Empyrean 90-95 trials

[Mephie]

Greetings. I figured with the R/E/M weapons being upgraded after the whole delve weapon fiasco, I’d write this post since you’re working on R/E/M weapons at the moment anyways. I’m not sure if there already a forum for this - if there is, please move it there.

Now I know a lot of you are going to say this post is just an empy holder complaining about their trial but it’s not. I will be using raw stats taken from the 2012 Vana’diel census to show the vast disparity between the 90-95 empy trial and the relic and mythic 90-95 trials.

For starters I had my friend do all the calculations as he does not have any R/E/M so there would be no internal bias skewing the calculations. I do not expect you to blindly believe these calculations though, rather I would encourage you to look at the numbers yourself from the census and calculate it out to see what you come up with. I will list all the numbers for these calculations below but for 90-5 trial the percentage of weapons at or above 95 for each weapon is: relic 94%; mythic 87%; empyrean 0.83%. While the relic and mythic hit a roadblock at 95-99, the empyrean hit it a stage early. I do not know if this was intentional. If it was, I think the player base would like to know the reasoning behind such an arduous trial; if it wasn’t, we ask while making the various changes to R/E/M to fix it as the numbers show a great imbalance in the trials. This is very important as the fixes are only slated to apply to level 99 weapons. The numbers below show percentage of original weapons at or above that stage.

Relic:

16568 at 4th stage or better [100%]

15582 at 5th stage or better [94%]

14951 at 80+ [88%]

14287 at 85+ [86%]

13707 at 90+ [83%]

12897 at 95+ [78%]

1960 at 99+ [12%] *1

Mythic:

578 unlocked or better [100%]

557 at 80+ [96%]

555 at 85+ [96%]

535 at 90+ [93%]

505 at 95+ [87%]

329 at 99+ [57%]

Empyrean:

72840 at 80+ [100%]

65682 at 85+ [93%]

26976 at 90+ [38%] *2

593 at 95+ [0.83%] *3

550 at 99+ [0.78%]

*1: The low numbers may be the result of the relative newness of the Arch Dynamis Lord at that point in time.

*2: This is possibly due to people stopping when they had unlocked the weaponskill.

*3: This is where Heavy Metal Plates come into play.

[Kincard]

I'm not quite understanding what you're asking for. If the changes are only going to apply to level 99 weapons, why does it matter that the difficult trial occurs at 90->95 instead of 95->99? Either way you're going to have to go through the hardest trial in order to get the weapon that matters.

At best you can ask for them to shift the Rift and HMP trials around so that the difficulty "ramp" makes more logical sense (all the while pissing off people who currently have 95 weapons), but I don't really see the point of that.

[Mephie]

I'm showing the difference in difficulty between empy weapons and the others at 95. The fact that the damage upgrade only helps the 99 weapons means that only the very few who manage to get past the hmp trial and the more reasonable rift trial receive the boon of that change. I'd love to know why the trial is how it is actually i mean is it a typo or were hmp's supposed to be a way more common drop or something? you gotta admit the progression is weird 50>50>75>1500>60>3000???? 99II is supposed to be the hard to obtain part not 95 <.< but personally i mostly wanted to show the actual data off, because to my knowledge no one has posted the raw stats between them outside of the census.

[Kincard]

If you're talking just overall, Empyreans had harder trials towards the end because they're much easier to complete the base weapon form for. At the end the cost of relics and empyreans are about the same. If there's any weapon that you would talk about being out of balance in overall cost its Mythics (30,000 is only 20x more than 1500 after all).

And yes, HMP are far more common of a drop than Rift items, and they drop from more VWNMs than the Riftitems do. It's still harder to complete the HMP trial, though. But like I said, there is a reason that the Empyreans have harder trials - the base weapons are easier to complete.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if the 95 trial or the 99 trial is harder, because you'll have to do them both anyway. I'm asking again what you're trying to show other than something that is easily accessible on any community site.

