On Skirmish III mechanics. . .

[Multiabuse]

So I've been doing the new skirmish quite a bit. Over 25 runs in, to be exact. Most of the time, the entry simulacrum has been 4/4/4. with a couple of 5/5/5 and 3/3/3 scattered. For the most part, the group is the same, yet our experiences are wildly different.

I get that gear should not be so easy to obtain as it was in Skirmish II. 3-4 runs through Yorcia Weald and most people were 5/5 on all sets or had enough wings to buy whatever didn't drop. When it's that easy, people just plow through it and never go back. The latest iteration, however, feels like an exercise in futility. In those 25 runs, I am the "lucky" one, having seen 3 KIs and 11 wings. One member is 0/25 and has gotten 5 wings in total. Is something broken with the drop rate of Key Item: Vial of Transmelange? It's not as if the +1 version obliterates the 113 gear, so why such a horrendous drop rate? The offensive stats are largely unchanged and the gains in defense and the 5 base stats are pretty slight. Wings are more common(ish) but the conversion rate for the KI is still pretty steep. You could get a full set of gear for 9 wings in Skirmish II, but now you have to fork over 6 just to upgrade a single piece ?


Now, I really love that the new gear is 119 and that you can get 3 augments (pdt, mdt. and 1 from the usual pool) but am disappointed in the execution. I wince to think about what the 113 set cost me in augments, but that was the stated price of admission. So away goes my hagondes with 25+ mab... for a white box and a few extra stats and the joy of playing the augment lottery again. I bit the bullet and have wiped 3 pieces of my set for the +1 versions only to find that the 3rd augment, mdt, is not guaranteed even with a +2 stone.

I don't mind putting in the time and effort to upgrade my character, but this Skirmish feels draconian. I really feel for the guy who still hasn't seen 1 KI in the ~18 hours we've spent in Outer Rak. The "unlucky" members of my group are discouraged and frustrated and at best it feels like it's just not worth the time. Please reevaluate the KI drop rate at the very least.



Edit: Grammar

[Selindrile]

The upgrade is so painfully minor, the upgrades sparse, and losing all my augments make me think I'll probably skip this content altogether.

[Karbuncle]

The problem is its not really about the armor and its minor upgrades, its more about the weapons, most of which are currently best in slot... even the Ninzas+2 outpace Oatixur. These weapons are incredibly powerful and useful.

That said, I really hate the key items drop rate. I haven't seen a single one, and only seen 1 Wing, in my ~7 or 8 runs now. I know its a small sample size, but the event itself is no easy task and requires at least competent players, especially since SE decided most of the NMs need some form of Physical Immunty "Phases" or Strip+Encumberance mechanic. Plain and simple i was waiting for someone to make this thread so i could give it all my likes.

The key item has in infuriatingly low drop rate :|

[detlef]

Definitely consider doing some more Yorcia Skirmish and obtaining duplicate pieces to upgrade and augment. Even if those suck you'll have the originals with your perfect augments.

[Bamph]

The problem is its not really about the armor and its minor upgrades, its more about the weapons, most of which are currently best in slot... even the Ninzas+2 outpace Oatixur. These weapons are incredibly powerful and useful.

That said, I really hate the key items drop rate. I haven't seen a single one, and only seen 1 Wing, in my ~7 or 8 runs now. I know its a small sample size, but the event itself is no easy task and requires at least competent players, especially since SE decided most of the NMs need some form of Physical Immunty "Phases" or Strip+Encumberance mechanic. Plain and simple i was waiting for someone to make this thread so i could give it all my likes.

The key item has in infuriatingly low drop rate :|

Wait......... they have mobs that strip and encumbrance you? Wasn't that something that they said they wouldn't do going forwards?

[Karbuncle]

They gave us some vague hint of "They won't use it if you don't use certain damage" or something, but yup, they have mobs that strip/encumbrance you just as they said they wouldn't.

Some effort is being done to figure out what damage needs to not be dealt but reports say with just MNK or SAM or DRG the move still goes off, so unless its random or they want us to use only mages, then theres something we're missing.

[FaeQueenCory]

Wait......... they have mobs that strip and encumbrance you? Wasn't that something that they said they wouldn't do going forwards?
They also said "Moving forward we will not be using the Rem Tales for relic and empyrean armor upgrades"...
And yet... that's EXACTLY what was used for the relic upgrades... so....
*shrug*
(That was almost a direct quote from Matsui himself too... if you can't trust God... who can you?)

