Cataclysm weapons: SEVEN WEEKS!?

[Fynlar]

Agreed with this, always have. In a game like this, any single piece of gear that takes longer than a month or so to obtain is way too excessive. Everything has a painfully short shelf life as it is and this just exacerbates the problem.

There is nothing dumb about it. Otherwise it would have been changed years ago.

Many dumb ideas/practices that started "years ago" are still around despite also having had the chance to change. This doesn't necessarily exclude them from being dumb.

[Granyala]

Agreed with this, always have. In a game like this, any single piece of gear that takes longer than a month or so to obtain is way too excessive. Everything has a painfully short shelf life as it is and this just exacerbates the problem.

Nonsense, if you don't raid savage, you are going to use this weapon for 4 months (you upgrade it's item level down the line).
7 Weeks acquisition time is completely justified.

If you don't raid savage, you don't need this weapon anyway. Content you do is already trivial in difficulty.

[VenKitsune]

The deepshadow weapons were 7 tokens, or 7 weeks, all the way from 5.05, till 5.1, which is like 4 months apart. It was only nerfed to 4 after 5.1
It was also the case for all of the omega raids - 7 weeks.

If you want it earlier, you can do savage raids as the tomestone itself drops directly from E6S - And really, you shouldn't NEED the weapon if you're not doing savage raiding. Plus, its only 5 ilvls more than the weapon from ruby, atleast in it's unaugmented state.

I dont see what the problem is.

The irony of this message. "Everyone is going through the same progression grind." LMAO, BECAUSE THERE IS A PROGRESSION GRIND!

You guys can sugarcoat it all you want, but here is the truth - the REAL truth:

This is purely due to Square-Enix's greed. Things are like this because it means they make more money.

If hardcore players could just come on when a new patch hit and get all the latest gear in less than a month, SE would only get a month's worth of subscription from them. Meanwhile, if they're forced to draaag out their item-acquisition period over a couple of months, they're able to force such players to stay subscribed for longer.

That's it. There is no other reason why end-game gear needs to be gated. You can try coming up with whatever other bogus explanations you can think of, but at the end of the day it still all comes down to this. It doesn't matter if a few players are suddenly able to become ilvl 500 after the first week after grinding - it wouldn't have any influence on the game server, or the other players. Casual players would still be able to get things at their own pace. Everything would be fine. The ONLY thing that would change? Square-Enix wouldn't get as much sub money from the hardcore players. Boohoo, so sad. :'(

And so, because of this, we have weekly tome caps and 2 chests per week, per raid instance... which leads to the shitty gameplay currently in place where people only log in Tuesday morning on the reset to do the raids, grind a few dungeons to meet the weekly cap, and then log off for the rest of the week until the next reset.

I hope you're joking, i really do.

Hardcore raiders CAN get almost full ilvl 500, in the first week if needed, and one month in atleast one of the dps from any hardcore group WILL be full ilvl 500.

And no...It's not for money. If the game allowed you to get ilvl 500 week 1 without effort due to a lack of a tomestone cap or whatever...Then everyone would just play on patch week, get full ilvl 500, and then not play for 3 months, by your logic. Which do you prefer? Playing a little every week, and actually PLAYING the game? Or playing like a maniac week 1, then never launching the game again for the following 3 months before the next patch. Do you play soley to get gear? Do you unsub for 1-2 months once you're at ilvl cap and say "welp, that's me 100%ing the game! Surely i can't get any more social interaction or enjoyment from this more than i already do through all those expert roulettes i did!"
Nobody is forcing you to play the game - If that's how you really feel, then why are you paying the sub? Why are you playing?

[Fynlar]

Nonsense, if you don't raid savage, you are going to use this weapon for 4 months (you upgrade it's item level down the line).
7 Weeks acquisition time is completely justified.

Well, I don't agree there. An item that has nearly a whole third of its shelf life consumed by the time it takes to acquire a single one of them (because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way) is a ridiculous practice.

If you don't raid savage, you don't need this weapon anyway. Content you do is already trivial in difficulty.

These arguments always sucked, BTW.

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG. How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

[Mavrias]

Well, I don't agree there. An item that has nearly a whole third of its shelf life consumed by the time it takes to acquire a single one of them (because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way) is a ridiculous practice.

These arguments always sucked, BTW.

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG. How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

Usually those ultimate weapons/ equipment came from either a large time investment or beating a superboss, so I'm not sure what kind of point you're making here.

[Akiudo]

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG.

I've got great news than, you can buy yourself 2-5 items depending on slot before grinding away for your weapon in week 7 so you are totally free to get more powerfull even before you can grab a weapon stone doing normals

[Granyala]

(because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way)

Generally it is intended for these games that you specialize in one role/class and that the equipment status reflects that.
As for the shelf life: don't care that it's 1/3rd. 10 item levels is nothing in this game, it's not as if your char suddenly can't do the content because you don'd have the weapon.

