I feel like Delve just made 90% of the Adoulin content irrelevant

[Masamune11]

I see what SE was "trying" to accomplish. They wanted to create a system where players were forced to progressively move from one tier of gear to another. That system can work as proven in other MMORPGS and it's a fantastic idea. Unfortunately, people are finding it very easy to skip a tier and move directly to Delve. Essentially any testing that was done for this has failed miserably. With Delve, you can repeat moderately difficult NM battles to earn enough currency to purchase gear that completely trumps anything that has ever been released before. Why repeat Naakual battles? Why purchase Bayld gear? Why do coalition tasks? Why do reives?

Prior to the release of SoA, your typical top gear came from Neo Nyzul, Legion, VW and Abyssea. Top weapons were R/M/E.

Upon the release of SoA, gear that could be purchased with Bayld was released. Some of these pieces (excluding the weapons) were better than prior released gear; some were worse. All in all, the bayld gear was just as good if not slightly worse than gear that had been released prior to SoA.

In addition to the Bayld gear, we were introduced to skirmish weapons and gear / weapons that dropped from Naakual NMs. It could be argued that many of these pieces of gear were better (if ever so slightly) than everything that has been previously released to this point. However the difference was minimal and there lies the problem. If the Delve content is designed for players with Naakual gear and the Naakual gear is barely better than previously released gear...there's a HUGE window of opportunity to skip Naakual fights in their entirety. When only one person needs to have defeated a Naakual to start a Delve you have problems. What's worse, the entire groundwork for the expansion that SE setup revolves around coalition system...which Delve completely ignores.

The new expansion is built heavily around the coalition system. The coalition system effects the rate people receive bayld, the defense of the Naakuals, gear that is available for purchase, buffs during reives, etc. Thus, it would make sense that any new content would still provide an incentive to "colonize." Delve does not. Naakuals are going to become a one and done. Why repeat them? The entire coalition system that SE established revolves around the Naakuals and they drop gear that is completely inferior to gear that is easy to obtain in Delve. Delve made colonizing and 90% of the expansion irrelevant.

[Alhanelem]

Got news for you, new gear usually makes some of the old gear irrelevant. If it didn't there'd be no reason to do it or get it.

New content is generally released tuned with hgiher difficulty. You get old best gear to be able to challenge the content to get new best gear, then later you use the new best gear to have a prayer at getting newer best gear.

It does create a bit of a power creep issue but at the same time i hate content that offers nothing but sidegrades/macro pieces. i don't want to have to lug around 70 pieces of armor to play a single job at an event.

[Kojo]

Al, tell me something. All this fuss has been, mainly over one stat on each weapon; Damage. I've been using the GS as an example, Best you could get was 179 or so on Crobaci, which due to Ragnarok's hidden effects made it about on par with it, I'd assume, I own neither, to be honest. So, max we could get is 179 on a Crobaci, which jumped to 247 yesterday which is a 68 DMG increase. Now look at armor. Armor's equivalent to Damage would be Defense, Kariyeh Haubert has 79 Defense, Mikinaak Breastplate has 80. You see how defense is slowly scaling up, yet hovering abound a, IMO, decent range? Why such a jump in damage over defense? High damage, low defense, look familiar?

[detlef]

Did anybody expect Naakual and Skirmish weapons to be pushed to the side (violently, and with malice) a month into expansion?

[Kojo]

Did anybody expect Naakual and Skirmish weapons to be pushed to the side (violently, and with malice) a month into expansion?

Considering the already high damage on them, I didn't expect them to ever be "obsolete". They sure as hell are now.

[Masamune11]

Alhanelem, there's a reason I merely referenced "Adoulin" content in the title and not all previous content. It's expected that older content should be surpassed. This was a mere month. The biggest issue i have is that all we have now with the expansion is Delve. There's little reason to do coalition tasks, earn Bayld, etc.

[Damane]

Did anybody expect Naakual and Skirmish weapons to be pushed to the side (violently, and with malice) a month into expansion?

I think what people dont get is that the Naakual and Skirmish weapons/gear are specificly for those people that lack a relic/mythic/empy weapon and still want to enjoy content like delve. They basicly bring them close to or on par with 99 relic/empy/mythic weapons in order to be able to bring somethign to the table instead of haveing to grind their way to a R/E/M to be effectiv and enjoy the new Expansion and delve. It levels the playerfield to participate in delve, this is nice and very good for returnign palyers, this also enables them to get things faster/quicker done form older content.

[Hawklaser]

I think what people dont get is that the Naakual and Skirmish weapons/gear are specificly for those people that lack a relic/mythic/empy weapon and still want to enjoy content like delve. They basicly bring them close to or on par with 99 relic/empy/mythic weapons in order to be able to bring somethign to the table instead of haveing to grind their way to a R/E/M to be effectiv and enjoy the new Expansion and delve. It levels the playerfield to participate in delve, this is nice and very good for returnign palyers, this also enables them to get things faster/quicker done form older content.

So what happens when these new pieces of equipment become more common? How many of the new items are needed to make Delve relatively trivial? How long till it is possible for a few people to low-man delve to gear someone else up?

As once that happens, why would anyone do the old content? Only reasons I can see the old content being done is because people enjoyed it, or there are still relevant drops. Just have to look back at CoP with and without level caps to see how that works. It was a pain to get people to help out with portions they had already completed with the level caps in place, and now its just outlevel the content and burn through it to get Rajas.

With some of these new equipments supposedly being AH-able, just need to wait and farm gil to get one, and after that, will be even easier to just go destroy old content for only the best items for a slot.

Do we really want a game where only the most recently released content is relevant, and old content is only done for a couple of best in slot items?

[Zagen]

Do we really want a game where only the most recently released content is relevant, and old content is only done for a couple of best in slot items?

How exactly isn't that how FFXI was before SoA? How isn't that how FFXI was before the level caps?

The only real difference now is how drastic the jump is and how fast it was implemented.

[Demon6324236]

Got news for you, new gear usually makes some of the old gear irrelevant.

Some, this crushed every single weapon in the entire game so far as I know in damage, the only ones left are Ryuno for DRG, and Apoc for DRK, everything else is gone.