Job point sellers need to be addressed

[Sirmarki]

The main problem is people are destroying the game for themselves and shortening the time before they stop playing, the whole point of an mmo is the climb the mountain. Not pay for a helicopter to fly you to the peak. Once you have all your job points, have all your gear you have no reason to login anymore.

This... 100%
With people buying everything under the sun, things are going to get really boring, for everybody.
It is incredibly self-destructive on all levels.

People 'play the game' and join content one of two ways.
1. Linkshell activity.
2. Watching the /yell system.

1. Finding a good linkshell running events and content that you need is... hard. You have to have a good group, all in the same time zones with a excellent leader that knows the ropes. People come and go, and so do linkshell's quite often. You then have to start this process again if your linkshell collapses which can be a long and experimental process.

2. The content creation in yell is not very often these days. If you consider the population of Asura, minus the merc and RMT/JP/EXP yells, people asking to join anything other than Ambuscade are few and far between. I think during this campaign I have seen two genuine delve yells.

[Alhanelem]

If people want to ruin the game for themselves though, that's their prerogative. Ultimately, no rules are being broken unless they're selling JP for real money directly.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

Two major underlying factors that Sirmarki is bringing to the table. One is that cooperative and collaborative activities are faltering mostly because of the dreadful reliance upon /yell as the primary source of creating groups. Two is the market dynamics are corrupted by AFK ToS violating programs which destroys what should be native and fundamental cooperative progression. This is further inflamed to a horrible degree when these scoundrels park these opportunist parasitic entities into areas of open world environment which obstructs access to these apex enemies. Each additional parked bot on a server increases this pain of obstuction and congestion.

Issue #1 is that lack of communicative and group facilitating competition for the /yell. I have and CONTINUE to call for a overhaul, upgrade and modernization of the /seacom interface.
Issue #2 is the congestion and obstruction of access associated with the limited open world sources for acceptable apex camps.
There is an issue #3: The total lack of conversion capability to apply capacity point gains across jobs. Today I am officially proposing a way of achieving this in a responsible manner.
Allow for the exchange of one Copper A.M.A.N. voucher a conversion of 100 Job Points from one job on a character to another job on the same character. You can either achieve this completely through the exchange at a NPC or by allowing the exchange to occur with the NPC creating a "EX" property item upon use that would apply 100 Job Points when consumed to the job a character is set as. This will facilitate the re-engagement of characters who have 2100 JP master essential jobs such as healers, party support and even BLM back into viable usage for party creations.

[Alhanelem]

I don't find /yell to be "Dreadful." It was a huge help when it was introduced. Not having to be near people in order to recruit th em also means you don't need to have as many people to be able to find help. The problem with yell isn't that so much as people using it for less savory purposes, which you also mentioned. I'm not sure why you think yell made things any more of a problem though. People have always used /shout to find groups, its just that it only worked in high traffic areas, and you had to stay there.

Search comments have been updated multiple times over the years, and by and large people never really made use of the additional categoriess nor have people really used the party request feature.

Short of copying FFXIV's Party Finder (I'm not talking about the duty finder, the automatic matching system- i'm talking about the system that allows you to post listings to recruit people for a specific activity and these listings appear in a searchable, categorized list that you can easily join parties or contact leaders of those parties from), I'm really not sure what they could do to improve it.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

First off, you're on Shiva which gives you a completely different perspective from a dead server. The availability of /yell is fine. The way "certain" users exploit it is dreadful. The lack of a better culture and better interface utilizing the search capabilities is dreadful.
Second, I haven't asked for SE to remove /yell. Please read and understand the true upgrades and evolution i have proposed concerning /seacom. I am not saying to limit a /seacom overhaul to purely what i have suggested, if anyone else can provide ideas that will truly improve the usage and convenience of the search feature; please do so.

[Alhanelem]

First off, you're on Shiva which gives you a completely different perspective from a dead server. The availability of /yell is fine. The way "certain" users exploit it is dreadful. The lack of a better culture and better interface utilizing the search capabilities is dreadful.
Second, I haven't asked for SE to remove /yell. Please read and understand the true upgrades and evolution i have proposed concerning /seacom. I am not saying to limit a /seacom overhaul to purely what i have suggested, if anyone else can provide ideas that will truly improve the usage and convenience of the search feature; please do so.

