Sorry Yoshi, but if you award the best weapon in the game by winning the lottery...

[Lambdafish]

You do not know if subscription rates are going down nor would you know why. My GUESS would be people are bored and will unsubscribe until SB comes out. No one here is saying opinions aren't valid l. We are saying that leaving won't help to change anything so it's their loss. Besides, no valid opinions were given by the OP, he/she felt the unbridled need to inform everyone they could that they were leaving because they do not like this one change.

In OPs defence, that one change represents a huge change in design philosophy. The amount of complaints on the forums are a backlash to a seemingly random break in the reward structure, and I think that OP and quite a few others are scared of what this means for the future of rewards, and their value. You are right that unsubbing does nothing though.

[caponesavage]

In OPs defence, that one change represents a huge change in design philosophy.

I get what your saying but what does this actually change other than raiders crying that a casual might be better geared then them and by doing less work for it. The content can and will continue to be cleared with or without the need for the 280 weapon. Most likely the casuals will never clear things like Alex Savage so whats the worry. I would be more proud in knowing I was able to clear the hardest content of the game then worrying about someone elses gear especially casuals who may never clear it in their lifetime of playing the game. Raiders you are still great players and still top tier and also still accomplished something that probably 75% of the player base never will.

[NolLacnala]

I get what your saying but what does this actually change other than raiders crying...

You obviously don't get what he's saying, since Yoshi invalidated RELIC a mere week after, which is casual content with grind. This decision impacted all tiers of players.

[Lambdafish]

I get what your saying but...

You obviously don't get what he's saying, since Yoshi invalidated RELIC a mere week after, which is casual content with grind. This decision impacted all tiers of players.

NolLacnala is exactly right, I don't care about who cleared what or who is better than who, but I do care about reward balance and for clearing content and getting its rewards to have meaning. Raiders especially have seen a huge decline in rewards since 2.0, they used to get unique story, unique gear, and the strongest weapon for their (rightly deserving) effort, however in 3.0 this was changed drastically because there was no "savage" story, the gear looked exactly the same as NM gear, and diadem 3.1 basically invalidated all the gear anyway, and the knock on effect was very poor reception to Gordias.

My fear is not people having better weapons than me, my fear is that the devs have set a precident that the raid weapon (and relic weapon) aren't necessarily best and that they can insert BiS weapons into any content they feel like in order to provide a carrot on a stick. My fear is that this will (quite rightly) deter people from raiding as a whole, and that Omega will struggle on arrival, just like Gordias, if not worse, because SE doesn't know how to balance rewards against effort. Then the devs will turn around and go "Hardcore content isn't popular, lets add more casual content", and I'm like "NO, balance your damn rewards correctly and people will do the content!"

[TaurielKyudo]

On the other hand, no one KNOWS what the devs are going to do in the future. Everyone is just speculating and causing chaos for no reason. This could have been a "let's see what people think about this" type thing, and now they know. For all we know, they won't ever put in place a different way to get a weapon again besides raid/relic. I thought people wanted more options, but here they are implementing other ways to get a weapon, and people still complain. OP and others like them are literally quitting the game because they think the game is doomed now. In reality, no one knows anything about what they're going to do in SB. So calm down for one second, breathe, and judge the expac when it comes out. If you hate it then, fine, leave. Until then, ya'll are just going bat-shit crazy for nothing.

[Sicno]

On the other hand, no one KNOWS what the devs are going to do in the future. Everyone is just speculating and causing chaos for no reason. This could have been a "let's see what people think about this" type thing, and now they know. For all we know, they won't ever put in place a different way to get a weapon again besides raid/relic. I thought people wanted more options, but here they are implementing other ways to get a weapon, and people still complain. OP and others like them are literally quitting the game because they think the game is doomed now. In reality, no one knows anything about what they're going to do in SB. So calm down for one second, breathe, and judge the expac when it comes out. If you hate it then, fine, leave. Until then, ya'll are just going bat-shit crazy for nothing.

I'm gonna clarify this once and for all. The reason why I'm so upset about this entire situation is because this completely breaks the reward structure in the game. Say whatever you want about "waaah you don't need the weapon to do the content", "it has random stats", "the chances of getting one for your job are so slim", etc. That doesn't change the fact that those weapons are currently the biggest carrot to get in the game and you get them by "winning the lottery". When you give the best reward by being extremely lucky with absolutely no ties to player skill (and the effort put into it is relative depending on said luck, if you got it on your 1st run or after 3 months) that tells me that the entire reward structure in the game is a joke and I shouldn't take it seriously anymore. Regardless of if it's a precedent for the future or not the reward structure IS ALREADY A JOKE, right now, this very minute. (By the way, for those who insist about the raid gear still making raiding worth it, there are jobs like NIN that may not use drops from A11S nor A12S at all now. That means only doing 9 and 10, where you can get carried in a corpse bag even on cross-server pf).

After the release I stopped playing for a few days and waited for the PAX panel to see if there was any new development about it. Was hoping for Yoshi to say that they may be considering adjustments, or that this is part of a bigger plan with more stuff coming soon (like maybe ways to upgrade raid weapons/gear), etc. Instead his response was that everybody should "calm down" and that this is perfectly fine just because it's rare to get it. That response made me feel really insulted for the reasons I mentioned in the former paragraph.

Now I gotta say, with a cooler head my reaction on my original post may have been overblown. As someone at some point in the thread mentioned there's still a lot more to the game and this is just a part of it. But then when I try to do anything I find that I lost a lot of motivation to put the effort.

[Lambdafish]

snip

This is my exact sentiment. The i280 weapon doesn't affect me, but the rewards system as a whole does, and it is a cancer that is slowely killing the game IMO. Honestly, any 10 year old with half a brain could structure rewards better.

[Welsper59]

This is my exact sentiment. The i280 weapon doesn't affect me, but the rewards system as a whole does, and it is a cancer that is slowely killing the game IMO. Honestly, any 10 year old with half a brain could structure rewards better.

I get the general concern regarding rewards and their frequent replacements, heavily due to how stats work in this ridiculously vertical/linear progression game. It's like leveling up, in that there's no reason to be playing at level 59, when you could be playing at 60 (you'd never care to look back). This feeling has been known about to happen since ARR launched. I think that initially, the devs didn't want to introduce a gear system that essentially forced players to have to go back to old content to get gear they'd need for current content, similar to how certain "hated" games like XI conducted itself...

Ironically, they obviously went that route to entice/compel people to routinely do old content anyway, be it any reason deemed necessary (e.g. filler activity, help new players, etc). The treadmill suffers because of that. Just like most content they newly introduce, their reward system since the beginning has been half of what it should have been (except half being one possible route, the other being half of a different one). It's like they chose to go vertical progression under the mindset of not forcing players to do old content too much for gear, only to keep that vertical progression and use horizontal progression methods that don't work for vertical (doing old content).

I appreciate what they seem to intend to do with this game, but there's a lot of half assed execution going on. The devs/Yoshi-P tend to have great vision and excellent ideas. The problem is, as I've said many times in the past regarding this sort of topic, that their execution is pathetic. Either problems arise that should have been prevented based on prior content (e.g. stance on win-trading, bots/hacks, hated perspective on methods to acquire stuff - e.g. FATE integration) or they come from content that is new but isn't fully executed properly, adding to the filler and dull limitations that they are often criticized for. I mean, we still apparently have that housing issue of furniture limitations... 200 for an L is kind of sad. Basically, you're playing a sub MMORPG that is being developed with the same execution standards you would expect of an F2P or mobile game. The biggest difference as far as money goes being the polish to what is half-assed executed (e.g. graphics, balance, story, etc).