Dev Tracker - Discussion

Scaling the price "dynamically" could just be a system in which NPC prices or quantity needed of some sort of currency goes down over time or as demand decreases. They've done this before too, my repeated example of Odyssey gear being an excellent example that was largely successful. Allowed the people on the bleeding edge to get their Nyame or accessories or whatever at the highest price, then easing the gil needed for players who are fine waiting around or who are late to the game at catching up.

A couple other dynamic pricing examples: ZNM pop items increase in cost as people buy them (and then go back down to minimum after time passes without more sales). Chocobo rental prices are a super old one where prices go up as more people rent birds. It's not some unprecedented idea, or anything that's so confusing it's impossible to imagine ways to implement these kinds of things on a larger scale for a particular type of armor upgrade.

This somewhat relates to one of my more overarching concerns: most stuff in FFXI gets cheaper over time. And SE has explicitly encouraged this, by design, with choices like:
* Adding a Vagary weekly RoE for more circulation of the materials after the initial wave of excitement for reforged pieces
* Dyna-Divergence statue crusher campaigns for more medal drops and voids/shards directly in personal pools, again after the initial frenzy period dies down
* Increasing sources of Pluton/Boulder/Beit drops
* Adding Eschalixir +2 for a pittance from Domain Invasion points (as well as straight up giving people Abjurations, Reisenjima armor, Ru'Aun weapons from a small amount of DI points)

So yeah, it's consistent that requirements are made easier over time, after waiting long enough to let the tryhard types get all their fancy gear first and pay more for it, then relax things so the masses have easy access too. But it's impossible for the crafted AF+3 upgrades to ever come down from their high prices as demand wanes, due to the static ingredient prices that can only be obtained from vendors.

This is old *** gear at this point, Omen was introduced in December 2016. Eiryl may be exaggerating the number a little when he says all but like 5 pieces are overvalued, but his overall point is right on. The significant majority of this stuff is still super pricey for no good reason.


Come on now, don't use people's sheer stupidity as a point for your argument to inflate the numbers. It's cheaper to buy 3 Beastmen's Medals and trade them, so the only people buying 3mil RDM shards have a bunch of gil and little sense.

And paying big money for Divergence drops is also something there's a great alternative to: just go do Dynamis, drops are plentiful and even if you don't get the one you were after, you will get other voids, shards, and medals from doing the event.

But if you want to upgrade an AF+3 piece, you literally have zero choice than to use gil to either (a) buy NPC-only materials to craft them yourself or get someone to do it for you, or (b) pay a reasonable markup from crafters who have to use the same NPC-only materials (I'm not blaming the crafters for what I see as dumb cost of materials). You can't go farm them from the event. And these pieces cost way more than what is generally FAR better newer gear from Ody. That's f'ing stupid.

Notice I don't have a big issue with AF card requirements, because that just encourages you to do the related event, and they ease up on that too with frequent bonus campaigns. OK, fine. I also have no real concern about the general concept of making people do Sortie for Galli and stones for Empy +2/+3 upgrades (although using the SAME currency for those and for Primes is not great... but a totally different issue).

I dont think capping shards at a paltry [checks notes] 2.1 mil each (700k * 3) is the win you think it is. You still need 5 shards per +3 and thats still 10.5 mil right there.


Stuff gets cheaper over time because the supply starts to exceed demand. Lustress Hide/Scales are big money, wings are not. People farm C for more segs, A and B are farmed less. In Gaol case, its correlated to nm kills. Dyna currency lately has been going up in price. Delve materials have also been going up. I was surprised to see them at 700-900k when I was turning in login pts.

Calling any gear "better" than another is kind of a false concept since this is FFXI we're talking about. If you're a WHM casting Cursna, there's no Odyssey gear you can buy to replace the AF pants. If you're a BLU casting Occultation, you need the AF body and you can't buy a Gleti's Cuirass instead.

Leaving that aside though...I think you're cherry-picking HARD for examples of things that have gotten cheaper. There are dozens/hundreds of examples of things that haven't gotten cheaper over the years as well.


OK, go to Omen and get the swarts, sell those and buy Faulpie Leather...


This has equal opportunity to backfire horrifically. If a bunch of rich mofos who don't care about the gil cost of their JSE suddenly buy up shitloads of this new item, the newb can't get any because the price is astronomical. Remember when chocobos from the crag of mea were over a million gil? What a good system to help new players!

Then only make it dynamically scale downward. Have a base price, and as less and less people make the item, or as time passes, decrease that price. Ya know, kind of like the system they used fairly recently with Odyssey that is one of a handful of decisions that I don't recall being very controversial with anyone. I call that a win.

AF+2/3: the price at launch is the price forever.

You may recall that relic +2/+3 upgrade items were crazy expensive for the first year or so. I assume every single Relic reforge piece costs significantly less to make now than it did when Dyna Divergence was new. Yet the AF pieces are basically the same cost. I just think that's dumb, and I've seen no reason why THAT is where you're drawing the line of a thing that can never be adjusted.


