FFXI R/M/E Thoughts:

[Shaiera]

RME, these weapons take an extreme amount of time and effort to get, as opposed to much of the new-contents’ weapons. So many of us weapon holders do feel - “Hey, I’ve done hours of farming and grinding to have this ultimate weapon; why should you, someone whose done not even but a small fraction of the time and work I’ve invested into this, have anything at all, even close, to comparing to this achievement?”

These weren’t just ultimate weapons; they were long-term goals; something a person could look back on and be proud of. Honestly I think if a person can’t see that; either, they’ve never achieved any of these weapons, or they had bought the Gil - had someone do all the work for them. Most that have done the work and earned these legit have fair strong grounds to stand on, feeling they’re work shouldn’t be tossed aside for 2-3 weeks of new content, if that.

I do understand the Dev.’s other point-of-view on the subject though. If new content doesn’t offer better things, no one will have a reason to do it, or those of us with RME will blast through the new stuff without any real effort. On that point I do agree, that makes sense. Here’s what I thought of to maybe meet both sides and bridge the gap of this chasm.

RME should continue to have upgrades via Trial or Quest, however; it shouldn’t be like it was building it to level 99. While building my Relic, it sat in my Mog House Storage unless being upgraded, then, right back in there. It was only until level 75 I ever actually equipped it, and not because it was viable, but because the Trials said, “Hey kill stuff with this gimp weapon ‘X’ amount of times using the unlocked Weapon Skill”. Only at level 90 did it become viable; here is where I think a good change could be made.

The level 99 R/ME/s could be upgraded via the new content, I’d be doing the same things all the other players are doing for the new content gear and weapon, but those same methods could be used to further upgrade the weapon’s stats. So I’m not all alone soloing in Dynamis or Abyssea for example. I’m actually playing and doing content with the other players; already a much more enjoyable thought.

Finally these weapons have a unique WS; if that unique WS on these weapons is awesome enough to offer a cool Aftermath or doing say, a double-light burst finishing off a Skillchain; that makes them already epic. Just make it so players can work on the DMG, ACC, ATT stats or whatever it is their class would need. I’m not saying these should always be the best in the game, but on par or equal to the best weapon(s) that are currently out at the time. The work would still be involved to upgrade to that new point of content or next level released via new content, and no work is lost because you retain that special unique skill that cannot be done without having earned the epic weapon in question. Also, that way you’re not given a free-pass into new content since you’d still need to make effort in upgrade to stay current with the other stats. Something as simple as this Rare/Ex token is needed to upgrade a new content weapon, or a 99 RME as an example. My favorite part of these ideas that I’ve had is being with my friends, new and old players; doing content together; not soloing alone in an old area. While continuing to build my character soaring to new heights!

I do apologies for the rather large wall-of-text but that is how I think; the whole picture, so to try and share the thoughts I had, I had a lot to say.

[Daemon]

The way I see it, SoA is the current focus right now and that's why REM has been pushed aside for the time being. It doesn't make sense to implement REM right now during the moment SoA is being built. Otherwise time would be wasted making an adjustment only to be outdated again later.

On top of that I think drawing attention from SoA would do more harm than good until people get use to playing the new expansion.

Had REM been fixed before SoA is complete the expansion wouldn't be populated as much due to scattering the community to various parts of the game.

That being my point of view I think the DEV TEAM will implement upgrades when the time is right.

So hang in there I think they know already how the community feels about it.

[Dragonlord]

R/M was originally inteded to offer the best weapons for their class (even if some fell short in reality). These were the long term goals that the dedicated players had to reach for. Emps came along offering quicker alternatives for a top tier weapon, and most only needed lv 85/90 to be viable. That vision of the game has shifted.

Now the dev team wants a progressive gear gain, unlike 75 cap where things were all side-grades. The problem with the change is the people that spent X hours getting their long term goal, then having a gold plated version handed to everyone that cares to. Some got to enjoy their weapons for years, some only a couple months or less.

The dev team really only has 2 choices. They can continue progression, keep implementing new weps that are stronger than the last. But, the only way for both R/E/M and new age weapons to co-exist is for the R/E/M to be able to be upgraded to a point where they are slightly better than new age weps. This way, those that put the time and effort into the R/E/M weapons get their advantage, but others wont be left out of groups just because they don't have them.

[Shaiera]

I agree; I would like them to keep upgrades available to R/M/Es – have them continue to be part of the game, definitely. You were spot-on with some only having a couple months; two in my case.

With items now having an ilvl added to them and almost all the older content being made much easier – soloing CoP just as an off the top of my head example. FFXI, to me, is starting to move over to the WoW model, which I’m hoping is more just in my head, rather than being the big plans for the future.