[xiozen]

If you're talking just overall, Empyreans had harder trials towards the end because they're much easier to complete the base weapon form for. At the end the cost of relics and empyreans are about the same. If there's any weapon that you would talk about being out of balance in overall cost its Mythics (30,000 is only 20x more than 1500 after all).

Absolutely. In addition, the balancing act between acquisition and completion of R/E/M's were addressed in previous posts (long time ago) by the development team themselves, rationalizing why the trials were set-up the way they were set-up. I have absolutely no complaints when it came to that because it made sense. Adjusting these trials now, would throw a perennial wretch in the process that may be impossible to overcome later.


And yes, HMP are far more common of a drop than Rift items, and they drop from more VWNMs than the Riftitems do. It's still harder to complete the HMP trial, though. But like I said, there is a reason that the Empyreans have harder trials - the base weapons are easier to complete. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if the 95 trial or the 99 trial is harder, because you'll have to do them both anyway. I'm asking again what you're trying to show other than something that is easily accessible on any community site.

QFT...

My opinion, this entire OP is irrelevant... the OP appears to be attempting to justify adjusting or changing trials prior to getting an R/E/M to 99... As someone who spammed (and I mean spammed) Void watch day after day for hours on end, over a very long period of time, then spammed Provenance and its prerequisite battlefields for drops that costs millions, then spammed Dynamis for currency to sell, only to rinse and repeat this process over and over again to gain the gil and items necessary to accomplish each trial towards 99... I do not believe adjusting the trials is justified...

1) Items have been introduced to weaken all Void watch NMs... many folks worked their trials without these weakening items...so the introduction of these items makes doing void watch a cakewalk (regardless of the drop rate).
2) Same weakening items can be used in Provenance battlefields.
3) Dynamis is still Dynamis...which means, folks can stop being "lazy" and spam for currency (there are still those out there that wanna buy currency towards upgrading their relic)
4) There's Neo/Salvage for alexandrite... sell-able currency for those working on a mythic.
5) With the introduction of Delve, plasma items are a big selling item now, (more ways to fund upgrade items towards R/E/M) weapons if you so choose.

Sorry but in my opinion adjusting the trials is absolutely unnecessary. This is an MMO, if you want to work on a trial and the item/s you need drop from an event, then ORGANIZE an event... I'm sure there's more than (1) one person on your server that may be interested in participating in said event--you may even get lucky enough to find folks willing to form a static.

We need the development team to remain focused on balancing the R/E/M's with Delve weapons now that a new "End game" line of weapons have been introduced.

I'm all for adding another "line of ultimate weapons" and if the Delve weapons are those weapons, then so be it... but its time to BALANCE out the R/E/Ms to keep them relevant to the new content--undoing years of previously released content will sink this game faster than its already sinking...

The SE Development team has always been big on providing the player with a CHOICE (as per numerous posts made where choice was always a factor of consideration...) whether they were weapons, armor, abilities or spells... there has always been a choice. This should be no exception. As a Puppetmaster, I CHOOSE my Level 99 Verethragna as my H2H weapon of choice for end game content--since that was the original intention of obtaining a Level 99 Verethragna. If I choose to use a different END GAME weapon, that should also be my choice, as well as the means in which to acquire that weapon etc.

As far as future upgrades, we honestly do not have to always come back to the table about the ultimate weapons (R/E/M and D) if future upgrades take this into account prior to content release and ensure that these weapons stay balanced--especially now that the player base has spoken.

[Vold]

For the record, total Empy count, not counting SE's insistence to include WoE weapons for some reason, including Ochain and Harp and not their useless base forms, is 75,932 as of a year ago, 2012 census. It's probably just over 100,000 by now. Again I thank SE in advance this year when they make me do this all over again instead of adding a Total count at the end of empy census.


I'm asking again what you're trying to show other than something that is easily accessible on any community site.Possibly that the lv95 empy trials are crap? Doesn't matter much why they are crap, just that they're crap, everyone knows it, and 0.83%ish of players have bothered to complete it. Mind you, over 16,000 relics exist and those aren't cheap. The question here is, why do people stop spending money when faced with a 95 empy trial? Probably for the same reason people stop spending money on their relics when it comes time for 99. It's fricking expensive!

