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

[Camate]

Greetings.

Some of you have already posted the information that was on the Japanese forums, but here it is again, officially.

Required number of items
As a result of adjustments to match the trial difficulty, the below are the current numbers that are planned for the stage 1 version of the weapon upgrades.

• Relic Weapons: 5 items
• Mythic Weapons: 3 items
• Empyrean Weapons: 60 items

※As we are currently carefully looking into the number of items required for stage 2, we will let you know the specifics once the information is available.

[Lushipur]

they sounds good to me

edit: now dev team just need to adjust that 1500 metal plates...300-500 are fine

[Creelo]

The problem I have with this Relic trial is that it simply cannot be low-manned; it's completely inconsistent with how relics can be made now.

To get a relic, you don't need to have 18 people helping you. At most you'll probably need 1-2 other people to help you with Attestion/Fragment Trials. That's it.

How are future relic holders suppose to be able to get their Relics to 99 when everyone's said and done collecting their own Umbral Marrow?

Not to mention, could you imagine the drama that a trial like this could bring for shells that have 10+ Relics to upgrade?

"Who should get the Umbral Marrow?"

Personally, I would want to upgrade others' melee weapons over my own Gjallarhorn because they gain so much more at lvl 99, yet how am I to know that I would get the same help when it comes time for my own? Everyone knows how notorious it is for people to finish a Relic/Empy/Mythic and then just quit or take an "extended" break a week later lol

Pretty funny too, considering SE wanted to avoid drama through their horrid loot distribution system in VW.

This dev team is just not consistent. At all.

Ninja Edit: Ohohohoho, the dev team is consistent with one thing though: Disappointment.

[Zhronne]

This is a variable that I don't see mentioned enough. You are absolutely right... the player base is much older than it was upon release and time is something not everyone can afford a lot of.

Yes and also gaming standards changed.
What was supposed to be "standard" or acceptable 4 years ago cannot be considered acceptable now. The market evolves and so need to do MMORPGs.

Also it's a psychological matter. Using a metaphore: In this game you're used to walk 600 miles it won't seem a big deal to walk for another 800 miles, you're used to it and you probably don't even imagine that things could be better.
Then, to your big surprise, SE gives you a Ferrari to cover those 600 miles and many many more with much less effort.
You complain a bit at start, but after 1year and a half you kinda get used to that.
Then, all of a sudden, SE makes your Ferrari disappear and tells you to walk for 400 miles.
Those 400 miles are technically less than 600 you used to walk back in your days, but still after having tried a Ferrari they will feel like ten times as much.

They only have themselves to blame for the "Ferrari". They should have given us a Bicycle instead. They can't really expect to go back to the 600miles walking thing and have the player base being happy? Not saying you should keep your Ferrari either, but at least try for something in between instead of jumping from one extreme to another!


They also aren't considering "practical" issues. If you're "forced" to do Dynamis-Xarcabard to help your friends, you won't be able to do Dynamis for yourself.
And wanna talk about the congestion at ADL? Or at how "random" ADL can be?


Personally I don't think the number of Marrows required matters much, it's just a bad idea planned in a bad way. A display of how to design things in a MMO the bad way.
It could be 2 marrows (which would be much easier of course) just like 50 but it would STILL BE a retarded idea, period.
I still don't get what good is there in this idea of promoting individuality to the detriment of collectivity.
Why do they have in 2012 to STILL design things that requires people being "forced" to do things together that will benefit one and only one out of 18 people for an extensive amount of time?

I don't get how they don't even consider these and many other implications, it seems like we're dealing with people who:
1) don't play their games
2) have just started developing mmorpgs
instead of professionists supposed to have over 10 years of experience in the field.

[Lushipur]

5*18=90 kills are a bit too much, lets do 50 adl kills and i bet ppl will be less pissed off

[Zhronne]

The problem I have with this Relic trial is that it simply cannot be low-manned; it's completely inconsistent with how relics can be made now.

That's exactely the "Carrot on a stick" I was talking about.
The same "carrot on a stick" Camate was told to reassure us about.
The same "carrot on a stick" which wasn't supposed to be and that, just like most of us were afraid of, is happening.

