Allied seals and Pricing

[lyndwyrm]

So I'm sure many of you have seen the ludicrous prices for allied seal items. I don't want this to be so much of a rant than rather a plea for sense, because I cannot find it.

Firstly, the i70 GC gear vs the i90 AF2 gear.
Slot i70 GC price i90 AF2 price
Head/hands/feet 600 30
Body/Legs 1000 40
Accessories/belt N/A 20

A 20:1 ratio for worse gear? Well that would make sense for vanity I guess, but that is a pretty big ratio. Well, lets relate that to Tomestones of Mythology. Just looking at the AF2 the ratio ranges from 16.5-20.625, so lets say 16 or 20.

Then we look at alexandrite. 800 ToM vs. 200 AS. So a 4:1 ratio on alexandrite makes it vastly in your favor to spend ToM on alexandrite and AS on your i90 AF2. Is that big of a ratio difference really intentional though?

Next lets look at GC seals, just for the sake of it. The only notable items are ventures and Reagan peppers. Ventures are everywhere, levequests, beast tribe dalies, and 5 can be bought for 1000 GC seals. 5 ventures can also be bought for 10 AS. Reagan peppers on the other hand are 48000 GC seals or 20 AS. A ratio of 100:1 vs 2400:1 again puts certain purchases in vast favor of one currency over another.

In all honesty though, do these differences in ratios really hurt the game? I can't defend them hurting the game to any great extent. Sometimes you may have an abundance of GC seals, ToM, and sometimes (in the far future) AS. So down the road it may just be that you should spend one currency on one thing, and another on another thing. Just right now no one has too many AS.

This brings me to my second problem, actually acquiring Allied seals.

First, the daily, or regular marks, seem like a joke. Seems like 7 AS per day will be the number we get per day for 3 sets of 3 random world mobs and 2 FATE bosses. By just doing daily marks, it will take you a mere 6 days to get that i90 chest, which could also be bought by doing 9 of the now expert roulette dungeons. That i70 GC weapon though will take 248 days, at which point we should either be looking at 2.5 or an expansion.

I don't think the devs want us to take 248 days to get one stinking vanity weapon though, which is why there are elite marks. If my information is correct, and it probably isn't entirely, elite marks drop 5, 20, and 50 AS for B, A, and S rank marks respectively, which is separate from the weekly reward. The marks themselves also drop ~4xToM and ~1xToS. The weekly reward will likely remain on B and possibly A rank marks, and will be 20 AS for B rank, maybe as high as 80 for A rank if they can be A rank. Additionally, by assisting in the kill of a mark, you may get a reduced reward all the way down to 1 AS.

So far so good, well, at least we can go hunting and farm the guys if we're really in a hurry to get our i70 GC weapon. Lets add in the weekly reward to the previous calculation. If they remain B rank, then that's an additional 25 AS per week. Wait a second, that's a little more than half of the dailies in a week. At 74 AS per week (I know changing from days to weeks as a unit, just bear with me) that's still 23 weeks before I can get my i70 weapon.

Well, that's still a really long time, so what else can I get at 74 AS per week? In about 7 weeks I can get an Oil of Time, and in about 10 I can get a sands of time. In 10 weeks I can also get a full set of gear from Sycrus Tower and get 4 oil of time, if not some sands of time by then. The ratio between OoT and SoT seems about right, 2:3, but something still doesn't seem quite right.

Ok, so lets rethink this. What do the devs expect normal players to do to get these things? Well, what if in addition to the 74 weekly AS, we do additional hunts, they do drop their own AS after all. Weighting at a 3:2:1 for B:A:S with the above mentioned number of expected AS dropping from each, that's a weighted average of 17.5 AS per mark. If we kill an additional elite mark each day in addition to the dailies, we get 196(.5) AS per week.

At a rate of 196 AS per week, that's only 2 and a half weeks for an OoT and just under 4 weeks for a SoT. That doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, given that they are otherwise weekly locked progression items. That super awesome i70 vanity sword is still going to take almost 9 weeks though (you know what, I think I'll pass).

So instead of normal players, how many can I get if I want to? If we say one A or S mark in a 2:1 weight every 20 minutes for 8 hours a day you'll get 720 AS per day. With the respawn timers I've heard about, that may not be impossible, if you have eyes in every zone and can get there and achieve full credit consistently, but that's a pretty long stretch. On the other hand, WOW that'd take me almost a month to get otherwise.

