Standard letters to SE

[spooky]

I brought this up here: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=23566&start=240
But I though I’d make a new topic for an idea I had.

The community as a whole is unhappy with many aspects of the game, and seemingly most of the time our opinions go unnoticed by SE. As Bercus pointed out, and has been said many times before, the best way to get things changed is to use the Suggestion Box on the POL website.
If we could agree on a set of “Standard letters” to send to SE, we could encourage everyone here to copy/paste mass suggestions to SE and maybe they might actually start listening to us. Perhaps Elmer could do some JP translations for anyone that a legit JP copy of the game too.
As has been done in the viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24260 thread, we can get everyone to put forward their ideas, and then the community as a whole try’s to pick out what common ideas should go into a letter to SE. A mod can then sticky this or put it on the Wiki for the mass spammage to begin.
Maybe we would actually start seeing some results from SE.

Letters I’d like to see:
Job adjustments
AV
Einherjar
Dynamis
Kings
Merit EXP camps

[donnie]

I am not sure but i remember the size of the letter is limited to a number of words in POL site. so if you want to make a standard letter to any of the above we need to know whats the max and how we can make the best of it to explain the situations.

[kuronosan]

Einherjar is being handled and executed poorly. On average, a linkshell that participates in this event can participate a maximum of twice a week. There are 9 chambers, not including Valgrind, that every member must clear in order to participate in Valgrind itself. In Dynamis, the same can be held true for the cities and Outlands Access. However, in Dynamis, the key items do not vanish upon entry to Dynamis-Xarcabard nor are you penalized for not beating the Dynamis Lord. In Limbus, you receive chip drops at the end and everyone can participate in the battle against Omega/Ultima regardless of attendance. The chips are lost whether you win or not but are easily farmable without maximum participation.

Upon entry to Valgrind, you lose all nine feathers whether you win or not. This means that the time spent getting maximum participation (which under optimal conditions takes a minimum of 3 weeks) is lost just by entering Valgrind itself. In Nyzul Isle, you can enter any floor so long as your runic disc has access and you haven't erased it by completing Floor 100. Why can we not do the same with Einherjar? What if Einherjar access is based on the person who trades the glowing lamp, and upon completion of Valgrind they lose all feathers instead? This way every linkshell member can farm any chamber so that one person missing a run does not mean everyone has to repeat the same chamber 1-2 times to secure the win for everyone.

Speaking of which, Einherjar's monster selection is far too random. When a group of 36 people has a run where 36 enemies spawn but another group of 36 has 12 enemies spawn, it creates too much randomness to consider fair-game. Not to mention that 30 minutes is all you have to clear a room that could potentially give you 20 minutes to fight the boss or 5 minutes to fight it. How about making the spawn system create a time limit scaled according to the number of monsters that spawn? You wouldn't have to change the difficulty of the enemies because they the difficulty is not the problem when clearing the chamber. Make it so that time extensions (even if it's just 5 minutes) become available after certain conditions are met (such as killing the special monsters that spawn) or you clear certain waves of mobs (example: if you kill all triple bats in a room, you get a 5 minute extension).

Recap:

1) Fix the key item system so that it doesn't require maximum participation twice a week just to fight Odin once a month and lose 3 weeks of progress on a totally random system with minimal chance at rewards.

2) Fix spawn conditions so that linkshells aren't presented with totally random odds of winning. The random system of Nyzul and Einherjar are great but Einherjar is a little TOO random considering the rewards seldom pay for the glowing lamp. Dynamis, Nyzul Isle, and Limbus are all more rewarding and profitable and worth the time invested. Einherjar is not.

[bercus]

Hmmm....
I would just do one by one thing.

Job adjustments(JA)
AV
Einherjar
Dynamis
Kings
Merit EXP camps

We don´t know what they have in progress for JA.
AV should get talked about at the Fan Festival. So don´t bother with that till then.

I would stress at the Fan Festival Kings and Einherjar!!! Both we want to do because of the Abjurations(usually)
(if they suck or not doesn´t matter).

Merit EXP camps. We will probably get a lot more camps with the Expansion, don´t you guys think so?
Wouldn´t bother with that too till then. This leaves Dynamis. And for Dynamis I will get responds soon.
So I would not bother with Dynamis for now too.

So yeah. Go for Kings and Einherjar. The Einherjar thingy kuronosan wrote doesn´t sound so bad already.
For Kings we have had several ideas already. The demand is just so high because of the low drop rates
and more and more Linkshells going to DA,VoS and BD and botting the shit out of their PC.

So there has to be done something after 2 years complaining. Seriously some people need to stress that at the Fan Festival.
Players can probably do more in that case then Interviews.

