Suggestions to improve Ambuscade

[Nyarlko]

I know it has been said before, but it is still a problem. The very event that the zone being used for Ambuscade is named for has become nearly inaccessible, namely Legion.

Can you please PLEASE reserve just one zone instance for the event that the zone was created for? I actually enjoyed farming in Legion before Ambuscade was released.
I enjoyed teaching others the tricks that I'd learned inside to deal with certain bosses.
I had enough fun soloing it that I actually bought a second account so that I could try my hand at dual-boxing inside of Legion using my 2nd laptop.
.... So, why is it that I can't get in anymore? T_T

It seems that the Ambuscade queue system is simply locking me out if there is ANYONE in the Ambuscade queue. I'm not sure if the actual number of zone instances are being used up, or if it is just an issue of the way the Legion entry system works, or some detail I'm not seeing the devil in, but something is wrong here. I somehow luckily managed to sneak in a LS group into Hall of Mul a few days ago after ~15-20min of Legion entrance Enter-key spamming and everything worked fine inside, so it's not the event itself that is causing the problem.
(It was the the first time 7 out of the 10 of us had ever stepped inside, they all got shiny new vorseals, and everyone had a blast. I promised everyone {fun} and {death} and maybe {money}, and we all had plenty of the first two and a few payouts from pricey drops. ^^)

Had a LS member asking about Cerberus and Behemoth spawn conditions yesterday for learning Blue Magic, and I suggested Legion since the mob types are set with no 21-24hr windows or expensive pop items, and we simply couldn't get in.. I tried spamming entry as a test and gave up after ~1.5hrs... Please fix this. Legion was my "fun" event for when I got tired of killing endless trash mobs for merits, job points, or Ambuscade entry... It makes no sense that it's essentially shut down for the first 3 weeks each month.

Please fix this.

[Vanfrano]

It's not just STR +10... it is STR +10 on a cape with a whole lot of other nice stats on it tho.

I agree with the fact that the capes are nice but they require way too much work, especially with the added dyes and fourth bracket. You need 4000 hallmarks for 5 dyes, that is HQ Feet + HQ Hands, if you take into consideration the stats these two pieces give you, it is really unbalanced that you only get STR+5 with dyes for all this work. Add on top of this the 5 other monthly dyes that you get by totalling 20000 hallmarks, that means the whole HQ set is worth less than STR+5.
Even taking into account a fully augmented cape, the armors are for several jobs, the capes are for one job and you often want to have several capes for one job.

I gave up on Ambuscade a while ago and the cape I solo'd is sitting at three brackets too, I'd rather enjoy the rest of the game than having to go through the zoning, killing 10 mobs, queueing and doing the same boring thing monthly.

Stompa if you ever want to complete your cape though, look me up, unless you would rather solo.

[Rooj]

I saw the word "solo" and cried a little.

I'm not gonna say that Ambuscade couldn't be a bit more convenient in certain ways, but on the other hand... you're not required to cap anything from it... I didn't get the 10th dye last month, and I don't give any sort of poop about it either. Cause I knew I'd get it next month. To be fair the dye cap was lower last month, I'm definitely glad it was raised this month. I kinda had a feeling it would be eventually, but it was done way sooner than I expected

Don't let the megagrind ruin the game for you ;\

[OmnysValefor]

The system to get the KI intentionally draws you away from Mhaura for a time to free up congestion. It was a well planned mechanic of the battle system . More time getting the KI = less people trying to enter at once. It serves a needed purpose

As for intense ambuscade, like you said people don't do it because it is inefficient. That is why they are looking into raising the reward for it. if you can do intense on normal as easily as regular on VD and get more rewards, its wort it to do both. It will be much more efficient to do intense then regular every time . Intense is not un-winnable at all. There are plenty of people willing to do it for the challenge and to break the monotony of spamming regular.

See, if they're worried about the "content" itself being the bottleneck, then improve the variety of the content. There's no defense for all the needless zoning and fighting with other groups over the same mobs (which is not as terrible this month, being arcana).

IMO, since Intense takes place in the same battlefield, longer fights = more waiting at book for other groups, especially slow/solo/lowman/inefficient groups.