I should probably see this years census before I start blabbering off here, but let's pretend it's still 2012. SE's idea that the 99 relic trial was designed for "many" or "most" or whatever wording they used. They actually envisioned that the majority of relic owners would upgrade their relics to 99 with ADL standing in the way. So it's pretty obvious why relic numbers are down when it comes to 99. That's okay because those players have already spent fortunes getting a relic period. No one can blame them for saying no to the 99 relic trial.

Now back to emps, why do people stop spending money on an ultimate/etc/etc type of weapon when it comes to those 1500 metal plates for emps? They hadn't spent a dime before that moment unless they paid someone to farm it for them. They are more pricey than relics by time you reach 99. It's possible that gil doesn't grow on trees for people as much as some people would like to believe. It's possible everyone who paid up for relics ran out of money for emps. Some also looked at the costs of taking these weapons to 99 and chose relic because 1)it cost less than emps 2)specific weapon was better than emp counterpart, like I did. Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, most people who own emps are casual players. They may play a lot, they may even take offense of being called casual, but they don't play hard enough to have hundreds of millions of gil or to spam end game content over and over to farm 1500 plates.

Perhaps these numbers show the difference between once wealthy players, current wealthy players who maintain their wealth and didn't spend it all on a 75 relic, and not so wealthy players. You've got the 90- emp crowd who has never upgraded to 95+. You've got the 95- relic crowd who never upgraded to 99. And you've got the 99 relic/95+ emp/entire mythic crowd who have spent a ton of gil. What this tells me is that to date there is still a very small percentage of players who can claim to be wealthy enough to afford things.

Overall, does this explain why 1% have taken the 1500 plate and beyond dive for their emp weapons? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe those that would have done it, decided that the 99 relic was better or significantly cheaper anyways, and on top of that they also may have mythic dreams and are spending a fortune on those. I don't feel 1500 metal plates are 100% stopping us from completing the 95 trial. It's the fact that the alternative weapon choices are on par or better on the way to 99, and cheaper. Perhaps that's enough to lower the plate count down to 1000 or even 500, but you can bet that in the end you still won't get 99 because people will just raise prices on the final item needed to make up for it as demand increases. People will still do the math and relics will still be their best option.



So, the short short answer is, 1% of people own a 95+ empy because most people can't see spending a fortune on minor upgrades to 99 when most of the awesome came for free up to 90. Relics and mythics on the other hand, you must spend a fortune to obtain them at all. And given the choice, you're gonna take relics to 99 long before you'll take emps to 95+. What does that mean for emps not at 99 for inc RME99 upgrades to match delve? Well, I guess it means those weapons are doomed, or you have a new found reason to spend money to get RMEs to 99 so they stay relevant with upgrades to match delve weaps. A 90 ukon will no longer be "good enough" For those that don't spend money, delve and WS unlocks is your answer. That is why they exist, I feel. So you replace your sub 99 emp with delve weapons. Look at it this way: At least you don't have to farm fricking 175 drops from high end NMs that may or may not be low man friendly, having to go out and constantly farm cruor so you can brew your way to emps. Granted, it's a pretty big mess right now with the whole SoA business, but find a way through it and obtaining new delve weapons will be well worth it.

[Kincard]

The idea that the 90->99 trials for Empy are disproportionate to the reward is going to be totally void when they update RME99s and thus make it worthwhile to 99 any one of those three weapons (well, maybe not Claustrum). Did people just miss out on the fact that they're planning on making RMEs competitive/stronger than Delve weapons again? Besides, the OP was complaining about the 95 trial being harder than 99. Are we seriously still complaining about the RME trials being "too hard" when they just introduced an alternative weapon that's going to be competitive with the renewed RMEs that takes like an afternoon to get?

If you don't want to upgrade your 90 Emp because it's "too hard", you can always just go get a Delve weapon.

