soiled promissory note?

[ArkNova]

Please for the love of God tell us if the RNG is gonna stay in 2.0 or if there will be a drop system even remotely like XI's so I know if I need to drop my subscription now or keep it. I can picture it now all the Cloud Strife fans raising hell they gotta spam Ultima Weapon 300+ times to get their wanna look like Cloud sword.

[Biggs]

Actually I am very sure that everyone will get their powered-down weapons through a completely unrelated quest, tied to the storyline of the jobs, and this whole shenanigans will be to make the weapons actual top-tier gear

Possibly. It certainly would lower this anxious feeling I have that this is just step 1 of a very long and tedious 5 step process. Not to mention, years from now when they FINALLY increase level cap, they could add more things likethis to upgrade further to keep up with the increased levels and equipment.

[Hulan]

I've always found it fascinating (in a scientific, social science sort of way) how people in general put up with so much nonsense in MMOs that they'd never put up with a "real" video game. What if you had to kill the final boss for a chance for the ending to "drop"? And it was possible you had to kill it 100+ times for that to happen? The first 99 times it was all like "as you prepare to deliver the killing blow, mist rises from the earth, obscuring your sight. you quickly strike, but you hit nothing but soft earth. quick! find the villain!" then you have to go find the boss again, and he's fully healed. Oh, and this fight takes like 30-60 minutes each time. Would you kill the boss until you got the ending? You'd seriously devote 100 hours to that? I kind of doubt it.

Haha, I'm sorry if that came off as a little oddly put. I was just trying to get across that I do not disagree with the complaints, so much, as I find there existence interesting. Game design at a theoretical level interests me, so a violent response like this is fascinating to me. I have myself actually argued for a more robust drop mechanic that does not diminish the difficulty of the respective task, but encourages the player instead of taunting them, in another thread.

It's a complex problem. The developer needs to preserve content, while keeping the player interested in the content long enough to produce more. Ideally, content has a half life (I prefer to refer to a content's lifetime in terms of half life because the decay of interest often looks closer to half life formula than anything else) longer than the development cycle, thus producing more content than is consumed.

Random chance has a base response in the human psyche. There is a reason why gamblers often end up in alcoholics anonymous. It's untrue to say that random drop mechanics have no place in preserving content, or even interest. At the same time, even an addicted gambler will lose interest in a machine that never wins. Similarly, constant progression gives the players the sense of constant progress towards a goal. However, it also feels very mechanical. Go to Ifrit, punch time card, work, receive credits, go to ifrit, punch time card, work, receive credits.

Put simply, just a pRNG or a token system alone will not preserve player interest long enough to sustain a small pool of content (FFXIV's real problem, but that's another topic entirely). Each needs something to counter-balance their flaws. For all of the fact that many came to despise Dynamis after years of running them, I think they found an excellent balance, as you said. The frustration of the pRNG (Relic AF) was offset by the fact that the drop rate was 1:20(ish) with any monster in the zone able to drop an item. Not to mention, even if you did not receive an item, you could work toward the ultimate goal of a Relic weapon. The mechanical nature of the token system of the relic weapons, on the other hand, was offset by adding a market mechanic to the system (simply by making the items trade-able).

I suppose in the context of FFXIV, we can only hope that once the full team is working on the game again (post 2.0) they will be able to produce more content, thus reducing the load on current content and freeing the developers up for more creative drop systems.

[Req]

The comments in this thread fascinate me, in a scientific, social science sort of way. These requirements really aren't 1/100th as steep as those for getting relic weapons, even 1/1000th. Yet while I can barely recall a complaint a year about the difficulty of procuring relic weapons, it prompts a veritable flood of complaints in this context. What is it that has changed? Is it the perception of the community? The implementation? The very social structure of MMO players? Or perhaps a combination of all three.

You could actually work towards getting the relics in xi. Here its just luck based. You are just sitting there spamming content that is unrewarding outside of getting those seals.