I would like to see them improve the limit points reward to something like 5 merits per run (50k exp) so that groups were encouraged to bounce between content. ("Merits are full, let's go hit xxx HTBF"). I also think Ambuscade should give a full JP per run, regardless of bonuses or anything.

[Diavolo]

So I know that there are other things on the cape - I already solo farmed them, and it took me a whole month to do so. A month of zoning hundreds of times, and killing like thousands of mobs that other people may have wanted to xp on, and zoning every ten mobs, queueing in Mhuara, calling trusts, battle, zoning, killing ten mobs, repeat. For a whole month. For a cape.

We've done more for less in this beautiful time sink of a game, though I must ask, why not party up and turn those 30 days of grinding into 2 or 3?

My point is that the grind is unreasonable for my new JSE cape that is only slightly better than my old JSE cape which took an hour to farm and augment.

Wait a couple more years to farm your Ambuscade capes and they'll surely be just as easy then as Adoulin JSE capes are now. They also took far more than an hour to farm up and later augment when they were introduced.

[CrAZYVIC]

Thanks for all of the ideas! We've passed on all your suggestions to the team.

In terms of improvements that we are working on at the moment, to better reward you for your efforts in Intense Ambuscade, we are looking into increasing the amount of Hallmarks earned upon completion. (Gallantry will remain unchanged.)

The team is currently in the process of making adjustments so you receive double the current amount, and we are hoping to get this implemented as early as next week. We hope that this creates more of an incentive to bump the challenge up a bit more and head into Intense Ambuscade!

We'll follow up if we hear anything further about the suggestions listed in this thread.

camate can you ask the dev team if is posible

12 000 Hallmarks be enough for cap the HQ +1 Set from ambuscade?. 12K its a right amount its equal complete two capes in a month.

Also its possible the "Daily normal ambuscade" give you x2 hallmarks rewards? only the daily?. This will help a lot people with limited time to play thanks!

[Zeldar]

Honestly though Stompa, while I can definately see where you are coming from, I know you read the reddit AMA and saw when Matsui said that the game is built around playing with others. If you had the group to go with as a party, alll your time, zoning, killing, etc would be cut to about one third. It really isn't THAT much of a grind considering you have a month to do it. 20,000 total hallmarks at 300 per run is only 67 runs: 65 since you will have 2 seals to increase rewards. Even in a short month, thats between 2 and 3 runs per day, much closer to 2. So do a very easy and manageable 5 runs each time you join a group. It will take an hour tops with a good group. In 2 weeks, you have the entire gear set, want it or not, and what, about 2 capes? Not to mention the millions in upgrade materials you could get. The system is very rewarding if you utilize it in its full capacity. If you don't, thats fine, but its right that you dont get the full reward.

[Rydal]

67 runs of Ambuscade is pretty bad. That's equal to doing to going through 13 full merit (75) runs of Tenzen VD. Finding a group, getting the KI, and waiting for an entry are what cause the process to become even more tedious. God forbid someone decides to afk or leave the group. There's no guarantee you'll find 5 other people to do VD with you every day. People have limited time to play and can't spam Ambuscade without sacrificing other events. Everyone is trying to finish 20k points before the campaigns rolls out next week. They're pressured because NO ONE will be doing Ambuscade over CP, VW, WKR or NNI so they have to do it now not to miss out. I think Ambuscade is a huge time sink. When have you spammed something 67 times in a month outside of a campaign unless you're making a legendary weapon? That's just to get all the exclusive armor, not to max out points.

[Zeldar]

67 runs at 5 minutes a pop , another 5 minutes to get the KI= 11 hours on an event in a month. Add in another hour for miscellaneous bs. Compared to what you'd need to do in the past or present to cap any other gear set and get the other items you are getting is really close to nothing. This is just another instance where a small percentage of the community wants things practically handed to them. If you aren't willing to spend 3 hours per week to get an entire 6 piece set (including cape) then you really don't want it that badly.

Also, when you get in the habit of joining pick-ups, people in those pick-ups start seeking you out when they need bodies for ambuscade. I get a few /tells every day asking if I want to do ambuscade, and I'm on one of the smaller servers.

[Castanica]

Thank you Camate, sounds great. I think doubling the reward from intense versions will get more people to at least consider doing those and vary it up somee.