[dev1015] Still no Abyssea VNM adjustments still a major point of congestion

It's not up very often on Lakshmi during primetime either.

Do you think adding more T2 will solve the problem? That will make it more accessible yes, so more people will do it, and those (4-5 linkshells) that are camping it will each camp their own, so it's not like you're going to get a better chance at the upgrade. But wait, now it's easier to upgrade and there's more spawns, you've just attracted the DNC/NINs and PLD/DNCs to come out and solo theirs.

If Brulo/Maere weren't a waste of time, you'd see a more even split among the zones and while yes, there would still be competition, it wouldn't be as bad. Not to mention, while I think Maere is easier than Ogo, Gamayun most definitely is not. Brulo is harder than all of them so if they dropped a 'normal' amount of souls, then you wouldn't have as many issues because garbage players won't be out at the other two due to the difficulty leaving them to do lolChione and the other zones open to people who don't suck.

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Originally Posted by Rearden

Do you think adding more T2 will solve the problem? That will make it more accessible yes, so more people will do it, and those (4-5 linkshells) that are camping it will each camp their own, so it's not like you're going to get a better chance at the upgrade. But wait, now it's easier to upgrade and there's more spawns, you've just attracted the DNC/NINs and PLD/DNCs to come out and solo theirs.

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It may not SOLVE the problem -- but it'd make it better than current, and is a hell of a lot better than upping the T1 upgrade rate.

I started farming relic and daurdabla together with a party of 6. 4 month later 1 have one Gjallarhorn, 2 stage 4 spharai. But, 50 Iron clad plates and ...5 colorless souls [ yah IR can be overcamped too... but it might be just my luck]. Fix that. Why is Gjallarhorn twice easier to get than daurdabla lol. I think they should increase the Tier II strength to begin with, make it on par with other body seal NMs strength. This way less seal hunter would be tempted to farm T2s instead of regular pop NM. I mean the difference in strength between a body seal Nm and T2 is night and day. T2 are jokes.

I still don't get why they can't either increase the number of T2 and T3 pops (two of each?) or reduce the repop time (5 minutes?).
Both of those would help a long way toward addressing the congestion issues.


Also there's another thing I've never seen SE people comment on, and that they could make in time for next patch.
Currently the congestion issue is particularly present in Abyssea Uleguerrand because the T3 VNM there has a much higher drop rate on double Colorless Souls compared to the T3 VNMs of the other two zones.
That's why the majority of people just camp VNM in Uleg instead of Grau and Altep.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

Honestly, it's the soloer's who are making matters worse. The "overcrowding" comes from soloers trying to compete with groups, not the other way around.

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This. You already have an idea how much I get pissed off when a random joe Ninja soloer or Bob the Beastmen soloer comes out of nowhere and ninja pops an NM while working on empyrean NM, or just for the sake of seals. Sure, it's all fair and all blah blah blah, but it's incredibly rude and annoying. It's like this. "Hey, I see 10 people getting ready to pop Grandgosier, I'll just go ahead and pop it anyway lol."

This is even worst when it comes to VNM given that even tier 2 VNM have 10 minutes repops and SOME can solo some tier 3 VNMs. It's really, really annoying.

When it comes to making tier II VNM easier to get, while it's a nice change and all, the only thing I think about, in that case is. "Uh, not sure if want" because many people said it perfectly, it is only going to make matters worse.

No, I'm not saying make it so people CAN't solo, but I am saying, get rid of the bottlenecking issue that comes with VNM, especially in the case of Empyrean harp and shield.

really? Ullegerand and ALtepa T2 are just legends for me. Ive never succeded poping them.They are literally popthe second the srver loads them.

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Originally Posted by Zhronne

I still don't get why they can't either increase the number of T2 and T3 pops (two of each?) or reduce the repop time (5 minutes?).
Both of those would help a long way toward addressing the congestion issues.


