Trials of the Magians and casual players.

[MakkotoParinne]

As with my other thread concerning Walk of Echoes weapons, I have a few concerns and questions regarding Trials of the Magians and the casual playerbase.

It's all well and good that the super weapons of the expansion have come to fruition, and there are plans to increase R/M/E weapons in damage and practicality. These changes will keep many people happy and have goals to strive for in the new content.

However, there are also many people who do not have R/M/E to start with and instead focus on Trials of the Magians in their spare time. With the implementation of the new weapons that completely and utterly outclass Trials of the Magians, and with R/M/E getting upgraded, what will become of the Trials of the Magians system and weapons?

Surely this system was not implemented to be unused in such a short amount of time. Will all of the gil and time spent here as well be discarded in favor of the Adoulin expansion rewards? I'm curious to see if Trials of the Magians will have new trials added to keep the content relevant as a lower difficulty-lower tier reward option for those who don't have the time or desire to make a R/M/E weapon or try their luck in Delve/Skirmish without one.

Casual players like to set goals, too. I thought that's why TotM was implemented in the first place, so everyone could have something they can grind every day and accomplish over time.

Thank you for reading.

[solodragon1984]

I Agree cause i work in real life and only get a chance to play AFTER 5pm cst sometimes late as 8 and I don't MEGA amount of time to do dyna for JUST 1 base weapon which i have to get Coins and Mat.s just to upgrade it and then i'll have to be bound by the timer for the goblin NPC for weapon and for mythic same thing not enough time to farm Ny. Isle or salvage and ein. and need TON of gil to buy alex. for quest to get fully opened mythic base weapon and Empy. just not doable with out ppl but most people don't want to help if they dont get exact same item you are hunting for like Sobek Skin for example and those resting pop NM are even worse to TRY to do solo cause it is near impossible to do w/o twilight set BUT same as above need gil and time for those.. yes few LS sell the drops but for gil for a FREE ITEM that isn't for sure to get your drop and i tried to do it for scythe back when was worth it and didnt get drop and they charged me *sigh* which i asked and they said pay first and if no drop i'll get gil bk but they stiffed me and i reported it a GM and they didnt do nothing saying it wasn't affect by the ToS *growl*

sorry for long winded post bad at . and ! placements lol
and thanks for letting me rant

[MakkotoParinne]

I implore anyone who supports this idea to like my first post and leave a positive comment. Casual players need their share of attention, too.

[Duelle]

I'll support this thread, but I think the issue is more the fact that ToTM doesn't seem to tie well to Adoulin content, and limiting it to Abyssea would be odd.

[Zagen]

Casual gamers don't exist in a MMO, despite you(general) thinking you're a "casual gamer" you aren't, you may not have as much play time as others but that doesn't make you a casual gamer. Look at the complexity of any casual game and you'll see they are nothing like MMORPGs.

Okay that aside I get that TotM weapons were supposed to be targeted at players who wanted good weapons without having to do things that were perceived as hard. However they screwed up in that design. The reality is when you compare any TotM path to a Relic post Dynamis changes they are actually harder for players with limited playtime. TotM requires fixed times a player must be on (day/weather/NM respawns) and Relics only require being able to go into Dynamis, then killing NMs that are popped not on a timer, and then killing regular monsters with 0 restraint on time. Oh and for those who're going to argue that TotM came out before Dynamis was changed then a simple question; Why weren't TotM adjusted to keep them the easiest weapons to make? The answer is either they didn't care or they never intended them to be anything more than a time sink.

As to them becoming useless already, I'm gonna have to contact a GM because I haven't gotten all the Delve weapons in my delivery box yet. They're a stop gap or stepping stone just like every other piece of gear has been in the game. In some cases some of them are still better.

If TotM remain relevant until the end of FFXI what's the point in designing any other weapons?

[Sarick]

Casual gamers don't exist in a MMO, despite you(general) thinking you're a "casual gamer" you aren't, you may not have as much play time as others but that doesn't make you a casual gamer. Look at the complexity of any casual game and you'll see they are nothing like MMORPGs.

Poor choice. Why? The players that stay aren't casual, the players that leave might have been. In all most people fail to realize that MMORPGS are more of glorified chat programs with a gaming environment attached to it. Look at it this way, the hardcore people think they earned something and attribute these achievements to them being successful. Since the developers want to push gear to only a select few that are hardcore we lose a majority that will never be.

