Regarding Kupo Shield

[Snaps]

Hello everybody,

This purpose of this post is to bring attention to the severe balance issues introduced by this item.

Kupo Shield

Thank you to bg-wiki for providing the following image.

http://i.imgur.com/QucM47f.png

Everybody who is familiar with crafting knows that this a very powerful item. There are a large number of older cursed item recipes that fall within the 92~94 crafting skill range. When combined with all other obtainable crafting items and advanced synthesis support, the Kupo Shield allows a player's crafting skill to exceed these recipes by 31 or more. This moves the rate of high quality synthesis for these recipes from tier 1 (6.25% base high quality rate) to tier 2 (25% base high quality rate.)

High quality versions of old cursed items may seem irrelevant, but they are not. Newer cursed items introduced with Escha - Ru'Aun have two different recipes. A high main crafting skill recipe (110~115) with a level 70 sub crafting skill with a very low rate of high quality synthesis (tier 0 - 1.5625%) and a low main crafting skill recipe (91~95) with fewer ingredients, no sub crafting skill, and a low to moderate (tier 1 - 6.25% or tier 2 - 25%) rates of high quality synthesis. The high quality versions of older cursed items serve as the base for the lower main crafting skill recipes. It is very desirable to use those recipes due to both the lowered number of ingredients and increase in the rate of high quality synthesis. Furthermore, most of lower main skill recipes also fall in 92~94 crafting skill range. Even if the older cursed item is not affected by the Kupo Shield, the recipe will most likely benefit from a tier 1 to tier 2 high quality synthesis rate change. In some cases, the Kupo Shield affects both the base cursed item and the new cursed item.

The combined effects of this can be staggering. Voodoo Cuisses, for example, can be obtained at a fraction of the effort and cost (20~ vs 272~ synthesis attempts) for a player with Kupo Shield versus a player without. The effects of this can easily be observed on Fenrir server. Voodoo Cuisses were only formerly obtained by determined Alchemist's and sold for a price for 40~50m but now they sell like hotcakes for a cheap 10m.

Affected Recipes

The following recipes are affected by Kupo Shield.


Cursed Cuisses -1
Cursed Finger Gauntlets -1
Cursed Greaves -1
Jinxed Coif
Jinxed Slops
Jinxed Gages
Voodoo Greaves*
Voodoo Finger Gauntlets*
Voodoo Cuisses*
Voodoo Mask
Cursed Haidate -1
Voodoo Haidate*
Cursed Sune-Ate -1
Voodoo Kabuto
Voodoo Kote
Voodoo Sune-Ate**
Jinxed Kote
Jinxed Hakama
Jinxed Hose
Voodoo Mitts
Jinxed Cuffs
Voodoo Slacks
Jinxed Tights
Jinxed Kecks
Jinxed Mitra
Jinxed Bonnet
Voodoo Mufflers*
Cursed Mufflers -1
Cursed Sollerets -1
Jinxed Somen
Voodoo Celata
Voodoo Breeches
Voodoo Sollerets*
Cursed Gloves -1
Voodoo Gloves -1*
Jinxed Wristbands
Voodoo Subligar -1
Cursed Leggings -1
Voodoo Cap
Voodoo Leggings**
Voodoo Handschuhs
Jinxed Gauntlets
Cursed Diechlings -1
Voodoo Diechlings*
Cursed Schuhs -1
Voodoo Crown
Voodoo Schaller
Jinxed Coronet

(*) denotes a cursed item where the base recipe and main recipe are both affected by Kupo Shield.
(**) denotes a cursed item where base recipe only is affected by Kupo Shield.

I did my best when compiling this list, but I may have missed some recipes. Additionally, a few of these recipes that are not denoted with (*) probably should be. The reason for this is that the base recipe has an sub crafting skill with an undocumented level. These usually fall in the 40~44 crafting skill range, and if that's the case, will be affected by the Kupo Shield. However, as they are not documented, I did not mark them with an asterisk as I cannot be completely certain.

