[DEV1003] Adjustments to Empyrean Seal Acquisition.

[Kenthedeviant]

First of all, let me start by asking, we're all familiar with the system of obtaining battle trophies (Key items) for Killing NM's in the "Heroes of Abyssea" areas, correct? Well, I believe theres a great number of reasons why a similar system would make a lot of sense for obtaining seals to upgrade our empyrean armor. In the simplest terms, we could obtain a Key Item "Voucher" that can be turned into an npc to have your pick of seals. These Voucher KI's could be earned through both NM kills AND quests, randomly. And perhaps if you were to procure a weakness (stagger) on an NM, each member could potentially give more than one voucher. Then, when vouchers are turned in to the NPC's. the player could have their pick of the seals they need.

For starters, since seals are "drops" that enter the treasure pool, many players are often competing with one another, and in some cases even fighting over these drops. If we were all to obtain these vouchers as a Key Item, there would be no need for lotting or arguing over who gets what. More importantly, when doing quests or NM's, so many seals fall that no one can use, or especially in the instance of quests, seals have no possibility of going to players who CAN use them (since quest seals cannot even appear in the treasure pool).

It's BEYOND frustrating when you keep obtaining seals that no one can use over and over again, and even more frustrating when you obtain nothing over and over again. I'm not asking to make it EASY, just less frustrating. THere's a VERY big difference between "challenging" and "frustrating". I WELCOME a challenge, but a challenge should NOT be a test of your LUCK or PATIENCE. When you do EVERYTHING right, and everything that is expected of you (killing AND procuring an NM, completing the quest as prescribed, etc), and still virtually NEVER get what you need, this fails to be challenging, and simply becomes an annoying time sink hole. If this system does seem "too easy" for some, perhaps the number of required vouchers to obtain each seal can be increased, I'd be glad to listen to other's ideas, but lets stop using "Challenging" and "Frustrating/time consuming" interchangeably, because they are NOT the same thing.

[staley]

Seals are easy to get from NM's. Stop questing and grab a whm, thf or monk and go at it. This game is already easy enough so stop crying.

[Kenthedeviant]

Somehow I had a feeling that right away, the first few replies would be about someone crying about "it's too easy already". If you actually took time to read the post like an intelligent human being, then this would not be an issue.

[Varchesis]

The system you propose is similar to the battle echelon (sp?) system.

I would say revise the battle echelon reward system to include seal acquisition. Because the 'enhanced' gear obtained in battle echelon is far inferior to the empyrean gear why not allow seals to come from this exchange system?

The battle echelon reward system is already broken into different gear slots (head, body, hands, legs, feet) would it be so difficult to change the reward item to seals?

[Kenthedeviant]

Agreed, Varchesis. I think SE had a good idea when they came up with the battle trophy echelon system, but it can be greatly expanded upon or just adjusted to actually be worthwhile. As it stands now, it was just executed poorly but has a lot of potential to be adjusted for seals or other items that are actually worth getting. The bottom line is that LUCK should be less of a factor in this game, and SKILL should be the focus. If you do everything right, you should have an equal opportunity to get what you want/need, rather than leave it entirely to chance.

[Kenthedeviant]

Seals are easy to get from NM's. Stop questing and grab a whm, thf or monk and go at it. This game is already easy enough so stop crying.

And Staley, I just want to point out, you're offering strategies to DEFEAT AN NM, which is completely irrelevant to this topic to begin with. Next time, try actually READING a topic before you post a reply.

[staley]

Still crying T.T Stop making this game easy!

[staley]

Your idea of vouchers etc would take longer then finding a pop nm or 10min time spawn to spam. Though it would be nice to be able to trade in unwanted seals.

[Miera]

I was thinking maybe making seals trade-able.

But in a way where you'd have to trade something of similar Value.

Let's say for instance I need 2 more SCH Body seals to complete my +1 body piece and neither that damn Khimera or Ironclad Giant douchebag is dropping them and neither is the stupid Uligurand Range run around BS quest is giving me any seals.

To the point

Let's say you have to give a seal to get a seal, but not just ANY seal. Like SCH body seal for WHM body seal or something along that manner so people wont complain about how easy getting seals would be and EVEYONE would have +1s, which they already do anyway.

Or how about this, Dom Ops is fun, I do it for the Dominion notes and the possible seals but It annoys me to no end that I get seals I cannot USE so instead of them dropping to your inventory and then you dropping them off the face of the planet why not give the option to put it into lottable spoils so everyone who actually could use it lot it?

