How long is too long

Hour number 6 here for Yumcax, 160 people, Delve weapons galore, healing, support, Aegis's Ochains, geos, corsairs, still at around 30% health.

If this is an indication of what is to come for delve in these new zones, I'm out.

Then stop joining groups when Colonization % for the zone is lower than 50.

They were designed to have very high DT at lower %, to the point where 20 and under is pretty much a COR & SMN-only affair as far as damage output goes.

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Originally Posted by Kaisha

Then stop joining groups when Colonization % for the zone is lower than 50.

They were designed to have very high DT at lower %, to the point where 20 and under is pretty much a COR & SMN-only affair as far as damage output goes.

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While that's true, your point is irrelevant when 1 person can cause a wipe of 150+ people. The larger issue in my opinion is this content smells of Pandemonium Warden Syndrome. No one wants to leave because of the time investment of farming ~75K bayld, so no one leaves, everyone gets mad, and everyone starts to hate this game.

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Originally Posted by Kaisha

Then stop joining groups when Colonization % for the zone is lower than 50.

They were designed to have very high DT at lower %, to the point where 20 and under is pretty much a COR & SMN-only affair as far as damage output goes.

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This is pretty awful thinking.

One person, one party, can't make a respectable difference in reive rate. Right now, reive rates are as good as they're going to get, as well. As people get their weapons and hats, etc, less and less people will do it because the investment (time, mostly) is so steep, that helping anything short of your entire ls is a waste of time.

Groups are only going to get worse as groups become 25 people trying to zombie through it with 2 cor and 2 smn.

Simple observable fact is that many servers don't have the populations for reives to stabilize, as can be observed just after content-launch.

That's nothing was in a 9 hour Yumcax with 250 people only to get the neck piece I already had. By making Cor the only good damage dealer at low % col rate just makes the whole thing take a long time.

13.5 hours, one frustrated player trained all of the mobs to MPK everyone, after everyone took a break and regrouped and had started making progress. I am sorry, if this is how this is supposed to work by design, it is bad design.

This is why I don't do SoA content.

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Originally Posted by Vivivivi

13.5 hours, one frustrated player trained all of the mobs to MPK everyone, after everyone took a break and regrouped and had started making progress. I am sorry, if this is how this is supposed to work by design, it is bad design.

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I hope you all mass called a GM and had him banned.

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Originally Posted by Vivivivi

13.5 hours, one frustrated player trained all of the mobs to MPK everyone, after everyone took a break and regrouped and had started making progress. I am sorry, if this is how this is supposed to work by design, it is bad design.

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Blah, that sucks. I didn't know Wildreives could take that long.

I wasn't there for the whole battle, but I posted a bug report about the unbreakable regen shield. Please offer any additional info you can so that Yumcax gets an axe through his head from the development team:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...e-regen-shield

25 hours longest here, technically. Took 6 hours to get him to even 50% due to only having 5-7 COR at low % then maintenance was announced for one hour later so no chance to finish. Went to bed and logged at the battlefield, logged back on and it was still going with him at 99% rejoined and fought for another 8 hours or so slowly getting more COR. All that so I wouldn't lose 50k bayld that I could have farmed back in a few hours.

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Originally Posted by Vivivivi

13.5 hours, one frustrated player trained all of the mobs to MPK everyone, after everyone took a break and regrouped and had started making progress. I am sorry, if this is how this is supposed to work by design, it is bad design.

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Funny thing is, MPKing you lot actually IS a valid tactic. It means you aren't doing things like keeping Yumcax in it's regen state and you actually got time to read the shouts. Yumcax's regen can be countered by dealing wind damage.

It's also possible they were trying to kill the people stuck in the terrain behind the Oops Moogle, so they could be tractored.

I was on a 25% col rate Yumcax that was at 98-100% HP for the first 30 minutes while people were getting into the reive. Then people started shouting in every known language (I swear there even was someone shouting in Klingon) what the tactic was, and it died 3.5 hours later (mostly due to low col rate). If you aren't doing wind damage, you kill adds. If you can't kill adds, you support those that do.