It just I'm heartened thinking about how so little people recognize the flaws in the system. It's not fun anymore because people are selfish and greedy. The whole category for getting the M/R/E weapons revolved around selfish desire to get ahead in a world full of PIXELS. What do we have now is more new weapons and armors with lavish capabilities.

The Mog weapon trials where supposed to be useful for anyone wanting decent weapons. Now they aren't even decent in comparison. I agree with the OP these should be upgraded to decent grades. Right now there aren't many new players joining and the ones that do rarely stay more then a few months. There is just to much to do and not enough reason for the HARDCORE players to notice anyone but themselves. This leaves the players who are limited to casuial play no reason to really stay.

After all only the gil cheaters (people who abuse the system to make massive amounts of money) and 10+ hours a day hardcore are allowed to really participate in the popular events. The others who would be considered casual might as well just F-off and quit because they're not worthy of the same level of gaming entertainment. This is fact. It's why I think mog weapons getting left behind is a bad developer choice. Without this alternative scaling players are forced to deal with the negative nature of what ruins the game for casuals.

[Gippo]

Stop bellyaching. Shit's not hard.

Step 1. Level whm or brd if applicable
Step 2. Buy Seekers of Adoulin if necessary.
Step 3. Join the first shout you see for a T4/T5 to get KI
Step 4. Sing or cure.
Step 5. Wait for someone to shout for a delve farming pt.
Step 6. Sing or cure.
Step 7. Get 30,000 points
Step 8. Buy a weapon you like
Step 9. Level that job.
Step 10. Forget you cared about Magian Trials.

[Kristal]

Trial of the Magians could easily be continued with moogles in Adoulin.
Oxyuranis (DMG:+34 Delay:+91 STR+11 Attack+22) becomes Oxyuranis +3 (DMG:+94 Delay:+91 STR+15 Attack+25) for example.

I expect these trials to appear with the same update that continues the REMC trials. Why did you think those precious REM weapons aren't upgraded yet? They got to make trials for ALL TOM weapons!

[Umichi]

Stop bellyaching. Shit's not hard.

Step 1. Level whm or brd if applicable
Step 2. Buy Seekers of Adoulin if necessary.
Step 3. Join the first shout you see for a T4/T5 to get KI
Step 4. Sing or cure.
Step 5. Wait for someone to shout for a delve farming pt.
Step 6. Sing or cure.
Step 7. Get 30,000 points
Step 8. Buy a weapon you like
Step 9. Level that job.
Step 10. Forget you cared about Magian Trials.

except you forgot one thing you're hypothetically telling me to go level a job or jobs that I may or may not like for the sake of getting a weapon for a job I enjoy...... Sarick has it spot on, to many selfish players in this game I'm tired of seeing so many people telling me I have to do something against my will in this game because it's for the better or something similar to this line..


This game is broken, but it's not the developers fault or coding sadly.

[Zagen]

except you forgot one thing you're hypothetically telling me to go level a job or jobs that I may or may not like for the sake of getting a weapon for a job I enjoy...... Sarick has it spot on, to many selfish players in this game I'm tired of seeing so many people telling me I have to do something against my will in this game because it's for the better or something similar to this line..


This game is broken, but it's not the developers fault or coding sadly.

Ok new set of steps for those who don't believe in "the ends justify the means" type of logic.

Step 1: Stay on whatever job you want.
Step 2: Research T4/5 Delve NMs (lots of info already out there about the gimmicks and setups on how to take them down).
Step 3: Shout for a group based on research done in Step 2.
Step 4: Go fight said monster for the relevant KI.
Step 5: Research Delve Fracture farming (not much to learn pretty much merit style fighting with a PLD or 2 holding NMs.
Step 6: Build your Delve Weapons.

Congrats you now have the new time sink weapons that are even easier to make than TotM because you don't have to wait for NMs to spawn/respawn (yay pop/instance NMs for the KIs), you don't have to wait for the right time of day (in game), and you definitely don't have to wait for the right of the year (in game) to ensure plentiful weather you want. Don't even have to kill hundreds to thousands of monsters as you could in theory just by all your airlixirs/plasm (via eating pop items).

Repeat the steps above with T1,2, or 3 Delve NMs and you'll also unlock the Delve armors.

The game is broken because people who don't want to conform to the player established "cookie cutter" setups are too damn lazy to lead so they avoid conformity and increase diversity.