Ullikummi

[Cyprias]

*Copied from a previous post*

As you know, Ullikummi is a largely sought after NM by many linkshells on every server (http://www.killingifrit.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=136757&n=last#). By reading many forums regarding this NM, that many people, including myself, are unhappy on the spawning conditions of this NM.

The NM has a very large window in which it can spawn (http://www.killingifrit.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=136757&n=last#), noted from 3 to 23 hours. For an average player this is far too long to be sitting at their console or computer (http://www.killingifrit.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=136757&n=last#).

What I am asking is for the conditions of Ullikummi to be altered. I have suggestions which might be more fair to the average player.

1. Making Ullikummi spawn by trading 2 rare/exclusive items dropped from 2 separate Statues in Tu' Lia.

The "Aura Statues" in The shrine of Ru' Avitau, would drop 1 rare/exclusive item named "Kumarbi Ash" After Ullikummi mythology.

The second rare/exclusive items would be dropped off of "Enkidu" in Ve' Lugganon Palace. These would drop an Item named "Gargantuan Statue".

After trading these two items to a "???" in the room that Ullikummi currently resides in.

Note: These two Items will have roughly the same drop rate that Ro' Maeve Water currently has, possibly more rare.

2. In the room Ullikummi currently resides in: The statues are all place holders for Ullikummi. However, they will have a smaller window in which for Ullikummi to spawn. Unlike now with it being a lottery spawn, make Ullikummi spawn claimed right after the death of the correct placeholder, much like Biast is to Shadow Dragon, or Absolute Virtue is to Jailer of Love.

These methods of spawning will have two effects which are currently unavailable to many players:

RMT will no longer have a monopoly (http://www.killingifrit.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=136757&n=last#) on this NM because there will be many for him to spawn. Every Linkshell which camps it 3-6 hours will have a chance to spawn him.

The large window it currently has in unbearable and disheartening to many people.

Thank you for your time.

[Icemage]

This sounds like a reasonable alternative. I'm not really sure that making him harder to pop than Olla Paquena is really a good idea, but anything is an improvement over what we have right now.


Icemage

[Karinya]

It almost doesn't matter how hard he is to pop (well, within reason) as long as players feel that their actions are earning them progress toward getting him.

Instead of earning progress toward some claimbotting S.O.B. getting him.

Or having no effect at all because his spawn is just that random.

I think it's important that any new system for popping Ulli should have the property that the more players/parties/LS's are trying to get Ulli, the more Ullis they should actually pop per day. Pops should be (at least roughly) proportional to the amount of player effort that is being applied, and the players who make the effort should be rewarded with the chance to fight Ulli and not have him claimed by someone else.

Both of the above suggestions have this property, but there are also many other ways that would work well. As long as they have the property that player effort is rewarded in proportion to the effort put in, and the rewards go to the players who actually did the work, it'll be a good system.


I'm not sure why we're bothering to discuss this though. It's clear that SE knows what the problem is and how to fix it - because they *did* fix it in sea. Sea has its own problems but this isn't one of them. If they wanted to apply a similar fix to Ulli or even the 3 Kings, nobody could stop them - nobody would want to stop them. But they won't fix problems in old content even after they themselves have invented a better way. Why this is, nobody knows, but they have a several years track record of it, so it seems pointless to hope that they will change their minds about that.

I bet you won't see an Ulli-like situation in the TAU endgame areas, either - and that Ulli himself will remain the stupid pain in the ass he is.

[Aeni]

There was nothing really wrong with Ulli before the change. The change only made it worse. In fact, it suspciously rewards hajins and RMT. Like seriously, wtf? Ironically, now the only way you can get a claim is to bot. GG GJ SE.

[Vyuru]

Sea has its own problems but this isn't one of them. If they wanted to apply a similar fix to Ulli or even the 3 Kings, nobody could stop them - nobody would want to stop them. But they won't fix problems in old content even after they themselves have invented a better way. Why this is, nobody knows, but they have a several years track record of it, so it seems pointless to hope that they will change their minds about that.


