Is this where it begins?

When Neo Nyzul was announced, there was an air of caution and apprehension from the player base about the quality of rewards to be forthcoming. I think I speak for the majority of us when I say that we were perhaps surprised as the calibre of armor that came our way.

However, there seems to be a running habit with the development team, that they've referred to lightly in several official texts that they've released. It happened at level 75, and I'm wondering if it's about to start happening again with the release of Salvage II.

Is every reward in future end-game, including Adoulin, to be considered majority Sidegrade? Is this where actual vertical gear progress stops, and we end up with a horizontal spread of situational gear - most of it taking many weeks or months to obtain? (I have no problem with the weeks/months, so long as the end result is worth it).

Not sure I'm going to enjoy looking forward to "meh" rewards from otherwise fun events for the rest of the games life.

^^^ So true!

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Originally Posted by Dazusu

Is every reward in future end-game, including Adoulin, to be considered majority Sidegrade? Is this where actual vertical gear progress stops, and we end up with a horizontal spread of situational gear - most of it taking many weeks or months to obtain? (I have no problem with the weeks/months, so long as the end result is worth it).

Not sure I'm going to enjoy looking forward to "meh" rewards from otherwise fun events for the rest of the games life.

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It's a habit I wouldn't be surprised to see them slip into. Then again, we managed it for the duration of the L75 era as improvements were gradual rather than radical. Similar results at L99? Wouldn't shock me.

In defense of the dev team, there really isn't much room for drastically more awesome equipment. Look at a lot of the AF3+3 pieces, voidwatch, or legion gear. some of that can really get a job a bit op. Everything has to be a marginal upgrade or sidegrade.
As to situational pieces. people have used situational gear for years, it's just becoming prevalent and common instead of only for hardcore players. there have always been TP sets, WS sets, and what have you. SE if just taking a more official part in bringing them to the front.
I would love to have some new super-awesome-must have gear... but i don't honestly think it'll happen... or really that it should.

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Originally Posted by Aethon

As to situational pieces. people have used situational gear for years, it's just becoming prevalent and common instead of only for hardcore players.

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What? That's backwards. Situational gear was prevalent and common at level 75, for both casual and hardcore players alike. With the advent of Abyssea, players stopped bothering with situational gear - and most still don't.

That's not my point though. Almost every piece of gear in Salvage II is plain useless and sub-par to Legion/Nyzul gear. "new content" shouldn't have gear that's a few classes below existing gear, else the new content isn't worth doing. I give you Limbus II and how active that event is(n't).

The idea in an MMO is to keep moving forward and progressing, sidegrading isn't progressing. At this point, they might as well add HNMs back with a 0.1% drop rate and let us chase them for another 5 years rather than reinvent the wheel with subpar sidegrades.

When Matsui says this:

"In regards to item stats, this is a crucial growth element as you cannot level up past level 99. It's necessary to release items with stronger and really good stats in the future."

And Neo-Salvage gear is what we get, it makes you wonder.

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Originally Posted by detlef

When Matsui says this:

"In regards to item stats, this is a crucial growth element as you cannot level up past level 99. It's necessary to release items with stronger and really good stats in the future."

And Neo-Salvage gear is what we get, it makes you wonder.

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Then again. if there's a space between which earlier gear and next expansion's gear stat budget, perhaps that's why Neo-Salvage is where it is.

While I definately agree that new content should have at least some gear thats better than what they gave us... they do have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise you will quickly end up with gear thats so ridiculously OP that they would have to stack whacking around the nerf-hammer to "balance" things again. It is a fine line between good and OP, and its tough to know where to draw it.

I dunno, what exactly are you looking for, Dazusu (Not trying to antagonize if that's what it sounds like, honest question). I am not really a fan of power creeps myself.

I don't think sidegrades themselves are a problem, but they have a serious issue with figuring out how to balance investment/reward. NNI might be randomly generated bullcrap, but you can significantly push up your odds of winning as you get better at it, and you get the armor immediately when you win. Neo Salvage you need to do like 10 runs dedicated to a single person to get enough papers for 1 +1 armor. The Alex along the way will be nice, but that's still pretty dumb.

I'm all for the progress slowing to slow but steady upg0rades, and differences between the casual and hardcore being whiteboxes and a few big and rare status pieces. It's stupid to keep making new events that each clearly outshines the other, because you kill content that way. Ideally they'd make the absolute best gear for each situation come from a different set of events and then people will have to spread out and content will have a much longer shelf life.

However, I think the expansion should be where this leveling off happens, not before it. It's like climaxing before you put it in.

That's also why I think it was a horrible move to release neo-salvage now. Even if the rewards were worth a damn, people would complain if SoA didn't blow it away, and if SoA blows it away, then the event is essentially done and dead.

The best thing they could have done is maybe added to meebles, and saved the Salvage update for the update that puts out the first good batch of SoA gear, with gear that has comparable stats. As of right now, they blew the the salvage update.

All is not lost however. If they want to save Salvage instead of letting it die in a in a corner curled into a fetal position, they can wait for SoA gear to come out, then add an Augment system to Salvage gear. The augments would need to be be strong enough to make the gear comparable and situationally stronger than the SoA gear. The augments can't be random either or they'll kill the event again.

