So... Pandemonium.

[ringthree]

Also, you're all forgetting that Kings are far easier TO BOT than the newer alternatives. Why work harder for something that isn't as good?

I think you missed something in there, so I helped you out!

[dave]

Until then, people will still be at the same camps every day, because in 3 hours they can have a shot at gear that in most situations is STILL the best in the game, where 3 hours in ZNM picture farming + standing at an NPC will barely get you enough to pop a tier 1 and 2 mob.

The bolded parts sum it up for me. Even if the ZNM doesn't drop your item, you've still had fun.

[Thistle]

I get really sick of people saying their's better gear elsewhere when their's not. Yes, their are some better alternatives for some jobs but others' their aren't.

Please stop making my head hurt.

[ronin sparthos]

Maybe if players didn't have to follow 1% mobs around for multiple hours just to pop 2-3 NMs (not even consecutive farming, since the mobs might change) for honestly low rewards until the Tier 3 range at a minimum, and Tier 4 for certain people, they'd be more interested in it.

Because sitting in 3 areas for 3hours is better?
Because Diorite farming isnt as tedious and time consuming?
Because Ix'DRK doesnt take hours on end to spawn?

Just 3 examples of 3 things that the playerbase have accepted and done religiously for years. How is this new system any worse than what we already have? So taking pictures may not be the most exciting thing but neither is sitting among 100 other people in a crammed zone. I really fail to see how this system is different than typical sea farming where your lucky to see ONE torque in the building of a JOL pop set and even JOL can dick you and drop nothing thus wasting multiple players hours of work. Until tier 4 your looking at sky-esque 100% trophy drops and decent rewards from lower tier NM pops, much more than some other systems in this game pay out.

Yes, kings has some great stuff but slowly... we're getting some competitive gear from various parts of the game. Kings is slowly losing that 'end-all' factor that made it so popular.

I basically turn my ISP into gold coins which I turn into jettons which I turn into cameras/film which I spend time running around the world (and sometimes having to compete at certain camps) for mobs with a few other people, sleep them at 1%, spam pictures til I have 2-3 days worth, come back and trade pictures over 2-3 hours, and finally get zeny for those pictures.

Compete? For what? Most of the time the monsters asked for are have multiple spawn points about the world and since you only need one monster to actually snap pictures from - you have multiple choices as to where you do your farming. The only cockblock ive seen so far in terms of what Sanraku asks for were Wamoura and that is only because of the nature of Wamoura - if anything this system goes against competition.

Bugards - Mamook and Vunkerl Inlet for example.

It feels extremely shoehorned in and a terrible waste of time (but what isn't, I guess) and could have been done a lot better up to that point. For example, why not just have an NPC that will convert your ISP into zeny to buy pop items, but limited to a certain amount of conversion per day/hour/RL day/JP midnight or something. Yes, it's lazy, but it's the same thing without needing to try and force people to have any interest in stupid pankration again. At the very least, I'd rather just kill mobs for X zeny a kill or something, the pictures are seriously a downer to such a possibly great system.

Because the last thing this game needs is another system where you MUST EXP in ToAU, if it wasnt already a problem the game faces. 2 jettons buys a camera so it really isnt forced upon a player to collect coins but converting ISP to zeni would just lead to more camp
overcrowding and cockblocking, if it was not bad enough already.

SE needs to be breaking the forced EXP system in TOAU and venturing out, something that would be counterproductive if you needed to use ISP directly.

The system for buying the pop items inflating and going down over time was a good idea, the ability to pick multiple choices was nice, but once again, in a classic example of Apollyon versus Temenos, the balance was fucked. There's an obvious "easy" path through each of the tier 1/2 that can be done easily (and has a correspondingly higher cost, true) but in addition the easier NMs also seem to have the best drops of their tier. Rather than giving the tougher, harder to kill/access NMs the better drops, and the ones easy to kill crap, all of the reason to kill are stacked on certain NMs, making another bottleneck

Thats all in the hands of the players - the SAME players who ask for harder content yet time and time again take the easy road for everything. What can a dev do when they give players what they want then cry it isnt good enough or worth their time. The drops may not all be great but they are at the LEAST decent rewards for what they are and can be catered to a more casual audience. Ive been critical of SE before but frankly this is a solid system with rewards ranging from meh to excellent and that is much more than SE has done in the past.

