Campaign discussion

[yayajax]

All the time I thought only Bastok in Midgard is in bad situation until I read up a few posts here.
It seems like in many servers the Orcs are weak from almost zero morale and prosperity.
The Qudavs and Yags are equally strong in Midgard, in some areas near nation like Gusta and Saru can be easily duo the entire force by two or three PCs. Except the situation with multiple Shadow Raids, which what took Bastok down to the worst nation of the week, besides the Orcs.

The Quadavs are really tough to handle, with high defence and Diamond/Harden Shell, with RDM, BRD, BLU fail to Dispel most of the time on my server from both NA and JP players, sadly... that extend their life lasting on battlefield. Plus that AOE move usually be seen from NMs in Dynamis does instantly 1300+ damage and Gravity.

Now change topic to NPCs, Sandy does have an elite force with good positioning solid PLDs, Royal Archers, and DRGs appear frequently on the battlefield. Windy's force is about as cool as their jobs can do, espcially the BSTs, BSTs call out pets to fight for them and double the population. Besides, I never know worms can be such powerful creatures in terms of killing birds. Now back to Bastok, other than xbow spamming WARs and SCH forces, I have only seen those Gun Red Mages twice, they are powerful espeically the hero who spams Coronach every few seconds, but never show up anymore after we lost Crawler's Nest.

With the entire server hard work days and nights we are grinding down Rolen. Field in Zazarg's name. At first we had to deathpull every single mob and spent 5-10mins with 20-30 people to kill one. Up to now, some NPCs finally show up and with a lower Fortification the mobs seem to be easiler to kill.

[Lucavi]

Its good to see others having Quad proble- wait.

No, its not good. Fix it, SE.

[Kaylia]

I don't think that's what he means. /cmap lags so far behind when the music (and therefore Campaign) starts in a given zone that it's nearly useless. And most battles are so short now that even if you're standing on the teleport NPC, if you go as soon as you see that sword icon appear, it's almost over by the time you get out there. I have to rely on LS members camping zones to tell me when things start.

Yeah, was in a rush and misread his post.

[Priran]

Quadav are not overpowered, Bastok is retarded. The strength of a race is obviously tied to their morale and/or prosperity.

During the first week, the races were pretty equal in difficulty, but because comparatively fewer people give a damn about Bastok, the Quadav just got stronger. Windy and Sandy can keep their bitches in check, it's your own damn fault. Move to another country if you want, I really doubt SE is going to start giving Bastok handicaps.

[Kaylia]

Quadav are not overpowered, Bastok is retarded. The strength of a race is obviously tied to their morale and/or prosperity.

During the first week, the races were pretty equal in difficulty, but because comparatively fewer people give a damn about Bastok, the Quadav just got stronger. Windy and Sandy can keep their bitches in check, it's your own damn fault. Move to another country if you want, I really doubt SE is going to start giving Bastok handicaps.

They did for old conquest system, dont see why there wont be one.

[Priran]

Quadav are not overpowered, Bastok is retarded. The strength of a race is obviously tied to their morale and/or prosperity.

During the first week, the races were pretty equal in difficulty, but because comparatively fewer people give a damn about Bastok, the Quadav just got stronger. Windy and Sandy can keep their bitches in check, it's your own damn fault. Move to another country if you want, I really doubt SE is going to start giving Bastok handicaps.

They did for old conquest system, dont see why there wont be one.

What handicap? "Last place gets more CP than first place"? That's neither A nor B. It's not Bastok-specific and it's not a handicap.

[Lucavi]

Move to another country if you want

How Machiavellian of you! I guess Sandy needs more recruits.

[Aymee]

I find the discussion of Lastok's placement to be amusing. Be warned, this is a lot of complaining below, but I want to at least pretend like I have a fair argument.

On my server at least, Sandy and Windy are almost to 5 zones with progress in their 6ths. Bastok is barely holding on to 3 without any dent in the Beastmen bar in the other 3 zones to Jeuno. Quadav morale is by far highest and no matter how many successful attacks/defenses we can muster it doesn't seem to change one bit.

