Ok...let me level with you here SE...

[Greatguardian]

I'm sure COR, RNG, PUP and BRD would like to know where to sent the flowers. (COR and PUP would then remark they don't got relics anyway, but joined out of sympathy.)

This is only really relevant for Cor. Bard can just macro out their gjallar after songs. No one would bring a Rng or a Pup to a zerg anyways.

[Camiie]

The problem with kills is that it would be very unbalanced. PLD could equip Excalibur and Aegis, while MNK can only equip Spharai. And don't think you can come RDM/NIN (Excal+Mandau) either, because ADL doesn't strike me as a NM you want to PUG...
Oh, and don't forget you need to be alive for kills to count...

What about BRD with Mandau and Gjallarhorn? Oh and SAM can have Amano and Yoichi!

Yeah, just forget about making a reasonable system because 4 jobs can equip 2 relics at once. Yessiree that's a total game breaker right there! Some jobs can occasionally work on 2 "normal" Magian trials at the same time... I'm ashamed to say I have done this before... You know we should probably scrap the whole Magian system since that's horribly unbalanced!

[Tinuviel]

Reading several posts, I want to distill 2 very valuable messages that I hope the dev team takes out of this thread.

1. The player landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years. The vast majority of players no long operate in large LS that coordinate their player resources. Most content is done in small groups now... and this is something has SE has encouraged with the LVL cap increase (and abyssea). SE needs to understand that they created this landscape and design future content to FOLLOW THROUGH with it. WoE was redone to require large groups (just try clearing path+10 with 6ppl) and it gets done much less now, and Einherjar wont see anyone until it becomes 6mannable. I think everyone is disappointed with Legion before its even been released because they're anticipating it will require large groups. People love smallgroups because its more efficient, you waste less time waiting around on people to gather or waiting to find people, and you spend more time playing with friends. SE needs to accept that this is the direction the game is going and own it.

Conclusion: Designing ultimate weapon trials (lvl95-99) that require huge time commitments from a large number of people (arch-dynalord or PW) makes SE look severly out of touch with their own game and due to are causing frustration in the player base

2. Stage 1 and Stage 2 ultimate weapon trials shouln't be the same with different numbers, they should be complementary. OK, SE, if you want to get people working together, you should balance the trials and encourage people to work together by design. This is not hard. Make stage 1 of upgrades simple defeating of the target NM, and then make stage 2 of the upgrade to require x number of items from the same NM. This will result in large number of players to work together on defeating these NMs and all get their upgrades. Second, only a small number of these players will care to pursue stage 2, so the NM drops generated by stage 1 players should make it possible for a select few to accomplish stage 2. These drops should be bazaarable.

Conclusion: Requiring an item for stage 1 trials to accomplish LVL99 ultimate weapons is an enormous increase in difficulty for accomplishing the trial. Players do not want to be forced into begging friends to sacrifice time/money to help them for extended periods of time (50+ hours, etc). The challenge of the game shouldn't be to see who can impose on their friends the most, or who can take advantage of a LS's manpower the most. See message #1 if you dont understand!!

[Kimble]

1) When did RNG become bad for zergs?

2) You can be dead when you kill VNM for empy trials and get credit.

[Camate]

Greetings!

I asked the development team about the possibility of changing the trial requirements from collecting specific items to straight up kills of the specific notorious monster, since there were quite a lot of comments regarding this topic.

The development team had looked into changing the trial requirements in this way; however, for a variety of reasons they decided it would be better to not make this change. The biggest reason for this decision is that it was explained previously on the forum that the basis for stage 1 enhancements would be item collection and their thinking is that as long as there are people who have already started collecting these items, it would be best not to change the trial.

Also, there is quite a difference in between item collection and kills. For item trials, in an 18 person fight, one person will receive an item. Whereas for a trial requirement involving a specific number of kills, in an 18 person fight, all 18 people would receive the kill credit. While it’s not really as simple as multiplying it 18 times, since the basic thinking would be that the kill count should be greater than the number of items, in the event that we were to change the trial requirements from item collection to kills, there is a high possibility that the number would rise significantly.