[Mephie]

Possibly that the lv95 empy trials are crap? Doesn't matter much why they are crap, just that they're crap, everyone knows it, and 0.83%ish of players have bothered to complete it. Mind you, over 16,000 relics exist and those aren't cheap. The question here is, why do people stop spending money when faced with a 95 empy trial? Probably for the same reason people stop spending money on their relics when it comes time for 99. It's fricking expensive!

I should probably see this years census before I start blabbering off here, but let's pretend it's still 2012. SE's idea that the 99 relic trial was designed for "many" or "most" or whatever wording they used. They actually envisioned that the majority of relic owners would upgrade their relics to 99 with ADL standing in the way. So it's pretty obvious why relic numbers are down when it comes to 99. That's okay because those players have already spent fortunes getting a relic period. No one can blame them for saying no to the 99 relic trial.

Now back to emps, why do people stop spending money on an ultimate/etc/etc type of weapon when it comes to those 1500 metal plates for emps? They hadn't spent a dime before that moment unless they paid someone to farm it for them. They are more pricey than relics by time you reach 99. It's possible that gil doesn't grow on trees for people as much as some people would like to believe. It's possible everyone who paid up for relics ran out of money for emps. Some also looked at the costs of taking these weapons to 99 and chose relic because 1)it cost less than emps 2)specific weapon was better than emp counterpart, like I did. Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, most people who own emps are casual players. They may play a lot, they may even take offense of being called casual, but they don't play hard enough to have hundreds of millions of gil or to spam end game content over and over to farm 1500 plates.

Perhaps these numbers show the difference between once wealthy players, current wealthy players who maintain their wealth and didn't spend it all on a 75 relic, and not so wealthy players. You've got the 90- emp crowd who has never upgraded to 95+. You've got the 95- relic crowd who never upgraded to 99. And you've got the 99 relic/95+ emp/entire mythic crowd who have spent a ton of gil. What this tells me is that to date there is still a very small percentage of players who can claim to be wealthy enough to afford things.

Overall, does this explain why 1% have taken the 1500 plate and beyond dive for their emp weapons? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe those that would have done it, decided that the 99 relic was better or significantly cheaper anyways, and on top of that they also may have mythic dreams and are spending a fortune on those. I don't feel 1500 metal plates are 100% stopping us from completing the 95 trial. It's the fact that the alternative weapon choices are on par or better on the way to 99, and cheaper. Perhaps that's enough to lower the plate count down to 1000 or even 500, but you can bet that in the end you still won't get 99 because people will just raise prices on the final item needed to make up for it as demand increases. People will still do the math and relics will still be their best option. [/HB]

It really wouldn't be so bad if the drop rates on hmps weren't so bad and if the pouched which are way less frequent than the singles dropped alot more plates ><;

[Werewolf]

It would be nice if they either lowered the required plates (since 1,500 was always a bit off, considering the trials went 50>50>75>1,500>60?!) or just make Heavy Metal Plates available from other events, similar to what they did with Alexandrites; or both...

[xiozen]

It would be nice if they either lowered the required plates (since 1,500 was always a bit off, considering the trials went 50>50>75>1,500>60?!) or just make Heavy Metal Plates available from other events, similar to what they did with Alexandrites; or both...

Honestly, why?

I personally don't think 1500 is way off, considering the history... HMP's are available from 7 different void watch NMs and HMP pouches are available from 3 different void watch NMs... so that's 10 different NMs you can farm for Heavy Metal Plates... why do you need them from other events...is beyond me... I can understand if they were only dropped from one or two different NMs, or even three... but 10 (ten)....???

Maybe I'm just out of touch.

[Kincard]

The only good reason to make something easier is if its impossible. There's a large amount of people who spent the time to upgrade and have finished their weapons to 99 (which will be reflected in the census- in b4 someone talks about how there's more relics even though those weapons came out like 5 years before Empyreans did) and you're basically asking the devs to screw them even harder than the Delve weapons already have by making it easier to obtain the weapon.

There is absolutely no reason left for casual players to complain about REMs being too hard because the new weapons from Adoulin are either competitive or better, even after the proposed REM adjustments. Before this there was actually some space of people talking about how an Ukon 85 was beating a 99 Shamash, STR GAX or Dies Irae, which made the game "REM or bust". Now that's not the case so either suck it up and upgrade your weapon or just get one of those new shiny Delve weapons which will take you all of one afternoon (if that) of farming.

