Implement Weekend "Double Everything" Bonus Please :D

[Nyarlko]

I think that a large part of the anti-campaign sentiment here is more about how they tend to focus the entire playerbase into a small handful of activities while they are active. Will you see a lot of people grinding thru Voidwatch when there's no campaign? Not likely. DURING a campaign though, you'd be lucky to find an uncamped ??? for any of the NMs that drop HM Pouches, and likely to see entire alliances hanging out by each one, for the majority of the time that the campaign is active. How often do Domain Invasion dragons die on Sylph when there are no campaigns up for it? I'd be willing to bet that Azi Dahaka (Escha-Zi'tah) basically never goes down, since that is how it works on a heavier population server like Asura. Campaigns are not necessarily a "bad thing" period, but certain ones do have a greater impact than others, and not always purely positive.

I estimate that I saved ~1000-1500 logs this week leveling Woodworking from 25>106.6 so far due to the crafting skill up campaign. That's ~100x stacks worth of mats that I would've had to buy from AH or farm that are not buyable from NPCs, so that's a rather large economic impact (and most likely why the devs have classified it as a "powerful campaign" that they intentionally avoid using frequently.) It's also a rather large time-savings, which also means that I've burned through part of the game's content much quicker than I would have otherwise. In my case, I was actually able to make it almost entirely on what stock I had hoarded away, which would have been almost impossible to do w/o the campaign. The campaign enabled me to essentially remove myself from the economy as far as the task was concerned. Great for me, bad for sellers.

So it's not necessarily so much a "You can't have it easy because I didn't have it easy when I did it," kind of thing. It feels like there is a worry that everyone will burn thru content too fast and end up getting bored/quitting.

Also, I find it hard to believe that there are more than a small percentage of players who would actually agree with the OP. What was asked for is massive overkill no matter how you want to look at it. About the only thing I would agree with would be the increase in regional currencies, and probably excluding bayld/silt since they are the easiest to get right now.

[Aysha]

I think that a large part of the anti-campaign sentiment here is more about how they tend to focus the entire playerbase into a small handful of activities while they are active.

I suppose I understand that sentiment.

The solution is obvious: Middle-ground it. Perhaps every week, pick 1-2 major activities and 2-3 minor ones and add small bonuses, and have them rotate each month, kinda like the Limited-Time RoE Challenges, and let players know what these are in advance.

That way, you make things less grindy, you encourage certain activities during certain weeks, but yet the bonuses are not crippling enough, that you don't feel like crap if you miss one. It would add up over the long run.

Perhaps something like...

Jan. Wk 1: XP/CP Bonus: +50% per kill
Jan. Wk 2: +25% chance of crafting skill gains
Jan. Wk 3: Voidwatch Bonus (half as good as the current campaigns)
Jan. Wk 4: All Mog Tablets + Double Flotsam
Feb. Wk 1: +50% Escha Silt gain
Feb. Wk 2: +50% XP/CP bonus

etc. With the most common (XP/CP) being once per month and everything else being rotated through the months. That kinda thing. The thing is to give more bonuses, but each bonus be smaller so that it is not so world-ending if you miss one.

I estimate that I saved ~1000-1500 logs this week leveling Woodworking from 25>106.6 so far due to the crafting skill up campaign.

Why 25-106.6... why didn't you get Wood up to 70 and then wait for the campaign to do 70->110? Or didn't you have enough time to get it up that far before the campaign? Double-Skill gains mean nothing when you're guaranteed .1 every synth as long as you're not over the recipe level, lol.

Great for me, bad for sellers.

The Mog Garden already does that; don't need no special campaign for that. I've leveled my Goldsmith from ~80 to 105 now and I've bought almost nothing from the AH other than a few Elemental Ores, lol. I get so much Silver and Gold ore now that I am getting to the point I vendor silver, and Gold.... I'm going to start vendoring that too because the AH is too saturated. Darksteel? The only profitable way to deal with absolute flood of Darksteel is to make Darksteel Items and vendor them (until/unless they nerf the sell-to-npc prices, blah) because nobody wants Darksteel, stuff is nearly as easy to get as Tin.

