DEVs Stop adding worthless pointless gear to dungeon chests.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I like my new superhero underwear.... er, I mean subligar!

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I'm betting they put in that new subligar just for Reinheart ><

Heh, my only complaint is that they release junk loot that's so much worse than the AF they released in the same patch that all you can do is laugh pathetically at it. Like a 2-inch penis.

Hey, if people were still playing classes, MAYBE-

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I'd rather see them made meldable instead. It'd be more fun, and also make the dungeons more repeatable.

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It would be nice if the materia system had more depth...
Like instead of materia coming from gear types (i.e. healer's hand from belts), they could have some unique gear that gave special materia... or materia that could only come from specific pieces of gear

Imagine all the darklight pieces became super epic "Darklight Materia"


SE just really have a chance to make something INCREDIBLE.. if they can just find the right recipe that includes the right mix of Materia... u/u... crafted gear...

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Originally Posted by Rydin

It would be nice if the materia system had more depth...
Like instead of materia coming from gear types (i.e. healer's hand from belts), they could have some unique gear that gave special materia... or materia that could only come from specific pieces of gear

Imagine all the darklight pieces became super epic "Darklight Materia"


SE just really have a chance to make something INCREDIBLE.. if they can just find the right recipe that includes the right mix of Materia... u/u... crafted gear...

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And a special materia pouch to keep it from pissing your inventory away. You know those belts that have pouches on them? LET'S USE THEM.

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Originally Posted by Rydin

It would be nice if the materia system had more depth...
Like instead of materia coming from gear types (i.e. healer's hand from belts), they could have some unique gear that gave special materia... or materia that could only come from specific pieces of gear

Imagine all the darklight pieces became super epic "Darklight Materia"


SE just really have a chance to make something INCREDIBLE.. if they can just find the right recipe that includes the right mix of Materia... u/u... crafted gear...

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They are adding new materia types in the next patch along with the ability to convert some U/U gear to materia, so I would say the chances of rare materia could be high.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

They are adding new materia types in the next patch along with the ability to convert some U/U gear to materia, so I would say the chances of rare materia could be high.

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New materia is welcome and coming, but I wouldn't count on any special rare materia. Some materia are rare compared to others already. The whole point of the system is through bonding with gear to form certain materia, not some epic ultra rare end-all materia.

Besides, Darklight Materia? Really? Go wear the gear you loot from the remains of the Darklight Raiders who lost their lives in battle in those dungeons, and after bonding with them they somehow form some uber special materia called Darklight Materia?

Hey, how about anything I wear and turn into materia gets called Noctis Materia? I shed my valuable sweat in those garments and thus they are worth more than any other shiny thing.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

They are adding new materia types in the next patch along with the ability to convert some U/U gear to materia, so I would say the chances of rare materia could be high.

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Im not gonna lie to you... I would be super happy (Way happier than a video game should make you) if that happened....

This game and system has so much potential... as soon as they make it so you can attach materia in someones Bazaar
And since there is no skill involved at all... I don't see why they don't have it yet...
I can see it now...
1. Needing crafting support from rare, hard to get places...
2. Unique/untradeable materia
3. Unique/untradeable catalyst
*4. Materia that actually changes a piece of gear

For number 4... Imagine if Ifrit didn't drop an axe.... imagine him dropping a Unique/Untradeable materia that only fit onto a Barbarian's Bardiche that had no previous materia on it.... and putting the Ifrit Materia on the Bardiche changed it to the U/U Ifrit's Battleaxe...

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

New materia is welcome and coming, but I wouldn't count on any special rare materia. Some materia are rare compared to others already. The whole point of the system is through bonding with gear to form certain materia, not some epic ultra rare end-all materia.

Besides, Darklight Materia? Really? Go wear the gear you loot from the remains of the Darklight Raiders who lost their lives in battle in those dungeons, and after bonding with them they somehow form some uber special materia called Darklight Materia?

Hey, how about anything I wear and turn into materia gets called Noctis Materia? I shed my valuable sweat in those garments and thus they are worth more than any other shiny thing.

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Noctis materia would just be smelly and weak.... lol
Seriously though... Rare materia... Materia that only came from 1 piece... it gives people a reason to do the content, even when something better comes a long....