The content is becoming the equivalent of putting electric nodes on your nipples and electrocuting yourself for 12 hours only to be rewarded with a hat that says "I survived having my nipples being shocked for 12 hours and don't have to do it anymore"

Unless there is some secret mechanic we don't know about its probably going to take like 25-40 perfect hamlet runs to get the 9 seals for one person. And that is just one person, the only reward the other people in the party will be getting are dark matter and militia barbuts.

[Skies]

I think, Req, that the secret mechanic that we don't know about is getting Rank 3+ Hamlet. From what I get the hamlet level is a multiplier to your points, and it seems like you already get a pretty good drop rate with 50k acquired at rank 2, imagine what 100k+ would net you at rank 5?

Of course, all the hamlet suppliers want is making it top 20 and not increasing hamlet level, so eh.

[SniperRifle]

Greetings,

Eemeefu from the Localization team has confirmed that this is indeed a typo in the English language version and the correct number should be three of each seal. The issue will be addressed in patch 1.22b. Sorry for the confusion.

Thank you, sir.

[TheVedis]

I think, Req, that the secret mechanic that we don't know about is getting Rank 3+ Hamlet. From what I get the hamlet level is a multiplier to your points, and it seems like you already get a pretty good drop rate with 50k acquired at rank 2, imagine what 100k+ would net you at rank 5?

Of course, all the hamlet suppliers want is making it top 20 and not increasing hamlet level, so eh.

when rank 3 is added people will go out of there way to see what its like and we will probly go from there

your right though, some people just dont want to donate without a guarentee of getting top 20, which is a bit rediculous when half of them only do so cuz they dont understand what top 20 even means(such as people claiming you get no drop sunless your in top 20 regardless of the situation)

[syntaxlies]

I think, Req, that the secret mechanic that we don't know about is getting Rank 3+ Hamlet. From what I get the hamlet level is a multiplier to your points, and it seems like you already get a pretty good drop rate with 50k acquired at rank 2, imagine what 100k+ would net you at rank 5?

Of course, all the hamlet suppliers want is making it top 20 and not increasing hamlet level, so eh.

if nothing else phase 3 should be easily attainable. You'll get more points over all form more kills probably more NM's plus a x3 multiplier, so i wouldn't be surprised to hit 100k in phase 3 alone.

[Req]

I think, Req, that the secret mechanic that we don't know about is getting Rank 3+ Hamlet. From what I get the hamlet level is a multiplier to your points, and it seems like you already get a pretty good drop rate with 50k acquired at rank 2, imagine what 100k+ would net you at rank 5?

Of course, all the hamlet suppliers want is making it top 20 and not increasing hamlet level, so eh.

The thing about it is, we already get the gold chest from level 2 hamlets. Unless the gold chest in the level 3 hamlets is somehow different it won't make a difference because points past 50k are seemingly worthless at the moment.

Either way, the content is unrewarding and that is the main problem. Sure its going to be cool to get the hamlet diggers hat and all that good stuff, but by the time we get even 2 of these promissary notes the entire party will more than likely have every decent item from the hamlet. It is kind of how like with the dungeons, at this point about 90% of the linkshells doing aurum vale and cutters cry have long gotten past the point where they need any non darklight drops from the dungeons meaning the market is being flooded with them and their value is so much less than they should be. The same exact thing is going to happen with the hamlet defense, everyone who wants the non seals are going to have them and theres going to be absolutely no reason to do the content outside of getting the seals.

The only possible thing I can think that they will do to counter act this feeling of worthless content at this point is by making the beastmen currency that is for some reason mysteriously dropping from the chests even though it has no use, have a use that is related to getting seals outside of the event.

And one final thing, to everyone saying we were complaining about this being the "hard to do" content we are looking for, this isn't hard to do, hamlet defense is a joke, the only thing that will make these things rare is the fact they have ridiculous requirements to get and the rng in this game is a piece of garbage.

[Velhart]

Being top 20 I think only adds like 3k points. Not that big of a deal.