Job Specific Capes recently added in New Areas - New Exchange System

[Zhronne]

In the latest big patch 3 new areas were added to the game:
1) Marjami Ravine
2) Yorcia Weald
3) Dho Gates

Monsters, Soul Pyres and Reives in these 3 zones have a chance to drop one of 22 Job Specific Capes.
The rate is pretty low and it was meant from the developers as a system to promote doing reives and various activities in the 3 new zones.

I think enough time has passed since then, and now most people just obtained what they needed or gave up trying to.
I hence propose a new system.
Similar to what was recently done for Abyssea Feet equipment, there should be an NPC that in exchange for any 3 Capes, gives you a chance to pick 1 cape of your choice.

[FaeQueenCory]

How a bout a job check?
Like the first cape to drop (so it doesn't actually increase droprate) is the cape for the job you're on.

This would promote more job types in Rieves (and make getting the actual cape you want a whole mess easier).

[Zhronne]

It's a good idea but honestly too "different" from how everything else in the game works and too complicated to code it.
Why even bother? I'm sure a lot of the people who even cared about capes got a lot which they do not want, and can keep getting ones they do not want/need.

Allowing to trade them, even if at a non-equal rate like the suggested 3:1, sounds fair to me.


P.S.
R.I.P. Masaki Koh, miss him so much ; ;

[predatory]

How about increasing the drop rate on the capes? I have a friend who managed to get all 22 capes, and from doing those reives alone managed to do wkrs every Sunday, and ended up with 1.5 million bayld. That seems more like a way to discourage casual players from going out to do those reives than it does to encourage them.

I'm not proposing a 100% drop rate because that's just lame, but why not a 20% drop rate? I bet that would get people in those reives more consistently

[Zhronne]

but why not a 20% drop rate?

If you want an answer to this question, I already replied in my first post.
Wether it was right or wrong, the reasoning behind this choice from SE is that the capes weren't a goal for them, but a mean to reach a goal.
This goal was to promote people into doing activities (Reives mainly, others as well) into those 3 new zones.
Things didn't perfectly play out as they wanted since the player base condensated into Marjami instead of more or less equally distributing among the 3 zones, but in spite of that I'd dare to say they pretty much achieved their goal.

It's just that it couldn't last forever, and at this point aside a small minority of people still spamming reives in hope of getting the cape they want, the majority of people either got what they wanted or they didn't. Whatever the outcome, they stopped bothering.

This is exactely why I'm saying that this is the right time to offer an exchange. It would be very simple on their end to implement and they wouldn't have to change absolutely nothing with the current mechanics.
Drop rate is not that bad imho. Sure it's not good, but with a rate like the one you suggested people would have stopped hunting capes in 2 days, while clearly they wanted a long term activity to keep players busy with.
What's bad is that with so many capes and with no possibility to choose (and with the mentioned low rate) it can be quite frustrating to keep hunting for them.

I think offering an exchange system is the most simple, quick and efficient way for them to handle the situation without major changes in balance one way or another and without losing too much time or effort in it (they'd rather focus their reduced manforce in other fields of the game)

[predatory]

The exchange system is a great idea, but in order to implement it, people would actually have to get them to drop. I spent a day and a half in Marjami Ravine and only got one cape to drop, and decided to not spend all my ingame time going after those capes. Now I just farm Marjami for the bayld I need every weekend to do WKRs. It wasn't really much of a loss for me either way as I use Molluska mantle for pld, Libeccio Mantle for my rng, and Atheling for my dnc, it would just have been kind of cool to have one for those jobs

[Byrth]

Looks like capes will be added as a potential reward (for when you receive a R/Ex item you already have) from WKRs:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...l=1#post475188

[Zhronne]

Since they could already drop (I got my RUN mantle from Yumcax) I assume they mean something else? Not 100% but something high?

[Byrth]

They mean that the first drop slot will potentially load a cape now. In the past it was only the other drop slots that could be capes, but the first slot was frequently empty because you already had the r/ex item that the game picked for you.

[Zhronne]

That's potentially a good or a bad change. If it's a system based on priorities (i.e. cape gets rolled only if you already have the item that came out) then it's awesome, but I seriously doubt it works like that.

If it just increases the potential loot pool for the first slot adding 22 more items (capes) it will just become an infernal nightmare to get the item you want from that boss...