So it's not necessarily so much a "You can't have it easy because I didn't have it easy when I did it," kind of thing. It feels like there is a worry that everyone will burn thru content too fast and end up getting bored/quitting.

But yet, without the gains people quit without ever finishing and that's even worse. If you finish everything there is to do, then yes you will walk away bored, but at least content that you got to see the majority of the content. If you get bored to tears to the point you just can't continue because everything is so stupidly repetitious, then you end up quitting with a sour taste in your mouth.

Players will quit eventually, there's no avoiding that. You can't run an MMORPG forever with zero new content. Rehashing Ambuscade every month is not going to keep FFXI perpetually alive. We need new content, otherwise we are going to have to prepare for the inevitable. Trying to keep the game alive for longer by making players grind their eyeballs out on tasks so boring and repetitive that a newbie coder could code bot scripts to do it is not the way to accomplish things.

Also, I find it hard to believe that there are more than a small percentage of players who would actually agree with the OP. What was asked for is massive overkill no matter how you want to look at it. About the only thing I would agree with would be the increase in regional currencies, and probably excluding bayld/silt since they are the easiest to get right now.

No, I don't agree with the OP, they are too extreme. However, I understand the spirit/underlying cause what caused them to suggest it. There are things in this game that are simply not fun or interesting, but we do because we must, filler content. Capacity Points are the most egregious.

[Shiyo]

Campaigns are bad and need to go away forever. Most of the campaigns need to be nerfed by about 50-75% and implemented into the game permanently, like JP should always be +75-150% more per kill and dragons should never fly away or pop adds, vw should ACTUALLY be doable in 2017 with capped lights(No, it's literally not doable unless you enjoy paying for $17/monthx10), etc etc. Most content is basically unplayable or flat out not realistic to do unless a campaign makes it playable, like dragons and VW. No ones gonna be able to find enough people in 2017 to do content like that, but campaigns nerf it enough that it's doable in 2017's player base, which is stupid because then you're forcing people to do x content during y campaign.

If you want your player base to burn themselves out and have cyclical subs instead of steady subs(are you trying to be ff14? the no content simulator mmo?) then keep campaigns, if you want STEADY subs for years, which tbh sounds like more profits to someone with basic math skills, then you should probably remove campaigns forever and implement their bonuses at a massively nerfed rate base into the game so all content can actually be done.

TLDR: Update your damn games content and stop relying on crappy campaigns to make tons of content ACTUALLY doable in 2017.

[Nyarlko]

@Aysha:
I'm not really keen on the likely to accompany weekly maintenances that a short-term campaign schedule would bring with it. I don't trust the devs quite enough to believe that they'd have the system setup properly so that they wouldn't need to reboot the servers to turn stuff on. Converting to a short-term schedule would also likely ingrain the urge to utilize the flavor of the week even deeper into us.

I leveled WW on a whim tbh. lol I had three thousand logs clogging up that mule and enough crystals in storage to pull it off. She's 110.0 now by the way. ^^ I have always agreed that the skillup campaign did exceedingly little for 1-60, but I tried being lazy and took some recipes all the way to +10 past cap. I was still getting ~90% skillups even that far away, so I now think that it at least increases convenience since it's possible to use a single recipe for 15-20 full levels if you have reasons to do so. Also managed to cap off a 95BC during this campaign, so that gives me access to 3x capped crafts (LW/BC/WW) which is kinda nice. Also made myself a spiffy signed Su2 crossbow for Nyarlko's thief as my first non-skillup synth.

I have 12x Mog Gardens running, where do you think I got all those logs I was choking on? Or where I got all my BC mats when I leveled that? :3 I actually did buy a bunch of Guatambu Logs for the 106+ stretch, but expending less than 1mil for a capped craft sounds like a good deal to me. Enough stuff has been selling already that I think I'm close to break-even. Now for the monumental task of leveling allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the subcrafts. @_@

@Shiyo: I agree that Domain Invasion dragons' flying needs to go away forever. It's the primary obstacle preventing consistent kills IMO. Adds can be annoying, but they do scale with the number of players present, and can generally be AOE'd down rather easily, so I don't see them as much of a problem as flying. Flying causes Trusts to glitch out and force flails once they land, if there is more than one tank trust then any that are not the mob's target will slowly slide around from the front to the back, trusts don't know how to move out of the way when they get drawn-in, etc.

