Ambuscade! 1 NPC, 100 players

[Raydeus]

So what I'm reading is that somewhere between Normal and Difficult, the hit rate becomes unacceptable and the fight becomes very dangerous (assuming we're talking about the dragon right now). I think you're also suggesting throwing 3 melee jobs at it with no real regard for tactics. Might some adjustment be in order then? Possibly bringing some kind of support or healing role into the mix? A GEO, COR, BRD, RDM? Also, outside of the breath moves, the AoE ranges are very small. I would think any ranged attacking job would do just fine in there.

The thing is if you have random soloers you can't really expect to have a proper setup or many options, not to mention someone in sparks gear will probably perform worse than my lvl119 Trusts. So there is little incentive for me to waste my limited play time trying to party. For the most part the only advantage of grouping would maybe be getting it done faster and slightly safer if and only if the people playing know what they are doing, but that's about it. And you may even need to go on a lower difficulty if for some reason the people in the party are worse than your Trust. Now, I'm not discounting the possibility of bumping into well geared people you can actually get a higher difficulty Ambuscade done with and that happen to have the proper jobs for it right there, but that's something far from reliable.

Also, players soloing are usually doing so because they have very good reasons not to group unless grouping can be done quickly and painlessly on the spot. Because if you are waiting for people to change jobs and gear up or whatever you are going to lose many solo players unless they happen to have enough time to waste on that. And if you are trying a more difficult run you'd like to at least know you will be getting more for it to make it worth the extra prep time and you wont end up wasting it because the people playing are worse than Trusts. But how exactly do you know that beforehand partying with randoms? Are you willing to gamble your time for the chance of getting slightly better rewards or are you better off doing your thing and repeating the event at your own pace?

That is the question. And the main reason I personally rather skip an event than wasting time trying to party with random people whenever I have time to do the fights.


PS > As a side note that is one of the reasons why I really hated the Content Finder in XIV so much. You get grouped with a bunch of random people who may or may not know what they are doing, and maybe cause you to waste your time on a loss. Not only that but if you happen to be the inexperienced or undergeared one there is no way for you to learn the instance on your own at your own pace so you have to ruin other people's runs while you learn and/or get better gear. And let's not forget how f'ing awful it was when they had the brilliant idea of setting the mission battlefields as farmable events, so you had people b*tching at you for wanting to watch the cutscenes and just killing the monster before you were even out of it. Yep, very epic those story fights were. Woo... hoo....

[OmnysValefor]

As a side note that is one of the reasons why I really hated the Content Finder in XIV so much. You get grouped with a bunch of random people who may or may not know what they are doing. ...

Almost any game (with exception to XI*) where you can solo to level cap and then are required to party for "hard content" (whatever is hard for you) is going to have this problem and developers never get that.

- Healers learn nothing about triage healing when they're trying to nuke something with feeble nukes before they get killed.
- Tanks learn nothing about enmity control when they're the only one ever hitting the mob or, as in FATEs, things are dying before they have a chance to register enmity.
- DD learn nothing about throughput vs burst when they need the target dead before they die. DD also don't learn that while they may have been godmode while leveling, they can't tank dungeon trash.

I loved the community in classic XI but these reasons are why I really love party grinders.

* I gave exception to XI for two reasons: (1) The game is in its twilight. Trusts gave a resurgence. (2) There are still a lot of players that do know what they're doing because they went through the party-grinding experience.

I played XIV as well, and not to hate on that game at all but it didn't teach me a single thing about tanking. Even the PLD job quests have you fighting mobs with bigger badder tanks that you're not meant to provoke, because they will hurt you, badly.

[OmnysValefor]

That said, what they should have done for Ambuscade, I think, is connect it to HTBFs (maybe without drops if your group goes the "meritless" route). The shadow dragon does nothing really new for that family of mobs. It's not a new or innovative fight for anyone and by the third time, it gets kind of boring. That alone should alleviate a lot of the congestion.

[Raydeus]

Honestly the only way I can see random grouping working would be if the number of people in the party directly added a bonus to the amount of Hallmarks to be gained in the fight.

Say you are doing a Normal volume 2 fight and get 100 for it. If you did the exact same fight with another player you'd instead get 125, 150 with 3, etc. That way even if you aren't fighting a harder version of the battlefield (or had to lower the difficulty) you'd at least get something from it while using less instances in the process. Which would also help with congestion in my opinion.

[detlef]

Honestly the only way I can see random grouping working would be if the number of people in the party directly added a bonus to the amount of Hallmarks to be gained in the fight.

Say you are doing a Normal volume 2 fight and get 100 for it. If you did the exact same fight with another player you'd instead get 125, 150 with 3, etc. That way even if you aren't fighting a harder version of the battlefield (or had to lower the difficulty) you'd at least get something from it while using less instances in the process. Which would also help with congestion in my opinion.

I definitely agree with implementing the Meeble system where a multi-player attempt at the same difficulty is encouraged.

I still think soloers should at least be able to duo and get more hallmarks over time but maybe I'm severely overestimating things.

