Handout for Square Enix

**Confucion** · 2006-08-22 10:23

The funny thing is, I believe it's in that Sage Sundi interview, or from that last panel before ToAU was released, when endgame people were complaining about not having enough to do, and having to do the same things over and over again, their answer was:

"We implement things like the NPC Quest, as well as new regional quests that no one ever does, we really wish players would complete all of these before they begin to complain about having nothing to do."

But then they still won't fix 21-24 endgame HNM :/

I think some of them are retarded.

**Brandson** · 2006-08-22 10:52

I like a lot of these suggestions but much of the wording in the OP is disorganized. You may want to reword and simplify a lot of the suggestions before submitting to SE otherwise the suggestions will likely be ignored. I can help with any rewording if you like. As other people noted, if we can organize the suggestions in a clear and concise manner, then many users of this forum could cut and paste the suggestions into POL and have a much greater chance of being heard.

Overall, FFXI has a big discrepancy between time invested and rewards given. This seems to stem mainly from the fact that SE doesn't want to make existing content easier which would force them to continue to create new harder content to keep the game interesting. Perhaps they just don't have enough developers left working on the game to pump out as much fresh endgame content. Or perhaps it is because due to the way the game is designed, it is not possible to instance anything, only to fake instances by having a fixed number of multiple arenas for bcnms. Nevertheless, for an expansion with the word "Treasures" in the title, the new items that drop from Cerberus, Hydra, and the new beastmen kings have been far too weak. In most cases they aren't even good enough for situational purposes. That has got to change.

At this point in the FFXI life cycle, SE is not going to invest the time in creating a real instancing system for the game. So for any of your suggestions that talk about instancing, you may want to instead suggest something more reasonable such as adding more arenas for reserved zones. For the Dynamis suggestion, perhaps suggest that they have 4 copies of each Dynamis zone so that 4 linkshells could do Dynamis-Xarcabard at the same time for example.

Other suggestions that I really like are making all Sea trigger drops 100%, improving wyrm loot pools possibly with a chance for King abjurations, adding more BC/ENM fights that have a chance to drop high-demand items such as Ridills, Defending Rings, Kraken Club, and King abjurations, and extending the maximum available time in CoP Dynamis zones by 1 hour. I would also love it if when using a blood pact or a weaponskill when the target is too far away, that it doesn't result in resetting the blood pact timer or the player's TP, respectively.

The main issue is really the time/reward balance though. Everything else is just bonus.

**Thalion** · 2006-08-22 11:01

Rmt blocking end game progression in sky, 3 Kings time sink, Sea being broken and shitty loot tables on COP wyrms/Hydra are my biggest concerns and are the reasons I quit.

**Takedown3** · 2006-08-22 11:40

Originally Posted by senoska

Originally Posted by aurik

Originally Posted by bercus

Glad now?

Give Hydra a Sword that hits 2-3 times as well, cause of its 3 heads.
 Give Hydra’s Sword maybe the same amount of Damage then Ridill.
 Make Hydra pop more often OR/AND Better his loot pool
 Make Cerberus pop more often OR/AND Better his loot pool
 Give Jorm Dalmatica Abjuration and make him pop more often. OR/AND Better his loot pool ov
 Give Tiamat Crimson Body Abjuration and make her pop more often. OR/AND Better his loot pool
 Give Vrtra Koenig Body and make her pop more often. OR/AND Better his loot pool
I doubt any Linkshell can then camp all of them
 Increase the chance on KS99 Kings to drop Black Belt Items.

 OR SIMPLY INCREASE THE DROP RATE FOR EVERY NM/HNM BY THE PERCENTAGE OF 75 PLAYERS YOU HAVE NOW COMPARED TO 1 YEAR AGO ^ ^. 40-50% drop rate on many Items would be really helpfull.

I still think that making the BIG stuff 21-24 would help us as a End Game Community more then always need to have ppl standing at Wyrms Camps (only Tiamat worth it a bit atm) to see if it is up.>.<

Give us more limbus-style stuff to do and we won't want to waste 3 hours waiting for something to pop.

Thank you, please, seriosly, 3 hours a day is fucking annoying. Just make it like a BCNM / Limbus / something else.

your giving the Devs a totaly wrong view of what a large majority of end game players want.

rare is rare, 1-5% drop rate on ridill is down right annoying.

Anyone got a screenshot of the opening "Okay" buttion when opening FFXI? "Dont let this game interfear with real life, school, friends, or work" or some crap. yea, really hard to do when you want semi decent gear when u gotta camp 3 hours a day every day.

no offense but if you dont want to spend 3 hours a day camping your chance at a ridill you dont have to

gear was meant to be rare for a reason

**Gatsby** · 2006-08-22 11:45

Theres a difference between rare and just stupid hard to get.
In the case of the ridill its just stupid hard to get since the drop rate is so low. If it were moved to a more challenging fight (no matter what that is), it still be rare but those that did get it would have earned it not just gotten lucky with the random # generator one day.

