2015-08-03, 03:09 PM
SaptaZapta Wrote:Now you get the worthwhile drops from Elite Mobs and Elite Bosses. Which spawn at any level.
Of course you spend a lot less time grinding to level 100 than you used to, so far fewer monster kills and so fewer good drops.
But unless you spend the whole time in PQs, you should end up looting 3% or even 6% gear you can use, enough spell traces to scroll it all, and enough meso to star-force it. Plus something good from an Elite that you can sell to buy all, or most, of the mastery books you need.
Back in the pre-BB, you had no hope in hell of having enough meso for all your 4th job mastery books, unless you merched a lot, farmed area bosses for valuable scrolls for weeks and months, or somehow managed to join a bossing group that sold z-runs and htp's. Equipment rarely dropped, and scrolls were too rare and expensive to use on your own gear. Yeah, you could get really lucky with that Esther Shield or GFA. Or you could be scrabbling for potion money.
Not saying pre-BB is better overall. I love post-BB; I love what they've done to the game. The new content itself (not talking about HP values and numbers and whatnot) is very fun and awesome, I am one of the few people who love the "variety" of classes, I love NX items so the abundance of them is wonderful, and all of that. It's just so hard for someone who enjoys being competitive to maintain their interest in the game, when the competitive part of the game is overrun by people who pay not just more, but a fucking metric pomegranate ton more.
And none of what you stated as "cons" even bothered me back then. When you compare it to now, yeah it sounds a lot shittier than it was, but at the time it didn't bother me at all. There was a community aspect of the game that is now dead, and while progressing at times was stagnant, the game was genuinely interesting.