I see more balance in this than Sea for sure, where it is either a jackpot or yet another virtue weapon.

Hachiryu so far seems to be the biggest draw to these rewards, and as they only carry 5 jobs on them, will only have interest from those jobs. most of the interest is centered on the body and legs anyways it seems. Since they are rare, people who don't have any interest in the ZNMs will eventually be able to just buy them anyways (lol if anyone ever kills pandy) so there's another strike. Finally, we have the new weapons. Some of them are honestly great. I love my Naglering. However, most of them suck, and again, a lot of the non-suck ones are non-EX anyways as well.

How is hachiryu different from E.abj Body (WAR/DRK/lolBST), Hauteclaure (PLD/DRK), Ridill and D.ring? Really people are camping for PLDs, DRKs, WARs and maybe the odd THFs/DRGs at kings most times - if not for the LS Bank or just for the hell of it.

Taking this all into consideration, there's certainly room to improve and change it, and hopefully it will be mixed up a bit to be bettered a bit. Until then, people will still be at the same camps every day, because in 3 hours they can have a shot at gear that in most situations is STILL the best in the game, where 3 hours in ZNM picture farming + standing at an NPC will barely get you enough to pop a tier 1 and 2 mob.

Players will be at the same camps because either they want the easy road, are so stuck in kings mode that nothing will EVER pry them off kings and frankly many people just like the thrill (or excuse to afk) of camping kings. Period. Kings waters down now to Ebody, Abody, Nhead, Nlegs, Ridill, Dring and Black Belt items, many of these are in Ein or KS99 - the real gripe is Ridill and Dring which we all know SE will never port out. Even Ridill has taken a popularity dip in the past year and half, especially with the 2handed craze sweeping the game.

There's a reason it seems most (not all) major linkshells aren't putting much effort into ZNMs, and (on my server at least) most of the ZNM groups are made up of a hodgepodge of people from mixed endgame LSes and other places who grouped together to do it since the rest of the shell doesn't give a shit, and with obvious reason. SE will need to do some major work into the ZNM system if they expect anywhere near the interest level of kings in it.

Nothing will pry the playerbase off kings, the scant chance that SE did up and completely blow kings out of the water - the epic QQ that would resound from the playerbase would be epic. This response to a fair system only strengthens that.

[Therin]

The ZNM system is excellent.

The ONLY problem with it is that it's too inventory-intensive. Soul Plates should stack (and yes, I realize that's impossible because they each have different Feral Skills). If they could make it less inventory-intensive the ZNM system would be perfect.

Oh and maybe increasing the drop rate on Tier V pop items.

[Kaslo]

This thread needs to be renamed: "So... Pandemonium. (Now with more King QQing!)"

[Charismatic]

Wait, why would anyone compete for mobs anyway?
Can't you snap pics of claimed mobs?

[Kaslo]

Wait, why would anyone compete for mobs anyway?
Can't you snap pics of claimed mobs?

uhoh here comes the QQing for less points for taking pics of claimed mobs!

[Wizerd]

uhoh here comes the QQing for getting only 1 point for taking pics of claimed mobs!

Fixed (applies to most, anyway...) :/

[dave]

Wait, why would anyone compete for mobs anyway?
Can't you snap pics of claimed mobs?

In my experience, you'll be welcomed to the group taking the pics 90% of the time, unless they have a full alliance.

[Charismatic]

Fixed (applies to most, anyway...) :/

Really? Hmm, I guess I should have tried it before I posted.
But yeah, each time I went out people would just invite me to their party, I accepted though I didn't know the reason why they felt the need to invite me.