Also there's another thing I've never seen SE people comment on, and that they could make in time for next patch.
Currently the congestion issue is particularly present in Abyssea Uleguerrand because the T3 VNM there has a much higher drop rate on double Colorless Souls compared to the T3 VNMs of the other two zones.
That's why the majority of people just camp VNM in Uleg instead of Grau and Altep.

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Not to mention that Tier 3 VNM is also MUCH easier to do as well. Hell, Level 95, may just make it soloable.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Though we won't be able to make it in time for the upcoming version update [..]

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Aside from this update being useless, this excuse strikes me as pretty odd. It's adjusting the "drop" rate. It's adjusting a number, isn't it? I can't imagine that taking too long. I don't believe that it requires extensive testing and complex calculations before you can update it. Or is that why things take so unnecessarily long to adjust?

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Originally Posted by Kari

This is bad.
It's not going to help people farming VNMs for Colorless souls or what-have-you.
If anything, it'll hurt those that farm VNMs for easy Pearlescent Lights.

IMO, make 5 T2s, 3 T3s, and increase the rate of T2 > T3 upgrades. [Maybe make Red proc affect upgrades?]
You made 3 ???s for most of the popular NMs, this isn't even close to as helpful but still better than current.

Having T1s upgrade to T2s easier will only make that person who's farming a T2 pop get to the competition zone easier. >_>

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Red = upgrade or higher upgrade would be a god send. As for the multiple pops, how long have we been asking for them to increase the spawns for the monsters that you need KIs from to pop the empyrean trial dropping NMs? I can't count how many times I've had to wait 40min because a JP shell or a large NM shell had to pop 18~ NMs in latheine, that doesn't add challenge, it adds rage. The sheer cut throat nature of the empyrean NMs is mind boggling especially during prime times for time spawn NMs... I think they should come up with an alternitive way of going about getting the empyrean upgrade items in general... maybe high kidred crest BCs? lol

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Originally Posted by Arcon

Aside from this update being useless, this excuse strikes me as pretty odd. It's adjusting the "drop" rate. It's adjusting a number, isn't it? I can't imagine that taking too long. I don't believe that it requires extensive testing and complex calculations before you can update it. Or is that why things take so unnecessarily long to adjust?

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That's obviously not the reason. The reason is that they're probably not 100% sure yet, they want to "monitor" several things and probably do other adjustements as well, which haven't been mentioned by Camate.
One thing they want to "monitor" for sure is our reaction to Camate's announcement :)

That's why they "won't be able to make it in time for next update", not because it requires time to change that variable.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Howdy!

Though we won't be able to make it in time for the upcoming version update, we have decided to increase the rate in which the Clear Demilune Abyssite changes into a Colored Demilune Abyssite. This will be reflected on the test server a little after the version update takes place.

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The bottle neck is with T2, not T1. T1 are easier to upgrade because there are many instances of the NM in each area and any NM from any area can be used to upgrade. The problem is T2 where there is only ONE NM to upgrade to a perticular T3 abyssite, and that ONE NM only has ONE instance and a 15 minute repop time.

Edit: What about OUTSIDE Abyssea VNMs? The clear>colour change on them is equally terrible.

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Originally Posted by noodles355

Edit: What about OUTSIDE Abyssea VNMs? The clear>colour change on them is equally terrible.

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They already said in the past that they're fine with the upgrade rate of outside VNMs. They were only concerned about the inside upgrade rate because inside of Abyssea you are under time restraints, which is not the case when you're outside.

Oh, the same reason they didn't give keys or let you peek inside treasure hunts, because there's no time limit. They're fine with people getting unlucky and spending hours upon hours to upgrade to a T2 abyssite just for it to change to T3 on the first pop of their Empyrean VNM trial upgrade and have to go and spend another god-knows-how long farming another. Good to know they think that's ok, especially concidering the notice when you start FFXI that basically says "dont overplay".

Yes it's the same reason. Which honestly doesn't really make much sense to me. I have like... 400+ Aby stones nowadays? But maybe I'm in the minority and the majority still have issues with Aby stones?

