Besieged - update please!

[Kavik]

I am all for the adjustments being asked for in another thread on this forum as it relates to campaign, but i daresay we should have a bigger gripe on a system that has had no attention for some time. Yes i remember when besieged lasted for like 3 hours, you didn't get exp if you were dead when it ended etc etc. But I feel since i have seen no other posts for it that i must speak up, if i missed them i'm sorry, we NEED an updated besieged. Currently for an hour or so's worth of work you can get........1.5k exp! That's assuming the enemy was level 8 attacking and they did not steal the candance and you contributed a LOT with damage and cures. The same amount that can be made in less then 5 abyssea mobs if you're in one of the Hero's areas for sitting and doing nothing. The same amount is true of Imperial Standing, which is, now that abyssea is the only place people go to exp, fairly difficult to obtain. Currently the reason probably most people do besieged is because it is a battlefield that you can skill up in without fear of losing a bunch of exp by dying. Perhaps make it a 'by mob' exp drop like in bastion. Hey wait! I told my friend when they asked what is Bastion? I told him Besieged for abyssea, although bastion is far 'easier' and far more lucrative. In short the changes I propose are:

1) Make Besieged more frequent
2) Increase the Exp yield
3) Increase the IS yield
4) Make each mob drop exp based off it's difficulty like in Bastion
5) Grant bonuses for killing certain mobs (Hydra, Medusa to name a few) perhaps a KI that drops to all players that can be exchanged at the sanction people for a certain # of the item, like the battle trophy system in abyssea.
5.5) Make these mobs stay longer then the last 5 mins of battle.
6) Shut the gates to al zhabi when there is a besieged going on and make an NPC or a clickable door that says "Martial law has been declared, are you sure you want to enter?"
7) make some kind of besieged warning system. Like, if you are of a certain rank in your assault missions you get a KI that 'broadcasts' that besieged is taking place, kind of like the marble bridge coaster, only in a broader area, so you do not have to sit and stare at the Besieged tab or sit in whitegate waiting for it, when you could be doing something else
8) I am sure i can think of more things but i currently have a cold so i'm somewhere between :confused: and :p

If anyone has any more ideas to add please post them, if you think besieged is fine the way it is, your entitled to your opinion. Thank you.

[Kavik]

I see still no love for besieged ><

[Orenwald]

I'm with you! I want can has moar Besieged!! There's never one going on when I climb out of my hole and log into the game :(

[Swords]

General thing is people go where the best experience/reward lies, and since Besiged, Campaign, Assult, Salvage, Nyzul, and Dynamis fall terribly short due to all the new upgrades, content, and exp. boosts, theres a FAT chance that you won't see people going out of their way to do any of the old content without a major rehaul to all those aspects.

I don't really know how long many of you have been playing, but the same thing happened when ToAU came out about five years ago. Getting 4-6k exp an hour used to be good, when ToAU came out it jumped to 10-30k an hour you never did see anyone exp in the older zones, now that Abyssea has come out as the exp king you don't hardly see anyone in WG anymore.

[Orenwald]

they should cap the exp on a 200/200 besieged at 10k EXP, which would make it basically the best EXP you could make solo

[Mirage]

Many good ideas in the first post there. Personally, I think the concept with monsters invading a city, and players fighting them off is pretty cool. I still try to do a few besiegeds whenever i see them starting, but I must say it is sometimes hard to justify spending an hour in besieged for so to get a reward of perhaps just 1600 exp. That's also from lv8 besiegeds, lower leveled ones grant as little as 500 sometimes. Come on, that's something you can solo in a few minutes elsewhere.

Here are the things I've been thinking would make besieged more interesting, some might have been mentioned earlier, but whatever.

An even higher max level besieged, one that can bring a challenge even to a bunch of lv90 characters. Lv 9 besiegeds could happen occasionally after successfully defending against lv8 ones perhaps 5 times in a row, then defending against 5 lv9s could make lv10s happen now and then. These new higher leveled besiegeds would be hard as balls, and perhaps grant as much as 25k-30k exp for lv10, and 15-20k for lv9.

Perhaps they could also drop key items that could be redeemable for special items that are relevant to lv90 charcters. They don't need to obsolete every abyssea item there is, but it could be as good as or slightly better than some of them.

More exp for the current besieged levels. Lv8 could cap at for example 10k, lv5 at 5k, lv3 at 3k. I don't think this is an unreasonable amount considering exp all around the world has been doubled already, and abyssea can grant you over 100000 exp per hour.

Maybe add an item that during besieged could warp you to right outside al zahbi from anywhere in the world.

