Dev Tracker

[Genosync]

It did hurt big linkshells. Why would someone sit through 17 other peoples emp weapons, when they can just take 2 others and trio all three long before the 17 finish. Apply that to every Abyssea item and that is what happened. If you mean "social" shells, that that isn't what most are referring to with "big linkshells", which are primarily event based.

There's linkshells that didn't have this problem, and you fucking know it. The situation you gave was people putting themselves in front of everyone else, which is the inherent problem that waffles posted with people being assholes.

Problem with needing an 18-person or more sized group to do anything, with limited resources as a reward -> there will end up being problems regardless of anything you try to do 99% of the time.

At any rate, 4 x 9 = 36 days to farm 18 weapons to Lv85. Seriously is not that bad at all. And that's only going hard at it for maybe 2.5-3 hours a night at a maximum. Was definitely worth the time investment before cap went up from 90. Because then SE skewed the time investment all to hell when you need 1500 Heavy Metal Plates. If I knew that was coming, I never would have made a single Empyrean weapon.

[calinz]

SE did mention at one point, that they'd like to balance the acquisition rate of empyrean, relic, and mythic.... only, at that time, everyone thought they'd make relic and mythic as easy as empy... not up the difficulty of empy >.>

[NynJa]

Geno gets it lol
Its not complicated broski

[Apelila]

SE did mention at one point, that they'd like to balance the acquisition rate of empyrean, relic, and mythic.... only, at that time, everyone thought they'd make relic and mythic as easy as empy... not up the difficulty of empy >.>

We thought they'd continue being nice to the playerbase, not that Tanaka would come back and become of the bestest Jackass Genies ever.

[Genosync]

We thought they'd continue being nice to the playerbase, not that Tanaka would come back and become of the bestest Jackass Genies ever.

Having the player be able to make legitimate progress on a high tier weapon that defines their job, even if it's not the "Best" weapon but is one of the 3-4 best weapons and has some special properties (i.e. this is basically the definition of an Empyrean weapon), with knowing the exact (well, near exact, 44 pops for 75 drops with the right TH, is average etc for a 90) amount of time necessary to work on the task and complete it, and have something special is amazing.

This is why I don't think the ADL drops are that bad for making 99. You have a guaranteed time investment--and nothing actually has any monetary cost associated with it. Same thing with the PW drops. Empy gets fucked over and now instead of being this cool, new concept where you can put direct time and effort into the task, knowing exactly what reward you're going to get in the end, and not getting fucked over by the RNG... 1500 metal plates. 60 riftbullshit. and they're still outshined by relic/mythic so I don't really get the fucking point besides tanaka wanted to piss everyone off.

oh and obligatory BALANCE

[Prothescar]

SE's really been seeming like they're allergic to money lately, in more ways than just pushing people away from XI and pumping more and more into that should-have-been-an-abortion known as FFXIV. They're stuck in the Japanese rut just like most other Japanese developers, and it's sad to see.

[Churchill]

Well to be fair, Vere and Ukon are definitely worth the investment. Almace is as well though mainly because there is no other reasonable option so why not 99 it. I don't see much of a reason to do any of the others unless you had a hard on for having a 99 Gandiva to go with your 99 Anni (aka, the only thing you'd be using anyway) or you really liked dressing up in all black and doing blade:hi.

[Deader2818]

Armageddon for COR would be worth the investment.

[Mahoro]

and yet there was nothing stopping anyone from going "hey, doing xyz, who wants to leech"...or "/l hey JoeBlo, just got in from work, wanna hit up Attohwa?" while 1/5 of your LS is jerking it in dynamis, 1/5 is in Uleguerand, and the other 3/5 are in Tahrongi leeching xp / holding glav/chloris pop items.

Once again, your linkshell broke your linkshell. If your linkshell fell apart, does that mean you went without a linkshell for the past year?

