Sage and Reaper Crafted Weapons.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cach

I COULD understand if they don't want to revisit older crafted sets like the ARR ones, not really ideal, and very much open to criticism, but understandable.

---

They did that for Sam and RDM in SB though.
I remember in SB being excited to see what crafted weapons would be available for RDM, and expected the same thing in ShB, only to be massively disappointed xD

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SnowVix

This might be the set we get for the second ultimate this expansion if they added sage and reaper weapons to that set.

---

Oh now that's an interesting theory, and makes a lot more sense than anything I'd come up with to explain it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cach

LARPing as Square's product management is a hell of a drug.

---

As opposed to their dev team, as I do. ;P

(More seriously, I do try to frame all my "this is probably how it works under the hood" theorizing as theorizing, albeit theorizing from relevant personal experience having done that sort of development.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deveryn

90% of the counters to my arguments are smol indie company or that I'm a shill / simp.

---

I mean, if you want actual arguments you should respond with actual points instead of deflecting all the time and insulting people. Could help foster a conversation.

Also, you are a shill and a simp for SE. It's ok to be one, you know. It's not ok to pretend like you're being objective or playing devil's advocate when every negative thread you hop in with "SE can't *possibly* make more content in this game! Why should they cater to the minority playing classes they've introduced in EW?" Whilst they're busy developing the Fat Cat Loungewear on the Mogstation for $22 USD lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deveryn

What Endwalker set is missing sage and reaper? Emphasis on Endwalker content.

---

You try way too hard to defend their poor design choices.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

You try way too hard to defend their poor design choices.

---

I guess everything looks like it involves a lot of effort when the opposition puts next to nothing into their arguments. "I didn't get this thing I want, so SE is lazy." The irony. :rolleyes:

Someone linked another company in the last weapon thread and I was asked to respond. They had nothing to say about it, it was just noting that work gets outsourced. Okay great, that proves nothing on their end. The big / small indie corporation didn't pour it's infinite / limited resources into filling the entire backlog, so shame on them?

We're talking about weapons that are conceptualized years ahead of the start of the next job design. The work on adding particle effects is saved for another time. Somehow it's lazy that they don't cover trials, only what is necessary for a job to level. In the case of Thordan, that was going to be the Ultimate reward with the same base item. If you can't see the logic and the process in that example, then you're hopeless. I'm not the one getting stuck in an illogical loop.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cach

As I have said before, if you introduce a new crafted weapon set, but don't include the jobs that are active at the time, then it makes you look lazy and or cheap. No way around it.

---

Glowy crafted weapons tend to usually be just the existing weapons from a trial, with a glow added. So far as I've seen when looking at them, the new Titania EX crafted weapons are, model-wise, the same weapons that dropped from Titania EX when it was current, just with a glow.

So while I actually agree with you on this that it's not a great scenario, I will also admit there's a bit of me that can easily see a weapon set introduced now for previous content being approved based on "we're just adding glow to things" rather than "we're going to design a bunch of new weapons adhering to this aesthetic scheme".

Game production schedules are a weird beast, as is the content approval pipeline at many dev houses. Especially large dev houses, and especially if there's higher-priority things that bump it down the list. On this, I speak from (occasionally painful) personal experience.

And designing a glow ("this is the particle effect we're using and this lighting effect") is just one thing to be approved and added more quickly, versus adding entire new weapons; the latter involves an artist to design them and a modeler to actually make the models/textures, not just the programmer writing the particle effect system. If your artists are already being kept busy designing something else -- and even at a big dev house, that's possible -- then the first one (just adding glow to existing models) is a much easier sell for something to bundle into the next patch cycle.

It doesn't change the appearance of the set being released now missing weapons for jobs that now exist, mind you, which is not great. Nor does it mean people can't be annoyed by it; I actually am, since I'm currently maining SGE in raid and am thus extremely aware of the lack of shiny weapon options.

But believe me, I can understand why it would happen.

If they don't have time to make new weapons then they could have released crafted versions of any of the 4 trials' weapons that already have a Reaper and Sage weapon made, and gotten round to making older sets for all jobs when they can afford to hire an intern. That would have been efficient, but they chose to be lazy and release an unfinished set instead.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reinha

If they don't have time to make new weapons then they could have released crafted versions of any of the 4 trials' weapons that already have a Reaper and Sage weapon made, and gotten round to making older sets for all jobs when they can afford to hire an intern. That would have been efficient, but they chose to be lazy and release an unfinished set instead.

