Ok...let me level with you here SE...

[Washburn]

Obviously thats the choice everyone will be taking.

[detlef]

Yup. Other than wasting development time on something that will not happen, what's the problem?

[Ravenmore]

Yup. Other than wasting development time on something that will not happen, what's the problem?

Them giving us the line that the reason it takes so long for new content is they don't have the staff or the money it rubs the us the wrong way. Better yet not getting more then reskins of old mobs in old zones. Then they even think of wasting time no matter how little of it on something that at best 10 or 20 people will ever get and then a chance that 100 might even try to finish it, so can you see why people might be mad.

[detlef]

Frankly I was more upset when there wasn't any first stage at all. When it looked like maybe a handful of people would be running around with level 99 weapons across all servers. Now THAT looked like a colossal waste of development time. Compared to that, this is a breath of fresh air.

...

We'll see what the stage 1 trials entail, but it appears to be a step in the right direction. Incidentally, are the people who are upset r/m/e holders? I would think that most people would be happy to know that the weapons' final stats can be obtained through a reasonable (maybe) amount of effort.

The argument that they are wasting effort on content that may as well not exist is a valid concern that I can get behind.

[Atomic_Skull]

When it comes to the first stage of upgrades for relic/mythic/empyrean weapons, this is considered to be the weapon’s complete form

Except it's not complete so long as the final stage remains. It is a slap in the face to relic holders who undertook the original relic quest as a capstone on their character to suddenly take that completion away from them and tell them that the weapon is no longer complete and will never be for 99.9% of relic holders.

I wouldn't mind a hard quest, even something on the order of the difficulty of the 10,000 currency stage as it was at level 75. Even if that meant the removal of the easy lvl 99 stage. Because at least that's just a matter of hard work and can be completed by someone willing to put in the effort. But this final stage is simply impossible for 99.99% of relic holders. You have taken my completed weapon from me and you can say the easy stage is "complete" but I'm sorry it's just not complete no matter what the developers say so long as there is a remaining stage and people are going to be angry and feel like something was stolen from them.

Asking for another 10,000 unit currency for 95->99 probably would have actually caused less rage than this because at least that can actually be completed and the upgrade (40% WS damage and enhanced extra damage proc) would be worth the effort.

[Strife]

more HNM's?

This!

I, personally, will likely never get a relic or mythic weapon, but this just strikes me as terrible game design and a terrible goal to put in the game.

Then why bother commenting on trials for them? Just kinda sounds like "I don't want SE to make hard stuff cause I'll never get it".

But the Dev team is going to get it into their mind that it's acceptable to make these horrid trials and to make gear even more of a pain to obtain than voidwatch already makes it.

When have they not thought this way? lol
Just because the game has been placed into easy mode now people seem to forget that a lot of old content, especially obtaining 'ultimate' items like relics and mythics were always hard. 30k alex when salvage used to be challenging and fun with low drop rates, people would've killed to change the trial to defeating ADL a bunch of times lol. Collecting currency for original relics -unless you were obscenely rich- took more than a few hundred dynamis runs (poor bastards). SE always has & always will make sadistic trials because as much as we may like to mouth off about them history shows we still like doing -or some people at least- them for that sense of triumph and superiority at the end, of course they also want to keep those ppl grinding and paying their subscription.

If we were certain that's how it would stay, I would agree with you completely.

We can't be certain of anything SE will do except maybe that they do stupid stuff. We can be certain whatever they do people will QQ about it though. lol

Just out of curiosity will anyone on here be doing the +2 trial and i know you have to be pretty brave to say you will on here.

[saevel]

I’d like to share the developers’ thoughts and plan for these new trials and upgrades.

When it comes to the first stage of upgrades for relic/mythic/empyrean weapons, this is considered to be the weapon’s complete form and is also the one the developers expect most players can achieve. They don’t want to dangle a carrot in front of everyone saying, “you can make these weapons even more powerful!” and then make it so only small fraction of players achieve this.

On the other hand, as some of you have already mentioned, the second stage of these weapon enhancements is left for those players who wish to go above and beyond—the “completionists” so to speak. This is why there will be no difference in weapon skill damage or other stats and only an AoE benefit as well as a special effect will be given for completing this upgrade.

This is a good idea Camate. The dev's gonna get flak no matter what they do here, but I feel this address's the needs of the majority of the player base. They can reasonably obtain the final form of their weapon. The people who want to go to the extreme can opt to get the sparkly one that tells everyone they did that.

Now to address the issue with Heavy Metal Plates, their at 100K each now which translates into 150,000,000 gil. That's a little excessive if the majority of Emp holders are expected to upgrade to 99. Could the developers possibly look at either reducing the number of plates needed, or increasing their drop rates.

[Runespider]

Yeah, glowy effect, whatever. Its no real benefit. I just feel like it could have either been something worth the work, or that it was reasonably obtainable. It feels like a paintjob for your car costing $50,000. Its unreasonable, and its insulting to think that anyone would even take it seriously enough to consider putting in the work.

Honestly I'm kinda glad it's a)crap b)so stupid that most of us will never seriously contemplate doing it. If the trial was the same but the end result was amazing we would all be really upset we couldn't take it to the last level, if the trial was a little more reasonable but still rather stupid we would possibly attempt it and waste mass amounts ofour time on it.

Be happy for what the trial is and fear what they could of done. If a few want to do this glow trial then good luck to them, I'm thankful for the lackluster upgrade as to not make me emo to worry about it. They are determined to do thisd minority upgrade so be glad it's crap and leave it alone.

[Insaniac]

Read this over and over until it clicks.

Way to quote 1 sentence without context. The key word is "impossible". My question is: Why would you want something you can't get to be amazing? Forget the effort vs. reward arguments. Just isolate that question and try to answer it.

If someone sealed 1 cupcake under 30 feet of solid concrete and put another cupcake in a locker then put the key on a shelf that you needed a stool to reach would you insist that the cupcake under 30 feet of concrete be twice as delicious as the one in the locker?

[Atomic_Skull]

People didn't do relics for performance, they did them as a capstone on their character. SE has now taken that away and said that we will never complete our weapons.

I don't mind a hard quest to complete it, even something as hard as the original lvl 75 final stage (which I would be glad to do for the stats they listed for the 99 relics). But telling us "99.9999999% of you will never complete your weapons but here's a consolation prize" is more likely to make people quit than just asking for another 150 million gil in items would have been.