Heavy Metal Plates Adjustment

I refrained from bitching about the Plates mostly because it seems on par with the game I remember playing.

100's of Salvage runs to complete pieces, only being able to sponsor a Dyna every so often for coins
or just being able to comment 100's and probably not win lot when/if they do drop.
Things of that nature, even if that wasn't everyone's exact experience I'm sure its not too far off.

The one change I would like to see is having Plates drop from every VWNM.
I have done a ***ton of VW and only have 49. Somebody had said something about
leaving a Qilin run with like 70 Plates as a norm... Maybe I misread the context
but even so I spammed 12 the other night and left with 11 and that is my record Plate haul
for a single run. (luck etc.)

In summary, I have no problem with the grind but as it stands the item only comes from one event
so it would be nice if they dropped from every arm of it.

I'm so angry that SE doesn't just send me a level 99 relic/empyrean/mythic every month. I pay my $13/mo and I DESERVE these weapons and I don't have the time to play like those no-life elitists ***.

I'm going to quit if this doesn't happen, who's with me?

ok do it. well? im waiting!

Be lucky we are able to get elite weapons like emp and relic nowadays. I remember when i first read that relics were so rare that they said only a few players will ever own one. I played for 5+ years not having the best weapon for any job and now have 3 emps. Yea, SE admitted that abyssea was a mistake and now have tanaka trying to put the awe back into the game. Remember when you would see a relic weapon and be amazed? Or even a HQ armor piece that was so rare that only a few was even on the AH? So many options out there now that even a relic/emp weapon may not be the best choice as it once was. I mean there was a time when gear showed that person was dedicated to that job. Now it means that someone either has a few friends, a little gil, or owns a few accounts and can duo/trio box etc., i'd be happy to see something in game that showed hard work and determination paid off. Instead everyone wants to be elitist and only put forth little to no effort. Bring on the 99 nevergonnaownoneinmylifetime weapons! We could use the awe back in this game.

it alway amazes me how ppl can demand they deserve something without an effort.

I wonder how they are as an employee

I DEMAND its easier to get a raise or a bonus cause i don't have the dedication or time like my colleagues to put in more effort for the company.
So i should be rewarded equally anyway...


I just don't get that mentally. you get what you pay for and if you don't wanna pay the price for Ferrari then don't, and go buy a used minivan instead
its you choice what you want and prioritize but don't demand Ferrari becomes cheaper cause you can't afford it.

any choice you make you select something away. live with it its life.

personally i decided not to prioritize 1500 HMP and instead focus on making small emp85 and emp90 for my other jobs.
Thats my choice because i don't have the dedication/resources for it
You don't see me whine about it.

Yeah, I chose to prioritize 100GS over HMPs because the former will make the latter go much smoother, lol.

who's asking to "deverse something without effort?" that's the idea behind this.. rather then someone with capped gil from a glitch just buying the plates and not putting in an effort.......... making the items either rare/ex or ex (ex would make them stackable) would mean someone would actually have to go out and do some work for them. oh no, but that'd be toooo easy, ya.. cause buying them isn't easier.. (insert sarcasm.)

may be sarcastic but i tend to agree. i read a bunch of bandwagon people in this thread ripping on people who want this grandiose trial just a tad bit easier. but how many of you actually went to voidwatch and earned every single hmp? how many of those were bought? if you bought one, then you have no place to rip on others for wanting something a little easier to obtain without spending a mint in gil. how does the saying go? let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

If there will be no other paths offering heavy metal plates moving forwards I for one would like to see the total lowered. The drop rates on pouches from zilart is extremely hit and miss.

I say this because if your building a mythic and on alex's, you do salvage your ALWAYS gona get alex (and yes people buy) your always able to edge just that little bit closer every time you do it. relic you can do dyna every day now farming on average solo 100-200 coins, solo in dreamlands (maybe more i dunno but on nin I get 100-120).....

With heavy metal plates you cant just solo them you need the group to fight the mob for a "chance" at a pouch (yes you need more than one for salvage I am well aware of this before any one says). Or gil farming to buy... which I don't wanna do I want to earn them to upgrade.

