Please Make Older Minion Mats Available Elsewhere

[DrWho2010]

Then it's an outlier. just because one thing gets nerfed doesn't mean another thing is going to as well.

[sarehptar]

Then it's an outlier. just because one thing gets nerfed doesn't mean another thing is going to as well.

...That's... that's the point of giving feedback and making a request...

[DrWho2010]

look if every feedback and request was granted we'd have everything handed to us with no challenge at all. i'm just saying don't get your hopes up.

[Jojoya]

I was going to reply to this seriously and then I remembered that you ignored my entire question about why you're on this thread in the first place.

It's a discussion forum. I'm here to discuss. My opinion does not agree with your opinion and so I stated why I disagree.

Did I really have to spell that out for you?

Fine if you want to pass on the Corpulence. Was just trying to help you out.

[sarehptar]

It's a discussion forum. I'm here to discuss. My opinion does not agree with your opinion and so I stated why I disagree.

I got bored enough to come back and reply so... My question wasn't whether you had an opinion but why you have an opinion on a topic that has no bearing on your life. Based on your replies on this thread, you're not especially after these minions yourself, aren't in a hurry to collect them, don't care about selling the mats for a profit, and wouldn't be losing any gil income if these minions suddenly became accessible in other ways. When was the last time you even thought about these minions before I brought them up? There would be no repercussions to you if my idea was accepted; why have an opinion on something that has zero impact on yourself? If these minions were handed out with a 100% drop rate from new trial released tomorrow, would you even remotely care? If you wouldn't complain about that, why complain about my idea to just make the mats rare drops from raids? Why disagree with my idea, which still requires work, for mats that you were willing to hand out completely free?

Sounds like someone who's disagreeing just to disagree without really caring about the items to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Jojoya]

My question wasn't whether you had an opinion but why you have an opinion on a topic that has no bearing on your life.

It has no bearing on your life either, only your game play. It affects my game play and everyone else's as well.

We all have items we wish were easier to get. If SE were to cater to one specific player's request to make rare items easier to get, they would need to cater to every player's request to make their personal desired items easier to get as well.

I've seen what happens to games that start making things easier and easier to get. They start dying as people quit playing. Players lose interest because they get things too easily and so run out of things to do too quickly. There's no rush of adrenaline or sense of accomplishment when that seemingly out of reach item suddenly shows up in inventory and you're "wow, I really managed to get it". Those small frustrations then successes add more to game play value than some think.

The items I wish were less rare or had other options to obtain might be different from yours but I still have them. A very good example is I dislike PvP so I'll never get the housing furnishings, minions or the glamours that come only from PvP. I would love it if SE at least allowed the housing furnishing to be sold on the MB or traded if not given other sources outside of PvP. It would give those players who focus on PvP a source of gil income while negating my need to do PvP to get those items.

I also understand and agree with why SE will iikely never do it. Making PvP the sole source of certain items encourages players go into PvP to get them, increasing the content they have to do. Making PvP a poor source of gil making opportunities in turn forces those who only want to PvP into other content, giving them more things to do as well.

I can accept that. I can't have everything I want on my terms. I'll go without those items, or I'll break down and do PvP if I decide I want them bad enough. There are plenty of other items in the game I can easily get and enjoy. Lacking those items that only come from PvP is a negligible frustration that doesn't disrupt my overall enjoyment of the game.

You have the option of buying the rare materials you need to make those minions from the MB. It's your choice not to do it, just as it's my choice not to PvP.

Understand that if I had seen those materials and minions almost totally absent from the Crystal MBs when I did my window shopping the other night, I would have supported your request to make those specific items less rare. I do believe there is a point where items can be too rare. But there were plenty of materials available to make multiple of those minions along with multiple of the minions themselves. That says supply is where it needs to be and so no changes are needed.

[Morningstar1337]

I have a question that is relevant to the topic. Are there any crafted minions besides those based on Primals that were made available from the Accursed Horde? I remember that it was used to make certain rare minions more common and accessible.

[sarehptar]

The items I wish were less rare or had other options to obtain might be different from yours but I still have them. A very good example is I dislike PvP so I'll never get the housing furnishings, minions or the glamours that come only from PvP. I would love it if SE at least allowed the housing furnishing to be sold on the MB or traded if not given other sources outside of PvP. It would give those players who focus on PvP a source of gil income while negating my need to do PvP to get those items.

I also understand and agree with why SE will iikely never do it. Making PvP the sole source of certain items encourages players go into PvP to get them, increasing the content they have to do. Making PvP a poor source of gil making opportunities in turn forces those who only want to PvP into other content, giving them more things to do as well.

But that's what I've been getting at over and over on this thread--I totally agree that there are certain items that should stay rare, and those are items that take skill to get. It makes perfect sense that PvP items stay PvP-only because it takes at least some measure of talent (or at least enough talented teammates to carry you) to accrue enough wins to receive those awards. Their rarity is directly correlated to the amount of skill and effort a person puts into the game and the content.

