Why do so many people complain about Voidwatch being a bad idea?

[Sephiran]

I'm asking this question being in denial. I've always heard people say Voidwatch was bad content, and I would simply like to ask why. In Voidwatch's defense, let me make the following points:

1.) The event has the potential to be challenging without being ridiculous. You can adjust so many variables that affect its course, including difficulty via phase displacers.

2.) It's the old HNM's, but without the camping, the waiting around, the tension, and the frustration of dealing with botters. You can spawn the same NM within seconds after you kill it.

3.) The spoil system is rewarding. Unlike HNM's, VwNM's can drop more than one of an item or piece of equipment, and drops are distributive unto each participant rather than pooled among all.

In other words, it's almost a promise of items rather than just freak chance tipped your way by Treasure Hunter. And as if that's not enough, you can affect your chance of getting a rare item by trading rubicund cells and staggering the enemy, which helps everyone in the alliance get their stuff, hence encouraging people to help each other out.

4.) There's so few restrictions on participation. Got a Voidstone? Got access to the area? Then you can participate and receive rewards. Even if you don't have the best gear, like I said, the difficulty is adjustable with no penalties to rewards.

I just don't think that all the hate on the content and on the devs is warranted in the case of Voidwatch. It's a pretty stable and well thought out event. However, I'm sure I haven't convinced anyone at all of the point I'm trying to make. So I'm going to compare Voidwatch to Nyzul Isle Uncharted Investigation, an event that I do think needs some adjustment.

1.) Nyzul Isle Uncharted Investigation is not adjustable in terms of difficulty. You can adjust the destination floor but this does not equate to adjusting difficulty. Furthermore, doing so hurts the quality of rewards.

2.) Messing up still consumes an imperial army I.D. tag. Your abyssite doesn't get lost in Voidwatch.

3.) There's no promise of rewards. You can overshoot the destination floor and blow everything if you aren't careful. Also, the mechanism of floor progression is completely based on luck. No skill is involved. The best party can get bad floor jumps only to find order lamps awaiting them.

4.) Finally, a fair shot at the best rewards is not available to everyone. Even if you're going to do floor 80 runs 25 times per item, you still can't just find a pick-up party to do it in. I believe the privilege of getting the best stuff from floor 100 does belong to the party that is truly elite. However, I also believe that the chance to obtain the rewards the slow, agonizing, but easy way belongs to everyone.

Let's also define "everyone" and "elite". You can only do Nyzul Isle Uncharted Investigation with the very best of players with the very best of gear. You have to be hardcore and border nigh on perfect...

...and that's just to make it to floor 80.

Now, does Voidwatch have the same requirements? No. It does not. Is it completely luck based? No. Is rewarding without insane preparation? Yes. Is it forgiving in the event of a failure? Yes.

[Demon6324236]

The main problem people have with VW is the drops. You said...

The spoil system is rewarding.

However people go hundreds of fights on a NM without the drop they want, how rewarding is it really? If you look around the main 3 problems people bring up with VW are...

1.) Drop rates. All items in VW are as you said, "distributive unto each participant rather than pooled among all" which is great however the problem is that for SE to counter that they made drop rates terrible. This problem really extends to all problems with VW I think, as the next 2 are victims of this problem as well, however extra details within them are what truly make them worse.

2.) Heavy Metal. Everyone loves Emp weapons, they are powerful, easy, and well rounded weapons, many of them are the most powerful weapons in the game for one job or another, and well worth the time. However once hitting the lv90 stage your next level becomes a massive problem. For all previous trials of retrieving random items, such as Sobek, Glavoid, or Fistul, you are always rewarded with a single item, and only need 50~75 items. However with Heavy Metal that number skyrocketed up to a massive 1500, and to top it off the bad drop rates of VW don't always give at least 1 plate like other trials, but instead give 1 at most, and on an average of about a 50% drop rate at best. This made these trials annoying, and painful, and is a common complaint that is VW related.

3.) Rift-dross/cinder. These drop off of only a few select NMs in VW, less common NMs, who are not the easiest of the group, and the drops are rare. The difficulty of finding them is bad enough, and their price is worse, these are not as bad as plates thanks to the fact that few Emps actually progress to this stage anyways, but it does create a problem in the end never the less and is another of the complaints VW gets.

These are the 3 reasons I think it is complained about, and really its all 1 reason, drops, in the end thats what makes it an annoying event, though that very reason keeps it alive. I understand all of the good it does & you point that out fairly well except the drops, but thats the 1 thing that matters most, and if it weren't for that I think we would all be ok with this event I think.

