Ambuscade! 1 NPC, 100 players

[Olor]

The more likely scenario is you would be standing at the Ambuscade NPC with your Seek flag up waiting for someone to invite you. I suspect others will be doing this as well. While you're waiting, you can continue to solo it. The only time you'll have to take your flag down is when you're actually inside soloing and have to call trusts. Once you're done, just put it up again.

You can't accept invites or invite people while you are in the book waiting line... You have to stand around missing out on chances to actually progress

There is a difference between just giving people in groups more hallmarks(which they already largely get from doing harder difficulties) and having a whole new currency that soloers can't access... I am fine with groups getting more hallmarks and I supported the idea of adding something like meebles where you automatically get a bonus for having additional people. The difference is I can work hard solo to "catch up" on hallmarks but I can't solo a new "group only" currency. One of these situations punishes soloers - one of these simply rewards parties. I'd rather have the latter without the former.

[CrAZYVIC]

I would argue that while, yes, this is likely going to be the scenario, Ambuscade really isn't so difficult as other content to require this, at least for Regular Ambuscade in which the Difficult setting is pretty soloable with some skill. It might really be in player's best interest to pickup people on the spot if they vaguely fit job requirements. Other whys, groups are essentially going to be competing with soloers for the same limited space. Not to mention swarms of soloers competing for the same Record of Eminence targets.

This incentive to party is obviously meant to alleviate some of the traffic. So while, yes, that MNK may not be ideal in your eyes, he's going in whether you invite him or not. And if he goes in alone, he's going to be that much slower, taking up that much more time in Legion. Might as well invite him.

Yeah this content its a lot friendly. I loved the idea of play that when i could. Here even i solo on WAR the difficulty Dragon. I hate the idea of have form a party and yes PT leaders will shout for the meta jobs even if the content its easy =/

[Olor]

yes PT leaders will shout for the meta jobs even if the content its easy =/

Yep, only jobs I've seen people shout for for Ambuscade are GEO and WHM

[detlef]

They're not wrong that you should really bring a GEO to everything if you can. That's a job balance issue though.

[Olor]

They're not wrong that you should really bring a GEO to everything if you can. That's a job balance issue though.

I don't begrudge people for preferring to bring strong jobs to content, I begrudge the fact that not all jobs have a place in content (any content).

If it was at least balanced so that WAR was good here BLU was good there, BLM good the other place, BRD excellent here, GEO needed there I would feel less fussed, but as of now there are not many jobs one can expect to feel comfortable asking to get invited into content outside of friends.

The balance is completely out of whack, and that is a real disincentive to players who might otherwise be interested in playing the game. Ironically, I think this first round of ambuscade seemed like it was acknowledging the difficulties faced by players of heavy DD jobs. And now it's like they are forgetting that lots of people are soloing on these same jobs because they aren't really very useful in most strats for relevant content.

[Helldemon]

5. Stop allowing people to form their own parties, force them to accept scrubs /sarcasm

Seriously, people are soloing with trusts because other folks won't deign to play with them/don't make it fun.

So if you want less soloists, be more inclusive in your parties, be more fun! Teach a new player the ropes, have fun with a scrub, etc.

But given that this is the *first* solo friendly event with any relevant gear whatsoever, in AGES folks should not be complaining that soloists want to access it, especially when folks won't even let people exp with them anymore because their precious CP/hr will be ruined if they helped some folks catch up.

I love this game I just wish folks would be a little more lighthearted about it sometimes.

SE messed this up worse when they introduced the scaling system imo. I probably came pretty close to quitting around that time because of it. It basically made it extremely harmful to invite anyone that wasn't on the best jobs with the best gear. Of course there were plenty that already did this but there were groups that would invite anyone if they already had the gear/jobs/skill to win and hadn't yet hit 18. Now every person you add gives the mob an extra 100k hp so now that weaker geared person makes the fight significantly harder if they aren't geared as well as everyone else.

