Campaign discussion

[Septimus]

Windurst on bahamut made one last ditch effort to reclaim west saru[S] on Saturday. We did overrun the beastmen, and it looked like we had our own World War II. Unfortunately, the lowest we got the forti was 217/250. Not enough to reclaim it. Windy is back to being bullied by the beastmen for another week. That makes 3 weeks in a row. The Combat Salvamixers will likely never be casting high lvl support spells again lol. Meanwhile, Sandy and Bastok have overpowered NPCs ;;. It's real tough trying to take back forti in the same region as the nation. And what makes it so bad is, when there is finally a recession, we cant just go out and beat on the forti in west saru[S]. A battle has a to be started by the server first -.-.

Bastok's NPCs are not overpowered. Come on out and visit North Gustaberg [S]'s Sod-o-palloza- even if we make a little headway against the Quadavs, they will just send 4 waves in the next campaign (they love to send multiple waves simultaneously) then repeat the waves and it will all be lost.

So anyway campaign fucking sucks ass, and they need to change it back to like it was before it fucking sucked ass.

Oh, and this part is for only for Bastokans on Bahamut, everyone else may disregard. FUCKING STOP PICKING "PREEMPTIVE STRIKES" YOU FUCKING MORONS! EVER SINCE THAT BECAME POPULAR WE STARTED LOSING ZONES CONSISTENTLY EVEN BEFORE THIS UPDATE OF UTTER FAIL!

[Gwynplaine]

I don't think that Bastok NPC's are under or over powered per-say (although Adelheid is offensively weak-sauce). However some are terribly matched to for their zones beastmen counterpart. North Gustaberg for example; the BLM squad, versus Invincible Sheild and his wimpy ranged attackers are a terrible match. Invincible Sheild has moronic A.I., he randomly just switches to whatever thing nearby he feels like, and his AoE ws gets him even more nearby aggro. So ultimately he always winds up with several BLM mobs focused on him, and he succumbs quickly by doing this.

Back to Adelheid, she has decent defense vs the WHM unit (she can pretty much solo Crimsonarmor with just a little support) with healing spells and debuffs. Her tubes are pretty pointless though except silencing. Bind hardly matters since she doesn't move away from mobs anyway, and Paralyze doesn't matter since they're WHM with MND off the charts so para from her lame gizmo doesn't proc.

Another thing, I'm not too keen on the discrepancy between allied and beastmen physician units. Allied NPC's have to rest for MP, and are limited to strictly single target whm buffs. Beastmen on the other hand, have physicians which can aoe any number of buffs, don't need to rest for MP, and can use annoying aoe amnesia and silence. Maybe this is still balanced considering the players (SCH and such), it just seems a tad overboard.

[Kkel]

The difference between the Beastman Medics and the Allied Medics is probably linked to the affluence of the Army itself. Since the Beastman Horde has been running willy-nilly all over the entire world (at least on Fairy), they're at a really high research/technology level which could provide a direct influence over the spells available to the Medic Corps. Same in reverse for the Allied Army, which just can't seem to make any headway and are struggling on all fronts.

[Alarial]

I believe it has nothing to do with AN.

I have 76770AN and I'm on my Holy knight Emblem. I've never been ranked down and never had to do more than 2 evaluation. I might campaign 3 days out of the 5 per week, getting 650-1380xp per battle on said days. And sometimes that will not be enough and I will have to wait another week. AN is gonna be about half the exp you get. If it rank ups were about AN, I shouldn't be off of the Star ranking lol.

Oh, thanks, that helps a lot I'll just aim for like 2k exp every 5 days and call it good lol. ty ty

[terranova]

Bastok's NPCs are not overpowered. Come on out and visit North Gustaberg [S]'s Sod-o-palloza- even if we make a little headway against the Quadavs, they will just send 4 waves in the next campaign (they love to send multiple waves simultaneously) then repeat the waves and it will all be lost.

So anyway campaign fucking sucks ass, and they need to change it back to like it was before it fucking sucked ass.

I saw the map yesterday. Wow @ North Gustaberg, and I did check it out last night for the first time. Windy doesn't get that many waves at one time o_o. By overpowered, I meant by comparison. As said before, our "field medics" are really weak and the powerful ones that pop, will spawn over in the MH area and the little area across it(the Libran Casters) casting IV buffs D:. All our healing power comes from players lol. Bastok has the luxury of having strong support NPCs.

