Dev Tracker: Discussion (Old)

[Spira]

i think the point they were trying to stress was that the weapon would technically be listed as being above level 99 for the purposes of calculating player's effective level based on items.. and also for pet jobs that depend on it like DRG and i guess BST (still don't understand how that is calculated).

its probably a question on peoples minds because back in the days of lv75 and lv99 pre adoulin, a very strong weapon was simply a very strong weapon and ilvl didn't exist.. but now that "strong for your level" convention probably doesn't apply anymore

[Kincard]

I don't understand why there are people against the idea of having both REMs still be relevant and having their new super weapons that are piss easy to get be on par so that both parties can be satisfied.

But yeah, if they're just going to make updated REMs be shit they might as well not even have bothered.

[Dotsudoku]

Because I want them to pick a direction and stick with it. REM cannot exist if they want to go this rapidly progressive route

[fantasticdan]

Because I want them to pick a direction and stick with it. REM cannot exist if they want to go this rapidly progressive route

This, just allow the WS to be unlockable and let them die.

[Morari]

Because I want them to pick a direction and stick with it. REM cannot exist if they want to go this rapidly progressive route

That's what their initial plan was, ending the REM era with Adoulin. Now whether that's fair or proper or not depends on your perspective and opinions, but the only reason now why they can't seem to "make up their minds" is because the playerbase has forced them to keep (or at least attempt to keep) REM relevant. Like right now they have two plans going on at the same time, their original vision for Adoulin-era content and beyond, and the plan to keep REMs contenders in some way.

What I'm most worried about is that we don't know what stuff from their initial plan for Adoulin they're having to drop or completely modify so that they can "fit" REMs in a place they never had figured they'd need to be. With their already limited resources if anything kills the creativity or the speed and content of updates it's trying to carry a whole other set of game balance and content in addition to the one that had already started pushing them to the limit. Depending on how they feel, they could turn the REMs update into a half-hearted, uninspired effort to keep us happy, abandon their dream of what Adoulin was supposed to be (going back to maintaining the status quo with REM being unrivaled), or try to continue with a dual vision that's chafing against everyone's sensibilities in some way or another.

[Taint]

Because I want them to pick a direction and stick with it. REM cannot exist if they want to go this rapidly progressive route

Thats my issue. If they boost REM to lvl 120 (higher then Delve weapons) and then release 140 weapons down the road, REM users are back to square one. If they aren't going to continuosly update them then whats the point?

My personal choice would be to let me have access to all my Relic and Emp WSs and move on with the game. (or something else as a momento that I got Apoc 6+ years ago)

[Shenrien]

This, just allow the WS to be unlockable and let them die.

But mythics! QQQQQQ :/ That would be the only draw back to that solution.

[arus2001]

But mythics! QQQQQQ :/ That would be the only draw back to that solution.

Just have them unlock a trait reflective of the weapons, instead. Though some of them would deservedly need some modification. A free Cure IV every Convert for RDM ain't worth the cost, for example. Permanent MACC boost? Getting warmer.

[Darkmagi]

If they abandon REM entirely I'd absolutely expect some sort of benefit from having a 99 mythic. The quests have way too much work put into them to be complete trash.

[Chamaan]

I still think the answer is to just make relics easier to make. Lower the requirements or vastly increase currency/alex drop rate and make it trivial. Blahblah it's easy to make them now, whatever, but it's still an enormous timesink. Kill the timesink, halve ADL's HP and replace his game over moves with emotes and dances, and give them one bump to item level 108-110. The REMs just need to be devalued so people stop caring so much about the amount of time they took farming them up. If you care so much about REMs after they're made super cheap, go make another one. Go make all of them.

[Byrthnoth]

I enjoy the dynamic set up by RMEs more than I enjoy having a Tojil drop that I got while farming millions of gil worth of Plasm. The outcry on the forum wasn't just against the outdating of RMEs, but the entire "rapid gear release" design SE is setting up for FFXI. Best path to me looks like:

1) Cap iLevel at 120 and abandon the proposed update path of rapid gear release.
2) Make RMEs iLevel 120, fix the problems with the ones that suck and try to give them different niches.
3) Continue adding iLevel 119 Adoulin boss weapons. For the amount of effort these take to obtain, it's reasonable that they'd be high-end "I use this job once in a while" weapons.
4) Motivate future events through unique armor stats (on the proposed JSE sets, for instance) or slight armor improvements as they always have.


Meebles failed by-and-large because there were minor/no upgrades for most jobs there. When I think of Meebles, I think of Letalis Mantle, Elanid Belt, and Monkey drops. There's plenty of room to motivate people with armor (especially if you're willing to throw around numbers like 188 Attack). Crafting will never go back to being what it once was, but people will adapt.

[Draylo]

I still think the answer is to just make relics easier to make. Lower the requirements or vastly increase currency/alex drop rate and make it trivial. Blahblah it's easy to make them now, whatever, but it's still an enormous timesink. Kill the timesink, halve ADL's HP and replace his game over moves with emotes and dances, and give them one bump to item level 108-110. The REMs just need to be devalued so people stop caring so much about the amount of time they took farming them up. If you care so much about REMs after they're made super cheap, go make another one. Go make all of them.

