Were Emps supposed to be this easy?

[Arlan]

Compared to Relics and mythics, yes, Your right, they are easyer to obtain and are much powerful than previous armor/weapons.

But, I think the gear in general for AF3+1, in my experience, isn't that UBER even tho it is the most Uber thing so far in ffxi. They most likely going to add MORE stats for the future lvl99 gear. I think what we think is uber today, wont be so uber the next few major updates for lvl99.

Also, the rate you obtain your AF3+1 and the base is pretty decent in my opinion.
You can get your seals by forming ur own pt, and then killing NMs that drop it.
So ya, I like it. I think its pretty decent rate to obtain and earn your armor.
Specially for those who have lives and still love to game!

I think what I really like about the AF3s are the facts that they are equipments that you earn, Not equipments that you can just buy with gilz to upgrade.

I enjoy killing NMs with friends and LS mates. So I think its fun for a change.

[Tsuneo]

You didn't prove anything though. You edited out a sentence in the original post to change it's meaning.

I proved that they did say they were making relics easier to obtain. I never said anything about Mythics. I only proved you wrong in claiming that they never said they were making relics easier. Good job trying to put words in my mouth.

[Catsby]

My only problem with empyrean weapons is that it's so mindless to produce one and that the upgrade progression is backwards.

With Relic weapons each upgrade was harder and harder for your wallet and for the countless people helping you (directly and indirectly). The weapon itself also gradually got stronger as you upgraded, maybe not at the rate it should have but it still was a noticeble boost between upgrades.

Mythic weapons had probably the best upgrade system (hear me out for a second before you hit post quick reply). Instead of mindlessly grinding a single event for months maybe years you were required to experience pretty much everything that ToAU had to offer. I realize that there is plenty of grinding involved there too but take a high level look at everything required before you look deeper at the numbers involved;

Reach floor 100 of nyzul isle
Reach Captain mercenary rank
Clear Odin's chamber
Kill all the beastman leaders
Clear all 4 remnants areas
Collect rare drops from upper tier ZNMs
All the other quests involved

These events themselves took a long time to complete even if you had some of them knocked out before mythics were even introduced. They were also reasonably difficult enough to justify a sweet item after you clear it all ( before you even add in the bullshit requirements like alexandrite, eyepatches and assault ledgers). Going from mythics to empyreans seemed like the developers learned absolutely nothing or just simply doubted that abyssea would be as popular as it was.

In my opinion building an empyrean weapon would be more exciting and would leave less people feeling butthurt if there was a series of requirements similar to mythics. For example a quest chain that requires the player to defeat all the zone bosses, defeat all the caturae, defeat shinryu, turn in X different abyssites and atmas (they are temp key items remember), score a certain number of points in dominion and bastion, use a primeval brew and complete all the quests. You know, requirements that show you did pretty much everything that the add-ons had to offer and in the end you get a nice shiny weapon for it.

edit: also the upgrade progression for empyreans is dumb. it goes from weak and worthless to weak and worthless all the way until you get it to 85. Then the upgrade after that is completely unreasonable for the requirements.

[Kimble]

Mythics would have been fine if they alex cost was A LOT lower or just removed totally. Relics would have been better if maybe currency was dealt with like cruor and given universally to everyone that entered.

[Shoko]

If Mythics costed like 5k in Alex, that alone would be epic. But with today's terms they could cut the costs of ampoules and nyzul credits as well and it would justify upgrading one.

Speaking of Relics, I just have this feeling that they will be crazy easy to obtain soon for some reason.

[Yinnyth]

I agree with you partially, Catsby, but you're cherry-picking the mythic quests. The pre-requisite quests were indeed beautifully done for mythics, and to be fair, I'm glad they're there. I don't want some newb who's never seen Odin getting an ultimate weapon. But those are just pre-requisites. You do them once, then you never have to do them again no matter how many mythics you make. Just like how getting to level 75 is a pre-requisite for wielding one. The real portion of the mythic is the grind. 50 assaults redone (reasonable), Wyrmseeker Areuhaut (mostly reasonable), Balrahn's Eyepatch (slightly reasonable), 3 ZNM trophies (only unreasonable because the zeni system is retarded), 30,000 alexandrite (100% unreasonable BS).

That's what it boils down to. You have to look at what is actually preventing people from completing the weapon. For relics, it's currency. For mythics, it's alexandrite. For empyreans, it's... crowded zones. Ok, I kid- it's the abyssea NM drops. That is what the majority of time is spent on for these weapons. That is what people think of when they think of getting these weapons.