[Varchesis]

Though it would be nice to be able to trade in unwanted seals.

This is also a great idea.
Perhaps, every two or three seals of the same type traded will yield a seal of the same type as the job you are currently using.

i.e. trade two Unkai Seal: Hands while currently BLU and receive one Mavi Seal: Hands

This would limit the easiness and still keep it doable for those who do not have a good group/LS.

I would think it also nice to exchange say eight to ten seals of the same type to receive one card/coin/stone/jewel in a similar manner, as described above.

[Zarabi]

I personally wish for ways to solo seals somehow. And i don't mean soloable NM's. More quests maybe, the option to trade them, even trade several "wrong" ones for one "right" one, trading between players etc.

Due to personal reasons, illnesses etc. i cannot join NM hunt parties due to the fear i may have to leave to rest in the middle of a NM fight, making everyone else mad. It bums me.

[Starr]

I think something like 20 KS = 1 seal of choice and 30 HKS=1 +2 item of choice would be fair and also give them another use, although they did say they're gonna add BCs that take them to enter and that there would be more ways to obtain +1/2 items so they might be adding BCs that can drop them.

[Varchesis]

I've had a crazy idea for some time as far as artifact gear/item acquisition...

:: Mirror Match Burning Circle ::

You fight against an exact copy of yourself in a burning circle battle kind of like the fight for 70 lvl cap. One on one! No subjob restrictions. No cheating opponent who gets a subjob at max lvl.

The rewards would be job based and you would have to prove you deserve what you want. Perhaps the fight would not be quite as evil as fighting Maat or Raubahn (sp?) but it would be a great way to test yourself and receive much coveted items.

This would be an excellent way to receive artifact gear/items of any sort and would allow anyone to receive high-quality rewards without a group.

[Kenthedeviant]

I think these are all interesting ideas that SE needs to hear about. The bottom line is though, WAY too much is left to chance when it comes to acquiring seals, and challenge should be based on SKILL, not LUCK. In this instance, the LUCK of obtaining the right seal from quests or NM's, or even obtaining ANY seal at all. Some quests need to be spammed over 300 times before you get enough seals to upgrade the ONE job you want, and some nm's need to be done over 100x even if you procure weakness, especially if other players are lotting against you for that particular seal. Not all players have the time to spam a quest 300x for ONE piece of gear to upgrade, or the same NM 100x or more, much less join a shell that regularly does nm's like this. If we do everything we're supposed to though, such as killing and procuring an NM, or completing a quest, we should get SOME kind of an option to have a choice, not let it fall entirely into a CHANCE at LUCK... and a poor chance at that.

[Monkeynutz]

I can't think of any NM that needs to be killed 100 times, unless you're killing it with an alliance and everyone needs the same seal or something.

In any case, for additional ways of obtaining seals/ +2 items I like the battle trophies idea, especially since it gives incentive to help absolutely anyone who is trying to hunt any NM. The seals might not need to be too expensive, but I think the +2 items should be. They should all probably be added to the top tier (I forget if it's 5th or 1st -- but I mean the most expensive one) with seals costing a small number of those trophies and +2 items costing a lot of them, I think. I've never gone out NM hunting specifically for trophy acquisition, but I think it would be an easy task if that was your goal.

Some level of trading could be nice as well, though if it were allowed between players it would easily allow for buying/ selling seals, which I don't think is something SE wants to happen.

They could also maybe do something with dominion notes/ resistance credits for this, as well as maybe tying in WoE and/ or new BCs. I just hope they do something constructive with the high/ kindred's crests. I've got tons of those things.

[Greatguardian]

I think these are all interesting ideas that SE needs to hear about. The bottom line is though, WAY too much is left to chance when it comes to acquiring seals, and challenge should be based on SKILL, not LUCK. In this instance, the LUCK of obtaining the right seal from quests or NM's, or even obtaining ANY seal at all. Some quests need to be spammed over 300 times before you get enough seals to upgrade the ONE job you want, and some nm's need to be done over 100x even if you procure weakness, especially if other players are lotting against you for that particular seal. Not all players have the time to spam a quest 300x for ONE piece of gear to upgrade, or the same NM 100x or more, much less join a shell that regularly does nm's like this. If we do everything we're supposed to though, such as killing and procuring an NM, or completing a quest, we should get SOME kind of an option to have a choice, not let it fall entirely into a CHANCE at LUCK... and a poor chance at that.

