Dev Tracker: Discussion (Old)

[TacoTaru]

What gets me is that people are fixating on the one perceived negative of this update. So many are seemingly overlooking that everything else they did this update is pretty much a mish-mash of suggestions players have made over the years.

I think it's just because of the implications of what it did. Like we all said, there's was no way to see it coming. Some people finished RMEs a few days before hand to find out they wasted a couple hundred million gil and if there not getting fixed in any way, they don't have an easy way to recoup that gil since the means to make gil was just ran into the ground. I completely agree with you though, there are a lot of good things in this update and I'm excited to see where it goes. I kinda wish Skirmish didn't get invalidated so quickly or at least I'd like them to maybe bump up the damage on the weapons a tad to keep them as good offhands for DW jobs.

[Fake]

There is no way they could have given enough advance warning to not upset people. Even if they said 2 months ago that this would happen there would have still been a similar number of people who had just finished/recently finished upgrading.

Then you'd have had the entire community stagnate for those 2 months and it would hurt the game far more.

[TacoTaru]

Fair enough, I suppose.

[Zirael]

Fair enough, I suppose.

If content takes 3 months to slave out and grind your shinies, you should give 3 months notice. Mythic upgraders should've gotten 6 months notice, in my opinion.
If theyd've said 6 months ago that they'd be trashing all RMEC sans Shield/Harp, people who just upgraded at that point would still have 6 months to enjoy their weapon and those just starting the farming or in the process would have an option to decide if they wanted to continue or not.
Dropping the bomb like Matsui did was an ass move. You don't change the core vision of your game (gradual/lateral gear progression -> gear resets) without letting everyone know and even maybe asking for feedback.
Trashing everyone's progress and saying "IDK, maybe we'll let you use Geirskogul full time" reeks incompetence. Not something you'd expect from dev team with 10 years of experience. I won't even comment on those 3-6h Puking Pandy-style Wildskeeper Reive and Delve NMs. You've been there, you've done it yourself.

With this game being gear reset model, I'll have to rethink if I still want to do anything in it. Until now, if I, let's say decided to make a mythic, it might've taken me 6 months or even a year, at my own pace (RL work, family, friends, learning), but I would know that by the time I finish, my effort would pay off and I'd enjoy something I've always dreamed of. Could've played my job in new ways, mess around with friends more etc etc. That's what RPGs are to me - progression with short term and long term goals. Unless I'm already in a solid EGLS, there's really no reason for me to aim for Naaukal weapons or even farm 100M gil to buy craftables. In 3 months time (or 6) they'll add D300 weapons along with some D250 weapons you'd grind in 6 hours like current Delve weapons and I'll get Nauukal R/EX junk tri-boxing. I know I'm exagerrationg, but I hope you'll see my point in this.

[Byrthnoth]

If content takes 3 months to slave out and grind your shinies, you should give 3 months notice. Mythic upgraders should've gotten 6 months notice, in my opinion.
If they would've said 6 months ago that they'd be trashing all RMEC sans Shield/Harp, people who just upgraded at that point would still have 6 months to enjoy their weapon and those just starting the farming or in the process would have an option to decide if they wanted to continue or not.
Dropping the bomb like Matsui did was an ass move. You don't change the core vision of your game (gradual/lateral gear progression -> gear resets) without letting everyone know and even maybe asking for feedback.
Trashing everyone's progress and saying "IDK, maybe we'll let you use Geirskogul full time" reeks incompetence. Not something you'd expect from dev team with 10 years of experience. I won't even comment on those 3-6h Puking Pandy-style Wildskeeper Reive and Delve NMs. You've been there, you've done it yourself.

With this game being gear reset model, I'll have to rethink if I still want to do anything in it. Until now, if I, let's say decided to make a mythic, it might've taken me 6 months or even a year, at my own pace (RL work, family, friends, learning), but I would know that by the time I finish, my effort would pay off and I'd enjoy something I've always dreamed of. Could've played my job in new ways, mess around with friends more etc etc. That's what RPGs are to me - progression with short term and long term goals. Unless I'm already in a solid EGLS, there's really no reason for me to aim for Naaukal weapons or even farm 100M gil to buy craftables. In 3 months time (or 6) they'll add D300 weapons along with some D250 weapons you'd grind in 6 hours like current Delve weapons and I'll get Nauukal R/EX junk tri-boxing. I know I'm exaggerating, but I hope you'll see my point in this.

This is pretty much how I see it. I regularly make large effort-investments into things that I fully expect to be outdated in the future (at some point), but I don't make them if I know the outdating is coming in the immediate future.

Examples:

* Alchemy 110 - Cost me about 300mil and let me profit from being the first Alchemist to break into the mediocre alchemy Hexed -1 market. At some point I know that they will raise the cap to 120 with reasonable skillup synths and I honestly haven't made much net-profit off this venture, but it was fun.

* Khepri Kecks - Cost me 175mil. I bought them after the release of Adoulin because they didn't release the new Delve sets yet and until that point Khepri were the only pants for Dancer with both STR and DEX in any sizeable amount. I expected these to be outdated, but didn't know when. Dice roll not in my favor, but I'm over it.

* Terpsichore, Twashtar, Ukonvasara, and Ragnarok all 99 - Even apart from the effort doing other things, I dumped about a billion gil into these weapons. I did Terpsichore before Salvage v2, Twashtar at Plate/Rift item release, and Ukon when plates finally hit 100k each, and Ragnarok kind of just because I had extra gil (still haven't geared DRK). They represent the single largest time investment I have made in any video game, which I made because I thought they were pretty much a solid thing. That said, it has always been theoretically possible for SE to release weapons better than them, but I don't think I got a billion gil worth of use out of them and if I could trade them for the gil I spent on them (and the points/etc. back) then at the moment I probably would.


