Matsui: "Don't Throw Away Your R/M/E Weapons Yet"

Can you two please just yell at each other through PMs?

FFXIV.........

A. you are going to lose a lot of subscribers as a company if you release limited content with gear that blows out of the corner while explicitly stating that there is more to follow. A great many players (including me) will sit back, cancel, and wait for the dust to settle before considering reactivation.

B. How far apart were the last two sets of new gear released, exactly?

This still doesn't address the fact that FFXI is obsoleting the majority of its content, which is the main point here. If the playerbase knows new gear is coming, very few of them are going to bother struggling through current content for soon to be replaced gear.

Once it hits, no one's going to bother at all.

Except that almost all old events were invalidated until they created things like augments/tatters, Magian trials (for Dynamis gear), +1 armor for Salvage, and so forth. A lot of that gear had been outdated for awhile before they ever did anything to make it relevant again, and somehow gear becoming outdated in the future is suddenly a problem? That's what I don't get.

You're missing one major factor: defense.

We didn't have a massive defense patch for no reason, having low defense now causes very real and tangible problems. You can argue all you want about your old gear being close to the same, but it's missing a shitton of defense. If a mob shows up with heavy aoe and you're wearing current gear.. you're going to be eating dirt all day long while the Delve DD will not.

This makes a clear line: You are gimp if you don't have Delve gear. The difference between a Delve TP set and a non-Delve one can approach 100 defense alone, that's like having berserk up vs not..

A. Could be wrong, but I believe Abyssea offered more off-the-bat content than SoA has, mitigating the impact.

B. You can do the neo-thing once, but I have the distinct feeling the playerbase will not be nearly as enthusiastic about neo-neo-nyzul, salvagev3, arch-arch dyna lord etc. At that point, the treadmill becomes rather apparent.

Sort of. Visions offered Perle/Teal/Aurore and fast exp, along with some Atmas/a couple of accessories. Scars is what gave us Empyrean gear and Razed Ruins, and really paved the way for what Abyssea became. I'd liken what we have had up until now to Visions, and Delve is the move to "Scars".

I see what you're saying, but it's like "players are going to be disappointed if old gear is invalidated and they don't have to do old events anymore" and at the same time "people don't won't want to do neo-events because they don't want to do old events anymore." So is having to do old events for gear a good thing or a bad thing?

It's a good thing, as far as ffxi is concerned. Having a broad base of relevant content is the only thing that separates it from newer mmos with superior battle systems/content/dev teams/etc.

Players were willing to do old content because they already either had a head start (can augment gear they already have), or if they were newer players, the entire event was new to them. Their prior investments in the game were being recognized.

If it becomes clear that they are going to tack on a new "neo" and restart players constantly, I'm pretty sure interest will wane. That said, I seriously doubt they are going to keep tacking on neo's. If someone actually finds that an attractive prospect, please speak up, I'd love to hear from you.

I'm looking at my current gear sets (mostly TP/WS since it seems like that's what most people are interested in), and Abyssea gear is more or less the "oldest" gear that I have (exceptions being Brutal and Rajas, as always). I didn't have to do any of the old content to get it, and I didn't feel cheated by it. My TP/WS gear I have that's related to old content is pretty much limited to NNI and the one Proto-Omega piece. A lot of the old content is already pretty much delegated to situational pieces. There are some sky/Odin-era 75 cursed pieces that are still good via augments (not for me personally, but for others), but not many in the grand scheme of things.

If they adopt a do X to get Y, then use Y to get Z then use Z to get and so on, I won't be playing the game much longer myself then. If ALL the good gear comes from 1 spot, it takes away from the core that made FFXI so damn special.

At 75 you had Sky, Sea, Salvage, Nyzul and Dynamis to do and each one of them offered gear in its own right that were good for specific pieces or situations.

99 has Augmented Sky, Sea II, Salvage II, Dynamis +2, AF3, Bayld pieces, Neo Nyzul, Voidwatch.

While I agree, it's nice to see new contant added, it should not make the other stuff I worked for null and void, just different options such as some of the bayld gear is really good if you don't have neo nyzul gear, it should give an alternative not replace everything.

Case in points with the new weapons, they should not replace REMs, but offer Alternatives to those who don't have the time and effort to put into them or just don't want them. If you haven't noticed, SE has also spent the past few years building up the Magian system, and with all these new things, those items and the system are now worthless.

I agree with you that I don't WANT to see old content completely invalidated, but it's already the case that most of it is pretty situational. Very little of the Sea II stuff is worthwhile. The Dynamis +2 stuff will remain relevant simply because its so very, very situational. AF3 used to be the be-all end-all, but a lot of that is situational/already outdated too. There's not a whole lot of 75-era augment gear that's worthwhile anymore either. The use for these old events is already very tenuous. A lot of people were disappointed in Salvage II gear from the get-go because people found it "sidegradey." If it weren't for a handful of very specific pieces, I don't think that most people would have any interest in them already. Even before this update. A whole heck of a lot of my gear is already Voidwatch-era or later.

