Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Toth]

What the game needs now is multiple approaches to endgame that allows players a choice of what gear to get: HM AAs and DM should remain one option, Delve another, Skirmish, and whatever the endgame zone of Adoulin. It would be like Salvage, Einherjar, and Nyzul of the old days.

[Damane]

the upgrade from skirmish ilvl items to 119 is a bit confuseing, what happens to your augments on your armor? ¬.¬ Also fuck sea of red... dear lord there is too much red in this game atm.

[Kyreth]

I think they had an idea at first, but quickly realized it wouldnt work.

I think their original idea was a long grind of farming T1-3 Delve mobs till you cap out and upgrade all the gear, then a long grind of farming T4-5 Delve mobs till you cap out and R15 that gear, THEN the long grind of farming Delve bosses. Except, you had people who could clear Delve bosses without the T1-3 and hit the 119 plateau rather fast, and then there were people who couldnt clear the Delve bosses at all, even with all the gear. So ever since then, SE has been playing catch up, to try to get people to the 119 plateau without really surpassing the 119 plateau. Except for the people who've already hit that point, there was no point in playing. Why vie for something thats inferior to what you have? At the same time, even before SE added skirm 2 and what not, why spend a month grinding away on airlixirs for one piece of gear when theres already something better out there that wont take a month to get? Introducing such a system also included fear into the players, fear of "will all my time be wasted next month when SE adds something new"?

And then there are some gear adjustments that make no fucking sense (last patch that introduced a bunch of lv106/109 weapons/armor, vastly inferior to anything thats already out there, other than a couple AF macro pieces)

Not to mention that old balyd gear is pretty much junk at this point, outdone by Spark gear. Even the +1 versions, though there's the occasional useful bit for stuff like offhand weapons (at least until you get the Wildkeeper/Skirmish augmented ones). Which is kinda a shame, as they could easily have had the +1 gear match up statwise to Spark gear. I generally point people coming back to getting their initial armor/weapons from Records quest rewards, then using the Peacekeeper's stuff to fill in the gaps.

[fantasticdan]

the upgrade from skirmish ilvl items to 119 is a bit confuseing, what happens to your augments on your armor? ¬.¬

Hopefully they go away and the random augment system is dropped entirely.

[NynJa]

What the game needs now is multiple approaches to endgame that allows players a choice of what gear to get: HM AAs and DM should remain one option, Delve another, Skirmish, and whatever the endgame zone of Adoulin. It would be like Salvage, Einherjar, and Nyzul of the old days.

Except SE cant make 5 different pieces of "the best". There cant be 5 #1 pieces of gear, and when people find out which set will give you a 0.01 DPS advantage over the rest, people wont care about the rest.

[Martel]

the upgrade from skirmish ilvl items to 119 is a bit confuseing, what happens to your augments on your armor? ¬.¬ Also fuck sea of red... dear lord there is too much red in this game atm.

I think red is fine, as long as the armour it's stuck on isn't ugly as hell.... Hi cizin.

Now like, homam for example, was pretty stuff.

[Damane]

I think red is fine, as long as the armour it's stuck on isn't ugly as hell.... Hi cizin.

Now like, homam for example, was pretty stuff.

dunno i liked the look of the legion sets, but you never saw it alot, they could reuse that! Different colors! Everyone give me your rainbow shine!?

[Toth]

Yeah but that's the fanbase's issue. If the gear is as close to equal as possible, then people should not care about minimal differences. That won't happen of course

[Kincard]

People generally only care about 0.1% increases in DPS when they're playing with the spreadsheets since that's the entire point of them, but we've always had people wearing non-optimum gear because they were doing that event anyway, they don't want to do a certain event, etc. Because there's so many stats in this game different pieces are good depending on what you already have which is why people were so against the ilevel concept in the first place (boring straight line gear treadmill). I agree that the focus seems to have shifted a little bit from the start. Initially iL gear was almost all undeniably better than everything you could use, now the growth feels a lot more lateral (save for weapons pretty much always being higher iL is better, but as far as I can tell they balanced RMEs VS other 119s really well) so the iL label doesn't serve much use anymore.

