Questions to SE- November (latest email on page 23)

[Khamsin]

Seriously, doing this Q&A and not asking why the games best gear (majority of it) comes from a 3+ year old expansion would make it a waste of time.

I might be wrong, but I think that question was asked before in another interview.

[Lockecole]

Seriously, doing this Q&A and not asking why the games best gear (majority of it) comes from a 3+ year old expansion would make it a waste of time.

No, its not their fault. Its the playerbases fault for not realizing the true effectiveness of incredibly obscure latents and Besieged specific gear .

[yrpaine]

The China part is funny, but I'd remove it to make it look a bit more professional.

Maybe also write the names of the trigger NMs under the pictues. No one would be suprised if Sage Sundi confuses Ullikummi with Zipacna.

also all of them aren't 3-6 some of their windows vary

I'd have to say we should probably be careful how we phrase Ulli questions. If we ask for it to pop like baist maybe they'll throw it in our faces and make it 21-24 hr <.<; There's already ~10 fulltime smn killing aura pots on our server, I'd just hate to see what china would throw at aura statues if an item with the drop rate of raxa was introduced to pop. Hopefully all of the golems in sky would drop them, or the repop time would be reduced. Since everyone and their mom would be farming ulli pop items for several months to catch up their byakko seals to their other seals for kirin pops.

It would be nice if we could use our stacks of beastmen seals, or whatever the method, to have instances which would allow us to obtain stones. Similar to how ks30 drops brownbelt/purple belt items, and ks99 can drop blackbelt items (bc99?). To suppliment the demand for autumnstone's or other highly overcamped sky nm items.

[spooky]

Yeah I know, it was just to make a point, plus I was too lazy to look up all the diferent spawn windows, and many people can't agree on the times for them anyway.

[Veli]

spooky, I don't know what to say. the diagram looks lil corny but BRILLIANT ! No better way to help the dev team see the flaws and problem.

Anyways, to comment on the question about synthesis. It's a given that synthesis results are random, however it really helps us if we know the factors that influence the results. I personally find it frustrating not only to face the consequences of investment loss due to NQs, but worse when it fails/blows up >_< (yes I managed to blow up an expensive synth I was 31+ levels above cap).

Wouldnt it be nice if something there were actors that influence results? I would love to NQ some items with a lower chance of break like B leather and the items you try to HQ have whatever break rate they already have.

[NynJa]

you seriously think 15-25 AF on a full-clear city run is farfetched ??

sometimes you get those shitty runs where you only get 5, luck is indeed a factor. But:

Oct.24 Sando: 25
Oct.17 Jeuno: 8
Oct.10 Bastok: 15
Sep.26 Windy: 9
Sep.19 Sando: 4 lolz
Sep.12 Sando: 15


Maybe you guys should go with 30+ and actually CLEAR the area, instead of going with 10 ppl just to show "WERE GUD LS".

[TsingTao]

Just made a post in this thread that made me think of something that might be worth asking.

Copy/Paste of the impetus just in case you don't want to ckick.

"A few months back I dropped my tav ring, I called a GM they told me there are things in place to retrive items that have been lost, however would not tell me how."

Q:
For a long time now GMs have said that there are things in place that allow you to retrieve lost quest items (accidentally dropped being a good example). People have also asked for years if there was a way to repeat Divine Might for a different earring and recieved almost identical answers from GMs.

Is there a way we have not discovered to repeat completed quests to re obtain lost quest rewards? If yes can you give us a hint where to look? It's been years and we haven't figured it out yet.

I leave the wording to you as they tend to like prefer simple questions.

[Miji]

Question 14 :
Is it possible to increase CoP dynamis drop rate by ~1/3 or 1/4 or such and increase currency drops (maybe make dragon farming in Bubu drop great currency)? It seems like that would please many people.

I'd reword this to make note that it's not worth the 1 million gil hourglass for so little currency compared to regular dynamis.

Also, every time we go up to sea, my roommate makes a note that we're usually the only people there. How do they feel that an entire region's worth of development goes relatively unused?

I think the drop rate in CoP dynamis is fine.

did Buburimu last tuesday, and got this in roughly an hr and a half of farming:
hands -1: war nin mnk bst blm
cape/belt: brd brd drg nin
currency: unknown atm

9 pieces in less than 90 minutes (subtract time spent farming dragons, add time spent killing whm NM). I think thats on par with city drops, where you spend 210 minutes and get anywhere between 15-25 AF.


What SE needs to bump up is the drop rate on the 4 100 currency when beating the boss. 0/10 or so now.

I didn't mention anything about AF drop rate, but I seriously doubt you average 9 pieces per CoP dynamis run. What I did mention was currency drop rates, that regardless of how much time you spend in dynamis, you're still spending the same 1 million gil for less currency (and less AF) on the same timer.

[NynJa]

then how come no one complains about xarcabard , where mobs take longer to kill, the currency is sub par, and a successful AF run is 3+ ?
Or beaucedine, where you spend a good portion of the run just running around ?

