Heated Endgame Discussion

[Matricide]

People dont want to do Salvage because its "boring"...they "stand around and do nothing for the first 45 minutes"...yet what are kings ?? AFKing for 1 to 7 periods of 28 minutes out of 30 minutes (I think I worded that wrong, but you should get the point). Its these hypocritical statements that seriously irk me.

Who's people? I don't do salvage and my linkshell RARELY camps kings. If you got your head out of your ass you'd see that I'm complaining about progression and how this game lacks it. If this was directed at someone else you can disregard this post.

Other points have already been argued against Salvage and I won't argue them again, and like I said before it's my opinion and it doesn't have to be shared.

[Kyreth]

Do it enough times, and the old indeed does become obselete. One layer doesn't do it. Two starts to. Three or four and you're seeing last year's useful gear becoming sale-to-vendor trash instead.

That's kind of the point though, they haven't even done it once in years. And just because they do it once, doesn't mean that something else with follow immediately after, especially with this game.

The reason why SE doesn't add any new groundbreaking content is because they think that making the old less useful is bad. Which has left a lot of people frustrated.

That's the problem with doing it even once. Do it once, and you guarantee people will foam at the mouth to do it again. And if it happens twice, you've just begun the process of severing your newer players from your older ones. So far, S-E's managed to end up expansions with some unique and useful items that work all the way up to the top. Zilart's got it's earrings. CoP has it's rings/obis. Who knows what ToAU gets at the end, but it's managed to pull a few god item -1's in there and the Salvage armor sets.

Every expansion has had things people want, things that will improve their character. What S-E hasn't done is put gear in that breaks the "best" current gear as useful items. And that's the line that IMHO shouldn't be broken.

[NynJa]

I don't do salvage

I stopped reading here...

[Matricide]

I don't do salvage

I stopped reading here...

sure ya did

[Lordender]

I think salvage is one of SE's worst idea's, it clearly shows on my server when maybe 4 linkshells total do it regularly. More linkshells gun for Tiamat when it pops than i see doing salvage. I can't speak for other servers but on mine salvage is very lolworthy.

[Amadeo]

Its a shame how poorly planned Salvage is, because the rewards are pretty sexy (coming from someone who has no interest in Aery).

Here's hoping they fix it, but they rarely fix anything so I won't be holding my breath.

Next update? SE nerf's Cell droprates.

[divisortheory]

Actually I think it's fairly well planned. As with most things in this game, it's introduced first, then they make adjustments later. Honestly, they only need to slightly improve cell drop rates in non-Bhaflau zones and it will be perfect. Bhaflau already is perfect. I still want Salvage drops to be extremely rare. Just imagine that E. Body drops like once a month. So if an Ares Cuirass is completed once a month, I think that's pretty reasonable.

[Xavier]

That's the problem with doing it even once. Do it once, and you guarantee people will foam at the mouth to do it again.

God forbid you make your playerbase happy.

And if it happens twice, you've just begun the process of severing your newer players from your older ones.

You've done nothing to explain how this would happen. Any argument you've made has been the extreme case, which nobody is arguing for. People aren't asking for gear thats 5 times better than current gear, just that when new gear is released its not -worse- than current gear.

I wouldn't care if the best gear the game ever got was Abj gear, so long as the Abj gear started to be distributed among more and more HNMs, instead of the original 3. Your case implies that people are going from 15 acc, 15 atk, 10 str, 10 dex to 30 atk, 30 acc, 20 str, 20 dex, when in fact all anybody really wants is for the new body piece not to be worse.

Every expansion has had things people want, things that will improve their character. What S-E hasn't done is put gear in that breaks the "best" current gear as useful items. And that's the line that IMHO shouldn't be broken.

If you imply that people are asking to break the old gear one more time I'm just going to put you on ignore. That isn't whats being said. Even divisory admitted its stupid to keep releasing new, harder HNMs that have worse and worse gear in comparison to the old ones. I don't care if you never have full progression so long as its not degression.

[Kyreth]

I think salvage is one of SE's worst idea's, it clearly shows on my server when maybe 4 linkshells total do it regularly. More linkshells gun for Tiamat when it pops than i see doing salvage.

Tiamat: Farmable, loot pool/process known, capable of being downed by a pack of RMT monkeys.

Salvage: Actually dangerous, loot pools/process not completely known, RMT's would be swallowed whole.

Yep, bad idea. Dangerous event, actual risk involved, can't Kclub it to death. Gotta be one of S-E's worst ideas ever.

If there's one thing I -did- pick up from EQ, it's the groups who headbutt their way through new content that get the rewards, and only then once other people see it's doable will the content be "good" as they then attempt it themselves by copying the trailblazers.

[Quicklet]

Actually I think it's fairly well planned. As with most things in this game, it's introduced first, then they make adjustments later. Honestly, they only need to slightly improve cell drop rates in non-Bhaflau zones and it will be perfect. Bhaflau already is perfect. I still want Salvage drops to be extremely rare. Just imagine that E. Body drops like once a month. So if an Ares Cuirass is completed once a month, I think that's pretty reasonable.

How long, on average, do you think it should take for someone to get a full set of armor from Salvage if they do it twice a week, assuming they are at the point where they have all the information/strategy required to do successful runs most of the time?

