I miss campaign Follow

One thing I wish they would do, is update the Campaign/Conquest System to account for far fewer people playing.

Way back when these were first introduced, you had 1k+ players on a server and at any given time you'd have 50-100 people in many different common leveling zones in the game.

But now, everybody hangs out in Adoulin or Mhaura, doing the (almost) instanced content. This means that very few people are even in the Shadowreign areas, or even the old old conquest areas.

The systems are balanced around there being many players taking part in it, when there are so few today. Don't know about your server, but the last few weeks I looked at ours (Slyph) and saw that Beastmen usually own most of the vanilla areas on a consistent basis. Family member and I did a LOT of leveling in Shakrami and Onzozo, gaining a few hundred thousand experience points each, and Windy took over Kolsushu.

Next week, we did the same again (trying to get some lowbie jobs up, etc) and by Tuesday.... the Beastmen had 80%+ progress. I'm like "how is anybody supposed to keep control of an area like that!?"

We did a few more leveling sessions and barely put a dent in the thing, and we gave up afterwards.

The problem is.... some of those regional vendors sell hard-to-get crap, but if the areas are never owned.... how are people supposed to actually get that stuff?

They need to re-tune the systems and tone down the beastmen advances so that players actually have a hope of getting some progress going, because there just ain't enough people doing stuff in these areas anymore.

And this directly relates to Campaign -- I don't think raising the level of the mobs would be the right idea, because some of those mobs (especially any Quadav that casts Breakga...) are still cheap, even at Item Level. Raising their levels would make Campaign impossible, and people would have even less incentive to do it.

I'd like to max out my WoTG rank, but I never see anybody at all doing Campaign, and some of the mobs (again, Quadavs) are just too cheap to attempt to solo, unless there's also NPCs there to hold stuff so I can pluck them one by one.

Maybe if I knew that my contribution was going to mean something, I'd be tempted to try some more campaign battles. Maybe if Breakga wasn't pretty much guaranteed death, I might be tempted to fight Quadavs. But, I know that no matter how many hours I dump into trying to help win the war.. a few days later and that will all be erased like I never did a thing because the game is wrongly assuming that players are regularly pitching in when several days go by and nobody touches it.

Edited, Dec 22nd 2016 3:06pm by Lyrailis

Sometimes, its better to just do EXP in an area or Campaign within the last few hours before the weekly tally. Always seems that's when it makes the most difference. Or just my perception.

Improving Campaign is one of those things I pined for even when it was current. Just from the simple gameplay perspective, it was something that was always going on that didn't need loads of other bodies to at least participate. It promoted variable job thinking and the utilization of abilities frequently ignored in usual play.

Some of the things I wanted...
- Region control shifted from conquest tally to real-time.
- Multiple "bases" added to each zone, ultimately influencing control status.
- Strongholds conquerable regardless of other zone status. Direct teleports added if at least one base is controlled.
- Ability for players to deploy a country's NPC squads to a specific location for battle by talking to an arbiter in the corresponding zone.
- Deployment/Arrival times shortened significantly for friend and foe alike with NPCs scaling based on player participation on both sides.
- Unowned bases are always active for campaign, but also better defended by stock enemy units.
- Non-campaign mobs no longer aggro when flagged and players get reraise with a 1m weakness. Non-aggro persists for 30 seconds after a battle ends or you get outside a base area.
- Crafting requests that fluctuate per base and squad, serving as buffs to NPCs based on supply. Rewards AN and Gil. Perhaps even EXP as a low level alternative.
- Scrap the Union system and employ personal rewards with a better loot pool. Relic currency should be much more frequent, perhaps even getting the pouch treatment for singles.
- Increase the number of hero and enemy squads.
- Allow us to learn the various Campaign WS (perhaps with tweaks) while adding more for poorly or non-represented weapon types.
- Revise score limit system to not be per-minute, but more like 5 seconds. Further enhance specific category caps so fights going over 15m don't require tag recycling (and Union forfeiture). 1 JP should also be earned for every 10k AN acquired, tally remembered between battles.
- Create ilvl versions of the armor sets with upgrade paths fueled by AN purchases. Other equipment can be added, as well.
- Create campaign-specific abilities and spells, such us a JA that calls for a cure from healer NPCs within 50 yards, has combat NPCs within range assist you, and so on. Some being job-specific is fine.
- Designate certain regions as hot spots every 8 hours, where rewards are further increased, but foes are also stronger (relative to ilvl) and attack more frequently if bases are claimed by players. Unique enemy squads can also be limited to these locales, perhaps including the Shadowlord himself.
- Keep track of daily Campaign participation and send rewards based on the day's work. Timed percentage of total areas owned by the 3 nations would also play a role in reward quality.

...and probably more, none of which will obviously ever happen because skeleton crew. And while I am someone who does believe new content does need to be a thing eventually, a palatable reward spread can still make participation appealing even after primary goals are succeeded. Nonetheless, RNG as presented in the event via base locations and mobs you fight should produce some variety. Team up or run solo, s'all good.

Even if I had done that, thanks to enemies giving 2-5k+ per kill at T-VT, at lower level I would get at most, what, 2 kills per levelup? It still wouldn't last that long, lol.

Ah well. Thankfully I got most of my crafts leveled already and the regional vendors aren't really a huge issue for me most of the time, but I'd hate to be, say, a newbie cook or something who actually needs that stuff.