[saevel]

3.) The spoil system is rewarding. Unlike HNM's, VwNM's can drop more than one of an item or piece of equipment, and drops are distributive unto each participant rather than pooled among all.

This is where your wrong. The system is not rewarding as the developers have inserted mechanism's to prevent you from obtaining loot. We're talking less then 1~0.5% drop rates, so 100~200 fights for a single item. When fighting older content you would never have to fight a monster 200 times for an item. That is the single worst problem with VWNM, spectacularly low drop rates. Being unable to distribute your unwanted goods to other members is just rubbing salt in the wounds.

Other then that Voidwatch is fine, a bit too reliant on fanatics for my taste though. The NMs are way to powerful but SE did introduce a system to combat that via procs.

[Sephiran]

Is it really that bad though? If you stagger, that drop rate goes up to at least 10%.

[Arcon]

Is it really that bad though? If you stagger, that drop rate goes up to at least 10%.

No .

[Sephiran]

And it's nice to meet you Arcon. You've been an advocate of PLD and quite honestly, a hero of mine in the paladin sub-forums.

[Demon6324236]

Is it really that bad though? If you stagger, that drop rate goes up to at least 10%.

Either you are the luckiest man I have ever seen who does VW, or you have not had much experience with VW. I assure you I have capped lights every kill I do of nearly every NM I have fought, and yet I have gotten 1 rare body, Heka's, thats the only one out of over 600 VW fights total. If you add semi-rare items such as Ganesha's, Phasmida, and that kinda thing, then I probably have 10~12 out of 600 VW fights. If it went to a 10% drop rate with capped lights, I think VW would be just great honestly!

Please note I am not trying to sound rude or anything, but that makes it seem like your highly unexperienced with VW at this time.

[Monchat]

I'm asking this question being in denial. I've always heard people say Voidwatch was bad content, and I would simply like to ask why. In Voidwatch's defense, let me make the following points:

not sure if you are trolling ...

1.) The event has the potential to be challenging without being ridiculous. You can adjust so many variables that affect its course, including difficulty via phase displacers.

The event very quickly shifted to fanatic/fool's drink spam. ie you cannot win w/o perfectdefense kind of strategy. Then the devs had that in mind, and escalated in retarded moves, thinking players must like being one shoted by "chalenging " mobs. The only "chalenging ones" were city T4 if you didn't have the initial KI temp items, and even then a perfect defense made them stupid easy for a pt of 6.

2.) It's the old HNM's, but without the camping, the waiting around, the tension, and the frustration of dealing with botters. You can spawn the same NM within seconds after you kill it.

yeah it's cheap content like old HNM. I see it more like a bcnm. The mobs have stupid instant death movess. Hi guys lets make a mob that chainspell meteor and another with doom aura lolol!!! players must like that.

3.) The spoil system is rewarding. Unlike HNM's, VwNM's can drop more than one of an item or piece of equipment, and drops are distributive unto each participant rather than pooled among all.

lol. Reward system is the worse crap they ever came up with. Look, a 6 man party can kill all/most of the VWNM up to jeuno ~T3, and the last tiers if you use 1 or 2 displacers, but they'll never get crap. You have to bring 18 people just for procing, and even with capped light shit doesn't drop.

[Mirage]

Is it really that bad though? If you stagger, that drop rate goes up to at least 10%.

Yeah. 1.1% is 10% more than 1%.

[Arcon]

And it's nice to meet you Arcon. You've been an advocate of PLD and quite honestly, a hero of mine in the paladin sub-forums.

Now I feel bad about my blunt response, so allow me to elaborate, although others have already done so (with limited benevolence). The reported drop rate of certain items is well below 1%, even with all lights capped. Let's take Coruscanti for example. A disturbing number of people have been trying for well over 300 runs for it. Even with a 1% probability it's very unlikely (~5%) that it would take someone that long. With a 10% probability it would be a 0.000000000002% chance that someone would take 300 tries (i.e. statistically impossible with the current playerbase). And I know someone personally who is close to quadruple digits on it, and still no sign of it.

The Voidwatch system was good and bad at the same time. It introduced some good things (personal chests) and some very bad things (inherently low drop rates and limited accessibility because you can't transfer drops even if you wanted to).

Yeah. 1.1% is 10% more than 1%.

Technically, he said "to 10%" not "by 10%", so that's not right.