The other thing I don't get is, ok, take Argus for example, his spawn time is huge, and his drop rate is really really low. If you are going to make a huge respawn time, at least up the drop rate, or like Ose, the Assualt jerkin is rare/ex and he can have a rather long respawn time, and a low drop rate. Why can't the Assualt Jerkin have a higher drop rate? I don't mind working on something so long as I have a reasonable expectation of a decent reward.

[Aeni]

The other thing I don't get is, ok, take Argus for example, his spawn time is huge, and his drop rate is really really low. If you are going to make a huge respawn time, at least up the drop rate, or like Ose, the Assualt jerkin is rare/ex and he can have a rather long respawn time, and a low drop rate. Why can't the Assualt Jerkin have a higher drop rate? I don't mind working on something so long as I have a reasonable expectation of a decent reward.

I agree with this. The mob is rare already, what purpose then is it to make the rare/ex drop rate abysmal? Heck, the stats aren't even that great to begin with. If it's such a crappy drop rate and claim rate, make it 1/2 decent. For Assault Jerkin, throw in +10 to DEX and AGI each and I think you'll have a winner...

[eticket109]

I agree with this. The mob is rare already, what purpose then is it to make the rare/ex drop rate abysmal? Heck, the stats aren't even that great to begin with. If it's such a crappy drop rate and claim rate, make it 1/2 decent. For Assault Jerkin, throw in +10 to DEX and AGI each and I think you'll have a winner...

I actually sent SE a feedback on the rare mob + crappy r/e drop rate issue. My negative experience has been with Stubborn Dredvodd. No one has any idea what his timer is. Every site lists him at 21-24 but I know that isn't right. He just seems to randomly show up when he wants to. Overall in 6 months I have seen and claimed him 8 times, probably more then anyone else on my server. What do I have from it? A tathlum belt. The ring and boots he drops are r/e too. It just makes no sense to have an NM with such a long spawn time with such a low rate.

[Aeni]

I actually sent SE a feedback on the rare mob + crappy r/e drop rate issue. My negative experience has been with Stubborn Dredvodd. No one has any idea what his timer is. Every site lists him at 21-24 but I know that isn't right. He just seems to randomly show up when he wants to. Overall in 6 months I have seen and claimed him 8 times, probably more then anyone else on my server. What do I have from it? A tathlum belt. The ring and boots he drops are r/e too. It just makes no sense to have an NM with such a long spawn time with such a low rate.

Yeah, I'm all for variety of drops, but the thing is, there's no guarantee on these super rare pops on their drops and what would suck is it can drop 5 items and maybe only 1 of those 5 is the one you can actually use on the main you are currently playing. Then there's the random chance that ... you could have 100 drops registered honestly by players and that one item NEVER drops (while the other 4 do drop on occassion) This, to me, makes no sense at all and is really stupid. Stupid to the point that it becomes meaningless to use system resource to even have these things out in the first place.

Save some system resource and put in a few more different monster textures >.>

[sphero]

There was nothing really wrong with Ulli before the change. The change only made it worse. In fact, it suspciously rewards hajins and RMT. Like seriously, wtf? Ironically, now the only way you can get a claim is to bot. GG GJ SE.
I personally know that some got banned for claim botting Ulli... but RMT's still do. Thats suspicious!
For the rare/ex thing, i would agree...its one solution. But to be honest, the only REAL solution would be to remove those 24/7 campers (RMT). This will hopefully happen soon with the new and allmighty Task Force *cough cough*

[Likibiki]

There's nothing wrong with Ulli, apart from the RMT there.

Take out RMT and it's just a normal NM with a long pop timer. Let's face it, they're not meant to be easy to get (not saying that RMT are meant to be there or anything), but they're meant to be tricky pops.

Hopefully it'll get sorted soon - let's face it, it's got to be because people are quitting over it now.

[Aeni]

There's nothing wrong with Ulli, apart from the RMT there.

