The Live Letter XXVI and why change is necessary.

[Galan]

Most fun i had in this game was doing Titan EX unsynced. Dps was so high we had trouble avoiding all his skills cause they came one after another. SO fun being at bottom of pit when you the you see someone else just drop beside you dead lmao!

Problem i see with game is

1: A dungeon system that rewards only tomes. And there isn't any variety to them.
2: A raid system that is extremely focused on dps and NO DPS METERS! Makes no sense. Don't want to put meter then don't make content dependent on super dps.
3: Homogenization. Everyone likes to be DIFFERENT yet were all stuck getting exact same gear with same slightly varied stats.
4: The loss of skill usefulness. So when should sleep be cast? Why have it? Whats point of cross class skills like cure for paladin? 400 slow cast heal real good against targets hitting for 3k+?

And as previously stated whats point of a weapon drop on last hardest boss when you kind of don't need anymore cause you cleared it. Logic eludes me again.

[KitingGenbu]

Does anyone else miss the days that Titan HM and T5 Coil were unclearable by about 80% of servers? Kinda funny that T5 is still unclearable by many that dont do it unsynch'd lol.

[AzureFlare]

2: A raid system that is extremely focused on dps and NO DPS METERS! Makes no sense. Don't want to put meter then don't make content dependent on super dps..

Agree with this and can I add onto it that they designed themselves in a corner since healers and tanks have a super high utility to DPS conversion rate, but DPS have a super low DPS to utility conversion rate? I can't really ask a BLM/SMN to Physick regularly and expect them to hold a lot of DPS too, let alone have a MNK mitigate for a tank.

[Kaurie]

it is more like this:

devs: here is an apple
player 1: apple is too casual, i want pepper
player 2: i find cherry better
player 3: too many trolls here. everyone know that apples are the best
devs: hmm, ok. here is a cherry red pepper in an apple
player 1: remove the apple
player 3: remove the pepper
player 2: there is nothing for me

That really doesn't capture the situation at all.

For example in the Live Letter Yoshi implied people wanted the relic gated behind hard content. However, what people were asking for is that he do a) add an OPTION to do more challenging content and b) add NEW content to the grind as well. He didn't seem to capture either of those things and simply took the hard content aspect of it.

Another example is that people asked for harder content, so he removed the medium level difficulty of content and didn't see why this was a problem. That made an enormous jump in skill gap between the regular content and the higher end raids with nothing in between. When people said we want more harder content, that didn't mean we want less medium content.

When people say they want more medium level difficulty content and more 'midcore' content, it did not mean we want them to remove the top tier difficulty completely.

Honestly, I don't even know what to say to this "Furthermore, we also understand that obtaining an item level 210 weapon for clearing the fourth area of the extremely difficult Alexander: Gordias (Savage) is an issue due to the fact that this is the same item level as that of the upgraded Esoterics weapon. Had Savage offered an item level 215 weapon, it would have given a clearer identity to those who cleared this content. It would also have made it possible to implement the Esoteric weapon upgrade and Anima weapons earlier, and in turn made those easier to obtain." Why is obtaining an item from A4S an issue because there is another weapon you can get from clearing A4S. That makes no sense? I Honestly read this like 10x and still have 0 idea where Yoshi is coming from or what he sees as the problem. Maybe someone can enlighten me?

Anyway, I read both reddit and the official forums a fair amount. Any time I ever see Yoshi acknowledge player complaints he seems to leave out part of the complaint within the same posts. It's not even that he is only reading some posts, but he is only reading half of the posts (hence the red apple to red pepper analogy).

Your post is cute, but ultimately unhelpful and incorrect in my opinion. Your trying to put the blame on the players, but that doesn't make any sense. We, as the players, do not have a singular voice. We are all providing our feedback as best as we can. For some that works better than others. It's the development teams staff to weed through these and understand our concerns and address them. Currently, they are doing a very poor job of the understanding part, but a decent job of acknowledging them and an OK job of addressing them.

[Belhi]

People will run Diadem. It will be by far the easiest and cheapest way for people to get high grade Materia and everyone will want high grade Materia in 3.2.

I'd also address a thing about the relic being tied to new content. Unless that content is the diadem, any new content for the relic would take more time to develop, meaning either something else having been cut or us waiting even longer for the anima weapons to come out. New content doesn't come from no where. It takes time and resources to produce.

I think everyone would like new content but the question is if it was feasible. Would it be better for them not to have a 'relic' weapon quest at all?