I’m not meaning to bash on WoW, it is a fun MMO; I’ve play from time to time. The thing I’m just not to keen on is how fast things continue to change; by the time you’re finished with a gear-set, like just having finished it. Here’s the next thing and it’s so much better than what you’ve just finished, your finished set isn’t viable anymore, if you’re lucky it has a nice graphic so you can at least use it for transmogrification (Give your new gear the graphic of your old gear).

Looking back at the level 75 cap, TOAU, WOTG, CoP, all of these offered gear options - many different ways to gear you’re character - Limbus, Dynamis, Einherjar, Sky, Salvage, Sea; all of these are great examples. The bottom-line there were many events you could do to be a well geared player at level 75. Now it feels like you must go for this one weapon and this one body-armor; which is WoW.

Really, the only thing to do is wait and see, but in truth I think WoW is better at being WoW; I’d like FFXI to be a bit more how it was, rather than where it seems to be going. There were so many options of content and things you could do, now it seems the only option to do is SoA; if you’re not doing that, you’re not remotely close on stats and gear – you’re not going to do well using weapons and armor exclusively from Abyssea for example.

Please continue having methods of upgrades Dev!

Allow upgrades to mission rewards! (Ex: Raja’s Ring, Moonshade Earring)
Bring on the AFv1+3, AFv2+3, and AFv3+3!
KEEP R/M/E!!!

[Spectreman]

This is a joke. So you guys are saying that old content must reward better loot forever? Like your job is done permenetly since you got your R/M/E? Nobody forced you to go after R/M/E and now theres a healthy option for everyone to be geared in this game.

So your proposal to SE is to force a dwindling playerbase to go after R/M/E weapons, so everyone has to go through that ordeal like you did (because ou wanted to do that, no one forced you) to be able to be decently geared?

Because we all know that the community has no space for 2nd best gear for endgame. So if depends on ppl like you every DD will have to go get a R/M/E weapon to be accepted for new content.

Genius.

[MarkovChain]

Because there are no requirements to join alliances atm lol. I think it's a good thing that they revive RME. At least it gives something to do, not just staring at the log in hope you get to join a n-th delve boss run from which you don't need anything anyway [because you only need to kill them once right SE ?]. The only alternative would be the release of adoulin versions of ultimate weapons, which they failed to do so far. Also far game balance you can not put a single KI drop on par with the hundred of hours that building a RME cost. If you don't want to spend hours farming your weapon that's fine, you still have the delve boss weapons - they 'll come second most likely.

Someone tell SE to fix the riftcinder/dross supply because it's a headache. Level 99 empy are definitely harder to build than mythics atm. They need to tone down the difficulty of Ig-alima & co because right now it's impossible to low man (I didn't try a lot though, as even at 3M, buying rifticinder for our second level 99 DDB/GH bard was the fastest still).

[Dragonlord]

This is a joke. So you guys are saying that old content must reward better loot forever? Like your job is done permenetly since you got your R/M/E? Nobody forced you to go after R/M/E and now theres a healthy option for everyone to be geared in this game.

So your proposal to SE is to force a dwindling playerbase to go after R/M/E weapons, so everyone has to go through that ordeal like you did (because ou wanted to do that, no one forced you) to be able to be decently geared?

Because we all know that the community has no space for 2nd best gear for endgame. So if depends on ppl like you every DD will have to go get a R/M/E weapon to be accepted for new content.

Genius.

You should read the pros and cons of REM upgrades vs. leaving it as is before putting words in peoples mouths. The problem is a new age system that constantly outdates old content on a game that for a decade was all about small progressions and longevity. Its a major clash, and what we're going through right now is the fallout. People have their own opinions, mostly formed on how long/intensely they have played the game. No one forced people to do anything, but if you spent 500+ hours or w/e on a mythic weapon, only to have it obsoleted soon after, i think you'd be pissed about your time lost as well.

[Shaiera]

It’s hard to have one definitive solution; most likely the reason Dev. has been taking so long to have just that; a solution. Here’s how I feel about it - players that have chosen to do the more difficult challenges should have the better rewards for the effort. It’s true no one said you must do these challenges and it was, in fact, their choice to do them; no one forced them too. It should be obvious the reason they did make that choice is because they chose to not just take on a tough challenge but they chose to go all out for the best the game did have to offer. If you’re not willing to go the extra mile, you will end up with less, that’s how it works in real-life with most things, why should lazy people just be handed things; better things?

