Is anyone particularly happy with the new gear from New Salvage?

[Zhronne]

why cant a game just be about the content and not being the best?

It is like that, for some people.
Just not for the majority.
Give two paths to obtain the same things to people, one annoyingly retarded, ugly to play, but more efficient/faster, and another which is a shitton of fun to play, but less efficient and slower.
Which path do you think people, or at least the great majority of people, will pick up?
It's like that in all MMO, and it's always been a mess for developers to balance.
"Every law has a loophole"
Players will always try to circumvein game mechanics, take advantage of broken stuff, and do things int he most efficient/faster way, even if it's the least entertaining one. Can't help it :P

We all work towards having the best gear, but when we all have the best, what do we do with that?

This has always been a problem in FFXI, to a certain extent.
It's not something recent Jaall.
I've been asking myself that question for a long time and... there is no answer.
Up to a certain point, gear just make you more efficient in the things you do, but past that you just get gear because you want to get gear.
In other games it's quite different, take WoW for instance, but then again the concept of gear is much different there. The way you get it, how fast/often you get it, the purpose it serves, etc etc.

The WoW model is way more logic and efficient maybe, but personally I've always liked the FFXI one more, as pointless as it really is beneath it all.

[saevel]

Both of these are unlikely, the chances of getting all 5 possible Umbrage plans to drop in every single run for Zhayolm is very, very, very, unlikely

Umm what...

Each zone you can hit up to 6 NM's and each zone is weighted towards a single plan type. Why on earth would you possibly want to do the "hardest" zone for the lesser dropped plan? If you want Umbrage then do Arrapago, you will get a least five umbrage and one or two blood. Some of the NM's can double drop Umbrage so it's likely you can get seven. I know when we do SSR I tend to walk away with seven Primacy plans.

[Jaall]

Yea it is actually very very likely to get 4-5 plans per run, obviously depending on what path you choose, and on every path you'll also get 3-4 of the opposite plan. The hard part about salvage II is the 45 farming because that actually can take skill to defeat the HQ bosses. If it drops from NQ and you get lucky then great but the drop rates less on NQ. You need a lot of plans yes but reality it will only take you 10 days ish of the same run to finish 2 pieces of +1 so it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. I remember going 2 years without even getting a chance for valor surcoat, to get it in 10 days would have been a miracle!

[saevel]

The hard part about salvage II is the 45 farming because that actually can take skill to defeat the HQ bosses.

The key is to control TP feed, which can be quite hard as your on a time crunch. Our four man static rotates zones with each member getting to pick any zone they want for their turn. We've nailed down each zone pretty solidly. Bhaflau Remnants II is stupid easy followed by SSR and Arrapago with Zhayolm Remnants II being the hardest due to the unlock distribution, Hydra spamming Pyric Bulwark, and HQ Hydra triple attacking for 400 damage each hit. Bringing a good DRK who has a PDT and Hybrid PDT set makes it much more manageable, same with Arrapago.

[Demon6324236]

I was using the runs I have been doing as an example, which I have been doing Zhayolm, thus leading to what I said. Sorry my numbers were a bit off, however the point I was making still stands, and in a group like yours, its even more so the point. Where as everyone would be making progress in NNI, in Salvage we have to lot plans of which are dropped, meaning an area rotating idea such as yours works well, however it also means your getting the pieces even slower.

In the end Salvage is a slower event in a few ways, you must go every other day, no tags to store up, so at best you can do two runs every two days. drops are limited to 1 person not given to everyone upon mob death, no 100% chance at the item of your choice if you kill the HQ. The time per run is 100 minutes rather than 30 minutes, Salvage has a lot more stopping where as Nyzul is constantly moving or failure. Salvage needs old drops as well as new for some of the gear, NNI gave you the gear straight up. Salvage requires plans to get the gear, NNI had no special requirement such as that, the closest was the 5~25 KIs needed for a piece from the next tier, which when doing floor 100, was non-comparable anyways.

This was the point I attempted to make, sorry my number was off due to my farming in a certain area, I should have checked BG and DB before posting an exact number.