The materia system is fine as is. They simply need to go on adding new materia with new effects. More things to be gained through materia. Instead of expanding the materia system into some sort of rare/ex field they can utilize other, fresh ideas for such things.

Am I the only one excited to see how the upgrading of AF weapons will be handled in patch 1.22? I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that tidbit in the last letter.

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Originally Posted by Rydin

Noctis materia would just be smelly and weak.... lol
Seriously though... Rare materia... Materia that only came from 1 piece... it gives people a reason to do the content, even when something better comes a long....

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I don't know man. I see people doing DH, Toto-rak, Ifrit, Moogle, CC and AV all quite regularly as is. The expedition for seals was a fantastic addition to have people go back to dungeons and farm old loot. Ifrit and Moogle still keep people busy.

Like I said, a new system like the one hinted for the upgrading of AF weapons is much more appealing to me for rare/ex things than some extension of the materia system. The materia system's primary purposes are to promote customization in gear, give a long-term goal with forbidden melds, and more than anything else provide a gear-sink to maintain circulation of crafted gear in the market. It's quite successful in those regards.

All that needs to be done is add more materia to entice players with established gear to start blowing shit up again.

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Originally Posted by Krausus

I'm betting they put in that new subligar just for Reinheart ><

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They need to add 200 more different subligars as promised (in my dream!)

I think a Sublimen gear set is far overdue.

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

Am I the only one excited to see how the upgrading of AF weapons will be handled in patch 1.22? I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that tidbit in the last letter.

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yeah wondering about that myself, I mean will the first version be a level 50 item that is OK but can be upgraded with hard content to be bad ass, or will it be a low level weapon that can be upgraded to an OK weapon at 50. I am excited about it for sure.

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Originally Posted by Rau

save it for company seals.

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I'm just waiting for them to allow you to turn this crap in for seals and watch the PRICES SOAR! Oh the humanity~

Threads like this force me to keep pointing out that the vast majority of the gear in this game will just be useless. It's a fact, there's no way around it. Battle is too fast paced for situational gear, which you all wanted. The fact that in-combat gear swapping macros aren't possible severely limits what gear could ever be useful, which you all wanted.

And the level cap will rise sometime soon anyway, and ALL gear will be worthless. Which is what you all wanted. And it will keep slowing rising every, what was it, 12 to 18 months? Which resets all useful gear. Which is what you all wanted.

Welcome to Final Fantasy Not-11. Created by the user, doomed by the user.

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Originally Posted by Jericho

Threads like this force me to keep pointing out that the vast majority of the gear in this game will just be useless. It's a fact, there's no way around it. Battle is too fast paced for situational gear, which you all wanted. The fact that in-combat gear swapping macros aren't possible severely limits what gear could ever be useful, which you all wanted.

And the level cap will rise sometime soon anyway, and ALL gear will be worthless. Which is what you all wanted. And it will keep slowing rising every, what was it, 12 to 18 months? Which resets all useful gear. Which is what you all wanted.

Welcome to Final Fantasy Not-11. Created by the user, doomed by the user.

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Created by the user? Partially.

Doomed by the user? Hmm... lolwut?

Doomed? Yea... no.

Excuse me, but I'd really rather not participate in a party where the team is constantly blinking, changing pants and shirts before specific skills as a sorry excuse to make more gear useful.

Oh, and level caps rising in an MMO? Oh, the horror!

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Originally Posted by Rydin

we need to start the "Junk item appreciate thread" that focusing on increasing the self esteem and worth of mage chausses everywhere

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+1, because that's exactly how the NA forums seem to operate lately.

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

Created by the user? Partially.
Doomed by the user? Hmm... lolwut?
Doomed? Yea... no.

Excuse me, but I'd really rather not participate in a party where the team is constantly blinking, changing pants and shirts before specific skills as a sorry excuse to make more gear useful.

Oh, and level caps rising in an MMO? Oh, the horror!

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it's weird that in my 8 years of playing ffxi, I never, ever once heard someone complain that they didn't like gear swapping.

