Cataclysm weapons: SEVEN WEEKS!?

I do not get it.

Who looked at the previous system with four weeks for a deepshadow weapon and thought, "This needs to be a longer wait!"

I really don't understand this. Even by the usual standards of time gating this is excessive.

Didn't deepshadow start at 7 weeks and then get nerfed? Or am I totally misremembering that
I thought that's how it's always been done

Its 7 weeks to start, reduced to 4 once they unlock armor pieces, at which time weapon pieces are still locked until either the next patch or, on the last cycle each expansion, until the .55 patch.

It always starts at 7 weeks lol. In odd numbered patches they drop it to four weeks. You want a higher level weapon than the extreme drops sooner, run savage.

Deepshadow started at 7 and got nerfed to 4. So has every previous equivalent since at least 3.0.

I mean, you still can get Ruby Weapon and we still got ShB relics, so it's not too bad.
But it's always been like this.

It has always been seven weeks; reduced to four during the odd numbered patch cycle. If you want it faster, you could also attempt to clear E6S where the upgrade itself drops instead of tokens.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

I do not get it.

Who looked at the previous system with four weeks for a deepshadow weapon and thought, "This needs to be a longer wait!"

I really don't understand this. Even by the usual standards of time gating this is excessive.

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Uh no, hun. they are always 7.

Search for "The number of Blade of Early Antiquity required in exchange for a Lightweight Tomestone has been reduced from 7 to 4."On the patch notes

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...716915b851002f

They reduce it later to make it easy for people to gear up

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Originally Posted by Avidria

Didn't deepshadow start at 7 weeks and then get nerfed? Or am I totally misremembering that
I thought that's how it's always been done

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That's how it is. This person likely joined after the nerf happened

Lol, This is how its always been.
Its a 7 week grind. Then after a few months, they reduce it to 4 weeks. Till eventually towards the next update Tier they lift the weekly restriction and you can get as many clears and X item as you want.
This is nothing new Bruh, they've been doing this since Alexander. Or even the Binding Coils

Oh they've always done this. So this dumb idea was in place from the beginning? Good to know.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

Oh they've always done this. So this dumb idea was in place from the beginning? Good to know.

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This "dumb idea" made it possible for more casual players to still obtain the tomestone weapon. Prior to HW, you had to wait 3-4 months for the next Alliance raid to obtain one.
If you want to get it faster, you could always clear E6S. That'll give you three weekly resets of rolls on the tomestone, since you need 1000 Allegory anyway.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

Oh they've always done this. So this dumb idea was in place from the beginning? Good to know.

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There is nothing dumb about it. Otherwise it would have been changed years ago.
Have Patience, everyone is going through the same progression grind.

Agreed with this, always have. In a game like this, any single piece of gear that takes longer than a month or so to obtain is way too excessive. Everything has a painfully short shelf life as it is and this just exacerbates the problem.

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There is nothing dumb about it. Otherwise it would have been changed years ago.

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Many dumb ideas/practices that started "years ago" are still around despite also having had the chance to change. This doesn't necessarily exclude them from being dumb.

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

There is nothing dumb about it. Otherwise it would have been changed years ago.
Have Patience, everyone is going through the same progression grind.

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The irony of this message. "Everyone is going through the same progression grind." LMAO, BECAUSE THERE IS A PROGRESSION GRIND!

You guys can sugarcoat it all you want, but here is the truth - the REAL truth:

This is purely due to Square-Enix's greed. Things are like this because it means they make more money.

If hardcore players could just come on when a new patch hit and get all the latest gear in less than a month, SE would only get a month's worth of subscription from them. Meanwhile, if they're forced to draaag out their item-acquisition period over a couple of months, they're able to force such players to stay subscribed for longer.

