Increase or remove ZNM limit of 10 soul plates per day

[Blaize]

With the increase in accessibility to most other level 75 endgame content, the ZNM system has been left behind. The limit of 10 plates per day is making it a hassle at best for people in my linkshell to gather zeni for pop items. With the cost of a T4 pop being 22500 zeni at minimum, (and with the non-guaranteed nature of the T4 trophy item drop) that's 23 hours of trading just for the chance of getting one of the three required trophies to pop Pandemonium Warden.

The system already has a built-in limitation, the number of pictures you can take and carry at a time. Even with an unlimited trading option, it would still (at 100 zeni/picture and using both Soultrapper 2000 and Soultrapper alternatively) take 3-4 hours to gather the required 22500 zeni for a single T4.

Please look into this. The system, while rarely used anymore, is still one that can be a lot of fun and anything that gets us out of Abyssea is a good thing.

[Dieth]

Wow, and I thought this was something SE had done pretty decently.

I spammed ZNM for quite some time at lv75, I've popped each T4 at least 50 times.
Trading plates takes all of 5 minutes, best time to do it is right at day change so you can get 20 in, and then go do something for a couple hours and come back at the next roll over and do it again.
edit...
/item "Soul Plate" <stnpc>

macro spam that to achieve 5 minute trade times.
/edit

You should be lucky the system is rarely used now I remember having to pay much more than the "minimum" price for some of my pops because people had already done a group purchase and the price got inflated. It works just like the chocobo you can all lock in as a group at the minimum price, but after everyone has purchased it goes up by X*T*100 where X is the number of purchasers, T is the Tier.

Go take more pictures!
Go play Pankration while you're waiting for day change rack up the jettons!
Do an event that's Local to ToAU so you can get back to Zeni guy fast!
Nyzul Isle, Assaults, Besieged, Salvage (If you start Salvage just after day rollover you exit just before day roll over on the new day so that you can trade another 20).

Is spending 3-4 hours grinding out a guaranteed pop set for anything else normal? Lets forget kill time as upgrade is 100% from T1 to T4 and all you need is Zeni to get the next tier.

Remember you're also killing 10 individual mobs, that's 3 T1s, 3 T2s, 3 T3s and 1 T4 in the end.

How long does it take you to kill all the NMs required to get a Kirin pop set?
How long does it take you to farm a T3 Abyssea VNM?

For me if it's "just me" it takes about 8 to 12 hours to kill every NM on the way to Kirin, with some extra help from my LS on the gods themselves.

It takes about 15 minutes to 90 minutes to upgrade T1>T2 (27 kills w/o upgrade is my best streak)
It takes about 15 minutes to 4 hours of time to upgrade T2>T3. (This is more due to there only being a single pop per zone)

In the end everything is a time sink.

[Kristal]

Ehm... you can have a Tinnin pop in just over 2 hours from scratch (no KIs) for 4k zeni (assuming minimum costs)
If it is costing you 22k, then you are doing something VERY wrong.

[Dieth]

22500 is the Minimum purchase for ALL pops from T1>T4.
3 Tier 1s at 1000 a pop (3000),
3 T2s at 2000 a pop (6000),
3 T3s at 3000 a pop (9000),
T4 is 4000

500 for the salt to warp to the T4 fighting area.

Unless they changed how you get T4 pops

Also for Tinnin you have to fight Armed gears, which can take 2 hours in itself.

[Byrth]

Ehm... you can have a Tinnin pop in just over 2 hours from scratch (no KIs) for 4k zeni (assuming minimum costs)
If it is costing you 22k, then you are doing something VERY wrong.

Yeaaaah... You might as well have put a big "I've never done ZNM" sign on your forehead.

I'd also like to see the limit increased or erased, though in the short term I'd be satisfied if they just didn't patch Abyssea - Tahrongi.

[Kristal]

You take 7 people, and have them farm and trade 20x2 Naul plates for 100+ zeni each.

P1, P2 and P3 each buy the easiest T1 pop for 1000, 1100 and 1200 zeni.
Kill those pops and have P1, P2, P3 lot the next tier items, then trade them to NPC for T2 key item.
P1, P2 and P3 then buy the easiest T2 pop for 2200, 2100 and 2000 zeni.
Kill those pops and have P4, P5 and P6 lot the drops, then trade them to NPC for T3 key item.
P4, P5 and P6 then buy the three T3 pops for 3000, 3000 and 3000 zeni.
Kill those pops and have P7 lot the drops, then trade them to NPC for the three T4 key items.
P7 then buys the T4 pop for 4000 zeni.

End result, the group of 7 people payed between 3200 and 4000 zeni each, with another 500 for the salt (I didn't count that in my first post.)

And that's with 7 people.. with 14~18 people, you can get 2 Tinnin pops and have the manpower to take down every NM in the shortest time possible. It takes coordination, preparation and dedicated people (ie, no afks, dc, power and skill taking down each NM efficiently, etc), but it can be done.

[Dieth]

If someone wants to makes a T4 for themselfs it's 22500
Lock on at the same time and you can all buy T1@1K T2@2K T3@3K T4@4K

In the end it's still 22000+ormore per pop +500 points person.

But we'll just bickering now and I'll shut up!

[Byrth]

You take 7 people...

Well, your scenario runs into the problem described in the OP almost immediately. Turning in 20x2 (you use 36 plates per run and yield about 30-32 pictures if you aren't stupid) takes 4 game days. Assuming you're trying to blitz this as some kind of LS event (7 people...), that's a minimum of 3 hours not including potential additional time it would take to actually take the pictures (easily half an hour) and run from place to place killing things. Realistically, you're looking at a minimum of 4 hours to build a Tier 4 pop even with a party of 7.

Not only is it a minimum of 4 hours, but it's a minimum of 4 hours that you've spent mostly doing soloable content in a group. I don't know about you, but my LS rarely pulls 7 people anymore. When we get together, I'd rather not waste time doing stuff that I could be doing when the other 6 people aren't on.

It's much more efficient to take pictures and kill T1/2 solo and have everyone buy a pop for the T3 ZNMs. Then you can use a single LS event to knock out two dozen high tier monsters at once. If people are exceptionally ambitious, they can buy one of each Tier 3, get a T2 KI, and get two T2 R/Ex. Then they can pop two of each Tier 3 when the LS goes to do the event, and eventually pop two Tier 4s.

Also, as a tip, you can avoid price increases by having everyone buy from Sanraku at exactly the same time. So everyone is in the menu and it tells them "2k for Iriz Ima" and then you buy.

[Kristal]

Indeed, if people would build zeni and kill lower tier NMs beforehand, you could do the T3s and T4s during a LS event.

Anyway, the point was that the cost and time investment of a T4 pop can be shared among multiple players, painting a far more reasonable picture then the OP.

[Byrth]

Indeed, if people would build zeni and kill lower tier NMs beforehand, you could do the T3s and T4s during a LS event.

Anyway, the point was that the cost and time investment of a T4 pop can be shared among multiple players, painting a far more reasonable picture then the OP.

You're wasting 28 man-hours to kill one Tier 4 for a 10% chance at a decent drop whether you do it solo or in a group of 7. Doing it in a group of 7 arguably reduces your efficiency. The number of people in your party is irrelevant when addressing the OP's question.