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Originally Posted by Moppet

Blah, that sucks. I didn't know Wildreives could take that long.

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They only last that long if you don't know what you are doing. Which is pretty common at first.

I just logged back in, and it's still going on, verified by players who were here when I logged. 24 hours+ and counting!

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Originally Posted by Vivivivi

13.5 hours, one frustrated player trained all of the mobs to MPK everyone, after everyone took a break and regrouped and had started making progress. I am sorry, if this is how this is supposed to work by design, it is bad design.

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Imagine if you spend 12 hours then emergency maintenance forced you and everyone to log off.... Seriously...

27 hours, dead finally.

I was dealing with Yumcax for around 13 hours the other day. I found myself dozing off several times during this. I was starting to lose my sanity, and yet I didn't want to give up my 70k bayld either.

Of course on one hand, we as players know that a lower colonization rate will mean a more difficult Wildskeeper Reive. However, with 70+ people in the zone at all times, there is absolutely no reason this should be taking as long as it is to kill. This needs to be adjusted, and it needs to be adjusted now.

This is 2013, fights shouldn't take more than a few hours at most, regardless of things like col. rate etc.

Five hours or above is too long, for any single event. SE still have their lol-comment when you log in about "don't forget your real life and family and friends" then they throw out NMs that can take an entire day to beat. What this means in real terms is that anyone with an actual real job/education & responsibilities is automatically eliminated from obtaining certain gear. The fact that SE did *not* realise this back in 2005~ when alliances were farming 18 Ohats in a run, which could go on for 9 hours in some cases, and people were dropping out because they were too tired after working all day in an office or w/e and so they spent their four or five hours evening game time farming hats for ppl but never got theirs. This problem has existed in FFxi for a decade and instead of rectifying it, SE have made the problem go completely steroidic in SOA.
I bought SOA, and play the quest/mission/coalition storyline content as far as it has currently been released, I give a thumbs-up to SE for Seekers areas, the city and wild zones etc are great, the missions and quests are very enjoyable (to me). I farmed some c.rieve armors I wanted for haste set, but I have 100% /avoid on delve and wk.rieve coz of the time and blunt-instrument nature of the events. I also have reservations about releasing dmg220+ weaps into vanadiel, but thats different.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I was afk while it was defeated and KO'd so no drop, despite actively participating enough to hit the 25k bayld cap. ><

Correction, I reviewed the chatlog and got a cool ebony log woot!

stop blaming SE because playerbase is stupid!

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Originally Posted by hiko

stop blaming SE because playerbase is stupid!

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ok!!!!!! XD

It a modern day mmo fight (defiance get 900 people killing a boss) , yea it takes time, but when the entire player base and server understands it will not be going that hard. Need some cow bells and 40 summoners. Heck 3 pallys and 3 whm and then 60 cors, and 60 smn and 60 bst and 200 people that understand the game hehe. You can still toss a pebble if got your skill up for 3 damage on any job.

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Originally Posted by hiko

stop blaming SE because playerbase is stupid!

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I blame you!

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Originally Posted by hiko

stop blaming SE because playerbase is stupid!

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We fight at low rates because Reives are boring, slow, and to easy with any meaningful amount of people to be of any fun. They made its DT so high we have to do Reives to make the fights doable. We did not make the boring content, and we also did not make the high DT, this is our fault?

These glitches are everywhere. Last time I was camping Onvi, there was a 90min delay in the pop.
GM repsonse was a blanket messege stating, "not my problem."

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

We fight at low rates because Reives are boring, slow, and to easy with any meaningful amount of people to be of any fun. They made its DT so high we have to do Reives to make the fights doable. We did not make the boring content, and we also did not make the high DT, this is our fault?

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These are actually not the reasons why Yumcax in particular is fought at low rates, because otherwise Marjami wouldn't be at 100%. People fight Yumcax at low rates because they view Yorcia Weald as difficult to Reive in. Whether accurate or inaccurate, Yorcia is viewed as an inaccessible zone to the general populace.

