Letter from the Producer LIVE Part X (11/11/2013)

[Gokulo]

New Raid: Crystal Tower: tomes and gear!
New dungeon: Pharos Sirius: more tomes!
New dungeon: hard modes: even more tomes!
New Primal fight: Good King Moggle Mog XII: haha, tomes!
New Primal fight: extreme modes: fuck we need more tomes?!
Aesthetician: new hair and make-up
Duty Roulette: drowning in tomes!
Wolves' Den: PvP
Beast Tribe Daily Quests: tomes?
Treasure Hunts: choke on these tomes like you choke on your dad's cock

On one hand it sounds horrible, on the other hand, seeing as we have to accept tomes as part of our lives, it good we will have more options, lol.

[Alkar]

Well you can't really win in that scenario. If they release better gear people will complain that their hard-earned Coil/Myth gear is obsolete after 1 patch and if they don't you get the "what's the point" reactions. Maybe the Extreme primals will have some decent gear worth farming, Titan should at least be on par with some Coil stuff as far as difficulty is concerned.

[Waraji]

Well you know, gear checks and what not. So not entirely obsolete.

[Kincard]

I'm hoping they'll be smart about the ilevel checks in the DF and make sure it isn't a really rigid tiered progression through endgame. Like, it's not hard to beat AK in your AF, for instance, but it's just ridiculous seeing so many clueless players/idiots/trolls walking into Garuda with level 15 accessories and level 30 weapons.

[Vuitton]

With all the various new ways people can acquire philo and myth tomes, it doesn't matter who you are, everyone is going to be gearing up very quickly via Rowena's bitches. I don't think gear check is going to be a huge issue. The DF isn't going to distinguish between Coil gear and myth AF.

[Kincard]

I was more saying that if they wanted to be annoying they could only allow you to do CM/Praetorium until you had a few pieces of Darklight, then open up Ifrit/Garuda/WP/AK for you, and then not open Titan for you until you had one or two pieces of Myth, etc (Guessing they'll be using ilevel average like most other games do). Basically it'd be harder to bypass repeating content in a tiered fashion by being a decent player (or getting carried/being rich I suppose). I doubt that will happen, but lolidunnoSE.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I believe that party leaders will be able to setup what they're looking for if they use DF but building a server party will still have the regular ol' filter of "LF RELIC+1 BLM AND GEARED+EXP'D PLD FOR NON-SR PRAETORIUM /TELL PLZ AND HOLD MY HAND".

[Waraji]

CM/Praetorium until you had a few pieces of Darklight, then open up Ifrit/Garuda/WP/AK

This is... dumb. Darklight is already better then AK/WP gear. Are you sure you understand the way Gear Progression works?

[Kurokikaze]

This is... dumb. Darklight is already better then AK/WP gear. Are you sure you understand the way Gear Progression works?

Seriously... Lemme farm something that's higher tiered so I can do lower tiered content. Makes perfect sense. lol

[Kiarax]

You guys completely missed the point. If AK required ilvl55 wearing your AF and level 49 accs wouldn't let you queue for it. God help you if you have something like a level 44 GC accessory. You'd need one or two DL pieces to hit the average ilvl to even enter AK.

[Kincard]

You guys completely missed the point. If AK required ilvl55 wearing your AF and level 49 accs wouldn't let you queue for it. God help you if you have something like a level 44 GC accessory. You'd need one or two DL pieces to hit the average ilvl to even enter AK.

Basically this. If the game was to take average ilevel like most other MMOs that do this sort of thing tend to do then the easy way to inflate your average ilevel would be to buy one or two pieces of Darklight. I'm glad some of you guys apparently play on a server where Darklight is handed to you all in a single set or something, though. Not to mention you can make that exact argument for right now- you can already farm CM/Praetorium forever and you'd get better gear after a while than you would have if you had farmed AK for drops.

btw even ilv50 on AK would probably bar entry for someone just arriving at endgame, consider how all of AF is ilv50 and bought accessories a newbie can afford are ilv48 or whatever

But like I said, if they're smart about it that isn't going to happen. Making AK like ilv45 or something might work, too lazy to math right now.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Watch them make it a minimum ilvl for every single slot, then forget that job stone is lv30 so nobody can enter instances as a Job until emergency maint.

Edit: Or even better, be really bad at calculating "average": be naked with i55 weapon, congrats you're avg i55. Just put on shit gear once you're in.

[Kincard]

if you were cool like me you'd inflate your WHM gearscore by wearing Gryphonskin Rings and then entering hard mode titan, duh

[Lucavi]

Basically this. If the game was to take average ilevel like most other MMOs that do this sort of thing tend to do then the easy way to inflate your average ilevel would be to buy one or two pieces of Darklight. I'm glad some of you guys apparently play on a server where Darklight is handed to you all in a single set or something, though. Not to mention you can make that exact argument for right now- you can already farm CM/Praetorium forever and you'd get better gear after a while than you would have if you had farmed AK for drops.

btw even ilv50 on AK would probably bar entry for someone just arriving at endgame, consider how all of AF is ilv50 and bought accessories a newbie can afford are ilv48 or whatever

But like I said, if they're smart about it that isn't going to happen. Making AK like ilv45 or something might work, too lazy to math right now.

In some situations that's not an option (skipping AK). For example, Hoplite head is just about BIS until looooonnnng into coil.

[Kincard]

Yeah true that they screwed itemization on some things- I dunno shit about tanking gear but I know there's a couple Toxote pieces I'd take over the Darklight stuff. My concern wasn't really specific to this point in time, though. How they set the ilevel requirements for dungeons will affect how endgame progression goes whenever they decide to add new content. EX:

I can't run ilvX+10 stuff until I've run ilvX content y number of times for tokens, or won the lottery for drops in ilvX+5 content or spent mountains of gil on HQ'd level X crafters etc. I liked that after I finished CM/Praetorium I could move directly onto whatever came next instead of having to sit there and farm that content for a while because of an ilevel barrier etc. Granted when you get to a certain point (AK-equivalent) you'll be doing that for endgame anyway, heh. I guess I just have some concerns about it given the way they're planning on handling griefers in the DF.

tl;dr I hope they set ilevel requirements closer to the minimum required to beat the dungeon rather than "faceroll to win" levels.

[Chamaan]

In one of his earlier interviews someone asked what ilevel would be necessary for CT, he said (paraphrase) "I'm not sure but I think relic will be required." Which leads me to believe ilevel is mostly going to just be weapon level, same as gear set ilevels.

[Tyrath]

That'll be kinda dumb if so. I've had my relic+1 for a few weeks but I certainly have not been coil ready gearwise.

[Kincard]

at least it'd be consistent with their df griefer solution, as in completely ineffectual at best and harmful to legitimate players at worst

[Raldo]

That'll be kinda dumb if so. I've had my relic+1 for a few weeks but I certainly have not been coil ready gearwise.

I... don't see how this is possible...? I mean, you might not be ready for Turn 5, but I ran Turn 1 in mostly Toxotes.

[Tyrath]

I... don't see how this is possible...? I mean, you might not be ready for Turn 5, but I ran Turn 1 in mostly Toxotes.

Well I meant the later turns lol.