FFXI was released in 2002; from that time until 2010, 8 years - almost a decade; there were tough challenging items to go for. I remember it took me a couple months of doing Sea with my linkshell to get my Faith Torque; it took me months to achieve Black Belt via HNM camping and an occasional KSNM 99. That is the kind of game this was for almost a decade. There were many gear alternatives; I didn’t need Black Belt or Faith Torque, I wanted them; not only for their awesomeness but for the stature that came with it. A person can admit it or not, but I know when I saw other players, which were few, with those things, I really wanted to get there too, I could have settled for nearly gear equivalents and I would have still been a great player. Given the two options, I chose to push myself and try to reach what they had achieved; I knew many that were not up to that kind of a challenge, and I never looked down on them, we both made our own choices, simple is that. I think anyone that says you’re not a real Monk unless you have Black Belt should be punched in the face and called an idiot. None the less, I was proud that I did earn and achieve my Black Belt and I was happy to help others to do the same.

For the majority of this game’s years, those items were top notch, just as two examples. I even did the hours of raising my Guard Skill anyone who has soloed to cap Guard Skill can agree with me that it, at the time, was not an easy thing to do, and it took a lot of time. Even leveling to level 75 was something to be proud of on a job in my opinion, compared to a lot of games.

Here is Present Game:

- Get to level 30 and afk in Abyssea to reach level 99. Leveling to 99 is just a formality; it’s like giving someone a hand-shake. It’s nothing to be proud of when you can get to level to 99 in less than a day.

- 90% of most of the gear is dated and obsolete via old content. Faith Torque +7 H2H is garbage to a weapon that has 60+ on it, same with a Guard Torque with +7 Guard, what is that to a +60 or higher on a weapon? I’ll answer that, it’s garbage!

- There is a huge Magian Trial chart of people have dumped hours into for other weapons that are obsolete; I don’t mean R/M/E I mean good alternatives at the time before SoA.

- Parry and Guard were reworked, it is no longer taking weeks of long solo to cap the skill it can be done in a single day with two Atma and a train of Mandragora pummeling you for a couple hours. That time invested in a job showed a difference between an occasional Monk-player to someone who dedicated to the job.

So in summary, yea the population has taken a huge nose-dive, taking nearly 8 years of achievements away from players is a huge slap to the face; it’s not an astonishing breakthrough on why player-base is declining. So presently I feel I can’t really be that proud of my Guard being capped or the fact that all my items are dated; those that aren’t are much easier to get than when I did it, like Black Belt for example.

My Relic is literally the last thing I can be proud of, and I do feel it should still be top-notch, even if by only +4 DMG when these weapons their adding are getting bonuses well over 100.

So that’s my long-winded answer; we veteran players have had so much lost and taken away to make FFXI super easy for the new players. Most players just left and said the hell with it, but those of us still here that have dealt with all of the fallout have turned the other cheek on a lot of it, but R/M/E is where I think that line needs be drawn, how much more achievement should just be handed to the players that wine, “Hey I’m new and I want that!”.

DEV. KEEP R/M/E!!!
Give us something to reach and strive towards, at least one thing we can still be proud to have achieved~!

[Damane]

This is a joke. So you guys are saying that old content must reward better loot forever? Like your job is done permenetly since you got your R/M/E? Nobody forced you to go after R/M/E and now theres a healthy option for everyone to be geared in this game.

So your proposal to SE is to force a dwindling playerbase to go after R/M/E weapons, so everyone has to go through that ordeal like you did (because ou wanted to do that, no one forced you) to be able to be decently geared?

Because we all know that the community has no space for 2nd best gear for endgame. So if depends on ppl like you every DD will have to go get a R/M/E weapon to be accepted for new content.

Genius.

i think you are understanding things wrong. i dont think vertical gear progression is bad, but the current rate of vertical gear progression we have atm is TOO fast for a game like FFXI that eats alot of time up just to organizing a group/ally to do the content. Imho they should do slight vertical progression jumps every 8-10 months while filling the gaps in between with decent horizontal sidegrades to specialize in. atm we are looking at vertical progression jump since adoulin was released on every 1-2months which is way too fast, people cant keep up. first skirmish, then delve, then skirmish 2.0 and everythign inbetween. People are haveing a hard time keeping up. I am caped on delve and skirmish 2.0 gear, but I also ran/run with a very good endgame shell.
The problem is you cant keep that up for every 2 months, it becomes a giant pain in the ass. Not to mention the huge inventory mess and at some point you would start wondeirng yourself why even do the hassle when you can restart in 2 months with it AGAIN.

EDIT: on the REM subject: I dont think REM weapons should be made overpowered, but they should be on par with boss delve weapons or very very very slightly ahead of them.

[detlef]

Here's what people are looking for:
-Assurance that many, many (many) hours of effort making existing RME are not wasted.
-A reason to make new RME (which would help to revive the economy by giving people something to buy and sell, would revive currently dead content, and most importantly gives people something to do).

How powerful SE decides to make RME and how easy the upgrades are remains to be seen. What I'm personally looking for is an across-the-board adjustment that makes competitive or slightly better than Delve mega boss weapons. I think that making them much weaker or much stronger than Delve weapons would be a mistake.