[Leonlionheart]

Something tells me that the new dev team despises ToAU content, considering they haven't used any of it for anything yet, other than the jobs PUP BLU and COR, and the drop rate increases (which happened everywhere other than abyssea).

Maybe thats why Dynamis is seeing so much attention but no ToAU end-game content is? (Einherjar, Salvage, Assault, Nyzul, ZNM)

The point is, new development team, new FFXI. You can't really expect to see similar patterns in updates and content like we used to (Pretty much every piece of gear after sky was a side grade or a minimal upgrade from even AHable gear).

Not that I mind, in fact I quite like Abyssea. I applaud the dev team for not listening to all the QQ HARD STUFF ISN'T HARD LIKE IT WAS IN 2004!

As if "takes up most of your life" = hard.

[Yinnyth]

As if "takes up most of your life" = hard.

This has always interested me. In an MMORPG, what does constitute "hard"? Given the chance to design a quest to create the game's ultimate weapon, how would you go about doing that? How do you create an ultimate weapon which newbs can't get? Would you put it on an extremely difficult boss like an unzergable AV? Make it a reward at the end of a dungeon crawl similar to salvage? Have an NPC sell it for a large amount of gil? Make it crafted out of rare items from several difficult enemies?

In the end, getting the ultimate gear all seems to boil down to time. If you try enough times, you will eventually beat the ultimate NM, finish the dungeon crawl, or acquire enough gil. There is a skill modifier involved, certainly. Some groups manage to milk more currency out of Dynamis, some groups of people kill abyssea NMs faster, etc. But even complete newbs will get it eventually, given enough time.

Ultimately it boils down to the average amount of time one of these items takes to finish, and the time your average player invests in the game. SE can't (directly) control the average time we play their game, and we can't (directly) control the average amount of time it takes to finish a relic. That being said, players have indirectly controlled the average amount of time it takes to finish an empy. For whatever reason, SE decided even the most casual of players deserved ultimate weapons, making it substantially harder to tell hard-core players apart from everyone else. Is it right for anyone with 70 hours of free time to "beat" FFXI? Depends on who you ask, I suppose.

Judging from your signature, I'd say there's lots of things you did on your character that you're proud of, which later got downgraded and made substantially easier for casual gamers. Now that those accomplishments would be so easy, you're forced to put that information in your signature to maintain your pride. And you should be proud of those accomplishments, I'm not trying to belittle them or bash you at all on this. I just think you're being a little hard on the QQers who miss the good old days when it took 30 tries to beat promyvions and relics took a year and a half.

[Dart]

This. I just got my 80 Kannagi yesterday--took me about a month to do it, grinding out a lot of it solo/duo. It will probably be several months until I get the 85. By the time I get the 90, I expect to have put about 8 months of effort into it, which isn't unreasonable for a weapon of its caliber.

What the complaining people aren't getting is that the linkshells that are cranking out a new 90 Emp every week are the same sort of linkshells that would use their banks to buy most of a relic from nothing to complete in a week or two (depending on Attestation, etc.) using the gil they got mercing drops. To the rest of us (i.e. people not in that kind of shell), Emps are much closer in difficulty (still not there, but a lot closer), just without the gil requirement. The requirements for Mythics were always retardedly high for what they give, which is why there are so few of them even today.

If any magian weapons need to be adjusted, it's the Fire/Light elemental line, anyway.

your tears are delicious. I joined some RL friend since I came back who never did kings/merc'd drops or anything like that. (they were always a sea, limbus, dynamis shell) I've been back for 6 weeks now and after helping to organize them we're currently working on empy # 8 and 9. They all have fulltime jobs and the like. Get organized, do some research and actually help each other. There's no reason why you cannot get 6-7 friends together and get everyone an empy and just zerg everything for 4-5 hours during the weekday after work and go a little harder on the weekends.

[Runespider]

This has always interested me. In an MMORPG, what does constitute "hard"?

For me, mobs that are actually so difficult or heck even unfair to fight that you have to be competent to kill and even then have a chance of failure, also yes time is a difficulty because it will scare off some. Emp NM's are a joke, take very little skill or competence to kill and can be finished in a small amount of time.

I finished a kanagi for my sister a few months back just so she could have a toy to mess around with. If she had asked me to get her a relic or a mythic I would of simply laughed but the time and effort was so minimal that I did it for her, that's the ease of Emps.