Trust me: if the tome gear would not exist and people would have to kill E8s for a similar weapon, it's useful life would be much MUCH shorter to nonexistent for most folks. Most raiders progress for months to even be able to pull the last boss, not to mention to kill it.

How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

You mean in single player games? Never, because I don't like pointless grinds.
I am not a stats person. Even when raiding savage/mythic I never really cared about the gear. It was merely a tool I needed in order to be able to tackle the next challenge.

Unless the gear looks pretty. Then all bets are off.

Really? I thought Hades was the most unfairly-designed DPS check I've ever seen in the game.

o_O
You're joking, right?

RIGHT?

Please tell me that the above is a jest. B/c the enrages of ex trials have always been a very lenient one compared to savage.

Still, don't you think that 7 weeks of normal raid and 3 weeks worth of tomes is a bit much for an item?

No I don't. As I said: most raid groups will take far longer than 7 weeks in order to get their weapon.
Sure, really good raiders blitz through in a week or two but that isn't the norm.

[BluexBird]

o_O
You're joking, right?

RIGHT?

Please tell me that the above is a jest. B/c the enrages of ex trials have always been a very lenient one compared to savage.

That's exactly it. I'm used to trials not being so demanding. The fact that farm party after farm party only barely managed to kill it before enrage, makes me think the fight was poorly-tuned. Allow me to explain:

First there's phase 1, which is alright. If you have good damage, you're allowed to skip the last tank buster. This is the only easy phase.

Then phase 2 comes. You mess up tethers, you wipe the party. Fail to do enough damage? Wipe.

Then comes the Ascian phase. Tethers, tank swaps, DPS checks, a bunch of healing. Either tank dies? It's over.

THEN there's Mr. Big Ascian. Fairly easy compared to what came before, but you can still fuck this up if you aren't careful.

THEEEN there's fight against final form Ascian. A bunch of simple mechanics, but still there's a possibility of fucking up and going back to the start.

AND FINALLY, AFTER YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THAT, you get the final phase of the fight. And you still can't kill him fast enough before the last enrage spell starts casting? Like really, I had to do it all 4 times to get my axe, with different parties, and not a single one was able to kill him before that. That's not exactly what I call lenient. Not to mention if you fuck up, you go back to the start.

This isn't an ordinary trial. But the game treats Ruby Weapon (Extreme) as if it's on a similar level. It's not. Ruby Weapon is a joke compared to Hades, even if you DID have to redo phase 1 upon death.

[Granyala]

Not to mention if you fuck up, you go back to the start.

Working as intended.

A proper encounter should enforce the mechanics.
We killed Hades... with problems, yes. Enrage timer was not one of them. As soon as the mechanics fell into place -> down he went.
Imho the various Ascian phases are the hardest part of the encounter. What comes after is pretty straight forward and the last phase is basically a freeloot Duke Nuke'em phase.

Yes, he has a lot of phases, I agree. Also, he places a lot of responsibility onto individual players and gives very little room for recovery in these cases (tanks failing meteors, people failing tethers = wipe). Mechanically, he might be a bit annoying for random groups.

We weren't talking about mechanics though. We were talking about the enrage timer. That is as lenient as ever.

[Mavrias]

That's exactly it. I'm used to trials not being so demanding. The fact that farm party after farm party only barely managed to kill it before enrage, makes me think the fight was poorly-tuned. Allow me to explain:

First there's phase 1, which is alright. If you have good damage, you're allowed to skip the last tank buster. This is the only easy phase.

Then phase 2 comes. You mess up tethers, you wipe the party. Fail to do enough damage? Wipe.

Then comes the Ascian phase. Tethers, tank swaps, DPS checks, a bunch of healing. Either tank dies? It's over.

THEN there's Mr. Big Ascian. Fairly easy compared to what came before, but you can still fuck this up if you aren't careful.

THEEEN there's fight against final form Ascian. A bunch of simple mechanics, but still there's a possibility of fucking up and going back to the start.

AND FINALLY, AFTER YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THAT, you get the final phase of the fight. And you still can't kill him fast enough before the last enrage spell starts casting? Like really, I had to do it all 4 times to get my axe, with different parties, and not a single one was able to kill him before that. That's not exactly what I call lenient. Not to mention if you fuck up, you go back to the start.

This isn't an ordinary trial. But the game treats Ruby Weapon (Extreme) as if it's on a similar level. It's not. Ruby Weapon is a joke compared to Hades, even if you DID have to redo phase 1 upon death.

If you were seeing any of hades phases enrage after maybe week one your group's dps was just hilariously bad. None of his checks were particularly tight, and once you got his mechanics down, they were also a joke. None of his mechanics were even particularly new either. Attacking the right aspected adds, getting hit with the appropriate elemental attacks, doom, reverse-doom, knockbacks, stacks, and exaflares? All seen in previous fights, whether they were extremes, savages, or even normal modes.