[Aysha]

I would agree that a permanent 50% would be a good solution too, but they seem to want the spikes in player activity that they do every month for some odd reason. They seem to think that this is the best way to keep players active, to rotate different activities. Problem is, too little too sparse. Yes, you bring everybody to the Apex Mobs with CP Campaigns, but when there's no CP Campaigns, I almost never see shouts for CP groups in the cities, and the Apex Camps are nigh-empty 'cept for a couple no-lifers that are always there 24/7 (probably botting at that).

It boils down to SE trying to keep the game afloat without any new content for long stretches of time by inflating the amount of time it takes for us to get stuff done. Problem is, that's not how it works. Make it take too long and players will simply quit out of boredom.

And yes, old content needs to be made do-able, either by nerfing to allow low-man groups, or changing the mechanics to adjust to today's playerbase numbers.

I've long maintained that obsolete content such as Delve should be nerfed to allow for solo play with trusts by people wearing lesser gear. Right now, you got this endgame model where it is impossible for the little guy to progress past Yorcia Wield Skirmish and Ambuscade NQ because everything else requires a group and is tuned way too high to even think about doing it with trusts, even if you have the best Trusts. It's "get an endgame shell or go home", but what does the newbie have to offer an endgame shell?

It usually boils down to "play a support or go home" because support is what every shell seems to want, because the ONLY shouts you see are for GEO, BRD, or rarely BLU. Sometimes WHM once in a blue moon. GEO and BLU take a ridiculous amount of prep work to actually be useful to your group, BRD to me looks like the most boring (but hectic) job to play and I dunno about WHM. Been wanting to try that, but eh, how do I get practice and how would I convince an endgame shell to take me in when I have zero skill (or might as well be zero -- I used to heal way back before Afflatus days) and next to no gear to offer them?

So, with no Endgame shell, I'm locked out of 90% of the endgame content at 119 and even some stuff less than 119 that is simply tuned too high to be solo'd due to horrible mechanics, such as mobs unequipping your gear in Ra'Kaznar Skirmish. Most lame mechanic ever.

[Nyarlko]

I would agree that a permanent 50% would be a good solution too, but they seem to want the spikes in player activity that they do every month for some odd reason. They seem to think that this is the best way to keep players active, to rotate different activities. Problem is, too little too sparse. Yes, you bring everybody to the Apex Mobs with CP Campaigns, but when there's no CP Campaigns, I almost never see shouts for CP groups in the cities, and the Apex Camps are nigh-empty 'cept for a couple no-lifers that are always there 24/7 (probably botting at that).

It boils down to SE trying to keep the game afloat without any new content for long stretches of time by inflating the amount of time it takes for us to get stuff done. Problem is, that's not how it works. Make it take too long and players will simply quit out of boredom.

And yes, old content needs to be made do-able, either by nerfing to allow low-man groups, or changing the mechanics to adjust to today's playerbase numbers.

I've long maintained that obsolete content such as Delve should be nerfed to allow for solo play with trusts by people wearing lesser gear. Right now, you got this endgame model where it is impossible for the little guy to progress past Yorcia Wield Skirmish and Ambuscade NQ because everything else requires a group and is tuned way too high to even think about doing it with trusts, even if you have the best Trusts. It's "get an endgame shell or go home", but what does the newbie have to offer an endgame shell?

It usually boils down to "play a support or go home" because support is what every shell seems to want, because the ONLY shouts you see are for GEO, BRD, or rarely BLU. Sometimes WHM once in a blue moon. GEO and BLU take a ridiculous amount of prep work to actually be useful to your group, BRD to me looks like the most boring (but hectic) job to play and I dunno about WHM. Been wanting to try that, but eh, how do I get practice and how would I convince an endgame shell to take me in when I have zero skill (or might as well be zero -- I used to heal way back before Afflatus days) and next to no gear to offer them?

So, with no Endgame shell, I'm locked out of 90% of the endgame content at 119 and even some stuff less than 119 that is simply tuned too high to be solo'd due to horrible mechanics, such as mobs unequipping your gear in Ra'Kaznar Skirmish. Most lame mechanic ever.

