Nyzul Isle Revamp: Praise and Lamentation

I wanted to take a minute to talk about several aspects of my current focus in game to gather the opinions of others and hopefully give the Dev Team some notes for future content so they can avoid the rampage that came along with the first incarnation of NI:2.

THE DIFFICULTY

The luck factor involved in NI:2 before the previous update was so far off the charts that peoples minds were blown. The addition of stoppers and astrariums was maybe the single biggest improvement to an event ever made and I applaud the devs for it. Good groups are capable of reaching 100 while groups with less than perfect set-ups can make pretty steady progress towards goals. The difficulty of this event is now at an almost reasonable level but I feel a few more tweaks could be made to put it right where it needs to be.

1) Setting a stopper should not cap a groups progress. Even a mediocre group that aims for 80 and has trouble reaching it every time should have the opportunity to shoot for 100 once they reach their 80 cap. Pure insane luck could take the group to 100 but because of the extremely low odds they will aim for 80 and may cap out their run after 15 minutes. Being forced to stop on 60 or 80 is already a big enough penalty for the stopper imo.

2) Certain combinations of objectives, mobs, and penalties should be removed. No one run should be decided by a single crappy floor roll. Getting a kill all floor at 90+ with 2-3 HNMs and white magic restriction should never happen. Aggroing gears on a lamp floor where every lamp is surrounded by 2-3 gears should never result in 1 minute penalties in NI:2. ect. ect. FUs like that shouldn't happen in an event where the odds are already stacked against you.

3) Order lamps should be removed completely. This goes along with #2 in that it's quite simply a run ender if you are going for 100 unless you guess correctly on your first try which is extremely unlikely.

4) The timer should not start until you are on F1. This is self explanatory really. Buffing and getting temps eats up to 60 seconds of valuable time. More if someone in your group has a crappy connection and it takes them a long time to zone.

THE GEAR

NI:2 gear is simply amazing. No more VW side grades. Worthwhile set bonuses. Gear that is truly worth the effort to obtain. That being said, I do have a complaint.

It looks atrocious. It's just a recycle of gear that has been ugly for years. Not even a pallet swap. Please go back and do something with it. Best in slot gear should not look so terrible. Doing amazing damage is soured by looking like a 2008 gimpard.

EVENT LONGEVITY

For some groups it's there. Relying on 80s to get 100 gear will keep some groups busy for months and months. For groups able to reach f100 though, this event has pretty much 0 replay value after beating f100 10-15 times. So, we need reasons other than the gear to keep going.

1) Alexandrite output should be drastically increased. NMs should have a good chance to drop pouches. All Bosses should drop their pouch 100% of the time and Astrariums should be worth pouches:

3 Bronze astrarium = 1 cotton pouch
2 Silver astrarium = 1 cotton pouch
1 Mythril astrarium = 1 cotton pouch
2 Gold astrarium = 1 linen pouch
1 Platinum astrarium = 1 linen pouch

We would finally have a viable means of farming alexandrite directly instead of farming gil through other sources and buying it. This would definitely keep me coming back. My guesstimate is that a 100 clear would net a group about 400 alex which would allow them to complete 1 mythics worth of alex in about 90 days worth of tags assuming a high rate of 100 clears. I find that very reasonable considering the other effort involved in the mythic quest.

2) The NMs you put in the zone are terrible. None of them drop anything anyone cares about. Make them worthwhile somehow. For eaxmple; put HQ king pops in the loot pools of the NQ kings that appear. Original nyzul had certain NMs that you might be excited to see and go out of your way to kill like the fei'yin shadows and argus. They also dropped the base mythic weapons. In NI:2 they are nothing more than an inconvenience.

IN CLOSING

NI:2 went from being an awful soul smashing FU event to something I think a lot of people will eventually warm up to and enjoy. I really think the devs should be ashamed of themselves for releasing the original version but they should also receive a pat on the back for reacting quickly to how much people hated it.

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Originally Posted by Insaniac

1) Alexandrite output should be drastically increased. NMs should have a good chance to drop pouches. All Bosses should drop their pouch 100% of the time and Astrariums should be worth pouches:

3 Bronze astrarium = 1 cotton pouch
2 Silver astrarium = 1 cotton pouch
1 Mythril astrarium = 1 cotton pouch
2 Gold astrarium = 1 linen pouch
1 Platinum astrarium = 1 linen pouch

We would finally have a viable means of farming alexandrite directly instead of farming gil through other sources and buying it. This would definitely keep me coming back. My guesstimate is that a 100 clear would net a group about 400 alex which would allow them to complete 1 mythics worth of alex in about 90 days worth of tags assuming a high rate of 100 clears. I find that very reasonable considering the other effort involved in the mythic quest.