However to me it seems like upgrading my ochain will take significantly longer than just doing an aegis (which I now have started because frankly you should have both so I am gona try and do it). I have become a bit disheartened by the sheer number / small chance of even obtaining metals that my focus is waning on voidwatch.

I care not for numbers if I am seeing a progression of sorts towards my trial when I do an event because you can see "the light at the end of the tunnel" with relics and mythics that kind of pregression you can see and its guranteed if you put in the 2 hrs for dyna or salvage your gona get something.

I could spend 8 hrs in voidwatch and not obtain a single pouch.... no pregression towards the trial makes you not wanna do it at all.

If there are more alternatives to obtain metal / drop rates improved keep the 1500 the same for all i care. I would still put in the time to build 100%

I hope this came across right, in the sense I like seeing progression, I like working towards things if I can see what I am doing has some benefit to what im trying to achieve.

1500 hmp is fine. If you can't make the money to buy em then be happy with your perfectly fine 90. Only empy really worth upgrading to 99 is the harp anyways.

well about the alexandrite thing too, you could never get a boss purse and get straight 5 alex cotton purses too. sometimes it is hit or miss on a salvage run, unless you can get people to spam ssr for you (unlikely).

even still with that, it takes a year of daily salvage to farm enough. that's kind of crazy :X but i understand what you mean.

Couple questions...

If buying them is so much easier... 1. Why are people still complaining? 2. Why aren't more people finished?

How is it that going to the events and getting them work, but (doingwhatever) and saving your gil to buy it not work? Since when did everyone with a lot of gil get it by cheating or buying it? When did people stop crafting? When did people stop sacrificing other purchases for things like this?

When did comments along the lines of "F--- SE! This trial is f-----g b------t!" become the same as "excuse me, but would you consider making this trial just a tad easier?" Because, the people posting thought out alternatives/suggestions get respect. It's the "it's too hard, I can't do it, everyone else is better than me and I don't like it" crowd that gets the hate.

How many people - especially before the changes to dynamis - built a relic without buying currency? Or a mythic without buying alexandrite? Did they not work? Are they, too, your "sinners?"

How is it "bandwagon" to be against making the last trials completable in a short time? The bandwagon people are those saying that everyone should have everything anytime they want. And they're everywhere. I'd say the definite minority are the people who are up to waiting to be able to finish.

No.

This is a good attitude:

When did this game get the "Everyone should have the super weapon given to them attitude?"

To get the best you have to work hard to get it, which involves repeating the same stuff over and over again, which has always been a triat of FF games.

Yes this mean you actually have to do something to make some gil too, there is crafting, daily namis and other events that are VERY easy that you can earn gil from to pay for your plates.

So instead of posting here saying 1500 is too much cause they dont drop or they are 100k+ each.. it's called get to work.

I knew a few people that are close to finish with their 1500, but then they are crafters and make good use of their time and arent spending all their time on the forums complaining that 1500 is too much.

Lately it has been the same for everything. Everytime something takes actual work or whatever, people go "OMG WHY IS THIS SO HARD" "I PAY FOR THE GAME I JUST DESERVE THE WEAPON"

/rant off

this'll be the last post for me on this thread, people don't seem to want to think about the idea. this doesn't change the difficulty, it changes the method of aquisition. idc if it goes to 750 plates, tbh all i want is it to be ex instead of tradable. but no one seems to understand that. anyways, ty for those who actually listened.

1500 HMPs for a cosmetic upgrade or 2-3 relics + 4-6 Lv.85 Emps + still having a social, family life, career and finshing my MBA.

SE is right to expect me to get 1500 HMPs.
So are all you other elite basement children.

I'm so ashamed I will never be able to spend 500-700 hours repeating the same mind numbing content.
But you hamsters keep running that wheel and fueling SE's warped and skewed take of "fun content".

I'm not gonna say 1500 is not excessive. In my experience alone it has been. Yeah i could do Dynamis and sell the currency but wait... i have friends that im helping build relics daily, so yeah barring a few days here and there where we do gil runs generally we building relics, so dyna as a source of regular income isnt open to me.

