Ark Angel Merit cost

[Demonjustin]

Skirmish is being updated in Feb, I hear Delve is as well but I have seen no word from SE saying so, so I leave that as questionable, either way it should help congestion, though to an extent it would be better if they were all implemented at once rather than spread out in this way if the goal is to help congestion issues.

[Sapphires]

Until you add other battlefields that make it easy to obtain pluton boxes/cases en masse, don't expect congestion to be relieved anytime soon

[Demonjustin]

Well they did say that these new ones would be distributing those rewards the same way, so people who currently farm them via Ark Angels should likely find themselves doing the new fights in a similar way all the same.

[FaeQueenCory]

Ha! I knew I wasn't crazy! (completely anyways...)
Matsui DID say that the cost would be reduced at some point.
Though he mentioned it so offhandedly that I was never sure it was a real thing to do or just an idle fancy.

And tbh, having them at 20 merits has done multiple worthwhile things.
For a while there, at least on Odin, aby-xp pts were basically dead. They'd only happen once in a blue moon.
Which if you already have 99s, you don't really care.... which is selfish BS if you ask me.
But for those newbies who aren't 99 and for those new people just starting FFXI... the return of the XP parties is great.

So... I kinda don't want them to lower the cost now that I've seen what having them be 20 and 30 has wrought.
On the other hand, due to the nature of "you need 8pgs for 1 RF1+1"... even halving the cost should still maintain the xp parties.... because you need more than one KI. (and chances are ppl have more than one RF they want to +1)
So, half away I guess.
I dunno.
I just don't want to shaft the new people who still need stuff. (merits, 75>>>99, AA KIs lol, etc)

And on the OTHER hand... (I'm Shiva. I have more than one other hand)
Increasing the cap for stored merits from 30 to.... w/e... 60? Could also "solve the problem".
At least I think so.
Cause if you can hold 60 merits... the pops costing 20 and 30 would be the same as if you could hold 30 merits and the pops costing 10 and 15.

[MarkovChain]

Halving the merit cost will trigger a disaster, and they will do it. People will still solo the laloff bcnm because it's a lot easier to farm 10 merits than get 20 sacred kindred crests (exp campaign is over and even during exp campaign exp is by definition faster). I don't remember seing conggestion at SKC even though only one person only was required 20 skc. So what will happen is that instead of having 6 parties and 6 soloer competing for three slots you will see double of that.

I think should required 15 merits for each member as well as something else for the party leader to limit abuse (gil ? skc ? time limit ? minimal number of players ?)

[Karah]

I think should required 15 merits for each member as well as something else for the party leader to limit abuse (gil ? skc ? time limit ? minimal number of players ?)

Totally agree, however unfortunately;

As we all know, gil is of zero consequence as a limiting factor, as the materials are (-/+) 100% on normal and sell to morons for north of 5m... (disgusting btw but i digress).
SKC could possibly work... but they aren't all that much harder to obtain, with log-ins.
They do have a time limit.... (you want to shorten it to like 5 minutes??) or you mean, once per day/jpmidnight etc?
And we've (most) have been arguing against arbitrary minimum party requirements for years... no backward steps, please.

So, viable options are very limited, but indeed needed.

[Sfchakan]

It took over an hour of spamming for my group to enter One BC the night before last. We had FOUR instances where we got into the menu and our screens blackened, only to be kicked out.

Ridiculous.

[MarkovChain]

I think they should release another tier of difficulties for normal SKC and let them drop boxes so that only people actually farming seals do laloff.

[Demonjustin]

I think they should release another tier of difficulties for normal SKC and let them drop boxes so that only people actually farming seals do laloff.

Seeing as it is so insanely easy to get 20 Merits vs 20 SKCs, that would change nothing. Only real solution that is not detrimental to us and only beneficial is to simply make more instances so that its a cap of 3 each rather than 3 overall between all 6 fights, which is how it should have been.

[Damane]

Seeing as it is so insanely easy to get 20 Merits vs 20 SKCs, that would change nothing. Only real solution that is not detrimental to us and only beneficial is to simply make more instances so that its a cap of 3 each rather than 3 overall between all 6 fights, which is how it should have been.

I agree on this one. Bottlenecking isnt gonna "solve" the problem, it will just frustrate people that WANT to play the game. They should have just really added 3 instances per AA fight instead of 3 instances only for all 6 (DM included).