[Alberel]

Why is everyone saying that the relic will be outdated in 3.2? Because better weapons will drop from the next alex stage?
I kind of disagree, relic isnt aimed at the raiders that do alex savage. It is aimed more at the more casual player that doesnt raid. The fact there is a better weapon obtainable from alex or the new primal? is irrelevant to non raiders since they will never get one of those.
Its also not very likely that the new tomestone introduced in 3.2 will give us a new weapon to rival relic since we cant even get the upgrade item from the eso weapon outside of alex savage.
And even the upgraded eso weapon is only ilvl 210, the same as relic.

My conclusion is for raiders: ignore relic and get your alex/primal weapon, for non raiders get the best weapon in your reach with the relic.

There will be a new tomestone in 3.2 which means a new equipment tier. Since the current relic ends at the highest iLvl of the old tier it's fairly obvious that 3.2 will offer an easier alternative for a weapon higher than i210. This is what I was pointing out when they first introduced the new relic quest; unless you grind Alex for all of the items needed the weapon will be obsolete by the time you get it. You'll be able to continue working on it in 3.25 but you'll never get to actually use it.

[PetiteMalFleur]

Honestly, I don't even know what to say to this "Furthermore, we also understand that obtaining an item level 210 weapon for clearing the fourth area of the extremely difficult Alexander: Gordias (Savage) is an issue due to the fact that this is the same item level as that of the upgraded Esoterics weapon. Had Savage offered an item level 215 weapon, it would have given a clearer identity to those who cleared this content. It would also have made it possible to implement the Esoteric weapon upgrade and Anima weapons earlier, and in turn made those easier to obtain." Why is obtaining an item from A4S an issue because there is another weapon you can get from clearing A4S. That makes no sense? I Honestly read this like 10x and still have 0 idea where Yoshi is coming from or what he sees as the problem. Maybe someone can enlighten me?

What he said was if he had somehow implemented a way for players to upgrade their weapon to 210 earlier in the raid cycle (put the dip in a3s + earlier release of relic) it would have helped the more casual raiding community with clear rates since players would not have needed to clear in essentially the same ilvl as the first hardcore teams. Next tier the weapon we get from the final savage boss will be 5 item levels higher so they can implement ways for players to upgrade their weapons earlier in the content cycle without making future savage weapons irrelevant.

[RiceisNice]

What he said was if he had somehow implemented a way for players to upgrade their weapon to 210 earlier in the raid cycle (put the dip in a3s + earlier release of relic) it would have helped the more casual raiding community with clear rates since players would not have needed to clear in essentially the same ilvl as the first hardcore teams. Next tier the weapon we get from the final savage boss will be 5 item levels higher so they can implement ways for players to upgrade their weapons earlier in the content cycle without making future savage weapons irrelevant.

Which...really doesn't make much sense in context if you think about it. A4S already awards other things like the mount and such, and ilvl in this game is literally a number because the numbers themselves do so very little in setting the board for gameplay.

It wasn't that big of a problem when they had alternated between the top tier of raiding weapon and relic being the same/higher than one or other, but I feel like the developers themselves are making a mountain out of a mole hill if they think the Ilvl number is a driving force to A4S' motivation. Even at same Ilvl, the substats still differ that you'd probably still prefer one of the existing 210 weapons over another.

I mean I can agree with upgraded eso weapons being lower than the raid weapon... but relic doesn't even need to be an issue. On top if that if they're doing increments of 5 ilvl again, unless they actually change the WD scaling on BRd/MCH, we're gonna run into the same mess as we are nw where an i210 weapon is actually weaker than an i205 because it's the same WD with worse substats. In the end, I feel like he's thinking that weapons are big driving point to being a motivation to clear the raid, which isn't the problem right now.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I do feel fights of A3S difficulty have their purpose in the game. Unfortunately, when it accompanies a lengthily lull in content, this leads to the insurmountable wall feeling many gamers had. Savage was all that remained, and the difficulty spike was immense. It's as though they started playing Bloodborne without realizing. What I think may be a good balance to still include the actual "wall" fight would be scaling existing content on occasion. That way the devs are not designing new fights a fraction of the playerbase won't play.

Thordan EX looks to be a great middle ground. So I hope they do continue to tune fights to that level despite what has been said.

[Riardon]

Isn't in time for SE to further fund this game and grow the dev team larger? I mean its now obvious those guys are struggling to create new exciting content and fix the current issues at the same time. It's rly obvious the team is draining out their energy and inspiration. 3.0 was an excellent job up until you finished the MSQ. After that the end game content was pretty much non existent. 3.1 was a half made poor job and nothing else. Diadem as it is now it's a complete failure. Feels like a Beta content. I hope 3.2 will be better but seems to me the engine that grows this game stronger becomes weaker and weaker.