Ruminations on King pop times

[Sidanoir]

Ok...I guess people are not understanding what I am saying....

Lets see how much simpler I can put it....

Zilart abjurations in particular those dropped by Fafnir/Nidhogg are still to do this date among the MOST desired gear in game.
I was not aware that Aspid and KB existed..really I wasn't...
KB and aspid have same overcrowding problems cause they fall into same class as Faf/Nid although no where near as bad since the NQs fail....



Newer HNMs such as Tiamat, Vrtra, Jorm, Hydra, Cerb....drop gear that does not come close to anything these mobs currently drop...

My point is new HNMs should drop gear that is the best or close to the best for the jobs that can use it...thereby replacing older HNMs or offering alternatives to their drops...then LS that have dominated faf for a year would likely move on..giving other people a chance etc.

Furthermore Vrtra gear in particular for example manteel for instance was made further worthless by letting manteels be made from desynthing subligar...then that assault item that came out is comparable..and of course Bahamut 2 drops cloth too...why was this done to Vrtra? He was hardly killed in the first place...doing this to Fafnir/Nid or KB Aspid would have made slightly more sense..why couldn't Bahamut 2 drop some abjurations? I don't understand the logic other than SE enjoying people wasting 3 hours camping these mobs long after their introduction

[Tordall]

Umm..quite a lot of the non-abjuration gear that various NMs drop (like ridill & fafnir) are actually associated them from mythology, so it makes a lot of sense that they don't drop from other mobs.

As a side note from mythology, Fafnir is basically a monster created by greed. Somehow that's fitting.

[Sidanoir]

Yes nearly every HNM in FFXI has some form of mythology associated with it...

Fafnir turned into a dragon cause of greed I know lol

But again its a video game...not ancient Greece so as far as I know they can enter the approriate code to make these things drop somewhere else without incurring Zeus' wrath

[razorcat]

And if you already claim more often than (number LS people in zone)/(total number in zone)x100%? This would make things worse.

perhaps.. not like it can get any worse. there is a limit to how much each a computer can handle. plus you'd think that as LS's finish off whatever gear they need for their members (barring new ones) they'd lose interest in that particular HNM unless of course to spite others... which in that case the LS in question must stupid in the first place.

[razorcat]

Is there a way for to code for a monster to load claimed to some random person in the zone/area similar to item popped mobs? I think it would server to eliminate bots and gives any LS at least a random chance of getting some sort of claim. Then any and all LS's can actually get these monsters without having to bot.

Mentioned just such an animal (in Soviet HNM hunting, monster claims YOU) a few months back. People hollered about it being unfair and that linkshells would clog the area with players.

Well popping claimed and popping it claimed by aggro are two different things. People claim that its unfair only because the person it aggro's almost never stands a chance of surviving the first couple hits. Sometimes they could be, dead before it even finishes loading on the screen.

In many cases that I've seen it pop, the person Faf/hogg aggros almost ALWAYS dies which results in another LS that takes it. Having it pop claimed for 1-3 seconds and having it aggro-claimed I believe are two distinctly different actions. If an LS isn't ready, after 2 seconds... it'll proceed to kill the LS off.

[shotgn]

Have you guys really thought about what would happen if SE took all your advice? Okay, so there's two things people are endlessly repeating they think SE should do. For an awesome item like Ridill that everyone wants, they should make it drop from something instanced; it can be a rare drop, but it should be instanced so that someone with no life and who can play 16 hours a day can spam the instanced fight over and over until the 1% drop finally kicks in and they get their Ridill.

So what would happen? There is not really a limited number of X Ridills entering the server per day now; rather pretty much everyone who wants a Ridill will get it after a certain period of time. For example, if the drop rate was 1%, and the instanced fight took roughly eight hours to set up and complete, you'd get people doing the instanced fight 1-2 times a day. Whip out your probability textbook and you'll see that in about two months, EVERYONE on the server suddenly has a ridill. That's the glory of instanced stuff.

So when SE first released the instanced fight, everyone was so happy and jumping for joy and like "Hoorah! SE finally did something right!" Then two months later, Ridill is meaningless cause everyone has it? This is your idea of an MMORPG utopia?

The other thing people want is for SE to keep releasing new stuff; i.e. even if everyone has a Ridill by this Februray, in March they want SE to release Ridill v2.0 which attacks 2-4 times. There's a problem with this too, but we'll save it for another post.

