Balancing the Ergon Quests

[Lyncath]

Can we please have a developer look at this thread? I think it requires addressing.
TL;DR - Scroll to the foot of the post.

The quests for the 'Ergon Weapons', Idris and Epeolatry, are far too taxing in comparison to relic, mythic, and empyrean weapons (not so much the latter in later stages): Specifically the final stage of the quest and the 9999 High-Purity Bayld requirement involved.

The pre-requisites for both are perfectly adequate, having Legend in all coalitions for Ergons and having Captain rank for Mythics, but I must stress that the problem is the cost and availability of High-Purity Bayld in comparison to Alexandrite. As it stands across most servers an Ergon weapon will cost, considering an average price of 35k (some going for as much as 50k on some servers) per High-Purity Bayld and with 13099 being required, a whopping 458m. Now, compare that to a Mythic weapon with Alexandrite now hovering around 7k per piece and with 30000 being required bringing that total to around 210m. In reality the figure required for a mythic would actually be lower considering that a player can solo farm Salvage for their own Alexandrite and do other farming on the side (Dynamis, Voidwatch, and selling High-Purity Bayld) to buy other pieces, so really this figure will be around 130~150m.

I would therefore suggest that developers either make High-Purity Bayld a lot more available through various means or reduce the quantity needed for the final stage of the upgrade process. Both measures, increasing supply and reducing requirement, should not be implemented as some challenge should remain present - just one will suffice. As it stands the quantity needed per stage increases as such: 100 - 500 - 2500 - 9999. The first three phases, in addition to other necessary requirements such as Skirmish Stones and Delve materials, are perfectly reasonable, but the final stage is such a massive spike in difficulty that it is baffling. You are literally looking at 350m for THE FINAL STAGE ALONE when the first three stages amount to roughly 100m. No matter how you slice it that is an insane spike in expectation.

The solution I would suggest is that the number of High-Purity Bayld required for the final stage be cut in half to a figure around 5000 making the grand total required 8100. This would put the total cost for an Ergon to around 300m, still expensive but certainly more reasonable. As fewer and fewer people could potentially do Adoulin content, the source of an already constricted supply, with impending updates taking players outside of the source the price of High-Purity Bayld could only increase as fewer would enter circulation. This is something else that requires consideration.

Now, developers have gone on record saying that the immense difficulty in getting an Ergon weapon is entirely intentional because they are "extremely strong" weapons.

Since Ergon Weapons have been set as extremely strong weapons, the development team does not have any plans to ease up on the process for obtaining them. With that said, there are no plans at this time to make high purity bayld more readily available.
Okay, let's take this viewpoint and run with it. So, these are meant to be "extremely strong" weapons are they? So, tell me... How is a Samurai using a Tsurumaru, which is an extremely common thing, able to utterly flatten an Epeolatry Rune Fencer in terms of damage output? On that note, how is any damage-dealing job using a Mythic weapon able to completely outdo the weapon for what equates to less-than-half of the effort invested? Sure, one could say that the Epeolatry is meant to be a weapon for tanking but then again how much does an Ochain and Burtgang set a career Paladin back by? Nowhere near as much. Also consider how many times you have honestly gone out of your way to bring a Rune Fencer over a Paladin for high-end endgame content such as Very Difficult battlefields, Incursion, and practically anything that requires a tank? The fact is that a Paladin can completely outdo a Rune Fencer on most content for a mere fraction of the effort and nowhere near the cost. If a job requires a 450m item to even remotely compete then something is very wrong with the job itself, but that is a matter for another thread.

Then there is the little fact that Dimidiation, the weapon skill tied to the aftermath effect of the Epeolatry, does not gain a boost in damage like a Mythic's equivalent weapon skill does? ...Really? After climbing such a massive hill you're going to do that to the climber? I doubt that alleviating these problems would not solve the problem that the job is practically useless for anything high-end.

