Chains of Promanthia Mission 5-3 Complete - Finally!

I finally finished up Chains of Promanthia Mission 5-3 this weekend. For those of you familiar with the Three Paths mission, you may understand the level of work it took to get all of the various segments done. The missions themselves weren't that bad, honestly. But the time it takes to gather up a group is horrendous. By this point in the game the Chains of Promanthia expansion has been out for quite some time. Most people who play are either already done with the missions, or not too concerned with progressing down that storyline. Consequently, it can take a very long time before you find others willing to join your cause and no concession has been made to allow low-man or solo progression available.

The rewards for other players to redo the missions to help strangers or acquaintances progress don't come anywhere near the level of effort it can take to complete the fights -- most notably the next mission I am up against, 6-4 The airship fight. (Consumable items for one attempt alone can cost upwards of 50,000 gil - a far cry from the 1000 experience points you can get as a reward.)

So, yes, I suppose you could say that I am a bit more that just a little annoyed with the whole process. It's a methodology of madness that I can only pray won't make its way into Final Fantasy XIV. Another thing that would be helpful in the newest MMO installment of the Final Fantasy franchise is better objective tracking. The only way to confirm you have gotten a specific cutscene required for mission progression is to either revisit the NPC, or find another NPC designated for the area to replay custcenes that you have viewed previously in that area. Then again, I am not certain that all of the NPC interactions can be accessed in the latter method. So much for looking at your Mission status in the menu. Three Paths was particularly bad with this. On more than one occasion, and even once by myself through a bit of confusion, you will get in a party and make your way to the point where you can engage in the fight only to find out that someone missed a step somewhere along the lines. At that point you can either disband and try again another time, or wait while they traipse across the game world searching for the cutscene they missed. We're not talking a 30 minute wait, either. Some of these chains can take an hour or even hours to complete once all the travel is factored in.

So why even bother? Really, I think the only reason that I'm even sticking around this long is to finish playing my Blue Mage. I simply love the way the class plays and I enjoy the different roles you can explore by changing your subjob. My most enjoyable experience thus far has been subbing Thief and helping with both damage and hate control. It's been over a year since I last played in a party with my Blue Mage, time enough to take several breaks and to level both Beastmaster and Red Mage to 75 and Black Mage to 60 (mainly to use for the CoP missions). My Blue Mage is at level 72, at which point I left it until I could unlock Sea access in order to obtain the most valuable spells in the Blue Mage arsenal. Without these spells, I'd only be a mockery of the potential the job offers, a gimp BLU that others snicker and laugh at, confined to Fields of Valor or Campaign.

Oh well. I'll keep you updated on my progress.