Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

[Feba]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

Increased chance of drop based on frequency and/or number of kills.

Yes, exactly. Also, such drops should go directly into the player's inventory.

For example, let's say the Ridill starts off with a %1 drop rate. One out of every hundred people will be lucky enough to have a Ridill show up in their inventory the first time they're in an alliance that kills Fafnir. The next time you go back, you've got an %11 chance, then %20, %28, %35, %41, %46, %50, %53, and topping out at %55; you're more likely to get it than not get it. If they want to keep an item rarer, they could lower the percentages and gains; more common they can raise them. If they really want to prevent frustration, they could have it add some percentage at every kill up to %100, to make sure that you can't be screwed over by chronically bad luck.

[Caspian]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

I lol'd.

Anyway, I still say the game should have a system that rewards people somewhat randomly, but based on their past and total efforts. People that devote themselves to an item have a better chance of getting it every time they go back, while not giving away the item to everyone that passes by or making it easy to determine when you'll get an item (I'll have X points at Y date, which is enough to buy Z item).

Increased chance of drop based on frequency and/or number of kills. Would still keep a level of chance that SE seems to have love.

[Feba]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

The only people that thrive off the competition and the "rush" of getting a claim are the morally depraved anyway.

I lol'd.

Anyway, I still say the game should have a system that rewards people somewhat randomly, but based on their past and total efforts. People that devote themselves to an item have a better chance of getting it every time they go back, while not giving away the item to everyone that passes by or making it easy to determine when you'll get an item (I'll have X points at Y date, which is enough to buy Z item).

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

I foresee flaming or at least heated criticism of this.

Nah, its dated, archaic and decrepit in design. There are already plenty of design examples to draw from within the game that would still keep HNM encounters rare and the drops rare as well. The problem with Malacite's idea is that he wants a more simplified spawn time, which would only lead to two problems:

(1) Diminished rarity
(2) Increased competition

The fact that there's a 21-24 wait is a means of discouraging everyone from getting in on it, but the waiting not a very fun element. There are plenty of ways to make it a timesink without making you just stand around playing your PSP, DS, etc for 29 minutes and paying attention for one.

The only people that thrive off the competition and the "rush" of getting a claim are the morally depraved anyway. No need to enable them further by offering more opportunities to claim.

I think an ENM-style structure would be the best option. This way you always get a claimed mob and can even schedule multiple runs a week based on people's scheduling needs. Make the key item for getting to do the fight the ordeal rather than have the camping and drama be the ordeal. This way, you're at least doing something without dealing with the urge to find these freakshows and stab them.

The length of dynamis is a turnoff for me too but I don't expect that will ever change. It's just the nature of the event. Totally agree about Nyzul though.

I don't think it could be practically shortened to the length Mal wants, but I do think that cutting it in half would be reasonable. Of course, no one says you have to stay an entire run. I know some linkshells say you have to complete the run for your points and I think that's pretty stupid. Shit comes up, don't punish people for having life priorities. My advice here would just be to find a better Dynamis LS with more humane leadership... if that's at all possible.

100% disagree about Nyzul. I prefer it stay one or the other because separate tags for each type of Assault event just encourages players and linkshells to cram more into their week. There's enough endgame content, its practically suffocating players as it is.

People like to do other things in game, they also like to take time away from FFXI.

The structure of entry to things like Dynamis and Limbus, along with how tags are distributed between Assault and Nyzul maintain a certain level of cool-down time. If you don't do Assault, you can't do Salvage. If you do Nyzul, you can't do Assault. All the events have potent rewards and the current balance lets people choose which event to do in moderation.

[Taskmage]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

3) Either do away with the ridiculous NM respawns (24 hours or longer) or make their drops at least 50%. Eastern Shadow, King Arthro, and especially 3 kings etc... it's nonsense. Hell, just getting the claim on most of these is challenging enough.

I foresee flaming or at least heated criticism of this.

The length of dynamis is a turnoff for me too but I don't expect that will ever change. It's just the nature of the event. Totally agree about Nyzul though.

