Endgame Rewards and Situational Gear

[Yabby]

It won't change because SE thinks kings isn't just camping something for 3 hours. They made it so you don't even have to do anything for 30 mins at a time. Why is this? "Don't forget your family, friends, etc". Ground king camps is SE's way of giving you time to: Wash the dishes so your mother will shut up, Walk the dog, take a shower (You sink), fuck your wife, or call papa johns for some food. If someone says SE is too time intensive, they can simply say,"Hey some of the events you don't even have to be here 10% of the time to do." What they won't say is the people that bot don't even have to come back every 30 mins, just wait for the Call across the room and come back to is a red nid.

[Khalil]

It won't change because SE thinks kings isn't just camping something for 3 hours. They made it so you don't even have to do anything for 30 mins at a time. Why is this? "Don't forget your family, friends, etc". Ground king camps is SE's way of giving you time to: Wash the dishes so your mother will shut up, Walk the dog, take a shower (You sink), fuck your wife, or call papa johns for some food. If someone says SE is too time intensive, they can simply say,"Hey some of the events you don't even have to be here 10% of the time to do." What they won't say is the people that bot don't even have to come back every 30 mins, just wait for the Call across the room and come back to is a red nid.

While we do agree with you that the way Kings are setup are fucked, this is still a MMO; a time-consumming game that simply never ends.

[ErzaScarlet]

I think the most successful ways to avoid frustration is to have intermediate rewards, but I have discussed that before.

This issue with intermediate rewards is that it is much less addicting. Good for us, but bad from SE's point of view.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

For all the people who want pop items for HNM, I cant see SE ever doing this, they dont want more ppl to get drops, they want you to keep fiending in DA for years.
They already gave us Einherjar and thats great with a 100% of 1x Body abj from odin, (chance of more) a good LS is going to do one odin every 2 weeks with rotating mules.
Other than tier3 Einherjar runs, I dont believe there is anything left in the game that is difficult. When things first come out they are unknown but once they are mapped out then most ls cut the # of ppl they need in 1/2. Most limbus runs can be done with 6 or less. Omega has been done with 6, ultima with 8? For an average ls you could prob do omega with 12 and ultima with 15 np.
Salvage can be done with 4-6 people, nyzul by any 6 retards shouting in town. ZNM can mostly be low manned, dynamis is just a grind not difficult but the more ppl you bring the more you can clear (In some zones).

HNMs with 6-8 people. (TOAU/Sandworm included) DI takes more now I guess with rage timer, (people are scared to rage it) but they nerfed him so he goes down so fast now, so its only a matter of time until people find out the minimum needed to kill him and start using that.

I miss the 2x weeks we had where enfeebling magic was fucked. There needs to be a difficulty curve because atm the jump is from Easy to WTF.

However difficulty curves discourage bad players and SE wants to make money so I doubt they will really touch this.

[Maxxthepenguin]

I honestly don't see what the argument is. This stuff isn't hard to get if you are consistent. SE doesn't want you to get everything you want in 2 weeks. They want to keep you busy for months and years. Makes perfect sense to me.

If you want a full Salvage set, do Salvage 6-7 times a week for 4-7 months.[/quote]

Minimum 160 hours (according to your figures) and 15 mil gil to get a salvage set makes perfect sense to you? And that's if you focus on one or two sets only. There's no way all 6 people could get a full set in that amount of time, so those people worked their asses off to be completely unrewarded. There is no intermediate drop in Salvage; only high effort (salvage armor) and retardedly high effort (mythics).

If you want a full AF+1 set, do Limbus twice a week. There's plenty of shout parties for this and in some cases you can even try to get your item by soloing or duoing the first floor in a specific area.

...people shout for limbus? Really, though, Limbus is relatively well designed, with the only real flaw being the randomness that is inherent in all drops in this game. It has three separate tiers of gear, all of which are simultaneously worked towards, with Ancient Beastcoin gear, AF+1, and Homam/Nashira. It rewards you pretty well.

Dynamis. Twice a week but requires a significant amount of time for a minimal amount of reward. The big problem here is the number of people you take to Dynamis limit your chances of getting the piece you want due to competition. Salvage can be more enjoyable because you can do it just fine with 6-7 (excluding having friends force DC to enter with fewer).

Dynamis drops a fuckload of AF2 and currency; with 24 people, each person will get good dynamis gear faster than each person will get good salvage gear, and that's even while making a profit off currency instead of spending an extra 15+ mil! It's too long, but it has a decent enough reward system in place.

I think their HNM system is a bit flawed and caters mostly to the "fastest bot", but they've made significant improvements when developing new content.