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Originally Posted by Juilan

SE should add more spawns in general, every NM should have a minium of 3 pops... so we can get in and get out, I hate guku aery!

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This. So glad I'm past that crap now.

Just add more spawns, the new content smell is gone.

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Originally Posted by Suirieko

This. You already have an idea how much I get pissed off when a random joe Ninja soloer or Bob the Beastmen soloer comes out of nowhere and ninja pops an NM while working on empyrean NM, or just for the sake of seals. Sure, it's all fair and all blah blah blah, but it's incredibly rude and annoying. It's like this. "Hey, I see 10 people getting ready to pop Grandgosier, I'll just go ahead and pop it anyway lol."

This is even worst when it comes to VNM given that even tier 2 VNM have 10 minutes repops and SOME can solo some tier 3 VNMs. It's really, really annoying.

When it comes to making tier II VNM easier to get, while it's a nice change and all, the only thing I think about, in that case is. "Uh, not sure if want" because many people said it perfectly, it is only going to make matters worse.

No, I'm not saying make it so people CAN't solo, but I am saying, get rid of the bottlenecking issue that comes with VNM, especially in the case of Empyrean harp and shield.

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Would help if soloers were more considerate also. When I'm out on DNC soloing for seals or KIs, if I grab a mob and then see a group or even another soloer watching me, I'll go ahead and ask them what they need. As long as they are ok that I get what I popped/claimed the mob for, I don't mind sharing with them. Especially since it can help get more procs a lot of times. And then most times gets them to help me in return by offering that seal/jewel/etc they didn't need on things they pop.

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Originally Posted by noodles355

Edit: What about OUTSIDE Abyssea VNMs? The clear>colour change on them is equally terrible.

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While technically that's true, there's 2 pops per zone, and 4 zones to pop them in. Not to mention, not nearly as many people are chasing them for upgrades as Abyssea VNMs. I've never had trouble upgrading outside of Abyssea, even if the upgrade rate per abyssite was equally horrible as inside.

When VNMs were fresh it was just the same if not worse due to a myriad of reason essentially coming down to absolutely horrid game design. I think I went 0/17 once on T3 without shadows - back then, that was a large amount of time. 2-3 hours for a T2, 2-3 hours for a T3 -> hope a T3 is up. And...that's with no one else camping, which was rare back then.

Now, if that content was in any way relevant you'd actually see complaints about it still as there were back in the day (on other forums). As it is, it's another failed event and sadly, it's actually something I look forward to when compared against doing NM trials :/

Heh crazy idea make the T3 Pop item Gold Box farmable >.> makes it easier for those who are after seals and gives those who want T3 for drops easier way to get color change per se.

Honestly I'd be happy with instant respawns or multiple NMs for T2/T3 as that would be enough of a fix to keep me wanting to farm them for seals/color change but hey the first idea gets rid of the "I want color change" competition for the most part.

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Originally Posted by Zhronne

Currently the congestion issue is particularly present in Abyssea Uleguerrand because the T3 VNM there has a much higher drop rate on double Colorless Souls compared to the T3 VNMs of the other two zones.
That's why the majority of people just camp VNM in Uleg instead of Grau and Altep.

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Sorry to bump my post but I find it strange nobody is commenting this.

For those of you who still do not know, the 2 T3 VNMs of Grauberg (Maere) and Altep (Brulo) have a MUCH LOWER drop rate of TWO Colorless Souls Compared to the Uleg one (Oogopogo). We're not talking about a 2% difference, we're talking about less than half of the times.
There's lot of data/proof around on Allakhazam, FFXIAH and BG if you wanna dig.
It's not just a coincidence that the majority of people are farming souls in Uleg...
SE should at least comment if this is working as intended or if it's a mistake they didn't notice.

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Originally Posted by Zhronne

Sorry to bump my post but I find it strange nobody is commenting this.

