Concerns Regarding Implementation of Nexus Light

[Avarghaladion]

I'm very near completion of my Nexus weapon so I'm not actually going to get hit by any of these concerns but I do still find them quite worrisome. When Nexus was released I initially applauded the Light acquisition process, especially following the rumour that the light earned was variable based on a number of factors that would encourage players to do a variety of content and to really play the game in general. Since then, however, the following things have become painstakingly evident:

1. Anyone who didn't have their Novus weapon, or who didn't start farming light as soon as this patch hit, is at a serious disadvantage:

I really enjoy time-attacking instances as all of us Novus owners burn through our upgrade but I am keenly aware that there will never, ever, EVER be this concentration of Novus owners in the game ever again. Right now, farming is fast and efficient. You can easily form a Light farm party in PF and spam the most efficient bonus window in a 6 DPS party . Every day, though, as more and more people finish their upgrade, this becomes less and less the case. Within a few weeks I anticipate that dedicated light farming will be pretty dead, especially outside of DF. This will be bad for everyone, but especially bad for DPS.

Even if you were to finish your Novus today it would be considerably more difficult and painstaking for you to upgrade it to Nexus than it has been for current Novus-owners to upgrade theirs. Without SE keeping a very close eye on the concentration of Novus owners on servers and adjusting light rewards carefully and in a timely fashion, the Nexus stage will be very unfun and disheartening. What the swarm of Novus-owners was able to complete with ease in a matter of days will very soon take the most dedicated grinders a weeks or months unless the content is intelligently adjusted.

I foresee this being especially bad for player morale because:

2. The same people who will be at a disadvantage in this stage were already placed at a disadvantage in the previous stages:

With the addition of Atma, some players were able to complete their Atma sets with extreme ease while others took and are still taking hundreds of hours. In subsequent patches, despite the obvious issues with reward balance, it was the Animus and Novus stages that were made easier via greatly improved Myth acquisition and easy-to-get Alexandrite, causing the luckier players to leave those still on Atma in the dust. Being able to respec your Novus materia somewhat alleviates this as a player can put cheap materia on their Novus then slowly upgrade it over time if they're having a hard time affording what they really want, but they'll still have a much harder time getting light as of about right now.

3. Unless carefully controlled and remedied, this trend has the potential to continue and worsen for the rest of the game's life.

With the exception of a few dedicated people who manage to get their Nexus done outside of this current and expectedly short-lived light farming golden period, it will be the same combination of lucky and hardcore grinders who are ready to commence the next relic stage who are finishing their Nexus right now. This especially concerning because people hit a disturbing grind-wall with Atma stage, and now, as more and more of us finish our Nexus, they're going to hit a disturbing grind-wall with light farming, one that wasn't nearly as bad for us.

[Venom]

So in short you are asking for SE to help the people who didn't grind the relic upgrades to move them to the same stage of relic then the people who did grind? I don't think I agree... people who don't play will always be at a disadvantage. What about when the level cap increases in the future, should SE move all their players to 50 without any effort involved so they aren't at a disadvantage to those who get to 50 by actually leveling? I am not sure I totally agree with the same reward for less effort agenda.

[Avarghaladion]

So in short you are asking for SE to help the people who didn't grind the relic upgrades to move them to the same stage of relic then the people who did grind? I don't think I agree... people who don't play will always be at a disadvantage. What about when the level cap increases in the future, should SE move all their players to 50 without any effort involved so they aren't at a disadvantage to those who get to 50 by actually leveling? I am not sure I totally agree with the samereward for less effort agenda.

That isn't remotely what I said and you're incorrect in assuming that the people who come later, in this stage in particular, would require the same effort as I and other Novus wielders did. That's entirely the point of the issue, that it's going to be a completely different ballgame for people who aren't done their Novus yet. Even if they were to finish it today or tomorrow and start light farming right away it would already be considerably more difficult. Most of the people I know with Novus have it upgraded to Nexus in less than a week of not unreasonable grinding. This is only possible because of the Novus population surging simultaneously in achieving this goal. It was a water tank that exploded into a waterfall and now it's steadily slowing down to a trickle, and there will never be nearly as many Novus owners as there were when this patch hit. Where I was able to farm upwards of 100-120 light per hour, latecomers will be lucky to pull off 40 light per hour, at best, as time goes on... and that's a very generous estimate.