Mind you, Bastok is never really strong on my server in terms of anything, but the difference here is massive. Quadav seem far more annoying to kill and seem a lot stronger (def boots and diamond shell prevent dmg from 270 degrees? uhhuh. Yagudo unequip as their new TP move and orc counterstance doesn't actually make them harder to kill. These do), making campaign more of a chore than meleebashing fun. Conquest balance is mostly random every week based on who went out to exp the most from each nation. You exp based on zone preference, not because of region control. Campaign on the other hand is 100% voluntary and you can never 'accidentally' help shoo beastmen control. You choose to.

The problem in nation balance of power started here in what missions/quests each nation got. The windy and sandy quests have far far superior rewards than the bastok quests, which also take much longer to complete. If a random player was to choose one nation, they'd go to sandy for the gobbiebag items. If they were to pick two, the second would be windy, considering heavy JPN and taru obsession with windy. People aren't going to change their affiliation to a country with 20,000gil in total rewards unless they're an existing bastok fanatic. I know I know, people can change at any time, but most people didn't know how to do that in the first few days and/or are too lazy to... and now won't because it'll cost them notes/medals.

A rather fundamental problem with the world design is something that can never be fixed, sadly... No one likes to go to Pashhow or CN for anything whatsoever unless they absolutely have to. Just look at where any of the populated uncapped ballistas are... all Jugner. Maybe mountains. I've never seen a ballista in Pashhow, lol... people just hate the zone. There's zero reason to be there in the past (or present!) besides the random chance of a campaign battle. There's nothing worth farming and nothing to merit on. As for CN, eew. Same deal. It's just an old old zone that people have little option but to exp in at a lot of lower levels and hate for that reason--it's not exactly a tourist attraction. Random aggro in zones to Bastok being sound instead of sight also discourages visitors (sneak oil vs tonko powder, hmm...), and TP moves of the new mobs are substantially more annoying on that path. You get sound aggro going to windy and you get a raptor that will chomp you. You get it going to bastok and you either get encumbered into Salvage mode or treated to continuous cone AOE petra that makes the mob basically impossible for a melee to solo.

Furthermore, Garlaige and the necropolis have been hyped in past articles and the vana'diel history as famous battle sites (I assume this is why they got decent makeovers)--I had no idea CN was a bastok stronghold until cait sith dropped me off in RolanS. Adding a teleport TO the dungeon zones would make defending CN less of a pain (the walk from the teleport spot in rolanberry is hideous without a chocobo). Actually, walking to all the dungeons is annoying, let us teleport there please!

Lastly (even more minor) problem is that there's no solid circle path to take around CN to kite attacking beastmen in like there is in the other zones. Death is easier to come by in such a 1-way path environment, and that hardly makes people want to come to fight there for fun.


...This isn't to say there aren't annoyance issues with the sandy and windy paths and that they have everything perfect, or that any one of these issues with Bastok are absolutely killer, but add up a dozen little issues that people are barely aware of and it turns into a general hatred and disinterest.
Please don't flame me for the hell of it--seriously I wouldn't give a damn if Bastok was being attacked in markets itself 99% of the time, except that availability of Ops can depend on nation control. Having access to all of it would be nice.

[Kaylia]

What handicap? "Last place gets more CP than first place"? That's neither A nor B. It's not Bastok-specific and it's not a handicap.

Getting bonus cp, longer signet, being able to do expedition with 3. Those are all handicap, not that they are doing much nowaday, but they are still handicap.

No, it's not bastok specific, but Bastok is the country that has the lowest population on almost every server..so yeah, any handicap would help bastok a lot more than other nation.

[Kaslo]

Furthermore, Garlaige and the necropolis have been hyped in past articles and the vana'diel history as famous battle sites (I assume this is why they got decent makeovers)--I had no idea CN was a bastok stronghold until cait sith dropped me off in RolanS. Adding a teleport TO the dungeon zones would make defending CN less of a pain (the walk from the teleport spot in rolanberry is hideous without a chocobo). Actually, walking to all the dungeons is annoying, let us teleport there please!

Actually CN was/is a Windy Brewery

[Inoiown]

The problem in nation balance of power started here in what missions/quests each nation got. The windy and sandy quests have far far superior rewards than the bastok quests, which also take much longer to complete.

Windy quests have good rewards? Hooray for a 4k item and a useless furnishing.

