Campaign Improvements: What it could and should be.

[Karbuncle]

I'll add my views on campaign

Point1: Skill ups.
It's been brought up. It needs to be again. Allow Skill ups in Campaign battles. I Don't understand what is so broken about being able to skill up your weaponry in campaign. Oh? You don't lose exp on death? Who cares. There is no logical reason for not being able to skill up in Campaign. It does not make sense. Please Allow it. A lot of Systems in this game are dead-in-the-water thanks to small, stupid things like this being restricted.

Point2: Union Spoils
Remove the "Choose your own union" Crap. Make it to where you're placed in a Union at the end based on your performance. Make it relative to the highest exp earned player. Top 5 Exp = Adder, next 5 = Bison, and so on, With Adder giving the best rewards, Bison giving second, etc. Adder/Bison being the only two who can see 100 currency. This removes the "I made 300 exp by leeching, Let me lot your stuff" that people complain about. Not rewards would be distributed based on Participation. This isn't a big problem, but it would solve a lot of Complaints.

Point3: Experience Points.
Experience Point yield in Campaign needs to be upped a bit. It doesn't need massive over-hauls to be on-par with Abyssea. Something like what you did with Out-side Exp. Simply Double Exp values/Limits for Campaign. This would solve that problem.

Point4: Fortifications
Fortification Nerf was because it apparently gave too much exp for players. This point is now stupid. Players can go from 30~90 in a day. Remove the Fort Nerf and allow us to Exp on Forts same as Campaign Enemies. we're still doing the War effort a great service by weakening the enemies, We deserve the same rewards.

Point5: Enemies in general
Increase the HP of Enemies, Not their Attack/Acc/Def/Strength/etc, Just their HP. More HP = More killing = More Exp in the end. this Simple feat will elongate the duration of battles. Increase Allied Forces HP by the same amount, Otherwise it becomes a one-sided Rape Fest. Also look into some Campaign Bosses abilities. Some of them are just insanely Broken. the Rock-crusher guy with his ultra-Petrify Peistes comes to mind. Any monster that has pets that immediately get resummoned, mobs with Endoom.

Point6. Duration of Battles
A While back a Maximum Duration was imposed because some areas (hint: Eldieme/Garlaige/CN) Would go on nearly forever, 4/5/6 hours, Why? I Won't go into detail. But anyway, A Maximum duration of 1 hour was imposed to Campaign Battles, I think this should be doubled. If enemies are present, the duration should be lengthened. This increases the "Room for error" when things like "I just zoned in! lets get Tags!...........BATTLE OVER". It'll still happen. But not as much.

Point7: Outside Influences
As brought up previously. Enemies outside of the Campaign Enemies, While in Campaign Battle, Should not influence you. Simply give us "Battlefield" Status like with Augmented-Fight NMs, or Ballista. Where Enemies outside of Campaign Battles will not Aggro us. However, Due to the nature of that some new players could run through a zone with tags and be aggro free. Impose a "Distance" limit on Campaign Tags with this. This solves Two Problems
*One: Players Will no longer be able to drag 1 Enemy half way across the zone and Solo it for 30 minutes. While I've never had a problem with this since I'm smart enough to know that Campaign battles have a kind of "Time exp" thing. Longer Battles = more exp. Some people tend to complain cause they want to get their Precious Yew Logs from their battle and move on to losing lots on their Next batch of Yew Logs.
*Two: Players No longer get Face-Raped by Outside Influences.

Point8: Campaign Spoils
Can we please Impose some sort of "minimum not crap" Items for this? Opening your Spoil pool and seeing 200gil Synth mats flood your screen and the occasional 1 piece of Currency seems kind of underwhelming as "Spoils of Victory". I Know each zone has a 'base' pool based on exp yield for the Union, Perhaps increase the frequency of Ancient Currency. doesn't have to be by Much, Just by some. Also Consider adding new Items to it. Like the Synth Mats for the level ~90 Rings. Items like Phrygian Ore, Etc. Some Currently useful Items!

Thats all i can think of To be honest.

[Rambus]

I'll add my views on campaign

Point1: Skill ups.
It's been brought up. It needs to be again. Allow Skill ups in Campaign battles. I Don't understand what is so broken about being able to skill up your weaponry in campaign. Oh? You don't lose exp on death? Who cares. There is no logical reason for not being able to skill up in Campaign. It does not make sense. Please Allow it. A lot of Systems in this game are dead-in-the-water thanks to small, stupid things like this being restricted.