It's not about handing things out, it's about achieving and maintaining balance. The contrast with your analogy is that raising the level cap wouldn't make it any more or less difficult to level new jobs thanks to roulette exp bonus, animus dungeon reqs, leves, etc. This content, that was just released, goes from very easy to extremely difficult in a matter of days. What took me maybe 20-30 hours will take latecomers hundreds of hours.

My advice to those working on the materia for Novus right now and who want to be able to get light efficiently is to put whatever materia you can afford onto your relic right away so that you can start farming light before the well runs completely dry. You can respec it later for virtually no additional cost (just the myth cost of your Sphere Scroll).

[Black91CRX]

He's right. When I first started Nexus, ques were instant. Today? Not so much. Even ones with bonus were taking up to 5 minutes to pop.

[NationOfZealots]

I didnt start the ARR quests until about 3 months. Titan HM was all I needed. Tried continuously at the time of release, and kept getting kicked due to known lag issues that affected ability to be credible to whatever party, then gave up for a long time because I didn't want to waste my time by continually getting kicked, fast-forward to 3 months ago and the DF for this was so long. But now have reached the Atma stage for my first weapon, of which the mechanics are totally unclear and the drop rate discourages continuous attempts, I think I will be part of the group OP mentioned where we are somewhat artificially held back due to this perceived imbalance of which I am nowhere near yet in-game apparently.

I don't know if this happens in other games, but the casual vs end-game player divide seems to be a planned design feature, because it does not help casual players progress at all. As OP states, makes Relic more unobtainable the longer yu don't do the quest line.

[ServerCollaps]

you can always grind fates, run bg or do maps


no need for hard modes

edit: did I mention fates?

edit II: with 2.4 you can speedfarm t6 in about 5-6 minutes per run, which spends blinding light
farming light will be just easier in future

[Yukariko]

edit II: with 2.4 you can speedfarm t6 in about 5-6 minutes per run,

If you have been lucky enough to be in a static and get a t6 clear, but tyhat's a whole other thread/story/topic.

I agree with the OP though, as more and more finish their nexus during this "rush" period those that can't take part in this rush period will feel the effects more and more. I personally can't farm light as much as I'd like due to various things liek real life prioritys ect. doesn;t make me more casual or lazy or more entitled.

the problem lies in that as the rush period ends, the instant queues many of us are currently enoying will dry up. those late to nexus light farming will spend just as much time "in" content as those who have their nexus already, but those who can;t get in now will spend an expontially increasing ammount of time waiting to get into content to farm light.

[Nutz]

The Novus to Nexus upgrade I see as a much lesser problem than the atma acquisition, personally. I got my atmas during the initial rush, meaning that I had to run to get to FATES in time to participate. Now you mostly solo all the FATES because nobody's really doing them. That makes a huge difference. Farming lights will certainly take longer, but the people who haven't hit that stage yet (myself included) were never going to go all out farming lights. The only exceptions might be people who started late or are working on secondary+ zodiac weapons. I like that nearly any activity I take part in will generate some light so I can pretty much not worry about it and the upgrade will eventually come. This is how I always intended to handle that upgrade.

I see what you're saying and it's true it will take longer for people finishing today or in the future, but a lot of those people were going to be taking their time with the upgrade anyway. I would have completely wasted the opportunity to run with light farming parties since that's just not really how I enjoy playing the game.

[Mejingjard]

Or you can just doesn't focus on completing your nexus the day after the patch.
Not every one is aiming at having everything as soon as they are released.
As Nuts says, not every player enjoy rushing 100 times the same thing just to progress faster.
Yeah you get your Nexus faster that way, leaving you with : 1-bored of a part of the game as you ran it untill being disgusted, 2- nothing to do IG untill next patch... It make me think about all those SR in Brayflox HM for having their animus in a few day.
Now, we get far more Myths, and Animus is done faster than before in a less boring way. So player will catch up, as previous content is eased when ilvl rise!
And one last thing: having a 115 weapon is far from being the only way to enjoy the game, you can already be powerfull enough with a 110 weapon, so nah, there is nothing to worry about the Nexus and players being left behind.

[Takonis]

Most likely we will see more questlines that will help keep queues reasonable in the future.