Was Ambuscade too popular?

[Pixela]

I'm assuming it was far too popular because I can see no other reason why the first month offered a set of monsters to fight and a solo monster fight yet this month offers 2 group monsters to fight. What's the point of having 2 tombs with 4 difficulty levels?

The first month the content was aimed at everyone, better geared players could do the more difficult fights for better rewards and everyone else could do the 2nd tomb on a fairly decent difficulty.

This month the "easy 2nd tomb" is 2 monsters, killing one makes the other monster enrage. The taur can use mortal ray and kill you or your pet/trust tank with a pretty good chance of success (cause cursna sucks) and they have party based aggro, so whether you hit the other or not it's going to go and kill your healer.

You really have to make your mind up what you want here, are you offering content for everyone or are you offering content where they have to be carried?

This feels like a bit of a bait and switch.

[Diavolo]

You really have to make your mind up what you want here, are you offering content for everyone or are you offering content where they have to carry their own weight?

Fixed that for you.

[Jile]

Fixed that for you.

Remember that when sending invites, don't ask newbie players to change jobs when they're spark geared and only have one 99-dd job and still want to do this content at max level and have no chance at contributing beyond the social aspect.

SE needed to address the entry to allow orderly and fair play, they need many more instances. Slapping soloers when 2016 players solo 95% of the time makes little sense. A sign SE dev team either doesn't play xi nor every job.....and they play on gm-server with other supremely geared players.... A far stretch from the reality we play in.

[Diavolo]

Remember that when sending invites, don't ask newbie players to change jobs when they're spark geared and only have one 99-dd job and still want to do this content at max level and have no chance at contributing beyond the social aspect.

Any newbie I invite wouldn't be wearing that sparks gear the next day.

SE needed to address the entry to allow orderly and fair play, they need many more instances. Slapping soloers when 2016 players solo 95% of the time makes little sense. A sign SE dev team either doesn't play xi nor every job.....and they play on gm-server with other supremely geared players.... A far stretch from the reality we play in.

Glad I'm not the one that had to say it.

[Olor]

yeah this is disappointing - gear with a pet job on it and ZERO pet stats for one thing - and replacing the only soloable event in the game with one designed to thwart soloers. Way to kill my desire to play SE.

[Immortta]

yeah this is disappointing - gear with a pet job on it and ZERO pet stats for one thing - and replacing the only soloable event in the game with one designed to thwart soloers. Way to kill my desire to play SE.

Last I checked almost everything is soloable outside of the highest tier of Escha NMs lol.

[Pixela]

Last I checked almost everything is soloable outside of the highest tier of Escha NMs lol.

There is a difference between someone with all the best gear in the game and a huge amount of player skill and a casual soloist.

That's like asking why your mom can't pick up her car to change the tyre cause the worlds strongest man did it.

Honest question: How does it thwart soloers?

I just stated how it stops some people doing content solo, it's 2 mobs, the mob rages after the first dies, they have shared aggro so cures make the 2nd mob go kill your healer and they use death moves that are custom made to kill an npc tank.

The reality is that you can't force people to group in this way. They just won't do the content if they can't solo it, given the game needs to keep people entertained that's not a good thing for the future of the game. If content is created that is party based like Escha Reisen then fine, you have to accept it. When they do a bait and switch and make you think it's content for casual players and then change it next month because too many people were engaging in the new content that's going to have a very different reaction.

If they keep doing this there won't be a problem getting into ambuscade because people are going to stop playing the game again. You can't dismiss the casual portion of this game and giving them nothing while they pay the same subscription.

I understand that many people are simply only interested in their own self interest and want faster queues but you also have to keep in mind that there are a lot of solo casual players and that if they have no content to do anymore they will go play something else, this game is borderline unprofitable as it is. They have like 3 people and a small parrot on the dev team, not sure how much more streamlined they can make it with a smaller playerbase again.

In a perfect world with a welcoming and accepting playerbase (or a party instance system every other mmo has) maybe this would work, the xi playerbase has never been either of these things though so people just get ostracized for being scrubs.

[Ketaru]

yeah this is disappointing - gear with a pet job on it and ZERO pet stats for one thing - and replacing the only soloable event in the game with one designed to thwart soloers. Way to kill my desire to play SE.

Does it really? You keep saying things like this, but if I recall correctly, you were struggling with even the NORMAL dragon last month. Eventually, you're just going to have to admit your gear simply isn't good enough for current content- solo or not. Maybe Ambuscade just isn't what you should be doing right now.

EDIT: I just soloed the Demon duo on Very Easy playing an undergeared RNG. No bells and whistles like REM weapons. I literally just stood there, used ranged attacks, and used weaponskills at 1000 TP. Trusts were August, Gessho, Apururu, King of Hearts, and Cherukiki. To be fair, I would not have used Cherukiki if I had remembered she doesn't give a rat's hindquarters about status removal, there are others that do. Between three healing trusts, surely ONE of them will remove Doom.

So there, the very easiest mode is soloable by what has traditionally been considered one of those worst soloing jobs in the game. So the fight, is in fact, very soloable. Just maybe not on the difficulty you want to do it on.

[Olor]

Does it really? You keep saying things like this, but if I recall correctly, you were struggling with even the NORMAL dragon last month. Eventually, you're just going to have to admit your gear simply isn't good enough for current content- solo or not. Maybe Ambuscade just isn't what you should be doing right now.

Right, which is why I needed ambuscade to be soloable - so I could get gear good enough to participate in solo and group content... HOW am I supposed to play if there is no gear ladder?

I have 119 skirmish one and 2 gear that I spent 10s of millions upgrading. I have a bunch of unity gear. I have some relic and AF (none of which, frankly, is better than my skirmish stuff) I can't get anything better solo - outside of ambuscade.

And I only had trouble on dragon on normal first time I tried. After doing it a few times solo on easy it was easy on normal. Hard I couldn't hit it enough to win, though if I could have worn the gear that dropped last month I bet I could have done it. Accuracy was my only issue. I was surviving just fine, but I couldn't hit it enough to take it down.

What content am I supposed to do? I'm not interested in spending 6 hours shouting, I have limited play time, I am willing to group up but the game makes it hard to find other players who want to do the same content.

Why does it bother you that I want to make my character better and play the game? Would you rather players like me just quit? Cause the game won't last long without our subs.

I am not the best player in the universe but what is holding me back is gear, not skill. I did endgame events fine in the past when everything wasn't so ridiculously stratified. Now if you're not caught up on gear you're left out. And because every new thing invalidates every older thing, no one who has better gear is willing to group up on the lower tier content. I could probably solo a lot of it with gear just an inch better than I have but right now I am totally stuck.

[OmnysValefor]

Honest question: How does it thwart soloers? It entices people to group up, which is a fine thing in an mmo, but it doesn't actually penalize soloers.

As someone who prefers to play with others, at least a few others, it's a little frustrating to have one guy fighting the dragon for 25 minutes (not all soloers are this slow).

Like everyone else, I wish they either had more copies of the instance or, even better, varied the instances (and possibly the battles themselves). Bring back the classic BCNMs that sit empty most of the time, like KS99s, Under Observation, etc.

But given that there are limited resources, I like that grouping up is rewarded.