Letter from the Producer, XLVIII (07/25/2013) Follow

Not sure why anyone didn't answer this.

From top to bottom:

-Black Mage
-Summoner
-Warrior
-Dragoon
-Monk
-White Mage
-Paladin
-Scholar

I might've gotten the Summoner/Scholar icons wrong, but they're the only icons I don't recognize, and since Summoner is classified as a DPS and Scholar is a healer, I think I got it right.

well considering relic is already hard to obtain to most casuals (supposedly) umm just how much harder can MUCH HARDER be? >.> Also if they have a Masamune it would have to be a katana (it wouldnt make much sense otherwise) and we;ll wed need a katana wielding class/job for that.. i mean a pld with a katana just sounds all kinds of wrong lol

good because this isnt demon souls after all



speaking of new classes. how is getting ppl to redo old content gonna work? I mean lets say samurai and or thief dont get introduced until 2015.

right now when teh game is launched everyone will want relic so it will be EASY to get ppl to do those things, but what about 2 years from now when everyone who wants relic has it and now only the handful who want it for their thief and or sam are doing it but cant get enough ppl or have to shout for decades to get it... isnt this the very scenario the devs claim to want to avoid? How would they go about doing that?

Normal=Four players
Hard= Eight players
Extreme= Alliance?

And with each mode your resources go down while enemy resources go up?

From the way things look right now, gear will probably be closer to the disposable, quick to get, quick to replace model of WoW and its various "clones" than FFXI's original model of only seeing a true upgrade for a slot every year or two.

except even WoW has "uber" weapons and armor

I wouldn't worry too much about ARC/BRD. For 8 and 24-man groups, you'll probably always want at least one for Rain of Death. Whatever damage a party potentially loses by adding a BRD will be more than made up for by the 10% damage increase.

Except it doesn't. It has BiS at the time during a patch cycle and that cycle only. Sulfuras was replaced by Ashkandi in the next tier, and the original Naxx staves were trophies with teleports on them. Glaives were replaced by anything in Naxx 25 in the start of Wrath. Val'anyr wasn't anything special because the proc overwrote and was overwritten by a Priest's shield. Shadowmourne, like the Glaives, were replaced in the first raid in Cata. Rogue daggers were replaced by quested blues in MoP.

The only exception to this rule was Thunderfury and that went through four nerf patches before they finally just got rid of the extra threat on the weapon at the start of TBC. It was their first "uber" weapon and they admitted they goofed and nerfed it no less than five times to finally get tanks to move on to better weapons.

Well, Thunderfury and some trinkets, but even still they don't last beyond 2 tiers usually.

So no, WoW has nothing like Relic weapons because even the "legendaries" get replaced in the next raid tier.

Closer, but not the same. I see it as more of a blend. I don't think they are quick to dispose of the 1.0 gear progression, and materia REALLY made normal gear stand out and stick around past its level. The risk/reward of triple melding was great, and I hope it stays.

Even in FFXI, they've been adopting a similar model, where great gear still progresses without disposing of it by upgrading it.

Except that with the exception of the healer mace in Ulduar (which was quickly outpaced and rendered obsolete in sheer healing capabilities in ToC weapons as the proc was broken), every single legendary has cropped up in the last raid of the expansion so that's not really saying much. The majority of the populace didn't bother with the one deviation (Ruby Sanctum in WotLK) due to the fact that the majority of the gear actually wasn't really better than the previous tier (mostly side-grades, which was really odd for WoW).

I don't...mind.... a completely vertical progression path of gearing but I would actually prefer a blend of the two, yet I don't think it's realistically possible. Theoretically, sure. Realistically in implementation I doubt it could ever work because it would be too much of a hassle to try to keep the push and pull worth the balancing nightmare. FFXI's sidegrade mess only really works for people that continually try to keep up with the new content. For someone coming into the game late there's always been this massive "catch up" race that's only lately begun to not be a problem (but FFXI's current state of affairs as far as Adoulin/Delve/gear is a whole other topic beyond this one...).

You see you need a few relic pieces that are augmented (which is a grind of itself), you need NNI gear, you probably need a few things from Abyssea, you possibly could still need an OLD abujuration with augments that are decent, you need salvage II gear, there's more than likely pieces from Voidwatch you *need* for TP/hybrid setups, you need bayld and outdoor delve items, etc... and this is all just to get you ready for the current content. By the time you've actually gotten everything (if S1 boss drops don't decide to say "FU" as the rest of the pieces are ridiculously easy to get now) you're months behind and are playing catchup on what you missed while getting what you were already missing, etc. OR, you just grind money for a month and hope someone's selling megaboss KI clears to just bypass the majority of that.

Then you have 95% of the other MMOs that go vertical where you replace virtually everything every patch. For the upgrade feeling of getting more powerful (which FFXI didn't really do too well since most adjustments outside of your weapon can't even be seen outside of parses) it's great, but gear becomes less meaningful but it's significantly easier for latecomers to catch-up to friends and actually be useful.

It's a nightmare on both sides.

There's always Firefall's "No one drops gear, just components" but that doesn't actually strike me as particular fun even if it's technically better.

Edited, Jul 26th 2013 1:22am by Viertel

Dragonwrath. Also there were guilds having problems in heroic ICC that made trips back to Ulduar to build more Val'anyrs. Wrath was a weird healer game (I played a healer in wrath, doing heroic raids).

I get your point though, and some mix of the two might be ok. As long as SE is aware of the danger and plans accordingly, it'll probably be fine. Only way to know for sure is to wait and see.



That sounds like more or less what's going to happen. Where you'll take some weapon through a lengthy upgrade process. My concern is really whether that process is mandatory or not. Will there be weapon upgrades that are sufficiently upgradey for people who don't have their stage 17 relic? Also how DOES someone catch up 5 years down the line when raiding FCs are asking them why they don't have their stage 54 relic yet?

Or.. even the devs realize that the buffs from bard are hella-weak.. because they are.. For bard, it is hardly worthwhile to use Ballad with the mp drain on yourself.

Game isnt out and people giving up on bard? Im going to take a guess that the actual uses for bard havent been fully realized, versus that they are "weak".