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This has my vote!

Oh hey, I thought this thread would slip by unnoticed because I had the audacity to post it in right section. Thank you for the bump, Goliath~

Added 3) and 4) under the difficulty section.

At a minimum I think the time should start at floor 1. Shouldn't be hard to balance that into the mix.

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Originally Posted by Insaniac

Good groups can reach 100 fairly regularly

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I could be wrong about this - but I have yet to hear of a group that has reached 100 without the use of 3rd party tools. With double embrava, 4 eph DD, and speed movement gear, 80 has been a struggle for my group.

This is more of a question, rather than a statement - how do you consistently reach 80 or 100 without these tools - would anyone like to share their experience?

I support bumping this thread.

Because I like the idea. Well thought out!

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Originally Posted by larrymc

I could be wrong about this - but I have yet to hear of a group that has reached 100 without the use of 3rd party tools. With double embrava, 4 eph DD, and speed movement gear, 80 has been a struggle for my group.

This is more of a question, rather than a statement - how do you consistently reach 80 or 100 without these tools - would anyone like to share their experience?

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I should change the wording. Semi-reliably is open to interpretation.

Changed the wording to be less misleading.

The only tips I can offer you may be things you are already doing:

Use only 2h DDs. They make better use of embrava.

Don't forget haste. Both of my SCHs had just picked the job up and weren't used to keeping so many buffs up. Once they got used to keeping haste up we went from ending runs in the 70-80s to 90+.

On kill all/family floors never double up on anything but tough NMs. And make sure you fan out when you come to intersections in the map. Embrava/Regen 5 DDs can kill just about anything solo.

Have your AoE WSs ready. 2 cleaves or 2 Sonic Thrusts will level a group of normal mobs in seconds.

Always always always have someone at the rune when the floor is done. If you aren't up within 1 second of clearing a floor someone isn't doing their job.

Sprinter's drinks are awesome. Put em in your preferred items list and use em when it makes sense. Also don't be lazy with your movement gear. Put it on anytime you have to run even a small distance.

Beyond that, pray for good jumps and no lamp order floors.

Just asking: How the new NI2? The strategy listed look like same as NI1 back in time when lv75 was the lv cap...

I like the Alexandrite buying with astrariums and most of it in general but I disagree that the timer should begin at 1 your group should be getting in and out of that chest in 20s or less using preferred items and this is doing a double body boost.

Cycle buffs every time you go up a floor do a buff as people are all at the lamp don't need to buff in first room.

For lamps I would be happy for them to just remove the delay timers on an unsuccessful guess and the delay it takes to register succes this alone would save groups up to 5mins.

The event itself is fun and is one of the few sources of Alexandrites coming into my server at least and if they nerf it so everyone is done in 15 days or knowing SE they will nerf the rewards of the event by removing the key items Alex and reducing the stats of all the gear (or turning it into the lovely 1-2% drop rate from other events that can be completed easily and drop logs the rest of the time) so making it a complete breeze through is not something I want.

Time extension chest randomly off mobs. 30s-1min in them, make them kind of rare/uncommon.

My hope is that once all the 3rd party tool users and power gamers have all their elite gear, SE will make Nyzul "for the rest of us".
Adding in TE chests, removing certain run stoppers like lamp sequences, making the timer start after buffs are done, would go a long way to make it an event that can be done like old Nyzul. Well balanced team of DD, Healer, Support should be able to work toward the good gear. Shouldn't have to rely on SCH x 2/ 2H DD x 4 to complete this event (unless you don't want players to have "fun" playing their jobs).

Certainly until this happens I'm not sure I'll bother much with this event. I tend to prefer events like Limbus and Abyssea where you could make steady progress towards your goals even in less successful runs. Events like NI2.0 and VW are a total crapshoot and if you go on a bad string of luck it could be months of playing before anything worthwhile drops.

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Originally Posted by Darwena

Just asking: How the new NI2? The strategy listed look like same as NI1 back in time when lv75 was the lv cap...

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It is roughly the same strategy, just at a higher level. The whole point is to get as many floors as possible in small amount of time. The primary difference being that there is no saving the floor you end at, you always start at 1st floor. That being said, the urgency to be time conscious and speedy is high.

Additional options available to non-3rd party users is a rotation of Flee boots, but this will take time to become accustomed to since the boots do have a reuse timer and cool down after being put on before being used. This can be a major decider on getting to 90+ without the use of 3rd party tools.


Also, to expand on the worthless NM drops....I think it would be nice if they removed the ??? items since so many of them appraise to lvl 1~10 trash that no one wants. They did away with weapons dropping, so why can't they remove these ??? items especially when some of these NM are exclusive to the zone only and can't be found anywhere else? If they drop something, make it worth while and get rid of ??? items all together. This way if it does drop then it drops..no random junk that just appraised to junk in the end.

