Stormblood end-of-life cycle and Buyable Weapons

[Monsalvato]

I'm opening this thread just out of pure curiosity, I don't have the slightest intention of starting a controversy, and it would be useless with Shadowbringers so close anyway.
I'm convinced the devs had a plan when they made this choice, I just don't understand what exactely where they trying to achieve.

What am I talking about? About weapons being buyable with currency. Previously (Heavensward, think ARR too) at the end of an expansion you could use Tomestones to buy weapons that had the same ilevel as the rest of the gear you could buy, and you could also level those items up by 10 more ilevels just with currency.

In Stormblood's end-of-life cycle you can get ilevel 390 gear, but you can't "buy" the items to power them up to 400. Furthermore, the only weapons you can buy are ilevel 330 (upgradable to 340), and it's through Centurio currency, not tomestones.


With no weapons dropping from dungeons, the only choices left are raids or Marketboards (pretty cheap, at this stage of the game), but no currency like in the past.
So, why do you think devs went for this route in Stormblood?
I am absolutely sure they were trying to achieve something positive in the community, stimulating something, but... what exactely?


Thanks for reading this.

[Adeacia]

I have an i400 tomestone weapon. The upgrade item does exist. You need to run all 3 of the 24 player SB raids for the coins to trade in for it. HW did the same thing before SB launched.

[Vidu]

I have an i400 tomestone weapon. The upgrade item does exist. You need to run all 3 of the 24 player SB raids for the coins to trade in for it. HW did the same thing before SB launched.

To add to this: This has been the same in both ARR and HW.

If you want the tomestone weapon but arent raiding, you can get it by running the 24-man-"raids" aswell as the NMs of the 8-man-raid (once they added those in HW) and obtain items that let (1) buy the weapon and (2) upgrade all your gear to the highste ilvl in the game.

In order to buy the current tomestone-weapon you need to get one "Military-grade Tomestone", which drops in AS2 or can be obtained by exchanging 4 Alphascape Crystalloids (100% drop straight into your inventory from A4NM).
If you want to upgrade that weapon you need to run each of the SB-24-man-raids once and exchange the 3 coins for one Scaevan Ester.

This was no different in ARR or HW - they only changed the way you can obtain all the stuff (aka: making it purchaseable with poetics) after the next expansion already dropped.

You can leave SB with an ilvl of 400 without ever having set foot into any challenging content.

[Niwashi]

... think ARR too)

They did it with ARR too, but not until after HW came out. Originally, the Encrypted Tomestone used to get the i120 Ironworks weapons, along with the Carbontwine and Carboncoat used to upgrade the Ironworks gear to 130, were exclusively raid drops (like the Unidentified Allagan Tomestone used to get i100 weapons a tier earlier). It took that raid dropped token along with a bunch of (at the time expensive) currency bought tokens to get the weapon, and another raid drop to upgrade it. After HW came out (one patch cycle later, in 3.1), they made the Encrypted Tomestone, Carbontwine and Carboncoat available to buy with Poetics as well. They've also (partially then and partially later) quite drastically reduced the Poetics cost of everything associated with that set.

[Nezerius]

What am I talking about? About weapons being buyable with currency. Previously (Heavensward, think ARR too) at the end of an expansion you could use Tomestones to buy weapons that had the same ilevel as the rest of the gear you could buy, and you could also level those items up by 10 more ilevels just with currency.

This is actually incorrect. You were never able to get the tomestone weapons with *just* tomestones, during the time when they were part of current content. They always needed a special type of tomestone (Encrypted Tomestone/Micro Tomestone), and an item to augment it (Carbontwine/Illuminati Deepest Gobdip), along with tokens that were purchased with tomestones.

• During ARR, the Encrypted Tomestone and Carbontwine were obtained through completion of the Crystal Tower weekly quest.
• During HW, the Micro Tomestone was purchased with 4 Alexandrian Gears, which were obtained through clearing The Soul of the Creator (near the end of the expansion). The gobdip was purchased with a coin from each of the three alliance raids.

In Stormblood's end-of-life cycle you can get ilevel 390 gear, but you can't "buy" the items to power them up to 400. Furthermore, the only weapons you can buy are ilevel 330 (upgradable to 340), and it's through Centurio currency, not tomestones.

Stormblood uses the same system as Heavensward. Purchasing tokens with Genesis tomestones, a Military-grade Tomestone (purchased with 4 Alphascape Crystalloids, obtained by clearing Alphascape v4.0) , and purchasing the upgrade item using a coin from each of the three alliance raids.

[Monsalvato]

A-ha! So that's how things were and my memory played tricks on me!
Thanks Nezerius for clarifying everything, it all makes sense now!

[Raldo]

Dear Square Enix,

This thread has reminded me that some of your token systems can sometimes be obtuse as hell. Please do try to clean that up. Can you please figure out how to make the lady trade you a weapon for 1000 tomes + Military-Grade Tomestone (even better if we can skip the Military-Grade tomestone trade-in step too)? I don't think anyone enjoys buying 10 whatever-tokens from one NPC, trading the items for a Military-Grade Tomestone at another NPC, then finally going to a 3rd NPC to trade all of that in for a weapon. Want to upgrade that weapon? Now you have to visit a 4th NPC (and re-visit one of the previously-mentioned NPCs if you need to trade in the ally-raid currency for the upgrade item).

It's no surprise that some people might be completely unaware that you can even buy weapons at all.

"How would you change it then?" I hear you asking. Simple.

Lady that sells you stuff for tomestones. New weapons subcategory.
[Paladin Sword] - 700 tomes + Military-Grade tomestone
[Paladin Sword] - 700 tomes + 4 Alphascape whatevers
[Warrior Axe] - 1000 tomes + Military-Grade tomestone
and so on...

I feel like the only reason we have the current system is because maybe there's some sort of limitation where the system can't accept both tomes and items at the same time.

[Iscah]

Can you please figure out how to make the lady trade you a weapon for 1000 tomes + Military-Grade Tomestone (even better if we can skip the Military-Grade tomestone trade-in step too)?

It seems to be a limitation of their shop setup. You can have a shop that sells items for [currency] or a shop that trades items for other items, but it can't do both simultaneously. Thus the need to convert your tomestone currency into an item (stack of tokens) before trading it to the weapon exchange.

They could certainly do with streamlining the purchase of previous expansions' weapons and letting you buy them directly, but I think their intent is that you can still acquire the upgrade items from the original raids instead of spending poetics, if you prefer.

A simple route in addition to the old trade-ins would certainly be nice.

[Kuroka]

It just sucks to upgrade all the jobs for the expension now, the 390 stuff just feels unfinished but i dont wanna have to do 70+ 24pp raids.. >_>

[Raldo]

It just sucks to upgrade all the jobs for the expension now, the 390 stuff just feels unfinished but i dont wanna have to do 70+ 24pp raids.. >_>

You know it's just going to be buyable with poetics once the expansion hits, and I doubt you'll be leveling everything at once. By the time you get around to your lesser-used jobs, you'll probably have enough poetics to cover it. I'll never understand the paranoia that I see all to often to have all jobs geared up for the expansion. Personally, I have 6 jobs ready. That's plenty.