So this update essentially lost me 1.2 billion gil worth of investments and rewarded me with 18-man content (boo) that's not very exciting (double boo). I don't like it, but they could have substantially reduced my losses if they'd kept RMEs relevant.

[Slycer]

Fairly recent 4Gamer interview, I wonder if there's anything new in it, Slycer?

Interesting. Working on translation now, some interesting (but late) info on Skirmish segments. Basically it sounds like there is always a constant number of Skirmish items around. Each one is flagged for a particular area and action (e.g. Logging in Ceizak). Until that piece is obtained, it will not move elsewhere. This explains why it's easy to obtain pieces quickly sometimes and it takes forever other times (you're waiting on someone to obtain one somewhere else to get it to spawn for you). So if you're farming Skirmish stuff it makes sense to just do as many different things as possible for short times each.

[Byrthnoth]

That also jives with people's observations (leaving a zone for an hour and then coming back results in a piece because one of the pieces gets "stuck" on that zone). I wonder how many pieces get locked up in, like, a Lair Reive in Yahse.

[Rhiannon2]

Dropping the bomb like Matsui did was an ass move. You don't change the core vision of your game (gradual/lateral gear progression -> gear resets) without letting everyone know and even maybe asking for feedback.
Trashing everyone's progress and saying "IDK, maybe we'll let you use Geirskogul full time" reeks incompetence. Not something you'd expect from dev team with 10 years of experience. I won't even comment on those 3-6h Puking Pandy-style Wildskeeper Reive and Delve NMs. You've been there, you've done it yourself.

They've already demonstrated the gear reset model with the release of Abyssea/Empyrean Armor. There was grumbling about Byakko's Haidate or E. Body or other long-term investments being invalidated or semi-invalidated, but we got over it and did Abyssea.

I don't think the issue here is the gear reset model as a whole. It is what they CHOSE to reset THIS time, i.e., R/M/E. Those represent a whole other level of gil and/or manpower hours sunk. I wouldn't call this a change in "core vision" of the game, just a poorly though tout decision on which aspect to reset.

[dasva]

They've already demonstrated the gear reset model with the release of Abyssea/Empyrean Armor. There was grumbling about Byakko's Haidate or E. Body or other long-term investments being invalidated or semi-invalidated, but we got over it and did Abyssea.

I don't think the issue here is the gear reset model as a whole. It is what they CHOSE to reset THIS time, i.e., R/M/E. Those represent a whole other level of gil and/or manpower hours sunk. I wouldn't call this a change in "core vision" of the game, just a poorly though tout decision on which aspect to reset.

That wasn't reset as much as normal progression of gear over lvl increases over the space of like a year. And was completely expected with lvl cap increases that we knew were coming and things that had a lot of time effort put in got upgrades

[Byrthnoth]

(and one of the reasons to believe that Relic/Mythics wouldn't be randomly surpassed was the way that they were updated when the level cap jumped, unlike all the mentioned armor.)

[Rhiannon2]

That wasn't reset as much as normal progression of gear over lvl increases over the space of like a year. And was completely expected with lvl cap increases that we knew were coming and things that had a lot of time effort put in got upgrades

The degree and expectation of reset wasn't really the point I was making, just that they HAVE demonstrated a gear reset model in the past. Again, I think the core issue here is what they chose to reset this time (i.e., weapons that were the subject of expensive and time-consuming trials that were being updated) and the notice they gave (i.e., zero).

[dasva]

Idk still say lvl is huge. I mean it's like saying all 75 gear resets 60 gear. And expectation is a lot of what make people mad. No one was angry when each lvl cap increase brought newer and better stuff to get or additional trials to complete because they knew it was coming and didn't waste all there time going for non trialable ra/ex because it was obvious that would be outdated soon. Because what it all comes down to no one likes to feel like they completely waste hundreds of hours that they only invested on the understanding it would be useful

[Jem]

I honestly think that the developers had the huge damage boosts set in stone until quite late in the development cycle. I mean they still tweaked Naakual weapons after release and they gave that warning about R/E/M's before expansion release.

They were probably testing the waters for reaction or didn't actually finalize the obscene DMG increase until like after Adoulin release.

Obviously pure speculation.

[Shenrien]

I'm pessimistic about the whole thing, not to upset about gear / weapons becoming obsolete, because without what I worked to get I wouldn't be able to do the content that is presented to me.

[Raffi_XI]

Question for all you who are arguing that only the 99 version of a weapon should be upgraded if they decide to do so:

Why?

You claim its the completed version. In my honest opinion, if they do decide to add another "trial" (trade 10k RP to RME etc), it should clearly only be accessible to the final version of pre-adoulin RMEs: the afterglows.

[Dotsudoku]

Because you and Obsidian are the only people who play this game that don't seem to realize that afterglows weren't created in the interest of progression

[Indalecia]

...Ok...seriously, just stop.

Afterglow was for e-peen idiots to get, not an actual plan for progression.

Or did you think that +15 attack for 150 scoria was reasonable?

[fantasticdan]

...Ok...seriously, just stop.

Afterglow was for e-peen idiots to get, not an actual plan for progression.

That describes most mythics lol.

[Dotsudoku]

Twelve of them were uncontested at what they specialized in, and a handful are still just as useful as they were before. I'm not sure where this recent surge of "lolmythics" came from, but it's complete nonsense given a moment of thought

[Kyreth]

Alternatively, you could have the old R/M/E weapons be fodder for upgrades. The higher the weapon level, the less other shit you need to produce the upgrade. So a L75 Mandau would take a ton of other bits to complete it's Adoulin version, while a L99 one needs much less.

And if some of those bits were from "outdated" content, it'd keep them relevant. Sorta like the way they put tatters in to give folks augments from otherwise now-useless abjurations.