Now, with regards to the Idris my hands are held high. This one is tricky to balance. While the Epeolatry nowhere near warrants its current price tag one could reasonably argue that the Idris certainly does. As any Idris owner would tell you the weapon is a MASSIVE boon for the Geomancer job and when used under the effects of Bolster it is downright absurd. I suppose that the counter-balance for the absurdity of Idris is that a Geomancer is still restricted to one mediocre buff/debuff (Entrust), one mid-power buff/debuff (Indiclosure), and one high power buff/debuff that is reliant upon Job Abilities and that can be destroyed by monster attacks (Geoclosure). I would still suggest that the Idris be made more available but I'd say that at the same time Riftcinder be made more available so more Bards can gain access to the four-song Empyrean Harp.

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In conclusion, I propose that the amount of High-Purity Bayld required for the final stage of the two Ergon quests be reduced from 9999 to 5000. This would make the difficulty increases in the quest more consistent and would help 'balance' the two weapons with their Mythic counterparts. I also propose that if you plan on introducing content outside of Adoulin areas and that do not provide a supply of High-Purity Bayld that you drastically increase the supply of the same within existing content such as make Wildskeeper Reive Naakuals drop an Aged Box [Bayld] 100% of the time and increase the minimum received from a box and increase the maximum received from a box to an amount roughly half of a Linen Coin Purse.

Thank you for your time.

[Crevox]

How is a Samurai using a Tsurumaru, which is an extremely common thing, able to utterly flatten an Epeolatry Rune Fencer in terms of damage output?

It may be "common" to you, but the weapon is by no means easy to obtain.

Besides that, Rune Fencer is a tank, not a damage dealer. There's no reason it should beat a Samurai, nor even try to compete.


Also consider how many times you have honestly gone out of your way to bring a Rune Fencer over a Paladin for high-end endgame content such as Very Difficult battlefields, Incursion, and practically anything that requires a tank? The fact is that a Paladin can completely outdo a Rune Fencer on most content for a mere fraction of the effort and nowhere near the cost. If a job requires a 450m item to even remotely compete then something is very wrong with the job itself, but that is a matter for another thread.

Rune Fencer can do the majority of the content in the game, Paladin just does it better. This is no different than most other jobs in other content being beaten by something like Samurai. There will always be a job that is the best at something, and thus people prefer to bring the job that does it better. That doesn't mean Rune Fencer can't do it, or shouldn't do it.


equates to less-than-half of the effort invested

Mythic weapons require much more effort than an Ergon Weapon; Ergon Weapons are just more expensive.

In the end of things, yes, maybe high purity bayld should be more readily available, but your points are a little off on why it should be.

[Sfchakan]

The HP bayld requirement only seems this ridiculous now because all of the RUN and GEO SUPERFANS™ are all trying to make the weapons ASAP. Once they are finished, it will be as cheap and undesired as Plutons are now.

[Lyncath]

The HP bayld requirement only seems this ridiculous now because all of the RUN and GEO SUPERFANS™ are all trying to make the weapons ASAP. Once they are finished, it will be as cheap and undesired as Plutons are now.

At which point people will stop doing the already limited number of events that are themselves inconsistent in drop rate, thus keeping prices higher because there's so few in circulation.

[Malithar]

It may be "common" to you, but the weapon is by no means easy to obtain.
The discussion is about Ergons and their comparable strength to other weapons. Regardless of DD vs tank, it's more about what the weapon does to improve that job. If Delve is still "by no means easy" then I don't think someone should be eying an Ergon.


Mythic weapons require much more effort than an Ergon Weapon; Ergon Weapons are just more expensive.

You'd have to define effort. Nearly everything concerning a Mythic is soloable. Not so with Ergons, unless you want to argue that eating Yggrete is a realistic way to earn 2.5 mil plasm. Otherwise, and if Tsuru is still hard to get you're in trouble, you'd have to farm 2.5 mil plasm in Delve. Mythics requirements can be knocked out within 100 days (50 days getting Captain, another 50 days to do the books, tokens, ampules, NMs, and Alex all bought/farmed within those 100 days). Ergons require just shy of 3/4 of a year just to complete Legend in all coalitions. Sure, in that time you can get your plasm, get your obsidian fragments (use Copper Vouchers for fragments, or buy Ghastly Stones +2 to trade in, or just do lots of Skirmish), buy/win the lot on your Delve mats, and spend hours upon hours upon hours shouting for HPBs.

