Legendary weapons. Where is the balance?

[Arciel]

With the 11th Vana'diel Census out, I think the statistics are pretty clear.

Mythic weapons are not balanced out against Relic and Empyrean weapons in terms of acquisition.

Based on what I'm reading from the devs, there has never been any intention to make mythics any rarer than relics or empyrean weapons.. so how is it that in the past year less than 100 Mythics have been made, when there are thousands of Relics and even more Empyreans being made in the same amount of time.

there's even this comment

We're quite curious to see what next year's data will look like after the Aht Urhgan revisions that are currently being implemented have had time to play out.

thing is, at present moment NONE of the implemented Aht Urhgan changes are going to make it more convenient to obtain a Mythic...

Right now, this is where a mythic stands in terms of 'cost' to acquire and upgrade to 99.


(prices taken off average rates found on ffxiah. dynamis price uses silverpiece price for safe estimate. if mainly other currencies, it will be cheaper)

The bulk of a Mythics cos is upfront, at its lv75 form, because of the cost of Alexandrite. As you can see, the price of Mulcibar's Scoria relative to the price of even obtaining a mythic is very low. 30mil if you buy all 3 scoria, and this is partly because there are so few mythic wielders around.

Looking at pre99 cost. The cost of a mythic is more than triple a relic or mythic, and this is the fundamental reason why few players have completed a mythic.

it is NOT because of Einherjar. NOT assaults. NOT nyzul isle, and with Zeni NM changes, the trophy droprate is no longer an issue. Ask any serious mythic builder and they'll likely tell you they've cleared all the other requirements already.

the problem is Salvage. Salvage renewal have not been implemented yet, so there is still hope.
the reason why alexandrite is so expensive is due to a few reasons.

1. no incentive to do salvage. salvage 75 gear was good, but is now obsolete. it is not even worth getting now because the drop rates are bad and you need to spend assault points to enter and money to make them.

2. barriers to entry. minimum 3 players needed to enter salvage - you only really need 1 player to clear it. if the barrier didn't exist maybe more people would go in and solo Salvage, but this may pose a problem for capacity reasons.

3. lack of supply of alexandrite. for the few who do salvage, they may keep the alexandrite or sell it. each day not much alexandrite is created from Salvage (and nyzul II) in other words, the supply created at the moment cannot meet the demand, hence the price is so high.
*IF you had 600mil right now and wanted to buy all your alexandrite, you still probably wont be able to until a few months later because there is not enough alexandrite around.

Possible solutions.

The law of demand and supply. When the supply of Alexandrite increase, the price will naturally fall.

This can be done in a number of ways.

1. Increase the droprate of Alexandrite per run.
2. Increase the number of people doing Salvage (make it more popular again)
3. Implement new ways for Alexandrite to drop in greater quantity.

with Salvage expansion planned for Sept onwards, we are mostly likely going to see an expansion similar to Limbus and not Dynamis (roadmap says expansion, not revamp).

most likely it'll be new shorter battlefields that occupy the same area so congestion won't be a problem. (arch chariots? >_<) but it will need to supply more alexandrite to meet the demand.

why? because even if old salvage is popular again, the amount of alexandrite it creates is not enough. (trivia: it was never enough, a lot of the initial few mythics were created with supply of duped alexandrite)

secondly, salvage is a commitment event. you can solo dynamis and voidwatch can be done with complete strangers, but if salvage uses its old system then you're still going to need to share drops and can't go in solo, so the amount of alexandrite created needs to compensate for the shortfall.

tl;dr - not enough alexandrite - need to balance Salvage for there to be more alexandrite. from there, market price will fall from its current 600m total price tag, and be more in line with Relic and Empyrean weapon prices.

i also want to talk about the huge contrast in effort required for all 3 types of weapons, but ill leave that for another time

[Arcon]

I'm not sure if your solution would actually work. If the price of Alex fell, it wouldn't be worth doing anymore in contrast to the other money making options, and people would simply stop doing it. The supply would drop from low to zero.

I think the most logical and most beneficial adjustment would be a lot simpler, namely to just reduce the required Alexandrite amount. 30k is an entirely absurd number, of any item. You can't carry all of them on you and there's no way to trade them for higher quality items (like 100 and 10k currency). This implies you can't carry all of them on you, which implies that you can't change your mind about the mythic you've started. With relics and even some empyreans you can just switch at any given time, without it being a huge loss (or no loss at all, as it is the case for relics).

If you lowered the amount, the price could remain the same, as people would still have to pay less to obtain it, so it wouldn't hurt the supply. In addition to that, it may make more people interested in it again, as right now it's simply out of most people's reach. That would revive the entire market. I'm not going to estimate on what it should be, but 10k sounds a lot more reasonable, and it would still be the most expensive of the bunch.

I wholeheartedly agree with the removal of the entry condition, though, and I believe that should be applied to all Assaults as well (it should be removed from everything in the entire game, but that's another issue).

[Arciel]

o i definitely don't disagree with that.

it just that the last couple of times people asked about that they kept saying they had no intention of lowering the amount of alexandrite..

i don't get why really. if its to 'respect' the effort that previous mythic makers put in, i can just imagine all the early relic makers getting huge slaps to the face. and 75 content has generally gotten way easier with lv cap raise anyway.

[DrForester]

The Alexandrite drop rate should be the same as it is in Dynamis for Currency. Every Salvage and Nyzul mob should drop it. Also, the Salvage boss should 100% drop the linen pouches. Because of the terrible drop rate of Alexandrite, that's usually half the Alexandrite for a run, randomly at the end.

