replay them when the narrative calls for it.
After such a high, it's only natural there might come kind of a slope...
Treasures of Aht Urhgan: In which you travel off to a vaguely arabian desert land and become mercenaries for the crown. Aht Urhgan has 48 missions, a large number of which are cutscenes. This expansion pack was popularly nicknamed "Treasures of Japanese Midnight" because a high percent of the missions end with "...and then you go away and come back after real-time Japanese midnight to see a cutscene and get a new mission."
It was not a gating mechanism that was beloved by the fandom. Then again, I'm led to believe heavy US FFXI players found themselves slowly attuning to Japanese time anyway, which played hell with high school, college, or work.
I'm glad I'm not doing that. Anyway. Aht Urhgan ... I... I have never heard word one about the plot of Aht Urhgan except that the Blue Mage job quest is kind of a character-derailer if you care about roleplay. We'll see when the time comes. Playing Blue Mage is a goddamn complicated fussy mess anyway and I don't really want to deal with it.
Then the upswing came again...
Wings of the Goddess: WotG has 54 missions, again a number of which are boss fights and cutscenes, and a small number of which branch depending on which city you align yourself with... IN THE PAST! That's right, it's time travel time, baby! We're going back to the Crystal War to fight to protect the past to save our future!
This is the OTHER big one, the OTHER one fans seem to adore. While the pacing is a little ... off, I'm told, the plot itself is hot stuff and there's a lot of complex boss fights and basically the dev team decided not to hold back anything.
And then everyone quit because the game got too easy or something. Everyone was sort of stunned when S-E announced another new expansion, and apparently this one is very plotful...
Seekers of Adoulin: With five chapters and a whopping 105 missions, this thing is FRICKING HUGE... although easily 2/3rds of those are "watch this cutscene".
The plot that I know of? A new land is discovered! GO THERE! ... That's literally all I got. Nobody on the Internet seems to care much about this one. I do however know that if I plan to go adventuring in Adoulin outside the town gates, I'm going to need a level 99 character in level 100+ gear. The New World does not dick around.
So there's the plots and the five expansions. Of them, my interest/intents can be laid out thusly:
Very Interested In: Zilart, Wings, Chains.
Kinda Intrigued By: Original Plot.
If It's On The Way: Treasures.
This Will Kill Me So Hard I Will Die In Real Life: Seekers.
I will be delighted if I can narrate this blog through just one of the top-level expansions. Anything more is pure bonus.
...but wait, what about those other scenes we've seen? Well, they also put out a number of mini-sodes, short stories instead of novels. Let's look at those.
A Moogle Kupo d'Etat: 15 missions, most of which are fetch quests. It all began with a raindrop, or so the legend says. We've seen the first cutscene of this. It deals with strife and unrest among mooglekind...
A Shantotto Ascension: 15 missions, most of which are battles. Shantotto, rhyming black mage and supergenius, conjures up a portal and begins trying to take over the world. Can she be stopped? Should she be stopped? Yes. Also, yes.
A Crystalline Prophecy: 12 missions. This one wraps up the intro cutscene by following the story of Aldo a little further. I want to sit on this one until we've at least met Aldo in the main plot narrative again. (uh spoiler we meet Aldo again). I did some recording tests with the intro to this, so y'all may have seen it already.
Visions/Heroes/Scars Of Abyssea: Ugh shut up no one cares. Floating thingies have appeared all over the map. (This is what that "Cavernous Maw" business was about. The floating seashell I wanted to pay Naji to shove his arm into? Yeah.) They lead you to deadly battlefields in a shadow realm where you fight monsters and grind to level 99.
I will, if I'm lucky, end up in an Abyssea Party to get everything over level 75 because if I don't that may be a long painful grind.
I don't think any plot's attached to them. I don't really feel the need to document Dark Reality Grinding all that hard. Maybe it'll surprise me. I'm doubtful.
I want to do all three of the main minisodes and I don't give much of a crap about Abyssea but it is an evil I can live with.
Ahem.
Any questions?
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Date: 2014-11-13 08:18 pm (UTC)