Interim Report – Sorry to keep you all waiting!

[Rezeak]

While i have been unhappy with the recent content added to the game.

20 hr cool down on 10 min event.
Legion/Odin V2 being organizible nightmare
and their stubbornness on the difficultly/skill curve on NNI

Akihiko Matsui at least has let us know we've been heard on some key aspects and really as a producer is a really nice change and i hope he does well with FFXI cause if he does it'll be a huge improvement.

If i did have a message for him it would be, if 50-80% of the player base think something should be done a different way or should be removed then it should be considered and not just forced upon us being told "we made it this way, so deal with it". At least that's how the recent communications have made me feel.

[Llana_Virren]

With PD and Embrava getting the nerf, newer content won't be designed around them so much.

It wasn't the abuse of certain abilities that forced the development of retarded content.
it was retarded content that forced the development of strategies relying on certain abilities.

Nerfing PD and Embrava is not about "fixing" balance, it is about adding shelf life to content that is being beaten "too quickly."

[odericko]

Open communication is always good. Grats to the producer for filling us in.

[Dekar]

The enmity and the TP given to enemies (super TP spam by some) need a serious overhaul. I'm extremely delighted that the team is looking at fixing both.

[Babekeke]

While some of the Abj gear is amazing like Iaso Head/Feet, I have to say the price for -1s are very, very, deterring.

This.

Get rid of some logs, and add more of the lvl 100+ synth materials to VW. Make it easier to reach 110, and cheaper to synth the gear.

[ManaKing]

On any content that will be like VW in the future, and maybe void watch itself, you should implement a system that rewards longevity. I'm pretty lucky as far as drops go, but even I get frustrated in VW, because it's hard to tell how long it's going to take before you actually get a pay off.

I'm personally still trying to get an Ephemeron off of Aello. I've gotten every other drop besides the actual HQ sword. The more I do Aello, the less rewards I get because I can't pick up the random items anymore. Whirlwind Dirs are nice and I use the Earring as well. But when I get them now, I'm not particularly happy because I can't do anything with them. When you relinquish mob specific drops, you get nothing for it. It doesn't do anything for the player, in fact it pretty much makes it so that you won't get any plates off mob (or so it feels like).

Furthermore, you can't make the sword from pulse cells, because no one ever gets the sword to begin with. So even though I would be happy to throw all of my gil at the problem, like it was implied would be possible when they introduced pulsing, I can't because they honestly don't exist. Unlike the rest of the gear in VW, which has very low drop rates, the drop rates for Pulse gear is absolutely terrible.

What I would want is a system that rewards my repeated attempts with increased odd of drop for pulse items. The way I would want that to be established would be to permanently increase your Red values the more you relinquish mob specific drops until you gain the actual pulse item. In the case of Aello, if you relinquish the earring, pants, or NQ sword, you gain an extra 5%, 10%, or maybe even 20% for the items depending on the rarity of the drops. Make it so that this effect can stack very high so that players can continue to be reinforced to go for the items that they want. As the red value increases so will the chance at getting heavy metal plates and other desirable VW specific drops. As soon as you actually get the pulse item to drop, it completely resets your progress.

As a strategy, this allows players 3 benefits. Primarily, it allows players to get the extremely rare items they want if they put in enough time and motivates them to continue trying because eventually your red value will be high enough that the items will drop. Secondly, it motivates players that already have pulse items to continue to fight the mobs because the event will be more lucrative the more they do it. If a player is intentionally relinquishing all of their rare drops to increase their chances of getting heavy metal plates, then they are going to be doing VW more often. As their red value goes up, it becomes easier to farm plates for money or for their weapons. Third-ly, there will be more pulse cells available for purchase and more heavy metal plates for upgrades. When they finally do get the pulse items, they won't be completely upset that they got the item because they can always pulse cell them and make a profit off of the sale of the sell.

If you don't want to do that, then at least don't make the drop rates for pulse gear as bad as they are. Because they are terrible. I got the Kaggen Body after like 20 tries. Super Lucky. Akvan still hasn't dropped after over 100. I've heard much worse drop rates than mine and I feel terrible that people that are trying aren't getting rewarded. It really is a turn off when you are playing and doesn't do anything but frustrate your player base.

[Mefuki]

Indeed. The current drop rate on Ephemeron according to FFXIDB is 1 out of 3327 or 0.03%. That's right, not one percent, not even a whole point of a percent but zero point zero percent...

No drop rate in any game should ever have a drop rate that bad.

It's a drop rate that'd be unreasonable for an item off fodder monsters let alone a monster you need to gather a group to kill.