And AF+3 upgrades can never get cheaper, because even as demand wanes they can only be made with ingredients that have a static NPC price (or that are synthed with those static priced ingredients) instead of anything that fluctuates with supply and demand. I don't like that. I'm obviously not going to convince you and Maletaru that's a bad thing, so we'll just have to disagree on this one.

the event give a total of 500k exemplar points. there goes that dream of super grind.

I love how every FFXI update is a never-ending battle: SE’s translation team on one side, the gaming community’s reading comprehension on the other. It’s like David vs. Goliath, except nobody’s quite sure who’s winning.

Well, good news everyone, the exemplar point campaign is in fact not restricted to just Peach Power and Besieged; nobody should be surprised but since that was somehow a debate, there we go.

Neat how it explicitly tells you you're getting bonus points, and rattles off the amount remaining, instead of just silently doubling it like chain experience.

They think this is good publicity.

It should always work this way during the campaigns, with everything that gives any bonus. Lots of people never check the website or community sites, and don't even know it's going on.

If you give players something, you should tell them you're doing is so they appreciate it more.

Anyone have any info what the long update tonight is for?

hardware replacement, nothing for us (unless servers are more stable after, but doubt)

To piss off Eiryl

Interesting, the campaign doesn't display double exemplar.

It shows you earned 200 points, and 200 points that count toward the cap.

I guarantee that's going to confuse people. I only got 200 points instead of 400 and they took it off my bonus even though it's wrong!

Literally says
"<player> gains ### exemplar points.
<player> gains ### exemplar points as part of the active campaign."

It's listed twice. That's double. They couldn't have made it any clearer that you're getting double points, and they even gave you a tracker to see how much you have left.

Yeah but people that play mmos aren't the brightest.

Double exp displays double the amount.
Double capacity displays double the amount.
Double exemplar displays only the single amount and says that much of it counted towards the cap.

Multiple someones are going to think it's broken.

EP: 1986
kill mob
Gain 504 exemplar points
Gain 504 BONUS exemplar points as part of the active campaign, 449496 points remaining.
EP after kill: 2994

Let me confirm this math
1986+504+504 = 2994



Working fine and theres nothing confusing about it.

It IS good publicity for people who play FFXI but aren't obsessed with forums, don't bot Exemplar, might play vanilla.

Not only is it telling people they're getting a bonus, they are encouraging those people to go out and farm EP, form EP parties, etc., to take advantage of the campaign and keep using the "boost" to get 500k bonus points.

I realize people here scoff at that because they think everyone only bots and 500k is trivial. But there are way more people that you realize, who aren't posting here, who don't do that and might just occasionally party up to manually fight Apex for EP, or might just get the small amounts from doing other stuff (Ody, Sortie, whatever). Many of those people are not usually hitting 500k EP a month. So this campaign, and the in-game client explicitly reminding them it's on, is likely going to encourage some people to play MORE than they normally would in a month in order to actually get the entire bonus.

Completely missed the bonus key word. I mean that's as obvious as it gets right? So user error on not reading the message properly :)

The only potential confusing thing about the EP bonus is pointwatch doesnt know how to parse that second line. People relying on pointwatch to determine their EP/hr may be disappointed.

Congratulations on needing multiple posts to figure out what I said.

User error will happen. And it will be funny. (if they post, that is)

Lets break down what Eiryl said, shall we?


As you can see, the campaign clearly states double exemplar, the first standard line then a second line consisting of the words "bonus" as well as the remaining bonus EP available.

It actually does not show this as stated. Once again, it shows you gained X bonus exemplar points as part of the campaign, as well as the remaining bonus available.

He clearly did not "only got 200 points". If he was looking at his characters total EP and did some math, he would notice that he actually got 400 EP.
So far the only people confused is Eiryl and the hundred of accounts he has that he will have to log back in tomorrow after tonights bonus maintenance.

Lol I finally understood why he was crying about them doing it in parts.

Back to the "AF is so expensive":
Lets preface this with most jobs dont have 5 good pieces of AF 119+3, some jobs had pieces of AF 119+3 that were dogshit from day one. But were gonna presume someone wants the full set. Were also presuming no Canteens are lost.
Average card run is 3 cards per run. THF will net ~11 swarts per run, XXX/THF will average ~7 per run. For this, were assuming they're not THF main.

If the goal is to +2 everything before going to +3, you will need 40 cards. This is ~14 runs. Thats 4 million gil (more likely 6 million unless day one is sunday, I'm gonna use the shittier number to make my point) in shield/powder allowance. 14 runs is 98 swarts (TH4 only). Thats 8-9 million gil (server depending, again I'll use the low end of 8). This person made 12 million gil just getting all the cards to +2 their equipment. Each piece of AF costs ~1.315m to get to +2. The full set of AF 119+2 will cost 6.575m, and the person is still up 5.425 million gil.

