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

[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.

[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)

[Kiara]

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.

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.

Hi Airget,

Great points. Definitely agree.

Spending so much time trying to break the Top 20, only to then have to spend the 3rd Day (if it's a weeknight), trying to reap the rewards of your hard work (and for many, they only get ~3 - 5 hours if they're lucky on a weeknight), is too punitive.

One way is as you mentioned, having the amount of contribution extend the Defense (Battle) Period more than 24 hours. (To get more time to try and win items.)

Or, another way might be to increase the Drop Rate for being Top 20 (or reaching a Max Threshold as the OP suggests), so that even though you can only invest 3 - 5 hours, at least, you have a better chance than what we have now.

[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.

[Airget]

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.

I personally didn't bot, my 4th place value came from lucky HQs synths and gathering a lot of +1 spruce branches, since +1s grant 10x reward. I was hoping to see if 1-3 did anything special but seeing as it doesn't I'll prolly just aim for top 20 while gathering during the week and then turning it all in one big haul before a weekend fight starts since that's when I can do the maximum amount of hamlets.

[Alhanelem]

It was the first cycle of hamlet, of course everyone is going to rush and turn in for the top 20s. It will dies down especially when another two hamlets are coming.

The problem is the huge contribution barely got the hamlet defense to level 2, and level 2 won't be the highest after some patching. In other words, with the current setup and a whole bunch of people with no life contributing for hours on end, you STILL wont have much of a chance to get the good rewards.

[Duuude007]

I was in the top 20 on Durandal as well, and our LS was regularly pulling off 40k scores out of a theoretical 45k cap at Hamlet Level 2.
Out of 19 of these wins, the chest dropped nothing but dark matter and the occasional ixali currency. For every LS run. the type of chest was random, we saw bronze silver and gold on occasion, but the consistency of the rewards from chests was blatantly lopsided, in that Chest rewards netted at the top available tier was dark matter and a small amout of presently worthless beastmen crrency... but completing Hamlet Defense with under 15k points score rather consistently rewards a "consolation prize": Magicked Prism (Indigo Star).

My wager is that they have a chest loot list in mind for people in the following tiers:

Tier 0 Under 15k-----chance at Indigo star
Tier 1 15k-30k-------?
Tier 2 30k-45k-------?
Tier 3 45k-60k etc etc

The problem is, they may not have anticipated that before May 10th (when Aleport and Gold Bazaar go live), that people would be regularly exceeding tier 1 and tier 2, so the loot list for the chest was coded to give generic Ixali currency and dark matter, and the worthwhile gear would be added in 1.22a .

If I am wrong on this, I will likely not be participating as often, nor I wager, will a large majority of the server populations.

TL;DR -- If the only way to get anything but dark matter from the chests is to perform poorly, where is the motivation for groups to keep going at it, especially if they aren't in the top 20?

Goddess, I hope they fix this soon.

[Aion]

aside from the rewards, is it fun?hadnt chance to try it