Now I feel like a doofus, but at least I know what's up.

[Taruhealingwind]

I just got back to the game after a 1 month break. So the pop items are not 100% drop? while I can't say I'm surprized, because cop team made wotg as well, I'm surprized that they didn't learn from their mistakes.... after all they changed that in sea.... Why don't they just fire the moron who's in charge of this stuff?

[ronin sparthos]

Only tier 4 isnt 100% drop and thats so people wouldnt QQ that they got to Pandy too fast.

[Lordwafik]

Only tier 4 isnt 100% drop and thats so people wouldnt QQ that they got to Pandy too fast.

which resulted in people qq'ing that they can't get there fast enough! Gotta love the playerbase for their flip floppiness.

[ronin sparthos]

which resulted in people qq'ing that they can't get there fast enough! Gotta love the playerbase for their flip floppiness.

Go right, they QQ - go left, they QQ.

So long as Pandemonium doesnt turn into Absolute Virtue and the secret isnt in the regen - there is very little to QQ about.

[Taruhealingwind]

well, there seem to be many tiers already but if pop items farming speed would be a problem i'de rather have yet another tier to go through than not be 100% sure to have my pop items when i kill my mob... thats just plain frustrating...

edit: call it QQ all you want just giving my opinion... then again camping mee deggi atm 0/33 maybe i'm biaised who knows

[ronin sparthos]

When you look at it in the sense that jailer torques arent 100, salvage 35s are dismal, sky abjurations can be very biased in drop pattern, odin can give you the wrong abjurations, nyzul isle bosses can drop diddly squat.....

ZNM is just a mix of the norm with a little treat in the form of 100% tier 1, 2s and 3s.

[Kimiko]

Not many people seem to be doing zNMs imo, at least on my Server. My group is 1/3 on pop Items for Pande. We killed 2 Khim last night but no drop on pop items.. :/ We only have like 8 ppl normally, get a few extra for T4s. Just doesn't seem to be too popular atm, most people are still stuck in Aery and old content, here at least.

Ok, let me make sure I get this right (since I've been out of game for the last few days). The tier 4 mob pop items for PW are NOT 100% drop? Does this not defeat the purpose of zNM's being accessable to everyone?

[Taruhealingwind]

When you look at it in the sense that jailer torques arent 100, salvage 35s are dismal, sky abjurations can be very biased in drop pattern, odin can give you the wrong abjurations, nyzul isle bosses can drop diddly squat.....

ZNM is just a mix of the norm with a little treat in the form of 100% tier 1, 2s and 3s.

Well I wasn't talking about loot, only about progression items. Sure I understand the mob won't drop the loot I want ( even though 0/34 is starting to piss me off hi mee deggi ).

I'ts simply bad design to possibly make you grind the tiers again based on your luck, it just means you're beeing deprived of the most basic form of reward when it comes to tier progression, and I think most people just feel jacked when this happens, anyway that's how I feel. If you want to make the grinding longer it would be a better option imo to add content instead of frustrating the players. Then again I don't make video games for a living, I guess they know what they're doing. Right?

[LD]

Ok, let me make sure I get this right (since I've been out of game for the last few days). The tier 4 mob pop items for PW are NOT 100% drop? Does this not defeat the purpose of zNM's being accessable to everyone?

Not really, since PW is the only mob restricted in this way...and anyone capable of killing the 3 would have a shot, 100% drop or no, so it still IS accessable to anyone. ;x It may be a little incongruous and illogical, but the tier 1-4 mobs drop decent enough items and from what we've seen, it's not like everyone doing zNMs could kill PW anyway.

IMO, it keeps people from doing it too often without being utterly ridiculous, like how Sea was before SE was drained of a bit of the stupid. There was a gigantic block of time between Jailers being added and someone even seeing AV, and even with the poor tier 4 drop rate, someone got a full set in less than 4 weeks. System works.