Dev Tracker: Discussion

[urat]

Yeah I'm pretty sure every job has at least 1 if not 2 pieces minimum from Escha that are unequivocally best for whatever.

Most of these are side grades though that are maybe 1-2% better than other gear players may already have.

The other good items are generally T1 drops, and a lot of players already farmed them and never looked back at escha after that.

The rest of the population is probably so overwhelmed with stat vomit they may not even know a piece of gear is good for them from escha because theres a billion stats on it.

[Sechs]

It's some of the best gear in the game for various jobs, why wouldn't you give a crap? Silt is one thing, but gear isn't lacking.

I think it's the old issue with "first impressions".
When something makes a bad first impression with you, it's hard to make you change that impression even if things aren't any longer as bad as they were when you first formulated that impression.
Silt is annoying to farm, the necessity of having to go back and forth to buy that KI and the fact that nobody can help you (think about the typical situation of: "Ok I'm your friend, I don't need anything from that but I'm gonna help you kill that NM") wihout having to spend silt to do so.
NMs aren't hard for experienced and coordinated groups and the scaling is much better than the delve one, but at the same time some NMs are really annoying and require steeper setups than the average difficulty stuff has been requiring over the last 1+ year (we could blame it on people being spoiled, but that doesn't change the outcome).
Then there's the popping system. Wanna talk about the stupid necessity of farming stuff from the Boyahda Crab or the Fei'Yin fomor NMs? Or the incredibly annoying requirements for the HELM nms? (T3 pop conditions are fine instead, I guess).
It's a system that's not self-sufficient. You cannot go in Escha and farm stuff in there, it requires other things in an attempt to: 1) Slow down progression (gating), 2) Keep other content still relevant and "force" people to do it (Unity NMs).

Also there is no degree of control on the drops (cannot "proc" to increase drop rates, TH is the only thing) and there is no efficient way to farm currency to buy Eschalixirs (no, let's not talk about Beads please).
There also is no "consolation" prize for when you farm something and cannot get what you want, and NMs do not give good CP/XP either when you kill them.
There is no sense of "progression" like "ok I didn't get what I wanted but at least I got plasm".


Last but not least, the quality of the drops. Excluding the weapons and bodies from T3/HELM, which have an annoyingly low drop rate, the rest of the drop isn't particularly stellar. Yes some items are absolutely fantastic, the the majority of pieces are sidegrades or very very small upgrades. It would've been perfectly fantastic with the gearing standards of many years ago, but lately people have been used to a different approach with itemization and do not get surprised by items which aren't overwhelming or noticeable upgrades, and there aren't many of those with Escha.
A lot of the items have very strange things with either the jobs that can equip them ("Wow this would be nice, too bad only 2 of my 3 jobs that need it can equip it") or have mixed up stats ("Wow if only this body didn't have fast cast and magic accuracy that my DD doesn't need" or "If only I could mix this stat from path A and this other stat from path B")

It's all small things that, alone, do not mean much and just leave a little sour taste in the back side of your mouth. But when you put them all together it kinda creates a different scenario, and I can perfectly understand why some people aren't overly excited about farming Escha stuff and, as such, haven't been bothered to do so yet.

[BerenTebogo]

People talking about sidegrades like this isn't FFXI.

Gearswap exists. "It's just a side grade" isn't and hasn't ever been an excuse not to do something in this game.

Not wanting to do something or it not being worth your time is one thing, but people trying to be like "oh it's only slightly better it doesn't matter" are full of shit lol. That is literally every item in this game aside from Idris.

[vivbiibasjiu]

People talking about sidegrades like this isn't FFXI.

Gearswap exists. "It's just a side grade" isn't and hasn't ever been an excuse not to do something in this game.

Not wanting to do something or it not being worth your time is one thing, but people trying to be like "oh it's only slightly better it doesn't matter" are full of shit lol. That is literally every item in this game aside from Idris.

Not everyone uses Cheatswap

[Bail]

Not everyone uses Cheatswap

SOOOOOOOOOOOOO tired of seeing this same shit. Like every 3 months a new one appears only to either get themselves banned or slink into the background when they realize nobody on this forum shares the opinion that windower tools are cheating. Mainly I just came in here to say i'm stoked that I'll have 5 trusts, but sad that Ulmia will still ballad me, Joachim will still paeon me, and Qualtada will never hunters roll when I am farming chapters because I popped an xp band hours before and I never finished it.