Hmmm, now something else seems wrong. What was it? Oh yeah, we have daily marks worth 7 per day. How long does it take to camp those two FATE bosses? Well that'll depend upon how lucky you are, but you'll probably get them within 20 min if you're reasonably lucky, for those 2 AS. All 2 of them. You know what, I think I'll just go around and look for marks. The FATE bosses are at least marked on the map, but all of a sudden (not really) they just don't seem worth my time.

I totally understand an organized, active, helpful Linkshell allowing you to achieve more than just the daily amounts, but the daily and even weekly rewards seem pitiful in regards to the things we're looking at purchasing beyond AF2 and some ventures. Are we not seriously supposed to consider buying things more than 500 AS? Are we supposed to grind, like really grind, these randomly spawning boss enemies and forget about the daily rewards? Are there just a slew of typos at the hunt billmaster?

I'm just confused with all of this. Can you make sense of it?

Note1: Kakure made a thread on a similar topic in a different subforum, but many subforums don't get the appropriate attention, thus my posting here.
Note2: I'm aware of the difficulties in achieving full credit on many of the B rank marks if you are not there when it spawns, however, that is a topic for another thread, of which there are many.

[Nutz]

The pricing is ridiculous and all over the place. Some things are absurdly cheap and others barely worth thinking about purchasing (any GC item). I have no idea if it was intentional or not, but SE seems to be incentivizing roaming parties taking down elite marks instead of virtually any other content. Assuming you can find a few As and hopefully an S or two there's not even any need to run dungeons for soldiery, and you'll be capped on mythology before you know it.

[Morningstar1337]

Assuming you can find a few As and hopefully an S or two there's not even any need to run dungeons for soldiery, and you'll be capped on mythology before you know it.

At least when that happens I plan on using the Toms to but stuff for other classes...

[ThomasGallant]

I think vanity items overall are over-priced. Yes looking good does have a price tag, but... I guess I'm just wanting Vanity items in a price range greater than 100 gil worth and less than 500,000 gil worth, as that's a pretty big gap. Like having to chose between wearing a potato sack and a "designer" outfit from a designer with a big name (and I don't mean "brands" ) A middle point would be nice.

But it seems that extremes are the only option here, in gil, or in this case, Ally Seals.

[SarcasmMisser]

You are aware that you don't need to follow the bills and can just follow the zerg to marks of any rank? I know someone who has already cleared 1000 seals, the entire basis of your rant is wrong.

[Morningstar1337]

You are aware that you don't need to follow the bills and can just follow the zerg to marks of any rank? I know someone who has already cleared 1000 seals, the entire basis of your rant is wrong.

It is but I think SE designed the seals with that in mind, adding to the controversy with zerg-rusing non-bill marks (and players failing to hit the mark because of it).

[Nutz]

You are aware that you don't need to follow the bills and can just follow the zerg to marks of any rank? I know someone who has already cleared 1000 seals, the entire basis of your rant is wrong.

I wouldn't say it's wrong at all. If this person you know has over 1,000 allied seals they've probably spent a pretty decent chunk of time killing elite marks. For some items (sands, oils, alexandrite) I'd say this is acceptable give or take, but they still don't have enough to buy a single i70 vanity weapon (I say vanity because, well, 'cmon). The rewards for the daily hunts are so meager they may as well not exist and (for this week) getting credit for Naul is more difficult than the bounty is worth.

[SarcasmMisser]

They spent a day, that is absolutely nothing and sands is too good for that.

[Synestr]

You are aware that you don't need to follow the bills and can just follow the zerg to marks of any rank? I know someone who has already cleared 1000 seals, the entire basis of your rant is wrong.

Hmm, go on. SO you can follow hunters for the marks, but don't you only get the rewards if you have the bill in your key items?

Syn

[Nutz]

Hmm, go on. SO you can follow hunters for the marks, but don't you only get the rewards if you have the bill in your key items?

Syn

Oh no, not at all. You only need the bill to get credit for the daily hunts and the weekly hunt. Those are just bonuses like the roulette. The daily ones are mostly useless as they give 1-2 seals for normal weak (or FATE boss) enemies in a variety of zones that take too much time to be worth it. The weekly hunts (and all the other elite marks) give allied seals/ myth/ soldiery all day everyday. An A rank mark is worth as much (or more with tomes) as the weekly bounty on the rank B mark anyway.

I guess a single day is a bit ridiculous for the sands/ oils, depending on how long/ repeatable that day is. I don't think it's out of line for alexandrite though.