Point2: Union Spoils
Remove the "Choose your own union" Crap. Make it to where you're placed in a Union at the end based on your performance. Make it relative to the highest exp earned player. Top 5 Exp = Adder, next 5 = Bison, and so on, With Adder giving the best rewards, Bison giving second, etc. Adder/Bison being the only two who can see 100 currency. This removes the "I made 300 exp by leeching, Let me lot your stuff" that people complain about. Not rewards would be distributed based on Participation. This isn't a big problem, but it would solve a lot of Complaints.

Point3: Experience Points.
Experience Point yield in Campaign needs to be upped a bit. It doesn't need massive over-hauls to be on-par with Abyssea. Something like what you did with Out-side Exp. Simply Double Exp values/Limits for Campaign. This would solve that problem.

Point4: Fortifications
Fortification Nerf was because it apparently gave too much exp for players. This point is now stupid. Players can go from 30~90 in a day. Remove the Fort Nerf and allow us to Exp on Forts same as Campaign Enemies. we're still doing the War effort a great service by weakening the enemies, We deserve the same rewards.

Point5: Enemies in general
Increase the HP of Enemies, Not their Attack/Acc/Def/Strength/etc, Just their HP. More HP = More killing = More Exp in the end. this Simple feat will elongate the duration of battles. Increase Allied Forces HP by the same amount, Otherwise it becomes a one-sided Rape Fest. Also look into some Campaign Bosses abilities. Some of them are just insanely Broken. the Rock-crusher guy with his ultra-Petrify Peistes comes to mind. Any monster that has pets that immediately get resummoned, mobs with Endoom.

Point6. Duration of Battles
A While back a Maximum Duration was imposed because some areas (hint: Eldieme/Garlaige/CN) Would go on nearly forever, 4/5/6 hours, Why? I Won't go into detail. But anyway, A Maximum duration of 1 hour was imposed to Campaign Battles, I think this should be doubled. If enemies are present, the duration should be lengthened. This increases the "Room for error" when things like "I just zoned in! lets get Tags!...........BATTLE OVER". It'll still happen. But not as much.

Point7: Outside Influences
As brought up previously. Enemies outside of the Campaign Enemies, While in Campaign Battle, Should not influence you. Simply give us "Battlefield" Status like with Augmented-Fight NMs, or Ballista. Where Enemies outside of Campaign Battles will not Aggro us. However, Due to the nature of that some new players could run through a zone with tags and be aggro free. Impose a "Distance" limit on Campaign Tags with this. This solves Two Problems
*One: Players Will no longer be able to drag 1 Enemy half way across the zone and Solo it for 30 minutes. While I've never had a problem with this since I'm smart enough to know that Campaign battles have a kind of "Time exp" thing. Longer Battles = more exp. Some people tend to complain cause they want to get their Precious Yew Logs from their battle and move on to losing lots on their Next batch of Yew Logs.
*Two: Players No longer get Face-Raped by Outside Influences.

Point8: Campaign Spoils
Can we please Impose some sort of "minimum not crap" Items for this? Opening your Spoil pool and seeing 200gil Synth mats flood your screen and the occasional 1 piece of Currency seems kind of underwhelming as "Spoils of Victory". I Know each zone has a 'base' pool based on exp yield for the Union, Perhaps increase the frequency of Ancient Currency. doesn't have to be by Much, Just by some. Also Consider adding new Items to it. Like the Synth Mats for the level ~90 Rings. Items like Phrygian Ore, Etc. Some Currently useful Items!

Thats all i can think of To be honest.

dear SE, do this ^ that is all.

[Zyeriis]

Edit/Additions #2

1) Skill Ups (Courtesy of Eeek, Sagian, sc4500, Shadowheart, and Karbuncle)
-I meant to add this before, don't know why I forgot. Anyway, there is simply no reason for us not to get skill ups in campaign, nor was there ever a reason for it, aside from keeping Besieged "relevant". Now? Neither Campaign nor Besieged are used. Proof of this: Siren has finally lost Besieged. People do not care about either game mechanic/feature anymore (hence this thread). So why then are we not allowed skill ups? I remember the no-skill ups even if you don't have tags update, and it angered quite a few people. Why can we even attack campaign mobs without tags if we get no skill ups?

Anyway, thanks to Abyssea, new ways to skill up have become a primary focus upon reaching level 90 (in a day). Adding skill-ups to campaign will kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Breathe a bit of life back into an otherwise dead system and at the same time, give people something they sometimes desperately need: skill ups.

