The way to improve Ballista

[Antithesis]

Yes another ballista topic . Anyway what I want to do is ask for everyone's opinion on what can be done to improve ballista in w/e ways you think possible. I will then edit OP to show bullet points of what can be done.

All these points I want to see for myself but also to send the ideas to SE and see if maybe they end up doing something. SE's updates so far have been cool maybe this might be cool.

~~The List~~

~General Changes~

*** The most important adjustment most if not all people agree upon. Include some form of rewards in Ballista / Brenner that would intice players to play the Conflict games. Be it a form of Exprience points / Merit Points, use of Ballista points for new items / equipment, etc.

* Expand the areas in which Ballista can take place.

* Provide better means of transportation to Ballista matches

* The return of Ballista Royale or something along the lines of it.

* Monthly tournaments or something of the sort where the winning team / Linkshell get to choose from a list of exclusive and rare items / equpiment, etc.

~Adjustments~

* Tweak damage done by certain attacks / spells.

* Improve the efficiency of Pet Jobs (SMN, BST, PUP.)

* Adjust the quarry command.

* Adjust the problem that comes with Gear swapping.

[Shuemue]

All Ballista needs is to match Campaign's xp gain, or just give 1k xp per match or something.

Give it a decent reward and people will do it.

[Theenabler]

Don't allow red mages in, problem solved.

[Kerberoz]

Un-nerf magic damage. Add more items in quarry and more ways to refill MP without resting.

Do something to cut down on guerrilla tactics. Spamming aoes and silence is pretty much akin to annoying your opponent to death. It's not fun when nearly every "strategy" is exactly the same: find something cheap and keep hammering on it until your opponent gets frustrated and leaves to do something else.

[Shapua]

another ballista Championship!!! Siren only tho k

[Xythe]

Does ballista have that no armor change thing? Where it gives you the penalty? If it does get rid of that.

[Meian]

Don't allow red mages in, problem solved.

This

[Apelila]

Give it a reward, and for the love of god let me turn off the spam when I swap zones in jueno telling me about matches I don't care about.

[Cream Soda]

Does ballista have that no armor change thing? Where it gives you the penalty? If it does get rid of that.

Then when you can't target someone to because they do nothing but swap gear, you'll ask for them to reinstate this.

[SilverBreeze]

A few things I can think of...

A XP reward for participation (the larger the better), if you're going to spend an hour playing Ballista, which the game explains as a training exercise, they you should be able to get a sizable XP reward for participating and "learning" from your experiences fighting other capable warriors and adventurers from other nations.

-30 Cap (1500 Experience Points)
-40 Cap (2000 Experience Points)
-50 Cap (2500 Experience Points)
-60 Cap (4000 Experience Points)
-75 Cap (5000 Experience Points)

These numbers seem fair, give you a decent amount of your level (and considering you can do three of one cap in the same day, Pashow, Jugner, and Meriphataud). Of course they can be adjusted, I would like to see what others think.

Reward participation and fighting! Don't only count someone's Petra score in the points they gain, or how much they participated. It is extremely frustrating to see the person who is the "MVP" for a team in Ballista was the RDM/PLD who sat around the entire match, dug for petras and leeched Gate Breach, all while just binding and running away from anyone who threatens them. I think Damage Taken, Healed, Done, etc should be a big part of ones score in Ballista, depending on class of course.

A lot of people complain about not being able to change gear in Ballista, but don't see the consequence of people rapidly flashing their characters so you cannot target them.

Unlike most people, I actually believe that damage should be reduced significantly in Ballista. I know that everyone wants to E-peen it up and one shot each other, but I believe that it would benefit Ballista in a way that everyone would not feel obliged to sub Ninja to hopefully avoid being one shotted by anyone with 100% TP.

Increase how quickly one builds resistance to Status effects such as Gravity, Blind, and Sleep. I know this is somewhat in place, but I think that spells such as these should work like this...

First Casting of spell on target = Full Duration
Second Casting of Spell on target = 50% Duration
Third Casting of Spell on target = 10% Duration
Fourth Casting and so on = Immune

Give a time limit to how long someone can hold Petras without engaging in Combat before they start losing petras.