The Problem

Please don't misunderstand me. I think it's great that high quality versions of cursed items are more obtainable than before. The issue lies in that the only method to obtain a Kupo Shield was the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel Mog Bonanza as a rank 1 or rank 2 prize. The players who were lucky enough to win (only 130 players were) and selected the Kupo Shield as their prize have essentially been given an item that grants them nearly an unlimited gil using only a modicum of effort and the ability to completely corner most of the current crafting market.

I believe this goes beyond the original scope of the Mog Bonanza in that it serves as a huge detriment to any crafter who doesn't have a Kupo Shield. Crafters without the Kupo shield will have to work harder less gil, and in many cases it simply is not possible to make gil anymore at all. Voodoo Cuisses, for example, cost about 14~16m gil and several hours of crafting on average to synthesize for someone without a Kupo Shield. Someone with a Kupo Shield can synthesize almost 20 of them using the same time and ingredients. With the current price of 10m, it is no longer possible for anybody but owners of a Kupo Shield to make gil from this synthesis.

Please address this issue and please do it in a way that allows any player to obtain a Kupo Shield if they are determined.

[Tidis]

I do share in your concerns over this, the best thing people with the shield can do is base their selling price of items based on a 122 skill HQ rate or other crafters just won't be able to compete. Effectively owners of the shield could monopolise the market of certain items by lowering the price so it would still be a profit for them but a loss for everyone else.

[dasva]

I have nothing against the mog bonaza having a big one time pay but yeah this was basically a license to print money for the lucky few.

[Ulth]

Pretty much, they should keep it to expensive prizes not exclusive to bonaza. Hopefully they will add the Kupo items some other way soon.

[dasva]

So it seems that this isn't really just theory crafting at this point. Check Bahamut jinxed and vexed stuff made from alchemy and you will see way below other server prices for stuff in bulk from the same guy. Guy is basically printing gil. Seems like something similar on Fenrir too

[Rwolf]

I wasn't aware of this occurring, thanks to the OP for writing the post out. I agree with the premise that everything in Mog Bonanza should be available through some other means.

[Tidis]

So it seems that this isn't really just theory crafting at this point. Check Bahamut jinxed and vexed stuff made from alchemy and you will see way below other server prices for stuff in bulk from the same guy. Guy is basically printing gil. Seems like something similar on Fenrir too

With the prices he's selling, people might decide it's beneficial to server hop, buy all the gear they need and hop back and just as fate would have it, he's an alchemist so it could very well affect my ability to sell gear, which I'm already struggling to do anyway being on a small server.

[dasva]

With the prices he's selling, people might decide it's beneficial to server hop, buy all the gear they need and hop back and just as fate would have it, he's an alchemist so it could very well affect my ability to sell gear, which I'm already struggling to do anyway being on a small server.

Honestly I was thinking of hopping for some HQs and I have an alchemy mule with full skill, gear, furnishing KIs etc. But the guy is selling them way cheaper than I could hope to make them even farming most of the ingredients just because he has over 10 times better chance at making HQs on things he can bump a tier on both

[Snaps]

I'm relieved that other people also see this as a problem. It seems like it's only going to get worse given that players plan on moving items across servers because the price difference incentivizes this. Additionally, it only takes a few hours to take a craft skill from 70 to 110 if you don't mind blowing through a little bit of gil. It's only a matter of time until these players get guild items from multiple guilds and start doing this.

[Camate]

Greetings, kupo!

The Kupo Shield was designed to be a special item for Mog Bonanza, and at the moment there are no plans to introduce alternative avenues for obtaining it.
However, in terms of synthesis, the development team is currently in the midst of planning adjustments and additions.
Once I have details and a time frame, I will be sure to update you.

[Vae]

So.... in theory, the only way that comment has anything to do with the complaint is raising subs to 80, or allowing 110 every craft. Or adding skill+ gear to match the shield. (119 aprons lolz)

That would be, interesting, considering the previous posts.