2) Fortifications (Courtesy of Sagian, sc4500, and Karbuncle)
-Even before the nerf, fortifications were simply a way to waste time. There was no entertainment value at all to attacking them, only skill ups if you didn't have tags and easy (albeit boring) exp if you had them. This ties back into my complaint/disappointment that there is only one place in each map where beastmen can attack. The same is true in reverse. "Why is there a horde of players sitting there, just mindlessly hitting that one wall? What is the strategic purpose of this?" It looks silly, and I don't understand how it affects the tide of battle. It's an invincible wall. At the very least there should be other offensive objectives. You can do such things via Campaign Ops but the rewards and having to get the Campaign Ops in the first are both hassles not worth the time nor the effort. You should automatically be able to do these tasks during the battle, without the need for campaign ops orders.

3) Conquest/Campaign Weekly Tally (Courtesy of Sagian)
-This has never made sense. Especially so upon the release of Fiat Lux, which I mentioned earlier. The only time people would gather together to go tag-lessly take over castle zvahl was on saturdays because the tally was on sunday. This made things even more difficult as any attempt at taking areas over during the rest of week is pointless and a waste of time, as you'll come back the next day and enemies will have max influence again. Rather than this, control of a region should be based upon the most recent victor or perhaps a set amount of repeated wins to take over an area. At the very least, make it daily rather than weekly.

4) Being dead at the end of the battle with no one to Raise you (courtesy of sc4500)
-You die, a mere moment before the battle ends, the npcs you had been relying upon to raise you, warp out instantly, leaving you dead. Are these NPCs just pricks? There's no one with raise nearby, let alone some one that can see your corpse. What are you to do? You cannot get your hard earned exp if you're dead and home point. Allied Tags should grant a permanent Reraise effect. If Atmas can do it, why can't allied tags? Or at the very least, when the battle ends, automatically raise all dead combatants.

5) No distance restrictions on pulling mobs (Courtesty of Karbuncle and ShadowHeart)
-There is already a way to prevent this in the game. Why hasn't it been implemented in campaign? It was introduced in Wings of the Goddess and it's called "Confrontation status". This status should be added to allied tags, if you run too far from the battle, you lose your tags and your progress. There are even WotG missions that have this, why can't Campaign?

--Alterations/Additional Solutions #1 (Courtesy of Seriha)
Adjust the Compass to have an arrow pointing to each campaign mob (non-bomb squad, etc. that have set objectives) to weed out people pulling enemies great distances and pro-longing fights for selfish reasons.

The original post has been editted. If I missed something, please let me know and I'll see how to add/change the content of each post to reflect other possible additions/solutions to problems with campaign.

[Rambus]

I was left dead by outside mob ( so i lost exp) i seen whm run in backround and such I send tells and no one answered.

then i had to eat a RI from some SMN....

point is i find outside agro a big issue. I wrote this stuff before in SE's letter thing. I also think mobs need to be buffed up so they do not die in 2 seconds by some 99.

your new 5. is also something i wrote to them several times, I am shocked it is still ingored

[ShadowHeart]

if i recall u dont get outside agro from bastion so making this similar in campaign shouldn't be an issue
its been a long time since i done bastion so i could be remembering wrong

[Seriha]

First off, while I understand how some people can be angry about someone pulling a mob aside to solo, any kind of tag revocation if this is done is a bad thing. Sometimes people keep mobs away from the fort to keep NPCs from steamrolling them, as Campaign is fundamentally better the longer it runs. On the other hand, you'll also get people who lag when around a large concentation of fighting (N)PCs. Instead, the mini-radar should be tweaked so that when under Allied Tag status, you get a wide scan arrow pointing to the closest campaign mob at all times.

Others mentioned a lot of the other issues like poor EXP reward, crappy Union loot (quality and distribution flaws), the Union interface itself, Forts/Offensive battles, enemy general imbalances (I'm looking at you, Rockchopper!), and the dud fights (often bombing units triggering a battle and warping out soon after). I'd like to add that the stupidity of attacker's AI is also detrimental. If both sides are even, the defenders immediately gain an advantage since the enemy advance is usually a trickle of mobs (sometimes the general is first, if only because of their flee speeds). This gives defenders time to link up and focus fire on a mob or two, the defending general often greatly helping along here if they're aggro'd. So, maybe by the time the complete invasion arrives, it'll be more like 12 vs 15 in favor of the defenders. Unless the general on the weaker side is one of the more powerful ones, it's pretty academic that the numbers game will favor the defenders unless the level gap between forces is too big. So, in part, I'd like to see attackers not just Leroy Jenkins their way into a fight. Just make a couple AI choices. They could wait until they're all assembled just outside the fort range and push in, split off into a couple groups and move to attack from different sides, perhaps focus on defending PCs, and so on. In general, the AI should also prioritize mobs over the forts themselves so you don't get situations where a wave of NPCs just keep beating on a fort when defenders suddenly spawn and pick them off one-by-one until something AoEs (if they even can, unlike most Quadav).

