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

Back in 2004, my friends and I referred to it as the Greater Dartboard Theory of Game Design.

I've seen the phrase used before, but never so aptly.

Bravo.

Yeah that's exactly how it seems. If they DO have a plan, what is it? Some vague generalities about tiered content is all I've seen. Why does that require the total obliteration of all that came before save for a few unique utility pieces? I'm no journalist, but I'd feel a bit better if they'd answer some or all of the five W's.

the beauty of the way xi has worked up till now, is all old content had a place, even if pieces of sets were obselete from their original use, se expanded on them to make them situationally relivent, examples like ebody or relics got stepped up each time other things did to keep that hard work still feel satisfactory, even if you had to upgrade from nq to hq to keep that relivance. that noted, most gear has worked together from all other areas to keep all content worth something, neo limbus/salvage exemplify this by requiring the original pieces to upgrade to the new, nothing wrong with that concept. game changes though when the equipment progression is halted in trade for a "do this all new content or get left behind" turn the game has taken

that all said, r/m/e doesnt have to all be #1 especially considering the coming of legendary weapons, but keeping the effort into making them should always be a priority for se, not floor (in some cases) over a year worth of work to build a weapon in exchange for the next best crafted item someone with 150 smithing pops out

I dont know if I'd try to apply to much logic to the overall plan. I work for a Korean company and interact with Japanese vendors quite a bit. They both share this same set of logic that, to me in some instances, come across as bat-***-crazy but if you understand the culture enough you can start to see how they think.

Not really helpful to the overarching conversation, but there is a huge difference in logic between our cultures that should be accounted for.

That's about how I feel. I liked that the old content was relevant in some way, and that progression was...I think someone used the word parallel in the thread earlier. Incremental steps are great, imo, because they will invalidate older content more slowly, while still allowing improvement over the previous top end gear. I mean, it's not as if we do Operation Desert Swarm for Venomous Claws anymore, so content will eventually phase out, but to boldly work toward invalidating as much as possible of it in a few patches seems silly to me.

The extreme jump in weapon stats is probably due to them wanting clearly defined content levels. They had to make the gear gap huge between content that is accessible now and content on the upper tiers because they don't seem to want well-geared groups conquering those upper tiers without completing middle tiers. Tuning fights to require huge DPS output that even the current high-end players aren't capable of is just a way to ensure that no one is able to cut in line, basically.

Right, they're essentially trying to do this too fast, in my opinion. It would have taken time if they did it in smaller, incremental steps, but they could have gotten there eventually. Instead, they've altered the fundamental shape of the game in just a couple patches.

I didn't want a gear treadmill. Plenty of games for that out there. The least they could have done was try to ease the game into it.

Here's a good question. What if these new weapons where made as a new legendary weapon with a WS attached to it with the same stat bonuses. Would everyone still be pissed? I'm sure people would set aside there REM and play with these new ones with a smile

probably the best logical breakdown I have seen here, sometimes i love your brain

But a lot of those huge DPS weapons are craftable and sell on the AH. I'm not required to do any middle content and I can still cut the line by throwing gil at the materials, only at a much lower cost than what I've spent on relics and a mythic.

as long as they dont increment rme accordingly then yep

What if they didn't add new weapons. What would non REM owners do in delve? As is 99 REM are pretty weak on these new NMs and even the elitist team will have a challenge. Where would that leave the rest of the less skilled/geared players? They are there to make the less fortunate players able to play aside you and participate w/o being completely useless

who cares?

Left out, as is the mantra of the elitist snowflake religion.

If they didn't add the new weapons the content would have been scaled relative to the gear we have now rather than to these new weapons so that isn't a great argument to make.

Apparently everyone cares as there is 25 pages of bitching but no logic to why they did this. These weapons where made to be a tool in new content not to toss up some eye candy parse numbers in old content. In order to be viable in delve etc we will need some of these upgrades. If there was a WS attached to these there would be no QQ everyone would be all pumped up about it.

True, but the materials are likely obtained from the Naakual NMs within the Delve rifts and will not be seen on the AH for some time. So you can either wait to buy an upgrade or do the content while it's fresh and obtain it that way. The AH versions are basically a way to gradually nerf the content. The crafted weapons will gradually trickle down to the plebeians (like me!) and the hard-as-***-now Delve NMs will become more and more surmountable to a larger portion of the player base.

Really, the more we learn about this Delve system, the more I think about how well done it is (regardless of the direction it's taking the game in).

i dont even think most people would mull over an idea like "maybe these weapons are placeholder upgrades til they figure out what to do with R/E/M?"

Not at all just saying these weapons will allow non REM owners to participate in these battles along side us. And us to use them at will to be more efficient. We need need these weapons to help us get this new gear. And wait for our REM upgrades in the future. Most use merrit WS anyway so what's the difference of a relic that U never use the actual WS attached to it? Should be glad these weapons can help non veterans participate in high end game content and actually be helpful

In reality it's Easier for them to make weapons to benefit everyone in this content than it is to focus on REM upgrades that only benefit us, in which screws over non REM owners that want to do this new stuff. So balance is give weapons to all. Or upgrade REM and screw the rest.
Which makes more sense to keep the largest amount of the server happy and capable of attending such content? And yes I agree the massive leap they did with this is uncalled for but I see why the did it in the way they did. If they didn't do these weapons we would have a lot less players that are able to help us with delve etc. now non veterans can be of use and veterans can be even more godly

Going on 70 pages on the OFs, just image if the unquelled fury continues till Golden Week ends and the devs come back to their newest work basically being the spark that ignited a riotous wildfire.

I hate to break it to you, but you've been on the treadmill for awhile already. You just didn't notice because they weren't raising the incline.

Don't want to spoil the party but "Golden Week" this year in Japan is actually a 3 day weekend followed by 3 days of work, followed by a 4 day weekend. The dev team is likely toiling away as we speak working on new updates to help all the bed wetting crybabies sleep better at night. And considering the work culture and stressful situation at SE right now, they're probably even working on their days off to ensure they don't lose their dream job position that they worked their balls off to get.

Golden week? More of a bronze week compared to years past.

I just want to take my kannagi to 99

You try to tell people that and they all become "NUHUH!" about it :(

Because maybe just maybe you're completely missing the point

and maybe just maybe FFXI is actually a casual level of the gear grind MMO and the constant "my gear/weapons i worked on for years is now useless" parade can go away.

Lateral or vertical, it's still a gear grind. If there's a compelling argument to the contrary, I'd like to hear it. If you didn't want to participate in a gear grind, you'd have no need for the old content that you like (and I like; you're not alone in that) to contain worthwhile gear, because you'd be doing it for fun.

There is no argument to the contrary of your point of "it's still a gear grind."

Lucky for us you're incompetently trying to argue against a point that none of us trying to make.

There is an argument that FFXI is turning into a gear grind though.