HPBs themselves are a different beast than other currency. HPBs themselves come from only 3 sources in the game. Random drop from Lair/Colonization Reives, drop rate seems dependant on the area, but 10-20% is a rough ball park. WKRs drop 1 HPB per completion, and have a terribly low (seriously, gotta be 5% or less) drop rate of boxes which yield 3-15 HPBs. And Incursion Gramk coffers are capable of giving HPBs. I've gotten a few singles from his NQ coffers, and I once got 4 from an HQ Gramk coffer. That's it, no other dropped sources of HPBs.

Oh, but we can exchange our bayld for HPBs! Altana be praised! Until human nature steps in. SoA is an ongoing expansion, no one is capable of saying if/when Bayld may serve additional purposes. Infact, just this past update it was given a new purpose; trading in your mission rings. Not just a bit either, 300k. That's a potential 30 HPBs off of the market.

When's the last time you, or someone you know, went and purposely farmed Bayld? There's so little point to it. Skirmish pieces are mostly in the gutter, though further updates to the system will rebound that for a time. The massive amount of pebbles, iron ore, and other random junk you'll receive do little to convince anyone to bother specifically farming Bayld.

The only saving grace to the whole system is Coalition Assignments, specifically, Courier runs to Kamihr Drifts #4. For 10 seconds of work, you can get 10k Bayld. Except, problem being, if you're going for your own Ergon, those tags are going towards getting Legend in all Coalitions. So you're relying on the rest of the server to get you this Bayld, turn it into HPBs, and in turn sell it to you. But what incentive do they have to do so? 20k? 30k? 50k? What price is worth throwing away a currency that very well may be used next update, the update after, 6 months from now, etc?

For some people, you couldn't name a price. When I was building mine, there was someone in my LS with well over 4 million Bayld. There was also a JP on my server paying 50k+ per HPB in order to finish his Epeo first. LS member never did sell (even to me), said he didn't want to risk being short for anything added. I think that's a mind set that a majority of people take, unless they need that gil right then and there for another project and they're willing to part with what they have available. Outside of that? Farming Bayld isn't lucrative enough for someone to specifically farm it. I'd argue that without botting Reives being a real thing, there wouldn't be enough of a supply in the game to create Ergons. AFAIK, Bahamut still only has 3, two Epeos and an Idris, and that's what, 7ish months after they were added?

Kinda went on a tangent, but really, they're fairly similar if you compare them to when they were current content. You couldn't solo a Mythic then, and you can't solo an Ergon now. Ergon needs more time and money, Mythic requires more completion of a variety of content, that alone doesn't make one easier than the other. I'd argue supply is making Ergons far harder though.

Change it however SE sees fit, I got mine, so I couldn't care less. :3 No ill thoughts harbored over a reduction in cost or anything, the game progresses and moves on. Be pretty boring if it didn't

[Tinytimtaru]

Just recently finished mine and I can tell you it was no joke. It took me World Transferring across 7 servers to get all the HP Bayld accumulated for the last stage. Even then, there just wasn't enough in existence to complete the last stage. So to validate the OP argument...absolutely, SE needs to address availability of these to balance out how easy it is to farm/buy Alexandrites for traditional Mythics. Currently on Odin, Alex easily goes for 7-8k, whereas good luck finding HPB for anything less than 40k.

I absolutely agree, make Aged Bayld Boxes 100% drop from WKR and HPBs 100% drop from Colonization Rieves. Problem solved. It would still require ppl soloing 1000s of Colony Rieves if they wanted to take that route, so not a walk in the park.

http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/ah126/Tinytimtaru/Epolatry_14_zps3820d9ef.jpg (http://s1379.photobucket.com/user/Tinytimtaru/media/Epolatry_14_zps3820d9ef.jpg.html)

And as per the comments about the job classes, yeah this one makes me sad....RUN even with Epeolatry still doesn't have the survivability of PLD. We need to be spamming spells, JAs every second to stay alive in endgame content, whereas an Ochain/Aegis PLD can go grab a coffee come back and still be alive. On VD Avatar fights Shiva's Rush will do 1k+ dmg to me in full -Pdt set with full buffs, songs, etc. I really think they should have made Battuta a full-time Job Trait with high proc rate and given us native Cure IV/V. Then we'd be on par with endgame PLDs and might see shouts.