Which is exactly what I was venting about. Here's a situation for everyone to mull over.

Let's say that your LS has been camping this NM a lot. You have pretty good pullers and you all work very well together. In fact, you're one big happy family.

But imagine, if you would, that everyone here has just started out in sky. No, they don't have another "l33t" 75 job. They never got some really good rare/ex items before. This is actually their first real progression into what I call "end game."

So... how do you think your LS will feel if they are, time after time and again, being outclaimed on ulli by RMT over and over with a random pop timer? I'd feel really ***** considering those RMT peeps NEVER log out.

[Vyuru]

Actually, now that I've thought about it some more, what I'd like to see happen with alot of NMs is to make them spawned NMs by trading rare/ex items, or just plain ex items. Have the items be reasonably hard to get for their respective NM, and have the mobs that drop them be in reasonably large supply, and you trade the items to a ??? that is always there. Think like the Air Tanks for spawning that one NM, can't remember his name.

I would much rather have that then the current situation where you and 20+ people all sit around waiting for the monster to pop, only to have 16 of the people there suddenly use flee and run over to one corner of the room 2 seconds before the monster appears.

Why do I suggest this?

Because of my experiances with the Morion Worm. Used to be that you traded an iron ore to a ??? that appeared about every 15 minutes. Well, two people on my server totally dominated this NM for well over 2 years, YEARS people, every day on the spot, except for Chinese New Year, they were on 24/7 camping this worm.

One would camp one spawn point, and used to train the zone and harrass people leveling or farming there, the other person would run around from spawn point to spawn point, killing anything worthwhile right after he killed the worm, and as the worm's ??? respawn timer was getting near, he'd just stick to running from room to room. Once the ??? appeared, he'd hit flee and run straight to it every single time, even if the ??? was at the other end of the zone and far out of his and his partner's field of vision.

Proof?

I was down there multiple times helping some of my mage friends camp this worm for a tathlum, they would camp specific spawn points and I would follow the person running around in case it spawned next to him. There were several times where I received a /tell saying, "The ??? appeared!" followed about a second later by, "I just spawned the worm, get over here!"

About 1-2 seconds before I recieved the first /tell, this person would ALWAYS hit his flee and go racing straight for where the ??? appeared. Now really, how in the world can a small group of people compete against something like that in a large area with multiple ??? spawn points on a timer? We can't cover every ??? and we don't know where or when the ??? is going to appear, well, we know when, but we don't know immeditatly where the ??? appeared.

Also, if there were alot of other people who wanted to get a morion tathlum, these two people would keep the worm spawned, claimed, and slept until the other campers left, the longest that lasted was about 2 hours if memory serves me right. This was of course before several updates that prevented them from doing this anymore.

That is why I think that NMs should be mostly spawned, the items that spawn them should be relatively reasonable to get, and the items should at least be ex to prevent a small group of people a continous monopoly over the NM. You want to kill the NM a bunch of times? Then bring along a bunch of people, all with their rare/ex spawn items, I shouldn't be made to wait just because 3 people with full gobbie bag upgrades brought along 40+ pop items each and are taking their time to kill "their" mob, all while offering to sell me that mob's drops at an exorbitant price.

Heck, look at the Stroper Chyme, a group of people used to monopolize him too. Back when there was only one chyme spawn point, if there was ever anyone else there trying to get an archer's ring, their blm would poison the Stroper Chyme, unequip his weapon, and start meleeing it, while the other 6 people in his party stood there, and tossed him the occasional cure.

SE's stance of, "it's your claim, you do what you want with it" is seriously flawed vs NMs and HNMs. It sounds like they have changed that with HNMs, but I think that something really needs to be done with NMs, and heck HNMs too. Look at King Artho, I see alot of suspected RMT who keep his last placeholder crab slept if there is anyone else around, that should not be allowed.