[Fredjan]

While I am glad to see a post like that from our new producer, I'll be more excited when I see changes in-game. Also, to clear things up, Matsui is not the director. Mizuki Ito's still the director while Matsui is the producer.

I feel the one system that should be adjusted more than anything gear wise is Voidwatch. The pulse weapons' drop rate off Aello, Qilin, and Uptala are horrendously low. It isn't just Ephemeron, it applies to Coruscanti and Murasamemaru as well.

Murasamemaru: 5 out of 7938, 0.06%
Coruscanti: 28 out of 42047, 0.07%
To go up a notch, it isn't just those.
Borealis: 18 out of 13650, 0.13%
Asteria: 1 out of 3805, 0.03%
Aytanri: 9 out of 7911, 0.11%
Delphinius: 7 out of 3066, 0.23%
This isn't just limited to Voidwatch, either. Legion has two pulse weapons as well.
Girru, from the Gallu: 1 out of 448, 0.22%
There's also no recorded HQ katana in 300+ Botulus kills, which is to be expected.

It's obvious the pulse weapons were set that low in drop rate overall intentionally. Even pulse bodies were tough to get to drop. I've heard many stories about Corsairs having problems getting Akvan's bullet, too.

Sceamol band - 1589 out of 11504 - 13.8% - Roughly 1 per 7-8 fights
Akvan's pennon - 525 out of 11504 - 4.6% - Roughly 1 per 21-22 fights
Omphalos bullet - 222 out of 11504 - 1.9% - Roughly 1 per 51-52 fights
Heka's kalasiris - 105 out of 11504 - 0.91% - Roughly 1 per 109-110 fights

While I realize that's merely a statistic approach as it factors a full alliance's chances at the item, every individual's results can vary. What I will say without a doubt, is this:

From a pure statistic point, let's look at Coruscanti again, since over 40,000 chests off Qilin have been noted and the drop rate seems to be around 0.07%.
Coruscanti: 28 out of 42047, 0.07% - Roughly 1 per 1501-1502 fights

It's far from a far-fetched assumption, as I know someone in my LS that has done over 1,000 Qilins and has not obtained a Coruscanti. Their luck could also be much worse, too.

That is just flat out unacceptable.

I realize this became more of a Voidwatch rant, but it goes to show how sadistic the drop rates can be, and is a reason why not many like Voidwatch. I'm pretty much convinced people don't even want Qilin for Coruscanti - they do it for heavy metal pouches and it's the one people do more, which have about a ~6% drop rate across all three Zilart Tier III NMs. Qilin, in particular, it's been recorded to drop that 2,465 times, or 1 per ~17 Qilins.

Pulse cells were a step in improving the situation overall, as for some reason they want to keep the drop rates as sadistic as they are, but I don't feel it's enough. I don't think many here feel it was enough, either.

[Byrth]

It's an average 0.087% drop rate for Pulse weapons, or 1/1148 average. Apart from the fact that doing over a thousand voidwatch fights is unreasonable, the other problem is that you may not see the average and doing Voidwatch fights until you get the drop could take much longer (or much shorter) than that.

Check out Omphalos Bullet (222/11504). How many Akvans do you need to do so that you have a 50% chance of getting a bullet?
(1-1.9%)^36 = ~50%, so about 36 fights. The odds of going 36 consecutive fights without getting the bullet is 50%, so in the other cases you got the bullet. So 50% of the CORs (and everyone else) will get this bullet within the first 36 fights.

But "It took me 6 Akvan runs to get it" isn't something anyone would remember or report. What if you're a COR that really wants the bullet but you're unlucky?
(1-1.9%)^154 = 5%, so after 154 fights you have a 95% chance of getting the bullet. Wait a minute, so 5% of the CORs have to do more than 26 Akvan x6 sets to get their Bullet? That's pretty unreasonable.

You can see this below:


Anyway, one very simple solution would be to add a point system as suggested in the OP. Make it so that killing Akvan 80 times gives you enough "points" to just buy the bullet and cut off the upper end of the distribution. Alternatively, everyone wants maybe 4 items from Voidwatch that have a 2% drop rate. They could have made the points generalize across fights and used the relatively larger sample size to increase the cost of items a bit.

Still, the absolutely most essential and important part of such a system is:
The point items MUST be the same as the items that drop off the monster
You haven't actually improved the system by cutting off the upper tail of the distribution until this is the case.

[Luvbunny]

Please make contents for the 75% of the population, who prefer casual contents that can be solo-ed or small party set up. Voidwatch is a good example of large group content, but the drop rate is unbalanced. Also you need to add more variety of gears to some of these not so popular VW monster to give people incentive to do them. Overall thanks for letting us know what is going on with the team. Really appreciate the transparencies.