[Max™]

I thought Bastok had the luxury of Striking Bull, Maximilian, Invincible Shield, Elvira, and them doing a lot of War JA shit, mighty strikes + stupid double attack rates + ridiculous base stats/weapon damage = lol5000 Dmg rampage/vorpal/mistrals.

[Kkel]

Elvira is pretty badass, but i've seen her get torn up pretty badly when melee mobs, like Shadowfang and Shadowhorn, get to work on her.

San d'Oria will never fall, it's so defensively powerful. The Orcs only really have one casting unit, not counting Shadowhand, and it never attacks the city, just Batillia Downs. Nearly all our Generals use Invincible. Valaineral always tanks like 10 mobs at a time because of his 1500+ AoE Uriel Blades and i've never seen Cerane defeated. Hell, i've never seen her below 90%, she's indestructible even without Invincible.

Leonoyne and Yrvaulair typically take the worst beatings but at least Leonoyne hits like a truck. Fortunately his unit deploys right in the center of Victory Square so he's healed pretty often by PCs.

We're kind of lacking the offensive power to retake a lot of zones though.

As a side note, it kind of annoys me that i can't recommend Mieuseloir B Enchelles when i talk to Palardaifault about the San d'Orian Generals. That guy and his Crimson Wolves have made some clutch sweeps through San d'Oria recently.

[Kyreth]

San d'Oria is indeed the military gawds of Campaign- and it didn't hurt that Jugner is such a popular fighting spot when it's Allied-held.

Having tons of Paladins and Warriors makes a big difference. Windurstian forces can dish it out but can't take it, Bastokian forces generally can't dish it out (loldancersquad) but at least have more Warrior units that can soak up some punishment.

Units need to be mixed up a bit- rather than sending single support units out to get crushed, bringing them in together instead. Y'know, like us adventurer types- some Mithra to help tank a bit for Tarutaru BLM units, or Galka to cover the dancers- instead of all members of the same unit being the same type when they're spawned in a zone.

[Gwynplaine]

I would like to just plug the intel NPC's for a moment. If intel level is high for your nation they work really, really well. Just ask them about "current intel" and they will flat out tell you where the upcoming campaign battles will take place, beforehand. So you won't wind up eyeballing the map and arriving halfway through or right at the end.

[Hellfury]

Bastok[S] just fell on Remora,
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...713_170312.png

Everything seems to be normal in the city, NPCs are there as far as I can see, but the campaign status NPC is moved, not sure exactly where yet. running around looiking. . For some reason the "Tallying campaign results." message is being spammed


added:

We now have Cordell, C.A. at H-8 in Bastok Markets[S], next to the Goldsmithing guild

[Hellfury]

added:

We now have Cordell, C.A. at H-8 in Bastok Markets[S], next to the Goldsmithing guild


[Unintentional double, delete please ><]

[Gwynplaine]

It was bound to happen on some server eventually the way campaign is now. Would you be able to check the Ops npc and see if there's any different missions available? (Also maybe take a pic of C.A. for wiki-ness)

[terranova]

Getting Bastok back is going to be interesting no doubt. Damn did nobody even bother with the whole southwestern side of the map during the week? =o

Windy is still in hell on bahamut - that makes 4 weeks in a row, but so is Bastok! They lost N.Gustaberg. It should be easy for them to get it back. As for windurst, I'm convinced west saru will be beastmen owned forever. Battles rarely oocur there if ever .

[Dobrav]

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o...713_175206.jpg

Just happened on Hades lol

[Varg]

I logged on about 50 minutes before the tally and Windurst had a sizeable lead in Waters on Hades...I logged out to do other things and I came back to find it taken. The Yagudo must have done some major pushing to regain control in less than an hour...

[Aymee]

Getting Bastok back is going to be interesting no doubt. Damn did nobody even bother with the whole southwestern side of the map during the week? =o

Windy is still in hell on bahamut - that makes 4 weeks in a row, but so is Bastok! They lost N.Gustaberg. It should be easy for them to get it back.

