Grounds of Valor / Brown Casket Feedback

[Francisco]

Overall - I like the system of gaining prowess, and the gradual increase in experience points and tabs from completing regimes.

However, after spending entirely too much time inside of Zeruhn and seeing a friend spend entirely too much time inside Fei'Yin, I have the following feedback on the system:

Prowess

- The buffs are pretty nice - and I'm sure the increased casket yield is the most desirable. If I had my druthers, it would not be possible for me to reach level 6 Magic Acc/Atk Bonus, while sitting at level 1 Treasure Casket Yield... on MNK/WAR. I'll chalk that one up to horrible luck, and ask this instead. Remove the "increased crystal yield" prowess. I don't think anyone is doing Grounds of Valor for crystals, and all it achieves is making it so I need to dump items out of my inventory more often to prevent a Kindred's Crest from falling to the floor.

Treasure Caskets

- I've found the appearance rate of caskets to be generous enough in Zeruhn... IF the zone is not overpopulated, but I've heard horror stories out of Fei'Yin, Garlaige and Ranperre's Tomb. I was alone in Bostanueax for about 100 kills, and did not see a single brown casket appear. Maybe the appearance rate needs to be looked at in some areas.

- I would also like the hints provided by caskets to be adjusted somehow - without making it "too easy". It's pretty wretched when the hints start as follows: "Second Digit is 2, 3 or 4", "Second digit is odd", "one of the digits is 3" ... giving us a pretty low chance of guessing correctly. Maybe allow us to select the type of hint we get once per box?

- This is my biggest issue with Treasure Caskets. Non-rewards diluting the loot pool... Off the top of my head, I have obtained the following items from treasure caskets... pretty sure all in Zeruhn... Black Pepper, Aluminum Ingot, Bomb Arm, Zinc Ore, Holly Lumber, Galvanizer, Red Moko Grass, Skull Locust, War Beret, Gold Nugget, Elixir, various qualities of Potion, Ether, Hi-Potion, Pro-Ether and X-Potion... Most of these items are non-rewards, and are actually detrimental because they lower the chances of obtaining the "good" item from the box. I guess the Elixirs and War Berets are nice (NPC for over 7000 gil), but really, at least remove the "one of a stack" items that NPC for like 12 gil, and all the inventory slot wasting meds like Potions and Ethers. We get enough of these from blue caskets. I think 5-6 possible items per casket would be ideal, not 20-30...

Thank you!

[Byrth]

My largest issue with Caskets at the moment, are that the Rare item is far too rare. I have been in Crawler's Nest for the last 6 nights and still don't even know what it is.

My second issue would be that we still can't spend merit points in the field. I've had 20.999 merits and capped buffer for the last three days.

[Francisco]

What makes it so much worse is, the item might not be any rarer than the others, but the loot pool is just so diluted, you really don't have much of a chance of getting it anyway. If caskets are a 5% spawn rate from monsters, and there are 20 unique items in caskets, all with the same appearance rate, you're looking at a 0.25% chance of the item from any given mob. I'm no math whiz, but that's hundreds of mobs you can expect to be killing for one of these items. 1000+ is probably still in the range of reasonable expectation for this scenario.

[Byrth]

I have no way to predict what the brown casket item frequency is, as I've only seen one so far (Grapevine cape).

I'd bet that the CN Treasure chest item is Cocoon Band, which makes it all the worse. I'm not leaving until I get one, though! Even though I've gotten over 30 (non-temp) medicines now.

[AyinDygra]

The prowess and casket system looked great at first glance. Then I experienced it...
My only goal when I entered Zeruhn Mines was to get the Prouesse Ring. I only got the Grounds Tome version of "Treasure Casket Finding" buff from levels 2 to 5 on my last day, having achieved level 11 attack/r.attack, 11 acc/r.acc, several 8's, a couple 5's, 3 attack speed and level 2 "killer effect "on the previous two days. Finally, on the 3rd day, I found the ring and never want to see another Colliery Bat in my lifetime.

There are a few issues I see, mostly stemming from the "random" nature of Prowess Buffs, with a side issue of page goals not being in line with monster distribution. All of this is exasperated by the current popularity of the items in the chests.

First, it wouldn't hurt things to let people choose their bonus. Notice that it will take at minimum 11 page completions to max out any one category (11 is the highest level I got any one category, I assume this is the cap)... and sometimes completion of a page will not increase any category at all. In Zeruhn Mines, that's 77 monsters. (other areas have from 6-10 monsters per page, making that 66-110 monsters)

It takes at least 5 minutes (that's very low in some cases) to kill the monsters plus running back and forth to the Grounds Tome. (55min is the minimum time for each buff you want maxed without competition for the target monsters) And that's if you only get the bonus you want (not happening).

Monster distribution wasn't really accounted for in Tome Page Targets, was it? What I mean by this, is the ratio of monsters required for each page in relation to the population in the zone. When a person is alone in a zone, or in a single party, this isn't a big concern (you only need enough of each monster to fill the quota for a page) ... it's when the event is popular (like Zeruhn for the skillup ring) that you have to consider the multiplication of require monsters in the proper ratio.