Have to side more with the "your linkshell broke your linkshell" argument. It can also be heavily tied to how proactive leaders were in adapting to the changes in the game. While 0% attrition in any LS was likely impossible, there are specific strategies SH's could have used to keep their shells from fragmenting during the Abyssea era. Some of these have been covered already, but three additional reasons my own shell survived were: (i) a healthy focus on the top tier bosses of Abyssea that people found more difficult to duo-trio when first released (Pantokrator, Apademak, Azdaja, Ironclads, caturae, etc.); (ii) the fact we have only ever had 3 event nights a week so LS events weren't too invasive into people's side goals; and (iii) mixing in some Walk of Echoes, which in its early days was a large-scale event people couldn't do on their own effectively unless they stayed up during JP primetime. In any event, the only "highly vulnerable" period of time for LS's was from about introduction of Scars/Heroes Atma (end of 2010) to introduction of Voidwatch in May 2011, about a 5-6 month window of time. We were early adopters of Voidwatch, which renewed people's interest in large-scale events and sustained it to the present day.

[NynJa]

Id also like to point out abyssea only really became a "any scrub duo of MNK+WHM can succeed" event when heroes came out. Scars wasnt really easily duoed when it first came out, but your godtier players maybe pulled it off.

Id be highly suspect of any claims to "i was reliably duoing caturae at 85 mnk+whm"

[Genosync]

Id also like to point out abyssea only really became a "any scrub duo of MNK+WHM can succeed" event when heroes came out. Scars wasnt really easily duoed when it first came out, but your godtier players maybe pulled it off.

Id be highly suspect of any claims to "i was reliably duoing caturae at 85 mnk+whm"

I know of a couple people that two-boxed a few things at 80 cap.

Churchill, I think I didn't explain my point well enough so let me clear it up.

SE effectively halted weapon progress for the casual player with the 95 cap requirements. There is no reason to log on knowing that it will cost me 150m to get a weapon only one stage higher than what it was before. And then knowing I have even more gil to pay after that.

With the style of the 80,85,90 empyrean upgrades, it takes out these factors in upgrading the weapon (excluding the 'group' point we've made previously):

1. Unknown length of time to complete
2. Game Economy
3. Complete and utter randomness of drops that are worth gil
4. Drop rate of heavy metal plates/rift-item from your own chest


They should have just made Empyrean weapons the weapon of choice for the casual player, and that type of player typically wouldn't end up doing more than one or two, which brings back the game closer to a person being defined by one or two jobs instead of needing goddamn near everything.

i.e. poor game design choice by Tanaka once again.

[Churchill]

In that respect, sure. You could argue of funding Emp's with Dynamis, so the casual player is still able to finish (Albeit, much more of a project) but they did remove the teaming up portion of Emps past 90.

[Spira]

I know of a couple people that two-boxed a few things at 80 cap.

Churchill, I think I didn't explain my point well enough so let me clear it up.

SE effectively halted weapon progress for the casual player with the 95 cap requirements. There is no reason to log on knowing that it will cost me 150m to get a weapon only one stage higher than what it was before. And then knowing I have even more gil to pay after that.

With the style of the 80,85,90 empyrean upgrades, it takes out these factors in upgrading the weapon (excluding the 'group' point we've made previously):

1. Unknown length of time to complete
2. Game Economy
3. Complete and utter randomness of drops that are worth gil
4. Drop rate of heavy metal plates/rift-item from your own chest


They should have just made Empyrean weapons the weapon of choice for the casual player, and that type of player typically wouldn't end up doing more than one or two, which brings back the game closer to a person being defined by one or two jobs instead of needing goddamn near everything.

i.e. poor game design choice by Tanaka once again.

It still is the weapon of choice for the casual player.
The casual player can stop at Lv90 and still be better off than your AH options, considering you still have Empy WS and its Aftermath to work with.

still shits all over anyone going for a mythic tho. weak ass supply of alex being generated in game atm + current market rate and you could have enough gil to cover an Empyrean to 99 (say ~180m for heavy metal and ~24m for your basic 99 empy) and you still won't have enough to make half a Mythic. And even worse, you don't even have the Lv75 weapon to work with.

strangely enough for a weapon that was designed with the hardcore event-goers in mind, its biggest cockblock is the only part of the weapon acquisition where effort can be substituted by gil - and still a ridiculous amount at that.