[exceed]

almost every NM in this game's name has some sort of mythology connection to it, it's pretty interesting actually, it's all on the wiki.

and just to agree with some people: i really think they should make more NMs, like hydra difficulty and spawn conditions, that drop good gear, or even cerberus. it really does suck that after 3 years we're still in DragonAery BehemotDom and SorrowVall gettin our dalmaticas, ridills, ebodys, etc etc etc.

[aurik]

If there's a problem with "everyone having one", then the item is broken and should be fixed.

You could make it so that you can only try the instance so often. 1% drop, once-per-conquest-tally, takes 4-6 people to clear, would be 1 ridill per 8-12 people per year.

The nice thing about that system is that it scales up as endgame gets more populated. Right now ridill drops at the same rate as it did 2.5 years ago, when only 30 people even had the ability to kill fafnir, and only 4-5 of them had the ability to equip the sword.

[Tajin]

So when SE first released the instanced fight, everyone was so happy and jumping for joy and like "Hoorah! SE finally did something right!" Then two months later, Ridill is meaningless cause everyone has it? This is your idea of an MMORPG utopia?

I pay as much as the next guy (not couting mules of course) therefore the least i expect is an equal opportunity of getting items.

And yeah i know SE said relic is not meant for everyone and yadda yadda, maybe that applies to R I D I L L too; i dont know.

I do know if they want to keep this thing fun (no, leveling other jobs to 75 is by no means fun, if after leveling you cant do jack shit with your jobs) they should adapt to the "growth" of population/# of level 75 players.

At the end of the day, changes or not, gilsellers or not, there is always FFXII (which btw shows the new gay ways of SE with the random pop conditons *points Zodiac Spear*), so instead of whining (of which ive seen plenty and contributed) ill take my 13 bucks and shove it up my mouth in the form of a nice date/meal/whatever float your boat.

[Navia]

If SE was *really* losing enough money because of the current 3 kings design, they would.

Relics, Ridill and other toys like KC are hooks to keep people playing longer. If you instance the hell out of everything, people get the goodies theyve been chasing much faster and quit sooner.
SE is trying to find the balance between making things difficult enough that you'll keep playing forever, while postponing the reward and being stingy with it.
FFXI like any pay to play MMO is a Skinner Box

[shotgn]

You do have an equal opportunity of getting items. The chance of anyone getting a ridill on your server equals how many hours you camp in DA divided by the average number of people in DA multiplied by the drop rate of ridill. That's the same number for everyone.

Navia said it already so I won't say it again. I also want to comment on your avatar. It's a bit misleading. The only thing the RMT's are "f*cking" is you, because they are ruining your game experience. RMT certainly isn't screwing over SE, because they are filling SE's pockets. Although I know it's hard for you to understand things that don't exactly conform to your own distorted point of view, from SE's standpoint RMT doesn't hurt them one bit, as long as the masses keep paying for their game (one of which is you, by the way).

Aurik that's precisely my point. Allowing Ridill to scale up as endgame populations increase is the same thing as letting everyone have it in 2-3 months. And if you make the drop rate on the instanced fight to get Ridill really low (to prevent everyone getting it in two months), people will just bitch about that instead. "Come on!! 0.01% drop rate for an eight hour fight?? That's f*cking ridiculous! *bitch whine moan cry*"

The sad basic truth is that everyone wants every cool item in the game for themselves, but fails to understand that if it's easily possible for them it would be easily possible for everyone else which would negate the desire to have that cool rare item. It's amazing how shallow most people's minds work.

[Tajin]

You do have an equal opportunity of getting items. The chance of anyone getting a ridill on your server equals how many hours you camp in DA divided by the average number of people in DA multiplied by the drop rate of ridill. That's the same number for everyone.

Navia said it already so I won't say it again. I also want to comment on your avatar. It's a bit misleading. The only thing the RMT's are "f*cking" is you, because they are ruining your game experience. RMT certainly isn't screwing over SE, because they are filling SE's pockets. Although I know it's hard for you to understand things that don't exactly conform to your own distorted point of view, from SE's standpoint RMT doesn't hurt them one bit, as long as the masses keep paying for their game (one of which is you, by the way).