[divisortheory]

I look at it on a per shell basis, nto a per person basis. I'd say reasonable would be a shell completing 3-4 pieces a month. That's a realistic estimate. I'd certainly like to complete my entire set in a month if possible, but obviously ti's not going to happen, so setting my sights on something more realistic, I think 3-4 completed pieces a month is rare enough that it keeps people going for a long time, and common enough that you start seeing serverwide progress.

[Lordender]

Tiamat: Farmable, loot pool/process known, capable of being downed by a pack of RMT monkeys.

Salvage: Actually dangerous, loot pools/process not completely known, RMT's would be swallowed whole.

Yep, bad idea. Dangerous event, actual risk involved, can't Kclub it to death. Gotta be one of S-E's worst ideas ever.

It should really tell you something when you still see over 150 people camping a day 4-8 fafnir 2+ months after salvage is implemented. If salvage was meant to help fix the bottleneck of kings/sky it hasent happened and won't happen.

[divisortheory]

If salvage was meant to help fix the bottleneck of kings/sky it hasent happened and won't happen.

Just saved this one to my biological hard drive so I can use it against you in a few months.

[Xavier]

I think a lot of it has to do with instant gratification vs. working towards something. Even though most people know that they likely won't claim, the knowledge that if they do claim, an abj is going to 100% drop, and that its going to be really good, somehow overpowers logic.

[divisortheory]

I think a lot of it has to do with instant gratification vs. working towards something. Even though most people know that they likely won't claim, the knowledge that if they do claim, an abj is going to 100% drop, and that its going to be really good, somehow overpowers logic.

We're making progress (pun not intended). We finally agree.

[Lordender]

If salvage was meant to help fix the bottleneck of kings/sky it hasent happened and won't happen.

Just saved this one to my biological hard drive so I can use it against you in a few months.

I really hope you do, I don't have a problem admitting i'm wrong if a huge tweak goes into salvage and magically clears out sky+king camps but i'm realistic, I don't see it happening.

[Quicklet]

I look at it on a per shell basis, nto a per person basis. I'd say reasonable would be a shell completing 3-4 pieces a month. That's a realistic estimate. I'd certainly like to complete my entire set in a month if possible, but obviously ti's not going to happen, so setting my sights on something more realistic, I think 3-4 completed pieces a month is rare enough that it keeps people going for a long time, and common enough that you start seeing serverwide progress.

Hmm... that's a decent rate, maybe a little lower than I was thinking, but I kinda feel like alliance-sized zones should have their designs done with 18 people in mind. 3-4 completed pieces a month might be satisfactory if you're doing it with 12 or less people, for a full alliance it could be pretty annoying.

Ideally, I feel like the best situation would be to have a mix of endgame involving old sky-like returns (so you get back pretty much however much you want to put into it), old king HNM abj rates (1-2 per week of superior gear, but through instanced content instead of forced claims), and Limbus style of multiple tiers of loot (currency trade-ins, drop trade-ins, and boss drops).

Assuming they augment Salvage with other ToAU endgame content to keep people interested, I guess 3-4 completed pieces a month wouldn't be so bad just from Salvage. A trade-in currency system for those runs where you get unlucky / don't do well would have been a nice idea (I'm not a huge fan of all-or-nothing loot schemes), but it's still a step up from CoP Dynamis for sure.

[Orph]

Ridill doesnt drop in salvage, bottleneck wont be fixed.

[Xavier]

If salvage was meant to help fix the bottleneck of kings/sky it hasent happened and won't happen.

Just saved this one to my biological hard drive so I can use it against you in a few months.

I think the problem is that they'll never be fully cleared out because of how they work though. You are just never going to see Fafnir / Nidhogg sitting up unclaimed, because even if everyone rushes to Salvage, there will always be a linkshell that goes for the easy drop.

[NynJa]

Tiamat: Farmable, loot pool/process known, capable of being downed by a pack of RMT monkeys.

Salvage: Actually dangerous, loot pools/process not completely known, RMT's would be swallowed whole.

Yep, bad idea. Dangerous event, actual risk involved, can't Kclub it to death. Gotta be one of S-E's worst ideas ever.

It should really tell you something when you still see over 150 people camping a day 4-8 fafnir 2+ months after salvage is implemented. If salvage was meant to help fix the bottleneck of kings/sky it hasent happened and won't happen.

Would have a lot more answers right now, but a fuckload of the FF community is too lazy to bother finding out shit on their own.


As you said:

I think salvage is one of SE's worst idea's, it clearly shows on my server when maybe 4 linkshells total do it regularly.

IF MORE THAN "maybe 4" LINKSHELLS PER SERVER DID SALVAGE REGULARLY THERE MIGHT BE MORE PROGRESS IN REGARDS TO WHERE SOME OF THE UNKNOWN ITEMS DROP INSTEAD OF SITTING BACK FOR THREE MONTHS AND LETTING OTHERS DO THE WORK

Hmm... that's a decent rate, maybe a little lower than I was thinking, but I kinda feel like alliance-sized zones should have their designs done with 18 people in mind.

For the record, I find going with around 12 is MUCH better than going with 18.

12 people at 70-90% is much more efficient than 18 people at 30-70%.