[dragmagi]

Marcolith nm will strip u if u do WS on it. Only warning u get is when it collapses in its rest or rock pile mode u have maybe 4 - 5 secs to clear out .

[Demonjustin]

I always found it funny how they gave Maroliths, specifically the NM ones, the ability to Bind and Gravity players with AoEs, and yet they gave them the ability to strip us so nicely with Tectonic Shift with only a few seconds to escape.

It's kinda counterproductive to give us the time to run from it and at the same time, prevent us from moving with ailments which can not be quickly removed repeatedly without using a spell that removes some of the other ailments instead, such as Rasp, Defense Down, Evasion Down, and so on... I mean, they clearly mean for us to have a chance to escape, but unless you have the power to spam Accession Erase or a Yagrush WHM who can spam Erase, chances are someone is getting hit with it.

[Camate]

Greetings,

We’ve been seeing comments mentioning that some players have been getting Vials of Transmelange easier than others, so we checked with the development team to find out more.

They mentioned that the drop rate for Vials of Transmelange will increase if you complete the secondary objective versus just completing the primary objective. Also, the higher the rank of your Ra’Kaznar visage, the higher the drop rate for Vials of Transmelange and Pulchridopt Wings become.

With that said though, this new skirmish has been set to be slightly harder and have lower drop rates than the Yorica Weald skirmish. It was set like this based on the concept that anyone can become stronger right away by doing the Yorica Weald skirmish, and this time around the Outer Ra’Kaznar skirmish serves as content to be taken on by players who have cleared the previous skirmishes up to now.

Compared with other content where you can obtain item level 119 equipment, this content is geared towards casual play, and we hope you enjoy challenging it.

[Selindrile]

Except it's not much harder, it's just way less rewarding for your time, grit your teeth and bear the Stripping NMs or avoid them, run around lots, and then don't get upgrades or any drops that are worthwhile ever, even after completing both objectives.

I've completed all the other skirmishes, have all the skirmish pieces i wanted for my 22 jobs, I have plenty of iLevel119 equipment, but these would be good upgrade pieces for my PDT/MDT sets and some TP options.

This content is inappropriately geared towards casuals then because casuals don't do content that has a reward/time investment ratio this small. This is only done at all by people who aren't very casual, and even they're annoyed by the reward rates considering the marignal nature of the upgrades.

This content would be far more enjoyable without the encumbrance moves on the NMs, as it is, that annoyance factors outweighs anything else.

[Sapphires]

I would not recommend doing this content right now if you want the KI, its pretty much the worst content you could do to improve your character right now like the other poster says.
I farmed for visages like crazy and its a terrible time/gil tradeoff considering the randomness of reive drops.

Only if you already finished all your reforged AF and AF2 and have skirmish II done *and* you consider yourself lucky should you bother with Skirmish III.

[Vivivivi]

Compared with other content where you can obtain item level 119 equipment, this content is geared towards casual play, and we hope you enjoy challenging it.

Spot on. The new battlefields take some coordination to clear, and are challenging. The new Skirmish is the right level of difficulty for pickup groups. Still challenging but a variety of combinations of jobs can clear the tiers 4 and under (I havent tried a 5 yet).

[Kari]

idk why people are complaining. You want to be done with all of the new content within a week and then complain about that?

[Leonardus]

I do not like this new skirmish. The visages are difficult to procure and the challenge is high, but the reward often feels like a waste of time and effort.

I think I've done about 10 of these now and gotten 1 wing and zero Key Items. Not exactly motivating.

[Demonjustin]

idk why people are complaining. You want to be done with all of the new content within a week and then complain about that?There is a good balance to be struck between so easy it's done in a week and so annoying low on drop rates that you feel it's not worth your time.

[Demonjustin]

we hope you enjoy challenging it.I enjoy it all except for 4 massive flaws that make it unbearable to do at times.

1. Overpowered attacks by enemies such as Beastruction which if you are hit with them basically result in a wipe 100% of the time.

2. Terrible KI drop rate. You practically gave away the Yorcia KI and that content was 10 times easier, now we are doing something much harder and you made the gear 10 times worse to get, the KI itself has a terrible drop rate but thankfully you can buy it with Wings.

