Hamlet defense feedback from a top 20 provisioner: Critical problems and solutions

[viion]

Content for Bots!

I have no desire to take part in Hamlets, I find it a complete wank system, a lot different than I expected it to be when they first mentioned it. I will hand in enough items for 100 anima, then go back when I hit 6 anima XD

[TheVedis]

What i foresee happening is groups will gather up tens of millions of points in turnins so that they can guarentee the hamlet will be at the level they want it at without any outside help

and when they do, they wil;l all be top 20 and itl be the week they get everything they want when they do it...

[Arcell]

With the release of Hamlet Defense in more zones, it'll be easier to get into the Top 20. However I think it'll become harder for a particular Hamlet to get its Supply Rating up, due to the distribution of players contributing items.

However, as Thevedis mentioned, people can stockpile items and get themselves into the top 20 and the Supply Rating up regardless of what other people do. I mean I know on Balmung one person alone contributed more than 1.4 mil points on the last run. However, most other players didn't come anywhere close to them.

Another issue to consider, most people have been obsessed with beating Garuda since 1.22 has come out so that may be another variable to consider.

[Tsuuga]

Stockpiling is still a silly amount of work - and it's basically a wager that you won't have a family emergency or internet outage. Every X supply points should just give you an inferno lantern-equivalent.

[Hubert]

Agreed with lots of the points above. A lot of the OP's concerns can mostly be contributed not only to Hamlet defense, but the fact that this is a new patch with new content. When the next two hamlets open up in May, there will be 60 people in the Top 20 Ranks every week or so, removing much of the cutthroat competition. It may seem that hamlet defense is reserved only for the hardcore player with lots of time/gil and a competent LS but once the hype dies down and successful strategies are shared, I believe it will become very accessible.

The fluctuating server economy is nothing new - people naturally turn their attention to the new patch things and as a result the "old" stuff goes into short supply. The market will readjust itself after a few days.

[Jinko]

I agree with all of your points OP, hopefully these concerns will be passes onto the dev team, Hamlet defence has a good chance to be great with some fine tuning.

Content for Bots!

I have no desire to take part in Hamlets, I find it a complete wank system, a lot different than I expected it to be when they first mentioned it. I will hand in enough items for 100 anima, then go back when I hit 6 anima XD

I laughed because I foresee this being the only reason for doing it later down the road.

[Airget]

Ya I was thinking about the progression of battle in my head before falling asleep last night and it currently goes. Just to be lazy I"m basing it on a 48, 24 hr concept but you have

MT/W/TF/S/SM/T/WT/F/SS/M/TW/T/FS/S/MT/W/TF/S

Like looking at it like this one could say, no one will want to gather on Monday/Tuesday cause the battle is on a Wednesday, but Thursday Friday is better since it's on a Saturday. With such a short duration to the battle, to gather items to reach the Top 20 just to be able to make use of it for 3-4hrs just isn't worth it. In the concept that say you did gather on MT to get Top 20 then on Wednesday you get home at 6 and maybe get a party going on at 7, then you only have 5hrs to make use of it, if you have til 12am to do it lol.

But of course it goes on a 50/25 concept so it can vary, sometime you might have 5hrs to make use of it, others maybe 8hrs and then on those sad occassion you only have 1hr to make use of it once you get out of work lol but if a person does have work the next day then the 50/25 hr concept doesn't work for them since they still have to limit how long they can actually do the hamlet for.

The standby phase is just way to long compared to the battle phase and the fact that you lose everything that's gained is just a real kick to the nads lol. It should be more dynamic. Rather then a straight up 50/25. Have the supplies determine how long the fight goes on for starting at a base of 24hrs.

So say the cap was 2mil for rank 2. For every 1mil gathered the forces can fight on for another 12hrs. So not only does 2mil grant you Rank 2 but it also increases the duration of the fight to a total of 48hrs (maybe a cap of 72hr aka 3 days of hamlet active). If it was done like this then I could accept it being brought back down to 0 after all is said and done but to have to have people grind like this constantly every 50hrs just to the current top rank is pretty messed up. It's like they didn't even take the time to setup some sort of system to base how much should be lost after a battle since it is pretty ridiculous to think that ALL the materials are used up once the fight is over.

Can only hope if enough people speak up about it there will be some sort of change made into the next update or we can also hope that the other 2 Hamlets will have different requirements aka party sizes for entry since as it stands now, why would anyone wanna do the other Hamlets when they are all set back to 0 anyway, you would only want to focus on one to make sure you can get the highest rank possible and increase your chances at getting loot. Also since people are pretty use to this hamlet, unless the other Hamlets have unique items to offer their's no point in learning something new when you already know how this one works. (aka only reason people would want to do other Hamlets would be for achievements)

[ejiboo]

keep in mind i only read the OP but aren't they adding two more hamlet's with the letter patch?

i like some of what the OP mentioned and i honestly think some of it is a qq-everyone has great ideas and legitimate concerns that all stem from a qq and i'm one at the top of the bunch! i had fun during the hamlet defense and i'm interested to see how it progresses. afaik, there are other rewards for supplying the defense right...like anima? oooo, anima.

[Frein]

SE made the same mistake Blizzard did with their first version of the WoW honour system. It led to people playing almost literally 24/7 because they were directly competing against each other in time spent farming honour points. At least the rewards were good there.

[Delsus]

I agree with the op, I was mining for 6hrs today and only got 55k points, that only got me to 15th, and about 2hrs later I was down to 20th, the top on Gungnir at my last check had 400k points now if that was from mining (because I know the numbers for that one) that would be over 40 stacks of kidney ores, in the time from them accepting items to when I handed mine in that must have been someone who was getting items all day (not sure how its possible) or a bot.

Right now this system is enouraging botting with this competition, so we don't have to stay at our screens all day imagine this to a linkshell because I can "hmm I guess I'm going to try and get in the top 20" "lmao the only way you will do that is with a bot running 24/7" "I can't believe that" starts mining for 6hrs and gets 60k points "omg how has the top guy got 400k points" "prolly a bot like I said".

It will need looking into or as said before people will just use it to get anima and not as it is intended, I know the thought behind this, if everyone wants to get in the top 20 we will be getting the higher lvls, but if this involves 12-20hrs of gathering and crafting and people still arent top 20, they will give up and be asking what the point is.