Availability of HMPs, Riftcinders, Riftdross

[Daisansha]

Square doesn't understand simple math.

If one voidstone (1player) equals 1 heavy metal. Then 18 players (18 voidstones) equal 18 heavy metals. It doesn't improve anything. You can't suddenly get 2 heavy metals by using 18 people. YOUR drop rate is always constant.

They understand it quite well. What the playerbase here doesn't understand is that other people's loot pools does not equal your loot pools. Just because other people get a heavy metal plate does not mean they are going to sell it to you either. Just because there are less people doing VW doesn't suddenly mean that SE has to increase the drop rate. What they did do is make it so VW is incredibly easy and anyone can spam it. If you are running out of stones to pop VW, there are methods to obtain more without just waiting a day to pass. A person might not like those methods, but that's that person's personal problem. I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who just want to buy everything off the market instead of go out and obtain things themselves. You do not own other players, they do not work for you, go do stuff for yourself. Other players putting HMP and Riftcinders on the market for you to buy was just a convenience for you, it was not something that was required on SE's nor other player's part to make sure happens. HMP and Riftcinders are obtainable solo, quite easily. Just go out and do it. Otherwise, put out the word that you are looking to buy HMPs/Riftcinders and put a price tag that will motivate other people to go get them for you.

[Vae]

Just because there are less people doing VW doesn't suddenly mean that SE has to increase the drop rate.

That's LITERALLY exactly what it means.

When people stop doing it, there is a reason, and then square fixes the reason. Eventually.

[Zeargi]

They understand it quite well. What the playerbase here doesn't understand is that other people's loot pools does not equal your loot pools. Just because other people get a heavy metal plate does not mean they are going to sell it to you either. Just because there are less people doing VW doesn't suddenly mean that SE has to increase the drop rate. What they did do is make it so VW is incredibly easy and anyone can spam it. If you are running out of stones to pop VW, there are methods to obtain more without just waiting a day to pass. A person might not like those methods, but that's that person's personal problem. I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who just want to buy everything off the market instead of go out and obtain things themselves. You do not own other players, they do not work for you, go do stuff for yourself. Other players putting HMP and Riftcinders on the market for you to buy was just a convenience for you, it was not something that was required on SE's nor other player's part to make sure happens. HMP and Riftcinders are obtainable solo, quite easily. Just go out and do it. Otherwise, put out the word that you are looking to buy HMPs/Riftcinders and put a price tag that will motivate other people to go get them for you.

Except that there's a major problem with your sentiment, and it's not 100% accurate. When you look at all the other weapon types compared to the Empyrean, you see a vast difference between them.


A Relic: the easiest to obtain out of all the weapon types. It requires of 10,000 piece to complete, but with the proper knowledge and focusing on one zone, you can leave with 200+ ancient current.

A Mythic: hard to medium. The hardest segments of the mythic quest line are the assaults and the initial completion of Nyzul Isle. The 30,000 price tag is easy to obtain with a good understanding of each zone

An Empyrean: Easy to Extreme. The quest line starts in Abyssea. this is the easiest portion of the quest line, in Abyssea you have a clear and present knowledge of what is to come. The colorless souls have become much easier to obtain now with the certain key item from Rhapsody of Vana'deal. But after leaving Abyssea, you know longer have a queue on which weaknesses which will come up. You no longer have a time to know whether it is blunt, piercing, or slashing. You no longer have an indication of which elemental weakness will show up. You just know that there are weaknesses. At this point the playing field is no longer level. This content was made with 18 people in mind, and retains a whole aspect which is basically sealed nowadays. The Rhapsody of Mauve is useless for almost every job except for ones that have high damage dealing yields, and exclude all pet jobs with the exception of Dragoon. It takes 1500 heavy metal plates to complete the level 90 task, and that's still at the lower end of the spectrum. Fortunately, the weapons can bypass the level 99-2 and go directly to level 119. Sadly, this is not the case for the shield or the harp, and still requires the 3060 items to push it to its highest level. With dynamis and salvage, you are guaranteed to get what you focus on, but in void watch, you are not guaranteed any drops whatsoever that will help you. So, even though the numbers are less than what it takes to make a mythic or a relic these numbers are still drastically impossible to get because you can't find the items that you need.

