Quote Originally Posted by Afania View Post
I disagree, the way you say it sounds like lv 85~95 weapons are different from lv 99, but in fact they're not.

The one who made lv 85~95 weapons already know lv 85~95 isn't the end. Even if you make lv 85~90 in Abyssea era, you should already guessed that one day your lv 85 90 weapon would get a new trial.

Further more, killing lv 99 R/E/M means this game no longer has R/E/M. Which is one of the main reason why everyone is against this idea. If delve 30k weapon(which takes 1~2 days to get if you play more than avg player) is better than 99 R/E/M, then there's no reason to make them, thus one of FFXI's coolest concept is dead.

But keeping 85~95 as it is, and boost lv 99 R/E/M means R/E/M are still use-able. The legendary weapon concept still exist.

Players rant about lv 99 R/E/M isn't just about "I do this for nothing, boost it", but also because the emotional attachment, and I think emotional attachment should be lv 99 only. By your logic, if a player lv NIN during abyssea because NIN was useful, shouldn't he ask SE to boost NIN or give every NM NIN proc too, just because he leveled NIN for nothing after Abyssea/VW era ended?
I understand what you're saying about emotional attachment, but why should that apply to level 99 weapons only? If someone burns their weapon to level 90 in a couple of days because they have optimal jobs, already have a high-tier weapon, lots of available time and plenty of help etc then I can see how they might not be massively attached to them, but not everyone can/has done that. It took me a long time to build my level 90 Hvergelmir, and I'm attached to it partly for that reason.

Part of the reason that that people want lower level R/E/M upgraded is that there was no warning that this Delve fiasco was going to happen. There have been new legendary weapons released in the past, but they've always been approximately the same tier of effectiveness (generally speaking) to each other. If you had a relic before the mythics or empyreans came out, it's still top-tier afterwards. I think it was reasonable for people to assume that a level 90 Empyrean weapon would stay pretty decent for the forseeable future, and plan on taking it just to that level. It's not the best, but it's decent. Personally, I would not have created an Empyrean weapon if I knew the level 95 HMP trial was mandatory, because I simply don't have the in-game time or resources to complete it unless I slog it out for a year. This is the same issue that level 99 R/E/M holders face - they built their weapon expecting a consistent, indefinitely useful top-tier weapon, and now that's not the case.

Perhaps think of it this way: Empyrean weapons were created during the cap increase, with a definite end-point at level 99. If SE didn't think people might want to stop at some point along the way, why did they bother adding useful stats to any of the non-lv99 weapons? Why didn't they only give you the "complete" weapon when it's actually finished at lv99? Sure, the level cap increase period was fairly long, but if SE intended only the level 99 weapons to be relevant they could easily have announced "Your weird looking weapon will look like this at lv99. Start working now".

Regarding your jobs comment, job balance has been broken since the game's inception, and I think we can all agree that it's even more broken now. Ninja should be a useful job, regardless of when it was levelled or for what reason, or what is the point of having the job at all? I agree with your point - if you level a job, you should be able to be confident that it'll remain useful in the future. We all know that doesn't happen, but we also all agree that it should happen. How it's done is the important part - Ninja shouldn't suddenly become the ultimate job, but should remain just as good at what it does relative to other jobs - just as lower level R/E/M should remain just as good relative to other weapons.