That's it. There is no other reason why end-game gear needs to be gated. You can try coming up with whatever other bogus explanations you can think of, but at the end of the day it still all comes down to this. It doesn't matter if a few players are suddenly able to become ilvl 500 after the first week after grinding - it wouldn't have any influence on the game server, or the other players. Casual players would still be able to get things at their own pace. Everything would be fine. The ONLY thing that would change? Square-Enix wouldn't get as much sub money from the hardcore players. Boohoo, so sad. :'(

And so, because of this, we have weekly tome caps and 2 chests per week, per raid instance... which leads to the shitty gameplay currently in place where people only log in Tuesday morning on the reset to do the raids, grind a few dungeons to meet the weekly cap, and then log off for the rest of the week until the next reset.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Agreed with this, always have. In a game like this, any single piece of gear that takes longer than a month or so to obtain is way too excessive. Everything has a painfully short shelf life as it is and this just exacerbates the problem.

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Nonsense, if you don't raid savage, you are going to use this weapon for 4 months (you upgrade it's item level down the line).
7 Weeks acquisition time is completely justified.

If you don't raid savage, you don't need this weapon anyway. Content you do is already trivial in difficulty.

The deepshadow weapons were 7 tokens, or 7 weeks, all the way from 5.05, till 5.1, which is like 4 months apart. It was only nerfed to 4 after 5.1
It was also the case for all of the omega raids - 7 weeks.

If you want it earlier, you can do savage raids as the tomestone itself drops directly from E6S - And really, you shouldn't NEED the weapon if you're not doing savage raiding. Plus, its only 5 ilvls more than the weapon from ruby, atleast in it's unaugmented state.

I dont see what the problem is.

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Originally Posted by BluexBird

The irony of this message. "Everyone is going through the same progression grind." LMAO, BECAUSE THERE IS A PROGRESSION GRIND!

You guys can sugarcoat it all you want, but here is the truth - the REAL truth:

This is purely due to Square-Enix's greed. Things are like this because it means they make more money.

If hardcore players could just come on when a new patch hit and get all the latest gear in less than a month, SE would only get a month's worth of subscription from them. Meanwhile, if they're forced to draaag out their item-acquisition period over a couple of months, they're able to force such players to stay subscribed for longer.

That's it. There is no other reason why end-game gear needs to be gated. You can try coming up with whatever other bogus explanations you can think of, but at the end of the day it still all comes down to this. It doesn't matter if a few players are suddenly able to become ilvl 500 after the first week after grinding - it wouldn't have any influence on the game server, or the other players. Casual players would still be able to get things at their own pace. Everything would be fine. The ONLY thing that would change? Square-Enix wouldn't get as much sub money from the hardcore players. Boohoo, so sad. :'(

And so, because of this, we have weekly tome caps and 2 chests per week, per raid instance... which leads to the shitty gameplay currently in place where people only log in Tuesday morning on the reset to do the raids, grind a few dungeons to meet the weekly cap, and then log off for the rest of the week until the next reset.

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I hope you're joking, i really do.

Hardcore raiders CAN get almost full ilvl 500, in the first week if needed, and one month in atleast one of the dps from any hardcore group WILL be full ilvl 500.

And no...It's not for money. If the game allowed you to get ilvl 500 week 1 without effort due to a lack of a tomestone cap or whatever...Then everyone would just play on patch week, get full ilvl 500, and then not play for 3 months, by your logic. Which do you prefer? Playing a little every week, and actually PLAYING the game? Or playing like a maniac week 1, then never launching the game again for the following 3 months before the next patch. Do you play soley to get gear? Do you unsub for 1-2 months once you're at ilvl cap and say "welp, that's me 100%ing the game! Surely i can't get any more social interaction or enjoyment from this more than i already do through all those expert roulettes i did!"
Nobody is forcing you to play the game - If that's how you really feel, then why are you paying the sub? Why are you playing?

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Originally Posted by BluexBird

[lots of whine about bad money grabbing companies.

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Be happy us non-raiding scrubs get gear of this caliber at all.
In most MMOs I know it's "either raid or be doomed to wear crappy stuff".

Having to wait it out a little is a fair trade off. If you want to gear more quickly: raid savage.

As for the weekly lockout: it's there so people with a life have a chance to compete too.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

Oh they've always done this. So this dumb idea was in place from the beginning? Good to know.

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There are other avenues for upgrades. You could get a drop (or exchange ten totems, it has no lockout so you can kill it as much as you like) from Ruby Weapon, or buy/craft a weapon.