A bit flawed, lol.
Even as late as ToAU's HNMs, they were designed poorly.

ANNM, ISNM, and how HNMs work in WotG is pretty creative and successful.

ISNM is merely OK. ANNM seems pretty wonderful. WotG HNMs are relatively successful.

Nyzul Isle is extremely easy to get/form a static and easy to get drops in.

Nyzul Isle is decently well designed. It still blocks you from doing salvage though, which is retarded on an epic scale.

Tier 2 Jailers aren't as rewarding because of all the extra work you need to pop them, but the reward is largely the same, weapon 100%, torque pretty rare, with the exception of JoL. AV could make sea largely worth the effort similar to the way Kirin still makes sky somewhat worth doing, but SE made it too cryptic for anyone to reasonable farm him.

Sea still has too few rewards. 7 torques, 3 capes, 2 earrings, and 8 unattainable items, all at unreliable drop rates, are simply not as good rewards as sky's 8 tier 1 weapons, 4 tier 2 weapons, 4 tier 2 pieces of very strong gear, 19 abjurations, money items, and Kirin's unique drops. Sea isn't a complete failure, but compared to the rewards in sky? Fuck that.

ZNMs. Excluding PW, people do these for the stuff they want in shout/pickups. Not really that difficult.

lol Zeni. Honestly, all it needs is money drops. The armor could stand to be a bit more powerful in place, but the reward structure is reasonable in most ways.

Einherjar. Meant to be challenging, and the rewards aren't *THAT* impressive. There's a couple of nice shadow pieces, and Odin's got nifty drops people have a use for. E.body is a possibility there as well. A lot of the stuff people want they can get from Kilusha with the ampoules, so even wiping to T1 bosses will eventually pay out.

Shadow gear is terrible. Ampoule items don't even get close to how great ancient beastcoin items were (Brutal Earring, jesus). Some are decent and usable, but none are must haves. The carrot at the end of the stick are the same abjurations that people bot for and a few decent unique items, but it takes so much effort to get a chance on those (once every 2 weeks, more if you have bad t3 luck.)

What are you smoking?

[Yabby]

While we do agree with you that the way Kings are setup are fucked, this is still a MMO; a time-consumming game that simply never ends.

Yea its really hard to use sarcasm in text.

[ringthree]

This issue with intermediate rewards is that it is much less addicting. Good for us, but bad from SE's point of view.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

For all the people who want pop items for HNM, I cant see SE ever doing this, they dont want more ppl to get drops, they want you to keep fiending in DA for years.
They already gave us Einherjar and thats great with a 100% of 1x Body abj from odin, (chance of more) a good LS is going to do one odin every 2 weeks with rotating mules.
Other than tier3 Einherjar runs, I dont believe there is anything left in the game that is difficult. When things first come out they are unknown but once they are mapped out then most ls cut the # of ppl they need in 1/2. Most limbus runs can be done with 6 or less. Omega has been done with 6, ultima with 8? For an average ls you could prob do omega with 12 and ultima with 15 np.
Salvage can be done with 4-6 people, nyzul by any 6 retards shouting in town. ZNM can mostly be low manned, dynamis is just a grind not difficult but the more ppl you bring the more you can clear (In some zones).

HNMs with 6-8 people. (TOAU/Sandworm included) DI takes more now I guess with rage timer, (people are scared to rage it) but they nerfed him so he goes down so fast now, so its only a matter of time until people find out the minimum needed to kill him and start using that.

I miss the 2x weeks we had where enfeebling magic was fucked. There needs to be a difficulty curve because atm the jump is from Easy to WTF.

However difficulty curves discourage bad players and SE wants to make money so I doubt they will really touch this.

Intermediate rewards are given along with end-point rewards. Like Einherjar and Limbus, except for all events.

All events eventually burn themselves out, but intermediate rewards gets people to do them longer than they probably would have previously.

[ErzaScarlet]

Intermediate rewards are given along with end-point rewards. Like Einherjar and Limbus, except for all events.

All events eventually burn themselves out, but intermediate rewards gets people to do them longer than they probably would have previously.

You quoted the whole thing when only the 1st sentance was about your post.
I'm actually curious what people think about that? Does everyone in Advanced have the same idea about the lack of difficulty in this game?

I suppose I thought you meant there should be events with only intermediate rewards. At least from my PoV I have capped out on ampoules and Ancient beastcoins and I dont have every odin drop nor do I have every piece of Homam/Nash (althought many of them are not impressive). However I keep doing them because they are fun (At least when you farm 3-4 chips a night in small groups) and more so because there are people in my LS who want drops, and its a collective effort because they show up to things where I have interest in the lootpool.

