Ark Angel Merit cost

[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.

[Infidi]

I wonder if it would be possible to have the dev team look at some of the old content ,that not many people are doing now, and transfer some of those resources to open up more availability for newer content. Don't know if it would take slot of time to move those server resources, maybe that's why they haven't done it?

[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).

[Monchat]

Dear SE.

Making AF upgrade materials and equipements drop more with Treasure Hunter (apparently?) can only increase congestion in Laloff amphitheater.

The initial impression on the new battlefields is that the equipement is mediocre (compared to AA equipement), and also the type of seal you get is random,
so people will still do their AA fights for the seals they actually need.

20 SKC is insane to farm outside of double exp/multiple seal/etc campaign (and even then EXP is insanely easy to get during double exp campaign so yeah...), so the only real way to get them is login campaign/ exchange NPC. Personnaly I used all my SKC on novembre update to get AF109 upgrades, i used all my login points to get SKC, and got only ~100 SKC, thats 5 SKC20 BCNM fights. Initiall repoprts claim the BCNMs have less than 20% drop rate on AF upgrade mats.

I garrantee you that the congestion in Laloff will be even worse.

A good solution would be to make a minimum number of PT member requirement to enter.

[Demonjustin]

A good solution would be to make a minimum number of PT member requirement to enter.

I will say again, this, is a bad solution, its a solution that only serves to create another issue down the road when/if this becomes less popular and people still want to participate in it, I much rather a solution that is good in all ways and bad in none such as increasing the instance amount or giving them separate instance caps.