[Slycer]

The level 90 Empyrean weapons are definitely intended to be relatively "good" weapons at 99. Take a look at the level 99 Walk of Echoes weapons - all of them are worse than their level 90 Empyrean counterparts in DMG rating, and obviously Empyreans have other beneficial effects completely missing from WoE weapons. For the most part, the "good" level 90 Empyreans are only beaten out by their higher level counterparts and/or same/higher level relic/mythic weapons and perhaps one or two other difficult-to-obtain weapons (glowy VW, etc.). If you have one DD job and its your focus, you should be using something better than a level 90 Emp, but if you have multiple DD jobs or don't really care about the DD jobs you have, I don't think anyone's going to seriously fault you for using a level 90 Emp unless it's a Redemption or something.

[scaevola]

Either you find my position offensive and are therefore intentionally twisting(/omitting) my words or you're just not very smart and haven't managed to comprehend what I said, which is it?

Nowhere did I even imply that I find it 'difficult' to interact with my peers; I just find that it's usually kind of boring or annoying or a combination of the two, and the vast majority of the time it serves no real purpose when you consider that you'll never be particularly close to 99% of the people you talk to. I'm pleasant and conscientious towards everyone that I happen to end up talking to because the basis of my own personal morality is that you should treat others the way you'd like to be treated. The anonymous, shout-into-a-cave nature of the internet fosters a completely different attitude in terms of how people interact, and if you don't realise there's a very obvious lack of correlation between how people conduct themselves on the internet and the way they behave in their real lives then you're clearly not very observant.

protip: you'll find people more likable if you don't talk to them in robot-speak. There's a reason why they call brevity the soul of wit. I'll help:

Either you're twisting my words because I offended you or you just can't read. Which is it?

I never said I had a hard time dealing with my peers; I just said it isn't worth the effort considering how unlikely you are to form a bond with a stranger. I treat others how I want to be treated IRL. Right or wrong, you can't take the way people act on the internet as an indication of how they treat others face-to-face.

Now, that you had only considered two possible explanations for a misunderstanding (either you offended me or I can't read) while leaving out a third (you did, and consistently do, a really shitty job of explaining your thoughts when talking to real human beings) helps explain why you find interacting with your peers difficult* in at least two different ways.

EDIT: But don't feel about about it! Lack of clarity is a pretty common problem among people who learned English from video games translated by non-native speakers!


*so difficult that you consider it "kind of boring and annoying", when any healthy neurotypical on the street will tell you getting to know people is fucking awesome

[Mahoro]

Call me crazy, but I actually prefer the way HE said it. You removed all the tone, color, and imagery from his post and distilled it down to its main points. But this isn't a GMAT reading comprehension question. It's the internet. And if you were to distill every forum post, blog post, or random musing into its central thesis, you wouldn't have much of an internet left (for better or for worse, har har)! I don't think that post is particularly lengthy or "robot-speak" for attempting to express its points about humanity in a more formal fashion.* I also don't see how your long compound, footnoted sentence with parenthetical is any more concise than his opening sentence which you deemed necessary to edit.

* Not commenting on the substance of the debate. Carry on!

[scaevola]

Call me crazy, but I actually prefer the way HE said it.

I wouldn't have doubted that for a second~

[Mahoro]

Lol, well I AM a lawyer after all! We are well-versed in flowery speak

[ronin sparthos]

In that respect, sure. You could argue of funding Emp's with Dynamis, so the casual player is still able to finish (Albeit, much more of a project) but they did remove the teaming up portion of Emps past 90.

That argument while sound just doesn't mesh with the reality of what Empyreans were supposed to be - a casual alternative to a relic. As it stands with prices of heavy metal sitting around 110-120k, you need a grand total of 165M-180M to finish a single weapon? More than it'd take to finish a relic weapon under the same circumstances of farming daily Dynamis.

It isn't even like you could do Voidwatch and get a reasonable amount of plates either because SE has locked everyone into an arbitrary gilsink and pouches are rare enough to write off as being worth farming Qilin/Uptala/Aello for. I chalk this all up to SE being frustrated with Abyssea coming out too easy and wanting to fuck with people. It's not even balanced in such a way that you could reasonably clear the trial in 1500 Voidwatch wins (which is ridiculous in itself).

Let's not even get into the following trial which ranges from another 18-36M to complete.

[scaevola]

Lol, well I AM a lawyer after all! We are well-versed in flowery speak

Yeah, as examples of what not to do. If reading half the shit posted here doesn't give you a headache, your legal writing professor didn't do a very good job.