Now im gonna be told "hey do Qilin and get pouches!". In 40-50 Qilin's i have gotten 1 pouch with 14 plates in it. That has been the ONLY pouch i have ever got in VW. Yeah my luck sucks big time no doubt, BUT with that much of a shitty drop rate if i wanna progress i am forced to buy. i cant even farm the blasted things.

So yeah from my stand point 1500 is excessive. But i say this only because i dont get any HMP from VW at all >.>

This i agree with, You can play a MMO for fun and be contempt with what you got. If you want the best of the best you have to put in the effort for it. the items that are top tier are not mandatory to complete any VW shout or anything in this game.

SE has never said that if you dont have a Empy or a Mythic or a Relic you cant do XYZ and till they do the argument that MMO is suppose to be for fun and not work stand. You want the best you work for it.

I agree Abyssea has created noobs, and i agree the game has become far more accessible and a lot more has become open to all. But i still believe in the notion, that if you want the best, you have to put the time in to get it.

If you dont want to put the time in then be contempt with what ya got. I agree 1500 is excessive to me at least cause in 40-50 Qilin i got 1 pouch thats horrid :/ but barring that i think its fine. Just make the drops a lil better is all it needs.

Since I'm one of those no-lifers with a 99 empyrean, I thought I'll add my 2 cents about the subject at hand.

The heavy metal plate trial is doable. Not easy, extremely frustrating, but doable. Now, I don't fish(bot), I don't have the "right" crafts leveled (ok red curry buns sells well but dragon meat isn't THAT plentiful), and I don't multi box. I still bought the majority of my plates, earned my gil by doing dynamis (which got less and less profitable) to the point where I wanted to throw up at the thought of ever entering dynamis again, random item farming, cruor -> gil and just about anything else I could think of that could net me a profit.

If I was going to take my empyrean to 95 and not buy any plates, I'd still be stuck at around maybe 350ish/1500 (counting the plates I got myself while working on the trial, and the plates I've got after finishing). The random drop rate of singles and pouches is terrible. I've done 8 Qilins in a row and gotten 3 pouches = 27 plates in total. I've done 16 Oilins in a row and not a single pouch for me. It wouldn't hurt for SE to add a single plate as a 100% drop in Jeuno and Zilart T3 fights (in a separate chest slot). There's no way that would break the game and make 95+ empyreans too easy to obtain. But it might give those working on 95 empyrean, some sense of progress when doing these fights, instead of leaving them with logs and ores only.

For the record, I would almost certainly still be on the heavy metal trial if not for being blessed with some absolutely amazing friends.

Update for me as well. I finished Farming Gil and Voidwatch, so now I'm down to Einherjar as my only "productive" thing to do. I have been leveling subcrafts and collecting all the Salvage gear out of boredom.

This update will temporarily restore Voidwatch to my list, but probably not for very long based on the .dat mined drops.

This update will add Neo-Nyzul Isle, which will be nice as a once-a-week event.

I'm on record around here bitching about the plates trial, but the longer I go the more it doesn't seem that unreasonable.

The 99 relic trial still pisses me off the most just b/c you can't actually buy them reasonably. Cinder/Dross is around 700k/per. And even the PW drop sells for far less b/c PW sets are so easy to make now.

Umbral Marrow is still ridiculous.

But the rest of the stage 1 99 weapons don't seem utterly unreasonable at this point.

Not that I wouldn't welcome a lowering of the plate requirement with open arms, but I think at the moment the wife and I have around 500 plates and we haven't purchased a single plate. We've also finished one relic and are about a third of the way through another since the new year just farming currency and selling forgotten bits; we've really not purchased much currency at all (maybe ~800 between the two weapons), so we could have easily sold enough currency to complete a 95 and be on the way to a 99 Empyrean.

It takes about 200 mil to bring an empyrean from 90 to 99. That's a lot more of a time investment than previous trials, but considering you can lowman gil farm easier than ever it really isn't that bad. 1mil/hr, 200 hours later you have your 99. It took me about two months-ish?