[spooky]

Thanks for the feed back Bercus^^
I actually did mean 1 letter per item lol, I'll change the wording.
I'll definetly get people to try and focus on Kings and Einherjar first though. Even if AV does get talked about at the Fan Festival they will probably give very little information or just tart going on about Regen again...
Personally I really don’t see why they feel the need for the community to fumble around in the dark for years on end, trying to work things out and making 0 progress; contrary to what they might think, it isn’t fun, it’s tedious and frustrating. I’m not crying and saying I want everything handed to me on a plate, but when people have been trying for a year or two and getting no where - to the point where people don’t really even bother discussing it anymore. I think things have gone too far.
Sure some mystery is good, but if you let things go too far it just creates massive frustration in the community and people give up, I’m certain they didn’t intend for that.

[Sonomaa]

we have a representative on the forums now we can directly make posts to, I am in direct contact with them as well, if you have something youd like addressed, Ill see if we can simply push it through that avenue

[SephYuyX]

Where is the suggestion box on POL anyway? Ive never been able to find it, and id like to submit the idea of having an NPC take 8 elemental staffs and make two out of them, and the same deal with 8 obis/gorgets into 1 item. I dont think thats ever been presented to them, and I think it's a fair enough thing to do.

[Septimus]

we have a representative on the forums now we can directly make posts to, I am in direct contact with them as well, if you have something youd like addressed, Ill see if we can simply push it through that avenue

Ask him what my Adventuring Fellows are doing while I am in ToAU areas. Zoldof and Zayag must be very bored without me.

[donnie]

ok then i will repeat what i have said about einherjar :

Einherjar as an event is amazing and alot of fun , but the system behind it really draw it back to be a frustrating event , even the poeple that killed Odin are frustrated to have to start from scratch.

now i will just go directly to the suggestions :

1- the monsters inside are really unbalanced , they are not weighting monsters at all , having 7x bats for a group , while other group gets 12x bones 12x jelly 12x bombs is totally not fair , they should categorize them and mix them together . for example (IT , IT , boss ) ( tough , tough , tough , boss) (easy , easy , tough, tough , boss).

2- the loot from treasure makes it a total loss , every single other event has compensation and and some kind of reward , now for einherjar what reward is it if u have 1% rate of Abjuration , and for money items you get cerb meat x1 ... really what are they thinking , we are doing Einherjar from the begining and only 1 ABJ dropped , i know some other LSs have gotten 0 ABJ of what so ever . cant they make ABJ categorized too? , i mean poeple can do genbu every 3hrs if they wish and he will most likely drop what they want . why not make sky ABJs drop 100% since its 2 days a week event , and leave kings rare. add some KS30-like loots to the pools to give the feeling of some reward , not the 15,000 items that 99% of it sucks really bad.

3- again with the loot , how come Nleg drop from T1 wings and T2 at the same time? they literally just randomly build it soo fast without thinking , everything about Einherjar is sooooooo random , poeple should expect some kind of drops each wing , for example wing 1 hands & feet , wing II legs and head , wing III the new ABJ bodies and rarely some king ABJ body , and odin drops 1x helm or body , 1x sword or polarm , 1x 100% chance of king ABJ ( 0% chance of new body ABJs), no need for more loots.

4- in Odin chamber , why cant the valkyries drop feathers , 2-3 feathers in 1 odin fight , makes it rewarding enough to keep poeple motivated.

5- as everyone else keep saying , feathers should be lost once you win odin , not once you enter his chamber , getting to him is enough work to have this privilage.

6- i dont want time extension , kinda kills the fun of einherjar , maybe add time extension if they cannot have a good balance of monsters , then they can give extension depending on how many spawns your getting.

7- the +5min extension should not be from the time opening the box , but should be from the time you kill the last monster in Einherjar ( aka the boss) , cause we have timed out 1time looking for the chest which is pretty sad.

8- clock should start clicking once the first person enter the chamber , not once you trade the lamp , we always lose 2-3min just trading lamps and going in.

9- random mob can be chosed rather then spawn randomly , have diffrent color of chests that spawns mid-einherjar which each of them spawn a monster ( others vanish upon choosing) , and you can choose wither u want temp items , weaken monsters , reset 2hrs+full recover or add (treasure hunter) to the loot. ( think limbus)

10 - have the option to use the points u accumulated from Einherjar to get feathers from the NPC if you cleared that chamber before , have a max of 1x feather with 3000 cost every tally. this makes the poeple that miss 1 chamber can still follow the team .

i can list even more flaws in Einherjar , but i think if they do 50% of what i said , is enough to make it worthwhile.

P.S: not an english speaker sadly , so someone might need to re-write for others to understand lol.