[Damane]

It would be nice if they either lowered the required plates (since 1,500 was always a bit off, considering the trials went 50>50>75>1,500>60?!) or just make Heavy Metal Plates available from other events, similar to what they did with Alexandrites; or both...

Alexandrite dont drop from the sky either.
There is 3 ways to get alex:
old Salvage: requires 3 people to enter, relativly easy to farm you gain aroudn 60 alex per run (on average) depending on zone
new Salvage: requires 3 people to enter, somewhat challenging nets you around 80 alex per run (if you do all) on average
NNI: requires 3 people to enter but requires 6 people to actually target NMs, if you want to farm for alex.
all of them have a cool down of 24 hours to reenter

vs HMP:
3 zlart VW: can be done any time, as much as you like with 12 skilled people you should be able to kill them np. net gain if you count all people around 10 HMP per fight.

vs currency:
can be entered once every day, solo, 150 coins

Alexandrite is still harder to come by then HMP.

[Karah]

It really is bassackwards to have the 1500 before the 60, but it also really is irrelevant.

I can't recall ever seeing a 95 Empyrean, (for more than a day or two). Which means it is kinda silly, it takes -alot- longer to acquire 1500 of something (when the maximum is 50%(ish) single drop and 10%(ish) pouch drop) compared to Riftdross/Riftcinder which is relatively common by comparison (ratio-wise).

But again regardless where the plate trial would fall, if it was 75 80 85 90 95, the weapon still isn't 99.

[Metaking]

Main problem if VW past some fast easy exp is only going to be for those few people still focused on an emp so getting people for hmp runs will be hard and rift stuff impossible, dynamis still has relic gear which alot of it when its +2 has some awsome uses, and salvage 2 gear(some) is still pretty boss, maby if se lets us add delve augments to them, they would really take off.

self farming the hmps takes a long long time i burned 250 stones in a weeks period and only had 380 something hmps to show for it, i dont seriously think i could make a marathon like that happen again on my server (thankfully im at 1408/1500 hmps) but then we come down tot he rift stuff need 60 of them and the drop rate is atrocious compare this to relics last stage which could be killed by some people with a 6 man party PRE-delve weapons imagin after or even worse you have a few 99 relics already thrown in and he drops 1-2 and you only need 10, and worse yet most relics with emp weaponskills will be superior to there emp, i mean heck if se said were adding blu to excal, those hmps would all be up on the market atm >.>

[Demon6324236]

Honestly, why?

I personally don't think 1500 is way off, considering the history... HMP's are available from 7 different void watch NMs and HMP pouches are available from 3 different void watch NMs... so that's 10 different NMs you can farm for Heavy Metal Plates... why do you need them from other events...is beyond me... I can understand if they were only dropped from one or two different NMs, or even three... but 10 (ten)....???

Maybe I'm just out of touch.Because VW has little to offer anymore, many of the things that used to be good from it are not as good, and can be gotten from easier content or simply were outclassed in general.

[svengalis]

I'm not quite understanding what you're asking for. If the changes are only going to apply to level 99 weapons, why does it matter that the difficult trial occurs at 90->95 instead of 95->99? Either way you're going to have to go through the hardest trial in order to get the weapon that matters.

At best you can ask for them to shift the Rift and HMP trials around so that the difficulty "ramp" makes more logical sense (all the while pissing off people who currently have 95 weapons), but I don't really see the point of that.

I thought the whole point of empyreans were that they were supposed to be easier to max out then relics or mythics. Then SE pulls a bait and switch on us. Now VW is practically dead thanks to Adoulin, hardly anyone on my server does it anymore. Within in few months it will be near impossible to get a empyrean to the 95 stage.

[Alpheus]

I think the issue is that with VW being dead its orders of magnitude more horrible to get a sizable group to cover a decent spread of procs to get lights to even have a chance at HMP drops. Compared to say.... finding 2 random people who have no better use of their Remnant permits.