[chiz]

Had a bunch of stuff I think of here and there, but never bothered to write em down, but here's a few:

A. I'd like to see further improvements to inventory management. Mog Safe helped some, but having to move equipment 1 piece at a time is still cryptic and tedious especially in laggy zones like Aht Urgan. They'll probably respond with PS2 limitations but worth a shot:

• 1) Backpacks. Kinda like Horadric Cube from D2, storage within your inventory. I believe theres some other games that used it as well (NWN and BG series). This would allow for fast movement of multiple items at once. Each Backpack could be labeled and customized, possibly pull up a paper doll similar to the Mannequin load-out (except useful ofc). You could then basically pull up equipment for any job quickly in one action rather than piece by piece.
  
  2) Customizeable inventory load macros. Would require you to have a minimum # of available slots in your inventory or mog, but syntax would be something like /mog inv "item name". The reverse would be /inv mog "item name". 1st syntax would be source, 2nd would be destination. This would allow you to essentially save entire job load-outs and move them quickly from inventory to mog or vice versa.

B. Would also like to see them address HNM/King spawn times and abjurations. They've hinted at it numerous times before, but nothing has been done so far. Some solutions already covered numerous times:

• 1) Decrease spawn times for existing HNMs and/or duration of spawn windows. 8 hour repops would decrease competition while increase the frequency of fights which most still find enjoyable. Changing pop window similar to CoP 21 hour NMs would also be nice and remove chances for monopolization/manipulation of spawn windows.
  
  2) Introduce Abjurations in existing KS99 battles, at a lower drop rate similar to Black Belt items. I know SE seems dead set against this idea, but if enough of the player base wants it, they might change their stance.
  
  3) Decrease the # of days required for King Lottery. 48+ hour lottery with a maximum of 96 hours (2-4 day pop for Kings). This would be most significant for Aspid and KBehemoth.

C. Dynamis changes/upgrades.

• 1) Decrease the wait period between Dynamis. A lot of people won't enjoy this or take advantage of it, but there's a lot of people who do enjoy Dynamis. Personally, I'd rather spend 3 hours a day farming currency for people so they can upgrade a relic rather than sit at a King camp.
  
  2) Increase the amount of time for CoP Dynamis zones. 2 1/2 or 3 hours would be ideal, but at the current 2 hour maximum, many LS don't see it as time well spent when the first half of the run is spent simply getting to the second half (and farming).
  
  3) Change the drop/reward system for current AF2 items. I'm sure many mature LS are experiencing this now, some items are simply undesirable or have become redundant to the point they can't be put to use by anyone in the run. In some cases, good pieces of AF2 go free lot for a group, but are still highly sought after by others.
  
  Allow AF2 to be exchanged (to an NPC, or even an open-market of sorts where players can trade through a 3rd party NPC) for another piece of AF2 from the same zone, or allow AF2 to be traded with Dynamis currency similar to Limbus items/AF1+1/AF2+1.

[Shade]

the Sky chart thingy.

Spooky finished before me. ;; But I figured maybe I should go ahead and finish it anyway, since I was halfway done... Also I stole a couple of the images from you too. Sorry! : x

I was trying to show visually in the form of the chart, the problem. Just make it extremely obvious. I dont know how successful I was, but I did my best in 30 minutes.

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o...kytrouble2.jpg

[Lithiani]

the Sky chart thingy.
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o...kytrouble2.jpg

Ullikummi, not Zipacna.

[Khamsin]

the Sky chart thingy.
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o...kytrouble2.jpg

Ullikummi, not Zipacna.

Too late. SE saw it, and "fixed" Zipacna.

[Seyrr]

Ulli/Zip confusion aside, Shade's chart seems a lot cleaner and clearer to read. The progression (and bottleneck) are easy to see, and since that's what we want to get across, I'd go with that one.

[barber2006]

If something could be asked about the birdman cape and how to obtain it, that would be nice.

[Shade]

Aww dammit.
XP

Shows how well I proof read things.

*fix*

[NynJa]

2 m's fyi :D

[chiz]

Ulli/Zip confusion aside, Shade's chart seems a lot cleaner and clearer to read. The progression (and bottleneck) are easy to see, and since that's what we want to get across, I'd go with that one.

Need to make sure solutions are attached as well. I didn't realize it until that last thread on Ulli (I honestly haven't camped Ulli at all since the update), but SE really screwed the pooch on that "fix". Instead of making it a true lottery, they simply introduced 1 PH that didn't pop in a fixed location.

Simply make Ulli a true lottery spawn off of any of the 10 (now 11) Aura Statues in the room and you increase the chance of lottery per interval 10-fold. That's why lottery spawn mobs like SC and Despot are so easy to pop, because they have multiple PHs with low respawn times. This would not only increase the frequency of Ulli pops, but also reduce RMT spawn campers.

[inafume]

Even then RMT zerg enough of the other NMs that while the bottleneck isn't the same as Ulli, there is still one there.

[Kelvanis]

Poor Sey ;_;' 3rd times a charm ^^