And no its not a dumb idea. You don't get handed great gear for free early in the tier. Welcome to working towards something and being patient.

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Nonsense, if you don't raid savage, you are going to use this weapon for 4 months (you upgrade it's item level down the line).
7 Weeks acquisition time is completely justified.

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Well, I don't agree there. An item that has nearly a whole third of its shelf life consumed by the time it takes to acquire a single one of them (because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way) is a ridiculous practice.

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If you don't raid savage, you don't need this weapon anyway. Content you do is already trivial in difficulty.

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These arguments always sucked, BTW.

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG. How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

It could be worse, the only way to get better weapons could be 100% RNG with a .005% drop rate on several day respawn mobs. Like the good old days.

7 weeks is nothing.

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It could be worse,

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Things could always be worse. It doesn't mean what's there is great, or that it can't be improved upon.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Things could always be worse. It doesn't mean what's there is great, or that it can't be improved upon.

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it takes 3 weeks to get enough tomes to buy the weapon to start with. Most people buy tome pieces early on, meaning it will take them even longer anyway. You can get them from raiding week one, and it still takes 3 weeks to buy because of tomes. There is nothing wrong with having a delay on the weapon, especially when ruby ex exists and has no lockout. Its only 5 ilvls behind.

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Originally Posted by VenKitsune

I hope you're joking, i really do.

Hardcore raiders CAN get almost full ilvl 500, in the first week if needed, and one month in atleast one of the dps from any hardcore group WILL be full ilvl 500.

And no...It's not for money. If the game allowed you to get ilvl 500 week 1 without effort due to a lack of a tomestone cap or whatever...Then everyone would just play on patch week, get full ilvl 500, and then not play for 3 months, by your logic. Which do you prefer? Playing a little every week, and actually PLAYING the game? Or playing like a maniac week 1, then never launching the game again for the following 3 months before the next patch. Do you play soley to get gear? Do you unsub for 1-2 months once you're at ilvl cap and say "welp, that's me 100%ing the game! Surely i can't get any more social interaction or enjoyment from this more than i already do through all those expert roulettes i did!"
Nobody is forcing you to play the game - If that's how you really feel, then why are you paying the sub? Why are you playing?

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There's so much wrong with what you wrote, that rather than proving you wrong I'm just going to stick to answering your last questions.

No, I don't want to play like a maniac on week 1. At least not because of gear. What I find annoying is that I want to play the game... except I can't, because people won't want me in their party because they won't get any or as many rewards. THIS is what I'm against. It's exactly BECAUSE I don't play just for the gear, that I hate the system currently in place. When I brought up the hardcore players, I wasn't talking about myself. And for the record, I don't unsub or quit after I'm fully geared. It's like you completely missed the point of my post.

Its supposed to be something you work towards. Its a deliberate system to keep you subscribed.

Besides, it's the strongest weapon you can get right now aside from the Eden weapon, so it's natural that they'd draw out the process of getting it.

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Originally Posted by Stepjam

Its supposed to be something you work towards. Its a deliberate system to keep you subscribed.

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Waiting for the weekly reset to run E8 again isn't work.

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Originally Posted by Brill_

Waiting for the weekly reset to run E8 again isn't work.

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Neither is ruby ex. That fight practically gives weapons away.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Neither is ruby ex. That fight practically gives weapons away.

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An opinion that can only come from someone who has never pugged an EX.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

An opinion that can only come from someone who has never pugged an EX.

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Ive pugged ruby ex. Fight is easy, just use your eyes and most mechanics sort themselves out if you can run out of bad

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Well, I don't agree there. An item that has nearly a whole third of its shelf life consumed by the time it takes to acquire a single one of them (because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way) is a ridiculous practice.

These arguments always sucked, BTW.

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG. How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

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Usually those ultimate weapons/ equipment came from either a large time investment or beating a superboss, so I'm not sure what kind of point you're making here.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Ive pugged ruby ex. Fight is easy, just use your eyes and most mechanics sort themselves out if you can run out of bad

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So did I. Currently 8/10 PUG's for Ruby Ex fail horrible due to people messing up the easiest mechanics. Farming Ruby is more annoying then farming Hades ever was ...

