Instance Caravan Escorts are Needed

I would personally prefer it to stay open-world (but wouldn't mind if it changed to instanced like leves)

There are other solutions imo:
1) Make multiple routes to the hamlets (4-5 routes for each hamlet = 40 people/region = 120 people same time)
2) I'm sure other places require stuff too, other than hamlets. So more locations (with 4-5 routes each)
3) Increase the limit of players joining, from 8 to say 15? and the difficulty increases with more participants

Instanced caravans escorts can serve a purpose as well if implemented. Make a red ring around the caravan and if players are outside that zone for a certain amount of time then "You are about to abandon your caravan duty" appears. That's for those good-for-nothing space-takers.

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Originally Posted by Asiaine

Well, there are a few things that can be done:
1) IF you see they want help for AF/quest/etc, do not aid them.
2) If you see them on the ground needing a raise, do not raise them.
3) If you see members of their LS join your party, you can tell them you are ousting them due to bad behaviour of their LSmates

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Maybe it's just me, but I try not to hold a grudge forever...

Also, this still does nothing to address the actual problem/problems. People will still be able to leech and parties will still be at the mercy of 'who clicks in first'. While yes, it is nice to play with new people sometimes, it is also nice to have the option to group with friends...and the whole 'wait a couple weeks until it's less busy' while true isn't exactly how content should work. We should all be able to access content in which we meet the level/pre-req requirements. In another thread you said you don't want it to be something you are forced to form a group with pre accepting the quest (like a leve) because you like random PUGs. Fine. Well then realize that most people like to be able to, within reason, log in and play the content they wanna play...and not wait 2-3 weeks simply because 'contents busy now, try again later'. Or get in the content only to have friends not get in or be stuck in a party full of leechers. It's a repeatable chocobo mission for heaven's sake, not a rare HMN....


Ideas that won't work and why:

1. Auto-grouping (locking everyone into the same party). Basically the game is already doing this. So it's the exact same problem we have now, except now you are forced to party. Also, who gets lead? As soon as someone is given lead, they can 'oust' people to get their friends in as long as they 'oust' before the timer to start is up.
2. Having players get rewarded based on % of damage done, % of emnity drawn %healing done %of items given to chocobos etc. As some have stated, they are trying to damage the mobs, but mages are burning them to fast etc. I'm not sure if you played this game from release, but back when the game was released, we earned EXP more or less this way....do you know how much it sucked to be a CNJ who was main healing a group? You got exp at half the rate as the rest of the party because DDing=better exp. This is just too finicky a system to work correctly.
3. All party members must be in a certain range for the NM to spawn. So all this means is 'afkers'/leechers just need to memorize the spawn points or auto-follow a chocobo. Again, fixes nothing.
4. Wait a couple weeks, caravan popularity will die down and then you can do it. First, I have issues with this for reasons stated above. But also, as they become less popular, you will actually find more people trying to abuse them, and now, instead of having at least 5 people trying to win, you might only have 3. Also, not sure if the 'wait it out' plan will work as from what I understand, one of the later relic weapon quest steps, requires getting a key item from caravans. If this is true, then in like a month or so the demand will be even higher.
5. There are other ways to get seals. I agree with this...but just because there are other ways to get them doesn't mean people should not expect chocobo caravans to be easy to enter and not easy to afk.

Also instead of telling people who say 'Gee, SE this is kinda broken, can we fix it?' that they are wrong and/or that it is working fine, maybe listen to what they are saying. Or at least offer actual reasons why the system is better the way it is. Because frankly, while I can understand your liking of the pick-up battle style, arguing that you don't want to be forced to party to do content that requires a party is silly. You can still use the party search, or shout etc. to group with people you don't know even if they fix it so that it requires a group to sign up for the event. What should be arugued more is WHY am I FORCED to party with 8 random people...some of whom might not even help?

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I think it is worthwhile to point out that there are 3 caravan routes, so up to 24 people can be out doing escort duty.

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Out of how many players on the servers? Tens, Hundreds, Thousands? As said, this is a MMO, and in case anyone forgotten, it stands for Massively Multiplayer Online, NOT 24 players.

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Also, you are presently trying to get seals during peek seal-hunting-time

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This is not the peak hunting season, this is what SE expect us to do. They want 50K seals just for relic and the latest rank promotion. Even when consider that you have the caravan down perfect, that is 50 1K runs, or 12-1/2 hours per player. This is not counting if anyone needs any other GC items. That is a lot of time required from the player base given the limited slots allocated.