[Karbuncle]

Greetings, kupo!

The Kupo Shield was designed to be a special item for Mog Bonanza, and at the moment there are no plans to introduce alternative avenues for obtaining it.
However, in terms of synthesis, the development team is currently in the midst of planning adjustments and additions.
Once I have details and a time frame, I will be sure to update you.

Thanks for the reply. Keep the shield unique and rare, I like the idea of that for certain items. Was a good addition to the Bonanza to give crafters something to ogle.

[dasva]

So.... in theory, the only way that comment has anything to do with the complaint is raising subs to 80, or allowing 110 every craft. Or adding skill+ gear to match the shield. (119 aprons lolz)

That would be, interesting, considering the previous posts.

Oh god if they allowed getting to 110 on all that would give these people the ability to monopolize all crafts at once

[Snaps]

Greetings, kupo!

The Kupo Shield was designed to be a special item for Mog Bonanza, and at the moment there are no plans to introduce alternative avenues for obtaining it.
However, in terms of synthesis, the development team is currently in the midst of planning adjustments and additions.
Once I have details and a time frame, I will be sure to update you.

Hi Camate,

Thank you for responding. I look forward to any crafting changes or announcements. However, I must admit, I am somewhat let down by this response. It seems like the development team recognizes the largely negative affects on any crafter who does not possess this item yet they plan on keeping it that way. I find it difficult to remain excited about crafting knowing this.

[Vae]

Oh god if they allowed getting to 110 on all that would give these people the ability to monopolize all crafts at once

I've always been of the view that people paying 200m for a +1 is retarded anyway. You deserve to lose that market. let one guy per server with his shield crash all the markets.

It's not 2005 were only the leet have +1. The worst players all have HQ abj gear. It's 2016, game over Oprah time. Easy mode go. +1 everything for everyone.

(note, I have 110 smith 110 wood 110 gold 110 cloth 110 leather 110 alch 110 bone, and I couldn't care less).

If I was active and won the shield I'd be giving +1s away just to annoy the crafters.

[dasva]

Well yeah but then we should just have a bunch of people with the shield crashing it harder instead of just 1-2 guys making all the monies

[Feary]

they could be adjusting the hq rate. basically shorting the gaps between the rate of t0-t3. so that those having shield will have less of an monopoly on items that are T2'd without shield.

[Snaps]

they could be adjusting the hq rate. basically shorting the gaps between the rate of t0-t3. so that those having shield will have less of an monopoly on items that are T2'd without shield.

Getting rid of HQ tiers altogether in lieu of a static hq boost per level over the synthesis recipe would be a welcome change.

[Tidis]

Getting rid of HQ tiers altogether in lieu of a static hq boost per level over the synthesis recipe would be a welcome change.

It could be a good solution but the Kupo Shield users need to get a useful boost out of their 3 levels, it's sort of a kick in the teeth if it was just something like 1% per level for a rank 1/2 bonanza prize.

[Snaps]

It could be a good solution but the Kupo Shield users need to get a useful boost out of their 3 levels, it's sort of a kick in the teeth if it was just something like 1% per level for a rank 1/2 bonanza prize.

If tiered crafting was removed and the HQ rate was changed to something like HQ rate = 1% for every level over the recipe (with a cap of 50%), it would actually still be a very useful item. As it stands, the economics for cursed items with difficult to obtain base items (Adhemar, Amalric, etc.) mean that even with Kupo Shield half of the HQ items come from the higher level recipes. The amount of skill you can exceed the recipe for Vexed Doublet, for example, is at most 7, 10 with Kupo Shield. Going from a 7% HQ rate to a 10% HQ rate in that situation would be a 43% marginal gain in HQ rate. That seems much more in line with a Rank 1/Rank 2 prize and much more reasonable than the current situation.

[Snaps]

Also, it should be noted that half should be changed to at least half but probably more. Many of the base items for Adhemar/Amalric/etc. come from login campaigns or from the goblin dial.