Give us a choice to search for certain items.
-Quarry Health
-Quarry Mana
-Quarry Petra
-Quarry Enhancements

Of course you won't always get what you're searching for, but it would increase the chances of you getting what you want, instead of pulling up a super ether when you're at 10HP because you have MP merits and the game thinks you want MP.


That's just a couple things off the top of my head, I'll add some more later :3

[Meian]

Diorama npc in White Gate without cost of Ballista points would have me play a lot more...

[Isiolia]

- Introduce a real reason to participate. XP would be nice, but maybe a point system to save up/buy items that are good elsewhere would be good too. If nothing else, it'd provide a steady stream of people who'd have a reason to do Ballista, if only until they got their desired item(s).

- Either nerf everyone or nerf noone. A RDM or something is as annoying as they are because that's their job's strength. Reducing the ability of mages to attack at a distance and enfeeble, while not penalizing melee with poor accuracy and per hit damage isn't fun. Neither, of course, is constantly being bombarded with enfeebles, but that goes double for mages when Silence is involved.

- Take a page from the Blitzkreig assault mission and provide combatants with temporary items over time, rather that just via digging.

- Provide the option to use a temporary item gear set for capped matches. Not necessarily something awesome - as in, having capped gear would be better - but just so that it's not as much of a pain to participate in capped.

[Max™]

Change the equip swap = lost target, so I could use all my gear instead of running around in a bastardized mix n match getup.

Change War voke so you not only have to target me, when you do find me and target me (iVoke from behind at all opportunities), you get locked on until you switch to a new target (just cause that would be really annoying).

More exp reward, an ability to use ballista points for something useful elsewhere would be nice, be it grinding for a gil payout (yes, I would love RMT's to do ballista to try and grind for gil payout, can you imagine why?), or for various items.

[Stiker]

Just needs some rewards plain and simple. Whether it is gear/items/exp, it needs something. It is too much of a time investment to basically get nothing out of it.

[Cream Soda]

A few things I can think of...

1. Reward participation and fighting! Don't only count someone's Petra score in the points they gain, or how much they participated. It is extremely frustrating to see the person who is the "MVP" for a team in Ballista was the RDM/PLD who sat around the entire match, dug for petras and leeched Gate Breach, all while just binding and running away from anyone who threatens them. I think Damage Taken, Healed, Done, etc should be a big part of ones score in Ballista, depending on class of course.



2. Unlike most people, I actually believe that damage should be reduced significantly in Ballista. I know that everyone wants to E-peen it up and one shot each other, but I believe that it would benefit Ballista in a way that everyone would not feel obliged to sub Ninja to hopefully avoid being one shotted by anyone with 100% TP.

3.Increase how quickly one builds resistance to Status effects such as Gravity, Blind, and Sleep. I know this is somewhat in place, but I think that spells such as these should work like this...

First Casting of spell on target = Full Duration
Second Casting of Spell on target = 50% Duration
Third Casting of Spell on target = 10% Duration
Fourth Casting and so on = Immune

4. Give a time limit to how long someone can hold Petras without engaging in Combat before they start losing petras.



That's just a couple things off the top of my head, I'll add some more later :3

1. While petra may be a very large part of it, petra is not the only factor in ballista points. You get points for making kills, your team winning, ect. I've been on the losing team, scored 5 under top score, and gotten MVP because I was a killing machine that match.

2. If you get 1shotted in ballista, you're doing it wrong. You're either wearing lv 50 armor or wearing gear that has 0 defense on it like Turban or Ohat. Just last night I had a blu run up on me and use disseverment and frenetic rip and between the 2 of them, did not break 500 dmg out of my 1,700.

3. The resist rate is fine now. I don't expect them to just hand it to us. If you wear resist gear + ballista's natural resist, it doesn't take long at all to start building a decent resist rate or lowering the duration of the ones that do land. For example, when its a heavy mage match, I use x2 arete del sol which have resist bind/stun/gravity on them. Ballista matches are an hour long. if you get complete resist after only 4, they can hit you with that enfeeble an average of one time every 15 minutes >.>

4. This would support jobs such as brd that do not melee.

[SilverBreeze]

1. While petra may be a very large part of it, petra is not the only factor in ballista points. You get points for making kills, your team winning, ect. I've been on the losing team, scored 5 under top score, and gotten MVP because I was a killing machine that match.

