Baldesion Arsenal Feedback

[Xellos2099]

Here on Gaia, parties have never failed to form after an Ovni kill. Getting 56 people into the same instance is rather difficult, ensuring these 56 get to the portals adds another layer of difficulty. That is why, we avoid such situations. We can count on players to have: (1) basic competency to perform rotations, (2) attempting to perform mechanics, or at the very least (3) recognising that every person reaching the end counts, thus they want the group to succeed, because as an individual they want to succeed.

Players new to the arsenal can go in safely, knowing that in a pure PUG, there definitely will be people willing to mentor. Or at the very least someone will go to our usual source and copy+paste the JP macro for all to see. That is a given.

Premades here on Gaia have a different approach. Getting people into the arsenal is never an issue. The issue would likely be insufficient tanks and/or healers. So the premades I have met, are as such: 1 group 8, 4 healers, 4 tanks. Must be able to execute all mechanics in the arsenal as your role (tank, healer only), be willing to mentor random players, and have multiple clears in order to join their discord. Inside the arsenal, they split up and lead individual parties. Getting 8 people into the arsenal together is a lot easier than getting 48 or 56.

Most runs will be PUGs, so sometimes we will have insufficient tanks and/or healers. The expectation is usually to stop before absolute virtue, just gathering from chests. no argument there. People are happy with this, expectations are set early on.

Xellos, perhaps I was unclear. I will clarify my queries. Without the discord groups in NA/EU, why can't NA/EU have the same success that Gaia/Mana has with pure PUG groups for the arsenal? What is stopping them from doing so? Why are only discord groups in NA/EU successfully clearing the arsenal but PUG groups are failing?

I believe it is the drive and desire to win. People who join the discord for this tend to be one who really want to clear and win this and thus they put more effort it.

[Epidendrum]

PUG groups didn't happen even before discord were established. That s why discords were built in the first place.

I really don't get how people can expect to run 48 men raids without a minimal amount of organization.

Why not? Don't players want to explore new content just for fun?

[Epidendrum]

PUG groups didn't happen even before discord were established. That s why discords were built in the first place.

I really don't get how people can expect to run 48 men raids without a minimal amount of organization.

On Gaia, you can throw even 144 people together. As long as there is an established JP macro, it can be done. No need for any voice chat or grouping beforehand.

[Xellos2099]

Numbers for sure. First attempt at forming inside we got about 21 people (2 parties and a couple people floating) then 6 and 7 people in my next 2 attempts so not even enough for 1 full party.
Also a mindset thing I'd say. Too many people sit outside and pass judgement on those who pug it with comments like "we barely cleared with a full 56 and on discord, you're attempting it with 20/30 and no discord..I give it 10 minutes and they'll be out" which leads to people thinking we can't clear it without being in a premade and anything else is futile.

Well, we now know it can scale it down to 32. So in theory if no one die at all, people willing to die for the portal you can probably clear with 32 but you are nearly room for error.

[Stanelis]

On Gaia, you can throw even 144 people together. As long as there is an established JP macro, it can be done. No need for any voice chat or grouping beforehand.

I'm not playing on JP datacenters, obviously, more people are inteerested in Eureka over there. On Chaos, you ll may be be able to make 2 groups out of the whole Hydatos instance, a the most, and the other portals simply aren't taken. And that was the case even before the discords.

Why not? Don't players want to explore new content just for fun?

Because trying to complete a 48 men raids with the only 10 people interested with BA of the Hydatos instance doesn't go well, and I've tried.

[ltsquigs]

PUG groups didn't happen even before discord were established. That s why discords were built in the first place.

The Discords were established the first day it was out, when the hard core eureka players reached max level and decided to try and Prog through BA, and then those discords were opened up to the public or new discords were created to imitate that structure as the next wave of players hit 60. They were established to imitate the progression groups success, not necessarily because of lack of interest in doing BA from PUGs (most of this happened so quickly that the majority of the player base was not 60 yet anyways).

After the first few days of Eureka the common wisdom was "This is impossible to do without a premade" and so PUG groups rarely formed. I'm not saying if this is a bad or a good thing, but there was never really any period for PUG strategies to develop or be seriously done before the Discords ballooned in size as this all happened very quickly after the release of the content.

[Epidendrum]

I believe it is the drive and desire to win. People who join the discord for this tend to be one who really want to clear and win this and thus they put more effort it.

Thanks for the enlightening answer Xellos. Forgive me if my queries seem confrontational. It's just so... different. Players in Gaia who have no interest in the arsenal just don't enter it at all. This results in only players who are serious about clearing and gathering fragments as the ones who enter the portals.

[Stanelis]

The Discords were established the first day it was out,

No, they weren't, the first week of the content people simply didn't go to the portals even though they were all available. Discords only picked up pace when people noticed after 1 week it was simply too tedious to merely find enough players to enter BA if a premade wasn't in the area (it s not a matter of "being impossible", it's merely an issue of logistics and manpower).

People tried to make PUGs during the first week, but hardly managed to get more than 1 group or 2 at most. Even today you don't systematically find premades in every hydatos instance, and when no premades are in the area, people can't manage to find enough players to PUG the content.

[LaylaTsarra]

It's my understanding it's hard to use discord and play with your friends unless one of them is interested in being a leader of a party. If so that should be changed. i've leveled with a friend through all 4 zones and cannot play with her unless one of us leads a party she tells me. She's done 1 frag run so far and I've starting getting things together to get gear and logo's but I'm not really motivated to want to play without her or other friends.

[ltsquigs]

No, they weren't, the first week of the content people simply didn't go to the portals even though they were all available. Discords only picked up pace when people noticed after 1 week it was simply too tedious to merely find enough players to enter BA if a premade wasn't in the area (it s not a matter of "being impossible", it's merely an issue of logistics and manpower).

People tried to make PUGs during the first week, but hardly managed to get more than 1 group or 2 at most. Even today you don't systematically find premades in every hydatos instance, and when no premades are in the area, people can't manage to find enough players to PUG the content.

I can't speak for other Data Centers, but the Primal Discord was established on the 13th, the day after the content was released. I joined it shortly after (a day or two) and it had ballooned to a large enough size that they had to restructure it to include bots to assign roles and figure out parties. I know the Aether discord was already more established and set up by the point I joined the primal one.

I'm not saying this to judge the discords, I don't particularly care, I'm just trying to help at least describe the timeline of events surrounding them.

As for not being able to find PUGs now, as I said in my original post thats mostly due to the fact that pool of people who want to do the content but don't want to join a Discord for their personal reasons is too small to sustain a large PUG effort, in addition to the general attitude to BA being that it requires a premade to make any progress.