For those of you who still do not know, the 2 T3 VNMs of Grauberg (Maere) and Altep (Brulo) have a MUCH LOWER drop rate of TWO Colorless Souls Compared to the Uleg one (Oogopogo). We're not talking about a 2% difference, we're talking about less than half of the times.
There's lot of data/proof around on Allakhazam, FFXIAH and BG if you wanna dig.
It's not just a coincidence that the majority of people are farming souls in Uleg...
SE should at least comment if this is working as intended or if it's a mistake they didn't notice.

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Probably because it has been discussed before and it this isn't a region exclusive issue its just worse in Ule. On my server during peek times and sometimes even in between peek times Ule is so over capped for color changing you're competing with a lot of people, so much so even altep gets crowded as well, Grau only seems to be crowded by seal farmers, so color changing with them is easier but sometimes even that gets crowded. In the end all zones get crowded by people going after 1 NM just like how Guku and the other KI NMs for Emps were before the gold box change the only difference is you can't bot VNMs anymore

I'd be happy if they added 3 pops to all seal NMs, It really blows when you have to wait 15 minutes for a thf to solo a mob that the 6 people in your party can stagger and kill in 1.

I personally say just drop the VNM system or add an alternate way. This isn't a 'challenge' in any sort of the term other than a challenge to pop it.

"Yeah we finally get to pop it..!

2 minutes later

Okay it's dead, now to rebuild our pop and try to pop it again with 7 soloers and 4 groups here!"

VNM system is another way to pop things sure, but what was wrong with ??? spawning? I honestly think there's a disconnect somewhere in SE when it comes to these kind of weapons, like how Mythics were supposed to be the casual approach compared to Relics yet it takes 100x more work, and I'm pretty sure the 95 weapon path will require VWNM Round 2 items enmass that comes to randomly in a chest...it's a mess of a system in the end.

Hell even the VNM outside of abyssea is still pretty badly setup, especially given it seems like Tier I > II can be horrendous or very easy, yet Tier II > III can be almost instant when you're progressing trials and most people these days only care for TII pops. Hell you could even make colorless souls bastion buyable, or trophy items or something that we have almost no use for.

Multiple of each VNM no matter what the tier would cause less frustration and more fun gameplay. T1 > T2 changing easier is a good addition too.

I also agree with everything the OP said.

Honestly, I skipped over much of the thread, but really want to post about it. @_@

The VNM system for Daurdabla/Ochain is HORRIBLE. I never want to have to look at another colorless soul again in my life! >.<

I'm sure it's been said before, but to reiterate SE should add...
-More T2 spawns in the Heroes zones.
-Make Red Proc guarantee a change to T3 pop, or at least greatly increase the chance of it. This would help seal farmers out too since they probably don't want to give up their T2 pop for a T3 they have no use for.
-Fix Brulo/Maere's drops. They HAVE to be borked atm because the chance for them to drop 2 Souls is just so low compared to Ogopogo, especially when there tends to be a decent chance at getting 2 Emp. Weapon drops off of other NMs like Apademak/Dragua/etc.

I'm just happy I finished Souls long ago before competition truly started to ramp up. To those who are just starting to work on them... Good Luck. <.<

As a side note, I HATE the VNM system in general. -_- Random as hell pathing on T1 VNMs can kiss my ass.

T2 should be instant respawn, T3 should be instant respawn. T2 should break if you have a T3. 100% upgrade T2 to T3. Increase X2 drop rate to be equivalent to other NMs when affected by TH. Seriously. My friends' average 29-31 kills per 50 count items. For Plates I killed Giants 45 times. I had five total double drop. So far I've seen 2 double drops on Colorless Souls. Let's remove these clustercuss lame excuse bottlenecks and allow people to get thru with these trials. The fights are a joke, this is just pure tedium and stupidity.
I work a lot, so for the month of August. I got 10 souls. Woohoo.
Shiva = all 3 Heroes zone T3s are camped. That means that there's rarely times I can pop my colorfuls and try to upgrade them.
This isn't about not wanting to work for an item, or wanting to log in and be granted the item magically. This is, I want to make progress towards my goals daily. Going 1/32 to upgrade from T1 > T2 sucks, but it is no where near as mind numbingly depressing as going 1/14 to upgrade T2 > T3. Especially when I have to fight 20 other people to get a bloody pop.
Alternate methods for attainment would be nice. I hate stupid, idiotic (insert curse words here), luck based bull pucky that forces you to redo content over and over and over and over again for a low percentage chance at your goal. That's not working towards an item, that's being a lemming minded simpleton. Some of this crap needs points system. What's wrong with Ichor, or Assault point style systems for this crap?
At this rate I'll finish Ochain in another 4 months. Woohoo. FUSE.