So now they're up 5.425 million gil, they have a full set of 119+2 armor and they want to upgrade everything. Remember they already have 5.424 million gil in the bank.
A full set of +3 is 200 cards (40+50+35+45+30). Thats 67 runs. 67 runs is over 9 weeks, so atleast 18 million gil in allowance. 67 runs is also 469 swarts, 32 million gil and 3/4ths of a complete stack. Just farming the cards and selling the swarts has left them with 55.425 million gil for their +3 upgrade materials.

How much did we say the full set of +3 upgrade materials costs?
Head = 5.6m
Body = 6.85m
Hands = 5.25m
Legs = 6.4m
Feet = 5.25
Total = 29.35

Just from selling the swarts obtained from farming the cards necessary to upgrade their AF as well as their weekly allowance, they're up 26.075 million gil. Even if you take out the weekly allowance (22 million gil) because theyre using their accolades and sparks on other things, theyre still up 4 million gil.

The numbers generally look the same if you go to +3 individually. The only exception would be feet, as they need 36 cards total, which takes less than two weeks, and will leave you way short of a swarts stack to sell. Going NQ -> 119+3 for any other slot will always leave you with gil on hand.

Math dont lie.

AF3 is expensive for the value, which is next to none at this point.

It's laughable that we've even had this much discussion of AF upgrades due to my mere suggestion that hey, maybe in connection with new Limbus they can streamline some AF upgrade steps so people who didn't do it years ago can have an easier time getting caught up for any new upgrade steps introduced by Limbus.

I didn't realize what a sacred cow I was attacking, but now I understand we must retain the SANCTITY OF THE AF UPGRADE PROCESS. Eye f'ing roll...

Anyone who thinks it makes sense that in 2025 you can buy TWO FULL SETS of Odyssey armor for a little less than the cost of the upgrade items for one AF+3 body (not to mention the 50 cards you have to farm) is out of their damn mind.

Why not relax the requirements at this point, for 2016 content? I know it must really suck for people who made their useful AF+3 gear years ago to have to think about the possibility of the lowly stragglers getting a little bit easier time with it. The horror.

Um...what are you guys smoking?

WAR: Feet/Legs are solid TP pieces (if you don't need DT). Body is Berserk duration, head is Aggressor duration (lul)
MNK: Head for Focus, body for Chakra, feet dodge and solid TP piece.
WHM: Body incredible for cures, hands for curing, legs for regen AND cursna, feet for SIRD and enhancing duration AND enfeebling
BLM: body is insane, Hands are extremely good for macc nuking, legs for aspir
RDM: Head FC, body enfeebling, hands enhancing, legs cursna (lul)
THF: Head evis, Body evis and TP, legs TP and evis, feet flee and movement
PLD: Body FC, feet Holy Circle
DRK: Head Absorb spells, Hands weapon bash, Feet Arcane Circle
BST: I don't play *** BST. Body for reward, Legs killer effect, feet reward?
BRD: Head Paeon, Body Horde 2, Hands Lullaby, Legs macc (not duration), feet duration
RNG: Head RS, Hand Barrage+Shadowbind, legs Sharpshot+snapshot, feet movespeed (though you also have carmine)
SAM: Head meditate, Hands used to be Hasso but meh with empy, Legs WSD (until you get really high Nyame/hybrids)
NIN: Head WSD, body DW, Hands Daken (if you're into that), Legs DW
DRG: Head spirit link, Body jumps, Hands Jumps, Legs Ancient Circle
SMN: Body BPD, acc/macc for the rest
BLU: Body blue skill+WSD, Hands for learning, legs SIRD
COR: Body used to be good, Legs snapshot. This set is mostly trash now.
PUP: I don't play this trash. WSD body, Hands overload? Feet repair?
DNC: Head Samba dur, Body curing, Hands step acc and WSD, feet Waltz pot and Jig duration
SCH: Head FC+Sublim, Hands FC, legs Cursna, Feet FC
GEO: Body Life Cycle, Hands Pet DT, Legs FC+SIRD, Feet movespeed
RUN: Head FC and regen, Body Valiance/Vallation, Hands Gambit, Feet Pflug

...Yup, all this JSE is worthless. Why would anyone want to upgrade any of it?

I'm sure I missed some things too, but I'd love to hear about what jobs you guys are playing with 0 AF+3 for it.

Great, so let people who didn't already make this stuff back in 2018 like you probably did get their hands on it a little easier. Why is that so unacceptable? This is such a stupid hill to die on.

There are lots of situationally useful Relic +3 pieces too. Some of them used to cost 20mil or more when Dyna Divergence was in its first couple years. Now they're a lot less, even the ones that are still several million in shards/voids. Why are you so against 9 year old AF upgrades also getting cheaper?

I agree, SE should fix this because its absurd in 2025.
10:1 ratio for card trade makes no sense. Even a single run with card campaign will only net you 8-9 cards.


Anyways, I literally ran the numbers showing that someone farming cards to upgrade their AF will have a net profit after selling the swarts.

It's almost as if you don't read my posts.