A HNM LS should be booted into jail for MPKing if they allow Serket, or other HNMs to run rampant through exp parties, and it should be considered harrassment if they are killing all of the mobs for the exp parties who were there before them just because Serket is about to spawn and they don't want to mess up their /targetnpc & provoke macro, assuming they even bother with macros and don't straight out claimbot him. I can see the occasional exp party getting hit with a HNM's AoE attack, but to let him run into the middle of a party fighting their own monster, and then to tank him right on top of that party, that is low and disgusting behavior considering all of the places that are NOT by exp parties that you could be fighting this monster.

Sorry for a bit of a rant, but I recently witnessed a very ugly event down in the basement of the Citadel, this isn't the first time I've seen a HNM LS do that to people down there and the attitude of the HNM LS players really kind of got me mad.

[Davitron3000]

Sorry for a bit of a rant, but I recently witnessed a very ugly event down in the basement of the Citadel, this isn't the first time I've seen a HNM LS do that to people down there and the attitude of the HNM LS players really kind of got me mad.

GC is a horrible place when Serket is up. I try to avoid it at all costs :P

I really wish SE would take some of the suggestions of the players and change Ulli so that it can't be so easily monopolized.

This group on Valefor gets almost every claim and is there all the time. We go with alliance plus to camp him and still lose claim almost everytime. (I think we will get Ulli once or twice every couple of months). The worst part is that this group is then selling rare/ex items in /shout (Byakko's haidate, abjurations).

A very frustrating part of the game.

[Karinya]

It's clear in hindsight that the 3 Kings, at least, should have been BCNM type fights from the start (think Ouryu Cometh, The Wyrmking Descends etc.). But when SE *did* introduce KS99 versions of them, they were much harder fights than the outdoor one (partly because of member and time limits) and the drops weren't even close to as good.

Change Ullikummi to a 1% chance of popping *claimed* whenever anyone kills an aura statue. Change Faf/Behe/Adam to popping by rare/ex item like jailers (with the usual %chance of HQ pop). Standing around and waiting for other people to kill placeholders for you - heck, standing around and waiting for a pop *period* - has to go. The right to fight NMs should be earned, not stolen.

Even the people who are succeeding with the current system will probably like this change (except RMT, but screw them). Who wouldn't rather kill stuff for hours than stand around doing nothing for hours?

[Vyuru]

The right to fight NMs should be earned, not stolen.


Hmm, that reminds me, if you pop a NM with an item, it should spawn claimed by you.

I'm still traumatized over having my Bubbly Bernie stolen from me ; ;

Who wouldn't rather kill stuff for hours than stand around doing nothing for hours?


I like that idea, especially since it would mean you couldn't fight too many placeholders at one time because there would be the chance that you just spawned 5+ NMs

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Change Ullikummi to a 1% chance of popping *claimed* whenever anyone kills an aura statue. Change Faf/Behe/Adam to popping by rare/ex item like jailers (with the usual %chance of HQ pop). Standing around and waiting for other people to kill placeholders for you - heck, standing around and waiting for a pop *period* - has to go. The right to fight NMs should be earned, not stolen.

You want to change claim to Ulli as a matter of luck? Actually, that's a terrible idea because it would just encourage RMT and legit players alike for flood and lag up the area even more.

Ulli can be taken down with an EXP/Merit PT as it is, we don't need more people there. Pop rate by population only encourages more monopolization by RMT, not less. If SE did this, you'd have more and more waves of RMT going through all the zones to EXP to go to sky just to exploit that.

The pop item on other mobs idea is interesting, but then RMT would move to monopolizing the mobs that held those items instead. So back to the drawing board.

Think about what RMT can't shamelessly exploit in this game - BCNM, ENM, KSNM, Dynamis, Limbus and Assault. They have restrictions and limitations placed on them. BC/KS you can only do if you have seals. Dyna, Limbus and Assault have time restrictions after entry or completion.

I say SE implement a series of quests in the vien of ENMs, available once per conquest week. After certain criteria are met, you can enter a BCNM or spawn and fight Ulli or what have you. Once a PT completes the quest for triggers, they can't be repeated until next conquest week. Legit players get thier triggers, RMT can't monopolize claim and neither can botters.

