Campaign Gets Reinforcements! (06/15/2009)

[Plow]

Campaign doesn't need more people. What it needs is some control. So that as a player leading a group of other players I can manipulate what is happening outside the Campaign battles, the bigger picture. Right now San d'Oria(with most servers) is destined to win at any sort of competition(like say, the Northlands) because it just has more people. On my server atm, Sandy has all but 1 area while the other two only have their towns. In the end making Campaign more popular will just make San d'Oria just as good or better.

right now on dia beastmen have 5 areas-- the 3 strongholds, eldieme, and garlaige

only reason sandy has more people in general is cuch mantle

[Cutriss]

Keep in mind, no one dev stays on any aspect of the game forever, they seem to average about five years before moving on to other projects. If the game is still around in a few years(FFXI is DIEING! after all), I figure we can pose the question to a new programmer with a different perspective.

No, if you've played this game for any length of time at all, you would be observant enough to see that they're pussies when it comes to changing things that someone else did.

When asked about changing the ??? repop timers for sky gods, they basically talked about how they'd have to take the day off, get on the train, go all the way down to Fukuoka, approach some Square-Enix retiree in a wheelchair, buy him a small package of bland takoyaki, get on their knees, and ask him pretty-pretty-please if it's okay if they make a teensy adjustment to something he did over six years ago.

[ronin sparthos]

right now on dia beastmen have 5 areas-- the 3 strongholds, eldieme, and garlaige

only reason sandy has more people in general is cuch mantle

Lets not forget Sandy on average has sturdier units and generals that often can heal themselves.

Windy gets units that are often subject to being zerged (casters vs melee yagudo/kindreds = wipeout) but has equal rewards to Splitting Heirs. Cuch mantle is great but so are Roundel Earrings and Cuch Belts.

Problem with all this is the incentive to raid the strongholds is rather low. (on my server at least) Not enough people understand Campaign's inner workings and SE is hellbent on keeping too many little things secret. It doesn't help that again La Vaule is favored because the Forts aren't surrounded by formidable monsters compared to Beadeaux/Castle Oztroja. You dont even get rewarded for taking the forts down during CB downtime so you ask the player for alot upfront with little promise of good returns. Lastly because of the conquest tally nonsense you practically have to get JP support to take any strongholds due to timezones.

Besieged was easy to understand: you killed the enemy and stopped them from killing your generals. Campaign? So many little things factor into enemy tactics, where units get deployed, how powerful NPC healers are, where belfries get deployed etc. It's just so layered that the average player (the people this was designed for?) arent going to care looking into the multiple ways to "win" battles. Campaign Ops spit in the face of the superior Assault system, the multiple player ones are just so boring that no one bothers to do them.

The SCH NPC was a start in getting people to understand Campaign but so many little things are shrouded in secret that the system is boiled down to "kill shit, get EXP" when its obvious SE wants it to be something the community talks about a la Besieged on many servers.

[BRP]

San d'Oria was dominant before those Ops. San d'Oria has always had the highest population on most servers.

[Gergall]

The Ops system is supposed to handle this issue by rewarding players for doing the "5-star" items, which represent tasks the nation needs the most badly. You don't need to understand all of the finer points of campaign to know that 5 stars = better reward.

Unfortunately, a slightly larger XP bonus on brave dawn isn't going to be enough to get people to choose it over slaughterhouse. They would really need to ramp up the 5-star bonuses to get players to do the ops their nation actually needs.

[ronin sparthos]

The Ops system is supposed to handle this issue by rewarding players for doing the "5-star" items, which represent tasks the nation needs the most badly. You don't need to understand all of the finer points of campaign to know that 5 stars = better reward.

Unfortunately, a slightly larger XP bonus on brave dawn isn't going to be enough to get people to choose it over slaughterhouse. They would really need to ramp up the 5-star bonuses to get players to do the ops their nation actually needs.

It doesnt help that the 3+ member Campaign OPs are:

A. Boring
B. Could be duoed if SE didnt shoehorn people into 3+ members.
C. Boring

The names are deceptive though.

[yayajax]

Seriously there should be some balance in Campaign Battles. Not that San d'Oria has more people pledging to the nation; the Orcs are somehow easier to be killed by players and NPCs. With a sense of feeling they seems to have lower HP than the other 2 enemies. With the majority units being PLD job able to self-cure and buff, they are the best to cooperate with the player side by providing free tanks.

The only good part about fighting Quadavs they don't have AOE damage except some bosses can Ore Lob. Diamond Shield is just too much for breaking the balance of the forces. The nation who take them as natural enemy, the Bastok Armies, which has most of the units with piercing weapons/WS, can't poke in the Quadav Shell and show no advantage against Diamond Shield. This defense move should immunize other weapons than piercing types to contradict Bastok's "technology". Rockchopper is totally overwhelming both NPCs and players, why can't Sonia has something effective to counter the petrification?

[Max™]

Windy has the wimpiest mobs far and away. Yags have less Hp, remove TP (NPC's don't lose TP from this last I checked), and do wimpy shitty pussy TP moves.