Yeah. It's not "able to blitz in a weekend" like the 85/90 trials, but it's about on par w/ relic to 95. And given the Umbral Marrow trial for relic is ally-requiring pretty much no matter what (unless you wanna drop 200m JUST on your 99 version weapon), it really is easier overall than relics still.

I have to disagree with some people here saying that relics/empyreals at 99 are ONLY for hardcore/elitist players. Funny if you read the 99 upgrade 1 trial, SE specifically stated "the majority of players will be able to complete this trial". So majority means only the hardcore/elitist/worthy? Didn't know that. The afterglow I can understand being for the top only. But they did state that the regular 99 trial was for the majority.

It is for the majority. It is very doable for the majority.

It's just not very doable in a short amount of time.

The cinder/dross seems to be averaging out to about 500-550k/per on Bismarck. Plates 100-115k. There are a lot of people still bazaaring higher, but I only see them coming down in the grand scheme. I think/hope. If I'm wrong, this all goes out the window.

So it comes out to -- ballpark obviously -- about 200m to finish.

So, if you do Dynamis and sell currency, about 6.5-8.0 months depending on how religiously you do Dynamis, IF you only make about 150 coins per run, which is low average for a good solo/duo. (All at Bismarck's current prices*)

And that's using Dynamis as your only source of income. Figure in cruor parties/etc. it's a lot quicker still.

It's still a high expectation, but it is quite doable by any competent player with some dedication to do without having to rely on anyone else's assistance. It's not the instant gratification we've become used to getting, and I admit that even I kinda get annoyed by that; I don't think you should have to dedicate so damned much time to it every day.

That said, it is very doable.

In that, they were not lying.


Several edits were made to this post for clarification.

is it true those new crystal petrifacts are in same "treasure slot" as Hmetal pouch/HemtalSingle ?

Considering their decent droprate that means those new items are reducing about 5x more droprate of Hmetals ?

I so hope to be wrong...

I don't think farming the money to buy the items was part of the trial description. In reality to actually do the quest which requires farming the item, this is not realistic for the majority to do. Killing ADL 5 times with 17 other random people (or if you have a LS that large to do it for you) and to have to compete for the item isn't realistic. A realistic approach to this would of been :

Trial 99 #1 : Kill ADL 10 times with relic equipped.

Trial 99 #2 : Obtain 100 Umbral Marrows from ADL.

This would of been way more reasonable. Either that or make the Umbral Marrow have more sources to drop from (I think all the Arch Bosses should be able to drop them at a lower drop rate, and Arch Diabolos should also drop 1-2 at 100%)

i have gotten a few petrifacts and heavy metals in the same chest just earlier yesterday

Ah, leave it to my friend cyc to post something like this. There are a few people on our servers now with the 99 empy upgrades, but those people are the ones I've seen doing nothing but shouting for about a month to buy the metal plates. So unless if you're super rich/gil buyer or have a shell that focuses on VW, don't expect to get past the level 90 empy. As someone that is a casual player, I don't have a VW shell or have done VW more than just a few times for nothing much more than the wins. I have T6 Jeuno access and have no more than 7 heavy metals to show for it. I admit it was nice being able to get a nice weapon from abyssea, but because of my limited play time I will probably never get to finish what I started. I'm not upset by this and everyone seems to think that making an empy is super easy but everyone seems to forget the process of camping all the HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE NMs, which in itself can take 1 full day to complete a trial. When you start something like building a weapon, whether it's empy, relic or mythic, you have to realize that it's going to take some time. I think they should lower the amount of heavy metals required to finish the trial, or just make them drop off more VWnms in more abundance. I'm done with my rant so have fun working on your weapons!

I think if they're not going to lower the amount of Heavy Metal Plates required to upgrade your Empy 90 to 95, they should at least expand where HMPs come from.

I'm of the opinion that they should have T3 Jeuno NMs also drop Heavy Metal Pouches like T3 Zilart NMs, and have T1-2 Jeuno NMs drop Single Plates. It would give some incentive to keep doing Jeuno NMs.