But anyways, it was a fun goal to achieve. Good luck on your trials.

[Jeanna]

Not sure how they justify HPB at the moment. Does SE really not realize that the people with hundreds constantly in their bazaars are the reive botters, and generally not the average player? Reive botting is the new Alex glitch, and unfortunately it's the only thing keeping a decent supply in circulation.

Not sure they need to lower the requirements, but they could do other things to make obtaining it easier. Make bayld easier to obtain, add other sources to obtain bayld (possibly delve/incursion). The problem with bayld atm is that the methods to obtain them just aren't part of average daily endgame activities. People generally only do enough skirmish to get what they need and stop. There's almost zero incentive to do colo reives anymore as Incursion drops better capes. WKR cap out at 25k and unless you have fame it can cost near as much to buy the KI.

Make pouches a drop and more of a common drop.

Over time they did do several things to ease the mythic process (reduced from 50 to 30k, changed ein to 24 hours instead of 3 days, allowed salvage and assaults to be entered solo, etc), hopefully the Ergon process gets a little bit of an overhaul.

[Sfchakan]

I think pouches loading once or twice during group content would be nice. Say a chance of it in higher level Skirmish, and guaranteed drops in Incursion and whatever else we get.

[Lyncath]

Not sure how they justify HPB at the moment. Does SE really not realize that the people with hundreds constantly in their bazaars are the reive botters, and generally not the average player? Reive botting is the new Alex glitch, and unfortunately it's the only thing keeping a decent supply in circulation.

Yes, absolutely yes. I must have filed five or six reports to the Special Task Force about groups of mules clearly botting the Lair Reives in certain areas and then to find the same characters with 500+ HPBs in their bazaars a few weeks later. If the best way to farm HPBs is to literally cheat and defy the in-game mechanics then it seriously needs addressing.

[Afania]

The only saving grace to the whole system is Coalition Assignments, specifically, Courier runs to Kamihr Drifts #4. For 10 seconds of work, you can get 10k Bayld. Except, problem being, if you're going for your own Ergon, those tags are going towards getting Legend in all Coalitions. So you're relying on the rest of the server to get you this Bayld, turn it into HPBs, and in turn sell it to you. But what incentive do they have to do so? 20k? 30k? 50k? What price is worth throwing away a currency that very well may be used next update, the update after, 6 months from now, etc?


FYI, if you have mules, you can generate HPB faster since you get more tags.

[Malithar]

FYI, if you have mules, you can generate HPB faster since you get more tags.

Derp? That's like saying "FYI, you can get more login points if you have mules." XD

It's worth noting that if you're capable of multiboxing though, Skirmish bayld runs open up another quick avenue for farming. The few times I did it with friends was in Yorcia, buy a 1/1/1 set for everyone, enter, run to an NA, get Bayld, exit, repeat. Made about 30k Bayld every 10 minutes IIRC, per person. Since you bought the sets, have them turn in the 30k bayld for HPBs, and you just made 18 HPBs in 10 minutes for about 25-30k per 3 HPB depending on your server's prices.

[Afania]

Derp? That's like saying "FYI, you can get more login points if you have mules." XD

It's worth noting that if you're capable of multiboxing though, Skirmish bayld runs open up another quick avenue for farming. The few times I did it with friends was in Yorcia, buy a 1/1/1 set for everyone, enter, run to an NA, get Bayld, exit, repeat. Made about 30k Bayld every 10 minutes IIRC, per person. Since you bought the sets, have them turn in the 30k bayld for HPBs, and you just made 18 HPBs in 10 minutes for about 25-30k per 3 HPB depending on your server's prices.

You only need to pay $1 per character if you generate HPB with tags though, skirmish multibox kinda need a lot more monthly fee since those characters can't share the same POL account. I'm not sure how many characters you can have per POL account, if you can get 10 more character per account that's 10x more tags/HPB you can generate with $10 extra sub fee a month.

