Magnum opus: A dream for crafters.

if you want to collect items from things at or above ifrit extreme's difficulty level to craft a weapon superior to relic, fine. by all means. just be careful what you wish for. as i've already said.

but you yourself keep contradicting yourself on the difficulty issue. on one hand you make it sound like there should be an easier alternative, on the other hand you say it should be as hard or harder. on one hand you say the crafting of the item itself should be "as hard" as ifrit extreme, on the other hand you say it requires clearing (battle) content "as hard" as ifrit extreme.

i get that it's just an idea in the baby stages, but i'm asking for specifics and your responses have been somewhat vague.

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i don't really feel like you should be able to sell the weapons, though.

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My reason for saying, you must be able to sell them, is crafters do not make things for the sole purpose of having them.

I want people to know the name Kiote Corissimo. He is the guy who created the Greatest Weapon is all of Eorzea. I want people to beg me to make them a Weapon as Great as the one their Arch Rival has come in to.

I want to be the NPC who is sending Adventures on an Epic Quest to Build their Relic.

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Originally Posted by Kiote

I'm not in any way set to the terms I proposed, I was just giving an example of the kind of restrictions that need to be in place.

1.0 handed people a lot of thing with very little effort. I even feel like the Relic quest was far too easy. If we want crafters to be able to create something that excels to the level of Relics, I want blood sweat and tears.

Darksteel type synths except every Item is like the Obelisk Head. You must have unlocked your Luminary. I want it to be FFXI Relic Weapon pain in the ass level.

I want to have a craft so hard and time consuming, even if I could make as many as I want, it would still take a year.

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fair enough, i don't disagree.

there are several ways to make it enough of a grind to warrant superior stats to relic (and i do agree a bit that customization options would be nice if you're going to put in that kind of effort to begin with). to get started, a luminary weapon for the corresponding craft seems appropriate. then what? working toward a few guild items which increase your effective skill level? then working toward a guild key item which unlocks the synth?

while that's all debatable, another thing is how to handle the items you need to complete the synth. do you give the items a chance to drop at any time, then leave it up to players to distribute to someone working on the questline? do you not allow most of them to drop until after you acquire some key item or pass a certain stage of the quest? do you reserve the final material for a later stage in the quest, or just make it harder to get than the others somehow? (rarer drop, harder/hardest boss, etc)

i think simplification of crafting, removal of guild marks and key items, etc... was a good idea for 1.0. and it was good to allow more people to get into crafting. but i do think in 2.0 crafting does need something special and reintroducing some of those extra steps as *optional*, making it take a bit more work, and giving it a good long-term payoff is not only a good idea... but perhaps vital to the longevity of the game.

look how well crafting held up in xi over the years. it took a level cap increase to 99 and a shift in the economy from crafting-based to farming-based to disrupt the strength of the system. (and i think they plan on fixing that to put crafting back on top again)

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Originally Posted by Kiote

My reason for saying, you must be able to sell them, is crafters do not make things for the sole purpose of having them.

I want people to know the name Kiote Corissimo. He is the guy who created the Greatest Weapon is all of Eorzea. I want people to beg me to make them a Weapon as Great as the one their Arch Rival has come in to.

I want to be the NPC who is sending Adventures on an Epic Quest to Build their Relic.

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in principle, i agree. and i know some people like to play the game as primarily crafters, or primarily gatherers. so in that sort of scenario, i understand a crafter being able to make some legendary (perhaps that's the name we'd give these items, rather than relic- legendaries) weapon or tool to sell or give to some worthy adventurer.

but at the same time, allowing something as powerful or moreso than relic to be sold could cause some game balance issues, or worse- encourage RMT activity from people who want those weapons but don't want to put in the work to get them.

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Originally Posted by fusional

if you want to collect items from things at or above ifrit extreme's difficulty level to craft a weapon superior to relic, fine. by all means. just be careful what you wish for. as i've already said.

but you yourself keep contradicting yourself on the difficulty issue. on one hand you make it sound like there should be an easier alternative, on the other hand you say it should be as hard or harder. on one hand you say the crafting of the item itself should be "as hard" as ifrit extreme, on the other hand you say it requires clearing (battle) content "as hard" as ifrit extreme.

i get that it's just an idea in the baby stages, but i'm asking for specifics and your responses have been somewhat vague.

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They're not undeveloped as your imply, you're asking specifics in manners that are different from the route path. Saying things like "What, 2% success rate?" as if Ifrit Extreme was taken out of the equasion.

Here's the step by step stage production for you.

A player decides to aquire a relic type weapon.

The first decision is to take a Job based weapon of the exact path of "Relics" [insert steps to aquire a relic here] EX. You do all the steps to create a Gae Bolg verbatum - end up with Gae Bolg.

Or, if they have the properly leveled Crafts, attempt for a Magnus Opum.

Picture, if you will, the same branching quest paths of the FFXI Trial weapons. However, ramp the difficulty of these "Trials" up to the level that is on par with Relic Challenges.

For example, for the head of your spear, you chose to go for a piece that empasises fire damage and raw attack. You would go out, fight Ifrit Extreme, aquire his horn, and craft it into a Hellfire Spearhead. If you instead wanted to go with more critical chance and critical damage, you would go fight Garuda Extreme obtain her Talons, and craft them into a Galeforce Spearhead.

