Ambuscade! 1 NPC, 100 players

[Selindrile]

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, I only bring this up to state that I hope that sort of augmenting never becomes part of ambuscade.
(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.

Will there ever be a way to "catch up" on capes if one already changed their augments mid-stream, I (and others I know) unfortunately have misclicked on cape augments due to the ridiculous need to trade each item manually and spacing out when trading 20 at a time, so our capes will go uncapped, perpetually a little behind each month, I guess it's not a big deal, but it's painfully annoying.

Also, if you're reading this, as awesome as Reisenjimma augments are, the augment system is ludicrous, literally everyone I know hates it while simultaneously uses the heck out of it like someone shame-eating and hating themself while doing it, haven't we made it clear that we all hate perfectly random augments? Airlixir/Eshalixir or even Skirmish2's ability to roll one stat at a time are far less enfuriating, I only bring this up to state that I hope this sort of system never becomes part of ambuscade.

[OmnysValefor]

Also, if you're reading this, as awesome as Reisenjimma augments are, the augment system is ludicrous, literally everyone I know hates it while simultaneously uses the heck out of it like someone shame-eating and hating themself while doing it, haven't we made it clear that we all hate perfectly random augments? Airlixir/Eshalixir or even Skirmish2's ability to roll one stat at a time are far less enfuriating, I only bring this up to state that I hope this sort of system never becomes part of ambuscade.

x.x Wow. I feel absolutely the opposite. I loathe Skirmish and Skirmish II's augment system even though it is improved. Rei stones are easy to farm and aren't terribly expensive--I love the Reisenjima system.

[OmnysValefor]

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).

I know why they did it, but these may well be all sets of gear that everyone who plays jobs is expected to have. In the case of my friend, we'd have to wait probably four months for it to return. This gear is of greatest benefit to returning players, but every drk/war/drg on the game can get benefit out of at least some Sulevia's (if not their goto piece).

And unless the fights become a lot more interesting, it's not a great way to add content. "BLU's, save MG for after dispel please." "Uh oh, his health is getting low, better save provoke for the hate reset"

[Selindrile]

x.x Wow. I feel absolutely the opposite. I loathe Skirmish and Skirmish II's augment system even though it is improved. Rei stones are easy to farm and aren't terribly expensive--I love the Reisenjima system.

Easy to farm, cheap, nigh impossible to get the augs you want, a friend and I did some rough math, there's probably over 3.5 million different augments on a specific peice of armor with a specific stone, so approximately a 1 in 3.5M chance you're getting the exact augment you want, and so much time is just spent clicking and reviewing and clicking and reviewing, it's painful, it's definitely my least favorite augment system, though obviously it has the best augments.

[Hyrist]

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.

I honestly don't see how this will resolve issues with congestion.

Those who are going to party have more incentive to stay around thanks to the new currency, meaning more groups will remain there. But Soloists have next to no incentive to party in this situation aside from small pieces they MAY have missed, but because parties are so unbalanced towards the flavor of the month, soloists just have more incentive to spam the content when it is new, rather than group up with parties, so they don't feel forced to party more.

And with your queue system in place, you've just effectively increased the congestion fourfold time wise for everyone, including said soloists.

Sorry, but I'm afraid you don't understand the severity in which the dichotomy between meta players and casuals are divided, and have effectively thrown oil on the fire in both the divide and the original congestion problem.

If this is the course SE wishes to take then I highly recommend you pass along the suggestions to separate the queues between those with full parties, semi-full parties, and soloists (or just parties and solo if you don't have in-system flags separating full party from a smaller ones.) This will alleviate the specific kinds of congestion that are putting community strains on soloists vrs parties. This will also encourage soloists to alleviate congestion and push through to the naturally faster processing party queues, further sweetening your carrot to get people to party.

[Olor]

No, I don't want a soloist Queue, I like to solo because I don't often have a large chunk of time to party... so making it even slower to solo would make it pretty much impossible for me to play :/

If people want to grab me to fill out a party to get me out of the queue, great, but I don't want to be punished because folks don't want to invite.

[OmnysValefor]

Easy to farm, cheap, nigh impossible to get the augs you want, a friend and I did some rough math, there's probably over 3.5 million different augments on a specific peice of armor with a specific stone, so approximately a 1 in 3.5M chance you're getting the exact augment you want, and so much time is just spent clicking and reviewing and clicking and reviewing, it's painful, it's definitely my least favorite augment system, though obviously it has the best augments.

I would describe Skirmish as more frustrating to farm, and nigh-impossible to get the augments you want. I've always loathed that a +2 stone can give you the same terrible stat than NQ stone will very likely give you.

Neither system is likely to give you perfect augments, you'll probably end up with a great DPS piece that has INT+10 on it from Reisenjima. It's still not a bad trade.

Edit: I get you're saying that Skirmish will allow you to hack away at solely that INT+10 hoping for something more suited to your role, but you're also more likely to spend 200k and get int+1.

[Kensagaku]

Honestly, I wish they had a combination of both systems. We already have it so each stone favors a slot of augments, so why not just have it only cover that slot? Trade Pellucid stones for acc/atk/macc/matk etc, fern for your "special" augment, and taupe for your stat augment. It'd still have some aspect of randomization to it, but with more plentiful stones and separate slots, you can actually build an item piece more to your specifications. I'm okay throwing a couple hundred Taupe stones to try and get that STR+15 aug, or as many Fern to get a Triple Attack+3, but not when I have to also hope I get a high acc/atk, or heaven forbid Damage+ on weapons too.

[Pixela]

No, I don't want a soloist Queue, I like to solo because I don't often have a large chunk of time to party... so making it even slower to solo would make it pretty much impossible for me to play :/

If people want to grab me to fill out a party to get me out of the queue, great, but I don't want to be punished because folks don't want to invite.

I agree, I only came back to XI because it now supports casual players. If people in groups have to wait as long as me that's great because they aren't the kings and queens of vandiel, they are no better than me. Also the truth is that most people in parties are the ones causing the congestion anyway, since they spam the life out of this content over and over. Most soloists do 1-2 runs a day and go do other stuff.

I still think they should of put limits on how many runs you can do a day, this is a good 2nd best option though.

[OmnysValefor]

Honestly, I wish they had a combination of both systems. We already have it so each stone favors a slot of augments, so why not just have it only cover that slot? Trade Pellucid stones for acc/atk/macc/matk etc, fern for your "special" augment, and taupe for your stat augment. It'd still have some aspect of randomization to it, but with more plentiful stones and separate slots, you can actually build an item piece more to your specifications. I'm okay throwing a couple hundred Taupe stones to try and get that STR+15 aug, or as many Fern to get a Triple Attack+3, but not when I have to also hope I get a high acc/atk, or heaven forbid Damage+ on weapons too.

I agree man, that would be perfect. But obviously, both systems are designed to be gil/time-sinks. They could be as convenient as you describe if SE wanted them to be.