[dasva]

It could be a good solution but the Kupo Shield users need to get a useful boost out of their 3 levels, it's sort of a kick in the teeth if it was just something like 1% per level for a rank 1/2 bonanza prize.

Really though the people who picked the shield quite probably already made more gil then the gil payout for those rank so wouldn't be that bad for them

[Fae]

I've always been of the view that people paying 200m for a +1 is retarded anyway. You deserve to lose that market. let one guy per server with his shield crash all the markets.

It's not 2005 were only the leet have +1. The worst players all have HQ abj gear. It's 2016, game over Oprah time. Easy mode go. +1 everything for everyone.

(note, I have 110 smith 110 wood 110 gold 110 cloth 110 leather 110 alch 110 bone, and I couldn't care less).

If I was active and won the shield I'd be giving +1s away just to annoy the crafters.

I'm against that idea to be honest, quite a bit. There needs to be a distinction in effort and reward for players that really want to dig into and invest in a job vs those who spend 3 days gearing it. Otherwise it just gets depressing and seems entirely pointless. Please no reforged days again where there's people reforging every jobs gear and getting leeched leveled just to have every jobs reforge gears all 119 and claim they play every job in the game well. I really hated that, not just because those people usually played those jobs poorly even with the gear, but because it entirely removed any depth from jobs for people that actually really care about a few specific jobs. Also, it would once again make crafting pretty much if you have it, you do favors for ppl and lose gil thing, I'm for favors, but spending a ton of time and gil on a craft to only use it to craft for free is kind of a bummer.

The AH and crafting parts of the game are a nice little economy simulation and a fun aspect of the game as well imo I'm not for destroying that just to make it super easy to get max gear, and I'm against just getting max gear being easy too. There needs to be something to keep me logging in and wanting more, and I enjoy the distinction that can be had working hard on gear and the sense of reward from having worked hard and accomplishing something and then seeing it's payoffs when I use it in the field. Ultimate weapons work in this way, as do abjuration +1. In some cases, the abjuration +1 will do more for you than an ultimate weapon. So it is not something that should be just given away, no, please no. I agree that giving a few players with a high luck roll during bonanza is not a solution to HQ gear, and that it is a huge problem to allow people to basically control markets and print gil. Making it stupid easy for everyone to get abjuration +1 gear tho is not any solution either and would upset some that put in effort to get it the hard way, on top of that... for some if there's nothing left to do on their job they stop logging in, which is bad for SE. I already know a few players like that already, who after they got aeonic, been logging in and doing stuff extremely rarely because they only care about 1 or 2 jobs, and to be honest, this game has always been fairly hard core in that if you wanted to master one job it takes a career level dedication to it in game, but that if you wanted to be serviceable on many jobs that is doable too. All making it dumb easy to obtain abjuration +1 gear would do is destroy one of crafters last sources of income, destroy a large part of the economy, and destroy the ability to make a job career level with enough time and effort instead giving that ability to everyone. I really just don't like it. As for the game ending stuff, oprah mode... people been saying the game is ending since the first year of release, they have stated servers are up until people stop paying for them to be for PC so please I don't think that's a valid statement, let people who want to keep playing play, no need to try to create a situation the servers go offline forever.

[Olor]

... for some if there's nothing left to do on their job they stop logging in, which is bad for SE.

Way more people stop logging in because they can make no progress because there is no way for people without a strong shell to make progress anymore. Having nothing but the crap tier 119 gear leaves people unable to join groups for harder content for better gear - heck lots of people can't even get into JP groups because they expect you to have a super weapon to get exp (LOL) ... soloing all day and making no progress is boring and so is getting leeched up to better gear or paying mercs for gear etc.

The 1% of the game that has everything is not this game's problem. The problem is everyone else feeling like the game is pointless because they can't play with other people because the game makes it hard to group up (shouting for hours is boring) and doesn't explain how to do anything...

