New weapons with higher base damage then relics

[Asymptotic]

JPs got a BLM / SCH staff with +70 MAB and +18 INT from Skirmish!
Better than Laevateinn for BLM and rivals ToM staves for both! How strong the rivalry depends on the nuke, target's INT, and your MAB from gear. Assuming no additional damage from the +18INT, ToM Staves range from worse (MAB+60 from gear) to slightly better (+4.5% at MAB+100 from gear) to 12% if you can get MAB+200 from gear (this is in addition to BLM's innate MAB, not including it). If the INT+18 was getting you +2% base damage on your nuke, then this new staff is better up to ~77 MAB and ToM are only 6% better at +150 MAB . If the INT+18 is worth 5% damage on your original nuke, those values go up to 105 and down to 3.5% respectively.

So yeah, I would probably pick up the Skirmish Staff on the side while doing Skirmish for other things, and skip over the ToM damage staves. Accessibility of Skirmish is a concern, but that can presumably only increase because SE can't afford to develop content in which 10 people on the server will get to participate once a month due to the raw rarity of access materials. If you think that SE will sustain a new event such that it costs a group 30+ mil just to enter a 30 minute fight that is designed to be entered repeatedly you're out of your mind.

[Yinnyth]

Oh no no.. Let's actually make this comparable to what's going on...
>>>>>>>


So let's say they make the 99 horn drop from a 30 min battle 3-6 people,
and it's going to be All songs +7.

K, now how do you feel?

I'm still ok with that. I'll just have to get one. Let me be perfectly clear about this: I don't care if it's all songs +100 and you get it by clicking a ??? in Windurst. I would not feel my gjallarhorn was a waste.

Now, the matter of return on investment is another story. I don't want the whole game to be as easy as just doing the next skirmish and calling it good. I want them to release even stronger ones which require a bigger investment on the part of the player.

[Karbuncle]

While I respect your opinion, Its incomprehensible to me. I just keep thinking either you're in crippling denial to the point of mild lunacy, or are immortal since you've pretty much just said you'd be cool tossing 5 years of your life down the drain by clicking a ??? in Windurst.

Then again, I see what you mean. The item you got served you well until now, and replacing it isn't a big deal since the next item will serve you well too... And then you'll replace that.

Just... Wheres the fountain of youth and why haven't you told anyone?

[Yinnyth]

The way I see it, SE is starting to back themselves into a corner with RMEs. No one thinks RMEs should be intruded upon by anything unless it's a new weapon which requires a large time investment. So how do they release better weapons? They have to upgrade RMEs to beat the new weapons every time. Due to this system, Dynamis, Abyssea, Voidwatch, and ToAU content must remain relevant and playable throughout FFXI's lifetime, or the best weapons in the game are unobtainable. One such problem they're running into is the ToAU beastmen kings. Players are so powerful now that they usually kill the beastman king in besieged, so it never appears in its stronghold and people cannot complete their mythic. SE will be forced to revisit this old content and update it so it works with our newfound power. This will continue as long as RMEs are the best.

In addition to that, the time investment of each weapon goes up with each new trial they add. Yes, relics were made vastly easier with the changes to Dynamis, but they're the only one of the weapons to receive such treatment. Mythics are about the same to obtain they've always been, but now you have to do ~1000 kills with your weapon and get 3 drops from pandy. The time investment on it has actually gone up. As long as the game continues, this time investment mess will keep growing and growing until it gets to a point where starting a new one is ludicrous.

So if this is the only way to get away from this vicious cycle, so be it. I'm an endgame player, I'll do whatever it takes to be as well-equipped as I can be. Whether it's slaying a powerful beast, grinding magian trials over and over, or just clicking a ???

Edit: I get the feeling there is an element of superiority at play here as well. People spend a few months grinding a weapon, and then feel like it sets them apart from the newbs- like it makes them special. If the playing field gets leveled and their item which makes them special no longer does, they have nothing left to make them feel superior. I can understand this visceral response, and I must admit to some degree of it myself, but I do not condone it nor think it should be guiding our opinions on the matter.

[Asymptotic]

On the other hand, if you wipe the floor with 99 RME, you essentially invalidate future participation in a large swathe of existing content, which is extremely against FFXI's best interests unless the dev team is going to start releasing large volumes new content every month.

[Asymptotic]

Superiority has nothing to do with it. It's an investment issue. If someone convinces you to invest in a company and then right after you make that investment, the company goes under and the person that convinced you knew this was going to happen - you'd be pretty annoyed yourself. Additionally, you're out the capital that you could have invested in future, more lucrative ventures.

Completing a Mythic in particular is an extremely costly , time-intensive, and arduous investment. The sort of reward for completing such a task in a game should not be "why did I even bother?"

Anyway, as I've said before, they're inexorably going to adjust the LV99 versions of RME. They really do not have much of a choice at this point in the game.

[Horadrim]

Edit: I get the feeling there is an element of superiority at play here as well. People spend a few months grinding a weapon, and then feel like it sets them apart from the newbs- like it makes them special. If the playing field gets leveled and their item which makes them special no longer does, they have nothing left to make them feel superior. I can understand this visceral response, and I must admit to some degree of it myself, but I do not condone it nor think it should be guiding our opinions on the matter.

That's 90% of what the problem is.

Which is why I've stopped participating in this "conversation" for the most part...

[quote]

Superiority has nothing to do with it. It's an investment issue. If someone convinces you to invest in a company and then right after you make that investment, the company goes under and the person that convinced you knew this was going to happen - you'd be pretty annoyed yourself. Additionally, you're out the capital that you could have invested in future, more lucrative ventures.

