HTMB Completion Counters/Key Items

Since the introduction of tracking monster kill count as an alternative method for clearing Dynamis D for reforging relics, it seemed like a potentially good idea to consider adding a similar mechanism for HTMB.

Maybe have a running counter or key item that gets acquired for completion of VE, E, N, D, VD where the amount of the currency is scaled with the difficulty of the battefield; VE = 1, E = 2, N = 3, D = 4, VD = 5.

Then have an NPC provide a listing of drops for each battlefield and the ability to select a drop from each battlefield using the corresponding currency tallied from completing based on difficulty.

For example, if you do Shinryu 500 times on VE or 100 times on VD, you are then able to select a drop from the list to obtain from the NPC.

This would promote groups to work together more since all members would be progressing towards their goals, and it would also counteract fatigue that many players face in battlefields such as Lilith where you can go 500 runs without seeing your last drop to get 5/5.

Achieving VD completion 100 times should be able to be rewarded by progress instead of potentially obtaining nothing for your efforts and disheartening players to continue.


P.S. Thank you GM Laghegath for suggesting that I make this post on the forums.

I would like to also support this idea.

There comes a point where you know you can fight Lilith a thousand times without losing once, but you don't know if you're going to see a single meaningful reward for it. Giving out points toward progression, but scaling it to difficulty, would allow for a tangible sense of progress from your fights, rather than just banging your head against a wall and hoping something falls from it.

I feel like asking someone to repeat a fight five hundred times for their drop is a lot, though. On all but Shinryu, it seems like equipment drops somewhere around one time in fifty to one time in a hundred, on Very Easy. Not necessarily the equipment you want, but something nonetheless. It seems fair to try to aim for roughly the same rate of item generation.

Maybe have a target of 10000 points for a piece of equipment, with each fight giving out a fixed 100 points on Very Easy, divided evenly among party members? Then you get a party needing to do the fight six hundred times, to get six pieces of equipment, or a solo participant doing the fight one hundred times to get one piece. This would discourage partying to a certain extent, but parties could potentially be doing higher-level fights to get 200, 400, or up to 1600 total points (266 per person) on Very Difficult, which could compensate.

All they should do is add a coin that will drop instead of an item if you already own it (instead of nothing as currently happens), lillith token for example and if you get 5? you can trade them for any other items she drops.

The problem with Lillith isn't the low drop rates, the problem is that as you get more items it gets harder and harder to get the final part. Cause you could do a hundred runs and just get all the bits you already have.

The determining amount for a given piece of gear could potentially scale to the underlying drop rate value to better scale with each HTMB. The Avatar fights for instance have a pretty good drop rate on most of the items, and it would have a 500 point requirement be rather steep in order to obtain one of the pieces through this method. That being said, let's say that Shinryu's cloak or dagger is as ultra rare (0.1%), then it would make more sense to have the points required be 1000 instead of 500 to obtain one of those pieces of equipment. The drop rates are no longer a mystery to us, but rather the time/effort put into obtaining these drops being a known quantity versus an unknown one is the concern nowadays.

In the early days of Vana'diel, you could go a year without getting the drop you wanted and it's just a part of the game. With the introduction of spammable HTMB and other instance based content, you are no longer introducing other elements into obtaining gear such as claiming or popping an NM. The only two elements are getting the merits to do the fight and then winning the fight. The cost is time and effort and with how SE has been steering the game, they are trying to be a lot more accommodating to people's time and effort put into the game. I don't think it's unreasonable to have a clear path towards getting the gear you want if you have done the fight enough times where you 'should' have gotten the gear already, but RNG has not been in your favor.

If you want that last piece of lilith gear, you know that you could get it as a drop one day or you could ensure that you finally get it after your 500th successful VE run. I also know so many people who don't want to do certain fights together because of the fact that they would fight for drops. If you can have a clearing group focused on clearing the harder difficulties with the intention of getting the points and not fight over the gear, it would promote groups to work together more to enjoy and clear the content instead of spamming a single fight on VE over and over because that's the only difficulty they can achieve solo and don't want to have to compete over drops.