Long Holding Times for Delve NMs

[RyujinSephy]

They elected the no-Hyper, 20 minute version of this and the change will be implemented tomorrow. They are also making it so you have to kill Fracture NMs to drop the walls and open up new parts of the Fracture. Basically, they took what was already moderately exclusive event and made it incredibly exclusive for anyone that didn't do it within the last week:
* The 20 minute fight limit will make it difficult for casuals to get wins
* The lack of wall-dropping in Fracture will hamper attempts to farm Plasm in shout groups by reducing the pool of available monsters
* Hardcores will not be affected by the changes as much, because they can get >5k Plasm per Fracture run just killing NMs

On the upside, there will be no more long, boring fights.

Here are the posts, if you are interested and can read JP:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...415#post430415
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...414#post430414

English forums are just a placebo... :'(

[Byrth]

It looks like my Google-Fu is weak. It seems that the wall between the T1-3 NMs and the T4-5 NMs may still drop as time continues on, so this won't have much impact on Plasm farming. No reason to Plasm farm if you can't kill the NM, though.

[Tannlore]

Hmm, not seeing where the whole you have to kill nm to make any and all walls fall apart is at in the JP post. All I see is that you have to kill NMs to make the delve boss appear. I think this might be a misreading honestly.

[Camate]

Greetings,

Thanks for all of the feedback regarding the new Delve field NMs. The development team has made a decision as to what direction they would like to take for adjusting this, and below is a comment from Delve lead Ryota Iwagami about their decision.

Hello, Iwagami here.

First off, thanks so much for all of the comments. I've read through them all.

In addition to the feedback from those who have participated in Delve and those that have not, hearing feedback before you tried it out and then once again after having tried it out has contributed a lot to our discussion. This decision was made after personally interpreting all of the comments received, so even if it is not fully in accordance with your wishes, I'd appreciate it if you could understand our reasoning.

Before the result of our discussion, I'd like to let you know about one bug.
We've determined a bug where Mastop's magic and abilities are affecting players outside of the fighting alliance, and we will be fixing this immediately. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Discussion result
Now then, I would like to inform you all of the result from our adjustment plan discussion.

After sharing what I wanted to do for the adjustment, there were a lot more comments agreeing with the feedback posted, and also considering that these battles would increase moving forward in order to procure Yggzi Beads, we will be making adjustments so that these monsters do not go into hyper-mode, but will disappear after 20 minutes.

The reason we predict an increase in battles for Yggzi Beads
The two reasons why we foresee an increase in battles for Yggzi Beads are:

1. Preparations have been made to take on the boss
2. The drop rate of Yggzi Beads is not that high

Due to the fact that the drop rate of Yggzi Beads are not that high, it will be necessary to fight these NMs multiple times in order to obtain them. Design-wise we thought this would also give new comers to the Delve content an opportunity to participate. While in actuality there may be some who say "don’t come do Delve unless you have Delve equipment," we’d appreciate if you would keep in mind that we designed this system to give these players an opportunity. With that said, making a 100% drop rate for Yggzi Beads or increasing the drop rate would make it difficult for newcomers, so currently we do not want to do this. We'd really be grateful if those of you who are experienced could invite these newcomers to take on this content when you have the ability to do so. Also, the triggers for Delve can be found in reives and as drops from monsters in the zone at a decent rate, so even if you are inexperienced, definitely try to give it a shot and gather members who aren’t worried about losing.

Regarding feedback to keep as it is now
There's also been comments mentioning to keep it as it is now and to wait until the monsters can be defeated in 15 minutes, but due to the below reasons I cannot agree with this.

• The battles will become easier as more information is circulated
• It's easy to re-challenge
• It's easy to check whether you are lacking preparation
• We would like to eliminate the congestion between now and when you can all defeat them in 15 minutes.

Regarding feedback to increase the "???" points
While I am repeating what I said previously, the below reasons are why we will not be increasing the number of "???" points at the current time.

• We would like to avoid lag issues from having multiple points positioned nearby.
• Considering future content, we don't want to use up too much in areas that are further away.
• There will not be any cost effectiveness as pros and cons will arise from having them further away.

Also, while it's possible to spawn any NM from a single spot, we actually looked into doing this before implementation; however, problems arose with claiming trigger points and we also wanted players to adventure, so we cut this idea. We always have to consider the trade off even though we want to relieve congestion, and though it might sometimes be difficult for the development side and the player side to match up, we'd really appreciate your understand with this as we move forward.

It may appear that I've only extracted the portions of feedback that were suited to what I was thinking, but most of you are in agreement and I apologize that this system became something different than we had imagined initially. With that said, we have decided to adopt a time limit for Delve monsters fought in the field.

I've also made an announcement here about additional adjustments that will be made to delve.
Thank you very much.

[Cowardlybabooon]

Good, I was sick of two or three hour rage fights with pickup groups. I got my KIs though!

[Tannlore]

Well yup, see? kill nms to access the boss room. Nothing about walls being locked per nm completely or plasm being narfed or anything like that.

[Cahlum]

I honestly think these devs play a different game. That entire response did nothing but say "hey we want to drag this event out for as long as possible so we don't have to create any fun and interesting content!"

Try again SE, this time try to respond with something that we want.

[Asymptotic]

While in actuality there may be some who say "don’t come do Delve unless you have Delve equipment," we’d appreciate if you would keep in mind that we designed this system to give these players an opportunity

Basically this boils down to "If you don't have Delve equipment yet - have fun leveling Bard or Corsair!"

[Raksha]

If doing nothing wasn't an option, why did he tell us it was? Is this another fake poll a la BSTgate?

[ShadedOnyx]

Just leave it alone. On Phoenix there isn't an congestion. Everyone just wants to do it at once. Leave it be. You gotta let us get used to the content before you change it.