Please balance and increase Salvage drop rates!

[Demonjustin]

The servers keep having issues with Salvage over and over again, they have been since the restriction on the number of people needed was removed. Originally it seems like the congestion issue that was so feared has come to pass, that's a very vague and foolish assessment of the situation however. If you look at what areas have been affected it's quite easy to figure out what's happening here.

First off, it's not possible to get the same number of Alexandrite in each area, that's simply not the case, or at least it's not the same on average. While you might be able to say that if you add up each purse and individual Alexandrite that would drop that they'd be about the same with marginal difference it's wrong to say that on average they reward the same. In all the time I did Zhayolm, which was for about a month every day, it's average drops never matched or beat what I was getting in Arrapago. Yes, difficulty plays a part, but so to does the reward. If I average 10 more Alexandrite in Arrapago than I do in Zhayolm then you can be certain I'll be doing Arrapago. It's also worth noting that plans are being ignored now by almost everyone and are simply dropped in the end in most cases.

A good way to fix this overall in my opinion would be to make some slight and simple adjustments to drop rates, allow us to trade in plans for additional Alexandrite, and change some of the Salvage restrictions.

The Alexandrite rate so far as I recall was one of the differences mentioned upon release so far as I remember. It was brought up that each zone had a reason to do it, different armors, different plans, and different amounts of Alexandrite were dropped. This meant people would do different zones based on what they were after, allowing congestion to be a non-issue at the time. I could be remembering incorrectly, and if I have time I'll look for the post sometime though it's more than a year or two old by now. In the end bringing a true balance to the amount of Alexandrite obtained on average is the best and easiest solution to this whole thing. If people can get as much from Arrapago as they can in Zhayolm, they may not always do Arrapago.

Allowing us to trade in plans for Alexandrite would allow more Alexandrite in the market, allow another way to balance the Alexandrite in a way, and also provide a use for these items. Personally I think 5~10 Alexandrite per plan might also increase the want to do other areas, an area with more plans dropping 100% of the time might seem better than one which relies on the bosses and gears for their Alexandrite drops.

As for the Salvage restrictions, I am referring to the requirements for popping specific NMs. I don't know any zones besides the two I've mentioned, so I can't say how they work, but I'd assume part of the problem is popping certain NMs. For instance killing the Chariot in Arrapago in under 3 minutes is easy, but other zones may have harder requirements, and if they can't be met solo then people just won't do those zones. I don't want all zones to be the same, but all of them should be about the same when it comes to soloing them.

[RalphTheGalka]

Some of the equipment unlocks need to be re-evaluated in the other zones. Ammo and ranged are locked until the upper floors in Zhayolm 2, meaning that any job that relies on those slots (BST, PUP, SMN, COR, RNG) are pretty much useless there. There's an NM in one zone capable of 1-shotting players, that needs to be adjusted.

It's sad that there's 8 salvage zones yet only one is really used. Perhaps it's time to finally kill the cell system in V1 and adjust some NM pop conditions so that's at least an option.

Adding some kind of lockout timer is not going to have the desired results, players will find creative ways around restrictions like using storage mules to make up the difference rather than go to an subpar zone. Real changes need to be made to the other zones to have any effect.

[Olor]

I support this.