Orcs have a lot of Hp, probably the most HP, but wimpy def in general, are wimpy jobs against Pld NPC's mostly, and their only annoying thing (Cstance) is more brutal on players than the NPC's.

Quads are wimps except Gi'Ghi and Go'Dha... Bastok just sucks.

[Gere]

Diamond shell doesn't nullify damage from piercing, it nullifies damage from behind. That's one of the best parts of bastok campaign since you can turn the quadaavs so the npcs won't kill them too fast for you to cap exp.

On Remora, Bastok is typically doing the best in campaign followed by sandy, windy is usually down to nothing but their city.

[Plow]

Bastok npc's are vastly superior to quadav other than Gi'Ghi, he's just fucking retardedly broken. Honestly they need to do something about him, half the time it's impossible to even blood pact him.


Some of bastok's npcs (max mostly) are almost too powerful, it can be hard to cap exp with him demolishing shit in like 20 seconds.

[Max™]

Yeah, I am ridiculously awesome.

Thanks for noticing, Plow.

[Ryphen]

Sandy caught a break in another way since they don't have to deal with NMs with pets, aside from Anders.

Watching the NPCs whack ineffectually on elementals is so annoying whenever the Templars show up anywhere. Vee Qiqa must have the most wins chalked up amongst the Yagudo.

Would it be too much to ask that the NPCs ignore hitting pets despite the damage they take from them? It's like everyone in the game understands that killing the master is the fastest way to neutralize the pet except for them.

A lot of the normal matchups are tipped in favor of the Beastmen, probably because the devs wanted the players to step in and pick up the slack. But as stated before, no one really works as a team with the goal of winning a battle. Which is kind of unfortunate because it can be a lot of fun to develop a winning strategy with the people and NPCs that are available.

[Plow]

Sandy caught a break in another way since they don't have to deal with NMs with pets, aside from Anders.

Watching the NPCs whack ineffectually on elementals is so annoying whenever the Templars show up anywhere. Vee Qiqa must have the most wins chalked up amongst the Yagudo.

Would it be too much to ask that the NPCs ignore hitting pets despite the damage they take from them? It's like everyone in the game understands that killing the master is the fastest way to neutralize the pet except for them.

A lot of the normal matchups are tipped in favor of the Beastmen, probably because the devs wanted the players to step in and pick up the slack. But as stated before, no one really works as a team with the goal of winning a battle. Which is kind of unfortunate because it can be a lot of fun to develop a winning strategy with the people and NPCs that are available.

I think the main issue there is that pretty much every NM is either an easily handled joke, or a fucking massive untouchable truckload of face rape.

There's like... no in between at all. Maybe the RDM's that spam the big aoe+grav but chainspell poisona2 and diaga and shit.

[Valisk]

Sandy caught a break in another way since they don't have to deal with NMs with pets, aside from Anders.

Which is a huge problem. It's bad enough that he spams Plenilune Embrace (healing move), but his unlimited summons do the same. It makes for capping EXP easy, but after a while the shit just lasts too long.

A gripe I have about campaign is when people pull mobs so far away that when everything seems to be dead, there's that one guy soloing at (Z-45) trying to cap his exp. Don't make campaign last 20 additional minutes cause you came late to the party and want to cap out.

One of my ex-linkshell mates (Kaylia) suggested that if you pull a mob too far from the fortification/base, then it will cast the death spell. I think that's brilliant and would love for that to be implemented.

[Max™]

I pull them away to avoid tagalongs... from my point of view those people are like wiping your ass with cheap toilet paper and getting those little balls of shit left behind.

That's right, I just compared all those random lvl 60 melees, afk while meleeing rdms and whatnot, to little balls of shit.

[Plow]

Seriously, I don't mind a couple people hitting my mobs so I can't cap as fast... but when I'm out there as war/dnc I don't need some 60 blu getting me head butted/shell bashed every 3 damn seconds, thanks.

[Roree]

Hell just making it so they loose aggro at a certain distance would be fine. Or Shorten the distance you will loose your tag in.

[Max™]

There is no limit to the distance you can fight with a tag on.

I've dragged mobs all over Rolanberry fields before, was kiting a couple squads and random aggro once and ran all the way to the pashow zone... saw the mobs still coming, ran them all the way back up to the fort.

[Roree]

ergo "shorten" you loose tag when you zone

[Narol]

On Remora, Bastok is typically doing the best in campaign followed by sandy, windy is usually down to nothing but their city.

For a while there was an amusing "gain Meri, lose Meri" pattern going on. I think it was Fort K-N once, as well. Rate it's going this week, we're gonna lose Waters.

SE needs to fix NPC pop rate, at least. I'm not kidding when I say I've seen, many times, hour-long battles in Windurst zones where you get something like Ascetics -> Disseminators -> Templars -> random other yag group -> Ascetics again -> some manner of kindred -> hey look a turret and/or belfry -> Disseminators again -> done, with maybe one group of tarus who stay around for all of 5 minutes before getting routed.

As far as I know, they've got a system in place that basically guarantees epic zones stay epic and non-epic zones stay boring as hell with no chance to improve. My own fault for liking Windurst better than the other nations, even if it means putting up with bullshit campaign results week after week.