Dec. 10 Update Alliance Experience Adjustment

[Zenion]

I already don't like this and feel like it could be implemented in a better way than it sounds like it is being.

The stated goal is to cut down on mercenary alliance activity to make things easier for small parties and soloers, but that's, like, the one thing that reducing alliance exp won't help. They'll either just go for longer, or break into parties and clutter up the zones just as much.

The ideal solution would be to introduce some kind of instanced experience/capacity/exemplar points camp, but failing that...

What would really help is encouraging people to band together and form pickup groups. This is a little difficult when Trust is for groups of five or less only, restricting access to a healer, but here's my take on how it might be doable.

1: Drop the alliance exp penalty entirely. In zones where players are intended to be working on master levels, maybe even give a slight bonus for being over 6 party members. This incentivizes forming larger groups, allowing the soloers and small parties to more easily join others, making monster scarcity less of an issue.

2: Widen experience point range. Let your groups spread out across a third of a zone or so and there will be less competition over the densest spawn areas; the party or alliance can just have three members in one camp, three members in another, and they don't have as much need to be able to grab a monster a minute.

3: Idle party member capacity/exemplar penalty. For every member of the party or alliance who has not actively generated any enmity on a monster, reduce the capacity and exemplar points (experience might be better not to change) that monster provides the group by five to seven percent. If you want a fast, efficient experience grind, you work for it. Mercenaries are going to be very quickly cut out of the picture if they can't offer "give me some gil and go watch a movie, you'll have master levels when you come back."

Thoughts from anyone else? What's the loose thread I missed here that'll unravel the whole thing?

[Dzspdref]

The easiest thing they can do to stop merc exp parties and alliance or such, would be to implement what they use in Campaign battles: The less work you do to help kill the targets in a campaign battle gives you less reward points, experience points, and rewards from coffers, etc.... basically the less you do the less you get.
Implement this ability in ANY party set-up and it would kill exp merc parties that charge for it. Because they players would not be able to sit around afk doing nothing.
.
Just a thought....

[Uriah]

You are correct that this is the exact opposite of what they should do. They also couldn't care less, it's happening. They already decided and no amount of input is going to change it (for years, anyway)

I have a crazy idea......... How about, ban the damn bots. ban the shout bots that sell the exp faster than once a month. Crazy right? Actually enforce the rules, maybe?

[Pixela]

This is good, <7 no impact >7 big loss of XP.

This only applies to certain monsters, it won't be in events.

[Tidemaker]

If they are trying to make things easier for solo or small parties wouldn’t it be easier to simply create/convert like 20-30 new zones with apex camps like all over the world for example take [S] zones no one ever goes to the past aside from some very random campaign battles, why not make every zone into new apex zones or atleast increase the amount of apex around so if you have like 100 mobs don’t make 10 apex only …… per zone or the Aht Urhgan areas that a lot of people probably miss from the old days like make so many camps people have a tons of options other than dho/woh gates etc it should feel optional if you wanna go there not be like well those are the only zones we can go cause sih is too low level or inner raz is too high for new players etc I am sure no amount of rmt power can fill 20-30 new zones the way they have taken over dho so there is bound to be more than enough zones/mobs for everyone to go kick some mob butts I mean who knows maybe a new rmt wave will pop and like a wave take over haha but doubt it right now the zones just feel limited due to level of mobs or lack of mobs specially for people who kill really fast who have max aug oddly gear and r15, just a thought.

[Zehira]

The trust system is the most fascinating thing players wouldn't want to let it go.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/t...l=1#post617702

[Alhanelem]

I'm not sure i see a path forward here that discourages botting without harming normal players. Basically tying EXP to effort is a good idea the difficulty is not all jobs contribute in a way that can be equally measured.

[Zenion]

The easiest thing they can do to stop merc exp parties and alliance or such, would be to implement what they use in Campaign battles: The less work you do to help kill the targets in a campaign battle gives you less reward points, experience points, and rewards from coffers, etc.... basically the less you do the less you get.
Implement this ability in ANY party set-up and it would kill exp merc parties that charge for it. Because they players would not be able to sit around afk doing nothing.

I'm not sure i see a path forward here that discourages botting without harming normal players. Basically tying EXP to effort is a good idea the difficulty is not all jobs contribute in a way that can be equally measured.