The development team is in fact aware there is a difference in drop rates between the Abyssea zones for Colorless Souls. They will be making fixes in the upcoming version update to make the drop rates in each zone equal.

Equally bad lol

if you have 3 linkshells going after Amhuluk you have the following options to arrive at that NM.

Jagged Apkallu Beak:
-Funereal Apkallu pop NM
-Gold chest
Clipped Bird Wing:
-Manohra pop NM
-Gold chest
Bloodied Bat Fur:
-Asanbosam 15 min respawn
-Gold Chest

VNMS in any area:
-tier 1 with instant respawn
-tier 2 with 15+ min respawn
-tier 3 with 15+ min respawn

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Difference between the two
Amhuluk's KI requirements can be red proced for 100% drop rate allowing for possibly 30 minutes to obtain 1 pop set for a person

VNM's on the otherhand are an intense time sink not to mention competition between others. While 3 linkshells may go up against one another with the 3 NMs for Amhuluk, you are at least guaranteed the drop since a ls most likely has the red proc, so even though you may end up waitign 30 minutes to get the Bloodied Bat Fur you can still fall back on farming gold chest in hopes that it drops. Heck if a ls is buys fighting the 15 min respawn NM you can move to a pop NM and take care of that part of the pop requirements while waiting for the NM to reappear or farm gold chest.

Meanwhile if you have 3 ls going after a VNM it's pretty much, race to see who gets it first, have no guarantee that you'll get the KI, then have all 3 LS compete again cause the KI didn't upgrade. Now please explain how this is balanced you keep failing to realize that there is a complete bottleneck when it comes down to VNMs where it would be less congested just like everything else if you were to just add 2 more to the system. I don't understand how you can say it's balanced when you can clearly tell it isn't.

Basically how can you call the following balanced:
3 ??? to obtain the following.
Amhuluk=Coin of Balance (3)
Cirein-croin=Jewel of Balance (3)
Sobek=Stone of Balance (3)

Only 1 NM of:
Tristitia=Card of Balance (3)

So basically in the process of an hour you have the chance to obtain 3-9 coin/stone/jewels meanwhile with the VNM you'll be lucky to obtain 1-3 in an hr-2 based on the competition of the NM.

While sure you have said this change was to ease the process for upgrading empyrean weapons that concept falls flat when you made Pantokrator a 3 ??? available pop and as far as I can see it has no item drops used for empyrean weapons. So exactly why is it so hard to just add more pops to the VNMs, it's imbalanced, people are saying it's imbalanced and no matter how much you try and cover it up and say it isn't imbalanced it doesn't hide the fact that it is imbalanced.

I seriously don't know how else this can be explained to the devs and honestly there's an easy way to make the concept work, just have it so you have a clear abyssite, a beta clear abyssite and an alpha clear abyssite. Then just make it so you can only hold one type of those at a time so you can't have a clear, beta and alpha. Since LS are always trying to find this NM they can have 3 members grab one each and figure out which one isn't being hunted down atm. From there they can focus on either the regular one, the beta one or the alpha one but overall a simple change of adding 3 would create a similar balance between the acquisition of the empyrean gear. No matter how you look at it even though you claim because it's one KI so it's balanced the means of obtaining that pop item is so obscene and random that it increases the difficulty in terms of time required to even obtain one pop item. I"m sure people would much rather see VNMs wiped out of abyssea and replaced with 3 NM pops along with 3 ??? to pop the last tier NM rather then having to /heal every 5 seconds in hope they get a read of where it's at.