SE is in a position I don't envy. If they make new events relevant, people get upset and say they want reasons to do the old stuff. If they make old events relevant, people get upset that there isn't enough "new" stuff to do and say they're sick of doing old content. People get irritated with new gear when it doesn't replace their old pieces because they have "nothing to do," and they get irritated with new gear when it does replace their old gear because "all their work is invalidated." The grass is always greener, it seems.

I just don't like seeing FFXI get turned into every other MMO that's out. If I wanted to play those MMOs I would play them instead of this, but I like FFXI the way it is and don't like this new direction they are taking it in. Just feels like it will fizzle and die like the others if it keeps going like this.

Your gear may be all VW or later, but mine sure isn't. I only just came back a few months ago, and I've enjoyed all the content I've had to work with to upgrade my gear and the like. I'm just about "done" with Abyssea, but I've been doing Dynamis to work on a relic, and I'm just starting to dip my toes into Voidwatch. NNI/Neo-Salvage were probably going to be in there soon, for some spots.

Now, I'm not really sure what I should be doing. It kind of seems like a waste to get all my Voidwatch clears for the most part now, though it remains to be seen whether the REM upgrades will be worth it when/if they get here.

Thing was, they already had a basic model of do X to get yourself ready to do Y so you can get ready to do Z. Sure, you could do VW without complete Abyssea gear, but it's better if you don't. NNI really required at least full 90s for DDs and was better with VW gear, etc, at least from what I've understood so far.

And there was Meebles, and Neo-Limbus and all the other stuff as well. If these new weapons really are the cream of the crop and they're going to be replaced in July with new content, the old stuff really isn't going to be worth it. Think about how much time it takes to do CoP, even solo these days: several hours of running around, all for that one ring that all in all is fairly difficult to replace.

Part of what got people to do CoP (and Zilart) and a lot of the old mission content especially was those rewards--the developers had been very careful not to invalidate those gear pieces, so the content was still valuable. Where they couldn't do that, they offered the new revamps of content, and at 99, XI was really pretty robust in terms of "goals" you could set for yourself.

Now, as a returning but not by any means new player (started shortly after NA launch), I don't know that it's worth it to put the time into the goals I'd set, if new gear is coming out in just a few months time that is going to be clear and away better than what I'd have earned slaving through VW PUGs, for instance. It seems that the most efficient way to gear, barring a few situational pieces (like say, Iga Kyahan +2 for NIN's Utsusemi cast), is to ignore all of that and just do Adoulin, as the gear's always going to be far and away better than anything we could get otherwise.

Considering I disliked the speed of the gear treadmill that was WoW, I'm not too stoked about FFXI adopting a similar model. That it didn't have such an accelerated gear treadmill is part of what made it the better game in my opinion. FFXI was about slow and steady progress, and for me, at least, its provided a much richer experience as a result. I don't want to see it become just another MMO at this point.

That was all fairly rambling, as sometimes I find it hard to articulate the "feeling" this game provides relative to other MMOs. In the end, a lot of people may see it differently than I would anyway.

TLDR: I feel like I suddenly have less content to do than I did before, and that's no fun.

what I don't is the fact the new weapons are essentially "zerg" only weapons, so were going to have this new player base that will refuse to skillchain (in before everyone says they already do)
the thing about R/E/Ms is that there was some tactics with them and that they could be applied to skillchains, these new weapons are just going to be used for smashing buttons as fast as you can game and thats the point when the game gets boring for me. When skill is no longer a factor, and its just about having armor and zergfests.

your a couple years late on this

Alahra, I'm responding to you, but I don't want to overquote, lol.

As it stands right now, a lot of the gear you're talking about is still relevant. With regards to this Delve gear that's just released, there are pieces that are upgrades, but there is still a large amount of relevant "old" gear, currently. As more and more content gets released in Adoulin, less and less "old" gear is likely to be relevant, but that should also mean more "new" things to do. That sort of shift has been happening for awhile though. A lot of the things people are saying will become irrelevant are already mostly irrelevant to a lot of people, unfortunately. SE has done a better job of trying to invigorate old content than most other MMOs seem to do, but there comes a point where they have to release better things, or it just stagnates. There have to be new events, and the rewards have to be worthwhile.

sadly it wouldn't work. no matter how bad the community would want it. in the end its all about $$$ to SE. and seeing as the traditional FFXI we all know and love is steadily been going downhill (mostly due to age/PS2 limitations and more inovateive ways other MMOs catch peoples attention. such as no monthly subscriptions) leaving SE in desperate attempts to "change" the game and move towards other MMOs even if they are the last kid limping along (no office, i obviously love the game)

i hate to admit it. i think FFXI's time is nearing that of Everquest, and will soo be just a "trickle charge" for SEs account as they spend
%10 of assets towards developing new content and than charge $10 for the new "add on"... oh well. it will live on forever in my memories no matter how much SE changes it as one of my favorite games of all time!