You can solo a Relic, but then you need an alliance to get the last stage which was supposed to be "for everyone" because:

They don’t want to dangle a carrot in front of everyone saying, “you can make these weapons even more powerful!” and then make it so only small fraction of players achieve this.

It's completely unbalanced.
Tbh there would be a lot to say about Empyrean trial as well, but probably nobody cares anymore because lolempys etc.
The new WSs changed the in-game balance for the majority (all?) of empyrean weapons, the fact that we hardly play inside of abyssea anymore did the rest.
Atm Empyreans are looking to become inferior to their relic/mythic counterpart, but they're also looking harder to get to 99, considering the lv95 and lv99 cockblocks.
And we all know how players feel about doing something harder to get something weaker...
This doesn't sound very "balanced" to me. The 1500 plates was a cockblock big enough to stop people from further advancing into Empy trials, and it will be even harder in the future as people moves even more into newer content and Heavy Plates will become more and more and more and more rare.

[Zhronne]

Ninja Edit: Ohohohoho, the dev team is consistent with one thing though: Disappointment.

Right... can only think of disappointing things one after another since the patch after the level 95cap one came out.
How long has it been since then? An year? Almost... and one disappointment after another, with very very few welcome surprises.

[TMG]

5 items is still ridiculous for the first trial. And it's even more ridiculous that the second trial requires the same items. Taking the same trial and making us do it 1000+ more times isn't so much "increased difficulty" as it is "unnecessary and annoying" and it just shows laziness on the dev's part. They absolutely couldn't come up with ANYTHING better than this one trial? We, the players, have given a ton of ideas, but they're so stuck on this one trial and shoot everything their customers suggest down, why? We're the ones giving you a job in the first place, throw us a bone here.

I know I don't have a large linkshell that will give me 17 other people to go kill ADL 5 times just for me. I'm not going to shout for it either because nobody's going to come unless I get 17 other relic holders and promise them the right to free lot the marrow. No way in hell I'm trying to win lot against 17 other people because my luck just isn't that good and I'd never finish that way. A lot of people I know who have relics have more than one, and are going to need more than 5 of these... they're not going to go on the market anytime soon, if ever. So those of us who don't have linkshells are pretty much screwed. And I know that's a lot more people than just me. I find it highly unlikely that people can be forced to give up their personal daily dyna farming time to help farm ADL for the 10+ relics in their linkshell 50+ times. Stuff just gets redundant after so long and people will have "real life emergencies" when it comes time to go farm ADL just so they can log in later and farm by themselves.

As far as I'm concerned the devs are a bunch of lazy inconsiderate liars who just really don't care about the players at all. You told us it would be easy for most average players to get stage 1 99s. Go ahead and let us know after a month how many relics have been upgraded to 99 after you implement this trial. I'm pretty sure it won't be anywhere near even half of all the active relics across all servers.

5 is better than 20 but it's still unreasonable to me because I consider myself an "average" player and this trial feels far too out of reach for me, and that's not what we were promised. I'd have no problem buying 5 items, but I really doubt I'll ever find 5 of them for sale within the next year, and if I do, the price would probably be close to the cost of making another relic weapon, which is hard to justify for such a minor upgrade. Same exact reason I started a relic in the first place instead of buying up heavy metal plates for my Empy. There's going to need to be a way to increase the supply for those of us who can't/won't sucker 17 other people into helping us upgrade our weapons with no benefit to them if you aren't going to completely change this trial, or it's going to be impossible for a lot of people to finish. And you also have to accommodate for those crazy people with unlimited gil trying to do stage 2. Pitting the average against the psychotic for the same items is just... evil.

Still most likely going to cancel my accounts in a few months over this crap, but I'm going to see how this plays out first. May as well shut down these forums since you're not at all interested in what we think anyway SE.

[BigPapaBlueJay]

I vote for DL Stage 1 and ADL Stage 2. ADL from the get go feels like they're skipping a step.

[Cream_Soda]

LOL man I wasn't going to say anything earlier.

1000 to 20, ppl still whine.

20 to 5, people still crying?






I have an idea, SE should just make an NPC where you can trade your 95 relic and he'll give you the 99 version w/ afterglow in exchange