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

We fight at low rates because Reives are boring, slow, and to easy with any meaningful amount of people to be of any fun. They made its DT so high we have to do Reives to make the fights doable. We did not make the boring content, and we also did not make the high DT, this is our fault?

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I do hate to say it... but yah, It kinda is... You don't eat Raw Chicken because it takes too long to cook, and if you did, you couldn't blame the chicken packaging company for your death. (not only cause you're dead but cause you're stupid for eating it in the first place without proper preparation )

These things are intentionally designed to be c*ckblocks if Colonization isn't Above 50% or so, as they have massive DT... If people actively try to just zerg-rush it with Colonization rates at 11-20%, Its their own fault, not the designers. These fights were meant to be tediously difficulty without proper Preparation. This preparation being the advancement of colonization.

This is entirely The playerbases fault for trying to skip the entirety of Colonization to get straight to the goodies. These fights are designed a certain way, and we as a playerbase know how they're designed. Skipping 60% of Colonization because they're too lazy/its too boring. then crying foul when they can't win the reives... I'm literally, yes literally, angry that i share the same breathing air with the type of people who have this logical thought process as It makes me ashamed to be human...

These Wildskeepers have the proper warning labels, and with preparation, are easy to defeat. I think the only thing I'd say warrants adjusting is idiots being able to MPK everyone on a dime. IDK, If you're not engaged and a certain distance from the boss, I think Enemies should no longer aggro you. That way only idiots could MPK themselves...

(P.S any hint of personal attacks are completely unintentional)

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Originally Posted by hiko

stop blaming SE because playerbase is stupid!

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Playerbase did not invent coalition rieves, with twenty people trying to hit a lump of wood faster than each other so they can get a few extra bayld ticks before it ends. Fact is that SE made infinitely better battlefields in WOTG, years ago, which the playerbase largely applauded, but the battlefields in SOA totally suck conceptually which is why the playerbase is complaining. If you add the whole-day NM battles to obtain junk only in the random spool drop system, you are looking at a badly thought-out expansion.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

These things are intentionally designed to be c*ckblocks if Colonization isn't Above 50% or so, as they have massive DT... If people actively try to just zerg-rush it with Colonization rates at 11-20%, Its their own fault, not the designers.

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This is partly what I mean, you said it right here. They intentionally designed it to be a cock-block, but then its not their fault that we do it this way. If you make a boring event for the sake of forcing people to do it, that's not the players fault. Chicken needs to be cooked properly, yes, but the company in charge of that has no say in the matter, its not something they can really help, where as this is completely implemented on purpose by SE.

Well, The thing is, The event was entertaining at first, but as with everything that has no element of randomness, it'll become boring through time, So At least these new zones have different mobs...? So the inevitability of the event becoming boring or being boring Is in itself not a valid defense for being outraged that the NM you're trying to kill is hard solely based on the fact You're ignoring everything that will make it easy.

I think I should edit/finangle that particular sentence cause it pretty much sums up the point I'm trying to make... You can't be upset the Content you're trying to beat is hard solely based on the fact You're ignoring everything that the devs specifically implemented to make it easy.

Think that works... Regardless, Hopefully you see what I mean. While yes i can definitely agree to some extent designing content to be hard until you funnel down the correct path is rather lazy, But isn't that pretty much the entirety of most RPGs? Some just have a better way of making the funneling seem fun, and not like funneling at all, FFXI is losing that capability because no one wants to funnel through boring content knowing their carrot on a stick is going to spoil in less than a Month's time.

I mean, while i can't particularly remember any good comparison off the top of my head, I know for a fact theres many times in games where some enemies would be super hard until you weaken them, or knew their tricks. in this case, we know the tricks, and if you ignore them or avoid them when its so easy to do (even if a tad boring or tedious) its entirely ones own fault for ignoring the means to easy victory.

I won't say the system is without flaws, I just don't feel complaining that a fight takes too long because you've completely and purposefully ignored every tool at your disposal to make the fight shorter is legitimate by any means. :x

I understand your point, though some of what you say is a bit incorrect I think. Like for instance your comparison with weakening a monster until we know their tricks. Well, Delve captures that idea, and we use those tricks every fight, some of them are a near must. But at the same time, I have to say, these WK Reives are not the same way, it sounds like Yumcax is similar in the fact he has some kind of regen which can be broken by wind damage, but otherwise, not so much.