I will admit it when I'm wrong, but so far I'm not. The fact that there's only one useful set is a big problem. Toto-Rak, DH, strongholds, shposhae, all are useless and drop useless gear. There's no balance, and DL gear is an obvious winner. Everyone complains about useless gear, but what did you expect? The game is set up for us to actually hold on to one set per class/job. Nothing more. It's set up for us to blow through the levels, so spending time to obtain 15 or 30 gear is a waste of time. You can't deny that.

But that's what everyone wanted.

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Originally Posted by Jericho

it's weird that in my 8 years of playing ffxi, I never, ever once heard someone complain that they didn't like gear swapping.

I will admit it when I'm wrong, but so far I'm not. The fact that there's only one useful set is a big problem. Toto-Rak, DH, strongholds, shposhae, all are useless and drop useless gear. There's no balance, and DL gear is an obvious winner. Everyone complains about useless gear, but what did you expect? The game is set up for us to actually hold on to one set per class/job. Nothing more. It's set up for us to blow through the levels, so spending time to obtain 15 or 30 gear is a waste of time. You can't deny that.

But that's what everyone wanted.

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The game is set up so that the dev's can create content for 2.0 and have us playtest it. They're not worried about 90% of balancing issues apart from job balance and battle balance. That other stuff will come later when the game is more structured and finalized.

Face it. We're paying to play in a glorified Dev Beta test.

Edit: Also, you keep going on about how we've made most of the game's gear useless, but you completely ignore the Materia system, which has the potential to turn junk gear into gear that's better than what's dropped in the dungeons. We wanted this too.

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

Created by the user? Partially.

Doomed by the user? Hmm... lolwut?

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This is one of the most accurate statements about FFXIV. Players don't know what what the game needs, they only know what they personally want and not care about others. SE listens to this. I mean, look at a lot of topics on this forum:

"Wahh get rid of dungeon timers"...Yet timers serve the purpose of also creating objective based reward/scenarios, yet people cry about it and want it gone. Thankfully, Yoshida is smart and won't actually listen to this because he knows better.

"Wahh I should be able to equip every skill from every class and be a unique snowflake"...yet Square themselves said it was near impossible to balance.

"Baaaaaaaaw why doesn't every gear drop overpower me for 10 minutes of work? You're behind in the times SE"...yet you'd complain when you have nothing to do.

"Baaaaw totem nuts need to be higher drop rate and drop more, but in return I don't want it to cost more to get the weapon"...yet in order to balance the fact you'll get 1-2 every battle it has to cost more than 5/10 once again proving people don't know the first thing about balance and cry foul when SE doesn't hand everything to you.

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Originally Posted by Jericho

it's weird that in my 8 years of playing ffxi, I never, ever once heard someone complain that they didn't like gear swapping.

I will admit it when I'm wrong, but so far I'm not. The fact that there's only one useful set is a big problem. Toto-Rak, DH, strongholds, shposhae, all are useless and drop useless gear. There's no balance, and DL gear is an obvious winner. Everyone complains about useless gear, but what did you expect? The game is set up for us to actually hold on to one set per class/job. Nothing more. It's set up for us to blow through the levels, so spending time to obtain 15 or 30 gear is a waste of time. You can't deny that.

But that's what everyone wanted.

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Oh, they never complained about gear-swapping? Why? They were playing it weren't they? If a person didn't enjoy that, they'd simply stop playing. Shit if gear-swapping becomes a regular thing in FFXIV, despite having stuck with this game without any long-term breaks since CE release I will drop it right then and there like a bad habit.

I'm sorry, but new gear making some old gear obsolete is old news for an MMO. Sure, a lot of the DL gear just released are best in slot. They're also rare as hell. It's called having goals to work toward.

New age MMOs = No goals to work for, this is where SE is still living in the past. Giving players goals? Silliness.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

New age MMOs = No goals to work for, this is where SE is still living in the past. Giving players goals? Silliness.

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That's right. FFXIV should just be Minecraft!

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Originally Posted by Jericho

it's weird that in my 8 years of playing ffxi, I never, ever once heard someone complain that they didn't like gear swapping.

I will admit it when I'm wrong, but so far I'm not. The fact that there's only one useful set is a big problem. Toto-Rak, DH, strongholds, shposhae, all are useless and drop useless gear. There's no balance, and DL gear is an obvious winner. Everyone complains about useless gear, but what did you expect? The game is set up for us to actually hold on to one set per class/job. Nothing more. It's set up for us to blow through the levels, so spending time to obtain 15 or 30 gear is a waste of time. You can't deny that.