Treasure map drops do not work that way. They are completely random. Someone could open three maps and get three Atomos Corpulence, while three of my FC mates and I could continue opening maps for months upon months and not get what is needed to craft even one of these minions as they were intended to be craftable. Their difficulty is entirely based on RNG, and what drop rates are attached to that RNG are entirely arbitrary, based on Square's current choices, not player skill or effort. Furthermore, over time, as these particular brand of treasure maps get older, fewer and fewer people collect them and fewer and fewer people open them, meaning the rarity of the items increases over time from the originally intended level of rarity.

I fully agree that having rare items in the game establishes a sense of accomplishment--but you don't feel accomplished unless you've done something worth feeling accomplished about. A PvP win? Accomplishment. An RNG-based treasure map drop? Not an accomplishment, just a relief.

You continue to mention that keeping rare mats rare encourages people to do older content, but the high prices of Wyvernskin Maps and the rarity of the mats themselves--rare enough that you told me to just give up in your first post and there are currently a total of four people on our entire server selling Atomos Corpulence--shows that this isn't true. Except for a few extremely motivated individuals, items with abysmal drop rates generally discourage players from attempting to farm that content. Look at primal mounts and relics--the rate of people who farm the mounts increases when the mount drop rate goes up because there's greater promise of reward; more people are likely to restart the relic weapon questline once difficulty has been decreased. How do we lure people back into old content? Better rewards. Humans are just naturally reward-motivated--would you work for even 30 minutes a day if your boss told you you only had a 1% chance of being paid?

The idea that "people will leave if there aren't rare items" would probably hold true if the game wasn't consistently adding new rare items. There are new, difficult-to-get minions in virtually every patch. There are tons of new long-term challenges to players being added all the time; the new Ishgard crafting and gathering minions and mounts come to mind, for example, and because they're tied to finite "Score X to receive mount," they will almost certainly never be nerfed. There is plenty enough challenge and content in this game to keep people playing. A set of crafted minions from five years ago is absolutely meaningless in terms of keeping current players engaged and subscribed--can you name a single person who is still playing FFXIV solely because they haven't been able to get an Atrophied Atomos yet?

If SE were to cater to one specific player's request to make rare items easier to get, they would need to cater to every player's request to make their personal desired items easier to get as well.

No? That's not how this works in the slightest? If a DJ takes one song request, does he have to take all other song requests too? When people asked for nerfs to the relic questline, Square didn't suddenly go "Well, we nerfed relic so I guess that means we have to remove the weekly tomestone cap too!" This isn't a zero-sum game. Choosing to accept one person's feedback is not remotely a commitment to accept other requests.

It affects my game play and everyone else's as well.

But, as I've pointed out again and again, the crisis you seem to imply is going to occur if these minions became more accessible has already happened. Virtually every other old hard-to-get item in the game has already been nerfed. I've pointed this out repeatedly: savage drops, nerfed. Relic, nerfed. Mounts, nerfed. Other crafted minions, nerfed. Rare glamour gear, nerfed. Please explain to me how, compared to all of these other rare items--many of which actually took skill to originally get--making three or four minions from two expansions ago a tiny bit more accessible is going to affect your game play in any way, shape, or form. I genuinely want to know--are you or anyone else you play with going to suddenly quit because you got these particular minions?

As I mentioned in another reply, this game's design philosophy is literally to make rare items easier to get over time. That's the norm. That's Square's method of doing things and has been since ARR. If you don't like that design philosophy, that's one thing, but can we please not act like an eighth umbral calamity is going to occur and all of FFXIV will die if we make a handful of old minions that virtually no one uses or cares about just slightly less rare?

[sarehptar]

I have a question that is relevant to the topic. Are there any crafted minions besides those based on Primals that were made available from the Accursed Horde? I remember that it was used to make certain rare minions more common and accessible.

There actually aren't that many crafted minions in the game. After they started introducing primal minions, primals became pretty much the sole craftable minions. Since Heavensward, there are only been four non-primal craftable minions introduced: Wind-Up Chimera (does not require any especially rare drops), Wind-Up Sadu and Magnai (all mats purchasable from vendors except Royal Ferns from gardening), and Private Moai (requires a mat from submersible voyages).

Almost all primal minions up to Lakshmi and Susano have been added as rewards from Accursed Hoard. Several other previously rare minions that weren't craftable, such as Dwarf Rabbit (originally a treasure map reward), have also been added to Accursed Hoard to make them less rare.

All other crafted minions require mats that can be dropped from normal enemies or purchased from a vendor.

The outliers I was mentioning here (Atrophied Atomos, Iron Dwarf, and Steam-Powered Gobwalker) are the only craftable minions in the game that are not accessible in any other way and the only ones that require treasure map drops.