Dev Tracker - Discussion

I kind of wish they'd do this with mage REMA to actually make them useful outside of super-niche scenarios.

EDIT: Especially considering they're not RNG-based at all to acquire.. what a missed opportunity.

I don't really see it being a spell as that big a deal, impact is vital to some strategies but you could make the same argument about Dagon Breastplate for some Mboze strategies. Kraken club was game defining for the entire 75 era, and it spent the latter half locked behind a BC with an infinitesimal droprate. As long as there are alternative strategies that allow you to complete the content without the piece(twilight cloak for impact), I wouldn't rank 'having a spell' as a unique factor that should preclude items from being acquired through RNG.

That said, not much of a fan of RNG to begin with. I don't think items should be below 10%. If you need to gate something behind a droprate that low, then the content isn't hard enough. Granted, FFXI is in a tricky position because the 3rd party community has made so many cheat-tier addons that any legitimately difficult content to addon users is all-but impossible to regular players. Not really a good solution there, unfortunately.

If you want to see things from that perspective, i.e. "equipment necessary for whatever reason" it's hard to disagree with you Thorny.

Personally in a game like FFXI I see unique "spells" or "jas" as something entirely different than specific rare stats for that certain job on that specific slot.
The result is the same, as per your example, but to me it feels completely different.
Maybe it's just an irrational thing, I can't say.

I think it's less a question of equipment being necessary or not than what's fun. Ratcheting up your stats so you can kill stuff harder is all well and good but all it really does is smooth out the process you were employing before; getting new gear doesn't open the possibility of changing how you play. Stuff like Impact or Dispelga, however, represents actual new tools you get to analyze and incorporate into your existing playstyle and it's a shame there aren't more of them.

i hate them because every time i change equipment, my spell list order changes

Speaking of this... what the heck are the Prime weapons going to do to differentiate themselves from the existing REMAs???

Since all of the other REMAs and Ambuscade weapons have specific WS tied to them... are we gonna also get new WS along with the Prime weapons, and if so will they be locked to that weapon only like relic WS, or unlockable like Mythic/Empy WS? Maybe they reuse the Relic WS (along with potential adjustments to relic WS like the devs mentioned ages ago)?

Are they gonna give some jobs overwhelmingly good weapons to balance through buffs/new gear like they often try to do? For example, could they make a bow overpowered enough to make archery worthwhile again without major changes to the actual archery gameplay mechanics/damage calculations? Buff Ninja through a unique or powerful weapon (say, an effect like they have on Yagyu Darkblade but on a more accessible weapon)?

What the heck kind of niche are they going to be able to find for some of these weapons? They already seemed a bit stretched for ideas on some of the Aeonic and Ambuscade weapons (and some of the Su5s). Please tell me BST isn't going to get a third straight "hey it's a strong physical damage axe with nothing for your pet". I sorta don't mind specific use pieces, like the aforementioned Marsyas for Honor March, or even something like Gambanteinn for the ultra-specific niche of Cursna. And to some extent, they differentiated the RMEAs precisely by tying them to specific WS and pumping those WS up (not always equally) through augments to make different weapons more viable for different use cases. I'm curious to see where they go here...

Of course they can. The only reason archery is bad right now is because the weaponskills are bad. The only thing archery needs is a competitive weaponskill and it's suddenly viable again. If the new bow they design has a strong weaponskill attached to it then suddenly archery could start kicking ***.

Give Prime weapons AoE weaponskills. Good ones.

SE: "Game's done, everybody wrap it up, it's time to finally go home after 20 long years. Except you, ambuscade guy. You're here forever."

I'm not sure what they gonna do with the Prime Weapons honestly.
They could be alternative version of the Relics but with different stats, different bonuses but same WS linked to it (same 3D model but different colour).

I seriously doubt they're gonna release new WSs for each job.
And all of the currently "relevant" WSs have been bound to one weapon or another. They can't really take the lower level ones, can they? And their SC properties suck anyway.

Here's some wishing that the Prime weapons have the black relic model only at start but end up being something completely different, i.e. the Mog Bonanza weapons!

My guess is ambu weapons 2.0 in terms of getting a certain WS boosted in some fashion with its own unique effect to varying degree of usefulness, if they did make new unique WS they might utilize some of the old campaign only WS' that the npcs could use.

I almost am expecting them to be dud weapons far below the current RMEAs, but the completion of them "unlocks" the Relic WSs for use with other weapons for the player.

Mostly because I agree that its going to be hard to make them interesting or even debatable against existing options without overpowering them.

Also because Relic WSs remain the only class of ultimate weapon-tied WSs locked on the weapons, and if these are supposedly the "full force" versions of those old Relics, I could see some logic in they hold the true power of the WS.

Those old campaign weaponskills were blatantly broken. If they made the new weapons scale that hard they would be BiS without question. S-E said the prime weapons would scale hard enough that current REMA holders could not ignore their existence, but not so hard that they would feel they were mandatory. So whatever they do with them, I wouldn't expect campaign power levels here.

SE gives me Uriel Blade as a RDM in real content, and I'll forgive a helluva lot of the past decade.

Obviously they'd be scaled down and likely have their aoe effect removed on most if not all, id just assume SE to reuse some of those rather than make new animation sets if they were to add "new" ws' at all

I can see them reusing the animations sure. But the stat mods would have to be toned down significantly to make them usable outside campaign. Or they could just be enhanced versions of the original relic weaponskills like some have suggested. We'll just have to wait and see.