I've been guilty of this myself. A new ls member of an ls I'm apart of came to ruaun for an event but didn't have silt to get tribs so he farmed them for awhile, but event ended. I needed two T1 kills(Garguille and Mantis) and managed to get three others to stay and help. Anyways, we killed the Garguille and then the new guy happened to show up by the pop spot before we popped the mantis and some of the party members mentioned maybe we could invite him. I stayed silent for a minute but then decided we probably couldn't afford to, I felt bad and we won but I had to 1hr with my last pet and the others were almost out of mp(both trusts were dead, august got one-shot as soon as I popped...) so if we had invited him we would have wiped. Before this system I would have gladly invited him despite him probably not being geared enough to do the NM but now I am forced to weigh if we'll still be able to win whenever I'm a party leader and someone wants to join. They should have given reduced rewards for less people, or more rewards for people still going with 18 and not given so much hp to the NM's for each person added. They also need to work on tp feed and how much damage AoE's do.

Edit:

I don't begrudge people for preferring to bring strong jobs to content, I begrudge the fact that not all jobs have a place in content (any content).

If it was at least balanced so that WAR was good here BLU was good there, BLM good the other place, BRD excellent here, GEO needed there I would feel less fussed, but as of now there are not many jobs one can expect to feel comfortable asking to get invited into content outside of friends.

The balance is completely out of whack, and that is a real disincentive to players who might otherwise be interested in playing the game. Ironically, I think this first round of ambuscade seemed like it was acknowledging the difficulties faced by players of heavy DD jobs. And now it's like they are forgetting that lots of people are soloing on these same jobs because they aren't really very useful in most strats for relevant content.

Ya, ambuscade was great because it doesn't scale and any job is capable of doing good there, at least on the dragon. That could change with next months Low Tier NM. The gear from the tier rewards is pretty great, I found a use for all the pieces on my drg I believe, if you can manage to get the +1 gear for the job you want to play there you should be capable of doing even VD in a group provided the stats are similar(lots of acc/att/DT) of course the low haste hurts but most VD groups have 1-2 supports which should help with that. My main is drg and I have no mage jobs so trust me I know how it feels to be excluded from stuff. I've only been able to do a few Reisenjima NM's myself and only have one piece of Valor gear(legs).

[Olor]

SE messed this up worse when they introduced the scaling system imo. I probably came pretty close to quitting around that time because of it. It basically made it extremely harmful to invite anyone that wasn't on the best jobs with the best gear. Of course there were plenty that already did this but there were groups that would invite anyone if they already had the gear/jobs/skill to win and hadn't yet hit 18. Now every person you add gives the mob an extra 100k hp so now that weaker geared person makes the fight significantly harder if they aren't geared as well as everyone else.

Yeah you've hit the nail on the head, everything you say is spot on. For most content I don't begrudge folks not inviting a scrub because SE designed the content to be harder if you try to help people, which is really crummy.

I do find it annoying with the dragon because as you note anyone can contribute somewhat and it's not at all hard and it doesn't scale but people still don't want to invite others to join. I can solo the dragon on normal now, I am sure I could do it on difficult if I was in a party (probably even VD but I would be less helpful on it) but folks only want to invite GEO or WHM. I have WHM but it is waaaaay worse geared than my other jobs and I find it too stressful to play.

I am really super hopeful that the set for light gear jobs is as good as the heavy because I really need a better light DD body and hands and more ACC overall. I have pretty good Taeon in head, feet and legs, but only have Hagondes body for my blu and the relic 119 body for my THF.

[Camate]

Thanks for all the feedback on Gallantry.

In terms of what you can purchase with Gallantry, one of the major items will be the item I mentioned the other day that will allow you to alter the augments on your equipment. Additionally, we will be making it possible to reacquire Sulevia equipment that is currently purchasable with Hallmarks.

While you may be thinking that this is just the same as Hallmarks, the biggest difference is that there are no cumulative-type rewards for Gallantry, and all of the rewards can be obtained by spending points. Even if it’s an HQ item, you will be able to acquire it for the slot you wish, and if you, for example, wanted to obtain Sulevia’s Platemail +1, you could do so by exchanging your points at a lower amount than the amount of Hallmarks you need at the moment.
(However, if you’re trying to obtain the equipment for all equipment slots, you’ll need a great deal more points than the total Hallmarks required.)