I understand your point overall that the players are ignoring it and it is our fault for such a thing, but I do not think we should have all blame in this matter. If Reives themselves were more enjoyable, rewarding, or just generally not such a big time taker which requires so many people, I think we would be ok, but none of those are the case sadly. So while we can take some blame, I think SE is partly to blame as well.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

Well, The thing is, The event was entertaining at first, but as with everything that has no element of randomness, it'll become boring through time, So At least these new zones have different mobs...? So the inevitability of the event becoming boring or being boring Is in itself not a valid defense for being outraged that the NM you're trying to kill is hard solely based on the fact You're ignoring everything that will make it easy.

I think I should edit/finangle that particular sentence cause it pretty much sums up the point I'm trying to make... You can't be upset the Content you're trying to beat is hard solely based on the fact You're ignoring everything that the devs specifically implemented to make it easy.

Think that works... Regardless, Hopefully you see what I mean. While yes i can definitely agree to some extent designing content to be hard until you funnel down the correct path is rather lazy, But isn't that pretty much the entirety of most RPGs? Some just have a better way of making the funneling seem fun, and not like funneling at all, FFXI is losing that capability because no one wants to funnel through boring content knowing their carrot on a stick is going to spoil in less than a Month's time.

I mean, while i can't particularly remember any good comparison off the top of my head, I know for a fact theres many times in games where some enemies would be super hard until you weaken them, or knew their tricks. in this case, we know the tricks, and if you ignore them or avoid them when its so easy to do (even if a tad boring or tedious) its entirely ones own fault for ignoring the means to easy victory.

I won't say the system is without flaws, I just don't feel complaining that a fight takes too long because you've completely and purposefully ignored every tool at your disposal to make the fight shorter is legitimate by any means. :x

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Sometimes though it's still not that simple because of the entire server's unwillingness to do reive content to make other reive content easier. You and I may understand how to make this stuff easier, and the entire server can understand it, but it won't change the fact that most everyone is opting out of doing saaaaaay Yorcia Weald reives. In that case, while it is the server's fault, one can argue it's mainly SE's fault for designing the content in the fashion they did.

When you look at the col rates before the last update, I would say it was completely on our heads for not doing certain zones, and while a few hundred hardcore end game people may decide that they want to do things right, their effort is meaningless without the rest of the server helping them.

That aside, here comes the SoA version of Caedarva Mire called Yorcia Weald and people are like, F that noise. It's going to end up being that one zone per expansion that everyone loves to hate.

There is a simple solution to the problem, add more drops like capes to all reives, and as much as I am hating the random drop nature of these items, I believe they need to stay that way or else people will get their drops and never do reives again unless they are active enough in SoA that they need a steady supply of bayld. As long as they insist on designing content that requires the server to never stop doing said content to have full benefits of the expansion, they have to properly motivate us to follow their lead. Properly motivate us and there will be no issues whatsoever except when you design a zone like Yorcia Weald that's a chore to get to, shares drops with other new and easier to play in zones, and then when you're there, yeah..... need different drops per zone to properly motivate people. If Yorcia dropped JSE necks or earrings or rings or whatever, it would be at 100% col rate right now, too, despite sucking for fun factor. There's some nice drops from Yumcax, but not nice enough to make most people care to do reives in Yorcia Weald because most people aren't trying to do Yumcax and you need most people doing reives to make any meaningful progress in col rate.

Here's the simple solution...

Make all Wildskeeper Reives INACTIVE if the Colonization Rate in the zone is below 50%. This will FORCE the player base to participate in Colonization Reives in the areas where Naakuals are located and prevent these 24+ hour marathon sessions I've been hearing so much about.