...lol?
After 4 weeks now of Bastok under attack on Garuda, and really rather epic efforts from people to try to take back any of other zones, "easy" is not quite the correct word. In fact, I sincerely doubt there's a single person who'd argue that any zone is east to reclaim. There's a reason why basically everyone is now stuck playing defense at home. You've been lucky if you haven't had to face it yet, but you have now been warned that it's stupidly hard to reclaim anything ...and especially NGust since people freaking hate Venomtail's crew.

I mean people camp Gust and Grauberg between fights just to not deal with OPing back, people (very literally) lining up to do Slaughterhouse, and after such absurdity as watching 75 people wail on the Grauberg OP for a half hour last night and it having made zero difference (Fortifications went from 130 > 108 during the fight, but were back to 140/150 within 5 minutes after)... I give up.

There are so many damn bugs and balance issues regarding Campaign now that I don't even know why I still bother with it.

[Max™]

Awesome, we lost the war after all.

Got a feeling Carby held Bastok.

[Myriads]

I spent several evenings trying to help take back N. Gusta on Phoenix with many others. We even managed to get the Bastok bar up to 10% for about 2 days. Only to see it vanish in one fight where a half dozen waves swamped the zone.

Too many of the players are bottled up in Bastok, unable to port out when fights begin, because of fights there.

Reduce the tower, and an hour later it's rebuilt. Yes, I know, stop the repair crews. But you need a team of RDM, and spike damage dealers on 24/7 to catch them with the sack the quarterback trick. Miss a few and your work is gone. And it seems impossible to coordinate teams across the clock.

So people give up trying. EXP is pretty good with the attacks on N. Gusta, I average 2200 to 3K per round. BUT Getting your face handed to you over and over and over simply is not fun. So people are stopping thier playing.

Holding Bastok it's self has not been an issue on Phoenix. People have gotten good at that, especially leading the bosses into nests of NPC's by the mog houses. Shadowhand gets HIS face eaten by those.

But I don't see Bastok taking anything for a good bit.

And once you do get a zone, holding it can be a horror. I've seen Sandy in East Ron, get some massive pastings. The Kaiser Behomoth, the Warmachine, the Lobisons, and a few orc armies all at once. On one fight the bar dropped by like 20% for sandy. How do you deal with that?

The mechanism for building city control in a zone is so darn hard to move for us.

Here is a question. If you go to a zone and kill Beastmen (al an exp party) who just live there (like say the quads in Graubuerg) does that change the Beastmen forces control in the area? Hurt them somehow? If so then sending out teams to beat the snot out of the mobs that live in an area is the thing to do to weaken the forces.

I think Campaign is fun. Sometimes the fights feel trully epic. I was amazingly pleased when I was able to kill Alpha Gnole Anders by emptying My MP via BLU magic on him. I felt like I pulled off a great thing. But it also feels so pointless now. Like we can't make progress. And I worry that more people will just give up on it.

Myriads

[Gwynplaine]

Yes, I know, stop the repair crews. But you need a team of RDM, and spike damage dealers on 24/7 to catch them with the sack the quarterback trick. Miss a few and your work is gone. And it seems impossible to coordinate teams across the clock.

This is tricky and obviously not possible 24/7. I've only seen an entire recon unit retreat once from North Gust. They somehow managed to keep away all 6 and kill them off. If you can recognize the units name and go toward them while they're incoming someone can hold them off reasonably well, and then pull them back to players/npcs (there's only 6 instead of standard 9).

Here is a question. If you go to a zone and kill Beastmen (al an exp party) who just live there (like say the quads in Graubuerg) does that change the Beastmen forces control in the area? Hurt them somehow? If so then sending out teams to beat the snot out of the mobs that live in an area is the thing to do to weaken the forces.

I'm curious if this is true or just a myth. People seemed pretty sure back near release. In my experience farming Tasters Cape nm pop items with 3 ppl, and leveling npcs in Grauberg killing the quads had no apparent effect. Maybe we just didn't have enough people and they had far too high morale/prosperity to be affected, idk but it didn't in those instances. Months ago when beastmen strongholds came out, I had a merit party in Beadeaux S, and during their morale dropped to 0, I have no idea if it was just coincidence though.

[LD]

For the first time (afaIk) Bastok's Funds went up to 2 stars. I haven't been checking as regularly as I used to, but I check at least once a week and for as long as I can remember, it's always been 1 star.