**Septimus** · 2006-08-22 11:53

Originally Posted by takedown2

no offense but if you dont want to spend 3 hours a day camping your chance at a ridill you dont have to

gear was meant to be rare for a reason

No offense, but having the single best sword in the game drop off of a mob that takes less than 15 minutes to kill is just silly.

Ridill should be moved to Bahamut v2, hard fights deserve great rewards.

**Takedown3** · 2006-08-22 11:54

Originally Posted by Gatsby

Theres a difference between rare and just stupid hard to get.
In the case of the ridill its just stupid hard to get since the drop rate is so low. If it were moved to a more challenging fight (no matter what that is), it still be rare but those that did get it would have earned it not just gotten lucky with the random # generator one day.

ridill is still hard to get, doesnt matter if it drops from tom tit tat or absolute virtue. if you put it on a harder monster it just limits the number of ppl that can get it even more and then you would have even more ppl complaining that they can't get it same situation just made it worse

and if you increase the drop rate then you will see even more noobs running around with it

either way you try and solve the problem you are still going to have a problem

keep it rare drop rate is fine and monster u kill to get it gives every endgame person (where the item belongs) a change to get it

**Ksandra** · 2006-08-22 11:56

Originally Posted by takedown2

Originally Posted by Gatsby

Theres a difference between rare and just stupid hard to get.
In the case of the ridill its just stupid hard to get since the drop rate is so low. If it were moved to a more challenging fight (no matter what that is), it still be rare but those that did get it would have earned it not just gotten lucky with the random # generator one day.

ridill is still hard to get, doesnt matter if it drops from tom tit tat or absolute virtue. if you put it on a harder monster it just limits the number of ppl that can get it even more and then you would have even more ppl complaining that they can't get it same situation just made it worse

and if you increase the drop rate then you will see even more noobs running around with it

either way you try and solve the problem you are still going to have a problem

keep it rare drop rate is fine and monster u kill to get it gives every endgame person (where the item belongs) a change to get it

wrong the difference is in a bahamut fight you feel the person (and the alliance that helped) earned the ridill since it's a hard fight. whereas fafnir is a baby and people don't really earn it just have lucky botting that day.

**Gatsby** · 2006-08-22 11:59

People have records of their LSes going 2/180 or something equally dumb. Others have gone 2/2. The problem here is that one of the most overpowered weapons in the game only comes into people's hands by sheer luck. No skill is involved.

If it were dropped from a hard mob, then people would recognize the fact that people earned it from a hard to fight monster instead of just getting it one day when the RNG worked for you.

**Jeryhn** · 2006-08-22 11:59

Originally Posted by Septimus

Originally Posted by takedown2

no offense but if you dont want to spend 3 hours a day camping your chance at a ridill you dont have to

gear was meant to be rare for a reason

No offense, but having the single best sword in the game drop off of a mob that takes less than 15 minutes to kill is just silly.

Ridill should be moved to Bahamut v2, hard fights deserve great rewards.

Or rather, the Bahamut's Zaghnal shouldn't be the piece of shit it is.
Crank up its damage. Same thing with the Amood.

Or better yet, release more weapons like Ridill, good multiattack weapons, but instead of making it drop in the Aery, make it drop off of HNMs that matter, like Hydra.

**Sendra** · 2006-08-22 12:03

I really hope SE takes the hint with all this, but I somehow doubt it. I think they'll just take this like "All this over one little sword OMG NERF!"

**WhiteCuirass** · 2006-08-22 12:17

don't change 3 kings system, it is perfect. people who complain about it want to turn every strong/rare item into forced pop, so eventually any player who spends a long time can get whatever item they want if their linkshell wants to give them.

3 kings system keeps precious items rare and more importantly forces the linkshells to compete. How else are linkshells supposed to compete if not for 3 kings?

only the most organized and dedicated LS's can camp in all time zones the way 3 kings are right now, and the rarity and random aspect of items dropping still keeps it hard even for those LS's. this keeps precious items really rare and is the reason it takes some people literally years to finish 1 set of abj. or never finish at all.

the 3-hrs + per day does suck, but it is the only way to keep 3 kings revolving through all NA, EUR and JP times as evenly as possible. Now that kings go hyper they can not easily be held in time zones. even aspid, although it can be done, is difficult to hold through time zone without other linkshells coming to area to compete. everyone has a chance to camp with the 3hrs +/day system, all you need is the organization and desire to go camp. stop complaining about botting, legit LS's get 3 kings all the time when they actually go and camp.