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Originally Posted by Airget

if you have 3 linkshells going after Amhuluk you have the following options to arrive at that NM.

Jagged Apkallu Beak:
-Funereal Apkallu pop NM
-Gold chest
Clipped Bird Wing:
-Manohra pop NM
-Gold chest
Bloodied Bat Fur:
-Asanbosam 15 min respawn
-Gold Chest

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Just pointing out you can't gold box the bat KI.

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Originally Posted by Zagen

Just pointing out you can't gold box the bat KI.

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?

They added all Key items in those zones to Gold Chests. Was that one exempt or something o.o?

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

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They added all Key items in those zones to Gold Chests. Was that one exempt or something o.o?

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Actually no they didn't they only added Timed Pop KIs for Emp NMs to Gold boxes.

Edit: Sobek and Amhuluk still require killing a NM for the last KI.

Edit2: Here's the list for reference from the update post:
Tunga / Amun / Gukumatz / Heqet / Lord Varney / Hrosshvalur

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

?

They added all Key items in those zones to Gold Chests. Was that one exempt or something o.o?

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No they didn't. They only added the KI's needed to pop NMs that drop empyrean items. There are still roaming NMs, such as the bat, the dog in attohwa, and the imp in vunkerl, that you will need to kill in order to get the KI.

A better example for the devs would be the orobon. If you charged whisker burn, it takes about 10-60m to get 3 pops for the fish (depending on luck etc.). It never takes more than 60m for 3 pops. For the VNM, not only do you have to wait 10-15m for them to pop, but you might not claim it, and even if you do claim it, your abyssite might not upgrade. I would like the devs to personally log onto a real server and try this out for themselves so they can see how much fun this system is.

Nobody has mentioned it (I don't think), but you could always make the t3 abyssite a rare drop from gold chests. Every other empyrean can be completed solely through gold chest farming, so why not shield/harp?

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Originally Posted by Camate

The development team is in fact aware there is a difference in drop rates between the Abyssea zones for Colorless Souls. They will be making fixes in the upcoming version update to make the drop rates in each zone equal.

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Watch them reduce all drop rates to Brulo level.

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Originally Posted by Helel

Nobody has mentioned it (I don't think), but you could always make the t3 abyssite a rare drop from gold chests. Every other empyrean can be completed solely through gold chest farming, so why not shield/harp?

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I mentioned that idea a bit back as a joke because SE believes the Harp/Shield need to be harder to get than the weapons.

A correction Katana and Sword cannot be completed via gold box farming not even to 85 stage as the Bugard KI isn't in the Gold Boxes.

Same applies for the Corse in Chasm. Still need to kill the hound for the collar KI. Don't think Vunk has that issue, oddly.

I actually wouldn't be against T4 VNMs being added to the prior 6 zones that would also drop souls, but since T3 shatters on pop, maybe make it a 100% on red if not at least a modest rate. Compared to the Heroes ones, though, they should be harder. Would be kinda interesting if they revamped the Ark Angels, but not sure what they'd do for the sixth mob.

Imp KI in Vunkerl is not in gold box. Ditto with hound in Attohwa and Bat in Misareaux.

The hell? I've gotten all of these in boxes except for Titlacauan KI's.

Edit: Maybe not the imp, but I seem to remember that being in a box. My memory just doesn't care atm.

Your memory is wrong even if it doesn't care.

They added time spawn NM ki in addition to the other 4 ki they provided already for a total of 6 ki per zone. In Vunkerl, only Durinn requires you to actually kill NM (imp and dvergr). In Misareaux, you'll need to kill bugard for Sobek and bat for Amhuluk. And in Attohwa you have to kill the hound, doomed, and ghost. There is a weird lack of symmetry between zones when it comes to ki for whatever reason.

I think adjusting Brulo and Maere colorless soul drop rates is a good first step. SE will probably continue to monitor the situation, but I think pushing people out of Ule will actually help a lot.