General Musings on Community and Causality

[Meyi]

Excluding the intro NMs, it's 4650 kills to complete this weapon over 12 trials (including NMs), averaging 388 kills per (517 without NMs). Functioning under the assumption of a minute per pull/kill solo, you're looking at 77.5 hours just on the grinding, maybe another 12 hours tacked on from the NM phases, give or take their pop stubbornness. Is nearly 90 man hours worth a 2-4x scythe? Indeed, we know helpers will cut down on this time, but help should never be expected or assumed guaranteed. For someone who plays roughly 2 hours a day, this will mean 45 days to make their weapon if it's all they do from start to finish. Does that sound like a fun game to you? Now, imagine if you have multiple jobs...

Well, I really don't think it'd take that long to complete. But let's assume it takes 77.5 hours to complete. And let's break it down into 2 hours a day (approximately 39 days). That's slightly over a month. 39 days, decent play, for a superior weapon that's guaranteed as long as you do the work sounds pretty reasonable to me.

How many of us went months or years before we finally got armor we were after? Salvage? Dynamis? And no matter how much time you spent in Salvage or Dynamis (or a HNMLS), you were never guaranteed a final product in the end.

With Magians, you are.

I don't think the exact trials are enjoyable, and like I said before, I think there should be a maximum of 200 monsters required for any one trial. The enjoyment, for me, is the hard work and the guaranteed reward for said hard work.

As far as I'm aware, I think most jobs only need about 1~2 Magian Weapons? So even if you have multiple jobs, it shouldn't be much of an issue.

The jobs I can think of that need large amounts of magian weapons are BLM, RDM, SCH, and SMN.

In part, this is where the mercy of alternative weapons could come into play, but we all know those will eventually be outdated while magian items, already the superior in a lot of cases, will only continue to grow with no guarantee that another bridge weapon will be added. The level 85 cap actually sucked pretty bad in this respect, but 90 at least brought some new synths of ~87 stuff and the job-specific weapons of varying quality. On some level, it makes me think SE is aware of the grind issue, but instead of fixing it, they just gave us those instead while forgetting the playerbase is often hyper-critical about not partying with "the best" at any given time.

Why shouldn't the magians be superior? If people put in the time and energy into making something, I think it deserves more power than an item that doesn't.

[Seriha]

Just because the old game had flaws doesn't mean we should let current ones have their own. I'll leave the choice of a lesser of two evils for politics. In the end, I'm not saying Magian weapons shouldn't be superior to the random drop or crafted equivalent, but just that the gap of acquisition effort between them is too steep, which we're in part in agreement.

[Greatguardian]

OAX weapons are generally complete crap that aren't really worth making anyways (exceptions being OA2 Lance and OA4 Dagger for support DNC). But really, the only reason those trials are so high is because you can do them whenever. There are no day or weather restrictions to them.

The only reason Relic/Mythic requirements were lowered was because the base weapon already required a ton of work. They cut Relic owners some slack because they already toiled for their weapon, that's all.

Aside from that, really, someone who wants to gear 19 jobs is going to have to do 19 times the work someone who wants to gear 1 job does. That is common sense. If anything, Magian trials cut multi-job players some slack because the staves and some of the Empyrean Weapons can be used by multiple job classes (h2h, sword, dagger, gs, gun, staff, axe, etc). Once your PUP has the best weapon available, your MNK will too.

Honestly, I don't think any magian trial is hard if you do them efficiently. Fell Cleaves and AoE burns in Abyssea are amazing for them. Yeah, if you do them in a slower manner then it will take a while. But the weapons themselves are so powerful that it's easily worth the effort.

[blowfin]

Is nearly 90 man hours worth a 2-4x scythe?

No, but I`m no DRK and even I know that scythe is terrible. The length of the trial isnt the problem, its the choice to start on the OA2-4 path in the first place thats the problem. Very bad example to use really.

Plus, if you don't have the time do to the trials, maybe they're not for you? I do have to wonder though, if people dont have time to chip away at Magian trials, how do they have time to do anything at all?