Kind of a rhetorical "Could they?", by which I meant "Would they dare to?" ;) But yeah, agreed that a desirable WS could give Archery some demand. Personally, I'd kinda like to see a magical darkness archery WS - one thing RNG totally lacks in their Marksmanship WS arsenal (we have good physical, light, fire, a hybrid). That alone would be a good reason to pull out a bow sometimes. Could also put a bow out there with enough bow+arrow dmg to outdo gun+bullet dmg...


If I had to guess, that's what I'd go with. We did hear long ago that they planned adjustments across the board to Relic WS, so this would be a perfect time to implement those changes alongside release of a new ultimate-class weapon linked to those WS. I wouldn't be shocked if the WS remain weapon-exclusive (and I sort of like that, as it gives a reason to use some of the current Relics), it's just that maybe we'll have a couple of options now with Prime or Relic weapons getting access to those same WS.

If they do go that route, I hope they differentiate them enough though, so as not to destroy the existing relics that are still solid. And particularly for some of the weaker existing relics, wouldn't mind seeing the WS get a substantial enough boost to make them more viable weapon choices.

It's more than a year out. The devs don't even know what they're going to be yet.

Safe bet it will just be like aeonics - Zone 1 then 2 then 3 adds the new weapons

You really think so? I actually think that all evidence points to them having pretty good long term planning in recent years. A few examples:
- They talked about a "new leveling system" that was Master Levels a loooooong time before that actually came out.
- They talked about final stage Ambuscade weapons ages before those were actually released.
- They knew the endgame of Reisenjima/Aeonic weapons prior to starting up the Escha/Rhapsodies storyline, which took over a year.
- It looks like they knew exactly where they would eventually go with Odyssey (Sheol Gaol) before the initial release of Sheol A.
- They were pretty specific in the May 8 livestream about future roadmap: a little past halfway with TVR story, ML cap will be raised to 50 in increments (40, then 50 toward end of the year), new battle content around July related to Empy upgrades, Prime weapons are comparable in strength to RMEA and not a remake/upgrade of existing Relics.

Some people might grumble that they want more from this very constrained dev team, but all indications are that they do have a pretty good handle on their intended plans. They know their capacity by now, so I'd be extremely surprised if they don't already have a very good idea of where they're going with Prime weapons and all of the other current/ongoing content (Odyssey expansion, TVR storyline, Empyrean armor reforge).

And regardless of WHEN it happens, I'm still interested in people's thoughts about what they'll do with these weapons to make them have a place among the current RMEA. Seems like they have a goal of keeping more of a horizontal progression and making all of the ultimate weapon classes relevant, especially with the effort they put into balancing RMEAs when they did R15 augments.

I'm curious about whether Prime weapons will heavily focus on a universal trait like Aeonics (TP Bonus/STP) or Empy/Mythic having a consistent aftermath as one of their main features - and what that could be. Or perhaps they'll take a more relic-like approach where the weapons really are more individually customized, or how Mythics all have some enhancement to a job-specific ability/trait.

Great troll.

Simple, you need to have the matching relic, empyrean, and aeonic to obtain a prime weapon(each is 1 per weapon type). To wear it, you have to have the matching mythic for that job. It will be unilaterally better than the alternatives, and provide an amazing source of grinding for players who are hardcore enough to commit to this.

Please look forward to it.

I guess I'm already waist-deep in the SE muck, because finally having an excuse to make every REMA for a job (aside from collecting purposes) actually sounds awesome

All things said and done about what was expected for the 20th and what we got: they could have made the Noble Chocobo the only thing that they gave us and I'd be happy. I love it. Quick mount chocobo without the lag as it brings up my raised chocobo's info and it's so pretty. Also classic chocobo mount theme song and no dumb other mount song. I'm happy.

Prime Weapons probably gonna be multi-job weapons, same as Relics, Empys, Aeonics. The picture we saw during VR cutscene only shows 1 weapon/type.

Since Relics, we got COR, BLU, PUP, DNC, SCH, GEO and RUN. They must include these new jobs in the new weapons.

So Prime Weapons should be something like :

Great Sword : WAR DRK RUN => DD or Tank weapon ?
Sword : PLD RDM BLU => DD or Tank weapon ?
Shield : Probably PLD only, or maybe a shield for RDM/WHM ?...
Club : GEO WHM => healing club ? geomancy club ?...
Staff : SMN BLM SCH => DD, Pet, Healing staff ?

... or maybe there will be 22 weapons like Dynamis weapons ; same skin, but different statistics and jobs.

I just hope it won't be the same design as Aeonics.

One route they might go down is having multiple augment paths so you could specialize a weapon towards a certain role/job. That way they could get away from them being just generic damage sticks without having to make new models (I would prefer entirely new models and 1 weapon per job though).

Hopefully won't be a nyame situation if that't the route they choose, though id rather it too just be a 1 weapon per job type deal and they take another crack at the dyna crafted weapons. They had some neat ideas that were locked behind being MH/path C exclusive

I thought the prime weapons would just be the rank 1 bonanza things we have a 1/500 chance of getting in this upcoming bonanza. Am I the only one to see that? In previous bonanzas, the rank 1 prizes had been the REMA weapons before. I just figured whatever the end of TVR / the battlefield grind they add was just going to be "accumulate 30,000 of X and do a bunch of fetch quest stuff" like we had to do for Mythics.

Doubt they'd just shift those to being prime weapons, though I would hope they add alternate avenues to those weapons at some point too.

Mostly because if that were the case it'd deflate some of the expectation of those weapons, that and bonanza weapons were SE's silly attempt to bring back the excitement of rank 1 prizes by making weapons that are as rare/ex as REMAs once were, think it wasn't a great idea since atleast with REMAs you could work you way towards those unlike these, but I understand the idea.

Since all of them except the NIN katana and the onion sword look like straight garbage, I very much hope that's not the case.