They should allow more amounts of cells to be traded to cap red/any specific light (on a per player basis) or just have HMP pouches drop from WoEs since it's played up as the garbage disposal of all reality. Though with the cell idea it would at least put on life support gil making methods involving the other Point Systems (Conquest, ISP, Allied Notes, Cruor) and make the issue another problem you can throw gil at (just like all the other weapons) AND something to lowman (just like the other weapons)

[Shadax]

I have no problem with 1500 HMP for emps, but if you're going to require 1500 of anything from content that is steadily on the decline, you need to make it available from multiple sources. Voidwatch is dying off due to Adoulin content so there needs to be fair, low-man alternatives to getting HMP's like you can do with Dynamis currency.

[Daniel]

This was probably said, but I will say it anyway. The reason why less people 99 an emp is becuase their is no great advantage to upgrading an emp to 99 for the emp WS. Meanwhile taking a relic 95 to 99 has a large advantage, and by that stage its about 60% addition to the base cost, as apposed to a emp where you have to spend nothing to get to 90 and everything to get a small damage boost.

[Sephiran]

...So this means that if I...oh I don't know...have an Almace-90, that I'm not going to get any portion of the enhancements that will be applied to RME99 weapons? If so...then I'm not happy at all.

[Kincard]

This was probably said, but I will say it anyway. The reason why less people 99 an emp is becuase their is no great advantage to upgrading an emp to 99 for the emp WS. Meanwhile taking a relic 95 to 99 has a large advantage, and by that stage its about 60% addition to the base cost, as apposed to a emp where you have to spend nothing to get to 90 and everything to get a small damage boost.

So people complain about 99ing an Empyrean having a low cost-reward.

Now the same people that say the requirements should be lower because of the reward are complaining because they're making the 99 weapons better, and thus the investment more worthwhile. Am I seriously the only one who can spot this double-thinking?

[Karah]

So people complain about 99ing an Empyrean having a low cost-reward.

Now the same people that say the requirements should be lower because of the reward are complaining because they're making the 99 weapons better, and thus the investment more worthwhile. Am I seriously the only one who can spot this double-thinking?

The problem is, it (wasn't) cost-effective to bother 99ing, the difference in a 90 > 99 was -NOT- worth 200,000,000g (to most people)...((**though some people are willing to pay 200m for a 1% increase**))

Now... You change the rules of the game in the middle, and effectively change that previous sentence from -NOT- worth it to -MUST HAVE-... it's hard not to feel cheated.

[Afania]

It would be nice if they either lowered the required plates (since 1,500 was always a bit off, considering the trials went 50>50>75>1,500>60?!) or just make Heavy Metal Plates available from other events, similar to what they did with Alexandrites; or both...


There's no need, empy 99 is still cheaper than a Mythic, at one point of time dross empy was cheaper than 99 relic too(although hMP price went up recently). If you're going to complain about empy, why not complain about relic and mythic price too?

[Tarquine]

Honestly, why?

I personally don't think 1500 is way off, considering the history... HMP's are available from 7 different void watch NMs and HMP pouches are available from 3 different void watch NMs... so that's 10 different NMs you can farm for Heavy Metal Plates... why do you need them from other events...is beyond me... I can understand if they were only dropped from one or two different NMs, or even three... but 10 (ten)....???

Maybe I'm just out of touch.

You are out of touch. Since SoA the rates of VW have dramatically dropped off, and so to will the rates of plates coming in.

[Kincard]

The problem is, it (wasn't) cost-effective to bother 99ing, the difference in a 90 > 99 was -NOT- worth 200,000,000g (to most people)...((**though some people are willing to pay 200m for a 1% increase**))

Now... You change the rules of the game in the middle, and effectively change that previous sentence from -NOT- worth it to -MUST HAVE-... it's hard not to feel cheated.

Again, get a Delve weapon? I can understand this complaint if they just upgraded the 99 weapons with the intent of making them the best weapons in the game like before Adoulin, but they're doing it with the intent of trying to have the Delve weapons be competitive so it's not like you have to have a REM99 now.

