Dev Tracker - Discussion

My memory thinks they said something along the lines of "we made Emp+3 OP so now have to correct so folks use af/relic again" but that could be a combination of reading between the lines and wishful thinking or straight-up hallucination.

As someone who came back with a level 75, the sparks gear -> bayld gear -> "Intermediate" RoE objectives for some semi-real 119 gear -> solo Ambu V2 pipeline was pretty okay, but definitely needs to be signposted better. There was a guide over on BG and I just followed it step by step because there's zero way to disambiguate "content you can do a little of" (skirmish) from "content you cannot do" (a wildskeeper reive solo) from "content you absolutely cannot do" (omen midbosses)

My hope is that there's some sort of path to avoid the AF119+2 to AF119+3 stage. Don't really like JSE gear upgrades being reliant on purchasing expensive crafted-only items. It's odd that the reforged AF+3 gear remains the most costly upgrade of any of the reforged JSE pieces.

Maybe something like implement different paths to to upgrade existing reforged AF armor to whatever new phase they're making (whether that's AF+4 or some sort of augments to the +3). Similar to what they did with upgrading OG Artifact and Relic armor to the 109 reforged version, with lower requirements if you already have the +1/+2 piece, but a route where you could upgrade even from the base NQ piece directly to reforged with more items from the current content.

I'd like the option to do more Limbus to upgrade an AF+2 piece, and maybe skip the ~5-6mil per piece of crafting items for AF+3. Which requires even finding the crafted items for sale - not a given on many servers. Well, I think I'd probably like that; I guess it depends on how awful the Limbus item requirement "alternative" would be lol.

Could also just make the AF+3 materials purchasable from NPCs (preferably at a lower price). Crafters wouldn't like it, but I would!

I don't like it either but it made a lot of sense and it was a good thing for FFXI's economy back when they added it.
But nowadays it's nowhere nearly as effective as it was then, because of multiple reasons.
Soo... yeah, whatever they do about it I doubt there will be a big impact on the game's economy, so yeah, might as well add a new path to reach +3.
Would be pretty worthless for me but I bet a lot of returning players would enjoy that.

Granted that the number of really good pieces of AF+3 is not as large as it used to be back then.

It's exactly the same as it was, zero.

They don't need alternate paths, they need to be adjusted to be worth the 5m+ they cost.

(neither is happening, but if they make +4 the upgrade needs to be so good that it makes up for how bad +3's are) Cards are easier to get already. Scales are easier to get already. The conditions to make them are easier already.

They could simply lower the raw NPC price for those materials and/or add it as a drop to HTB (or whatever) as having another supply source should at least push AH prices below the NPC (and maybe give reason for people to do content)

Of course some pieces would rarely get upgraded because they're just inv-1.

In the case of some it also doesn't help that the main thing people use the piece stops scaling after a certain portion in the path (in fact I think all the relic ilvl augments are the same as the lvl 90 versions)

The source of those crafted items are one of the few things actually pulling gil out of the economy.

For those who need a reminder: pulling gil from the economy is different from moving gil from one character to another. And those mats were set so expensive to offset the bajillions of gil created from everyone npcing shields/powder.

And yes that is a good thing and is absolutely a necessity as every week each character can generate 2 million gil just on shield/powder. Add whatever they can generate from Odyssey to that, for those who do it. If you have no idea why pulling gil from the economy is a necessity, then you probably have no idea why simply printing a trillion dollars is a bad idea.

Yup, this. This is exactly why I'm very surprised Sortie has no gil sink. Without a gil sink, the amount of gil that enters the economy through Odyssey and other sources would cause inflation. I'm sure you all remember FFXI's Depression of 2006. Bomb Cores and NQ STR Rings were 15M.

A tartaru would require a wheel barrel full of byne bills to buy a load of bread, etc etc.

I think they actually are available as a drop... from Trove, which keeps it from driving the price down too much, but I know I've got an azure leaf I can't get rid of because I couldn't get the NPC cost for it on the AH.

You could still pull gil out of the economy by just allowing all players to buy the AF+3 crafted items from an NPC, instead of from a crafter who synths the NPC-able ingredients. And you could set the price for something like a Ruthenium Ingot lower than the ~4.7-5mil AH prices (which never dropped in line with a natural drop in demand over time, due to the price of the needed materials for crafters to make one).

At this point there is very little logic for why AF+3 items should cost 5-6mil, when:

* Most Relic+3 cost a fraction of that if you buy all materials. And the relic upgrade items have multiple acquisition methods, from buying on AH (like craft AF+3 mats), to farming the shards/voids in Dyna, or obtaining through AMAN Trove. Hell, give us some alternatives for the AF stuff too - make the pricey AF+3 upgrade items drop from Limbus bosses or be purchasable with some new Limbus currency (Limbus Accolades? lol)

* Empy+3 requires no gil at all, and also gets easier over time to earn the Galli as people learn Sortie or improve their other gear.

* Odyssey gear (e.g., Sakpata set) is another gil sink, and is also a lot cheaper than AF+3s for what are comparatively much better pieces in most cases. Also became cheaper over time BY DESIGN, by decreasing the server price as more people bought the gear and paid that "FIRST" tax.

So why does AF gear have to be the untouchable set where we just can't adjust the biggest roadblock of prices that never decrease and are generally out of touch with the utility of the items? It's not just due to needing a gil sink (which has done very little to impact the overall in-game economy in years, since it's not exactly like there's a massive demand for these items any more), and they could still create a gil sink by just adjusting item acquisition (NPC sale of the +3 items). Hell, you might even remove more overall gil from the economy if they made the pieces cheaper to get. I'm a completionist and made every AF+2 piece for all of my jobs, made some AF+3, but I'd make even more just for the sake of saying I did it, if each piece was less costly.

Perhaps "AF+4" is gonna be so good that people will suffer through the annoying step to make the +3 piece needed and just view that as one part of the total AF+4 cost. But IDK, it just doesn't feel in line with the progression we've seen with other stuff, like the aforementioned multiple paths to upgrade original AF/Relic/Empy to the ilevel reforged versions. IIRC, fairly recent dev comments also talked about wanting to streamline the process to get gear up to current max level for players starting it from scratch. Revisiting AF reforge upgrade requirements would align with that kind of thinking (as does stuff like this update's reduction in the cost of ambuscade armor/weapon upgrade items, which may well be setting up for stuff like +3 armor and beyond at some future point).

As it is now, the AF+3 requirements are only really providing a minor benefit to crafters who make a small profit on the completed synthed items, if they even bother to risk making stuff that doesn't sell all that fast. Kind of annoying that the AH might just be sold out of the item you need, especially on lower population servers.