3. The Wings are stupidly done this time around. The KI might suck but what's worse is you need 30 of the old Wings for 1 new Wing and 6 of the new Wings to get the KI, that's 180 old Wings for a single upgrade. At they are rare as well though not as rare as the KI itself, and I think they can be used for more than just the KI thankfully so they won't just fall into oblivion once we finish the content, that being said, it still sucks when 9 Wings before got you a full set of gear and now it's 6 harder to get Wings for a single upgraded piece.

4. The Augments are just as bad as before, if not worse, I have heard gear can get Magic Def. Bonus or Magic Damage Taken, never seen it myself but it's what I'm told, I'm also told it's not 100%, if this is the case it's even worse than the old Augments for gear and they were terrible as it was. Why you simply don't add a system like Delve had but for this is beyond me, you could easily make the points needed to cap out a piece of gear higher, or the amount of points given for a stone lower than that of what Airlixers gave, but please stop with the random augment systems, these systems are why so few people bothered with things like Synergy and other old augment systems, they are bad.

[Trumpy]

I think they didnt bother with alot of old random aug systems due to the possibility to get negative stats.

[Kincard]

In the future I would prefer a small-reward buildup system (See: Salvage II) vs low drop rate systems. It's frustrating to deal with the latter, at least with the former you know you'll get somewhere eventually. Honestly ideally it would be a mixture of both like the Delve system- that's pretty much the best reward setup in the game so far and I would like to see it used more.


idk why people are complaining. You want to be done with all of the new content within a week and then complain about that?

Arguing using extremes is never a good way to prove anything.

[Calatilla]

SE should have stuck a "Deal with it" gif on the end of their post.

[Monchat]

The visages are difficult to procure and the challenge is high, but the reward often feels like a waste of time and effort.

I think I've done about 10 of these now and gotten 1 wing and zero Key Items. Not exactly motivating.

Visages are very easy to come by: once you gather your party, do 1 or 2 reives in Ra'kaza and you'll get serveral visages. Tier iV visage seem somewhat common too.

The drop rate on the KI is relatively high (about 15% chance to get it). Instead of doing high-tier body runs (1hour), do several tier 1 runs (takes 5~10mn only). You also get wings and sometimes stones+2 doing these runs.

This week-end I did about 30 I/I/I run (5~10mn each), farmed all the visages on our own because they somehow cost 400k on the AH (its garranted from reives...) We ended up with ~30 KIs among 6 people, so 1 full +1 set per person. Almost every run someone had a KI, and im not counting the wings we got.

A quick walkthrough for the I/I/I run is:

go straight into the umbril room. 6 umbril +1 NM +1 coffer=15~20 points.

Go further west there is always another NM. At this point you are 7-8 mn into the run and have ~20~25 points.

Go back into the umbril room, mobs start repoping. Once you have 30 points you see what you'll get from completing the 2nd objective. If you get garbage, exit. You can still get the KI from clearing obective 1, and from what I saw its not much lower drop rate then secondary objective.

[Siviard]

Visages are very easy to come by: once you gather your party, do 1 or 2 reives in Ra'kaza and you'll get serveral visages. Tier iV visage seem somewhat common too.

The drop rate on the KI is relatively high (about 15% chance to get it). Instead of doing high-tier body runs (1hour), do several tier 1 runs (takes 5~10mn only). You also get wings and sometimes stones+2 doing these runs.

This week-end I did about 30 I/I/I run (5~10mn each), farmed all the visages on our own because they somehow cost 400k on the AH (its garranted from reives...) We ended up with ~30 KIs among 6 people, so 1 full +1 set per person. Almost every run someone had a KI, and im not counting the wings we got.

A quick walkthrough for the I/I/I run is:

go straight into the umbril room. 6 umbril +1 NM +1 coffer=15~20 points.

Go further west there is always another NM. At this point you are 7-8 mn into the run and have ~20~25 points.

Go back into the umbril room, mobs start repoping. Once you have 30 points you see what you'll get from completing the 2nd objective. If you get garbage, exit. You can still get the KI from clearing obective 1, and from what I saw its not much lower drop rate then secondary objective.