You couldn't have come up with a worse analogy if you tried.

You know who else knew that the company was going to go under? YOU DID.

Every piece of gear in this game is systematically phased out and made invalid as new gear comes out. That's the whole reason Ixion Cloak is 100-200k now compared to the what, 10 mil it was eons ago? Or why no one runs around brandishing Kirin's Osode like its the freshest swag on the street.

Gear becomes irrelevant after a time. Empyrean weapon users are the only ones really justified in complaining and as people ranted at me when i talked about the Magian trials being annoying -- it only takes a week to break 85 with one of those. Other than that, as I said before, Mythics are almost 5 years old, and Relics are at least 6-7 (and that's being modest, as I can't find a specific date for their release but I'm sure they existed as NA launch).

You've had YEARS to work on those weapons and you decided to wait until 6 months ago to start. That's your fault, not SE's. It's time for the game to move on and you can't blame anyone for you just finishing your new RME until now.

Moreover, they already said they are going to be bringing changes to RME to appease concerns about them becoming outdated/irrelevant. Seriously, if all of the sensationalism even necessary when you don't even now what RME will look like after the changes?

To fit with your analogy, if you invested in a company specializing in Floppy Disk drives knowing that a another company has ALREADY ANNOUNCED A NEW PRODUCT that you eventually found out was the Compact Disc drive -- its your fault for not realizing that the big announcement talking about new products and major changes could include something better than the already aged piece of tech you decided to back. You can't blame them for innovating just because you lack foresight. The very first thing i thought after the expansions were announced is that the gear was going to be crazy good.

[Asymptotic]

It's been stated over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over


and over
and over


and over

and over and over and over


and over and over and over and over and over and over
and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and overand over and over and over and over and over and over

That gear and prestige weapons are subject and have always been subject to different expectations and paradigms.

Thisisnotpeoplecomplainingabouttheirtandavacrackowsbeingmadeuselessbyskadi+1feet. Nooneiswhiningthatthurandautchapeauovertookkhepribonnetforaspecificpurposeorthatthetabardisbetterthantheirhardearnedtesserasaioforexenterator. Nooneiscomplainingthatkariyehhaubertclosedthegapforpeoplewhodon'thavephorcys.

People are annoyed that their 200-600M investments that SE has continually encouraged them to work for up to this point are in jeopardy . I don't care if they release new stuff that's great, but the max-level versions of prestige weapon should have performance - as SE stated - of the "highest caliber." Should there be competitive equipment from new content and people who don't want to invest in 99 RME ? OF COURSE! And I highly encourage it!

I don't know why I bother arguing with you people because they've already all-but-stated that they're going to adjust the 99 versions (alone, noyoudontgetanupgradetoyour85masamunesorry) so the debate is purely academic. But sure, go on thinking they can sustain subscriptions with new content alone andor that removing the motivation for participating in existing 99 events is a good idea for the game economically (either for SE or for in-game).

[Yinnyth]

How then do you propose SE releases stronger weapons for stronger content? Just keep releasing ways to further upgrade RMEs step-by-step so they always stay strongest? That increases the total time investment involved in the weapons and helps create yet another insurmountable wall for new players.

[Horadrim]

Childish, asinine post

Posting like a 5 year old doesn't make your point any more valid.

Meanwhile -- again -- it has already been stated that adjustments are coming to the RME weapons, which is why you and your all-caps-I'm-going-to-bold-asinine-components-of-my-post rage is premature at best.

And frankly, no.

There actually shouldn't be gear competes with end game gear -- the whole point of it being powerful is that you invest time and energy. However, that doesn't mean you should get to camp on one piece of gear you could have made 3 years ago and still have it be as potent as the latest and greatest. Especially when each day that passes and each new piece of kit that is released drastically simplifies the process through which it can be developed. Each time they add new weapons and each time they release new near gear, it becomes that much easier to get the older stuff whether you like it or not. The only reason every other kid and his mother isn't running around with a mythic is because of the time restrictions and limitations on assault tags. Trust me that most people would have burned through it if they had converted the tag system to match Abyssea/Meebles (and the only reason they haven't is because NNI is attached to the same tag system.)

Relics, Mythics, and Empyreans aren't hard -- they haven't been since well before 99 became the common level for the FFXI population. They are busy work and with each patch they become more and more of an eye roll to finish.

Eventually, its not fair to RME wielders themselves that the weapons should be the best. Eventually there needs to be new content and a new ultimate weapon that takes effort to make -- and that's what the new end game will be.

Fun fact, Skirmish is NOT end game. It is something for you to work on and tie you over -- just like Salvage, Dynamis, Limbus, and Walk of Echoes, the new end game (And the new ultimate weapons attributed to it) are a few patched down the line and I can promise you that they will be just as much of a headache as legit RME wielders want it to be for something that will make Skirmish weapons (Which, mind you, have no real special effects) look like a joke.

Skirmish isn't going to take people away from existing content. I'm pretty damn sure there are plenty of people doing Voidwatch, which is a fucking joke, for things like Borealis even though they have RME weapons -- and don't even begin to tell me that Borealis is somehow better that Ragnarok 99 or Cald 99. It's because not everyone is going to build end game weapons -- that's just the thick of it.

And there will still be people doing old content just like how you see dynamis/limbus/walk of echoes/abyssea seals/+2 shouts daily. The difference will be that it will take less of them to get the content done because higher level gear will help simplify the process.