Suggestions to improve Ambuscade

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Originally Posted by Zeldar

67 runs at 5 minutes a pop , another 5 minutes to get the KI= 11 hours on an event in a month. Add in another hour for miscellaneous bs. Compared to what you'd need to do in the past or present to cap any other gear set and get the other items you are getting is really close to nothing. This is just another instance where a small percentage of the community wants things practically handed to them. If you aren't willing to spend 3 hours per week to get an entire 6 piece set (including cape) then you really don't want it that badly.

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I don't know if anyone wants anything handed to them. No one is asking for the HQ set to be offered in the 300 login reward slot. Ambuscade is almost impossible to get into on my server right now. People are looking at anywhere from a 8 to 15 minute wait time during US primetime (8pm to 12pm EST). 11 hours a month is a lot for ONE event, even if you play everyday. And that's with ideal circumstances; you'd be singing a different tune if you were doing a party with less than 6 or doing D or lower. It wouldn't be so bad but (as I mentioned in my last post) 67 runs is just to get this month's armor. Considering you have a limited time to do so, you have to choose between spending a night spamming Ambuscade for 3-4 hours to get 1/3 of the needed points or doing this month's limited time campaign. 3 hours a week is completely reasonable if there were constant groups to join and no other, more appealing events to do in the meantime.

As Stompa has hinted at, people have real life to do. 3 hours is a lot for some people. I have enough free time to usually get at least the HQ body and max capes. A lot of others do not. Considering the armor is MOST appealing to new/returning players, a lot of whom probably only play a few hours a week and want to do something other than Ambuscade, it's not too much to ask to lower the cost of the HQ pieces. Not give triple points or make them cost 1000 Hallmarks.

Making intense more appealing will at least lessen the bottleneck of getting into normal.

Nothing is ever good enough for this community, is it?

If they make the KI faster to get, more people will be waiting to enter. They just need to add some variety to get the KI honestly.

I would say vary the target monsters on a daily basis so that you aren't doing the same mobs all month long and add other ways to get the KI, for instance 6? successful fishing catches also gives a KI, or 6 successful synths etc.

Would be funny as all heck to see 50 people all fishing in Muhara for KI :D

If you want the HQ armor, spend some HQ time on the event. If you want the best capes in the game, you need to work for them. Lets leave out the fact that ambuscade makes making an RME weapon a lot easier and less boring. If you don't want to dedicate the time to the game or don't have the time to dedicate, thats fine: settle for the NQ set or take 2 months to get the entire HQ set. I'm sick of running into people in the game that have great gear but are useless because they don't know how to play their job. Why? because they don't want to spend time earning and learning. I agree that right now, getting into ambuscade does take more time since it is new and people are excited about the new gear. Thats fine...nothing wrong with waiting 2 weeks . Yes, when the campaign hits everyone will want CP and ambuscade will die down. Maybe thats your time to spam some ambuscade. A grind? Ninja please. 4 hours per week of Dynamis plus another one preparing just to get your rdm hat in, oh I don't know, A YEAR?!? THAT is a grind. 2100 job points: THAT is a grind. Ambuscade is a leisurely stroll through the park.

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Originally Posted by Vanfrano

I agree with the fact that the capes are nice but they require way too much work, especially with the added dyes and fourth bracket. You need 4000 hallmarks for 5 dyes, that is HQ Feet + HQ Hands, if you take into consideration the stats these two pieces give you, it is really unbalanced that you only get STR+5 with dyes for all this work. Add on top of this the 5 other monthly dyes that you get by totalling 20000 hallmarks, that means the whole HQ set is worth less than STR+5.
Even taking into account a fully augmented cape, the armors are for several jobs, the capes are for one job and you often want to have several capes for one job.

I gave up on Ambuscade a while ago and the cape I solo'd is sitting at three brackets too, I'd rather enjoy the rest of the game than having to go through the zoning, killing 10 mobs, queueing and doing the same boring thing monthly.

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I agree the cape is grindy but that is just why I don't worry about finishing it in a big hurry. The dyes are bad, I agree, but it gives me something to work on over time.