I'd also like to suggest that players get the ability to initiate a battle or call for NPC help in a zone with enough AN. Paired with fort fixes, this can make offensive battles more offensive for us while expanding the possibility of taking northern zones more often. Calling in a reserve unit when defenders are overwhelmed should also be obviously beneficial.

Meanwhile, someone else mentioned zone status should be updated daily instead of weekly. On one hand, I can see this. On the other, giving people a week to do the BC Ops is obviously beneficial to those who might not be able to play every day if the conditions happen to favor them on a day they can't play (for long durations). In general, I'd be more for the zones being broken up into multiple strategic locations where a sort of perpetual "capture the flag" is played out with ownership of these mini-bases changing dynamically while, at the end of the week, cumulative influence still weights the man base ownership. However, this system would also require the need for more Arbiters in a zone with an option to check intel status to see who owns what in a zone so people aren't running around blind and wasting their time.

I guess I'd also want to see Campaign as "always on" in the strongholds.

[Rambus]

First off, while I understand how some people can be angry about someone pulling a mob aside to solo, any kind of tag revocation if this is done is a bad thing. Sometimes people keep mobs away from the fort to keep NPCs from steamrolling them, as Campaign is fundamentally better the longer it runs. ....

They are not talking about pulling a mob away from fort a bit so you are far enough away from the npcs, they are talking about people that pull mobs across the damn map. I saw a crappy rdm kiting one in West Sarutabaruta (S) like 10 feet away from the north zone to present east saru. i would not knowen it was that far away if it was not walking around doing widescan ( bst widescan is not as strong as rng so I could not see it right away). stuff like that needs a limit, way too far.

[Karbuncle]

As I'm typing this theres a 73PLD/DNC who's been fighting a single Campaign Orc for 25 minutes and has reduced its HP by 20%. He's waaay over @ Myradrosh Spawn in E.Ronf(S) (SHOCKING I'M IN AN EXP PARTY AT 37?! I MUST BE LYING :O!)

These are the type of people commonly complained about. I know longer Battles = More Exp So i don't always care about stuff like this. but its a complaint that should be addressed. because if Campaign become popular again this issue would be common-ground.

[ShadowHeart]

i seen them pull them all the way back by the entrance where u zone in from jugner forest (s) with 3/4 of them solo'ing that is not avoiding lag thats avoiding everyone and everything so they could get there 5k xp while we all waited 20 minutes trying to find them eventually thank goodness for the beast radar that day

[Zyeriis]

First off, while I understand how some people can be angry about someone pulling a mob aside to solo, any kind of tag revocation if this is done is a bad thing. Sometimes people keep mobs away from the fort to keep NPCs from steamrolling them, as Campaign is fundamentally better the longer it runs. On the other hand, you'll also get people who lag when around a large concentation of fighting (N)PCs. Instead, the mini-radar should be tweaked so that when under Allied Tag status, you get a wide scan arrow pointing to the closest campaign mob at all times.

The addition of a confrontation status to the allied tags, would be a relatively large area/radius around the control point rather than the whole map. I took into consideration pulling enemies away from the npcs when I added this to the proposed possible solutions. There is no reason to be able to pull an enemy to the colibri camps in East Ronfaure as karbuncle pointed out. Extending the battle is fine but, only if the other people involved are still increasing their ending exp. This doesn't happen if some selfish jack wagon is holding the last enemy off in some remote location. This also ties into one of my other solutions regarding multiple control points on the map. Which if I read further into your post, you seem to support/have a similar idea.

However, I do like the idea of adding arrows to the compass to track down mobs, that is another possible solution to this problem and I will be adding it to the list.

As for the daily vs. weekly points, Besieged is based off of who controls the Astral Candy at any given time. I don't see why each zone can't be a miniature version of this system, with multiple control points (much like your capture the flag idea). It doesn't even have to be daily, it can be on a minute to minute basis, depending on victory on a specific control point in each area.

As for the BC ops, these should be available at any time, they're rewards aren't that great anymore, due to abyssea. Campaign Ops in general should be an available option from all C.A. or Allied Tags NPCs.

Guess I'll go add some of your suggestions to the growing list.