1) Proc is not an abbreviation, it's an acronym for Programmed Random Occurence. Man, it's annoying to see people type out "process" and "procure".

2) NMs only drop 4 seal types max. With Grellow proc'd, let's assume the average number of seals dropped per NM is 2.5. It's incredibly unlikely that you won't be able to finish any given armor piece in less than an hour, especially considering the NMs can be spawned again 60 seconds after their defeat. The exception to this is VNMs which drop seals, as their repop is 15 minutes. Even those don't take much more than a couple of hours to finish pieces with, assuming you do Grellow and bring TH.

3) Quests and Dominion Ops. It's fairly obvious that these were not designed to be full-fledged replacements for killing NMs in any way, shape, or form. Seal Quests and Dominion Ops are simply a casual alternative for players that don't have the playtime or resources to kill NMs; or, just another way to make AF3 armor more accessible. Quests allow you to narrow down your seal hunt between 4 jobs, just like NMs. But if you're someone who is going to spam these quests 300 times, you are not the intended audience for them anyways and you really should just kill the NMs.

The only legitimate issue I've seen with the Seal Quests is the massive gap in difficulty between some of them. You may be able to buy Murex Spicules off the AH and spam that quest over and over until you've completed 4 sets of AF3+1 legs, but finding a Malachite is a royal pain in the buttox. Maybe adding additional, alternative quests in each zone that are also able to drop AF3 seals could work out. It's unlikely any one job is going to be stuck with 2 overly difficult quests in the same zone.

[Krashport]

First of all, let me start by asking, we're all familiar with the system of obtaining battle trophies (Key items) for Killing NM's in the "Heroes of Abyssea" areas, correct? Well, I believe theres a great number of reasons why a similar system would make a lot of sense for obtaining seals to upgrade our empyrean armor. In the simplest terms, we could obtain a Key Item "Voucher" that can be turned into an npc to have your pick of seals. These Voucher KI's could be earned through both NM kills AND quests, randomly. And perhaps if you were to procure a weakness (stagger) on an NM, each member could potentially give more than one voucher. Then, when vouchers are turned in to the NPC's. the player could have their pick of the seals they need.

For starters, since seals are "drops" that enter the treasure pool, many players are often competing with one another, and in some cases even fighting over these drops. If we were all to obtain these vouchers as a Key Item, there would be no need for lotting or arguing over who gets what. More importantly, when doing quests or NM's, so many seals fall that no one can use, or especially in the instance of quests, seals have no possibility of going to players who CAN use them (since quest seals cannot even appear in the treasure pool).

I think what Kenthedeviant is getting at:

Ok "most" jobs can solo pretty much anything w/in Abyssea that being said moving on. Now "mostly" everyone likes playing w/ other players duh!? Its a MMO after all.. Maybe said NM drops "Vouchers KI" (Keyitem) instead of seals to each Alliance/party member then those players can take their "Vouchers KI" (Keyitem) to said NPC to pick their reward.

I agree reason why, Cause if you have a full Alliance and its a pickup party every member in said Alliance isn't getting a seal. Yes "Some" members have their LS but "some" are also a social LS's and w/o a point system.



It's BEYOND frustrating when you keep obtaining seals that no one can use over and over again, and even more frustrating when you obtain nothing over and over again. I'm not asking to make it EASY, just less frustrating. THere's a VERY big difference between "challenging" and "frustrating". I WELCOME a challenge, but a challenge should NOT be a test of your LUCK or PATIENCE. When you do EVERYTHING right, and everything that is expected of you (killing AND procuring an NM, completing the quest as prescribed, etc), and still virtually NEVER get what you need, this fails to be challenging, and simply becomes an annoying time sink hole. If this system does seem "too easy" for some, perhaps the number of required vouchers to obtain each seal can be increased, I'd be glad to listen to other's ideas, but lets stop using "Challenging" and "Frustrating/time consuming" interchangeably, because they are NOT the same thing.

Maybe adding another "!!" weakness (stagger) if you want to try your luck in getting the "Vouchers KI" (Keyitem)

I've been playing FFXI for about 7yrs now by no means am I /cry.. Playing that long trust me I'm all /cried out! :p

[Starr]

I think these are all interesting ideas that SE needs to hear about. The bottom line is though, WAY too much is left to chance when it comes to acquiring seals, and challenge should be based on SKILL, not LUCK. In this instance, the LUCK of obtaining the right seal from quests or NM's, or even obtaining ANY seal at all. Some quests need to be spammed over 300 times before you get enough seals to upgrade the ONE job you want, and some nm's need to be done over 100x even if you procure weakness, especially if other players are lotting against you for that particular seal. Not all players have the time to spam a quest 300x for ONE piece of gear to upgrade, or the same NM 100x or more, much less join a shell that regularly does nm's like this. If we do everything we're supposed to though, such as killing and procuring an NM, or completing a quest, we should get SOME kind of an option to have a choice, not let it fall entirely into a CHANCE at LUCK... and a poor chance at that.