The weapon you wind up with is ultimately determined by the choices of challenges you make. Some steps and some choices, like some steps in obtaining a relic, will be easier than others. However, crafting gets involved in each stage and the weapon at the end is yours. Obtained by your combat skill, harnessed by your crafting skill, and developed based on your choices.

The reason why I say it can be harder than a Relic is because the Crafting aspects of a Relic can be bypassed via Markets/Auction house. Here, the idea is it could not be. All of these items would likely be U/U through the process.

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Originally Posted by fusional

fair enough, i don't disagree.

there are several ways to make it enough of a grind to warrant superior stats to relic (and i do agree a bit that customization options would be nice if you're going to put in that kind of effort to begin with). to get started, a luminary weapon for the corresponding craft seems appropriate. then what? working toward a few guild items which increase your effective skill level? then working toward a guild key item which unlocks the synth?

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Essentially. If you read the flavor text in my origonal post "Tomes from both Aincent times and fellow Adventurers" was to refer to key items that were to advance the crafter's skill beyond the normally 'capped' level, allowing them to work for a greater craft.

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while that's all debatable, another thing is how to handle the items you need to complete the synth. do you give the items a chance to drop at any time, then leave it up to players to distribute to someone working on the questline? do you not allow most of them to drop until after you acquire some key item or pass a certain stage of the quest? do you reserve the final material for a later stage in the quest, or just make it harder to get than the others somehow? (rarer drop, harder/hardest boss, etc)

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That would be dependant on the stage of the item. And we can use the path towards a relic as a sort of standard. If we were, again, to use Ifrit Extreme as an example, you were guarenteed a drop - but the fight was extremely hard. Where as when you were doing dungeon grinds, you diddn't necessarily get the item you needed every time.

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i think simplification of crafting, removal of guild marks and key items, etc... was a good idea for 1.0. and it was good to allow more people to get into crafting. but i do think in 2.0 crafting does need something special and reintroducing some of those extra steps as *optional*, making it take a bit more work, and giving it a good long-term payoff is not only a good idea... but perhaps vital to the longevity of the game.

look how well crafting held up in xi over the years. it took a level cap increase to 99 and a shift in the economy from crafting-based to farming-based to disrupt the strength of the system. (and i think they plan on fixing that to put crafting back on top again)

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We agree on this point, which is why I wanted to introduce this concept of making something that a player can take personal ownership of and have the ambition of taking their crafting beyond the normal level, much like you would consiter your dedication to your combat.

Much like Relics, if a Magnus Opum were to fall by the wayside because of updates and power creep, there could be a way of 'fine tuning' the weapon further to allow you to keep up with the effort you put into it.

Granted, this invites "why should you be a unique little snoflake" arguments, but part of what makes MMO's fun is a sense of identity in the world - and this gives people who are dedicated enough the availability to do so.

A major crux of this, however, would be that the developers design the Classes and Jobs to the point where they are not just viable, but optimal in multiple builds. For instance, a critical damage orientated Dragoon and a steady Damage Dragoon should each have builds that more or less give the same overall performance, rather than a single build being optimal in all circumstances.

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in principle, i agree. and i know some people like to play the game as primarily crafters, or primarily gatherers. so in that sort of scenario, i understand a crafter being able to make some legendary (perhaps that's the name we'd give these items, rather than relic- legendaries) weapon or tool to sell or give to some worthy adventurer.

but at the same time, allowing something as powerful or moreso than relic to be sold could cause some game balance issues, or worse- encourage RMT activity from people who want those weapons but don't want to put in the work to get them.

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I agree as well. Which is why I would say the limit of trading within the account should be able to bypass the RMT issues, and still have the concept of a legendary weapon being passed from a crafter to a combatant could be a possible compromise here.

that's fair, then i agree and think it's a good idea. the only thing i see as being implausible would be the customization step. while i don't think it's a bad idea, i just personally doubt the developers would want to put many resources into that. there might be a few standardized options, but i don't see them getting too fancy with that unfortunately.

This is an interesting discussion and a good idea, which btw might be extended to gathering as well. I would love some more challenging content like this however I would prefer if it crafting content only required crafting and does not rely on RNG, i.e. it would be time consuming. Personally I hate the RNG speed run dungeons, yes I know they are going away, and therefore I disagree with the original idea of making the gear dependent on completing certain battle content. I would prefer to keep crafting content separate or at least so crafters can buy the mats and complete the synths after passing some very long term trials a la the luminary tools where you can make slow but steady progress.

I therefore prefer the outline that Kiote proposes but the main idea is the same.

"Ifrit extreme was really hard abloo bloo bloo"

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

"Ifrit extreme was really hard abloo bloo bloo"

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you would know, right?

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Originally Posted by fusional

you would know, right?

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I wouldn't care. Half of the relic process is going to be easier in 2.0 anyway due to mechanic improvements.

Whilst I actually think it's impressive that people beat Ifrit X, you've been beating that horse for a long time. I dread to think how much welled up rage will seep out if they ever make the relic making process more simple.

Edit: And like in XI, I've never really had aspirations for a relic.