Optional global announcement when besiegeds are about to start. This would be able to turn off in chat filters for those that aren't interested

Make it so that people who lose connection during besieged don't lose all the exp they have accumulated up to that point.

What about a decent atma that would be linked to astral candescence status? that could give some people more incentive to keep beastmen from taking it. Seeing as few people level in aht urhgan now, many players don't care if astral candy is lost.

[Orenwald]

Optional global announcement when besiegeds are about to start. This would be able to turn off in chat filters for those that aren't interested

If you secretly have an item that already does this Imma beat you with a Rock! xD

[Mirage]

Where would I get such an item from?

[Cerelyn]

I like OPs Idea actually. Its hard to get ISP these days with no PTs around Aht Urghan.

[Mirage]

yeah. besieged is just about the only IS source i've got now :p

[Kavik]

I have been playing for 7 years, just for those that were wondering.

[Karumac]

If you secretly have an item that already does this Imma beat you with a Rock! xD

We do. Some call it the /bmap.

[Mirage]

/bmap teleports you to al zahbi when a besieged occurs? Awesome!

[Karumac]

/bmap teleports you to al zahbi when a besieged occurs? Awesome!

Totally, just gotta trade 300 gil to one of those nice dudes in any major city and whoosh! With all those Field Manuals everywhere your home town is no more than a few minutes away.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

On Siren we now win besiged with around 20-40 people.

[Orenwald]

We do. Some call it the /bmap.

touche :D (That's all I had to say, but they were like "you nedz 10 letters" so I was like crap, Why don't I waste space with a crappy comment that makes no sense. Enter this comment)

[Kavik]

I did think of the /bmap when i was doing my original post idea, but when you are just running around adventuring you are not going to check the /bmap every few minutes, maybe when you log in or something to see if there is one going on already or they are 'preparing' then you tend to go on your way and just forget or get busy with something. So an item would be helpful when you are, say, sitting in port jeuno waiting for something to do, but since you are sitting there, you're also watching tv/surfing the web etc, not every couple mins checking the /bmap, and as you surf you see some text pop up on your screen through an item you possess that states " This is a call to arms! The Undead horde is advancing on Al Zhabi!" Or something to that effect. This item could only be obtained after the quest "The Empress Crowned" which grants the title "Champion of Aht Urhgan" obviously meaning you wish to help Aht Urghan with it's troubles.

As for the besieged record on Siren, that's cool but not the point. This thread was created to bring attention to that fact that besieged has had 0 updates in the last several years while many other things have gotten updates and tweaks. It is older then campaign and yet campaign has had updates more recently that made it more lucrative for both exp and gil. That you win or not is completely a moot point as it pertains to this. I like to keep the focus so we do not get shut down and that we have the opportunity to express our views in a constructive manner, not putting down anyone's ideas. I doubt that those 20-40 people on Siren ENJOY defending the astral candy for an hour for.... 1500 exp and 1500 IS. Which is what this thread is about. You can make more then 1500 in 3 mobs in abyssea if you're capped on exp. In fact, one fully capped azure chest will give you 1250 exp and you don't have to do anything for it. In campaign if you solo (not saying you should but people do since there are not a lot of people there anymore) you will get at LEAST 1000 exp and have a chance at some very good loot from the reward boxes. I have netted 5.5k exp for helping in the demise of one wave in a campaign battle which took about 20 mins, and yet besieged gives you 1.5k max for staying the whole hour assuming it was a level 8 besieged. In the case of besieged i do not think the end justifies the means, when it was first introduced it probably did, when their were so many people doing it that you could not enter the zone and it would kick you back out, but that is no longer the case. But we already knew all that and that is why I look forward to hearing more ideas on how to better update besieged to make it more worthwhile and on par to the other "optional" things we can do.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Siren being awsome aside. Besieged doesn't need any updates. It's old content and the area is bearly ever visited. Making besieged harder will just result in it being lost more furthiering the penalties for the few people that still cling to a TAU-centric world.

[Swords]

Most things in the game really dont need any updates perse just something to make them more attractive even to smaller groups of players.

[Kavik]

Siren being awsome aside. Besieged doesn't need any updates. It's old content and the area is bearly ever visited. Making besieged harder will just result in it being lost more furthiering the penalties for the few people that still cling to a TAU-centric world.

since you obviously didn't read my whole post... i didn't ask for them to change mob level or position except for the final bosses that currently show up in the last 5 minutes of the battle. I didn't ask for it to be easier or harder, i WANT it to stay the difficulty it is, i simply asked that there be more of it and that we gain greater rewards from doing it which would in turn make it more FUN and probably get more people doing it again. Just like they have done with everything at some point in this game. Please read and understand what people are asking for before you post something negative that was never mentioned.