What I'm saying is that if these events were mainly intermediate rewards then i'd have been done them a long long time ago.

Or do you simply mean they should add another page of choices to Ein/Limb, and maybe one for salvage and nyzul?

I guess that wouldnt hurt, but how much more space do you have for mediocre gear? Because i dont believe that exceptional gear should come from here, if everyone has it its not special its the norm.

[Hyan]

Dynamis drops a fuckload of AF2 and currency; with 24 people, each person will get good dynamis gear faster than each person will get good salvage gear, and that's even while making a profit off currency instead of spending an extra 15+ mil! It's too long, but it has a decent enough reward system in place.

I don't think you can even compare the two, the only similarity is in the basic structure of the event. The gear from cities is pretty shitty except for few pieces, and there's lot of trash drops in icelands as well. Many are good for only few situations as well (to be equipped when using a JA, etc.). While some pieces are still pretty damn good (mainly from xarca), I think it should be compared to Assaults/Nyzul rather than Salvage in terms of rewards. Salvage on the other hand should be compared to Kings and some sky drops.

[ringthree]

You quoted the whole thing when only the 1st sentance was about your post.
I'm actually curious what people think about that? Does everyone in Advanced have the same idea about the lack of difficulty in this game?

I suppose I thought you meant there should be events with only intermediate rewards. At least from my PoV I have capped out on ampoules and Ancient beastcoins and I dont have every odin drop nor do I have every piece of Homam/Nash (althought many of them are not impressive). However I keep doing them because they are fun (At least when you farm 3-4 chips a night in small groups) and more so because there are people in my LS who want drops, and its a collective effort because they show up to things where I have interest in the lootpool.

What I'm saying is that if these events were mainly intermediate rewards then i'd have been done them a long long time ago.

Or do you simply mean they should add another page of choices to Ein/Limb, and maybe one for salvage and nyzul?

I guess that wouldnt hurt, but how much more space do you have for mediocre gear? Because i dont believe that exceptional gear should come from here, if everyone has it its not special its the norm.

I don't think I would like the idea of an event with just intermediate rewards. This would definitely turn into a grind. I know that WoW has some reward systems like this but I don't know how that would work for the FFXI player base.

I definitely agree that the top rewards should come from the end-point mobs, but I think that they should incentivize the grinding of all new events with some kind of intermediate token-based reward system. And I also agree that the lists for rewards for Limbus and Einherjar could very easily be expanded every couple of updates, increasing the costs of the new items if necessary.

SE has not had a track record of adding gear that makes a lot of sense. Very rarely do you see something and say "That would be a nice upgrade I would be really interested in" more often than not it is "Crap, crap, crap, HOLY SHIT, crap, crap...". And I think that is the reason using Augments might be good for a reward for a new token system. It would let the players take a larger part in the decision making of what is good gear and what pieces they want to prioritize.

I wanted to make one other point here, and that is I really hope that SE quits with the recycling of old equipment models. Now, I don't mean re-skins, re-coloring or other changes to existing models. I mean the actual reuse of old models that are exactly like the ones that we already have. It's 2009 guys, if you need a few more days to finish up some models take it, it isn't going to make or break the game. But tossing us the same crappy looking gear with new stats on it is going to make us a lot more cranky.

[Yabby]

I wanted to make one other point here, and that is I really hope that SE quits with the recycling of old equipment models. Now, I don't mean re-skins, re-coloring or other changes to existing models. I mean the actual reuse of old models that are exactly like the ones that we already have. It's 2009 guys, if you need a few more days to finish up some models take it, it isn't going to make or break the game. But tossing us the same crappy looking gear with new stats on it is going to make us a lot more cranky.

They don't even have to do it themselves. Have you ever looked at some of the dats that the FFXI player base make? Some are gorgeous with amazing detail. And i bet every one of them would say yes if SE asked if they could use them.

[Klaatu]

Your Endgame Reward is to stand in line and wait for an item 10 other shlubs want and to level/merit other jobs to get more of aforementioned gear and stand in line for it even longer.

Your situational gear is situational.

[ringthree]

They don't even have to do it themselves. Have you ever looked at some of the dats that the FFXI player base make? Some are gorgeous with amazing detail. And i bet every one of them would say yes if SE asked if they could use them.

Actually, I don't agree. Some of them look pretty good in screen shots, but they in general have several problems including; they don't match the design of the game, they are two bright or too dark, they haven't made them for more than one character model, and most importantly, they aren't rendered properly so they clip or don't look natural during any character movement (especially breathing).

[Gergall]

they aren't rendered properly so they clip or don't look natural during any character movement (especially breathing).