But that's what everyone wanted.

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MMORPGs they are ever evolving!

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Originally Posted by Jericho

it's weird that in my 8 years of playing ffxi, I never, ever once heard someone complain that they didn't like gear swapping.

I will admit it when I'm wrong, but so far I'm not. The fact that there's only one useful set is a big problem. Toto-Rak, DH, strongholds, shposhae, all are useless and drop useless gear. There's no balance, and DL gear is an obvious winner. Everyone complains about useless gear, but what did you expect? The game is set up for us to actually hold on to one set per class/job. Nothing more. It's set up for us to blow through the levels, so spending time to obtain 15 or 30 gear is a waste of time. You can't deny that.

But that's what everyone wanted.

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That's weird since in my 5 years of playing I did hear people say they hated it.

I had a love-hate relationship with it, and I will actually 100% agree that gear-swapping makes more gear viable and useful. If you don't have gear-swapping then you end up just wanting your overall best in slot items for everything, and not for specific spells and abilities. This is simpler and when it's tiered correctly, it's alright and I do like it. But right now we do have a lot of crap gear that really doesn't even feel like it has its own tier of usefulness compared to other alternatives for its slot.

So, my hate came from how crappy XI's macros were and no, I did not use windower scripts to gearswap. It also took a lot more of your inventory space to do it. My love came from how much it let you further tweak your character, almost spell by spell. If gearswapping came back, it needs to not be in a macro, piece by piece, there needs to be "dress spheres" or the ability to macro a mannequin set on in 1 line.

I don't think we will see gear swapping, and I definitely will not touch it as it is now until SE either gives us a "yes, do it" or once and for all tells us absolutely not (I feel like they already have but some people seem to be stuck in XI and disagree).

The Explorers gear goes for averagely 500k a piece on market, and it sells pretty often, still worthless?

Cause, yanno, getting the best gear all the time without nothing bad coming in the way is the best route for any game. You need to have bad gear. I don't care how random it is. You still need it to even it out. So what if you get one pair more than another? Keep going, quit complaining, or just buy it off the wards.

Go.

+1 to bring back gear swapping.

It is silly not to have it, plenty of MMO's do not just FFXI. I don't understand the argument against it, you have to carry too many items? It breaks immersion? Tough luck. Having gear last exponentially longer, and making itemization so much deeper is worth both of those.

If not allowing us to swap gear in 2.0, please at least give us activated effects on gear (such as in Vanguard) and allow us to use the effects if the item is in our inventory. Killing some highly notorious monster should never become passé because none of the gear it drops is useful any longer. It is completely backwards game design logic, no one asked them to trivialize endgame content after 1-2 patches.

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Originally Posted by Murugan

+1 to bring back gear swapping.

It is silly not to have it, plenty of MMO's do not just FFXI. I don't understand the argument against it, you have to carry too many items? It breaks immersion? Tough luck. Having gear last exponentially longer, and making itemization so much deeper is worth both of those.

If not allowing us to swap gear in 2.0, please at least give us activated effects on gear (such as in Vanguard) and allow us to use the effects if the item is in our inventory. Killing some highly notorious monster should never become passé because none of the gear it drops is useful any longer. It is completely backwards game design logic, no one asked them to trivialize endgame content after 1-2 patches.

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Too bad you've already been overruled by the devs, gear swapping is, rightfully, staying out of this game.

Yeah I agree. Without gear swaps 99% of our current 'endgame' exclusive gear is trash. Regardless if someone's willing to pay 500k+ for the novelty of having certain peices the gear is effectively useless. XIV's current system forces you to find the "best-in-slot" for the whole encounter, which knocks practically anything unmaterialized out of the picture (even including some of those Darklight pieces.. in fact, not being a tank there's only one Darklight piece I'd really even care for..). I realize the content is easy and spammable, but shouldn't there be more motivation to do it than just getting the clear? Even the primal weapons get beat out by simple double melded weapons.. I got one Ifrit wep and one Moogle Wep just to say I got it.. and now only do that content to help other ppl. SE really needs to go ahead and put out some not so-easy and not so-spammable content so we can start actually caring about the loot that drops, when it drops..