Honestly they should increase the hallmarks across the board for fights though, or even just give a single daily bonus 500 hallmarks via quest. That way you could get HQ set and a completed cape by logging in once a day every month and doing one successful battle.

I also solo most of the time and it can be a bit painful. I have done some groups but it is really hard to know what a group is capable of. I've often found it *harder* to do the fights with other people than soloing because of uneven gear and skills so, unless I have a lot of time I am hesitant to go that route. My gear is not good enough for VD, and when I do random pickups it is unusual for the group as a whole to have the gear/skills to be good enough for anything harder than normal (which I can often solo, depending on the gimmicks).

I never thought I'd say this but a proper gear check number would help a lot, right now there is just such wide variation in 119 armors and I don't know enough about every job to be able to quickly eyeball someone's sets to see what they can do. Augments also further complicate things. Huge difference between well augmented skirmish gear and badly augmented skirmish gear.

There never used to be such a massive massive difference between decent and good and great gear sets. It mattered but, not like today. It makes it a lot harder to make pick up groups.

Wow Olor, you are running into some very bad pick-ups, lol. I am not in any way doubting what you have said: its a sad state that this game is in when 6 level 115-119 players cant beat something over 119. I have yet to be in a pickup that couldnt at the very least crush difficult. Most pick-ups I've done are fine on VD. Some we have done D instead just because it was faster with returning players. I can't imagine trying to solo all of my hallmarks, it just seems way too inefficient to me. I'd much rather wait until a group is available.

I have had a couple of fun ones and some really good duos. I think part of it was job combos. Trusts make it easy insofar as you can just roll with what will work, whereas groups people will be on random jobs that may not really work very well together.

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Originally Posted by Zeldar

Also, when you get in the habit of joining pick-ups, people in those pick-ups start seeking you out when they need bodies for ambuscade.

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This. I love it when this happens. <3

Also I would just like to say that there were multiple times last night when doing Ambu on Asura that when I queued my group, we were next in line.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zeldar

If you want the HQ armor, spend some HQ time on the event. If you want the best capes in the game, you need to work for them. Lets leave out the fact that ambuscade makes making an RME weapon a lot easier and less boring. If you don't want to dedicate the time to the game or don't have the time to dedicate, thats fine: settle for the NQ set or take 2 months to get the entire HQ set. I'm sick of running into people in the game that have great gear but are useless because they don't know how to play their job. Why? because they don't want to spend time earning and learning. I agree that right now, getting into ambuscade does take more time since it is new and people are excited about the new gear. Thats fine...nothing wrong with waiting 2 weeks . Yes, when the campaign hits everyone will want CP and ambuscade will die down. Maybe thats your time to spam some ambuscade. A grind? Ninja please. 4 hours per week of Dynamis plus another one preparing just to get your rdm hat in, oh I don't know, A YEAR?!? THAT is a grind. 2100 job points: THAT is a grind. Ambuscade is a leisurely stroll through the park.

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Oh come off it. I have all 4 previous HQ sets and am halfway to Morrigan's HQ: The spam nature of the simple fight is bad event design. It stops being any sort of fun long before you're done with it.

Dynamis was at least diverse, required attention and a level of skill and coordination. You also, in its heyday, couldn't spam it but you weren't limited by time constraints. You didn't spend more time preparing for dynamis than doing dynamis. (usually lol)

Edit: And yeah, the cape-trading is the most obvious timesink I've ever seen. It was deliberately designed to be that way and there's no valid defense for that either.

It is only a matter of opinion but to me Ambuscade is the one and only event in FFXI that I dislike, I don't even think that the idea of monthly time-limited events belongs in FFXI.
I guess it was their way to make sure we were kept busy after the last "real" update but I really do not think this was needed nor true to what FFXI is. There are many things in this game to keep old and returning players busy, our love for Vana'diel alone keeps a lot of us subbed (I couldn't even leave for a whole month, I'm weak :D).

Maybe they should focus on bringing two or three big updates per year after March 2017 with well-thought events and content, and monthly QoL updates if needed.