I have a male tarutaru character with the hair thats all over the place (not the braided kind or the onionhead kind). I get clipping glitches all the time, especially with headbands. The glitch usually makes the head gear look like it is flickering on and off.

It's been like that for 5+ years so SE seems to be fine with it.

[ronin sparthos]

You quoted the whole thing when only the 1st sentance was about your post.
I'm actually curious what people think about that? Does everyone in Advanced have the same idea about the lack of difficulty in this game?

I suppose I thought you meant there should be events with only intermediate rewards. At least from my PoV I have capped out on ampoules and Ancient beastcoins and I dont have every odin drop nor do I have every piece of Homam/Nash (althought many of them are not impressive). However I keep doing them because they are fun (At least when you farm 3-4 chips a night in small groups) and more so because there are people in my LS who want drops, and its a collective effort because they show up to things where I have interest in the lootpool.

What I'm saying is that if these events were mainly intermediate rewards then i'd have been done them a long long time ago.

Or do you simply mean they should add another page of choices to Ein/Limb, and maybe one for salvage and nyzul?

I guess that wouldnt hurt, but how much more space do you have for mediocre gear? Because i dont believe that exceptional gear should come from here, if everyone has it its not special its the norm.

I always wondered why SE seemingly added basement Temenos/Apollyon for no reason. The entrance requirements are both "difficult" (pay 75 coins or get a rare metal chip drop) but the rewards are disproportionate to the effort required to win. Those two runs seemed like opportunities to add solid endgame gear as it does require luck or a huge investment to enter.

[ringthree]

I always wondered why SE seemingly added basement Temenos/Apollyon for no reason. The entrance requirements are both "difficult" (pay 75 coins or get a rare metal chip drop) but the rewards are disproportionate to the effort required to win. Those two runs seemed like opportunities to add solid endgame gear as it does require luck or a huge investment to enter.

My random conjecture:

Back then they had to put the zones on the desk to distribute it. They made a lot of extra zones just in case.

The Temenos area was indicated as part of the storyline pretty late into CoP (Obelisk), but likely was just shifted over into another event like Apollyon (Lower Promyvion). The extra zones were probably just left overs that didn't fit into the original Limbus design but they didn't want to waste. So they added two zones that didn't really have a purpose and the rewards were pretty lame.

[Nynaeve]

I always wondered why SE seemingly added basement Temenos/Apollyon for no reason. The entrance requirements are both "difficult" (pay 75 coins or get a rare metal chip drop) but the rewards are disproportionate to the effort required to win. Those two runs seemed like opportunities to add solid endgame gear as it does require luck or a huge investment to enter.

I've sent in suggestions to SE asking about these zones. My thought was to turn them into areas for farming AF+1 items either through special bosses that would always drop 2 items (like a chest) or make any mob there have a chance to drop an upgrade item.

[Gergall]

I always wondered why SE seemingly added basement Temenos/Apollyon for no reason.

Why do the hourglass goblins sell common AHable drops for 1000+ dynamis coins?
Why was Hydra added as an HNM with no rewards?
Why was PUP added as a playable job?

[Maxxthepenguin]

I don't think you can even compare the two, the only similarity is in the basic structure of the event. The gear from cities is pretty shitty except for few pieces, and there's lot of trash drops in icelands as well. Many are good for only few situations as well (to be equipped when using a JA, etc.). While some pieces are still pretty damn good (mainly from xarca), I think it should be compared to Assaults/Nyzul rather than Salvage in terms of rewards. Salvage on the other hand should be compared to Kings and some sky drops.

I don't think they're very comparable either, honestly. As a DRK, I fully understand that most of the AF2 is shit, however, when somebody tries to compare Salvage to Dynamis, as far as rewarding your time goes, opinion Dynamis pulls ahead.

[ringthree]

Why do the hourglass goblins sell common AHable drops for 1000+ dynamis coins?
Why was Hydra added as an HNM with no rewards?
Why was PUP added as a playable job?

1. Because they are items you need to upgrade relics, and were rare in the past.

2. I am sure that someone thought they were good rewards. They then passed out and vomited all over themselves.

3. Lame joke. PUP is limited but there are places they are useful. The real problem is they can be replace by other jobs that do the job better.

[ringthree]

I don't think they're very comparable either, honestly. As a DRK, I fully understand that most of the AF2 is shit, however, when somebody tries to compare Salvage to Dynamis, as far as rewarding your time goes, opinion Dynamis pulls ahead.

I completely, totally and in every way disagree. I would rather do (and have done) 4 no-drop Salvages in a row than suffer through Dynamis.

1 drop in Salvage in 20 runs is better than 1 Dynamis with 20 drops.