[macross]

99 was well worth the cost for my ukon. It gained like 20 base dmg over a 90.
But yeah, just get a delve weapon before you complain about your 85 and 90s sigh. Heck I don't even use my ukon no more and I'm not complaining.

[Shirai]

I'm joining the "get a Delve weapon" crowd for those that aren't willing to 99 their stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for increasing the availability of HMPs and Riftdross and cinder.
But as it stands the trials themselves (1500+60) are adequate and quite well ballanced out compared to the other weapons.
Relics never got a reduction in needed currency, Mythics didn't for the amount of Alexandrites needed so Empyrians should not be an exception in that regard either.

[Vil]

I'm joining the "get a Delve weapon" crowd for those that aren't willing to 99 their stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for increasing the availability of HMPs and Riftdross and cinder.
But as it stands the trials themselves (1500+60) are adequate and quite well ballanced out compared to the other weapons.
Relics never got a reduction in needed currency, Mythics didn't for the amount of Alexandrites needed so Empyrians should not be an exception in that regard either.

Just wanted to clarify back in the ToAU days, the alexandrite count was lowered to 30k from 50k.

[Kincard]

Yeah, except at that point not a single person had a Mythic yet. They lowered the required Alexandrite one patch after Mythics were introduced, as opposed to Empyreans which have been out for, what, 3 years now? The only reason it was lowered was because SE had no idea what the hell they were doing and overestimated the amount of alexandrite that was flowing into the market. Or if you want to buy their version of why, that "they didn't want anyone to get one yet" (which is possibly the most transparent excuse I've ever seen for not knowing what you're doing- if they didn't want someone to get one they just wouldn't put it into the damn game).

A bunch of people have gotten 99 Empyreans, more than 99 Mythics even, even though Empyreans have been out like half the time Mythics have been. If they make 99 Empyreans worth getting people will start doing the event again to make money, just like how people farm Dynamis for gil.

[Metaking]

yes, they are making 99 emps worth getting if you aren't allowed to make a relic for your job, remember with delve weapons on the table adl will probably be killed by anyone with a group of 6-8 PW the same(need a twlight set tho) in vw you need procs so you need as many people as you can get to cover them all, but because most relics with emp weapon skill are superior to emps, you will be left with the few people that want a pimped blu dnc cor ummm cant really think of any other job for that list...

tho while on the subject of mythics i do believe they should get an alix cut everything else about making them is spot on tho, you have to prove you mastered an expansions content to get one, kill the kings of the monsters check, kill the lord of strife a few times and bath in his blood check, complete 50 heroic task check colect 30,000 rocks.. the alix wall which just se saying heh will show them poor mans relic muhhahahah kopo! just destroyed its tempo. And over to relics really atm there the closes to having it right, i mean like a month and a half of farming a week or 2 of trails and thx to delve weapons probably like 2-3 weeks of adls with a group focused on upgrading, and if you notice you don't havet to party up tell that very last step and knowing my luck some party of 6 going to somehow find a way to kill him like 4 or 5+ times in a night thx to alts instead of 1 or 2 times a night(wating on 1 hours to reset)

[Zumi]

You are out of touch. Since SoA the rates of VW have dramatically dropped off, and so to will the rates of plates coming in.

Whenever SE releases the 99 R/M/E boost people will see their 85-90 empyreans suck still and want to spam farm T3 Zilarts. Because many don't read the forums here people aren't doing so now.

However in terms of difficulty most people will do relics 99 because they are much easier to get.

[Mayoyama]

I feel that the 90-99 trials do serve the purpose of balancing out empy with R/M.. but the huge abandonment of VW for SoA content is going to create an extra artificial barrier to upgrading these weapons. Dynamis was revamped to make them easier to obtain, alex became a LITTLE easier by adding NNI/Salv2 as other potential sources but these too will suffer the same fate as vw (abandonned in favor of other content) - although having said that, SE was meant to have also done some sort of adjustment to tags/assaults about 2 years ago now... yet another thing added to the backburner.