Aurik that's precisely my point. Allowing Ridill to scale up as endgame populations increase is the same thing as letting everyone have it in 2-3 months. And if you make the drop rate on the instanced fight to get Ridill really low (to prevent everyone getting it in two months), peple will just bitch about that instead. "Come on!! 0.01% drop rate for an eight hour fight?? That's f*cking ridiculous! *bitch whine moan cry*"

The sad basic truth is that everyone wants every cool item in the game for themselves, but fails to understand that if it's easily possible for them it would be easily possible for everyone else which would negate the desire to have that cool rare item. It's amazing how shallow most people's minds work.

Was that a flame? As for the avatar i seemed fun at the time, yes i know neither SE or RMT are losing money, if anything the number of GS has grown.

I could care less for the "cool" items, i'm in for the fun (or was until my monitor broke XD )

Your equal opportunity (yes the number is the same for everyone) means nothing when you apply real world variables like having fun, food, sleep, work, family, other videogames >.>; , etc.

bleh, whatever, too lazy to type explanations in english.

The avatar stays

[Taj]

All of the ideas presented in this thread are revolutionary. I haven't heard any of these before. I am not being sarcastic.

[aurik]

Aurik that's precisely my point. Allowing Ridill to scale up as endgame populations increase is the same thing as letting everyone have it in 2-3 months. And if you make the drop rate on the instanced fight to get Ridill really low (to prevent everyone getting it in two months), people will just bitch about that instead. "Come on!! 0.01% drop rate for an eight hour fight?? That's f*cking ridiculous! *bitch whine moan cry*"

Nobody complains about yigit design. Yigit set can be fully completed in 4 months or less of dedicated assault, is pretty good -- some of it being the best or near-best for certain slots -- and best of all, you can't be cockblocked out of getting it. You can go at your own pace; you don't have to get 12+ people to camp 3am pops and pray that you even get claim that day.

Despite the relative ease of getting this excellent gear, most people have at best 1-2 pieces. Very few people have full sets or even all the pieces they want.

Not many people complain about relics being too hard either. People complain about them being "not worth it", sure, but not "too hard" to obtain. Why? Maybe it's because every time you take even a shitty group to dynamis, you get approximately 1/150th of an upgrade. A well-trained group that splits up can probably net over 1000 coins a week leading to a relic every 4 months.

Despite the spam-ability of dynamis (anyone can go twice a week, whereas at most 7 fafnirs happen per week regardless of endgame size) almost all servers have less than 20 relics, and quite a few of them have less than 10. Relic still features "hard" fights -- paper and fragment are no joke to get -- but at least you don't have people bitching about how they can't even get claim.

The mechanics of incrementally "earning" your upgrade and allowing anyone to participate are much fairer and better than getting an all-or-nothing drop for only one group every 24 hours. Remember everyone saying how nice the limbus reward system is? Guess what, it's just like the relic system, except tuned so that it takes much less time/effort to get a shiny bauble for yourself.

Kings are a shitty system, and SE has given us a lot of new content that would lead me to believe they understand that. But what they haven't done is given us a reason to gtfo aery and go after that new content. Ridill for 200,000AP would see everyone at SM rank by now; instead, most of my friends are PSC or PFC still.

[Tajin]

Well put aurik, and my bad, i meant the relic takes a lot of time to get, in the end is just one piece of gear (granted not just ANY piece of gear).

[Veli]

Have you guys really thought about what would happen if SE took all your advice? Okay, so there's two things people are endlessly repeating they think SE should do. For an awesome item like Ridill that everyone wants, they should make it drop from something instanced; it can be a rare drop, but it should be instanced so that someone with no life and who can play 16 hours a day can spam the instanced fight over and over until the 1% drop finally kicks in and they get their Ridill.

So what would happen? There is not really a limited number of X Ridills entering the server per day now; rather pretty much everyone who wants a Ridill will get it after a certain period of time. For example, if the drop rate was 1%, and the instanced fight took roughly eight hours to set up and complete, you'd get people doing the instanced fight 1-2 times a day. Whip out your probability textbook and you'll see that in about two months, EVERYONE on the server suddenly has a ridill. That's the glory of instanced stuff.

So when SE first released the instanced fight, everyone was so happy and jumping for joy and like "Hoorah! SE finally did something right!" Then two months later, Ridill is meaningless cause everyone has it? This is your idea of an MMORPG utopia?

The other thing people want is for SE to keep releasing new stuff; i.e. even if everyone has a Ridill by this Februray, in March they want SE to release Ridill v2.0 which attacks 2-4 times. There's a problem with this too, but we'll save it for another post.