[pearlsea]

Limiting an linkshell to one Ulli fight a week is even worse of an idea then the 1% spawn idea, it does not fit in to the current sky system and people should have the right or ability to spawn Byakko more then once a week like they can spawn the other guards once a week,

Put the timer back to 3-6 hours and get rid of the RMT and problem solved, dont need to make it as drastic as once a week per LS.

[Lmnop]

unless it's a quest that's completeable once/week. In which case, everyone can complete the quest, and whoever initiates "spends" their quest completion for the week. Thus, you'd have one run/LS member.

Though I don't think taking everything to instanced battles is a likely direction. It just seems kind of a "meh" way to do it, and S-E doesn't like "meh." They also don't like turning the game into Guild Wars.

What Karinya said may indeed have loads of people in the zone, but it's still easier to claim one/10-20 mobs than it is to claim one NM. Even getting your Papyrus back in the day when you had 3 parties camping 4 Lich spawns (and competitive players are just as bad as RMT) wasn't super terrible compared to claiming Fafhogg or what-have-you.

[Karinya]

It wouldn't be a matter of luck, it would be a matter of who kills more statues. If the RMT think they can kill more statues faster than a legit LS they're welcome to try; but even if they can kill more, they can't win claim on every statue in the room and kill every statue in the room as fast as they pop (not without devoting a LOT more accounts to it, at least; and more accounts cost them more money, especially if they attract more GM/STF attention). It's only the placeholder judo and claimhacks that let them get 90-100% of Ullis now. If they could only get claims proportional to their population or killing ability vs. a legit LS's population or killing ability they wouldn't be even close to a monopoly anymore, just an annoyance.

Your idea that RMT can pull infinite numbers of 75 BLMs out of their asses *for free* is just wrong. Leveling up accounts costs them money and they have a limited number that they deploy in the most profitable ways they can find. If you can't monopolize Ulli with 10 accounts anymore it may not be worth it. (This might only move them somewhere else, but I think at this point most people would be glad to see them *only* killing every goobbue in Zi'Tah and operating 100 fishbots per server.)

Most importantly it wouldn't be a matter of who has the best claimhack, which is what it presently is. Almost anything is an improvement on that.

1% might be a little low though, on reconsideration. 2, 3 or even 5% would be better. Kill ~20 statues, get your claimed ulli, kill him - GSI aren't supposed to be so hard that they take the focus off the actual god fights.

[Jei]

I thoght NM popped by trading items already popped claimed by you.

[little ninja]

S.E didnt really take the Ulli situation under good judgement. First problem we had was the RMT. loved to train all the golems into the middle. Sometimes killing themselves, but most times then not flooding the circle area with 10 golems.. Which they still managed to get Ulli.

The second problem back in the day was an ls killing Ulli's placeholder an the RMT just standing around. An the only time they would claim or voke the placeholder is when it came up as Ulli, otherwise other ls's thought they were just better.

Now here we are. We have an nm, that can pop anywhere from 3-21 hours. Who does this benifet besides players who can live in sky? Then we dont even trully know the pop condtions. Is it 1 placeholder? is it the whole room now? If you depop the place holder will you reset Ulli's pop time?

Obviously if S.E's first 3 attempts to fix this NM failed. Its time they park their ego at the door an listen to the player base. Seriously does S.E follow a dummies guide to game programming?? Seems the first attept at a fix is something that nerfs some job. The next thing they do is make the problem even worse.

I dunno there are what 11 mobs in his room as it is. Just make those mobs drop an item that pops Ulli. Their isnt anyway for the g/s to monopolyze the 11 mobs without bringing in others RMTs. Thus actually hurting there other areas of gil making.

[Lmnop]

Did someone say that Biast pops claimed? If so, that shows that S-E has methods of handling NMs in a better method than the current one. Even if they don't like the Karinya Postulate, they have the power to make an NM pop under better conditions than they currently are. And it's not like it's a huge fuss to go back and change old content -- afterall, in one update they changed the drops of 3 NMs to rare/ex identicals, as well as made loads of new NMs in all of the old zones (one of which being Biast).