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It is also worth to note that there are still alternative (instanced) methods of getting seals should one wish:
-- Darkhold Dungeon
-- Toto-Rak

(and others as you have suggested)

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And why are not more people doing those?

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rather than just a few days after the appearance of a demand for a lot of seals.

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We didn't set the demand for those seals, SE did. SE can ALSO lower the seal requirements, instead of 25K, they can make it 10K. Won't that also help resolve some of these overcrowding conditions?

Don't forget, many of us play this as a game, and not some RMT that plays this game as a job. I have a job already, and I don't need this game to be my 2nd job.

The sad and funny part is, that SE reminds you to not to allow the game to over take your life every time you login, yet, they come out with all these "requirements" that demands you to play the games for hours, and often days, just to get anything useful in game.

jc

Well i dont see the problem of making that instanced, they could improve a lot the caravan escorts, like adding more mobs, without having server issues, it would be nice having a boss fight on those like at some point of the road the leader of the pack comes and fight with lot of adds, they could make 3 different bosses, so they appear randomly, maybe we could even get a special item with low drop rate like a ring, earring or bracelet. But not a must to be top notch, or an item that can be traded for more seals at your company.

I love having open world events but this kind of event is not that good, i prefer hamlets defense being open world so you can see other players and they could even add rankings list depending on how many mob kills a player got in one fight, or how many kills a linkshell did or points granted by kills, like a boss kill will give you a lot more than a normal mob, but would feel more epic having those fights as open world.

Just an idea

All fair points. But at the end of the day the real issue is not the 'mechanic' but the 'people'. Any mechanic can eventually be exploited (we are still suffering from the Garuda exploit despite being fixed ages ago). The only real solution is to avoid other people.

Either we create a world where we do not deal with other people, or we create a world where other people are good. Which is easier or preferrable? ^.^;;

If we turn everything into instanced content, add content finder with three levesl of difficulty on it, then there will be a lot less 'problems'. But then it will feel like playing a single-player game with some slightly better than standard AI companions.

Personally I would rather just accept the world as having both good and not so good people in it who (ocassionally) make it less fun, then resort to such strict and drastic changes that turn this into a very different experience.

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Originally Posted by AttacKat

We didn't set the demand for those seals, SE did. SE can ALSO lower the seal requirements, instead of 25K, they can make it 10K. Won't that also help resolve some of these overcrowding conditions?
jc

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In a way 'we' did. 'We' said we wanted to make more seals as the seal rate was too low. They added Toto/DH/NMs, but yet 'we' said we wanted more. So they upped Caravan rewards too.

Well, all this new found 'wealth' of seals comes at a cost. The cost being you have to earn 25k seals to go lieutenant (which you get back anyways, plus 5k more). 'We' asked for it, 'We' got it. The only way this wouldn't happen is if 'We' also asked for a 'Press this button to win' button. At least we did not get that ^.^;

Also, we do not have to wait till last minute to get our seals. Could be building them for a month or longer beforehand or wait longer to get a promotion.

Lots of options, and lots of ability to plan. For example:
There will be stuff we need seals for soon.
Will we saving up or are we waiting for the last minute?

I have what I need (promotion, cudgel, and still my coin). I am still saving up seals because I know I may need them in the future and do not want to panic and run around like crazy at the last moment desperate to get some to buy an item or get a promotion.

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Originally Posted by Asiaine

All fair points. But at the end of the day the real issue is not the 'mechanic' but the 'people'. Any mechanic can eventually be exploited (we are still suffering from the Garuda exploit despite being fixed ages ago). The only real solution is to avoid other people.

Either we create a world where we do not deal with other people, or we create a world where other people are good. Which is easier or preferrable? ^.^;;

If we turn everything into instanced content, add content finder with three levesl of difficulty on it, then there will be a lot less 'problems'. But then it will feel like playing a single-player game with some slightly better than standard AI companions.

Personally I would rather just accept the world as having both good and not so good people in it who (ocassionally) make it less fun, then resort to such strict and drastic changes that turn this into a very different experience.

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Well im just saying having the real good content like hamlets versus caravan or behest as open world and the other 2 as instanced would still make the important thing be and feel more global and fun, but another option is to autogroup people for caravans and behest like allowing 40 people be on the same event, you would need only to get there and you would be automatically grouped with others, right now they cant do that, but im hoping that by 2.0 they can add that.

About caravan and behest bosses, they could add em according to the number of players at the moment, if theres 40 people well they can unleash the 3 bosses at the same time with lots of adds, if they have to make something instanced to work better im fine as well with that.

Content should be ready all the time for as many players as they can.