[Kavik]

Most things in the game really dont need any updates perse just something to make them more attractive even to smaller groups of players.

which means an..... update.

[Swords]

Doesn't mean you have to change the mechanics of whats already there, but suppose you did something indirectly like new ISP rewards to attract players. IF the new ISP gear were outstanding pieces of gear it would warrent more play in ToAU in general to get said gear.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

since you obviously didn't read my whole post... i didn't ask for them to change mob level or position except for the final bosses that currently show up in the last 5 minutes of the battle. I didn't ask for it to be easier or harder, i WANT it to stay the difficulty it is, i simply asked that there be more of it and that we gain greater rewards from doing it which would in turn make it more FUN and probably get more people doing it again. Just like they have done with everything at some point in this game. Please read and understand what people are asking for before you post something negative that was never mentioned.I did read it and the changes you want would intail changes in difficulty and what not. Reward vs. effort as it were. Please understand what people are saying before you belittle them.
And again. Beseiged is old news and is not one of the things in TAU that needs to be updated just for the sake of an update.

[Kavik]

I wasn't belittling, it needs updating because it doesn't make sense to not update it. Oh lets update everything else to make it better.... except besieged, it can just go rot. If SE dev team had that attitude they would have taken every non-90 piece of gear out of this game or not done anything even remotely related to it, and if they didn't want it anymore they could have just taken it out, therefore making abyssea the only thing you CAN do, but they haven't, which means they still LIKE their old content. You are bias against besieged for some reason, or that is the way it comes off to me, i am not against any content, whether it is useful or not or inhabited or not. It is still a part of the game and it is a part that would get much more attention if the reward matched the time invested. Abyssea does, campaign does, so should besieged because it is a part of the game.

[Mirage]

I wouldn't be bothered if they did it the "easy way" either. I wouldn't mind if all the changes just reused old data, as long as the time:reward ratio was adjusted like what's being done with lots of other content.

I don't think this sort of a change would require a lot of work on SEs end. It's just revising a few exp/IS values after all, and if they choose to add new rewards, slapping some stats on a few already existing ring or earring sprites and then give them a reasonable drop rate or whichever method they want people to acquire it through.

[DFM]

I really wish they would fix Besieged & Campaign. They made them gimp because rmts would use them to level up w/o party's I think. But now that they are mostly gone they really need to change it so players can actually enjoy it.

I would like to see ALOT more besieged. level 10 would be cool. I also wish they would fix campaign so that you can just hang in jugner or what ever zone you prefer and fight swarms of enemy's. I really miss that stuff and I would play alot more if they just did those few things.

[LeaderofAtlantis]

I always felt the Besieged system had a lot of promise. I know once, I tried to take on Xarhorkur the Claviger on his way to Al Zahbi. He stopped for a moment to fight with me, but then he moved on and ignored me. We're challenged to intercept them, but then it seems irrelevant when we do.

Also, I found it strange that Besieged only starts when the entire group arrives at Al Zahbi (with the Mega Boss fro that level being at the end of the group), but then they all enter in small waves in the battle itself. Might be cooler if defending the Candescence meant we work outside and in Al Zahbi together.

[Kavik]

Thank you everyone that has showed interest in this topic, i certainly hope a dev member reads it.

[Mirage]

I really wish they would fix Besieged & Campaign. They made them gimp because rmts would use them to level up w/o party's I think. But now that they are mostly gone they really need to change it so players can actually enjoy it.

I would like to see ALOT more besieged. level 10 would be cool. I also wish they would fix campaign so that you can just hang in jugner or what ever zone you prefer and fight swarms of enemy's. I really miss that stuff and I would play alot more if they just did those few things.

I don't think that was the reason why it never granted a lot of exp. You do have to actually do stuff in there in order to get exp after all. a sub-lv50 isn't going to be able to deal a lot of damage or heal a lot.

Regardless, I think raising the cap would help quite a bit too, i mean sometimes i can join a lv8 besieged during the last 15 m minutes and get just as much exp as if I had been there an hour. That just doesn't seem right to me. Why shouldn't fighting for 4 times as long give you significantly more exp?

It also makes players care less about what they do in there. I know I sometimes after half an hour just find me a quiet safe corner and idle (while making me some food or something), because i feel pretty confident i've reached the cap on exp from dealing damage.