The "logical" solution would be to either adjust (increase) the drop rates of HMP (and alexandrites tbh lol) and/or add more lowman/solo friendly options for those who want to put in the effort without needing to drag 12+ people with them.

SE already stated that R/E/M would no longer be top tier (instead being "comparable") so theres no reason to keep superficial barriers anymore.

EDIT: as for relics, I believe they're in the best position, as ADL will only end up becoming more and more easy to low man as stronger gear is introduced

[Zumi]

Also RMT spam ADL almost every single day and put so many marrows in the economy. Same thing can't be said about plates. They use drks cors, smn, sch. All the drks got the same gear too.

http://i.imgur.com/7nleJCf.jpg

[Demon6324236]

Also RMT spam ADL almost every single day and put so many marrows in the economy. Same thing can't be said about plates. They use drks cors, smn, sch. All the drks got the same gear too.

http://i.imgur.com/7nleJCf.jpgWell I cant say they are all RMTs, or that any are really, I admit the same geared DRKs sound like it, but some names look real, Cornela, Jacksonwells, and Southwall for instance, and I know Swen used to run Qilin all of the time so I don't know that he is a RMT really, if he is then they do Plates too anyways. Point being, some may have RMT like characters or names and could be RMTs but I would not say they are all RMTs. :x

[Zumi]

Swen is a bst that wasn't with them just happened to be in the SS. They had 25 characters at ADL did several of them.

[Demon6324236]

LS color looked the same is all.

[Babekeke]

RMT rarely even use a LS, as they tend to all be sat in the same room. More than likely a few ppl using several mules. Looking on FFXIAH, a few of them seem very active and obviously have a few jobs levelled, whereas others have barely bought anything at all from AH.
Also, RMT tend to maximise the potential of their chars, by creating galkas to melee, tarus to mage. Rare, though not completely uncommon, to see RMT use mithras/humes/elvaan.

The main clincher is whether or not they have relics themselves I guess. If it is a few ppl and mules, the main chars will have relics, and it's unlikely that they'll bazaar the marrows. If it's RMT they'll all have AH bought gear (usually DUX for melees) and definitely won't have relics.

[Demon6324236]

Normally I would agree Babekeke but it is a bit weird most of their people look very similarly geared, I mean 3 DRKs with the Abyssea GS from that one Golem looks very odd...

[Babekeke]

Ah the one with the German sounding name? I can't really tell what it is from the pic, and I'm not very good with DRK gear either, but aren't they wearing empy gear? Unless it's basic empy gear and not upgraded, then I'm inclined to think that it's someone's mules. RMT prefer to spend as little time and gil as absolutely possible to gear themselves, and upgrading empy gear isn't part of their timescale usually.

[Demon6324236]

Yeah that GS, I just find it odd they all have that and similar gear, I mean yes its Emp Head/Body/Hands but still, seems odd to me, not so far as to say I would think they are RMTs, but enough to say it is weird.

[Babekeke]

Yeah that GS, I just find it odd they all have that and similar gear, I mean yes its Emp Head/Body/Hands but still, seems odd to me, not so far as to say I would think they are RMTs, but enough to say it is weird.

The fact that not one of them has Ragnarok is the only thing that would lead me to think they're possibly RMT.

Edit: Though looking at the price history of Kcsagfiny, she bought 3 full pops for Amarok. RMT wouldn't buy pops, I'm fairly sure.

[Karah]

Selling abyssean drops are one of the most effective ways to earn money... so if anything that makes it MORE likely to be RMT not less.

RMTs make money off the things we don't want to do, like, 75 orthrus claws for example. Maybe 20-30m for 2 days work - cost of Amarok pops (piddly 100k x30).

[Babekeke]

Not sure how you work your maths.

They paid 110k per pop, and you're unlikely to get more than 200k selling the trigger. 90k profit per mob.

'Cost of pops = 100k x 30'? why 30? minimum required if you got 100% double drop is 38.

[Babekeke]

Just been sat on my run and noticed those GS are actually ToM GS

[Demon6324236]

Huh, look the exact same, oh well.