Incursion: a possible solution for the Augmented Capes

[Zhronne]

I have a short analysys and a proposed solution to share on which I'd like to gather more opinions and, possibly, to stimulate the community reps' attention.


1. Why do the Augmented Capes have such randomness?
Without any form of randomness included, people would have been done with Incursion since long and wouldn't be interested in doing it anymore.
Thanks to the fact players have no control at all over capes and their stats, people keep doing the event.
This keeps players busy and avoids a scenario where they stay afk in towns whining about being bored having nothing to do: "Hey devs give us something to do!"
This demand would put additional pressure on devs to create and release new content, which is not sustainable atm given their current task force.
The way Incursion is now instead makes the event long lasting and it is hence beneficial for the health of the game and its players.
tl;dr A certain degree of randomness is necessary and unavoidable


2. What is the current level of randomness in the system?
There are several layers

1. First there's a random chance for a cape to drop from Incursion Coffers. (other random items/gil can drop as well)
2. Then there's a chance for that cape to be one of those you want, out of the 22 possible.
3. Then there's a chance for that cape to have one of more augments on it, out of the four possible ones on each cape.
4. Last, there's a chance for that augment to have an interesting value, out of the possible range each specific augment has

Players have no degree of control over this. The only things they can choose are

• fighting one of the 5 bosses instead of the megaboss. Each of the 5 bosses have a specific set of possible capes they can drop from their specific coffers. Megaboss can drop them all.
• raising the difficulty, which will generate a higher amount of coffers being dropped after a boss is defeated (more coffers > more chance that there will be a cape in one of them

3. What are the problems in this?
The degree of control players have over this is non-existant.
Despite what we said about specific bosses vs Megaboss, it's usually not time-efficient to farm specific bosses, given how the chance of a cape being inside a coffer is higher on the megaboss (megaboss NQ coffers have roughly the same chance as specific bosses HQ coffers).
Raising difficulty makes the odds slightly better, but in the long run it doesn't really change the frustration that can come out of the event for players.

This also create other issues.
First: In the ergonomy of FFXI, job specific augments have always been particularly precious and almost game-changing. Aside from small exceptions, they've always been relegated to fixed stats on job specific equipment. Likewise random augments have mostly been on generic stats, before Incursion.
Second and last: it creates additional and unnecessary strain on players inventories. And we all know how already delicate the situation is. (for instance you could get multiple capes of the same type, each with different augments, and you might want to keep them all to use in different situations, hence increasing the amount of wasted space in your inventory)


4. What could a possible solution be?
We already said how randomness is a necessity and taking it out wouldn't be beneficial.
In light of this, I propose the addition of a new NPC.
It will work similarly to how the Skirmish NPC works.
This NPC will accept a specific augmented cape in trade. After that you can trade the NPC another augmented cape of any type, and this will give you a chance to re-roll the stats on the first cape you traded.
You will then see a preview of the re-rolled stats, and you'll be prompted wether to accept the new one or keep the old one.

I feel such a solution would mantain the randomness of the event and hence the long-lasting appeal of it, but at the same time give a more acceptable degree of control to players while mantaining the philosophy of the event sustainable for both players and developers.



Thanks for reading, please discuss.

[Olor]

I like this suggestion.

[Camiie]

I too think you're on to something here. In the past SE was notorious for inserting too many layers of randomness into their loot systems. Just when it seemed like they were getting away from that with Delve's point system and the newer Skirmish's orbs and stones, they backslide hard with Incursion. I dare say it makes Voidwatch jealous with its trash to treasure ratio.

[Crevox]

As I've said before, I've done quite a lot of Incursion, doing the final tier of Gramk-Droog, etc. I've also formed/joined many Liij-Vok farm parties.

I've gotten about 5 summoner capes so far, and all of them have had +0 or +1 Blood Pact damage, and I still have yet to see a single one with Blood Pact delay reduction. The highest skill I've seen is +4.

Farming it just feels like a waste of time. You could farm for hours and not even see a single cape, and even if you do, it will likely end up being garbage. Yet, for some jobs (Summoner) the stats on it are so good and are such an upgrade over MANY other items that you really don't have a choice. Then you get to join parties and see everyone else get the capes you need. That is, IF you can even get a party, because farming something like Liij-Vok does not appeal to many people, resulting it in being difficult to even get a party together, and then kill him a reasonable number of times. Then you have the super randomness as stated in the opening post.

Sigh. Please change this.

[Camiie]

For two of the jobs I play often, SMN and RNG, I haven't even seen one augmented cape of any quality. An LS member mentioned in chat that he tossed two poor ones the other night. I would have been glad even for those. If the randomness is supposed to be encouraging me to continue to do the event, then it's backfiring hard. Is this going to be the new old Dynamis where people waited 3 years for a RDM hat? About the only saving grace is I'm not forced to lot against everyone else.

[Olor]

Things like this are so random you'd almost rather lot against someone else. If all those capes were in the pool and you could seacom one, you'd have a better chance of getting one that's at least for the job you want.

[dasva]

I'd like to add that instead of just augmented capes that would be nice if you could trade in unaugmented ones too though maybe make it harder... like need 3 of the same kind or something

[Urteil]

Let every augmented cape be traded at shady Velkk for a randomized cape of the job you are currently on or select. This way, every cape is a chance at one you want.

[Martel]

My preference, would be a cape combining system.

Let's say you have two augmented capes of the same type. You trade one to the NPC to be used as the base. Then the second to be used as the material. The base would maintain is full current augments.

In the case that both capes had the same type of augment, the potency would be increased by a small increment for each matching aug. +1 for things with low caps like str+. Maybe 2~ for stuff that caps at 20 like indi effect duration.

In the case that the material has an augment the base doesn't, that augment would be added to the base at a reduced potency. Probably half or less.

This method would retain a fair bit of the RNG, since you have to farm enough capes of the proper augs to build your cape up. But it removes the total frustration of having to try to roll that 0.0001% chance of the right cape with perfect augs. This way you can build up you cape slowly over time. Benefiting slightly every time you manage to get a cape for your jobs.

You might think this would make ppl finished too fast, but I don't. The RNG is still very much there... After god knows how many skirmish MB runs, I've still NEVER seen a Phalanx+ augment on PLD cape at all. Much less a +5. So even if this system had been implemented from the start, I'd still be working on it. I'd just be a hell of a lot less pissed off. And have better capes for my other jobs. -.-;

The down side, is that this is a bit more complicated to implement than a simple trade in for a reroll system. But hey, that doesn't matter. SE isn't gonna implement either of these anyway, so the difficulty for the devs is a non-issue. lol

[Zhronne]

because farming something like Liij-Vok does not appeal to many people

Yes.
But as I stated before, Megaboss NQ crates have roughly the same chance of content being a cape as normal bosses' HQ crates.
When you factor that in, most likely you'll get more chances to get what you want from Grammk's coffers, despite the larger pool, compared to farming specific bosses for a specific type of cape.


@Martel
Cape combining would be the best but I'm afraid:
1) it would be technically challenging for them to develop because they didn't create the capes augment system that way
2) as much as I'd love it, it would give players too much control over the randomness, which I hate, but evidentely it's intended to be part of this system. It's unreasonable to expect them to change that much.

The suggestion I made instead, or very similar ones, I can see as "possible" if they ever want to bother with doing something about it, it would be pretty simple to implement, it would give us a less frustrating and higher degree of control over capes, but at the same time it would keep a high enough level of randomness, that devs seem to love so much.
I just tried to suggest something I could see realistically being implemented, not the system of my dreams, of course =/