[dasva]

Except SE cant make 5 different pieces of "the best". There cant be 5 #1 pieces of gear, and when people find out which set will give you a 0.01 DPS advantage over the rest, people wont care about the rest.

Can make 5 different peices the best at 5 different things... all in the same slot even. That was kinda the point of all the various 75 endgame stuff

[Mefuki]

Exactly. That's what's going to add gear depth back into the game. It's all about "incomparables" as the link in my signature talks about. You can basically apply the iLevel problem and FFXI as whole even to that video and see the obvious parallel. I think SE needs to get back to the "It's situational" way of thinking when it comes to making new gear and I think SE knows they have to do that for the longevity of the game too. Which is why I think it'll be a while longer before a iLevel increase happens.

[Damane]

Exactly. That's what's going to add gear depth back into the game. It's all about "incomparables" as the link in my signature talks about. You can basically apply the iLevel problem and FFXI as whole even to that video and see the obvious parallel. I think SE needs to get back to the "It's situational" way of thinking when it comes to making new gear and I think SE knows they have to do that for the longevity of the game too. Which is why I think it'll be a while longer before a iLevel increase happens.

yeah, i wouldnt mind some updated refresh idle gear, serpentes gloves/feet/nares legs/spurrina coif have little defense, i wouldnt mind some ilvl 119 kind of equipment that adds the same amount of refresh. Also some updated enhancing magic skill+ ilvl 119 gear wouldnt be so bad either, just got lately one shoted by mistake by an AoE because I went in (thought it was safe after the TP move) to recast Boost-Dex... Needless to say with all the below lvl 99 enhancing skill gear that offers absolutly no DEF. compared to ilvl gear I got curbstomped to the wall.


I am a bit worried at the next batch of enmity changes (if they do any). If done wrong it might destroy melee tanking on anything remotly hard.

[Draylo]

I wonder when the JAN update will be.

[Shenrien]

Probably 3rd week of the month, we'll probably start seeing teasers next week.

[jimbobsonofgod]

14th was mentioned for something. somewhere, sometime ago. My guess is when campaign is over they'll update then and start the next log in campaign.

[Revati]

Can't wait for 3 song instrument I might unretire bard!

[Kyte]

the upgrade from skirmish ilvl items to 119 is a bit confuseing, what happens to your augments on your armor? ¬.¬ Also fuck sea of red... dear lord there is too much red in this game atm.

What they could and should do is:

1) Drop the random augment system from it completely
2)Allow dyes to be used on them
3)*Maybe* revitalize the rest of the Evolith system to use with them. Under this, you could pick and choose 2-3 things that you want that are actually good and not +2 Blizzard MAB vs. Demons.

At least then you'd see a sea of red....with some black and white.

Not to mention that old balyd gear is pretty much junk at this point, outdone by Spark gear. Even the +1 versions, though there's the occasional useful bit for stuff like offhand weapons (at least until you get the Wildkeeper/Skirmish augmented ones). Which is kinda a shame, as they could easily have had the +1 gear match up statwise to Spark gear. I generally point people coming back to getting their initial armor/weapons from Records quest rewards, then using the Peacekeeper's stuff to fill in the gaps.

That's really not true. There are a few Bayld+1 pieces that are still good intermediate gear choices and at least one that's typically the best for its slot.

[arus2001]

Doubting you'll ever see dyes in XI due to how they set up their armor skins. :/

[Kyte]

Ummm, the original armor that the model was taken from was "dyeable". I'm sure it also wouldn't be that hard to add a couple other versions of the models, such as blue ones.

However, their system would probably require that you pick out a color and stick with it before augmenting (if they did go the augmentation route).

[bungiefan]

Doubting you'll ever see dyes in XI due to how they set up their armor skins. :/

Didn't they have dyes for the Evolith Synergy armor?