I've been actively doing a Colonization Reive in Yorcia Weald (it's the only one I can find wandering around that blasted forest) trying to get the rate up. Sadly, I am the ONLY PERSON there, yet there are 70+ others in the zone. Guess where they're at. Yes, another marathon session is going on on Shiva server right now. Coming up on hour #13 if I'm not mistaken, as I saw the first shout for it around 1pm CST this afternoon, and it's nearly 3am now.

***Ninja Edit*** And I've just been MPK'd by a Paladin who claimed the monsters in the Reive and intentionally moved out of range while I was meleeing the roots believing she was still tanking the Reive monsters.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

I do hate to say it... but yah, It kinda is... You don't eat Raw Chicken because it takes too long to cook, and if you did, you couldn't blame the chicken packaging company for your death. (not only cause you're dead but cause you're stupid for eating it in the first place without proper preparation )

These things are intentionally designed to be c*ckblocks if Colonization isn't Above 50% or so, as they have massive DT... If people actively try to just zerg-rush it with Colonization rates at 11-20%, Its their own fault, not the designers. These fights were meant to be tediously difficulty without proper Preparation. This preparation being the advancement of colonization.

This is entirely The playerbases fault for trying to skip the entirety of Colonization to get straight to the goodies. These fights are designed a certain way, and we as a playerbase know how they're designed. Skipping 60% of Colonization because they're too lazy/its too boring. then crying foul when they can't win the reives... I'm literally, yes literally, angry that i share the same breathing air with the type of people who have this logical thought process as It makes me ashamed to be human...

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The SE devs went out of their way to make Yorcia as unappealing as possible.

-Truly embarrassingly awful map
-Only 4 colonization reives, which are spread out
-True sight panopt mobs
-Colonization reives block your passage

This is compounded by the issue that Marjami is much, much more suitable for doing reives and therefore attracts people away from Yorcia. Seriously, if you wanted to design a good zone to do reives in, Marjami is what you would end up with. 7 colonization reives which can be bypassed using survival skills if necessary.

It's generally a pretty safe bet that the playerbase is at fault somehow but in this case, the developers introduced two vastly unequal zones. Nobody should be surprised that one is always at 100% colonization while the other is at 20%. It's not fair to blame the playerbase for this.

Also, there are many issues with Wildskeeper reives in general that have been touched on in this thread and the Battle Content thread. Namely, the battles are long and unenjoyable, require a specific job and ability in order to efficiently deal damage, have non-refundable entry fees, and have skewed drop rates which very often leave players with a dryad root as the only reward for an entire evening of work. It's not fun, and you're highly unlikely to get the item you want.

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Originally Posted by Siviard

Here's the simple solution...

Make all Wildskeeper Reives INACTIVE if the Colonization Rate in the zone is below 50%. This will FORCE the player base to participate in Colonization Reives in the areas where Naakuals are located and prevent these 24+ hour marathon sessions I've been hearing so much about.

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This is not a good idea. On some servers, it simply may not be possible to sustain an adequate colonization rate for a given zone. You're basically locking players out of content. You're saying that Ceizak, Morimar, Hennetiel, Marjami, and Yorcia have to be maintained at 50% colonization rate for all time, otherwise those naakual fights will go the way of Fiat Lux.

The real issue is that it's fine for naakual strength to be inversely proportional to colonization rate. But that strength should manifest itself in terms of stats and hp, not damage taken.

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

We fight at low rates because Reives are boring, slow, and to easy with any meaningful amount of people to be of any fun. They made its DT so high we have to do Reives to make the fights doable. We did not make the boring content, and we also did not make the high DT, this is our fault?

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I'll go with your logic
- XPing is boring and no more fun than reive
- farming delve monster is boring....
=> I should be able to successfully take part of a delve boss fight with a naked lvl1

and imo doing reive is not more boring than tryng to fight a monster and do less than 1%dmg/h

Or, just get rid of the regen for Yumcax, and save it for his delve equivalent? It was my impression that Wildskeeper rieves were designed to be challenging, but also designed in a way where anyone and everyone can jump in and with determination, eventually defeat (in a moderately reasonable amount of time). Thus far, this is actually the case with the other four Naakuls, which I think were designed very well! Some of the most fun battles I took part in were in these other four zones and lasted at shortest 45 minutes, and generally at most 2-3 hours (acceptable in my opinion for these zone boss style fights).