Welcome to FFXI , everything has always taken time over skill, killing things over and over til it drops or you are up for it in a LS. You must be new.

[Bentonn]

I agree that the way to obtain certain job seals is totally unbalanced in the game and would appreciate a better system in obtaining the seals I can use/need.

The KI voucher idea in intriguing at the least and I would applaud SE if they would implement such a system. The basics are already in place as pointed out (battle trophies), why not add the seal of YOUR CHOICE?

I have no problem going with our (small) linkshell group and spamming NM's for seal drops, however it can be totally frustrating:

1) not all members live in the same time zones, so not all people with the jobs leveled and who can procure are on at the same time
2) other people ALSO spamming that same NM that drops the seals that YOU need/want
3) spamming the NM, procuring the NM (stagger) only to have it drop no seals you want or even better NO seals at all
4) time is limited in Abyssea - even if we 'farm' extra time

I, for one, would love a better way to obtain the seal of my choice

[RAIST]

For that matter.. they could just add the seals to the trophy reward list already in use. Maybe make it part of the 2 for 1 trade-up system. Two level 5 trophies for 1 level 4, or maybe a foot seal of your choice. Then two level 4 trophies for 1 level three or a leg seal of your choice, etc.

Raist

[Lollerblades]

Didn't SE mention something would be done with Kindred Crests and High Kindred Crests. Maybe they have something in the pipelines already for making seals more aquirable?
Maybe KCNM / HKCNM arena's where seals are rewards? Just a thought
But i do like this idea that's been put out ~ I'm tired of needing a pt / alliance / ls help just to get seals from bigger nm's then being outlotted

[Tsukino_Kaji]

My question still is this;
Why are the upgrade items for Relic and Mythic tradable while Empyrean are all EX? I still fail to see a reason to it.

I have personaly thrown away over 200 seals. Why? Because there's no room to keep them. I'm currently sitting on 40 stacks, over 150 seals for unfinished gear.

On the topic of seal quests. ALL quests should be the same "rank" to start. Say feet seals for example. I shouldn't be able to just walk and do one quest for one set of jobs, but then have to to some other random quest 40 times to get max rank in the area just so I can gain accesss to the quest that lets me get the same level seals for another.

[Greatguardian]

Finish an armor piece before starting the next? If you're doing one quest or NM you'll only have, at most, 4 stacks of seals at any given time. Inventory concerns are a player issue, not a game issue. It's not Abyssea's fault if someone hops, skips, and jumps around with half-finished pieces in their inventory.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Finish an armor piece before starting the next? If you're doing one quest or NM you'll only have, at most, 4 stacks of seals at any given time. Inventory concerns are a player issue, not a game issue. It's not Abyssea's fault if someone hops, skips, and jumps around with half-finished pieces in their inventory.No, most of the time you only aquire a handful of seals, never the full 8 or 10. And even if I did, feet from vunkurl are neigh impossible to get because no one ever goes there. And bastion is screwed over by the NPC before you can get any points.

[Greatguardian]

No, most of the time you only aquire a handful of seals, never the full 8 or 10. And even if I did, feet from vunkurl are neigh impossible to get because no one ever goes there. And bastion is screwed over by the NPC before you can get any points.

So... go back later and finish the sets... before starting new armor pieces. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. It just requires players to take responsibility for themselves. If you're low on inventory, don't make new stacks before finishing old ones. Most seal-level NMs are soloable anyways, if not extremely easy duos (or dual box solos).

[Tsukino_Kaji]

So... go back later and finish the sets... before starting new armor pieces. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. It just requires players to take responsibility for themselves. If you're low on inventory, don't make new stacks before finishing old ones. Most seal-level NMs are soloable anyways, if not extremely easy duos (or dual box solos).I NEVER said anything about being low on inventory.
I'm stating how wasteful the current system is.

[Greatguardian]

I NEVER said anything about being low on inventory.
I'm stating how wasteful the current system is.