I call BS on this. My LS and I did about 15 1/1/1 runs. We fully cleared 10 times, and got 1/2 clear the other 5 times due to bad luck with respawns, or Beastruction wipe. Out of 6 people in the party, NO ONE got the Key Item. I repeat. NO ONE. That is a total of 0/90 for all 6 people. So yes, I call BS on your "claim" of 30 KI's among 6 people.

[FaeQueenCory]

With that said though, this new skirmish has been set to be slightly harder and have lower drop rates than the Yorica Weald skirmish. It was set like this based on the concept that anyone can become stronger right away by doing the Yorica Weald skirmish, and this time around the Outer Ra’Kaznar skirmish serves as content to be taken on by players who have cleared the previous skirmishes up to now.

Compared with other content where you can obtain item level 119 equipment, this content is geared towards casual play, and we hope you enjoy challenging it.
Not to... be that person... buuuuuuuut....
Doesn't these two statement conflict with each other 100%?
"We made S3 harder than S2... cause... it's the end skirmish?"
"S3 is 'for casual'... so it's hard!"
um... isn't casual stuff supposed to be... like Yorcia skirmish?
Where you don't grind out countless hours trying to get a single item?
Isn't grinding for hours a "hardcore" type of thing?
Cause... Yorcia is a casual event...
Delve, AA2, DM2, and now S3... aren't.
Wasn't S3 supposed to be the 119 "for casuals"?

EDIT: I should probably clarify my facetiousness.
Don't lower the difficulty.
Don't increase the droprate of wings.
Don't fake lower the difficulty by dropping the HP bloat by some fraction. (this never actually makes things easier... it just makes the same difficulty die faster... though obviously not when the HP drop is tied to the # of players... cause DPS lowers.)
JUST make the KI drop 100% like in Yorcia.
This won't actually kill the content... because the thing about Yorcia being "done in a week" isn't due to the KI (which has the limit of 1/run) but due to the fact that multiple armors can drop on a single run and then what isn't dropped is then buyable with the wings which ALSO dropped with all the armor.
Heck, the KI from Yorcia kept it alive longer than it probably would have without it... because most likely people had more than 1 106 weapon to upgrade to 113.... and with S3, that need is infinitely greater... due to needing not only a weapon upgraded... but also MANY armor pieces.

EDIT2: also.... Casuals only play sparingly... cause they're casual and don't have the TIME to grind for hours on end.
The people who were disgruntled that Skirmish can be completed too quickly aren't casual players... they're closer to the hardcore end of the spectrum... because they are willing and have the time to grind the content to completion.
For casual content, the hardcore will always finish and complete it within a week... you can't design content "for casuals" with the mind that you don't want the hardcore to complete it quickly.

[Leonardus]

Visages are very easy to come by: once you gather your party, do 1 or 2 reives in Ra'kaza and you'll get serveral visages. Tier iV visage seem somewhat common too.

I'm usually alone when I have to search for Visages, but I see where you're coming from. It's a pain in the butt alone/dualbox sometimes. So far I've gotten Visage I's from places like Foret where I can quickly mow down reives back and forth.

[proto]

I think this KI is a myth just completed my 93rd run of outer raz skirmish, and not a single KI has dropped for me, have done 1/1/1 - 5/5/5 secondary objective completed.

There has to be something seriously wrong with the drop rate on this, because there is no way someone should have to do 93+ runs to get a single KI for anything.

Heading in for run # 94 right now.

Wish me luck >.<

[Lithera]

Haven't done that many myself, but did one run and another in my group and myself got the KI.

[Olor]

With that said though, this new skirmish has been set to be slightly harder and have lower drop rates than the Yorica Weald skirmish. It was set like this based on the concept that anyone can become stronger right away by doing the Yorica Weald skirmish, and this time around the Outer Ra’Kaznar skirmish serves as content to be taken on by players who have cleared the previous skirmishes up to now.

Compared with other content where you can obtain item level 119 equipment, this content is geared towards casual play, and we hope you enjoy challenging it.

I hate this. This is the opposite of casual play. Casuals like content where you can make steady progress. It doesn't even have to be quick or immediate progress - but as a casual, content where its essentially random whether or not I make progress is THE WORST. At least up the drop rate for wings or lower the number needed to trade in (or lower the number of yorcia wings, its just ridiculous how many you need to turn in)