[Hoshi]

Ideally you have friends and then you don't have to own all 6 accounts. Meanwhile mules will generate you slightly less than 2 H-P Bayld a day from the Kamihr courier quest.

[Camiie]

FYI, if you have mules, you can generate HPB faster since you get more tags.

So, Pay2Win is how you want FFXI to be?

[Lyncath]

FYI, if you have mules, you can generate HPB faster since you get more tags.

High-Purity Bayld cannot be sent to characters on the same account. You'd have to have an intermediary person in your linkshell or something to collect the few you get from your mules and give them all to your main. Also, that is literally paying-to-win.

As it stands the best method bar-none for 'farming' High-Purity Bayld is to have multiple accounts dual/tri/quad boxed at a Lair Reive in Outer Raz' and bot the Reive whenever it spawns. That is not only paying-to-win, that is also blatantly violating the in-game mechanics let alone the terms and conditions of service. This needs resolving.

[Hoshi]

I think the lower cost for WKR and shorter respawn times was a good start. I am very sad to see that campaign end. With that being said out of the 22 WKR I was able to do during the campaign I did not get a single bayld box even though I usually got capped bayld from evaluations.

[Afania]

So, Pay2Win is how you want FFXI to be?

I didn't advocate Pay2Win, I only provided information about how to generate HPB faster.

Tbh, FFXI has been Pay2Win since forever. In Abyssea era ppl created 10+ mules, leeched cruor in a cleave pt and NPC all the cruor for tons of gil. 1 year ago when airlixir +1 cost millions, quite a lot of players with mules also got 2x~3x more gil per delve run because they got plasm on every character. Nowadays some ppl trio box delve and sell delve win, while players without mules had to split profit and make less gil per merc runs.

This game just favors player with multiple characters, even without ergon weapon quests. It's not that I want Pay2Win, this game IS Pay2Win.

[Sapphires]

The event for WKR faster respawn and only 3k for the KI was a really good idea. They should consider making that permanent.

I was able to supply one of my friends 75 to 100 hp bayld ever day from constantly running back and forth between achuka+tchakka killing them for a couple hours.
I don't mind farming hp bayld as a gil making activity when its worth my time but its pretty much last on the list since delve/dynamis/salvage/voidwatch is a better use of people's time.

[Sfchakan]

As someone not even interested in making an Ergon weapon, I thought the campaign buffing WKR was great. It really got people out there doing them together.

[Lyncath]

Just recently finished mine and I can tell you it was no joke. It took me World Transferring across 7 servers to get all the HP Bayld accumulated for the last stage. Even then, there just wasn't enough in existence to complete the last stage. So to validate the OP argument...absolutely, SE needs to address availability of these to balance out how easy it is to farm/buy Alexandrites for traditional Mythics. Currently on Odin, Alex easily goes for 7-8k, whereas good luck finding HPB for anything less than 40k.

I absolutely agree, make Aged Bayld Boxes 100% drop from WKR and HPBs 100% drop from Colonization Rieves. Problem solved. It would still require ppl soloing 1000s of Colony Rieves if they wanted to take that route, so not a walk in the park.

Reading through this thread again that suggestion really seems like the best fix for this problem.

Aged Box [Bayld] should be a 100% or otherwise have a high drop rate around 60~70% from Wildskeeper Reive Naakuals and single pieces of High-Purity Bayld should be a 100% drop from any Lair or Colonisation Reive. If this is done then the requirement should remain at 9999 for the final upgrade stage to maintain a semblence of balance. Say for example 30~40 people take part in a Wildskeeper Reive and 30~35 of those get an Aged Box [Bayld] with an average of 8 inside each one (3~15 is the range). These people just added almost 300 High-Purity Bayld to the circulation.

The incoming "Bayld Campaign" is a nice gesture but all you're doing with it is treating an amputee patient with a band-aid. This does not address the problem that people simply do not want to trade their Bayld in to increase the supply ever-so-slightly because people are uncertain as to whether Bayld will be used for future content. Also, consider that people may well understandably want to conserve their stock in case they feel the need to trade in their Seekers of Adoulin storyline Ring.