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Too bad you've already been overruled by the devs, gear swapping is, rightfully, staying out of this game.

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Yes Molly. We all know you LOVE pointing at that "dead" horse.. The half-thoughtout comment from the Dev's that stated they aren't planning on doing it because XIV's armoury system is what is used to change your class.. Yet that response has nothing to do with the rest of the gear (ya know.. everything BUT weapons..). Oh, and can't forget to mention, things change..

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Originally Posted by Exni

Yeah I agree. Without gear swaps 99% of our current 'endgame' exclusive gear is trash. Regardless if someone's willing to pay 500k+ for the novelty of having certain peices the gear is effectively useless. XIV's current system forces you to find the "best-in-slot" for the whole encounter, which knocks practically anything unmaterialized out of the picture (even including some of those Darklight pieces.. in fact, not being a tank there's only one Darklight piece I'd really even care for..). I realize the content is easy and spammable, but shouldn't there be more motivation to do it than just getting the clear? Even the primal weapons get beat out by simple double melded weapons.. I got one Ifrit wep and one Moogle Wep just to say I got it.. and now only do that content to help other ppl. SE really needs to go ahead and put out some not so-easy and not so-spammable content so we can start actually caring about the loot that drops, when it drops..

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Gear swaps are not the way to go. IMO what needs to happen is more gear should be meldable. Best in slot gear is fine because you SHOULD have to choose the best piece of gear for your playstyle prior to engaging in battle, not just the best piece of gear for a particular move. The end result of gear swapping is that regardless of playstyle, if you don't have x piece of gear for y action, you are not as good as the player who does. Ultimately it promotes gear elitism. No thanks!

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Originally Posted by Exni

Yes Molly. We all know you LOVE pointing at that "dead" horse.. The half-thoughtout comment from the Dev's that stated they aren't planning on doing it because XIV's armoury system is what is used to change your class.. Yet that response has nothing to do with the rest of the gear (ya know.. everything BUT weapons..). Oh, and can't forget to mention, things change..

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Changing classes is only a technical limitation as to why it can't be done, there are also plenty of reasons why it shouldn't be done as well.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Gear swaps are not the way to go. IMO what needs to happen is more gear should be meldable. Best in slot gear is fine because you SHOULD have to choose the best piece of gear for your playstyle prior to engaging in battle, not just the best piece of gear for a particular move. The end result of gear swapping is that regardless of playstyle, if you don't have x piece of gear for y action, you are not as good as the player who does. Ultimately it promotes gear elitism. No thanks!

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Right... explain how it promotes gear elitism more than advocating that rare/untradeable gear be meldable (forbidden meldable???). Your way is soooooo much more of a timesink talking about obtaining multiple darklights as some have with multiple sentry items and attempting to meld them until you get a triple + meld.

That is a type of unrealistic elitist standard that only a few people will obtain, and I don't imagine them having much fun doing it. Whereas gear swapping simply advocates that everyone regardless of when they play FFXIV has a reason to want to experience all endgame content available either as much, or at least partially as much as they would have had they been playing when it was first released.

That last part needs to happen, regardless of how they pull it off. Endgame itemization should be either horizontal, or tiered but never trivialized out of usefulness enough that people no longer have a reason to do the content. It is extremely wasteful, and places severe limits on the amount and diversity of endgame FFXIV could ever have available at any given time.

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Originally Posted by Murugan

Right... explain how it promotes gear elitism more than advocating that rare/untradeable gear be meldable (forbidden meldable???). Your way is soooooo much more of a timesink talking about obtaining multiple darklights as some have with multiple sentry items and attempting to meld them until you get a triple + meld.

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Increasing the repeatability of content is a + in my book, so I don't agree with this. Making U/U gear meldable, while retaining a reasonable droprate in comparison to the gear's stats adds repeatablity, but it's not forced like making a low drop rate is, it allows the player more choice which is never a bad thing,

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Originally Posted by Murugan

That is a type of unrealistic elitist standard that only a few people will obtain, and I don't imagine them having much fun doing it. Whereas gear swapping simply advocates that everyone regardless of when they play FFXIV has a reason to want to experience all endgame content available either as much, or at least partially as much as they would have had they been playing when it was first released.