By contrast, it was my understanding that Delve was supposed to be more difficult content that requires extremely well prepared players all following an agreed upon strategy.

THE POINT I AM TRYING TO MAKE HERE:
I'm not opposed to challenging content, Delve is designed with a TIME LIMIT and is easy to repeat with entry items easy to obtain.

Wildskeeper rieves require a costly key item which takes individuals a significant time investment to obtain. Without the ability to homepoint, change jobs to form a better strategy, many players would rather try to stick it out and not waste their effort to get there in the first place, and as a result, we end up with marathons.

An important point in SE's defense I forgot to mention that I feel is important:
This is different than the original Pandemonium Warden in a big way- If PW was left unclaimed it would go away, so people had to actively hold it before Twilight gear existed, which led to unfortunate results.

While yes, technically the Yumcax battle I took part in lasted 27 hours total, there were significant lulls in activity where we all took extended breaks, so for that, I commend SE for at least building that aspect into this system. Also, while ~75k bayld does take time and effort to build, it is nowhere near as difficult as a Pandemondium Key when that was released.

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Originally Posted by Vivivivi

Or, just get rid of the regen for Yumcax, and save it for his delve equivalent? It was my impression that Wildskeeper rieves were designed to be challenging, but also designed in a way where anyone and everyone can jump in and with determination, eventually defeat (in a moderately reasonable amount of time). Thus far, this is actually the case with the other four Naakuls, which I think were designed very well! Some of the most fun battles I took part in were in these other four zones and lasted at shortest 45 minutes, and generally at most 2-3 hours (acceptable in my opinion for these zone boss style fights).

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=>WR are designed so people can learn delve boss specials and how to react, counter them
+

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Originally Posted by Kristal

Funny thing is, MPKing you lot actually IS a valid tactic. It means you aren't doing things like keeping Yumcax in it's regen state and you actually got time to read the shouts. Yumcax's regen can be countered by dealing wind damage.

It's also possible they were trying to kill the people stuck in the terrain behind the Oops Moogle, so they could be tractored.

I was on a 25% col rate Yumcax that was at 98-100% HP for the first 30 minutes while people were getting into the reive. Then people started shouting in every known language (I swear there even was someone shouting in Klingon) what the tactic was, and it died 3.5 hours later (mostly due to low col rate). If you aren't doing wind damage, you kill adds. If you can't kill adds, you support those that do.



They only last that long if you don't know what you are doing. Which is pretty common at first.

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Originally Posted by hiko

=>WR are designed so people can learn delve boss specials and how to react, counter them
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Ahhh... Yeah, 200 people fighting fodder mobs while summoner pets whack away at something big... So that's why we keep losing to tojil. We need another 190 people.

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Originally Posted by hiko

I'll go with your logic
- XPing is boring and no more fun than reive
- farming delve monster is boring....
=> I should be able to successfully take part of a delve boss fight with a naked lvl1

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No, actually level is boring and that's why people leech up jobs. We take the shortest possible way to get through all of the boring BS thrown in our path so we can get to what is actually enjoyable. In the case of Reives, that means doing Wildkeepers no matter the % because we want the gear, and normal Reives are very boring to many people. At the same time, we all have to level, it must be done, no progress can be gotten without it, as such, we do level, but we do it in the shortest possible method, leeching. The two situations are not so different, but you are using a very poor example of them.

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Originally Posted by detlef

This is not a good idea. On some servers, it simply may not be possible to sustain an adequate colonization rate for a given zone. You're basically locking players out of content. You're saying that Ceizak, Morimar, Hennetiel, Marjami, and Yorcia have to be maintained at 50% colonization rate for all time, otherwise those naakual fights will go the way of Fiat Lux.

The real issue is that it's fine for naakual strength to be inversely proportional to colonization rate. But that strength should manifest itself in terms of stats and hp, not damage taken.

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You make it sound like it's impossible. With that attitude, it will be....