Bring back the gear vouchers in Ambu

[Urmom]

how does a newbie even get rawhide without folks carrying them? Even with some ambuscade gear, a lot of [a] skirmish gear, and trust buff I can't solo most T1 escha.

Are you missing a lot of trusts or something? Cause T1 zitah are ridiculously easy. Like my shantotto was doing 15k mb on them last time I was doing clears. Have you tried bst? Even if your fairly new returning a 119 jug with skirmish/old content gear is still pretty strong on easy stuff like that

[Olor]

A newbie could carry their weight in those T1 fights with a little time invested in getting some quests/missions and XP/CPing done beforehand. I would be disappointed if one could successfully clear that content solo.

I've probably said this before, but feel free to send me a /tell in game if you ever want a hand with those NMs, I'll gladly knock them out for anyone that needs a little help and no, I won't charge for it either, something I feel needs to be stated these days as this server is "merc" heaven/hell (depending on your point of view, of course).

Hey, thanks for the offer I might take you up on that. I am really close to being able to solo a lot of these (I get them to 15% or so before trusts crap out on me) but I am finding that final bit of edge just loses me. I just successfully barely cleared one with the trust campaign up - I should probably try it again before trust campaign is done as kupipi got knocked out in first 10% by some fluke and I still managed to barely scrape by... but overall, I just feel a bit awkward asking for people to join me on these things because I never feel like I am good enough for a party, so I just do my best to solo.

[Olor]

Are you missing a lot of trusts or something? Cause T1 zitah are ridiculously easy. Like my shantotto was doing 15k mb on them last time I was doing clears. Have you tried bst? Even if your fairly new returning a 119 jug with skirmish/old content gear is still pretty strong on easy stuff like that

I haven't really tried bst but I don't really enjoy playing it so much anymore and I replaced a lot of my bst augments on my light DD skirmish gear to stuff better for thf/blu since I played them more. My bst gear is so-so at best at the moment. But it is hard to put a lot into a job that I feel constantly annoyed and disappointed in when I play it.

[Nyarlko]

A newbie could carry their weight in those T1 fights with a little time invested in getting some quests/missions and XP/CPing done beforehand. I would be disappointed if one could successfully clear that content solo.

I've probably said this before, but feel free to send me a /tell in game if you ever want a hand with those NMs, I'll gladly knock them out for anyone that needs a little help and no, I won't charge for it either, something I feel needs to be stated these days as this server is "merc" heaven/hell (depending on your point of view, of course).

I've done the same many times as well for many newbies/returnees, and never charged for it.
But I think I should also note that I stomped on E-Z T2s as non-Job-Master BST w/ 3x sparks geared BLM (I was basically there to give them a SC to MB off of,) and I've seen myself that it's also possible for a group of good players in sparks to down T1s if they have the game and communication skills to pull it off. The point of this is that you don't need to be geared for 135+ in order to take them down. The content was designed with group play in mind, not soloing. It's not a binary choice between "being carried" OR "solo Ambuscade". There is the option of playing the game with others after all. >.>;;

The merc heavy environment we're seeing now is probably less due to greed of players, and more to do w/ cost of pops w/o guaranteed drops, at least in the beginning.. It was a way to shift the cost from the ones who wanted a drop but didn't want to deal with possible cost incurred by bad luck to those who were willing to take on that risk in the hopes that they beat the odds and got the drop earlier than the full cost to cover the drop rate average in the hopes that they would have a profit leftover in the end. More recently tho, a lot of the merc offers are for dirt-cheap pops with a high price per drop.
-_-;; Price of laziness I guess..

How are you gonna CP in 800 accuracy gear? lol

The games new player progression path LITERALLY tells you to do ambuscade(ROE intermediate tutorial) and it's very, very, very clearly designed that it's the final step of gear before you do escha. However, unless you're playing a job that benefits from that months sets, you're pretty screwed.

It's awful.

edit:
Back in the day we asked people for help, and they helped us for free. Then sometimes people would ask us for help, and we'd help them for free too.

I remember rank10 level 75 JP's carrying me through shadow lord fight back in 2004.