Similar to Hallmarks, Gallantry will also reset when there is a version update. This is necessary in order to maintain a set rate for the cumulative rewards, and if we were to remove this system, each time we rotated rewards we would have to continuously bump up the required amount of points. As a result, months in the future the required amount of points would be astronomical. We’d like to keep this system in place so there is a defined starting point as well as a defined goal line for obtaining these items.

[OmnysValefor]

Greetings, everyone!

For those of you interested in a way to alter your augments I have some good news.

In the May version update we will be adding a new item that will allow you to change the properties of the back equipment you possess while maintaining your augment rank. However, there will be a limit to the amount that you can obtain in each version update, so you won’t be able to change the properties as much as you like.

Curious about this: Why not?

Why not permit people to buy as many of this re-augmenting item as they like? The smarter solution, certainly, is to have different capes if you find yourself constantly resetting, but it seems silly to me to stop people who would rather just change their augments.

I love the Ambuscade system, aside from the monotony and the bottlenecks. I think the duality of Hallmarks is wonderful but I do have one concern:

It sounds like, aside from Sulevia's also being obtainable next month, each month will have one armor set. Why do this? I have a friend who recently came back and Sulevia's was introduced at the perfect time for him to get tremendous upgrades out of them. Say he came back the month after a gearset was available, he'd have to wait a number of months to get the gear? That's quite unfair! At first, when I helped him, I was doing the majority of the work, but thanks to Ambuscade gear, he's contributing much much more.

If he came back a month too late, he'd be lacking a set that every plate DD on the server would be expected to have (unless they had better). He'd be denied opportunities in groups and denied one of the best hybrid gearsets FFXI has ever had.

So please, use the next month to reconsider.. Make Sulevia's permanently available if it is not, Make Ambuscade versions of Usukane, Skadi, and Morrigan's also available permanently available. This is the proper kind of helping hand that returning players need.

Also, in case you're reading this: It was very smart of you to trade Haste, rather than Accuracy/other offensive stats, for -DamageTaken% rather than accuracy. I genuinely hope the rest of the melee sets follow suit.

[Pixela]

Curious about this: Why not?

Why not permit people to buy as many of this re-augmenting item as they like? The smarter solution, certainly, is to have different capes if you find yourself constantly resetting, but it seems silly to me to stop people who would rather just change their augments.

I love the Ambuscade system, aside from the monotony and the bottlenecks. I think the duality of Hallmarks is wonderful but I do have one concern:

It sounds like, aside from Sulevia's also being obtainable next month, each month will have one armor set. Why do this? I have a friend who recently came back and Sulevia's was introduced at the perfect time for him to get tremendous upgrades out of them. Say he came back the month after a gearset was available, he'd have to wait a number of months to get the gear? That's quite unfair! At first, when I helped him, I was doing the majority of the work, but thanks to Ambuscade gear, he's contributing much much more.

If he came back a month too late, he'd be lacking a set that every plate DD on the server would be expected to have (unless they had better). He'd be denied opportunities in groups and denied one of the best hybrid gearsets FFXI has ever had.

So please, use the next month to reconsider.. Make Sulevia's permanently available if it is not, Make Ambuscade versions of Usukane, Skadi, and Morrigan's also available permanently available. This is the proper kind of helping hand that returning players need.

Also, in case you're reading this: It was very smart of you to trade Haste, rather than Accuracy/other offensive stats, for -DamageTaken% rather than accuracy. I genuinely hope the rest of the melee sets follow suit.

They did it this way to so that people can't zerg it 24/7 for a month, get every single item and then say "DONE! MORE PLZZZ! BORED NOW! QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ"

It's a great way to add content and make it viable for 4-5 times as long as it would normally be so, I hope they do more content like this in the future with cycling rewards (with a way to get previous ones at a greater expense).

MMO players are like someone with an eating disorder, if you put all the months food on the table at once they will eat it all at once. You have to ration them for their own good sometimes, especially when you have a smaller dev team.