Also, get rid of the randomness. Make the Cotton pouch a 25 piece and the linen pouch a 100 piece.

People can farm a relic in a few weeks, it would take over 6 months to farm enough alexandrite from salvage, and that's generously assuming an average of 150 pieces per run. It's totally mismatched given the other requirements for mythic weapons. 6+ months of Einherjar, 100 days to do your assault requirements (inclusion the original needed to hit Captain), then a few months of Nyzul. Then you have to farm zeny, and kill all the ZNM's (credit where it's due, at least SE fixed this with the Zeny increase)

o i definitely don't disagree with that.

it just that the last couple of times people asked about that they kept saying they had no intention of lowering the amount of alexandrite..

i don't get why really. if its to 'respect' the effort that previous mythic makers put in, i can just imagine all the early relic makers getting huge slaps to the face. and 75 content has generally gotten way easier with lv cap raise anyway.

Considering people can now get a Relic in a few weeks, whereas early Relic holders had to work for several YEARS, SE saying that is totally disingenuous.

[Severence]

Yeah, but honestly. Wouldn't making the drop rates significantly higher on Alex make people want to do Salvage more often by default? Because a mythic would not be /AS/ hard to obtain because more people will do them. And yeah, prices could fall. But. Where there is money to be made. People will rush to it. Just a thought. I may be wrong.

Edit: More people doing them would probably also mean less Alexandrites itself too.

[DrForester]

Yeah, but honestly. Wouldn't making the drop rates significantly higher on Alex make people want to do Salvage more often by default? Because a mythic would not be /AS/ hard to obtain because more people will do them. And yeah, prices could fall. But. Where there is money to be made. People will rush to it. Just a thought. I may be wrong.

Edit: More people doing them would probably also mean less Alexandrites itself too.

A quick look at Relics would say you're wrong on that. More people farm, more people sell, and a LOT more people are getting Relics, and currency price went down significantly on most servers.

The whole point of Mythics was to let people do quests to obtain it, not just throw money at it. It's totally impractical for someone to farm the Alexandrite themselves. You'd have do do daily runs for almost a year, and that's assuming you find some people who will let you keep 100% of the Alexandrite. Back in the old relic days, it was only a twice a week event, and you could justify getting 100% of currency because you were sponsoring the run. Main reason Relic's took so long was that only one group could do dynamis at a time and there were numerous scheduling conflicts.

[Afania]

I'm not sure if your solution would actually work. If the price of Alex fell, it wouldn't be worth doing anymore in contrast to the other money making options, and people would simply stop doing it. The supply would drop from low to zero.

I think the most logical and most beneficial adjustment would be a lot simpler, namely to just reduce the required Alexandrite amount. 30k is an entirely absurd number, of any item. You can't carry all of them on you and there's no way to trade them for higher quality items (like 100 and 10k currency). This implies you can't carry all of them on you, which implies that you can't change your mind about the mythic you've started. With relics and even some empyreans you can just switch at any given time, without it being a huge loss (or no loss at all, as it is the case for relics).

If you lowered the amount, the price could remain the same, as people would still have to pay less to obtain it, so it wouldn't hurt the supply. In addition to that, it may make more people interested in it again, as right now it's simply out of most people's reach. That would revive the entire market. I'm not going to estimate on what it should be, but 10k sounds a lot more reasonable, and it would still be the most expensive of the bunch.

I wholeheartedly agree with the removal of the entry condition, though, and I believe that should be applied to all Assaults as well (it should be removed from everything in the entire game, but that's another issue).

No, don't decrease the alex requirement. It does more harm than good in an MMO. If you already turn in 25k alex, and suddenly it only need 10k to complete. How'd you feel the 15k alex you lost? Inb4 SE giving refund etc.

If you want to start a Mythic, take serious consideration. Do it for a job you really want to take seriously. That's what this quest are for.

Whether alex problem can be solve or not depending on how good new salvage gears are. If new salvage gears are more sidegrade with shitty drop rate, price will remain the same. Otherwise it will drop.

[Demon6324236]

As I am sure it has been said before, by me even, reducing the amount needed & increasing the rate at which they are obtained really does the same exact thing. Earning 30k Alexandrites @15k each is no different than obtaining 10k Alexandrites @45k each, or 5k Alexandrites @90k each. Its the same thing no matter what, just reducing the number makes it seem like less work overall, and actually saves inventory space. No matter how they go about it, they need to make Mythics more accessable in the end.

The way I have always looked at weapons are like this, Relics are about farming & money, Mythics are about doing quests & killing HNMs, Emps are about doing Trials of the Magian, mostly killing the same NM over, and over, and over, starting in original areas, then moving outward to expansion areas, then to VNMs, then to Abyssea. But as it is now, Mythics are really Quests+HNMs+Farming+Money+Doing the same thing over & over again, which makes them more of a boring annoyance rather than a uniquely obtained weapon.

[Arcon]

As I am sure it has been said before, by me even, reducing the amount needed & increasing the rate at which they are obtained really does the same exact thing.

And as I explained as well, it is not at all the same. You assume the price would adjust itself, but that's wishful thinking. Player-driven economy (which this falls under) is regulated comparatively to other events. Salvage will not net much more than Dynamis, or people will start abusing it the same way until Alexandrite price falls again. Eventually it will settle at an equilibrium, which is not the same reward/effort ratio as it is with lower requirements, because the output from the event itself stays the same.

[Dawnn]

I'd like to see some salvage boss or something of the sort, and have it drop Cat's Eye or atleast something like a Cat's Eye Shard, having 20~50 of said shard's to complete an entire alexandrite category. We have different tiers of currency so why not add new tiers to alex?