I run a social-that-does-stuff LS on Asura. I enjoy collecting stray players whether new or returning. I think it's fun to get fresh players into the game and help returnees get back up to speed. My standard welcome gift is a free EZ T1 clear (and T2 if they can help offset the pop cost since I'm not rich,) with me dboxing once they have at least one 99 job. It helps to have a stock of vorseals and they get all the drops. So it's not everyone everywhere that excludes lower geared players for everything. ^^

I agree with you on Delve entry requirements and don't understand why they still require 3man to enter. I don't agree that anything should be actually nerfed tho, since it's not actually obsolete content. There are several drops that are still good/unique/desirable, plus plasm is linked to Ergons, so I don't see any difficulty changes incoming ever. Group content is group content however, so it doesn't make any sense to nerf it to easily soloable in sparks tier difficulty if groups are still doing it.

The demand for support is because everyone seems to want to play a DD. Most gamers like big numbers (especially damage dealt) and support jobs don't tend to directly cause much damage at all even if they are indirectly doing so by buffing others. Plus gearing a modern BRD is a nightmare. ~_~;; GEO is actually very easy to gear as most of the AF/relic/empy armor reforges are what you will be using the most and they even start off as 109s. BLU's challenge is just learning all the spells, gear-wise it's not that different from any other melee/mage. I don't know WHM well enough to say too much about it tbh, but you might want to look into reforges for it, and Vanya set from EZ T1s should hold you over for quite a while on at least cure potency I'd think from looking at the stats/augs. There's a nice WHM staff from UNM too.. Think it's Arke? The one in Sauromuge Champaign. :x It's a BRD/WHM greater bird, and the most threatening thing it does is Benediction once per fight, but it's a pushover.

Normal Skirmish doesn't have much worth the effort to obtain as far as I know, so I think you'd only need to clear it once for ROE? (Please correct me if this is wrong. I skipped it entirely and going off the very dismissive feeling I had after looking at the drop/aug lists.)

[Shiyo]

Demand for support is because if you're undergeared, you're not coming a DD. You also only need 1 DD to kill any boss in the entire game(and a good corsair that does damage, or two dd's if you can't get a good corsair). Adding another DD to a party ACTUALLY lowers the damage if the DD gains tp slow, can't hit the mob, or can't do a 3 step skillchain with the other 2 dd's. I'm not joking, I've literally kicked a DD and then killed mobs 2-3x as fast, there's actually "too many dd's", and that's past 1+COR or 2 DD's.

You want 3-4 supports and 1-2 DD's. Everyone also wants to come to content with their 800 acc warrior/dancer dualwielding eminent axes/swords.

[Aysha]

Not "everybody" is like that.

I finally got my BLU up to 1200JP thanks to this campaign, and once I get a couple spells, I'll have what "Out of the BLU" (a guide on BGwiki) says is the "optimal DD set list". I'm wearing Ambuscade (a couple of the pieces are +1), etc. Not the best gear, but certainly better than 117s lol.

But meh. If I have to gear up a support, it will take awhile, but I don't really mind doing so, I just don't want to be locked into that and only that. The support classes do not sound like they are fun to play whatsoever, or maybe that's just BRD or GEO, lol.

[Shiyo]

Blue mage is the last DD I'll ever invite to content, they are a solo only job. I'm ok with forcing a bluemage to be my tank + skillchain opener in JP pts though, got 5m/hour with that set up. Job isn't meant for dealing damage in proper party comps, though.

[Aysha]

Blue mage is the last DD I'll ever invite to content, they are a solo only job. I'm ok with forcing a bluemage to be my tank + skillchain opener in JP pts though, got 5m/hour with that set up. Job isn't meant for dealing damage in proper party comps, though.

I've done a few ambuscade PUGs with a couple BLUs and they seemed to do quite well. They've got some good support, They've got some good off-healing, and a crapton of utility depending on what they sub and are incredibly versatile. Not sure I'm seeing what the problem is.

But whatever. *shrug* You're not even on my server so I don't really need to care about your opinion, no offense meant.