Simply make a requirement that falls in between building a new armor piece and +1ing the old piece, and when you complete it, you can choose 1 augment from a table. Make it so you can repeat the augment trial it as many times as you want, but can only have 2 augments on the piece of armor at any given time. Suddenly Salvage is popular, worthwhile, and has an incredibly long shelf life.

Another easy way to guarantee that new SoA gear is good and desireable while not completely crushing existing 99 cap gear, is to create gear that augments and enhances JA and JT, kind of like empyrean gear, and preferably in conjunction with a new set of decent abilities, but that's not necessary as long as it stacks with existing pieces or focuses on abilities with have now.

Examples:

WAR Hands: Augments "Blood Rage"
Effect: Adds a Double Attack bonus of 5-10%

MNK Head: Enhances Chi Blast
Effect: Ignores monster damage resistance to spiritual damage, increases damage by 100%

THF Body: Augments Sneak and Trick Attack
Effect: Makes Sneak and Trick attack affect all hits of the next attack round or WS.

WHM Body: Enhances "Divine Caress"
Effect: Makes the target Immune to the removed enfeeble for 3 minutes.

BLM Body: Augments "Manawell"
Effect: Makes Manawell a 10' AoE around the target.

RDM Head: Enhances Saboteur
Effect: Magic Accuracy +200

PLD hands: Augments "Divine Emblem"
Effect: Forces he mob to attack the PLD for a set number of attacks based on Divine Magic skill. (Similar to provoke in ballista.)

DRK Head: Enhances "Scarlet Delirium"
Effect: Adds a base 25% damage enhancement to effect.

BST Legs: Augments "Spur"
Effect: Pet instantly receives 100-300TP

BRD Head: Augments "Requiem"
Effect: Grants a defense down effect to spell based on damage dealt.

RNG Head: Enhances Sharpshot
Effect: Ranged Attacks cannot miss while active.

SMN Head: Augments "Blood Pact: Rage"
Effect: Grants a tier II skill chain property to lvl 70 BPs.

SAM Body: Enhances "Seigan"
Effect: Reduces Third Eye Recast to 25 seconds, down to 20 seconds with merits.

NIN Hands: Augments "Migawari"
Effect: Migawari blocks the effects of Death and Doom.

DRG Body: Enhances the effect of Wyvern Breaths
Effect: Will use a Healing breath when magic is cast, without a trigger point. 25% boost to breath potency.

BLU feet: Enhances Duration of Enhancing Blue Magic
Effect: Increases duration of spells by 50/100%

COR Hands: Enhances "Quick Draw" TP bonus
Effect: Doubles TP from Quick Draw

PUP head: Enhances "Maneuver" Effects
Effect: Doubles the potency of Maneuvers and effects triggered by them.

DNC Hands: Enhances "Step" effects
Effect: Doubles step potency.

SCH Legs: Augments "Adloquium"
Effect: Adds +25 Store TP for duration of spell effect.



The effects I just made up on whims, but it gets the idea across. Even if the enhances/augments were the only stats on the gear, as long as they were only required at activation, the gear would be highly desirable without killing the desire for gear from any other event, for the most part at least.

I'd have to be mostly in agreement with Aethon. With us hard-capped at 99 there's going to be a limit on the difficulty of regular content, and to some extent even on boss fights. SE learned a lesson a few years ago with parental outrage over the difficulty of AV, they are unlikely to revive THAT level of difficulty. So, to make the content entertaining they CAN'T make the gear much more powerful than it already is, because too much of the game is easy mode as it is. Hence side-grade since we are already at the easy-mode limit on most content.

and @Detlef, I read that quote too, but I got a different take on it. It sounded to me more like they are going to be extremely cautious on gear stats to prevent OP while still making something we might want, if only for situational use. He also said that he didn't want to shut out the casuals from end-game content, and making content that could only be beaten with multiple sets of Uber-gear swapping that is only from major difficulty and/or super grinds would likely do just that. It sounded to me like the goal was to make content that even casuals could beat, it would just take alot longer to work through it.

now, I'm not sure that's the way PLAYERS want them to go (some certainly do), but it seems like what we have...

It began at day 1 of launch. The game has always been full of stuff like this, especially at the old level cap. It had to be expected.

Occasionally I question the "Beat up these super powerful monsters for new pants!" style of progression. Why do we do these things, and how come the pants are always a perfect fit? Also, why is there a better pair of pants released every few months? Is this Hell?

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Originally Posted by Caketime

Occasionally I question the "Beat up these super powerful monsters for new pants!" style of progression. Why do we do these things, and how come the pants are always a perfect fit? Also, why is there a better pair of pants released every few months? Is this Hell?

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Hell is when you realize the pants no longer fit the next day.

To an extent, I don't mind the leveling off of Armor stats as we move forward into Adoulin. For one, I've had it with S-E overshadowing each job's "uniforms", if you will, to the point of irrelevance--which they've tried to reverse some with AF2+2 trials. S-E cannot and should not try this with AF3+2 simply because someone with a superiority complex thinks he should be better than everyone else. If you enjoy an endgame event for it's own sake, I've got no problem with that. I have a big problem with people who want overpowered gear that only a small sliver of the population can get simply because AF3+2 is too "normal".

There has to be better gear for the more dedicated or any mmo would die. I hate these people talking about they dont want others being better than them because they can't/dont make time or do said event. Their stupidity is astounding. Hey guys lets remove the driving force behind every mmorpg to ever exist so I can feel better about my Empyrean +2.