[spooky]

Where is the suggestion box on POL anyway? Ive never been able to find it, and id like to submit the idea of having an NPC take 8 elemental staffs and make two out of them, and the same deal with 8 obis/gorgets into 1 item. I dont think thats ever been presented to them, and I think it's a fair enough thing to do.

This is probably part of the problem, they've said many times in interviews, via GMs, etc, to use the Suggestions box; I have, and it really isn't that easy to find. It could certainly do with being MUCH easier to get to and simpler to use. Perhaps a “remember me” option that used encrypted cookies? w/e
The point is, it almost seems to me like they deliberately put it out of the way so people wouldn't post loads of suggestions all the time.

[spooky]

we have a representative on the forums now we can directly make posts to, I am in direct contact with them as well, if you have something youd like addressed, Ill see if we can simply push it through that avenue

Wow that’s really great that we actually have an official person from SE looking at the well thought out ideas coming from your forum.
Would it be useful for someone(s) to gather up the bulk of the good suggestions from a few of the recent threads and post them here?
It’s certainly worth pushing ideas through that channel, but I do feel the Suggestions box on the POL website is a resource we could be making better use of thought a more organised effort.
I’m sure a lot of the sporadic ideas people have posted over the years have gone unnoticed simply because they get drowned out by the more common things being said over and over.
I remember one thing I suggested a while back was about the BLM JS boots item; which comes from a fished-up NM on the mana-clipper. It has a horrid drop-rate, no one camps it, and requires and reasonably large number of people to beat, also the item is/has never been sold on ALL servers. This surely is not how things were intended?
I only actually want it in the hopes of being able to store the set to free up some inventory space when I play other jobs…
A few solutions I suggested were, increase the drop rate, or ideals add it to ISNM and/or ENM.

[6souls]

Where is the suggestion box on POL anyway? Ive never been able to find it, and id like to submit the idea of having an NPC take 8 elemental staffs and make two out of them, and the same deal with 8 obis/gorgets into 1 item. I dont think thats ever been presented to them, and I think it's a fair enough thing to do.

This is probably part of the problem, they've said many times in interviews, via GMs, etc, to use the Suggestions box; I have, and it really isn't that easy to find. It could certainly do with being MUCH easier to get to and simpler to use. Perhaps a “remember me” option that used encrypted cookies? w/e
The point is, it almost seems to me like they deliberately put it out of the way so people wouldn't post loads of suggestions all the time.

https://secure.playonline.com/supportus/exmf.html

its not easy to find, you have to dig through a few sections to get here. this page also has the bug reports option and submission forum for the s.t.f.u. team. i keep it bookmarked, i suggest ya'll do the same.

[Sagacious Sundi]

we have a representative on the forums now we can directly make posts to, I am in direct contact with them as well, if you have something youd like addressed, Ill see if we can simply push it through that avenue

Ask him what my Adventuring Fellows are doing while I am in ToAU areas. Zoldof and Zayag must be very bored without me.

They're cheating on you.

[Ryogo]

We should be telling SE what is wrong with the game, but if players keep telling them how to change the game they will keep ignoring us.

Worst example is that horrible interview where the guy asks if we can fight Mickey Mouse in a Battlefield (Like in Kingdom Hearts). This is why I hope at the Fan Festival people ask questions that are questions, not dead-end complaints or development ideas.

[spooky]

We should be telling SE what is wrong with the game, but if players keep telling them how to change the game they will keep ignoring us.
Worst example is that horrible interview where the guy asks if we can fight Mickey Mouse in a Battlefield (Like in Kingdom Hearts). This is why I hope at the Fan Festival people ask questions that are questions, not dead-end complaints or development ideas.

I disagree with this; the players know what they want because they spend a crazy amount of time actually playing the game. Go figure.
As such they are in the best position to make suggestions. I doubt very much that the people at the top who make the decisions play that much if at all.
Obviously some suggestions, like the Mickey Mouse (are you fucking serious? LOL), are completely retarded and such people should be killed, slowly; but on the whole there are a lot of very good ideas coming from the community which are extremely well thought out.
I think it would be pretty tedious if people did nothing but complain, offering creative, imaginative solutions is what helps to keep the hope that things will get better alive.

[NynJa]

When a group of 36 people has a run where 36 enemies spawn but another group of 36 has 12 enemies spawn, it creates too much randomness to consider fair-game. Not to mention that 30 minutes is all you have to clear a room that could potentially give you 20 minutes to fight the boss or 5 minutes to fight it.

The problem isnt the mobs that spawn, its the fucked up scaling.

15 ppl can enter and get 12+12+boss mobs
36 ppl can enter and get 6 jnun + a boss

[Stromgarde]

The problem there might lie the fact that the mobs are generated at moment of trading the lamp - The only time I've seen different is when a wave of ghosts popped in the middle of pulling the boss on a T2 run.