I usually tend to stay away from this scapegoat bandwagon but I think in regards to the sky situation... S-E's really dropping the ball. Well, in general, they know they need to change the way the old content works. It truely feels like they're trying their best to abandon FFXI and make the players play Treasures of Aht Urgan. Instead of fixing the old as they know they should, they implement new things so that no one has any interest in looking back.

[pearlsea]

Did someone say that Biast pops claimed?
I do not think biast pops claimed or with aggro but Chariotbuster Byakzak does http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/Chariotbuster_Byakzak

[Vyuru]

I thoght NM popped by trading items already popped claimed by you.


I think some do and some don't. Bubbly Bernie, when I used to pop him for gil in my old newb days, did not pop claimed and there was a slight problem with people grabbing him after you pop him. The Guardian Crawler spawns in a green unclaimable state, wanders over to where you pop him, and if you are in his detection/aggro range, he attacks whoever pops him, and turns claimed at the same time. Otherwise he turns yellow and just stays there and anyone can attack him.

Other pop item NMs I'm not to familiar with, I know that Goblin Wolfman spawns claimed at least, but it's sticking in my mind I've heard of other pop NMs that do not spawn claimed.

[Legal Fish]

A lot of these ideas are just bad and don't work with Sky. Remember guys, SE designed sky as a system, and it's almost flawless. Ulli has least in common with the rest of the system. This may be why it's the most annoying part. Here is my fix, after much educated thinking:

Required:

2-4 (maybe 3-6) Repop. This pretty much turns Ulli into a real sky NM. At the moment, he no longer has a PH, which helps a lot for people who feel like exping there.

Would be nice:

He could cast Silencega and Thunder Break. This would make it impossible to duo, but give gil sellers a hard timer.

Rage mode. He should increase with walking speed and attack speed when over 15 minutes go by, more so after 30 minutes. This for the same reason as above.

[little ninja]

Well some mobs do pop claimed. So its not a question of wether or not S.E can do it. Its now a question of why hasnt S.E gone to this method. If you get a ton of complaints about 1 NM. Shouldnt this warrent some kind of investigation.

[dworkin]

Hmmm i dunno i love the new Ulli system...

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y75/ninjai/counttheblm.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y75/ninjai/findme.jpg


GO AHEAD AN FIND ME IN THIS LAST ONE>>

[little ninja]

Looks like that all the time nowadays on our server. Seems when ulli is about to pop they come from the other PoP areas to majorly secure Ulli.. But that sure is alot of BLM...

[dworkin]

Looks like that all the time nowadays on our server. Seems when ulli is about to pop they come from the other PoP areas to majorly secure Ulli.. But that sure is alot of BLM...

Yeah last two times i was up there it has looked like that. An dont be shocked if you see a few with shells on. They are pretty much all G/S

Funny how many BLM they have. But it is very effective. They position some of them on the porter. an then some in the tunnel back. An then they just nuke Ulli back an forth like a ping pong. Then they wait a few mins. Seems like its about 2-3 minutes. then they pin pong him again between the tunnel an the porter blm.

So much for the Blm nerf to Impossible to gauge type mobs.

[DragKnightFutch]

My LS allways had trouble claiming Ulli, This stupid Pop time is also rediculous, theres a difference between being difficult and unreasonable. You need to check your prioritys if you can wait 4-8hrs in one sitting for something you may or may not even claim! The Rare/ex Pop its definatly a wise idea. My LS never got to Kill byakko yet because of this Ulli junk.

[little ninja]

Yeah when we all heard that Ulli went from 3-6 hours to 3-23 hours. I think everyone all said at the same time. That it was another way S.E was helping the RMT.

Have you all noticed you can buy all the other pop items for 300-700k, but Ulli is stil selling for 2mil-5mil..