A rant on the high allagan weapons drop system

[Zumi]

Tell me about it, lol 5 axs and 3-4 sch books I forget. But they just have to have some RNG element to it to keep you coming back. If they did something like T7 and dropped say a High Allegan tombstone you could finish in just 8 weeks lol.

[dannycookies]

I believe my group's current stats are:

2x PLD
1x WHM
6x SMN

We've worked our asses off to learn the hardest fight in the game and 5/8 (6/8 if you count that the one mains BLM) of our group members have walked away with nothing for our main jobs. Raiding should not be this depressing of an experience. I understand that some RNG motivates players to play more, but when we add up the time it took to learn the fight + the time getting drops no one can use, it doesn't feel very motivating at all.

If they did something like T7 and dropped say a High Allegan tombstone you could finish in just 8 weeks lol.

I'm sorry, why is this a bad thing? If a group has perfected t9, they deserve to be able to cap it off after two months of raiding.

[Pyreflye]

I'm sorry, why is this a bad thing? If a group has perfected t9, they deserve to be able to cap it off after two months of raiding.

Because it means they will finish content faster than it can be produced.

Currently, the raiding scheme is:
Coil (hardcore)
CT (casual)
Coil (hardcore
CT (casual)

3 months between each patch, meaning players in that situation are getting new content every 6 months.
If you down it all, and get all your weapons in 2 months, that'll just make players get burned out quicker.

Don't get me wrong, I hate RNG as much as the next person, but it really is needed in some cases.

Developers will never be able to release content at a quicker pace than it is completed, the RNG present just eases the burden on them.

[cryptic_angel]

Because it means they will finish content faster than it can be produced.

Currently, the raiding scheme is:
Coil (hardcore)
CT (casual)
Coil (hardcore
CT (casual)

3 months between each patch, meaning players in that situation are getting new content every 6 months.
If you down it all, and get all your weapons in 2 months, that'll just make players get burned out quicker.

Don't get me wrong, I hate RNG as much as the next person, but it really is needed in some cases.

Developers will never be able to release content at a quicker pace than it is completed, the RNG present just eases the burden on them.

Players will still raid for bis and alts. Don't be intentionally daft and say that people clear content faster than it is made. No one is going to clear the final boss of a raid tier two weeks after release. Most statics were clearing t9 by 2.5-3.5 months after release. The sycrus tower patch came out three months after SCoB. Your example is terrible since people still had not even downed t9 by the time the crystal tower patch dropped. People will still have plenty of content to do.

[dannycookies]

Don't get me wrong, I hate RNG as much as the next person, but it really is needed in some cases.

We're not slamming our heads against FATEs for some atma garbage here. This is a very difficult fight with a lot of mechanics that the majority of players will never be able to get through without a major echo + nerf. It's a slap in the face to reward people who learn how to jump rope through t9 by incorporating a lazy RNG design to "stretch the content out." The solution should not be to penalize us with RNG, it should be adding more raiding content at a quicker rate. Four raids every six months is ridiculous. Besides, they wouldn't have such a hard time keeping content relevant and giving us things to do if they stopped making all previous raids useless after every major patch.

[Themis]

We're not slamming our heads against FATEs for some atma garbage here. This is a very difficult fight with a lot of mechanics that the majority of players will never be able to get through without a major echo + nerf. It's a slap in the face to reward people who learn how to jump rope through t9 by incorporating a lazy RNG design to "stretch the content out." The solution should not be to penalize us with RNG, it should be adding more raiding content at a quicker rate. Four raids every six months is ridiculous. Besides, they wouldn't have such a hard time keeping content relevant and giving us things to do if they stopped making all previous raids useless after every major patch.

Maybe you should understand that content doesn't just come into existence by will alone. In fact, that goes for pretty much everything in life.

Now, SE could, I expect, throw out 20 raids in a 3 month patch cycle. That's not hard to do all. Use an existing arena, so you don't spent resources on creating new graphics for that. Use an existing mob with existing textures and movesets and you don't have to create a new one. Don't bother thinking about how to make interesting mechanics, just make it pure tank and spank with no thought at all. Just that alone would save SE time and money. They could just use an existing library and have a handful of people develop the game. Oh, and definitely don't work on 3.0 or 4.0 expansions at the same time, because that's taking up resources away from more raids per patch cycle as well.

If you want quality end game content, then you have to accept that it takes time to create, test and balance. We already know that SE has their own testers fine tune mechanics and often redesigns a particular raid, simply because Savage mode exists (their original version of the battle). For all we know, it could take 3-4 weeks per raid to actually design, create, develop and tweak. That would mean that 4-5 raids in 6 months is actually pretty good.

But if you want crappy, dull and unexciting content then they could do that. There's actually a concept for this; look up the Project Management Triangle. The only way you can get very high quality is through lots of time, lots of money and a huge amount of scope/complexity. But they could do it very cheaply, very quickly and with little scope. That leads to very low quality, however, and I don't think SE want to simply churn out factory lined content just to please the few impatient people.

(And, no, I'm not actively defending their decision. Just pointing out business facts, that many people seem to not understand).

[Noll]

I don't think a token system will make people stop doing the raid after 8 tries. You're still aiming to get your secondary job weapon, eventually your third job. At least you'll know that after 8 weeks you can get your drop.

In T5 I was lucky, I dropped my book after 2 or 3 tries, I still farmed T5 with my party 'till coil#2 was released.