I don't disagree with that, really. I think my main problem is with the gap between the Adoulin gear and everything that's come before it. In the case of armor, there's not that huge of a difference. I only see one piece of gear that I'd consider an easy upgrade for my current TP set, but from what I can tell, that's partly because NIN's gearing paradigm is sort of weird. We're the only class that values Dual Wield as much as we do, so it's pretty difficult for SE to replace something like Iga Zukin +2 or Koga Hakama +2, for instance. There wasn't even a direct upgrade for Ninja Chainmail until Thaumas Coat.

The weapons, though, are a whole other story. When the Skirmish weapons were revealed, I wasn't all that worried, to be honest. They were higher damage than REM, but generally higher delay and lacked the WS as well as Aftermath, and I anticipated REM upgrades anyway, since they had done the same with Relics before. I wasn't exactly expecting them to make the Skirmish weapons look like absolute jokes, though.

It suggests also that we're going to keep seeing stronger armor as well, and that the gaps may be growing larger, along with things like overpowered AH gear, as time goes on to "catch people up" to whatever new content they've put out. That's the exact model that WoW uses at present and it's absolutely terrible. It was the beginning of the game's slow decline when they started doing it during Wrath of the Lich King, in my eyes.

If they're really going to be creating that huge of a gap between the "tiers" of content, and gear isn't going to "last" in the same way that it has for most of the game's life, it's a fundamental shift, in my opinion, towards a model that I'm just not interested in.

The gear can be worthwhile without completely invalidating everything prior, I suppose, is my point. The game worked under that philosophy for 10 years, and it was one of the only MMO's I've ever known that did that. As someone brought up before, they won't be able to keep pulling the "neo" trick, either. They're going to have to keep generating loads of new content, and they simply don't have the development staff to keep that up.

They would have been better off with smaller, incremental increases instead of these giant leaps.

Considering all of the new weapons have a lot of +acc and from what i'm seeing on a current live stream http://www.twitch.tv/squishythefish the delve nms have some wicked DT- and some crazy +acc, it reinforces my theory that the weapons are Delve only.

But really, only time will tell.

I would say they wouldn't try something like that, not without marking it on the weapons themselves, but they've done stranger things, I suppose. Time will tell, as you say.

I'm struggling to remember, but when I quit mid-Cataclysm, wow expansions were definitely a gear reset and tiers (each new content update) usually were. There were also pugs all the time for older content.

And wow's legendary weapons didn't even survive the wrath of an expansion reset (though they did for tiers), a legendary from a previous expansion was only a silly trophy.

At wrath's finish, I had more hp than virtually any other paladin, and still kept other stats good (the paradigm of wow tanking was basically hp>defense>other stuff. -DT gear and such didn't exist). I had 43k hp. By the time I quit in Cataclysm, I had 225k.

Matsui: "Don't throw away your R/M/E weapons yet"


He should of made a new comment!
Ok now with the new 240 DMG weapons you can throw them away!

Yeah, that's about right.

There were still PUGs for previous tiers during Cataclysm, but they eventually made those a waste of time, too. Toward the end of Cataclysm they introduced the Raid Finder, which gave you an easier version of the current raid that you could use to catch gear up if you missed a tier, as it required very little in the way of gear to do itself.

Each new tier comes along with "catch up" gear now, that you can use to get caught up and get into the latest content. Naturally, anything pre-Mists of Pandaria is dead except as a curiosity to bored people. They even killed gold drops from old raids so people wouldn't farm them anymore.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, what is the purpose of "killing" that older stuff. They must have some kind of reasoning? (Never played Wow)

Most people did the older stuff just to see it once, mostly. They were also fun to try to solo for some folks (though eventually the huge gaps in power between gear from one expansion to the next made it sort of easy to do for a lot of it).

Edit:

I think I misinterpreted your question entirely. Let me try again:

WoW basically adopted the idea that they didn't want to spend resources on new content unless as much of the playerbase was seeing that content as possible. In its earlier stages, it didn't have as many gear resets and the like as it does now, but they slowly became the norm.

I always hated it, personally, so it was refreshing to come back to FFXI and find that, even with the level cap being 25 levels higher than when I left, a lot of what I remembered was still relevant, if somewhat reimagined.

Well, you didn't gearswap in wow, or most mmo's actually, so a new tier meant you needed a dozen or so new pieces of gear. It sounds like a lot of work but it really wasn't. For Tier armor (kind of like an AF released every content update), you got points for boss kills that could buy it. Rings/earrings/necks/weapons/shields/etc usually came only via drops, and there were armor pieces that dropped from bosses too, but usually your goal was the heroic/hardmode version tier item.

Balancing gear was also an exact science in wow. Items had an item level and all items of equivalent level were intended to be equally powerful. Best-in-slot still happened because while one plate body might increase your crit rating by 3%, another might increase your hit rating by 3% instead. Since you could hit 100% accuracy in wow, you stopped stacking hit at a certain point.

I know, right? It's almost like being interested in the quality of PUP gear. ;3

No, but really though... All smart-assery aside, Kenkonken would totally be my 2nd mythic.