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

An opinion that can only come from someone who has never pugged an EX.

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lol "I have garbage luck with parties, so clearly you've never pugged before" is always my favorite argument.

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Originally Posted by TalithaSolarien

So did I. Currently 8/10 PUG's for Ruby Ex fail horrible due to people messing up the easiest mechanics. Farming Ruby is more annoying then farming Hades ever was ...

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Just standard pf luck then, i farmed out my 10 clears in about 3 hours then never went back, we're on the same DC too so its just standard luck

8 for me as I missed a week *sad face*

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG.

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I've got great news than, you can buy yourself 2-5 items depending on slot before grinding away for your weapon in week 7 so you are totally free to get more powerfull even before you can grab a weapon stone doing normals

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Originally Posted by TalithaSolarien

So did I. Currently 8/10 PUG's for Ruby Ex fail horrible due to people messing up the easiest mechanics. Farming Ruby is more annoying then farming Hades ever was ...

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Really? I thought Hades was the most unfairly-designed DPS check I've ever seen in the game. I never had to try so hard in order to clear something. On my first clear, we played it perfectly and still only cleared it with a couple of seconds left before enrage, even though we played that last phase perfectly with no deaths or debuffs.

Compare that to Ruby Weapon, where you can have multiple deaths during the first phase and still just power through to the next one, and kill it before even the first Outrage. The fight is a lot more forgiving, not to mention mechanically easier and less stressful. Especially because you don't go back to the very start if you die during the second phase. lol

So...they are doing what they've been doing for awhile now. 7 to start, 4 later when the requirements are nerfed.

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Originally Posted by BluexBird

Really? I thought Hades was the most unfairly-designed DPS check I've ever seen in the game. I never had to try so hard in order to clear something. On my first clear, we played it perfectly and still only cleared it with a couple of seconds left before enrage, even though we played that last phase perfectly with no deaths or debuffs.

Compare that to Ruby Weapon, where you can have multiple deaths during the first phase and still just power through to the next one, and kill it before even the first Outrage. The fight is a lot more forgiving, not to mention mechanically easier and less stressful. Especially because you don't go back to the very start if you die during the second phase. lol

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see, that here is why parsers being forbidden is such an issue, no offense here god knows who was underperforming for you guys, but compared to most savage fights at least hades enrage might aswell be nonexistent. Mind you the enrage on ruby really falls into the realm of "if you managed to reach this point you either wiped your way through the fight or i just don't want to know", like heck that thing is lenient.

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Originally Posted by Avidria

Didn't deepshadow start at 7 weeks and then get nerfed? Or am I totally misremembering that
I thought that's how it's always been done

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Still, don't you think that 7 weeks of normal raid and 3 weeks worth of tomes is a bit much for an item?

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

(because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way)

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Generally it is intended for these games that you specialize in one role/class and that the equipment status reflects that.
As for the shelf life: don't care that it's 1/3rd. 10 item levels is nothing in this game, it's not as if your char suddenly can't do the content because you don'd have the weapon.

Trust me: if the tome gear would not exist and people would have to kill E8s for a similar weapon, it's useful life would be much MUCH shorter to nonexistent for most folks. Most raiders progress for months to even be able to pull the last boss, not to mention to kill it.

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How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

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You mean in single player games? Never, because I don't like pointless grinds.
I am not a stats person. Even when raiding savage/mythic I never really cared about the gear. It was merely a tool I needed in order to be able to tackle the next challenge.

Unless the gear looks pretty. Then all bets are off.

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Originally Posted by BluexBird

Really? I thought Hades was the most unfairly-designed DPS check I've ever seen in the game.

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o_O
You're joking, right?

RIGHT?

Please tell me that the above is a jest. B/c the enrages of ex trials have always been a very lenient one compared to savage.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Still, don't you think that 7 weeks of normal raid and 3 weeks worth of tomes is a bit much for an item?

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No I don't. As I said: most raid groups will take far longer than 7 weeks in order to get their weapon.
Sure, really good raiders blitz through in a week or two but that isn't the norm.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Still, don't you think that 7 weeks of normal raid and 3 weeks worth of tomes is a bit much for an item?

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Not at all.