[Kavik]

On mirage's last post, there is simply no reason to stay for the entire hour in beseiged, unlike in campaign or abyssea, once you hit cap... you're at cap, it doesn't matter what else you do while you're there, and there is no way like in campaign to end the evaluation early should you need to leave/log out etc. They could also add that as a #8 to my OP, have an npc that allows you to do what the C Battle guy does, get rewarded for what you have done thus far. I think if they can make dyna give us exp per mob, it should be fairly simple to just click or type in whatever it is the that says "this mob now gives exp!"

[Kavik]

I would like to thank the dev's from deep down in my soul YOU HAVE UPDATED BESEIGED! (since i haven't been able to log on and see by how much i can't really say) but thank you thank you for doing it, no matter how minimal!

[Tsukino_Kaji]

And what was it you wanted instead?

[Kavik]

i said update it please, i had more ideas but i don't care that they didn't all get implemented, we get more from doing what is there, no changes to mobs or placement or anything, we got an update. You were the one that said they shouldn't update it -.- i'm genuinely glad they updated it, i'd like to see how much exp we can cap at now because the details just say 'it's been raised', soon as i update and log in and one starts i'll be going to it to see.

[Ravenmore]

Don't really care about the exp but the ISP is hot if its a big big enough increase.

[Talc]

One of my friends in my linkshell told me she got 11k exp from besieged earlier. Seems like they increased it quite a bit.

[Galadrial]

4400 xp and IS.. and that was with a loss.

[Vagrua]

I got 15k exp the other day. A friend said to me that 50k was the new limit, but unsure if that info is true.

[Kraggy]

I see no evidence personally that it's greater than 15k, I've had 15k in 5 attacks since the update, 5k IS each time, recent ones have ended after like 20-45 mins with 200+ people there, twice now the boss NMs have been destroyed.

The only thing wrong now with Besieged is they're too infrequent.

[Kavik]

Agreed with the infrequency. I have also gotten 15k exp, lowest was 8k, it seems all they did was add an extra 0 to the besieged values, super easy fix, we went from 70~ people to 400 over night. SO happy with it.

[Camate]

In the upcoming version update we will be making the following adjustments to Imperial Standing rewards:


• Amount of IS received for turning in an Archaic Mirror to an Imperial Gate Guard will increase
from 200 → 1000
• Amount of IS received for successfully bringing back the Astral Candescence will increase
from 1000 → 10,000
• Amount of IS received (base + bonus) when rescuing a prisoner will change as outlined below:


• Base amount
Serpent Generals: 150→1,500
Other: 100→1,000
　
• Depending on your rank you will receive a bonus as well:
Private Second Class: None
Private First Class: 5→50
Superior Private: 10→100
Lance Corporal: 15→150
Corporal: 20→200
Sergeant: 25→250
Sergeant Major: 30→300
Chief Sergeant: 35→350
Second Lieutenant: 40→400
First Lieutenant/Captain: 50→500

[Kavik]

In the upcoming version update we will be making the following adjustments to Imperial Standing rewards:


• Amount of IS received for turning in an Archaic Mirror to an Imperial Gate Guard will increase
from 200 → 1000
• Amount of IS received for successfully bringing back the Astral Candescence will increase
from 1000 → 10,000
• Amount of IS received (base + bonus) when rescuing a prisoner will change as outlined below:


• Base amount
Serpent Generals: 150→1,500
Other: 100→1,000
　
• Depending on your rank you will receive a bonus as well:
Private Second Class: None
Private First Class: 5→50
Superior Private: 10→100
Lance Corporal: 15→150
Corporal: 20→200
Sergeant: 25→250
Sergeant Major: 30→300
Chief Sergeant: 35→350
Second Lieutenant: 40→400
First Lieutenant/Captain: 50→500

YAY! More zero's added! I am really glad the dev team is paying attention to this older content, making it more worth the whole player base's efforts. Also while i know you guys are SUPER busy with all the stuff going on, is there anyway we could get besieged happening just a little bit more frequently? I am not trying to easy mode the exp or leveling or anything like that, it is simply a fact that besieged are now too short with a lot of 90 players in there, i think it would be a simpler fix to reduce some timing delays as opposed to adding in things like a level 10 besieged, which some people have been suggesting, i would rather see more of them, maybe a wave of each mob each rl day? Something of that nature as opposed to the 16-72 hrs between them now. (Shortness will only be exacerbated when we hit 99 i fear). As always we look forward to hearing any information. And thank you thank you again for updating besieged to where it is now. :o

[JackDaniels]

The devs only reply to threads that are relevant to what they are working on or planning to work on (and make it seem like they are doing spontaniously out of love for their lovely community). If you haven't recieved a reply yet I wouldn't hold your breath. I am getting close to an acceptable level for Besieged and my bf is new to FFXI so he's never done it before. I'd really like it if we could do more than just enjoy the content for what it is and reap some nifty worth-while benefits.