Doesn't fix the fact people still spent time to get them. There should be something for those people. Not everyone can pop out a mythic or relic in a few weeks, some took a very long time to get them.

[fattrav]

Could always unlock the r/e/m weapon skill and have aftermath or ws modifier based on the r/e/m level. So 99 r/e/m would get full unlock of weaponskill and aftermath, 90 r/e/m would get weaponskill unlock but no aftermath. Maybe throw in a damage modifier going from 90 to 95 and 95 to 99. And for the few people with 99glow, make whatever weapon they have on glow.

[Tymon]

With me, there's two routes I see as viable:

1) Make the upgrade from Level 99 REM to whatever adjusted item level, let's say 115-120, very difficult or time consuming, or both, but make getting a normal 99 REM easier. There are many ways to do this, from simply reducing requirements to making the upgrade items available in the expansion content. If it's very difficult to upgrade a 99 and nearly impossible to 99 one on a lot of servers as it stands right now (over 250M for an empy on Quetz and there are virtually no Cinders/Dross on sale, ever)

2) Leave the old requirements alone and make it easy to upgrade further. This upsets a lot of people, but by doing this you have to make the weapons a little weaker, I think. Otherwise, you get back into that pigeon hole where the top level just regurgitate "come back when your weapons are 99'd" again.

I could see there being different upgrade paths for different types of weapons. Like right now, Empyreans are hardest to upgrade to 99 because they're the easiest to get to 90. Relics are in the middle, because they are the middle child as far as difficulty to acquire at 75. Mythics are exceptionally easy (even PW, really) to get to 99, because getting one at all is an extremely expensive and time consuming process.

[Byrthnoth]

That is an interesting idea, but it wouldn't really work because Mythics would become nearly-required for every DD job. Like, Samurai A and B both have the new Delve awesome GKT. Samurai A has a level 99 Koga in his safe. Guess who does like 33% more damage because he has AM3?

Now you have a Mythic LS and a non-Mythic LS. Mythic LS clears content quickly/easily and claims it's too easy. Non-mythic LS has a hard time and scrapes through. Mythic LS is having such an easy time because their 6DD setup effectively has 8 non-Mythic DDs worth of damage.

[Yubar]

Why can't they just make REM always remain the most powerful when and before each expansion? The people who can't get REM are still just going to go after the next best weapon of that expansion so those weapons that aren't REM won't go to waste.

[Yubar]

That is an interesting idea, but it wouldn't really work because Mythics would become nearly-required for every DD job. Like, Samurai A and B both have the new Delve awesome GKT. Samurai A has a level 99 Koga in his safe. Guess who does like 33% more damage because he has AM3?

Now you have a Mythic LS and a non-Mythic LS. Mythic LS clears content quickly/easily and claims it's too easy. Non-mythic LS has a hard time and scrapes through. Mythic LS is having such an easy time because their 6DD setup effectively has 8 non-Mythic DDs worth of damage.

I don't see the problem with that. Those Mythic ls that clears content are the 1% and are not the majority.

[Byrthnoth]

SE is fascinated with releasing content that is difficult/impossible for even their best players, though. They wouldn't be able to let it slide, and they would eventually make an event that couldn't be done without Mythic LSs.

[Draginhikari]

I don't understand why there are people against the idea of having both REMs still be relevant and having their new super weapons that are piss easy to get be on par so that both parties can be satisfied.

But yeah, if they're just going to make updated REMs be shit they might as well not even have bothered.

I would assume it comes from one of two places. One, now that they are doing this item level cycle, it could create a issue where they are perputally having the increase the REM to continually match with what they try to release over a period of time, reducing any interest in other weapons as a result of the need to keep the REM close to the top of the chart and at the same time forcing the REM only mentality to continue.

Second is probably the more simple answer that people are simply tired of the REM process and just simply don't want to deal with it and further upgrade processes that would be required if they continued to increase them.

Whether or not those points are accurate or important is another debate entirely.

[Morari]

Why can't they just make REM always remain the most powerful when and before each expansion? The people who can't get REM are still just going to go after the next best weapon of that expansion so those weapons that aren't REM won't go to waste.

If FFXI had a huge development team, I honestly wouldn't expect anything else. But we're slightly just above bare-bones right now, correct? I'm a writer, not a game dev, so I don't know what sort of manhours it takes to design and balance gear/equipment every time a new expansion or major increase in content is planned.

It's like the next generation of pokemon games is drafted up has work started almost before the current generation is sold in stores. Despite the superficial repetitiveness of the pokemon games, any person who's deeply into competitive or even just advanced play would be able to tell you that each game is relatively more balanced and involving than the previous - even if the content doesn't appreciably change. But Nintendo has a huge amount of resources it pours into that franchise, and it's not an online game.

I would suspect that MMOs require even more time and resources for "balancing" and creativity, and FFXI isn't even SE's only project in the FF franchise much less it's only MMO now. So we've got just enough to keep things "new" but not enough to where they were expecting to maintain legacy content and gear.