Heck people just being more chill about JP parties and making the game fun again for people to play together would do so much for this game. It's the hardcore attitude that if you're not perfect you're garbage that just ruins it.

I miss when my friends still played and we'd get silly and do stuff and not worry too much if it took a bit longer or if we failed a couple times. Now folks rage quit if a single mistake has been made.

[OmnysValefor]

I'm against that idea to be honest, quite a bit. There needs to be a distinction in effort and reward for players that really want to dig into and invest in a job vs those who spend 3 days gearing it.

In a perfect world, yes, true but that's not the reality.

The reality is that many people are reive-botting or cleaving for 5 mules during certain very profitable times of the week, making an obscene amount of gil and running out of things to spend it on. A number of people doing one are doing the other.

Is everyone? No, but many many people are. So much gil has been ... what's a good word--sketchily .. earned, lining the pockets of people while they're playing elsewhere in the game.

Of course--as with blinkers--the damage is done and so you have legitimate players struggling to play in an abused economy.


Olor: there is no way for people without a strong shell to make progress anymore.

My advice to anyone feeling like this: Make a few friends, and level useful jobs. When I came back in November, all I had going for my PLD was Aegis and Ochain (and Priwen is sometimes better, sometimes almost as good). All of my capped mitigation sets were utterly useless. I was getting destroyed on content because I just didn't have the stats to back it up. My defense was low, compared to ilvl gear, my magic evasion was non-existent.

So I upgraded AF, Relic, Empy. I farmed Zi'tah and Ru'aun with the must-be-acknowledged help of a very special summoner friend.

Here's the thing though, I also went outside my comfort zone and started leveling other jobs so that I'd be useful in many setups. When I'd go to groups where another PLD was better geared, or my GEO was more important than my PLD, I got on GEO. Occasionally, rarely, my BLU is very very desirable and so I'll come on that.

And while having Aegis was a nice leg-up, I can honestly say that my PLD didn't do anything to gear my GEO. Much of GEO's most important gear is af/relic/empy and the rest can be earned from there.

Aside from Voidwatch (which certain people love because it forced you to bring a variety of jobs), FFXI has always had most-desired jobs in certain periods. Some people would level and fully gear their brd so they could get gear for their DRG. Some people would not.

[Tidis]

Hi all, resurrecting this one to technically play the victim card but here goes.

For the last couple of months I've been hardly playing, logging on and every Tuesday I would do a Vagary event, before I lost interest in the game I was crafting a lot and making a fair amount of money, admittedly I had been on an unlucky streak at that point and my funds were decreasing but I was doing al right. So recently I started playing a bit more and was looking to get into crafting again but I noticed for alchemy on Cerberus, Voodoo Finger Gauntlets, Voodoo Cuisses and Voodoo Greaves were all going for 10m, to put it simply those are the prices of someone who can HQ T2 their synths, aka a kupo shield user (minus the greaves that anyone with capped skill can T2).

So simply put, I can't compete, I can't craft cursed stuff with my Alchemy because it would be pointless, I am already 4/5 on Voodoo myself, missing the Mail so I could still make that since T2 can't be reached but there's not a huge market for it anyway, so my only alternative really is to focus on and cap my mule's bonecraft which ironically I only levelled to provide easy access to dragon armour for my Cursed/Voodoo synthesis, other people don't have alternate crafts to switch to and will just have to change their main craft or not craft at all.

My honest recommendation would be to remove Kupo Shield and, although they have probably financially benefited greatly from owning one, recompense them with an alternate Mog Bonanza prize.

[Manque]

Greetings, kupo!

The Kupo Shield was designed to be a special item for Mog Bonanza, and at the moment there are no plans to introduce alternative avenues for obtaining it.
However, in terms of synthesis, the development team is currently in the midst of planning adjustments and additions.
Once I have details and a time frame, I will be sure to update you.

Any update on this chief?

[Urmom]

Any update on this chief?

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/51675#mogivana29_07