Currently since we are only looking into devising the appropriate number of items to collect, I am not going to be able to tell you an estimate of how many kills it would take, but please know that there would most likely be a huge gap between the numbers.

[Nynja]

I'm glad the idea of moving to killshots has been shot down. All you have to do is look at the 95 cap fight to see why: anyone stuck at 95 now is pretty much stuck, and thats for one quick fight.

But really, I'm curious...how many Umbral Marrows have actually been created across all the active servers combined that the devs are afraid to modify the trial at this point? SE has changed things with greater implications in the past:
-Total experience needed to level up from 50-75
-Experience point caps
-Salvage drop rates
-Alexandrite for mythic (not that anyone was close to obtaining the 50k at the time afaik)
-Thief's Knife change (40 mil item dropped to a 50k item within a week)

the fear of upsetting the handful of players who MAYBE already started farming marrows pales in comparison to some of the above mentioned changes. Anyone who went out of their way to pre-farm items with absolutely no idea how many would be needed honestly deserves to get screwed. Theres nothing stopping them from selling any excess anyways.

[saevel]

Greetings!

I asked the development team about the possibility of changing the trial requirements from collecting specific items to straight up kills of the specific notorious monster, since there were quite a lot of comments regarding this topic.

The development team had looked into changing the trial requirements in this way; however, for a variety of reasons they decided it would be better to not make this change. The biggest reason for this decision is that it was explained previously on the forum that the basis for stage 1 enhancements would be item collection and their thinking is that as long as there are people who have already started collecting these items, it would be best not to change the trial.

Also, there is quite a difference in between item collection and kills. For item trials, in an 18 person fight, one person will receive an item. Whereas for a trial requirement involving a specific number of kills, in an 18 person fight, all 18 people would receive the kill credit. While it’s not really as simple as multiplying it 18 times, since the basic thinking would be that the kill count should be greater than the number of items, in the event that we were to change the trial requirements from item collection to kills, there is a high possibility that the number would rise significantly.

Currently since we are only looking into devising the appropriate number of items to collect, I am not going to be able to tell you an estimate of how many kills it would take, but please know that there would most likely be a huge gap between the numbers.

Ok could the Dev's look into making the NM's drop more then one of that particular item then?

18 people fighting for one person's upgrade isn't going to work. There have been many relics / emp's created and most likely any group will have six or more people needing the item.

[FrankReynolds]

Greetings!

I asked the development team about the possibility of changing the trial requirements from collecting specific items to straight up kills of the specific notorious monster, since there were quite a lot of comments regarding this topic.

The development team had looked into changing the trial requirements in this way; however, for a variety of reasons they decided it would be better to not make this change. The biggest reason for this decision is that it was explained previously on the forum that the basis for stage 1 enhancements would be item collection and their thinking is that as long as there are people who have already started collecting these items, it would be best not to change the trial.

Also, there is quite a difference in between item collection and kills. For item trials, in an 18 person fight, one person will receive an item. Whereas for a trial requirement involving a specific number of kills, in an 18 person fight, all 18 people would receive the kill credit. While it’s not really as simple as multiplying it 18 times, since the basic thinking would be that the kill count should be greater than the number of items, in the event that we were to change the trial requirements from item collection to kills, there is a high possibility that the number would rise significantly.

Currently since we are only looking into devising the appropriate number of items to collect, I am not going to be able to tell you an estimate of how many kills it would take, but please know that there would most likely be a huge gap between the numbers.

The correct number of items is 1.

[Chriscoffey]

Camate while I understand where their logic is coming come expecting 17 other people to get you an item WITHOUT ANY BENEFIT to them is not going to work unless it drops for mutiple NMs. If they expect relic holders to find 17 people to be their slaves for almost a month on ADL it won't be completed for most people. This doesn't even get into the ADL numbers for stage 2. I don't mind working and having somewhat a challenge for upgrading my relic but considering ADL and his pop requirements and killing strategy I doubt I see myself getting that kind of help.

[macross]

That's why they should just change it to getting 1m exp in dynamis with weapon equipped. I mean the function is already there since we do this for the relic+2 upgrades. Or maybe 1m xp + 1 adl drop etc.