Yoshi P / Dev Team: FAVOR System - Please Fix This BROKEN System

[blueruckus]

Greetings,

Once we have more information, we'll make further announcements. We appreciate your patience while we work on these adjustments.

I hate being pessimistic about it, but it doesn't sound like this will be any time soon. Now I have to debate whether I wanna save my tokens for a possible 'fix' or just go with it as is now and start making money by making/selling the new stuff.

Either way, I'm very glad it's at least been officially acknowledged.

[PirateCat]

100% spawn rate is probably too much unless the duration is super short. But I'm expecting that "adjustments to the duration" will likely mean shorter durations and higher spawn chance so that the process is less of a time sink.

My suggestion? Do the following.
1. Reduce the effect duration of a favor to 5 minutes.
2. Double the spawn rate.
3. Using a favor while in the appropriate zone immediately causes all three concealed nodes to appear initially.
4. Add a 5 minute cooldown to the use of the favors to balance out #3.

There. You still have the frantic RNG chase (which is actually kind of fun if you take out the long duration and the stress of feeling like you might not get anything) while guaranteeing a baseline return on the time gated currency. You know, like every other trade in that has ever involved time gated currency until now.

[Sigmakan]

Greetings,

We are planning to make adjustments to the duration of the Favors purchased with red scrips and the frequency of the Concealed Nodes spawn so that it'll become easier for everyone to participate. Once we have more information, we'll make further announcements. We appreciate your patience while we work on these adjustments.

So should we hold onto our favors till then? Or should we expect the same amount of items per favor

[javid]

As players (casual and hardcore) we want the game to be fun. However producers need to come up with a way to make that "fun" we're having last (keep their subscriptions up).

So we can guess, however the fix is gonna be it wouldn't be to their best interest to make favor timers SHORTER.

Also they are currently sticking to their initial game plan around specialist (crafter & gatherer); they consistently want to move away from self-sustaining few players that can run the market. So either you guys have to keep complaining until they abandon this path or face that they won't make it easy for one person to gather all the mats that person needs then turn around and craft it all.

(after you've spent 3 hours gathering then attempt to craft and have that syn be botched (either fails or return's nq)......you won't want to spend another 3 hours....you'll much rather spend 3-10mil gil for the next attempt!! [note: speaking from personal experience. lost 3 astral lumbers astral oil & 2 birch lumbers] )

I for one will appreciate more having to focus on one task predominantly instead of having to do it all.

[Nomad-phx]

just add an effect that gives x stacks of "lay of the land III" when you activate a favore, each "lay of the land III" stack would grant a 100% concealed spawn after hitting a regular node. beyond the x amount of guaranteed comcealed spawn pops it goes off straight RNG. 3-5 guaranteed nodes per favor should qwell all the Qs.

[PirateCat]

So should we hold onto our favors till then? Or should we expect the same amount of items per favor

My assumption is that they will try to keep the average number of items per favor essentially constant. There is likely a target ratio they're going for in order to balance out what people are doing with the scrips - if the current estimates of 3 items on average are correct then this works out to a 4:3 ratio of gathering to crafting tokens, likely with the intent to encourage people to get skyspring water and craft combat gear, or buy the HQ mats on occasion, or something like that.

So the answer is most likely that it won't make a difference - use them now if you want in on the market before it opens up, or save them if you want it to be less of a slog.

[chrillix]

As players (casual and hardcore) we want the game to be fun. However producers need to come up with a way to make that "fun" we're having last (keep their subscriptions up).

So we can guess, however the fix is gonna be it wouldn't be to their best interest to make favor timers SHORTER.

Huh? If they wanted it to be fun, then I would think they would want us to spend less time mindlessly running from node to node which would actually mean a shorter duration on favors.

Also they are currently sticking to their initial game plan around specialist (crafter & gatherer); they consistently want to move away from self-sustaining few players that can run the market.

Where did they say this? The specialization system was designed to allow players to only have a single or few crafting jobs leveled in order to make certain items (not require cross-abilities from every single craft). They even acknowledged that this would do nothing to stop omnicrafters, and that they didn't have a problem with it.

[Galactimus]

For the past three weeks I have used up all 45 favors and have found that I get about 3 Concealed Nodes per Favor on average. I've noticed that I'm slowly accumulating far more Concealed Node items then I can hand-in each week using red Crafting Tokens. We have a maximum of 9 Crafting Tokens; it takes 1 Token to get 5 NQ Purified Coke and 3(!!) Tokens to get HQ Purified Coke.


I'm ending up with far more Concealed Node items than I can possibly hand-in with 9 Crafting Tokens. I mean our Red Scrips -just- reset and I've already used up my 9 Crafting Tokens with 38 Favors still remaining. Every week my stock pile of gathered items grows larger. I have 12 Dragon Warts and 12 Red Rounstones that I'll never be able to hand in since they take 3/9 Crafting Tokens each. By next Thursday I'll be two FULL weeks ahead of what my Crafting Scrips can handle.


Now, it already takes 11 hours(!!) to use up your 45 Gathering Favors. That's a brutal amount of time and I don't see how increasing the Favors duration is going to improve that situation. Furthermore, if the number of Concealed Nodes we get per favor is increased I'd ask that the number of red Crafting Tokens we can get each week be increased as well. 12 Red Crafting Tokens would be a far greater balance for our current system; 16 if you decide to increase our Concealed Nodes. Otherwise, the Crafting Token "HQ hand-in cost" needs to be lowered from 3 to 2 (or even 1) to make the trade even remotely worthwhile.


Legend
~~~~~
(!!) - Indicates the amount seriously needs to be reduced!!

[Aeyis]

if the current estimates of 3 items on average are correct then this works out to a 4:3 ratio of gathering to crafting tokens, likely with the intent to encourage people to get skyspring water and craft combat gear, or buy the HQ mats on occasion, or something like that.

An average of 3 would give 60+75 materials each week, which would be enough for 6/6.5 refined materials, out of 9. That's in between 3:2 and 4:3. And the real catch is that you can only reach this max if you aim to gather and create a single material type.
So you'd be short by a fair amount if you get average or less drops.

As for buying the HQ mats, as someone else pointed out in the japanese thread (and others have in previous english threads), the HQ turn is too costly since it takes 3 crafting scrips.

[Rath]

An average of 3 would give 60+75 materials each week, which would be enough for 6/6.5 refined materials, out of 9. That's in between 3:2 and 4:3. And the real catch is that you can only reach this max if you aim to gather and create a single material type.
So you'd be short by a fair amount if you get average or less drops.

As for buying the HQ mats, as someone else pointed out in the japanese thread (and others have in previous english threads), the HQ turn is too costly since it takes 3 crafting scrips.

They may not be the most efficient use of crafting scrips, but some people need those HQ mats to get the HQ materials to HQ these crafts. Not everyone has the right stats or skills to make these with NQ base materials. 3 tokens is much more efficient then making a NQ item even once as it costs you 5 tokens for a HQ or 6 to remake a NQ ring. This is including gathering tokens.

The other side of it is gil. You can sell a stack of 10 ooids for 3-5mil on my server, and you can buy all 6 needed HQ items for 2.4-3mil. So 1 gathering token and 3 red crafting scrips to get mats for the HQ items and make some extra gil at the same time. If your rotation/gear or RNG luck is not that good, this is a decent option.