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Maybe you weren't kicked from parties for not having the best gear in XI, but it happened to me all the time. It's not as unrealistic as you think.

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Originally Posted by Murugan

That last part needs to happen, regardless of how they pull it off. Endgame itemization should be either horizontal, or tiered but never trivialized out of usefulness enough that people no longer have a reason to do the content. It is extremely wasteful, and places severe limits on the amount and diversity of endgame FFXIV could ever have available at any given time.

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I think either way they do that, gear swaps, or making U/U stuff meldable, both achieve that goal. One of them just has more downsides.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Increasing the repeatability of content is a + in my book, so I don't agree with this. Making U/U gear meldable, while retaining a reasonable droprate in comparison to the gear's stats adds repeatablity, but it's not forced like making a low drop rate is, it allows the player more choice which is never a bad thing,


Maybe you weren't kicked from parties for not having the best gear in XI, but it happened to me all the time. It's not as unrealistic as you think.


I think either way they do that, gear swaps, or making U/U stuff meldable, both achieve that goal. One of them just has more downsides.

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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that more people will complain about being expected to get double-triple or even quadruple melds on best in slot gear that are rare drops from dungeons, and which will be replaced every few patches.

Over the people who complain about gear swapping encouraging you to do all content the same amount, no matter when you start endgame.

Let's see one gets people to play content everytime someone new joins endgame, means that content only grows in abundance and never shrinks.

The other makes the grind for gear near unbearable and entirely up to the RNG of melding (completely to chance, nothing the player can do to help his/her odds) in addition to drops (something groups can help mitigate the pain of through distribution).

Oh and in your way the content still becomes useless. Only instead of being pissed off that your awesome darklight gear is now obsolete, you have to try and replace a multi-melded rare item with another multi-melded rare item so that maybe you can use that one for the week or two it remains best in slot.

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

N
Hey, how about anything I wear and turn into materia gets called Noctis Materia? I shed my valuable sweat in those garments and thus they are worth more than any other shiny thing.

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Nobody wants your crystallised essence ..:S

As for the melding on U/U I don't want to see that really, maybe 1 piece I would be ok with but more than that no thanks.

Who is crazy enough to double/triple meld a piece of Darklight anyway ?

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Originally Posted by Jinko

Gear in this game has been screwed from day one, IMO greens should trump white crafted but thats never going to happen because SE/Yoshi-p are too scared to upset the crafters in this game.

Materia was a huge huge mistake and will forever marginalise unique gear.

It's level 50 trash, by which time you could be using AF (which oddly enough is kind of trash also)... d'oh

Obviously you weren't thinking either.

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This is the point... In this game the craft is considered a primary aspect of the game.. Just like battle content...
While in any other mmo craft is just a secondary aspect...

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Gear swaps are not the way to go. IMO what needs to happen is more gear should be meldable. Best in slot gear is fine because you SHOULD have to choose the best piece of gear for your playstyle prior to engaging in battle, not just the best piece of gear for a particular move. The end result of gear swapping is that regardless of playstyle, if you don't have x piece of gear for y action, you are not as good as the player who does. Ultimately it promotes gear elitism. No thanks!

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Gear swapping doesn't promote elitism. If anything the current system promotes it WAY more. Without gear swapping, there is very VERY few choices for best-in-slot pieces. Making only a tiny pool of gear actually worthwhile can foster elitism. Gear swapping allowed ALOT more gear to be worthwhile, because the not-so-hot pieces can be used for a specific purpose, then swapped back out. You won't "need" to have that one rare elite set of gear. You can produce the same results by mixing different sets and using them at the right times to maximize your role.

Also, you will always have to choose the best pieces of gear prior to engaging the battle. Gear swaps don't change that. You will start the fight with whatever is appropriate for what you will be doing at the commencement of the fight. Mages mite want to make -enmity set to start out with, melee may want to make a TP build set to start with. You'll start with whatever fits your playstyle and the conditions of what starts that encounter. The point is you should't be locked into that one set of gear due to.. system limitations.

MORE RARE MATERIA.....

PLZ SE

If spiked Armguards were the only way to get "Poison Barb" materia that, when put on a weapon, had a chance of inflicting poison on the MOB.... the spiked Armguards would be SWEET