If they added changing hairstyle I might tool around with it a bit just to go twinsies with some people but Lago's hair is Lago's hair.

[Malacite]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

Didn't the dev team say they were taking the hair style issue into consideration at last fan fest? But we all know how reliable [B]they[B] are.

Totally agree on the Kupo thing too. I didn't mind it at first but now it's starting to annoy me ever so slightly. I mean there's still far, far more annoying things and in terms of priorities this would be on the bottom rung but it's a fairly easy thing to fix I would think.

A few other suggestions I forgot as well;

1) Make Dynamis instanced PLEASE and make it a 30-60 minute event and adjust mobs & drops accordingly. If you read Elmer the Pointy's JP survey, like 90-~95% of the people said they largely dislike Dynamis because it's just too long.

2) Would it be too much to ask to give Nyzul Isle it's own set of tags? It's not the end of the world but it sure would be nice if I could do Salvage and Nyzul together instead of one or the other.

3) Either do away with the ridiculous NM respawns (24 hours or longer) or make their drops at least 50%. Eastern Shadow, King Arthro, and especially 3 kings etc... it's nonsense. Hell, just getting the claim on most of these is challenging enough.

[Murphie]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

See, this is where FFXI gets a little too weird for me - roleplay isn't welcomed, yet people associate their character so deeply with themselves they want to change its appearance.

I mean, I'm sure it could be done. I think SE's talk of "PS2 limitations" on a matter such as this is complete BS. I think my characters look pretty distinguished as they are, though. I'm not much for radical style changes myself, though, so perhaps that's why.

Radical style changes certainly aren't necessary for me, but sometimes I wish I'd chosen a different hairstyle for Murphie.

[Elwynn]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

This, god this. And Ballista. When I get huge messages like that upon zoning every time, it lags me. I can't move until the message is done loading on my screen. It is manageable with the kupopowers thing, but has always been a problem with Ballista spam - which, by the way, is something I do not give a blue bloody fuck about.

You've got it backwards. You never could move until the moment when those messages show up on your screen. They don't show up until you are able to move. And at least Ballista spam is only in three zones.

But geez. On PS2 the old message was 5 lines. Now it's 6-9 lines, depending on the kupowers. (7 this week in Fairy)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

See, this is where FFXI gets a little too weird for me - roleplay isn't welcomed, yet people associate their character so deeply with themselves they want to change its appearance.

I mean, I'm sure it could be done. I think SE's talk of "PS2 limitations" on a matter such as this is complete BS. I think my characters look pretty distinguished as they are, though. I'm not much for radical style changes myself, though, so perhaps that's why.

[Feba]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

honestly, changing race wouldn't be that big of a deal. How? A wizard did it. End of story!

the bigger problem is losing character identity. I know what my friends look like. I know that some of them wish they had chosen a different race, but it would make characters lose what character they have.

maybe it would be better to force people to create a second content ID, and have their 'powers' (inventory, skills, levels, quests/missions) transferred to the new character. Given FFXI doesn't allow character transfers or multiple sessions on an account, you could even have them copied 1:1-- stop the pain of starting up a new character, without giving any real advantages. Inventory would of course force you to select one character or another, so it's not duping things. Related, there should be a service to transfer rare/ex items between characters on the same account.

[Melody_Serenata]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

I think it would be cool, just like make a fee or something and can only do it every so often like some of those other MMOs.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

In WoW it's the barbershop. Sit down and decide how you want your hair/features to look, and pay your gold based on what you have done. Really not a bad idea.

[Murphie]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

EQ2 had something like that. Basically allowed you access to the character creation screen post race/gender selection.

[Melody_Serenata]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

I think a good improvement (I think they were thinking about it at one time?) would be to make a hairdresser npc for those of us tired of our character model but don't really want to use a .dat or have the ability to use one since their not on pc with the game. I'd say being able to change your race would be a bit too extreme since the stats are different for each one, but just changing your face/hair should be ok.

[Murphie]

Re: Now Square-Enix wants customers to be happy. how will FFXI make us happy now?

God, I agree too. System messages can stay the same, but I don't need to know about that grey shit.