This is a subject that should be looked into because there are so few people doing void watch, and they are doing a current campaign to max out lights to start off with… Which means they see a problem by assisting the players, but they refused to actually do anything than apply a Band-Aid.

[BurnNotice]

The people that are able to purchase the items on AH are from the people that have given up on further enhancing their weapons due to the low drop rate on items, and excessive time spent farming these items. I've seen more folks create two or three mythics and relics faster than they can gather 1500 HMPs. As of January 12, it took my ls mate over 2 years to collect HMPs and finally finished his empy.

[Zeargi]

A solution I came up with is this:

New BCNM Fights:
★Alexander
★Odin
★Abomination
★Shadows Await (Ahriman + Dragon/Mission 2-3)
★The Wyrm God
*With the ones above plus:
★Dawn
★The Shadow Lord

Then add an Item that only drops from the higher Difficulties

The Kupon-I Mats II which when traded gives 1 of the following:

Dense Clusters - HMP Substitution
Umbral Coagulation - Umbra Marrow Substitution
Void Debris - Riftdross Substitution
Void Ash - Riftcinder Substitution
Cat's Eye - Alexandrite Substitution
Bayld Crystal - H-P Bayld Substitution
10,000 Bynes
Rimilala Stripeshell
Ranperre Goldpiece
Bztavian wing
Rockfin tooth
Slice of gabbrath meat
Waktza crest
Yggdreant root
Cehuetzi pelt

Then you have all of the weapons covered except the Aeonics

You give people a reason to help do REM's Chapters for armors. You can add more armors to be won from the newer fights, and you can give people a chance to upgrade there stuff.

[dasva]

Without bothering with someone I'll just leave this here as a comparison:

Using average prices on my server (100s/stacks for ones readily available since it's usually cheaper and nobody got time to buy several thousand of something in singles lol) gil costs (kind of hard to compare the pure timesinks between each but none are too horrible nowadays) to 119 are as follows

Relic: 43.5-45.7 mil depending on which ones.

Mythic: 169.5 mil

Ergon : ~453 mil with another 50k-2mil depending on your lucky with the random delve boss item roulette

Empyrean: 156-222mil depending on which one.

Now mythics and ergons being higher priced kind of make sense (though in ergons case you could certainly argue not that much higher) due to how great and job defining they are. They literally are that much better than say relics at the bottom.

But empyreans are by and large not much better and sometimes not even better than relics but cost ~4-5x as much. In fact half the empyrean weapons cost more the mythics that completely blow them out of the water

If that's not unbalanced I don't know what is

[Feary]

i think the problem here is that ppl are focusing on just these items itself.

i believe the real problem here is not how high the demand is vs how low the supply of hmp/rift~ are. the problem is how low the demand is for VW vs how high the demand is for the currencies are from the content.

i simple fix would be to revamp/rehash the main drops. the ogier/rubeus/athos or even enkido sets along with new accessories(back waist neck grips) could be remodeled to 119 and the currencies like curor/silver mirrors/ can be the items to enhance them, rather than just straight random drops.

this would solve the issue as long hmp/rifts where also a chance in the pool for any of the nm that drop base items.

there really is no need from them to be more difficult then 3-12 ppl.

with a similiar change there would be no reason to increase the drop rate or directly change the balance.

[Pups323]

INC surge voidwatch! 1/1000 chance for the nm to appear as a surged nm with a 2% chance to drop a pouch that has between 5-15 heavy metals!

[detlef]

I don't think people are focusing enough on voidstone availability. Seriously, a maximum of two voidstones per day does not cut it when you burn through 6 in less than 30 minutes.

Considering the adjustments to Salvage, Assaults, Einherjar, Meebles, and probably other things I can't think of, it's amazing that SE has been so stubborn with Voidwatch

[BurnNotice]

I remember somebody brought up the issue with voidstones and the conversion of voiddust. I believe that ties into this situation. Those folks are farming for items and end up depleting their stones as a result. The direction I was hoping the Dev team would go is to either add 119 content with a better chance and alternative to get these items or add them to Abyssea NMs....maybe even add new some 119+ NMs with unique armor/weapons and such.