For the example of Zeruhn Mines, you require 5 bats and 2 worms/crabs/leeches. The zone has about 25 bats and 20worms, about 5 crabs, and 5 leeches (guess-estimate.) In my experience there have been upwards of 15 parties, either soloists or groups of 2or3 in the zone at any time. Clearly, if more people teamed up, that could be reduced and everyone could complete pages faster and increase their prowess bonuses faster, and find chests faster... but people are greedy, selfish and not trusting. They don't want to risk losing a single brown chest that might possibly have the ring in it. (also, many people don't open their blue chests, potentially skewing the drop rate of chests, if there is indeed a limit on the number of simultaneously existing chests in a zone)

This means they are searching for about 75 bats and 30 worms every 5min. To complete a page at that rate, it will take about 15 minutes for everyone, tripling the time needed to gain prowesses. This leads people to claiming bats and worms like notorious monsters and everyone ends up frustrated.

Now, you look at the potential benefits gained by the buffs and some buffs are the REASON people are doing Grounds Tomes at all, instead of going some place else:

If they go into a Grounds Tome area as a Warrior to get higher skillup rates and all they get are Cure Potency, Magic Attack/Accuracy, Crystal Drop Rate, Treasure Hunter, and Killer Effects bonus... and any of those double up, that's at least 25min wasted plus double ups wasting 5min at a time. That can add up to hours wasted on unwanted buffs that do nothing toward the goal the person is aiming for.

Concept point: "Extended training increases rewards" ... How does gaining Magic Attack make sense at all for a WAR/DNC training for hours trying to get a wide variety of weapons skills capped? They can only really BEGIN to do what they went there for AFTER they have gained several bonuses in that category. Otherwise, they could have gone anywhere else for practically the same results.

Are the Prowess buffs potent enough to make up for all the time spent without them active? If it takes 3 hours to get "Combat and Magic Skillup Rate" to level 5... how long will a person have to stay in that zone after they get the buff, to benefit more from being there than from going anywhere else? (where competition for monsters is less, or there are better monsters to target to accomplish the goal.)

Grounds Tomes have another horrible downside... if you leave... you lose all the progress you've made. I'd be OK with the random bonuses if I knew I could leave and come back later to try to keep improving what I want. Sure it might take a few extra hours, but then I'd have an area to go to whenever I want to benefit from that bonus. People have other activities they want to enjoy in this game. (like participating in all those events that take planning and organization of groups) People cannot realistically stay in one zone for a week, to make full use of the buffs they obtain during the downtime between scheduled group events.

In conclusion:
Assuming prowesses will always be lost when leaving a zone, selectable prowess bonuses would let people target a goal while they are in a zone. If we can leave and keep bonuses, random prowesses are fine.

Adjusting the number of each monster target in Grounds Tome Pages to match zone monster population ratios would help ease frustration in hunting to meet those goals in popular zones.

I think these solutions would ease the issues most people are experiencing.

[Byrth]

I also think selectable prowesses would fix a lot of the problems people experience.

The buffs obtained from Prowesses are nothing compared to Abyssea buffs (Level 11 Attack is Attack+35, Level 11 WS damage is probably WS damage+22%)

[Francisco]

Good point about losing prowess upon zoning. I got up to Lv. 4 Casket finder once, only to get called out to Abyssea immediately after. It's a bit disappointing that progress is completely lost. I'm not saying the prowess should be permanent for any given zone - but some middle ground should exist so we can leave for a short duration - even if it's just to reapply signet or visit the auction house or mog house.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

What's this I hear about an XP ring?

[Mordanthos]

I was in Fei Yin for about 6 hours upping the casket discovery. I finally got it to lvl 3, so then i logged out to continue upping hte casket discovery to lvl 5, in which at that point i was going to "then" start farming for the Dagda's Shield. Fortunately for me, my farming was cut short, in fact, i had received 2 Dagda's Shield back to back, so i kept 1 for my Paladin, and the other one i sold for 2 mil.

Are the rare loots really that rare? I can't say at this point, seeing i got 2 of them back to back 1 chest after another, in a time gap of about 2.5 minutes. If i were you, i wouldnt even waste your time unless you get to lvl 3, and while continuing to book page up to lvl 5 you will most likely run into the items you are looking for.

Also dont forget, if you log out in these areas your prowess stays, so dont feel like you have to destroy your computer just to be able to get what you want. Just keep at it and eventually you will have your casket discovery high enough, and you will see what you came for.

[Coldbrand]

In before someone comes in to blab about how if you don't want to masochistically grind away entire real life days of your life for a single item that you get for repeating the same action over and over endlessly with no real difficulty then you're what's wrong with the game and expect everything to be handed to you.

Not to mention how they got the item on their second try and Abyssea wants to kill your grandparents and Salvage Bans were an inside job.