also 3 kings are nicely drawn and detailed NM's, set up in zones where everyone who camps is forced to see eachother and can /check eachother or just be involved. SE wants to make the powerful boss NM's good looking and famous FF-type mobs like King Behemoth, which will always require at least a group to take down, so anyone who comes to watch will see that at high lvl play it requires organization and effort to fight awesome NM's that pop only around once a week. if new high lvl people want to see awesome looking NMs they need to go to beautiful areas like aery where it is difficult to journey to and then will see the dedicated senior people there wearing rare/powerful armor and camping powerful NM's with beautifully drawn graphics, that look intimidating,, so even anyone looking over the shoulder of a player at his comp will obviously know that it is a high-lvl area fighting a giant HNM, and ffxi will show impressive environments and enemies for high lvl people to go to. even after years of going, aery still is beautiful to look at, dominion is ominous and scary at night and when you hear thunder, and during the day just contributes to making the more dedicated players in impressive suits of equipment look like powerful rpg adventurers. VOS forces everyone to huddle in one area and looks beautiful imo at night , and has many mobs sufficient for skillup or even soloing for lvl 75s who just want to go watch. they tried to make areas look like that on purpose to provide a good atmosphere for HNM camps.

the only thing that does suck is when it promotes stupid players to congregate and then start spamming shout or chat at HNM camp,, but it makes the LS's interact, although unfortunately some players can't handle competition and take a negative attitude when placed next to rival linkshells.

there's enough forced-pop type eq in dynamis for everyone to get that. if you want abj/dring/rid go suffer camping HNMs like everyone else, at least you'll be competing with other LS's and earning a rare/powerful item instead of just organizing a bunch of people to perform forced-pop tasks like in sky, or like BCNM's. dynamis is the perfect way for people who don't agree with 3 kings system to get powerful, so lvl rdm or blm and farm hats @ xarc, or farm beauc for ninja body or start working on a relic. if you want dalmatica or ridill go to aery but be ready to compete for it.

The pop times of HNMs are perfect because they should be a little more rare than the cooldown times for dynamis, so items will stay rare and it gives as much chance to everyone as possible to go and camp and get lucky for a random drop of a precious item.

the point is if you want powerful items in a forced-pop type system dynamis is there, but if you want 3kings loot you need to compete for it, and the current system is the best way to take care of as much as possible while trying to still be fair to all players in different time zones. there's no way to keep items fair unless it's all random. that is the most fair way, even if it is frustrating.

it is very obvious that SE knows loot from 3 wyrms or even AV or other powerful NM's are arguably not as good as loot from 3 kings, so stop pointing that out.

it's done on purpose so that organized groups of players will be rewarded accordingly for what development team decides is a more difficult and significant task: interacting with other LS's and competing in lag for claim against 250 people or posting on a website or /lsmes to be at jormungand next time he pops so he can be zerged.

sorry for length of post.

**epigram** · 2006-08-22 12:19

The problem is that kings are a waste of time, they are borring, and they aren't engaging.

No one wants a 100% drop rates on ridill, D. ring or whatever. But people wish to be engaged, challenged, and be rewarded. Unless your some highschool or college kid with a shit ton of free time, three kings does not achieve this.

Let's say one ridill drops a month on average.

If you let ls's fight with pop items or something similar with a timer similar to limbus you could adjust the drop rate to be similar.

1/30 ~ 1/(30 * number of ls's that fight per month)

So for most servers it would be around 20-30 groups of 12 - 18 people (probably less).

So with a three day re-try timer = 25 * 10 * 30 = 750. So now ridill is still pretty damn rare and everyone gets a shot, this is similar to today where everyone gets a shot but your not wasting three hours standing in darter shit.

Yeah so it's true some new people could go in and get lucky with a ridill, but that's no different than today.

**NynJa** · 2006-08-22 12:24

Originally Posted by takedown2

ridill is still hard to get, doesnt matter if it drops from tom tit tat or absolute virtue. if you put it on a harder monster it just limits the number of ppl that can get it even more and then you would have even more ppl complaining that they can't get it same situation just made it worse

and if you increase the drop rate then you will see even more noobs running around with it

either way you try and solve the problem you are still going to have a problem

keep it rare drop rate is fine and monster u kill to get it gives every endgame person (where the item belongs) a change to get it

Except if Ridill were placed in a difficult BCNM like Bahamut v2, retards like you wouldn't be running around with em.

Feel free to quote that for emphasis.

Originally Posted by epigram

Unless your some highschool or college kid with a shit ton of free time, three kings does not achieve this.

Where does Med School fit into the free time classification fyi ?

**Jeryhn** · 2006-08-22 12:31