Exclusivity and the potential downfall of the game.

[ZedxKayn]

Relics don't outdo raid weapons ever.

And TBH raid weapons have no point except bragging rights, like almost every reward in the game, because outside that or the very next raid your item level gets synced down for everything anyway.

But they do... My main job's relic weapon is BiS. I didn't look at the other jobs but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case for more than mine.

People who clear the hardest content get the weapons that hurt the most, that's how it should be.

[strawberrycake]

Exclusivity is not inharently bad, as much as people want to talk from personal prefrence. Many games do it actively and people just play more, make time, make the effort. Its good for the game and its good for the players who do play regularly and want to work towards something and achieve it. Many MMOs usually have an alternative and FF actively offers them. If you don't like relics then theres savage, its a time investment and something that gets easier with time.

Exclusivity done wrong can damage a game and its community, taking away the urgency to do some content can make people leave, and even make the developers wonder why they even make certain content. If it sees no trafffic so to speak it doesnt need to be in the game. Thats an exageration so to speak, but its something that can happen, and has in other MMOs.

Inclusivity is Not inharently bad, allowing people to have things equally works out well for community morale. It creates people wanting do do a mix of everything and wanting to try your hand at everything knowing its something everyone can get.

Inclusivity done wrong can be bad for manyof the same reasons exclusivity can be wrong and can be bad because It creates to a dull work enviornment for said devs and leads to a low of content feeling samey. Other MMOs have suffered from it as well

Yoshi P recently said during the fan fest that what fans see and say are bad ideas clash with what they see as the actual devs.

All in all a game needs both inclusive content and rewards, and exclusive content and rewards, they work in tandem and play off each other. One without the other would be incomplete.

[Ayuhra]

How do you unlock it?

It depends on the Ultimate fight you are unlocking but broadly speaking you need to have completed the most relevant tier of raiding at the time of the fight's release on Savage. For example for Unending Coil of Bahamut Ultimate you have to beat Deltascape V4.0 (Savage) and for The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate) you need to beat Eden's Gate: Sepulture (Savage).

These Ultimate fights cannot be unsynced. They will lock you in at a max level and max ilvl so they are always brutal.

I'd consider rewards from Ultimates pretty exclusive and this is a form of exclusivity I am all for: The fights are not going anywhere but only very dedicated and skilled players will ever get these glamours.

[Malakii]

I'm fine with some, but not a lot. Like Saint of the Firmament, pvp mounts, etc are fine. Not too many though.

This is the worst kind of exclusivity . You played between this time and this time here good job take this no one else ever deserve it cause they didn't play in this 3 months. Exclude people because they took a break off like yoshi suggests or weren't in the game yet so they can never achieve it. Wow that so exclusive, damn that exciting. Y

[Ayuhra]

This is the worst kind of exclusivity . You played between this time and this time here good job take this no one else ever deserve it cause they didn't play in this 3 months. Exclude people because they took a break off like yoshi suggests or weren't in the game yet so they can never achieve it. Wow that so exclusive, damn that exciting. Y

Elder Scrolls Online is an absolute nightmare with this. Seasonal loot crates, mounts on the store for only a couple weeks (or sometimes days), one off twitch drops... These things aren't even related to stuff you can do in the game. I guess the Indrik was, we had a shot at the Indriks for a while but it was clunky.

It's one of my biggest issues with that game.

[AnnRam]

I thought people raided because they liked the challenge and were there for the experience.

Some people do this just to bash others with their egos.

[Dzian]

I think exclusivity is the wrong word in the OP. Rarity might be a better one...

Exclusive suggests that something would become unobtainable in the future where that's usually not the case at all. You can still go and get the same shiny things that other player has. You just have to make the same effort.

If an item is then considered rare, it's because of players own laziness...

For Example, If the unsynced system was never added and the only way to get rewards was to play the content synced at the designed level that wouldn't make something like the Nightmare mount "exclusive" as even today literally any new player in the game could still obtain it by going and doing all the ARR extreme primals sycned. The only thing that would stop them is themselves. No time gating. No exclusivity. Just if you want the shiny. do the content. It can be today, tomorrow or even next year, just do the content. If something is then rare. it’s rare by player choice not by exclusivity.

Prestige and value are no bad things and in many ways something this game lacks which is why so many players get so bored of so many aspects of it. It's been a long-standing complaint that gear is boring for example and that's largely down to how everything ultimately just feels like cheap trash. Nothing ever feels special or valuable to get.
XIVs problem is its own hypocrisy.
When it allows things like PVP gear or even ultimate loot to maintain a sense of Prestige / rarity because the developers say "they don't want the items to lose their value or significance"
but then trashes the value of everything else because the developers say "it's just digital pixels they have no value or significance"
Same devs but 2 totally contradictory statements. Should be one or the other not both. That's hypocrisy.

All it does is promote laziness. i was super proud of my final witness title in ARR. but then 3.0 came around and people were literally 3 manning Bahamut t13 like a total joke.... well, wtf????

Also you could just look back at the white ravens and the uproar that caused..... Once again it wasn’t so much about "exclusivity" of the item, because nearly all that uproar could have been quelled just by making the version they handed out a "replica" looks exactly the same but doesn’t destroy what the original represents. that was the problem. which again links back to the devs hypocrisy.

[Neoyoshi]

I don't know how to feel about this thread, except that as human beings we are all horribly selfish sometimes.

Also nice tagging.

[Keramory]

There's a realistic balance for both gear value and exclusive items.

In terms of gearing, SE screwed up making gear completely vertical and constantly outdating gear nearly every patch. There isn't any worth in a relic weapon outside glamor after the ilvl goes up, as it constantly does. As such it only makes sense they tear down the requirements to get it.

As for exclusive items I do agree we should trend carefully with them. That said, I do think it's okay to eventually bring them back. However there should be one heck of a cool down (years) before bringing an exclusive item back into the game. For example there's some 1.0 stuff which was great for me to have for the 10+ years, sure. But at this point who else is running around in my Asuran Gauntlets? Why are we still hording this item for the 4 people total still playing the game? I exclusively had these for 10 years. I'm good. At some point it doesn't make sense.

[ForteNightshade]

@linayar
It's not about the items getting "easier" it's about having the items themselves that "prove" you went through the hardships to back up your story!

If people care that much, we have a third party website and achievements that highlight the date you cleared. There's no need to make the mount a level sync only drop. All that accomplishes is making it nearly impossible to obtain for most players as no one will go back and do old Savage fights.

IFor Example If the unsynced system was never added and the only way to get rewards was to play the content synced at the designed level that wouldn't make something like the Nightmare mount "exclusive" as even today literally any new player in the game could still obtain it by going and doing all the arr extreme primals sycned. The only thing that would stop them is themselves.. no time gating no exclusivity, just if you want the shiny. do the content. can be today, tomorrow or even next year, just do the content.. if something is then rare. its rare by player choice not by exclusivity..

This is not an entirely fair assessment because the pool of players actually doing that content will get decidedly smaller. Case in point, before Cross World PF existed, it was near impossible to farm EX primals once the new one came out on several servers. No one wanted to do them. The same thing would happen with forcing a level sync.