EDIT: More IS is nice but... can u even obtain anything >lv75 with the points?

[Mirage]

Stuff Camate said
Thanks for that info, Camate. Will you also be adjusting the amount of exp gained from the actual beieged events too? Considering how big a boost we have seen to overall exp gain rates lately, I think that would make a lot of sense.

[Mayoyama]

More IS is nice but... can u even obtain anything >lv75 with the points?

I'd like to draw your attention to http://ffxi.gamerescape.com/wiki/Imperial_Standing under common. There's 4 new pup attachments, 3 of which are worth 70-80k a pop on Shiva... Idk about you but I would much rather spend 20k isp for them than ~260k gil (or even better yet.. use up extra isp to make gil). Not to mention there isn't another item that has same effect as Lufaz's Ring for COR (godsend while trying to buff damn blm pts who never want to stand together) and I know that's pre-75 but just sayin.

If you do a lot of voidwatch, you can also get cells using ISP.

I'm not disputing that the (ir)relevance of most ISP stuff (particularly the perdu weps which sadly lost all their former glory not long after abyssea came out) makes the items worth the current cost, or that there doesnt need to have more stuff added, but you asked a question so I answered :P

[Mirage]

20k IS is 400k gil (on sylph anyway), using it directly on pup attachments would be crazy!

[Kavik]

EDIT: More IS is nice but... can u even obtain anything >lv75 with the points?

What a lot of people do on my current server is do besieged, grab some Imp gold Coins and sell them on the AH for 10k each. Considering you can now get 5k IS (at least) for one besieged that is 50k for 20~ mins of work. Easy money and everything that can be bought with IS can be bought at any level, the usefulness of it does vary, but you can buy anything. Also, the person that mentioned pup attachments, they were 150-200k on our server when they came up, i dropped 20k~ IS on them for my husband's pup, didn't cost me anything in gil, and since i already had over 100k IS, he had the attachments pretty much before anyone else and for a lot cheaper. So, if you have no other use for IS which can be gotten starting at lvl 30 (for decent cure exp) and 60~ for melee, make money! Go, go IS.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

In my personal opinion, doing things that prevent the beastmen from reaching Al Zahbi in the first place should be more rewarding than fighting them in Al Zahbi. But I think we're long since past the point of being able to fix that little oversight...

[Kavik]

It would be very time consuming to rework the whole process to get it so that we could stop them before they ever reach al zhabi and i don't really have any idea how that would work with actually 'doing' besieged. The adjustments they are making next update do help you delay/stop the monsters when they actually arrive in town. The reason i suggested lowering the time frame is because it would be much easier to implement, and could maybe be possible while the dev's are busy doing other things. Like adding the 0's to the values, the post that said they're going to do it prolly took longer to write then actually doing it will take.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

The main reason people don't intercept beastmen in Bhaflau or Wajaom is the same reason people didn't go out to break mirrors: the effort and risk weren't worth the reward. Why risk your EXP out in the Woodlands when you can wait in Al Zahbi where there is no EXP loss, plus you get more drinks than you can shake a stick at?

One easy fix to this would be to put a "tags NPC" right outside Al Zahbi, maybe with some temp items. Of course, it would also be a kludge...

[Kavik]

Yeah, thats a lot more work compared to changing a couple time values.

[Eracle]

The main reason people don't intercept beastmen in Bhaflau or Wajaom is the same reason people didn't go out to break mirrors: the effort and risk weren't worth the reward.

Helping a friend get BLU magic in the Reef and Mamook, I ran into a few mirrors. As SMN90, I threw out just 2 merited Grand Falls from Leviathan and got free mirrors. No death or danger necessary. One of the reef ones even had a numbered Lamia NM on it and it was still a non-issue.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Oh, they're easy enough to break alright, but the reward is rare, which means you have to run back to town each time you break one in order to get some IS for it.

Meanwhile, you can instead do absolutely nothing, then just show up for the next Besieged and, in the time it would have taken you to hike out to an Archaic Mirror and back, get several times more than the IS for breaking a mirror and EXP to boot.

On top of that, breaking Archaic Mirrors slows the frequency of those oh-so-rewarding Besiegeds, so you have a disincentive to break them to begin with.

[Kavik]

while i agree that breaking the mirrors is counter productive to beseiged happening i think it would be easier more rewarding to offer an alternative to what the mirrors currently do instead of simply stating the fact. Perhaps if bringing the mirrors back gave the beastmen more incentive to recover them, this could be the catalyst the spurs a smaller timespace between Besieged's.