I remember those days too. ^^ I actually miss the awkward but friendly communication between NA/JP that I normally experienced. (Probably helped that I have a basic grasp of the language, so could at least talk in romaji tho tbh.)

You should be able to reach pretty close ~900acc in sparks w/ non-sublime sushi IIRC. That's enough to grind in E-Z for your first 100JP. Then you can buy one of those Su2 weapons from an NPC for only 100k. Being useful for GF/DI might require you to put in some time doing missions and the like in order to gather a few vorseals, but you really should be knocking all of those out before you try to enter endgame anyway. :/

Prep work = win. Any job 117+ should have absolutely no problems clearing out any pre-SoA missions, and with a quickness, so there really aren't too many viable excuses for not getting them done. Seems like most of the newer content requires completing the old, so knock that stuff out in the beginning and never worry about it again. You need to do most of 'em anyway for escha/reisen access, so you might as well finish them while you are at it (and pick up a bunch of CP+ bonuses along the way for doing so.)

I help others for free very frequently. Only takes an hour to clear out E-Z T1s after all. All I hope to get out of helping is the warmfuzzy feeling of doing my good deed for the day and maybe encouraging someone else to pass it forward and help someone else out.
But, I'm not going to farm for others for free... And gear farming seems to be what the majority of merc shouts are offering these days since a lot of the pops used are actually quite cheap.

As far as Ambuscade vouchers go, I really wouldn't be too surprised if they give us a new way to get them once the dev cycle restarts next spring. I honestly expect Ambuscade development to end after it has done it's 12 month cycle, then just restart and go on a permanent loop. Even if they don't give easy access to vouchers, there will be more chances to get the same gear, you just might have to wait 6/12 months for it to roll back around.

Also, it is not punishment to have time-limited events/rewards. It is rewarding their current paying customers. If you are not paying, then why would you get access to a monthly product/service? Would you expect to be able to get Starlight Festival items in June? Probably not. Then why should you be able to get December's Ambuscade set outside of that month? ^^;; I am not saying that I like the system, but it's far from being bad design. It just means you have to pay for the game if you want the gear.

[Urmom]

I haven't really tried bst but I don't really enjoy playing it so much anymore and I replaced a lot of my bst augments on my light DD skirmish gear to stuff better for thf/blu since I played them more. My bst gear is so-so at best at the moment. But it is hard to put a lot into a job that I feel constantly annoyed and disappointed in when I play it.

If those were good augments ouch. Would've tried getting another taeon set. Can kind of understand that though. I only really bring out bst when I want to power thru some stuff using aoes and/or unleash. But part of that is having pup which lets me still use the same pet auged gear and is amazingly sturdy with okish dmg. But bst still pretty strong just a bit more dangerous (unless you want to play the will the move go off game with running in and out)... though not anymore so than thf

[Shiyo]

Flamma +1 is samurai's BIS helm.
This item is going to go away for a long time(perhaps forever) after this month. That means if you didn't play during these last 2 months, you're always going to be weaker than a samurai who did.

This is the first time in this entire games history that items simply CANNOT be obtained ever again. Please bring vouchers back.

[Urmom]

They said they'd cycle thru again so it's not a forever thing. Vouchers wont fix flamma since it wasn't on the voucher but chances are they made a V2 voucher for the new group of sets. So you need up with a 2 months + an extra chance at the end/beginning of groups

[Shiyo]

Well, they should keep the gear on the NPC forever then.
Also, lower the costs of obtaining stuff with gallantry, because if you miss the month the sets are up for it's a pretty ungodly grind to get full HQ.

Also, it might as well be gone forever. In a years time there will probably be better items, which is silly because it means for x amount of months you just had a worse item and could never obtain it because temp gear in my MMO.

Temp gear needs to never be a thing in this game.

[Diavolo]

In a years time there will probably be better items

This is the reason I don't think you should sweat it too much. Yes, it's poor design at worst and questionable at best, but our gear is getting replaced faster than ever. That stuff you missed out on probably won't be best for all that long.

[Catmato]

it's a pretty ungodly grind to get full HQ.

Then be happy with NQ. HQ isn't for everyone.