[BerenTebogo]

Trusts in vagary should be pretty amusing. Can't really think of a good use for any of them off the top of my head right now, but I'm sure one will present itself in time.

[Sechs]

People talking about sidegrades like this isn't FFXI.

If you look at things with the "level 75 mentality" I can absolutely support you.
But over the last years things have been much different from the days of old.

"It's just a side grade" isn't and hasn't ever been an excuse not to do something in this game.

You're preaching to the choir with me on this issue Sath, I absolutely support it.
But at the same time I have to acknowledge that there is a threshold somewhere.
When you *already have* a plethora of sidegrades, when the new gear offers such minimal differences compared to the stuff you already have, when you're starting to suffer for inventory space... when this happens I can understand people being less excited to farm something in a scenario like this. It kinda helps to kill motivation, for a lot of people at least.
The fact that the farming process isn't particularly "fun" but rather annoying kinda contributes to this end as well.




Btw my previous post was in no way an attempt to bash Escha or to say behind lines that whomever farms Escha (I farm it as well!) is stupid.
I was just trying to offer a different perspective to explain why so many people haven't been particularly "excited" about farming Escha, since someone was wondering about it in the previous page.
My post is my own personal explanation as to why a lot of people aren't finding Escha particularly exciting,
Nothing more and nothing less than that. I apologize if I gave the wrong impression.

[Fwahm]

SOOOOOOOOOOOOO tired of seeing this same shit. Like every 3 months a new one appears only to either get themselves banned or slink into the background when they realize nobody on this forum shares the opinion that windower tools are cheating. Mainly I just came in here to say i'm stoked that I'll have 5 trusts, but sad that Ulmia will still ballad me, Joachim will still paeon me, and Qualtada will never hunters roll when I am farming chapters because I popped an xp band hours before and I never finished it.

You can erase exp bands by entering and exiting Monstrosity.

[Maurauc]

Trusts in vagary should be pretty amusing. Can't really think of a good use for any of them off the top of my head right now, but I'm sure one will present itself in time.

So we're getting 5 trusts this update.. Will the final update allow trust parties to alliance, perhaps?

[BerenTebogo]

So we're getting 5 trusts this update.. Will the final update allow trust parties to alliance, perhaps?

Would be cool, but what I want even more than this is for trusts to count towards shit like UNM / Escha where you need 3 people to do shit.

[Maurauc]

Would be cool, but what I want even more than this is for trusts to count towards shit like UNM / Escha where you need 3 people to do shit.

That would be great. We can dream, eh?

[Sechs]

Would be cool, but what I want even more than this is for trusts to count towards shit like UNM / Escha where you need 3 people to do shit.

While I kinda agree with that (oh how many times I cursed that limitation when I wanted to solo easy UNMs...) we have to keep in mind that such limitation has been put in place because SE doesn't want people to solo those NMs.
They want to "force" people to cooperate.
If they allowed trusts to count towards that limit of "at least 3 people" (which is something I would personally like!) then that limitation would have no purpose any longer. At that point might just remove it completely instead of allowing trusts to count as "party people", no?

[Fwahm]

I think it's less SE trying to force cooperation for cooperation's sake, and more SE heavily overestimating how much congestion there'd be, even with multiple pop spots.

[geno3302]

Not everyone uses Cheatswap

I'd be happy to ban him for you all if I was a mod

[Zieara]

Cheatswap lol

So much butthurt. BG membership really needs to come with ointments and creams.

EDIT: On topic, 5 trusts is gonna be awesome.

[Kyte]

How low-manable is Vagary right now?

[dasva]

Not everyone uses Cheatswap

Implying official gear sets don't exist now...

[dasva]

How low-manable is Vagary right now?

Depends on what nms you doing, setup and degree of pimpness. I believe a few really pimp bsts triod a plouton/perfiden run... but popping was mostly possible with the infinite skillchaining mandy which they are changing so might not be possible afterwards. And few zones I think can be triod as well though some really help to have a nice geo since some debuffs can be rather bad or just for the def down

[dasva]

Saboteur only has 1/4 the effect on NMs
Monsters which check as impossible to gauge will limit certain effects which would otherwise be powerful on normal enemies. This is intentional and currently we have no plans to change it.

Gotta love this BS... yeah too powerful to boost slow a bit more... but elegy being stronger already? Just fine. It's not that this really only applies to rdm and I guess killer effects

[Draylo]

5 trusts! Incoming serpent general screenshots.