[Mookies75]

Greetings, everyone.

The development team is still in the midst of testing and verifying improvements plans for Ambuscase, and while I can’t get into the nitty-gritty details just yet, I would like to share the general direction of the adjustments planned.

First up is registration for entering an instance. The aim of this is to regulate the traffic at the entrance to this content, which has currently become a bottle neck. This will guarantee parties or solo players access to the instance in the order in which they registered.

Additionally, we’re looking into increasing the benefits of challenging Ambuscade as a party to give more opportunities for a greater number of players to get involved with this content.

There have also been questions about the rewards, so I would like to address what I can in regards to this as well. In the next version update, we’re looking to make it possible to acquire items via methods other than Hallmarks. With this system, we are planning to make possible to re-acquire the Sulevia equipment that can be purchased currently. Furthermore, we’ll also be adding new items that can be purchased with Hallmarks. (Hallmarks is also a part of Ambuscade that will reset, so after the next version update it will be necessary to save them up again.)

While it will be possible to purchase job-specific capes each time after a reset, the limit is one for each job during each period. This will also reset with each version update.

Once we get closer to the version update I will make a follow-up with more details.

It's been impossible to do Ambuscade even after the "fixes." I'm nowhere near the amount needed for the +1 armor set or cape items, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get there. It's not for lack of trying. Even without the congestion issues, even if I could get in, it'd be an insane grind solo.

There are a high volume of players, but nobody wants to party up. The incentive for group play must be high enough to get them to do it. They're not going to party with people they see as "scrubs." Not only that, why punish people who don't have people to play with? The FF11 community isn't exactly friendly these days. I think the points generated need to be increased all around. I'm not saying the items need to be handed to people, but the grind is crazy for people who have to do it solo.

And I'm glad to hear that there will be some other way to get the abuscade gear after the month is up. I am however worried that it's going to have hoops attached to it that make it not worth it.

[RichLester]

I'm wondering how this registration thing is going to work, though. As people mentioned earlier, there are still only 6 instances & I don't want to be waiting in a queue for 20-40mins just to do a 10-15min Ambuscade. I could be doing other things with my time (RoE getting capacity pts, mog garden, old quests). Imagine seeing yourself in 10th place in the queue. Again, not solving the problem.

I have noticed now that as all the groups that started the event have now had their opportunity to get the +1 items & capes they wanted, the congestion has naturally eased a bit. I'm expecting this will happen each month, though, when brand new gear is released (expecting RNG/NIN/DNC/BLU/... gear this time round & mages month afterwards then pet jobs).

I'm guessing what they mean by other methods of obtaining hallmarks is 1 Copper Voucher = 1000 Hallmarks. I'm hoping that's the case so I can do my daily RoE, get some capacity/job pts & some hallmarks during my few hours on in the evening's session.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

Have more ambuscade arena's covering the event to walk into do battle instead of the one arena to copy walk into it to battle the NM?

[RichLester]

Currently it costs 50 Hallmarks for one pluton.

Currently it costs 2 copper vouchers for one pluton.

So the "1x copper voucher for 1000 Hallmarks" would not fit that current balance.

I think adding Hallmarks to the copper-vouchers list makes a lot of sense, it would certainly cut down congestion, people who only want a single cape or something could buy Hallmarks with vouchers, and not add congestion to the Ambuscade zone.

However, the 1000 Hallmarks per voucher seems very unlikely. Currently you get 20 plutons with 1000 Hallmarks, but only 0.5 plutons with a copper voucher. So the current exchange rate would be 1:25 on vouchers:Hallmarks.

... that's if I am after plutons, of course, but I'm not at the moment. It's more building up the 1000s of hallmarks we need to augment the capes to max & get the equipment that will be available each month. Eventually, I'm hoping for neck pieces, ammo slots & earrings/rings which would most likely cost just as much & I expect it will take another 6 months for the current equipment to come round again.

[Olor]

So what I'm reading is that somewhere between Normal and Difficult, the hit rate becomes unacceptable and the fight becomes very dangerous (assuming we're talking about the dragon right now). I think you're also suggesting throwing 3 melee jobs at it with no real regard for tactics. Might some adjustment be in order then? Possibly bringing some kind of support or healing role into the mix? A GEO, COR, BRD, RDM? Also, outside of the breath moves, the AoE ranges are very small. I would think any ranged attacking job would do just fine in there.

I was trioing normal and it was going really well and was pretty easy so we decided to do difficult and the initial dragon breath one-shot one of the other players I was with...

The step up between normal and difficult is way too big for folks without great gear.

Honestly the only way I can see random grouping working would be if the number of people in the party directly added a bonus to the amount of Hallmarks to be gained in the fight.

Say you are doing a Normal volume 2 fight and get 100 for it. If you did the exact same fight with another player you'd instead get 125, 150 with 3, etc. That way even if you aren't fighting a harder version of the battlefield (or had to lower the difficulty) you'd at least get something from it while using less instances in the process. Which would also help with congestion in my opinion.

This would help. I like this suggestion.