Prism Staff (name pending)

[Meyi]

I'm pretty baffled as to why they've decided to bring this out now when people have been asking for it for quite literally years. A combined staff would never have increased the capabilities of the jobs that used it, but it would have been vastly more convenient. Why on earth announce this now, when most of the jobs that relied full time on the elemental staves are able to move on to unquestionably superior ones?

I can fully appreciate that there are more niche uses to combined staves, particularly for jobs that are not on the magian staff list, and for people who are not willing to create magian staves, but honestly, the timing is absurd. They must be aware of the supreme irony of bringing out a much desired item just after it has been rendered obsolete. It feels like a gigantic slap around the face and I'm very irritated by it. I'm not sure what's coming next, but it will probably involve the creation of affinity+9 staves tailored to specifics spells and the sudden and entirely coincidental announcement that magian staves will be combinable.

/disengage rant mode

I agree. It feels like a slap in the face. But at least it shows they're listening... even if it takes them five years to figure it out?

I'd definitely like to see Magians have a merge option. Whether it be all I/II/IIIs or per element I don't care. I'd just like to see a potential 24 inventory hog be reduced to 8 (per element) or 3 (per type). I'd make the rest of each element just to fuse them together, and I'm sure others would too.

Edit: Once upon a time I would have cared about a Prism Staff for the HQ staves. Then Magians came along. A Prism Staff, for the level 51s, is no longer enticing.

[Alistaire]

You know what'd be awesome and fix this whole 8 staff issue? @ the anniversary of 99 cap up inventory to 99.

Edit: or whenever. Anniversary would be a gimmicky thing, I'd be happy with just "asap".

[RAIST]

You know what'd be awesome and fix this whole 8 staff issue? @ the anniversary of 99 cap up inventory to 99.

Edit: or whenever. Anniversary would be a gimmicky thing, I'd be happy with just "asap".

/sigh

Won't happen until the PS2 is removed from the supported platform list....or they do some serious retooling of the game from ground up.

[Alistaire]

/sigh

Won't happen until the PS2 is removed from the supported platform list....or they do some serious retooling of the game from ground up.

That's if you actually believe that's the limitation. Which, considering SE said it was PS2 limitations preventing it from being more than several of the previous caps...it's just amazing they keep saying that and think it's legit.

[RAIST]

It's an old issue that was vetted years ago. If I remember right, people with more knowledge of how the registers reserved for FFXI work on the PS2 mapped it out to reveal that at best they could perhaps eak out maybe 4 more or something like that. It has to do with how many items can be loaded when both containers are loaded, taking into account the headroom for making the swaps between containers, sorting, etc. This is also why Auto-Translate is so far behind as well--they can only run so many items through that thread because they have to maintain resources elsewhere at the same time.

Only so much space was reserved for certain resources on the PS2--it is limited to just a 32MB memory space for everything that is going on at any given time, and the PS2 doesn't take advantage of resident memory, VM, etc. like other platforms can. It all is streamed constantly. Once you hit the hard limit of bus width and/or memory, they basically have to truncate something else to make more room for a feature to be expanded. Sometimes they just can't/aren't willing to make the tradeoff it would take. So long as they intend to maintain support for the PS2, we will run up against these kinds of limits on key elements of the game that would give certain players more benefit over another simply because of the platform being used. Some things just have to remain the same across all platforms in their eyes. This is apparently one of them.

[Crusader81]

So I assumed until reading further these were the stats for a weapon you can start in ToM, I'm to understand this staff can't be enhanced further in ToM and these are the final stats? If this is so why do this?
Why not make this staff ToM and require the other staffs put into it for a final staff that has = stats to the top ToM staffs but doesn't require 32 or more inventory spots.

I'm telling you SE if you want to make your player base happy This is the way. Give us the option to just put all the top ToM into one staff. I would be willing to spend all the extra time that it takes to make a staff like that; it's a win win, I keep playing (and paying) and everyone gets 50 more inventory.

Anything else is a waste of time

This also solves your problem of having to chose the stats since by ToM the player could decide the stats they want. Example:

I make all the Elemental Affinity Dmg+ staffs for my BLM I trade all 8 ToM staffs to the ToM moogle All Elements Affinity: DMG +6 is added and I have X stats left I can put onto the Staff.

Also is there a limit to the amount of hidden stats you can put onto an item? The orignal staves do many things but they don't say in the text.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

So I assumed until reading further these were the stats for a weapon you can start in ToM, I'm to understand this staff can't be enhanced further in ToM and these are the final stats? If this is so why do this?
Why not make this staff ToM and require the other staffs put into it for a final staff that has = stats to the top ToM staffs but doesn't require 32 or more inventory spots.

I'm telling you SE if you want to make your player base happy This is the way. Give us the option to just put all the top ToM into one staff. I would be willing to spend all the extra time that it takes to make a staff like that; it's a win win, I keep playing (and paying) and everyone gets 50 more inventory.

Anything else is a waste of time

Because this staff will only benefit mules, and other jobs that are not on the ToM staves, such as BLU and COR. Mages have to suffer!

[Crusader81]

That's completely illogical of them if this is true.
Completing a staff that takes all the other ToM Staves put into it would require as much time (and money; geodes) as a relic weapon if not more (one of the wind staves takes well over a million in geode/garudites) So there is no excuse. People should be rewarded for their hard work; not thrown a useless costume piece with stats like this. I can't think of one use I'd use for the stats if has now; which means my inventory is still clogged with staves and I have no incentive to play longer making more staves.

[Jerbob]

That's completely illogical of them if this is true.
Completing a staff that takes all the other ToM Staves put into it would require as much time (and money; geodes) as a relic weapon if not more (one of the wind staves takes well over a million in geode/garudites).

I think the optimal solution would be for SE to create a staff that can "absorb" other completed trial staves one by one. For example, I have a Cure potency staff, one of the perpetuation reduction staves, a Pet: MAB staff and an ice magic damage staff. A new trial could let me combine just those four, one by one, plus any others I might decide to make in the future as I build them.

If we could just combine the staves we needed into a single staff then I think the accessibility of such a piece of equipment would be much greater. Of course this would require some extra work on SE's part so it's even less likely to happen.

[Retsujo]

So I assumed until reading further these were the stats for a weapon you can start in ToM, I'm to understand this staff can't be enhanced further in ToM and these are the final stats? If this is so why do this?
Why not make this staff ToM and require the other staffs put into it for a final staff that has = stats to the top ToM staffs but doesn't require 32 or more inventory spots.

Finally, there have been some comments about making a prism-type staff that would combine all of the Magian staves. While your suggestions are of course always welcome, we would like to keep this to a separate discussion and will look into this another time.

That is your answer, Crusader. Not everyone cares enough about magian trial staves so having a staff that essetially has the majority of the stats from HQ Elemental Lv51 staves is pretty cool - but don't rule out a ToM version in the future.