And I'm stating that the problem isn't the system. Anyone wasting more than 4 slots at a time in seals (7 if someone is super casual and alternates between an NM and a Quest for the same piece) is the one creating the waste.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

And I'm stating that the problem isn't the system. Anyone wasting more than 4 slots at a time in seals (7 if someone is super casual and alternates between an NM and a Quest for the same piece) is the one creating the waste.You mean the quest and NMs where you have to throw away the other 3 seals that drop from them is not wasteful?

[Greatguardian]

You mean the quest and NMs where you have to throw away the other 3 seals that drop from them is not wasteful?

Well you can complete them, or you can throw them away, the game is not forcing you to make that distinction. Shit drops. Sometimes shit drops that other people want and you don't want. My god, what a new and upsetting game concept.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

I'm saying that we should have to simply throw them away. There should be options. Like how quickly SE did an update to make them stackable. How many seals did you have before they were. My storage was full in a day. The point is that they can change it, but there's the implementation?

[RabidSquirrel]

1) Proc is not an abbreviation, it's an acronym for Programmed Random Occurence. Man, it's annoying to see people type out "process" and "procure".


Short for spec_proc (special procedure), which is a bit of code triggered to cover a special case that the default code doesn’t handle.

In the older muds there was almost no variation between what a given object could do. For example all weapons used the weapon type, then you could specify damage type (was it a sword or a mace), damage ranges, and so on.

To get the weapon to do anything special, you had limited choices. Depending on the architecture, you could attach a spell to be cast, or could attach a script if the code supported it. In the codebases that Brad & co. played, the devs could not script, so the codebase allowed a pointer to a special hardcoded procedure to be entered in the weapon data.

“Proc” is almost entirely EQ slang… Even in the muds, it wasn’t that widely used because only some codebases used the term. It took EQ publicizing the inherited term to make it common knowledge.

http://www.nerfbat.com/2006/04/15/what-is-a-proc/

Just felt I should throw this out. But even so... Process, procedure, special procedure, programmed random occurrence, they all basically mean the same thing. Apples and Oranges.

[Greatguardian]

What would they solve by changing NMs? As is, the system encourages people to work together. Dropping multiple job seals allows up to 4 people to team upon the same NM without any sort of lotting conflicts. One person may want Mnk seals, another Nin seals, Pld, and Cor seals. If some NM only dropped THF seals, no one would want to kill it aside from the people who are after THF seals; making everyone in the group a competitor.

Quests? It would be nice if Seals ended up in the Treasure Pool instead of automatically in one's inventory, but the same concept applies. Adding diversity to the drops allows people to team up without competing over lots.

Edit: @Proc, the difference is the usage. FFXI's most common usage of the word proc is of the Programmed Random Occurence definition. "Paralyze Proc'd", for example. Or, "My Add effect just Proc'd". Spec_Procs are similar but they are not always interchangeable, and "Procure" is just plain wrong. If someone were to say "My Paralyze just proc'd," they would be correct. If they were to say "My Paralyze just processed," they would be very wrong.

[RAIST]

meh..unfortunately there seems to be fewer people willing to go do the +1 seals anymore. I've been so focused on leveling all my jobs to 90 and just grabbing the odd seals here and there when I can...now I feel like I need to kill like 40 NMs over and over to finish my +1's... and I rarely find anyone in shell that needs something from my target, and wind up trying to solo it. Nothing like beating down that @#$@#$ antlion with Garuda to continually get PUP/BRD when I need BLM/SMN /sigh. And that stupid bomb still seems to be stuck on WHM no matter how many times I rape it. Made Orison +1 freet like 2 months ago.

I'm anxious to see what the new method for obtaining seals is that they were talking about. Hopefully it's enough to put an end to the problem. Just gotta wait it out.

Raist

[Kenthedeviant]

1) Proc is not an abbreviation, it's an acronym for Programmed Random Occurence. Man, it's annoying to see people type out "process" and "procure".

First of all, why am I being corrected by someone who cant even spell "Occurrence"? Secondly, I did not say "proc" I said "procure" because "procure" actually is DEFINED as "To get by special effort; to obtain or acquire" which COMPLETELY fits making a special effort to stagger a fiend and obtain extra seals. What's TRULY "annoying" is seeing people make arguments for the sake of arguing, and then making themselves look like a complete troll. Don't argue a point in English if you havent begun to learn second grade English. And finally, "proc" is NOT a word in the English language. Whether an abbreviation or acronym, it CAN mean whatever you want it to, depending on it's context, it CAN mean "proctologist" if you want it too... since when did you make the rules on abbreviations and acronyms?