2. If you get 1shotted in ballista, you're doing it wrong. You're either wearing lv 50 armor or wearing gear that has 0 defense on it like Turban or Ohat. Just last night I had a blu run up on me and use disseverment and frenetic rip and between the 2 of them, did not break 500 dmg out of my 1,700.

3. The resist rate is fine now. I don't expect them to just hand it to us. If you wear resist gear + ballista's natural resist, it doesn't take long at all to start building a decent resist rate or lowering the duration of the ones that do land. For example, when its a heavy mage match, I use x2 arete del sol which have resist bind/stun/gravity on them. Ballista matches are an hour long. if you get complete resist after only 4, they can hit you with that enfeeble an average of one time every 15 minutes >.>

4. This would support jobs such as brd that do not melee.

1. I don't know about your experiences, I can only speak from my own. I've killed tons of people in a ballista match on my MNK, scored 29 petras and got beat by a RDM/PLD that I didn't see the whole match who scored 40 Petras, his teammates say he didn't even heal anyone but himself, so that in itself leads me to believe that while it's somewhat participation based, as long as someone petra whores enough, they can' beat anyone else, which I don't like.

2. If you're using a heavy defense build maybe, but on my BLU I've never had any problems killing most players in a few seconds by sleeping them, dispelling them (or Lethe Water if they're a RDM) then Disseverment > Blastbomb > Hysteric Barrage, Dead. I've seen Samurais do nasty things with Soboro and Meditate :3

3. Of course this would reset after you die, not last the whole match.

4. I wasn't aware that Bard didn't have any songs that affected enemies.

[Cream Soda]

1. I don't know about your experiences, I can only speak from my own. I've killed tons of people in a ballista match on my MNK, scored 29 petras and got beat by a RDM/PLD that I didn't see the whole match who scored 40 Petras, his teammates say he didn't even heal anyone but himself, so that in itself leads me to believe that while it's somewhat participation based, as long as someone petra whores enough, they can' beat anyone else, which I don't like.

2. If you're using a heavy defense build maybe, but on my BLU I've never had any problems killing most players in a few seconds by sleeping them, dispelling them (or Lethe Water if they're a RDM) then Disseverment > Blastbomb > Hysteric Barrage, Dead. I've seen Samurais do nasty things with Soboro and Meditate :3

3. Of course this would reset after you die, not last the whole match.

4. I wasn't aware that Bard didn't have any songs that affected enemies.

1. Its not my opinion. Its a fact. Petra aren't the ONLY factor, while I agree they count too much, other shit still counts.

2. Again, needs more defense in the build. Sams hardly do any damage to me either, especially with soboro. Hagun they can still get a decent 400-500 but with soboro they're lucky to hit 300.

3. The resists that they have now do last the whole match, even after you die, which I find to be fine rather than it resetting every death.

4. I fail to realize where songs are "engaging in Combat"

[Starr]

Either a lot of exp or good equipment

[Config]

Ballista was great back in the day because there weren't as many things to do as there are today. It would be fun as hell on a Saturday night to round up some friends and beat people up. With the release of so many things, ballista pretty much got categorized as a "waste of time" since there were really no benefits from participating. So unless they do add some kind of reward system to it, it will most likely remain the way it is now.

[SilverBreeze]

1. Its not my opinion. Its a fact. Petra aren't the ONLY factor, while I agree they count too much, other shit still counts.

2. Again, needs more defense in the build. Sams hardly do any damage to me either, especially with soboro. Hagun they can still get a decent 400-500 but with soboro they're lucky to hit 300.

3. The resists that they have now do last the whole match, even after you die, which I find to be fine rather than it resetting every death.

4. I fail to realize where songs are "engaging in Combat"

1. That's what I said, someone killing players and getting gate breach and scoring a few less petras than someone else that leeches the whole match should be recognized more. I'm not seeing what the disagreement here is.

2. There's only so much defense you can stack, especially for mages unless you're full timing Earth Staff, Darksteel/Carapace, etc. Also, not everyone has 1700 hp?

3. Whatever the current resist system is, it doesn't work as well as it should. I recently played a 6v6 match where the whole entire other team consisted of a RDMs and BLMs, and even at the end of an hour long match of getting spam slept I was still consistently getting slept for 30-45 seconds, I don't see it working at all to be honest.

4. You know what I mean by being in combat and it doesn't involve having to pull your weapon out. -.-