[Daimen-G]

During the first week, the races were pretty equal in difficulty, but because comparatively fewer people give a damn about Bastok, the Quadav just got stronger. Windy and Sandy can keep their bitches in check, it's your own damn fault. Move to another country if you want, I really doubt SE is going to start giving Bastok handicaps.

[Lordwafik]

Quadav are not overpowered, Bastok is retarded. The strength of a race is obviously tied to their morale and/or prosperity.

During the first week, the races were pretty equal in difficulty, but because comparatively fewer people give a damn about Bastok, the Quadav just got stronger. Windy and Sandy can keep their bitches in check, it's your own damn fault. Move to another country if you want, I really doubt SE is going to start giving Bastok handicaps.

On asura.

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/7...ospericde9.jpg

Orcs are pissweak and Quadavs are retardedly strong. If what you said was true, they would be equal - but they are not, Quadav can be hit for 1-5 damage, have near 100% accuracy, and their WS's hit in the thousands. Something's very wrong.

I too thought it was linked somehow to prosperity, but the sliders haven't moved much at all this week.

[Casey_]

On ragnarok, the bastok npcs show most of the time, but that doesnt help the quadavs are just nearly impossible to fend off, both quadavs and bastok have full morale/prospertity. bastok is ever-so-slowly taking over grauberg, but pashhow and ngusta are doomed to be ass-hammered for a while >.>

edit:

most random quadavs hit like HNMs to me, 250-390 damage, while NM orcs melee me for oh I dunno.. 30-60?..

[Goon]

Orcs are pissweak and Quadavs are retardedly strong. If what you said was true, they would be equal - but they are not, Quadav can be hit for 1-5 damage, have near 100% accuracy, and their WS's hit in the thousands. Something's very wrong.

I too thought it was linked somehow to prosperity, but the sliders haven't moved much at all this week.

This man speaks the truth, Morale and Prosperity has nothing to do with the strengths of the Beastmen, or if it's supposed to, it's broken. On Sylph, the Orcs are down to nothing and Clan Longtooth still rapes everyone in the zone if there are no NPCs to back us up (High Evasion and Strength makes them a tough force to deal with). The Quadavs are just demi-gods in terms of Overall Strength, Evasion, Accuracy, and Defense.

And if for some reason Morale and Prosperity is supposed to be determine these factors, it would explain why the Bastok NPCs are damn near worthless. Earlier in the week, they were as low as the Orcs, and whenever they'd actually try to attack, they'd get slaughtered fast in the great campaign of Rolanberry fields (20-30 People and about 20 NPCs vs like 30-40 Quadavs... we lost horribly...).

[Aymee]

On ragnarok, the bastok npcs show most of the time, but that doesnt help the quadavs are just nearly impossible to fend off, both quadavs and bastok have full morale/prospertity. bastok is ever-so-slowly taking over grauberg, but pashhow and ngusta are doomed to be ass-hammered for a while >.>

This is exactly what's up on Garuda. We did get Grauberg but lost CN... Sandy and Windy are plowing all the way to Jeuno. Quadavs are the only beastmen with full morale and 3 full zones of 100% beastmen control. Bastok NPCs seem stupidly slow to arrive anywhere, but since I'm not on 24/7 I suppose this is some bad luck (like when NGust gets attacked 4 times in a row) though lowered prosperity likely means less reinforcements. 90% of the time it's just players trying to fend off the turtles in NGust ... I don't even go to Sara or Ronf anymore because the lag caused by the 2-3 full platoons of NPCs is overwhelming, lol. Not to mention that ensures there's zero dmg to those OPs even if no players are assisting.

The types of Bastok soldiers just really doesn't match up with the Quadav. Tarus have it good because their NPCs can freaking manaburn through anything. Sandy seems to send out a lot of PLDs with a ton of HP that soak up weaker hits from Orc MNKs on the front lines. They can cure themselves and buy time while players mop up. Bastok has like... what? WARs with freaking rapier-type swords vs the beastmen with an insane defense? A company of RDMs that spam enfeebles? NPCs that don't understand you have to stand in front of the turtle when it uses Diamondshell... *sigh*. That's kinda a major issue since it's rendering 3/4ths [assuming equal spread over all mobs over infinite time] of NPCs useless.
The only company of Bastok troops I've seen work well in the field is the Galka RNG (maybe THF since xbow?) group. Throw out /assist off one of them to see what they're lobbing bolts at and tank the turtle while they do the cool stuff RNGs are supposed to be doing... lobbing heaps of ammo at stuff from afar in groups. ...That and the RNGs are then out of range of the really painful AOE anythings.