Shiva isn't dead lol- it just isn't overpopulated like Asura is. We're at like 60% of the pop we had 10 years ago which really isn't bad. No trouble getting stuff done here. We still have job point sellers just like you do, we still have mercs like you do, just not in the same volume.

I did read your post, and I'm still searching for the "true upgrades and evolution," to be frank. (The party finder would be nice, but we're far past any chance of getting a real UI update, in all honesty).

[Balduran]

In the Development Team Q&A I and others have promoted the proposal of expanding both the locations and variety of enemy types for Apex enemies. I am personally hoping for a minimum of 20 new locations and a minimum of 10 new Apex enemy types. If need be a whole new set of transporters could be placed into the game to allow players to access numerous freshly created area additions. Maps could be created and populated with Apex enemies or if there's room on an existing map, SE could make a significant addition of playable area then populate that space for those seeking Job Points.

I don't believe this is necessary because there is in fact an existing zone with hoards of Apex Monsters, I am talking about 99 Apex monsters of different types all wondering freely, in Ra'Kaznar Inner Court!

The bad news is the poor design of Apex monsters in Ra'Kaznar Inner Court zone terms of monster agro mechanics, and I'll explain why in my point of view.

Firstly, I will distinguish between the 2 types of usual 'monster luring' camps in job point parties in the current era.

Type A: Safe spot where the party can camp from a short distance to the apex pool and the lurer is able to pick up mobs with flash/provoke etc.

Examples of above style camps are available in Dho Gates crab room, Dho Gates crab/fish camp @H-10, Dho Gates Bat Camp at H-10/I-10.

Type B: Apex monsters do not agro, and therefore the party is able to stand in any spot they please within the apex pool.

Examples of above style camps are available in Woh Gates Apex Pugils/Apex Toads, Woh Gates Apex Toads, and Outer Ra'Kaznar Apex Bats, Outer Ra'Kaznar Apex Twitherym.

Now back to Ra'Kaznar Inner Court, unfortunately neither of the above styles can apply to any of the apex camps in this zone. There is absolutely no safe spot in that zone where a party can stand in the same place and continue to lure monsters from a safe distance, due to the fact that every 'safe spot' is occupied by Apex Umbrils or Apex Bhoots. Also all Apex monsters in Ra'Kaznar Inner Court hostile, so standing the middle of the camp is obviously out of the question.

So I really don't understand the logic behind implementing 99 Apex Monsters in a zone where there are unnecessary monsters placed in potential 'pulling zones' and at the same time making all monsters agro so you couldn't stand in the middle of the camp either. What is the point then?

These are the adversaries you can find in Ra'Kaznar Inner Court.

Apex Bats
Apex Bhoot
Apex Cyhiraeth
Apex Draugar
Apex Poxhound
Apex Umbril
Apex Vodoriga

I also want to point out that I have no objection at all with the mechanics of these monsters as some of them are quite nasty to fight (like the undead), but that just adds to the challenge and means you have to find the right setup and strategy to overcome them. The only real problem is these camps are totally unsuitable due to the horrible layout of the mobs.

Here what I think can be done to make this zone 'playable'.

- Change the hostility of the Apex Bats to be similar to the ones in Outer Ra'Kaznar where they aren't hostile.
- Remove or replace the position of the Apex Umbrils

[Pixela]

Apex are all different level ranges, many players can't even hit the ones in Ra'kaznar.

We need lower tier apex with less awful abilities that are there for solo players.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

In Ra'Kaznar Inner Court as Balduran has illustrated, the debilitating affliction of utilizing a vast amount of those locations is the rarity (typically non-existence) of dependable environment in which to position party members to be outside of the regular aggro and blood-aggro of the monsters available. Coupled with the mixtures of Umbrils and other undesirables these camps are treacherous at best. In addition to the environment being extremely harsh as it pertains to positioning; the offering of undead category types imposes a party configuration that requires a top tier bard that must be adequately agile to lullaby aggro, utilizing party compositions with higher ratio of healing magic casters and for enemy types which cast magic a party member highly competent successfully casting silence.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb8FnhYuh_M From Ruaumoko.