Right, you can kind of see this in Reives, I think; summoner can contribute a lot, but they don't get credit for their pet's actions, so they get rewarded with a big ol' pile of nothing, or at least that's how it worked at one point. Geomancer? Contributing more than most of the rest of the party by dropping two bubbles and making them stick. Unless your bard is pulling, they barely do anything for 95% of the time you're out there but those songs are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

This is why rather than any kind of ranked effort setup, I think it should just be a simple "has enmity/does not have enmity" switch. Tossed a cure at the tank? Fine, you get your full share of the exp. It's not asking a lot of active participants even if they're not able to contribute fully, but it's far more effort than anyone paying for their exp would be willing to put in (though they may just resort to botting to do it, but that's its own problem.)

If they are trying to make things easier for solo or small parties wouldn’t it be easier to simply create/convert like 20-30 new zones with apex camps like all over the world for example take [S] zones no one ever goes to the past aside from some very random campaign battles, why not make every zone into new apex zones or atleast increase the amount of apex around so if you have like 100 mobs don’t make 10 apex only …… per zone or the Aht Urhgan areas that a lot of people probably miss from the old days like make so many camps people have a tons of options other than dho/woh gates etc it should feel optional if you wanna go there not be like well those are the only zones we can go cause sih is too low level or inner raz is too high for new players etc I am sure no amount of rmt power can fill 20-30 new zones the way they have taken over dho so there is bound to be more than enough zones/mobs for everyone to go kick some mob butts I mean who knows maybe a new rmt wave will pop and like a wave take over haha but doubt it right now the zones just feel limited due to level of mobs or lack of mobs specially for people who kill really fast who have max aug oddly gear and r15, just a thought.

Just adding more apex camps is a tricky idea. The way they did it in Alzadaal was beautiful, take spaces that never had anything in them and just load 'em up full of new apex mobs. If you're not looking for them, you'll never know they're there. Perfect.

Then on the other hand, you get the level... 85, I want to say? Somewhere in the 76-99 range for sure anyway. Those guys, in Promyvion; you take one wrong turn and suddenly oh boy are you in the wrong neighborhood. That's the risk with updating older areas, if you don't do it carefully you're going to make old quests and missions much harder than they were ever intended to be, and with apex mobs especially that can push them from "easy solo stroll" to "maybe you should take a party just in case."

Of course, they couldn't just sprinkle around too many more apex camps now anyway, if they did where would they put the master level 50 super apex camps later?

The trust system is the most fascinating thing players wouldn't want to let it go.

Yeah, I can't even argue that. I have a white mage that I never use in content just because hey, why not use a trust healer instead. And of course nobody wants to actually play a healer when people can just have a trust for most content, so even in bigger groups you can't really count on there being one. I think the Trust system just needs an overhaul in general. Allow them in alliances at an exp penalty? Restrict them to content where people aren't supposed to be learning how to play jobs? Those could be their own post, and probably are somewhere around here.

This is good, <7 no impact >7 big loss of XP.

This only applies to certain monsters, it won't be in events.

... no. This is bad. It's a fix intended to disrupt mercenary alliances, which it might, but it's going to do nothing about mercenaries. You'll just see four times as many bots pulling mobs to support the same number of customers, if they don't just disregard the penalty and go longer instead. It's the solution you get from someone who is only half listening to your concern, catches one word, and says "ah, yes yes, alliances, harumph. We'll see those are dealt with right away, quite right."

[Voidstorm]

I'm not sure i see a path forward here that discourages botting without harming normal players. Basically tying EXP to effort is a good idea the difficulty is not all jobs contribute in a way that can be equally measured.

I have seen several bots solo w/ trusts for years in escha zones. One way to combat bots could be to make trusts gimp exp/cp/ep same as other players will.
Or to adjust the pentalty for additional players such that there is no penalty in a party of up to 6 regardless of if it's with trusts or other players.

SE: please do not do the alliance xp nerf in Incursion & delve. My friends and I like to spam delve during campaign for merits then burn merits on HTMB, then back to delve.

[Pixela]

... no. This is bad. It's a fix intended to disrupt mercenary alliances, which it might, but it's going to do nothing about mercenaries. You'll just see four times as many bots pulling mobs to support the same number of customers, if they don't just disregard the penalty and go longer instead. It's the solution you get from someone who is only half listening to your concern, catches one word, and says "ah, yes yes, alliances, harumph. We'll see those are dealt with right away, quite right."

No, because it will become non-profitable to run that many bots.

RMT only want to make money, if this is no longer profitable they will find other ways to make it.