---

Are you talking about the Endwalker trial weapons? Those will eventually have crafted versions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deveryn

Are you talking about the Endwalker trial weapons? Those will eventually have crafted versions.

---

I think what Reinha meant was "instead of adding glowy weapons for Susano and Titania now, in Endwalker, they should've added glowy weapons for two of the three Endwalker extremes that have weapons (and being in Endwalker, will by definition include SGE and RPR)." (I note three rather than four as in Reinha's post because the first EW extreme trial has accessories, not weapons; as it's not been current for some time, it's easy to forget that and I suspect the 4 was an oversight/mis-statement.)

Or in other words: do not go back to older expansions to add glowy weapons if you didn't get around to it at the time; focus on the trials in the current expansion first instead, so that you are giving equal attention to the most-recently-introduced jobs.

I'm not sure I 100% agree with that, but it's a valid take. And one I can understand (whether or not I entirely agree).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Packetdancer

It doesn't change the appearance of the set being released now missing weapons for jobs that now exist, mind you, which is not great. Nor does it mean people can't be annoyed by it; I actually am, since I'm currently maining SGE in raid and am thus extremely aware of the lack of shiny weapon options.

---

big agreement, since i'm also raiding on sage this tier. the existence of shiny Titania weapons almost made me switch to scholar, but the sage animations kept me there.

it'd be splendid if they went back and added weapons for all the classes to all the trials (and heck, all the dungeons, i'd love to see what a Ruby Tide Scythe might look like), but i also recognize that the amount of work may seem trivial if you look at each trial individually, but it adds up big time.

I think they'll be able to catch up eventually. For Shadowbringers, the 3 weapons remain (though I feel like they don't need more than they already have) as well as WoL, then it's on to what we have going on right now. The design contest which is likely to help out relic surely gave them a little more room as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SnowVix

i also recognize that the amount of work may seem trivial if you look at each trial individually, but it adds up big time.

---

Ironically, it's sometimes also actually more work at a big developer than an indie one. Indie developers tend to be light on process, which... there are benefits and downsides of that.

But sometimes it's a huge boon not having to have a whole process by which you design a thing, get the design approved, assign it to a modeler, approve the draft model, finalize and texture it, approve that, add the particle system, approve that -- potentially send to the publisher to approve as well -- and when everything's signed off on, you bundle it into the next scheduled content update. An indie developer can just have some artist go "I think this would be neat" and make a change, show it around the office, and check it into source control. Done, good, on to the next thing.

Working at a big game studio was sometimes an exercise in "yeah, we'd like to do this, but we'd need another week to do this and the publisher says 'nope' on slipping the milestone by a week" or getting otherwise mired in process. And while I no longer do game dev for my day job, I do lead a small spare-time indie game company, and when the company consists of like... a graphic designer/UX person, an artist/gameplay designer, and a systems designer/writer/programmer/musician (me), there's not a lot of process involved if I want to make a change. I have no publisher I'm beholden to, and no formal org chart that all need to sign off on something. (Also I am in charge so what I say goes. *pause for maniacal laughter*)

And moreover, it's worth remembering that while we consider SQEX to be both the developer and the publisher, that's not actually strictly true; SQEX is the publisher, and CBU3 is the developer. They are a part of SQEX, yes... but Bioware is a part of EA, and Naughty Dog or Guerrilla Games are parts of Sony; it's just that with them labeling the studio more prominently, we don't tend to think of them in quite that same sense. And while Yoshi-P reportedly has earned a fair amount of influence with SQEX proper and does have a place on their board (although he almost certainly spent a lot of that 'currency' buying the delay for Endwalker's launch) the two organizations are in fact separate... and it's quite possible that some decisions cannot be made by CBU3 alone without parent/publisher signing off on them.

For instance, it has been suggested before that SQEX may be responsible for the cash shop, not CBU3. That's not actually uncommon, as publisher/studio divides go... and honestly, I feel like that would explain a lot of the "why is this in the cash shop" decisions that I find more puzzling.