[dasva]

And as per the comments about the job classes, yeah this one makes me sad....RUN even with Epeolatry still doesn't have the survivability of PLD. We need to be spamming spells, JAs every second to stay alive in endgame content, whereas an Ochain/Aegis PLD can go grab a coffee come back and still be alive. On VD Avatar fights Shiva's Rush will do 1k+ dmg to me in full -Pdt set with full buffs, songs, etc. I really think they should have made Battuta a full-time Job Trait with high proc rate and given us native Cure IV/V. Then we'd be on par with endgame PLDs and might see shouts..
I think you overestimate pld. Ochain pld with capped pdt and 100% block rate which it wont have on even D is only effectively -83.5% physical dmg prevented. So that 1k rush with epeo would still be 660 on pld and if you went to get coffee would be eating a bunch of magic dmg too

[dasva]

Derp? That's like saying "FYI, you can get more login points if you have mules." XD

It's worth noting that if you're capable of multiboxing though, Skirmish bayld runs open up another quick avenue for farming. The few times I did it with friends was in Yorcia, buy a 1/1/1 set for everyone, enter, run to an NA, get Bayld, exit, repeat. Made about 30k Bayld every 10 minutes IIRC, per person. Since you bought the sets, have them turn in the 30k bayld for HPBs, and you just made 18 HPBs in 10 minutes for about 25-30k per 3 HPB depending on your server's prices.

The skirmish thing is a good idea but becomes a bit slower on multi boxing unless you have some way of automating it since you lose enough time walking people around and trading that I found it's actually faster just to have 1 character making pops and warping back each time. Still rather decent amount and don't have to worry about getting people to basically donate their time to you. Luckily skirmish piece prices are tanking... well for that for me who farms reives it sucks

[Lyncath]

So I found this little tid-bit literally added today as an addendum.

1) Bonus Bayld Campaign
Lair, colonization, and wildkeeper reives will receive evaluation bonuses throughout the duration, doubling bayld and experience gains.
* The maximum amount of bayld and experience available for a single reive remains unchanged. (Added Dec. 2, 2014)

So, this literally achieves nothing. Congratulations.

[dasva]

Yeah I've been soloing a few lair reives today and getting the same amount of Bayld though a ton more xp I don't really need. It might make a difference if you had like 3+ people on a lair reive or a ton on a colo reive or in wkr but if you are farming you are going to be doing lairs with not that many people at them anyways

[Lyncath]

I came across another very good suggestion on the FFXIAH forums today.

How about adding a few special assignments or a battlefield area akin to Salvage that unlocks when a player gains the 'Legend' status in all Coalitions? This would be like the highest level Campaign Ops in Beastman strongholds, an instanced daily event like Salvage, or a single battlefield like Fait Lux. Whatever it is could be soloable or low-manable and yield around 50~100 High-Purity Bayld a run on a daily or two/three times weekly basis. I'd suggest the battlefield area should be one of the majorly underused areas such as Raz. Inner Court or moreso Mount Kamihr in order to prolong more life out of those areas.

The Key Item required for access to this event would only become available via Runje Dessali (Ergon NPC) after one has become a 'Legend' in all Coalitions and would cost between 50,000 and 100,000 Bayld each time, which one's fame level in Adoulin being the variator much like a Wildskeeper Reive Key Item.

What this would do is give people working on an Ergon a legitimate avenue for farming their own High-Purity Bayld to supplement whatever they can afford to buy from people who do not have access yet, people who get High-Purity Bayld from the existing avenues, or to add to whatever they farm from the same. This would also mean that even after a person has finished their Ergon weapon they could continue to add to the supply. Botters and/or RMT could not profiteer from violating game mechanics with this system as getting 'Legend' in all Coalitions is no easy task (several months if I recall correctly) if done from scratch on a fresh character who until this point had only been botting Lair Reives.

What this would also do is breathe continuous life into Colonisation and Lair Reives as people would need to do them in order to keep their Bayld supplies up to buy the Key Item for this event. You really cannot go overly wrong with this suggestion but am very much open to constructive feedback.