[Jaall]

It's really not that much of a chore, and if it is, stick to nyzul. Nobodies forcing you to do salvage. Everyone gets a chance at something because SE have designed it well in the fact that item drops from NQ and HQ are mostly the opposite to the plans that drop in a certain area. For example, Skadi and Ares plans drop in arrapago, and to coincide with that Usukane, Morrigans and Marduk 45's drop from bosses. Also there is a bonus to defeating the HQ boss, and that is the drop rates are better and a guaranteed linen pouch. We split every piece of alex we got from yesterdays run and made 1.5m each. After 1 run that is a very nice amount considering you can go once a day, so most of your argument is invalid. It is slower due to you needing more, but that means it is what SE said it is... "casual". If you don't believe that this is casual content, just look up the definition, I'll even provide a link for you - http://oxforddictionaries.com/defini...asual?q=casual

[Demon6324236]

It's really not that much of a chore, and if it is, stick to nyzul. Nobodies forcing you to do salvage.

You seem to be missing the subject all that is on, the entire reason I am trying to point out Salvage takes more work is because that is the exact reason that a lot of people complain about the gear. If the gear was worse and took less time then it would make sense, however few people are willing to go through an event many times to get a piece of gear that is worse than something they could have gotten in half the time. If you are doing the event for fun, awesome, it may be fun for you, it certainly is for me, I love it, and I see good rewards I want as well, so its even better for me. But as for people who are not looking to do it just for fun and want something to improve their character from it, they are missing out in a lot of cases because the gear is not better. Gear is simply another incentive as to why you should do the event, and by compare to Limbus, Einherjar, Nyzul, VW, Legion, Abyssea, and Meebles, Salvage seems to have some good for some certain jobs and a lot of bad for more common jobs such as WAR or DRK.

[saevel]

Where as everyone would be making progress in NNI, in Salvage we have to lot plans of which are dropped, meaning an area rotating idea such as yours works well, however it also means your getting the pieces even slower.

Not really. If you have two other characters of the rights jobs you can tri box the zones to get a few plans each, can even clear Bhaflau Remnants II. The difficulty level was set very carefully, it's just hard enough that bringing real people actually makes a difference in progress, its definitely not abyssea. Yet it's not stupid random like NNI was, requiring a very specific setup and abusing game mechanics along secret ninja techniques. A four member team can clear every Salvage II zone and hit all six NM's plus both the megaboss's. This leads to rapid acquisition of plans and 45 pieces, I'm 5/5 on Morrigan's 45 already along with having extras from the other sets (due to other members already having them). I wasn't joking when I said seven plans plus a few extra. Each zone drops two types of plans, one is primary while the other is a secondary drop. You can plan your routes to get slightly more of the secondary type but it's far more efficient to farm the primary's of each zone. Again using SSR as an example you can get six primacy plans guaranteed with five of the NM's having a chance to drop two primacy, my biggest haul as nine in one run though I was extremely lucky on double drops. Bhaflau is the same with ritualistic. Zhao / Arapago have stupid pathing that no matter what path you take, your gonna be forced to fight a NM that drops the opposite of what you want. Zhao you get four guaranteed blood and two guaranteed umbrage with most of the NM's able to drop two bloods. We typically walk out with six bloods and two to three umbrages. Thankfully our guy on Blood also wants Umbrage so he wins no matter what.

Anyhow we're all 15/15 on NNI and players don't really have to chose which one to do with how cheap permits are now. NNI gear acquisition was stupidly random before they made it five floor 80 wins (without a specific setup and secret ninja magic). Your looking at a piece of 100 gear every few months, assuming you did four ~ five runs once a week with a static (seriously most people don't play this game every single day). With Salvage II you'll get pieces slightly faster but with significantly less randomness, which IIRC is exactly what everyone was complaining about with NNI.

[Jaall]

But as for people who are not looking to do it just for fun and want something to improve their character from it, they are missing out in a lot of cases because the gear is not better.

If they're the type of player who just does things for the reward, and this offers no reward, they dont miss out at all, they just dont do it...

[Demon6324236]

If they're the type of player who just does things for the reward, and this offers no reward, they dont miss out at all, they just dont do it...

Missing out on getting new content, if SoA offers no good gear a lot of people who are like that will not do the expansions primary content I am sure, they will pick and choose a few things to do and anything without a worthy reward will be ignored by them, if thats the case they miss out on a ton of what the expansion may offer. Originally you asked why people complain about the gear, and why they can not just do it for fun, I am trying to explain why. People complain because they want new content to do, and the content they got is something they want to do, but wont do because they do not see the reward from doing it. Another reason why people complain is because Nyzul and Salvage were swapped, where Salvage was the old amazing gear while Nyzul was the easy but ok gear, it is not the other way around. A lot of people expected Neo-Salvage to have gear that was on Nyzul's current level or above, and are disappointed.