There is no good or bad group, only cheater and others. The event was poorly designed, the devs dare say that they carefully paid attention to balance the difficulty because the rewards are so good, but aren't they the ones that made the initial nyzul. Guess what ? People were still winning prior to stopper. Seriously... Please boycott this fail event.

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Originally Posted by Insaniac

1) Setting a stopper should not cap a groups progress. Even a mediocre group that aims for 80 and has trouble reaching it every time should have the opportunity to shoot for 100 once they reach their 80 cap. Pure insane luck could take the group to 100 but because of the extremely low odds they will aim for 80 and may cap out their run after 15 minutes. Being forced to stop on 60 or 80 is already a big enough penalty for the stopper imo.

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This made me think of an idea that in the countless threads may be the one thing that helps legitimate groups while not helping hackers as much.

/drumroll

Increase the average and highest # of floors jumped when goal is set to 80 or below.

2-9 floors with 100 goal becoming 3-10 on an 80 goal would mean an average of 12.3 floors to succeed, but still need 25 successes to get a best-tier piece. Sounds like balance to me.

I do like the idea of linen pouches being worth 1 100 floor win, that's still alot of alex for one good run haha. Could get a max of 693 for ONE win. So say the groups with 50% clears did this daily, each person could make over 1.5 mil every other day, for a half hour event, and that's selling at 15k each. That would be really......yeah.

BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMPPPPPP!!!! AND TOTALLY BUMP!!!

I love how flexible is this Nyzul Isle 2.0

listing jobs that can participate:

WHM: X
BLM: X
WAR: O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only)
MNK: O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only)
RDM: X
THF: X/O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only)
PLD: X
DRK: O (Resolution/Empy/Relic/Mythic only)
BST: X
BRD: X
SAM: O (Hagun99+Shoha/Empy/Relic/Mythic only)
NIN: X/O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only)
DRG: O (OATweapon+Stardiver/Empy/Relic/Mythic only)
SMN: X
BLU: O (Empy/Relic/Mythic only)
COR: X/O "based on the player in question" w/ or w/o Empy/Relic/Mythic.
lolPUP: X/O "based on the player in question" w/ or w/o Empy/Relic/Mythic.
DNC: X/O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only.)
SCH: O Hands AF3+2 + 400+ Enhancing Magic skill.

Totally agree with order lamps being needed to be removed. In fact all lamps should be removed. They give us 30 minutes to do the run and even a simple, activate all lamps is difficult as it might take forever to find them all. I just tried a few runs with a great setup of 2 SCH, Empy COR, SAM, WAR and MNK. We got thoroughly wiped because of the stupid lamps. It's literally impossible to do at the moment unless hacks are involved.

I've done 1 run when they first added it. we hit about 3 lamp floors and were only going up about 3 floors at a time, we hit floor 20 around the 25 min mark. i dont like the idea of people using 3rd party tools to make this event easier, but right now i bet everyone with a floor 100 clear had atleast 1 person with 3rd party tools. I've seen groups break because some of the people found out 3rd party tools were being used and were afraid they'd lose the gear or charater.

funny thing is when I did my run day 1 I offered to go sch and Embrava. but the pty leader said "No, I'm going whm, that should be enough."

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Originally Posted by Waldrich

I love how flexible is this Nyzul Isle 2.0

listing jobs that can participate:

WHM: X
BLM: X
WAR: O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only)
MNK: O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only)
RDM: X
THF: X/O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only)
PLD: X
DRK: O (Resolution/Empy/Relic/Mythic only)
BST: X
BRD: X
SAM: O (Hagun99+Shoha/Empy/Relic/Mythic only)
NIN: X/O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only)
DRG: O (OATweapon+Stardiver/Empy/Relic/Mythic only)
SMN: X
BLU: O (Empy/Relic/Mythic only)
COR: X/O "based on the player in question" w/ or w/o Empy/Relic/Mythic.
lolPUP: X/O "based on the player in question" w/ or w/o Empy/Relic/Mythic.
DNC: X/O (Empy/Relic/Mythic/Coin99 only.)
SCH: O Hands AF3+2 + 400+ Enhancing Magic skill.

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Well, at least kanto+shoha sam isn't too annoying to get.

Lamp order defently needs to go. "/" if you are in favor of this!

If you want to get rid off lamps, I suggest you rate up nyzyl related posts on the last dev post asking for suggestion. One of the most "liked" post is monchat's

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...l=1#post352780

so rate up, and they'll will do something, they did say they would look at rates up.