Im not a Monk but most people say Destroyers are the best MNK weapon and you can get them easy. Now If Destroyers were Ridill and only dropped off Fafnir I bet you would say if they let it drop in a bc that would destroy the game. I dont really care about drops but everyone should have a CHANCE at getting one. This game shouldnt be about if you can claim it should be about if you can kill. Everyone has a chance for full Homam but I dont see that many people with 5/5.

[Thaesus]

Tiamat is only "easier" to claim because it doesn't pop for several real life days...whereas Fafnir pops everyday...

Normally its a mad rush to go to Tiamat after it pops on my server...I hear its worse on some servers where people actually leave holding parties there.

If there was some sort of good gear introduced on newer NMs with same window as Fafnir..it wouldn't make the claim system as bad since instead of 150 ppl in aery and Fafnir disappearing on you while yoru fighting him cause everyone is standing on its paws..you might see 2-3 LS at fafnir for 50ish people...and another 50 at a 2nd NM that also has good drops..and another 50 at a 3rd NM that has good drops..
When it comes to getting best end game gear its Fafnir/Nidhogg or bust largely and that is kind of sad :/ Forutnately gear they drop is by no means necessary for the more challenging fights in the game, but still it is very nice to gear your LS up ...and sometimes gear usually takes priority over enjoyment for most HNMLS...

On Migard, we sometimes had 3 whole Linkhshells camping Tiamat.

By the way, Tiamat is a 3-5 day pop, with 1/2hr windows like every other HNM. So if it hadn't popped by day 4.75, we would sometimes go and camp as a LS. It's horrible that I actually had to delete elementals, arch corses, antlions, etc in order to mash for Tiamat.

[loial]

If you think about it, SE must have done something right regarding the balance between Fafnir and Tiamat. Afterall, Tiamat is much easier to claim than Fafnir.

Funny that the "battle is won" simply by claiming the mob rather than having there be a challenge to it. I think that is what Sidanoir is getting at.

Sid needs to save his breath though. Most people that will argue with him have only played FFXI and don't realize that FFXI is seriously flawed when it comes to NMs versus other games out there.

Venture to many other MMOs, and end-game "NMs" do not have "windows" or pop times. It becomes a matter of which clan/guild/LS can gather their forces together the fastest and actually defeat it. Even better, no veteran end-game clan/guild/LS will touch 3 year old content. They leave it to the "up and coming players" to get their feet wet on how to handle end-game mobs. The veterans go out and take down the new stuff, instead of sitting in DA for 3 hours a day since not much new content compares.

But that would require gear progression. And that would require SE to remove their heads from their asses. However, their past performance does not lend one to believe anything will change.

[sleekmotorwurkz]

You do have an equal opportunity of getting items. The chance of anyone getting a ridill on your server equals how many hours you camp in DA divided by the average number of people in DA multiplied by the drop rate of ridill. That's the same number for everyone.

Gross oversimplification.

My hnm shell has been around for over a year, and just claimed and killed its first king wednesday. The botters sometimes let you get a faffy or 2, maybe a behemoth or adamantoise here or there. But the same one or two linkshells get EVERY SINGLE king pop. So saying everyone has a fair chance of any hnm item is either naive or assuming that everyone bots, which isnt the case. Maybe a few people in my shell bot, idunno, but if they do they arent very good at it.

[DrObvious]

So what would happen? There is not really a limited number of X Ridills entering the server per day now; rather pretty much everyone who wants a Ridill will get it after a certain period of time. For example, if the drop rate was 1%, and the instanced fight took roughly eight hours to set up and complete, you'd get people doing the instanced fight 1-2 times a day. Whip out your probability textbook and you'll see that in about two months, EVERYONE on the server suddenly has a ridill. That's the glory of instanced stuff.

If they're so concerned with too many people getting it then add a lockout timer.

So when SE first released the instanced fight, everyone was so happy and jumping for joy and like "Hoorah! SE finally did something right!" Then two months later, Ridill is meaningless cause everyone has it? This is your idea of an MMORPG utopia?

This is a stupid sentiment. More people having your gear doesn't suddenly make it not worth using or determine its worth. Every blm has elemental staves, every rdm has errant/mahatma. There are lots of retards with ridills.

If you really, really need to make ridill "special" for the loot whores add a 1% chance where instead of ridill you get ridill +1 that has 1 more damage and a white border. Problem solved.