I don't care what your server situation is, but you have to admit the NPCs not having AI to know how to handle Diamondshell is a grossly unfair handicap. We might as well not even have a NPC defense force. I appreciate that SE added a new TP move for all the beastmen groups, but this is a tad off.

For defense in Sandy/Windy zones I've been whining for 2 days now how stupid it is to only have 6 mobs attacking. I mean the battles last 30 seconds and aren't worth the notes you spent to teleport there and back. A group of turtles are still a challenge in that size group in NGust. Doesn't that strike people as strange? Lastly, if I'm hitting a normal campaign Quadav in melee with a GAX for less than I hit Kirin, something is very wrong.


On a lighter note...

Actually CN was/is a Windy Brewery

Hmm... wonder if I can trick them into giving me ancient currency for a stack of Rolanberry 864s I've had in storage... At least there's now proof that tarus are drunks besides just fat overeaters.

Edit: Why the hell was Bastok defaulted control of CN when Campaign started since tarus ran CN? ...And elves control of necropolis despite being played as a Bastok stronghold? ...And Garlaige for tarus despite being for elves? Someone in SE screwed that up... Technically it should be windy with the handicap because of CN and not bastok but the system is horribly off-tilt because they gave the wrong nations the wrong starting zones.

Windy quests have good rewards? Hooray for a 4k item and a useless furnishing.

Ok, you've got me there. I AH'd the junk for 40k and still got an RR earring and potential-to-be-cool medicine left over. Not to mention, the windy quests have some more classic taru characters! Thank god Shantotto isn't around, but knowing SE they'll cram her into this somehow.
If the King could lvl up on Aphmoo's toy in the present, I wonder what level he (it?) was during the war... Let's see. I've seen Aces out in Sara... let's assume they're lvl85. A King would be lower than that... but you'd have to think Aphmoo's playmate would be lvl80+ yet the King 1-shot him! Someone run the exp equations!

[Yutuyu]

I too have noticed the Quadav strength. And from the evidence given above it's obvious what the scenario is.

The Quadav are not retardedly strong because of max prosperity and morale. They have max prosperity and morale because they're retardedly strong.

[Lyramion]

btw dont knwo if it has been mentioned but if you change armies your alleid notes stay

[Lucavi]

Orcs are pissweak and Quadavs are retardedly strong. If what you said was true, they would be equal - but they are not, Quadav can be hit for 1-5 damage, have near 100% accuracy, and their WS's hit in the thousands. Something's very wrong.

I too thought it was linked somehow to prosperity, but the sliders haven't moved much at all this week.

I'm waiting for more comments/insults/jabs about how we're all wrong and Quads are no tougher than the other mobs. Yags hit pretty hard, but their abilities are fail -- the same weak mess we've always seen, and an item-snatching move which rarely targets the weapons. Meanwhile the quads are pumping out AOE gravity and knock back with 600-900 damage, hitting for 140-380, having thf mobs with retarded evasion, and having defense buffs which can nullify all damage for a good deal of time from 75% of their body radius.

Hell the moves aren't even the problem, its the absurd damage scaling -- theres no way my drg should be averaging 190 a hit on orcs, yet hitting for 25-100's on quads.

But I'm sure its just bastok's, and the people who support bastok's fault. It has no possibility whatsoever of having to do with an often-glitchy game that SE constantly winds up patching and adjusting -- absolutely no chance.

The Quadav are not retardedly strong because of max prosperity and morale. They have max prosperity and morale because they're retardedly strong.

Two internets for the gentleman up front, please! :D

[Builttolast]

I too have noticed the Quadav strength. And from the evidence given above it's obvious what the scenario is.

The Quadav are not retardedly strong because of max prosperity and morale. They have max prosperity and morale because they're retardedly strong.

Winnah!

Thought I'd post Ramuh's current situation, I tried to help in pashow by attacking the fortification but after the dancers showed up and took it to 130 the quadavs showed up and it was back to 150 in no time. All of this without a campaign battle, so theres no way to get rid of the quadav.

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/7...gnramuhwo0.jpg