[Seriha]

It's not so much about time as it is giving players variety. Like I said, if it does take that 90 hours, for someone who can manage 2-3 hours a day, that'd be 30-45 days if that's all they did. Realistically, someone might level another job during this span, farm something else, work on some quests or missions, or just shoot the breeze with their LS. So, the same scythe could easily take 3 months or more with an off-and-on approach. Such is also why you can't quite look at things as baby steps in the current incarnations since the reward arguably doesn't match the effort on a good scale.

Now that I think about it, though, this is a classic example of how multi-tasking in XI either isn't possible or scarcely as rewarding as focused play. Abyssea's broken this mold somewhat since you can make money from gold chests while you're EXPing, or get some modest EXP farming NMs for loot, but with how most of the old game worked, you were either EXPing, questing, hoping for a drop, or making money. Overlap was very scarce. So, really, I'd like to reiterate the desire, perhaps outright need, of people helping others with trials yielding a reward from the game itself and not relying on mercing or favors that may never be returned. Someone could possibly work around a crappy phases by helping others with their easier ones. Those who refuse to invite "leeches" to their AoE parties will, in turn, miss out from possible rewards for actually being charitable and helping strangers in a community environment. So, later on, they can skip their own blah trials if they so choose. Everyone wins.

[Rambus]

No, but I`m no DRK and even I know that scythe is terrible. The length of the trial isnt the problem, its the choice to start on the OA2-4 path in the first place thats the problem. Very bad example to use really.

Plus, if you don't have the time do to the trials, maybe they're not for you? I do have to wonder though, if people dont have time to chip away at Magian trials, how do they have time to do anything at all?

This is bad logic, lets make ash staff trails that requires you kill 1000 mobs per trail then end up with a D40 staff in the end.

this thead is to tell SE issues on the game.

1. why make a path that ends up with a "suck" weapon?
2. why is said path of bad weapon one of the longest, or is the longest paths of said bad weapon?

if you are going to make "crap" weapons, it is a waiste of programing to make them. it is likey SE missed these issues because it just does not make sence to have it ( waste of space/ time/ what not)

[blowfin]

It's not so much about time as it is giving players variety. Like I said, if it does take that 90 hours, for someone who can manage 2-3 hours a day, that'd be 30-45 days if that's all they did.

That was my point, choose a realistic option if you have limited playtime. There are plenty of choices out there, you just happened to pick the most labor intensive trial to aid your argument.

This is bad logic, lets make ash staff trails that requires you kill 1000 mobs per trail then end up with a D40 staff in the end.

this thead is to tell SE issues on the game.

1. why make a path that ends up with a "suck" weapon?
2. why is said path of bad weapon one of the longest, or is the longest paths of said bad weapon?

if you are going to make "crap" weapons, it is a waiste of programing to make them. it is likey SE missed these issues because it just does not make sence to have it ( waste of space/ time/ what not)

Huh, all weapons have the same trial branches. What would you have them do, take out all the weapons you personally see as not useful? That`s ridiculous. It`s up to the player to at least do a bit of research before they embark on trials to not choose something stupid.

HAI GUYZ, LIKE MY NEW MAGIC EVASION WEAPON?

[Rambus]

Huh, all weapons have the same trial branches. What would you have them do, take out all the weapons you personally see as not useful? That`s ridiculous. It`s up to the player to at least do a bit of research before they embark on trials to not choose something stupid.

HAI GUYZ, LIKE MY NEW MAGIC EVASION WEAPON?

point missed, I was not saying you should not do research

[blowfin]

point missed, I was not saying you should not do research

Point was not missed at all. They obviously came up with the base magian system and applied it to all types of weapons, removing `weak`weapons would have actually been much harder for them to code i`d say. Sounds like a waste of time for them really. To provide what kind of benefit to the player? Nothing that I can see. I`d rather their time is spent on developing new content and fixing things, rather than second guessing the community and removing `bad`weapons and trials.

[Rambus]

I do not know how to reword it but that is not my point