[dev1007] Voidwatch: Obtaining Spoils

[blowfin]

Its the right idea, but implemented very poorly. I've used this example three times allready, and because you clearly dont read the thread, I'll post it again.

You're in salvage...You kill Qiqirn Treasure Hunter...Macha's Coat drops.
Instead of casting lots, so the person who you want to get that rare item that finally dropped after going 0/100...the game randomly assigns it to someone. The person who gets it doesnt even have any mage jobs leveled. The group forces them to hold the macha's coat in storage instead of tossing or storing it.

40 runs later...
You defeat the Qiqirn Treasure Hunter.
You find a Macha's Coat on the Qiqirn Treasure Hunter.
The Macha's Coat was lost...because the game decided to auto-lot it to that person who allready had it.

I totally understand your point, not sure how reading the rest of the thread would make a difference to be honest. You'd assume they'd be adjusting drop rates upwards to compensate for that 1/6 (or w/e your group size is) chance you might be subjected to with an individual pool in an event like Salvage. Seems they haven't done it quite right in the case of Voidwatch from what I'm reading. So again, the main issue seems to be drop rates, If you can manage to dissociate other people's loot pools from your own wants (hard concept after years of shared loot pools I know). People do make an interesting point about R/E items dropping to the same people mutliple times though, what happened to the Abyssea system where R/E items don't drop if everyone in the group (in voidwatch just yourself) already has them? I'm guessing it was a bit of a pain to implement in Voidwatch for individual pools.

[Elanabelle]

/poke /poke /poke

Dear development staff,

You still need to fix the Voidwatch loot distribution system!

It's great that you're allowing us to use "symbols" in the headers for Macros, and I love that you're planning to prevent the Paralyze effect from causing Item loss ... nice ideas, really, and long overdue.

But COME ON! Maybe not everyone would agree, but those aforementioned "fixes" rate about ... a "1" on a scale of "1 to 5" where 5 means "really good, highly desired and needed fix".

Fix Voidwatch loot distribution. Make it a priority, seriously, please.

We just simply don't need all those Teak Logs, Beech Logs, Gold Ores, Mythril Ingots, Ebony Logs, and Platinum Ores. We really don't.
By NO means am I suggesting anything radical like a 40 or 50% drop rate on the best, most uncommon loot. I don't want "easy mode" ... so "inb4" any of those comments. I want to enjoy the challenge of Voidwatch, and I want to be excited and have a sense of accomplishment when I do receive a "really good" loot item. But I KNOW I am not being unreasonable when I say the drop rate on said loot should DEFINITELY be in the 10-15% range ... and not the 1-3% range that we're currently all experiencing.

S-E FFXI team, please fix Voidwatch ... and please don't wait until 2014 to do it.

Thanks

[ShadowViper]

Not reading every post so may be saying stuff thats been stated...

Overall I think the concepts behind voidwatch is really good but the major problems with it most lie around the loot system.

The ability to not pool the rare/ex items atleast with the "cost to participate" discourages people from helping. Why would you pay (stone cost) to fight a mob when you want nothing and can not give the items you didn't want to others. Atleast if they could give their items away they would have some incentive to participate. This also means the few who have access to spawn the mob don't keep fighting the mob till everyone has what they want they move on as soon as they are done with the mob.

Also, if your not going to allow moving the rare/ex items to pool then why allow the same item to drop multiple times. This becomes extremely frustrating on the person recieving and to the rest especially those wanting the items. The more you discourage people again less chance they are going to participate.

The mobs difficulty is not an issue whats so ever I have done every t3 Jeuno and most can be done in a matter of minutes with a good group, they problem comes from having some triggers that are near impossible to work such as sch abilities that either have long wait times (modus veritas) that doesnt even land when used or giving BLU a ton of staggers so they aren't capable of having most set for the fight (which was an issue for abys on non timed mobs so why bring it back on timed mobs).

And lastly the drop rate with capped lights and the cells MOST the time your still not going to get some of the better loot. Normally I wouldn't care with poor drop rates but in a system where your limited by a popping cost (the stones) then your almost required to pay some sort of currency (the cells) and lastly did the work of getting the staggers (not just killing the mob) to not get back anything but trash drops is a bit insulting which again discourages people from participating.

[Dais]

I have not read the full 25 page thread here so my apologies for any redundant feedback. If I am repeating anything someone else said let me know the post number and I will like that post with the vigor of an antican phalanx raiding a picnic.
I agree with those calling for a change to voidwatch (and by extension the new walk of echos) treasure distribution system. The 'chests for everyone' concept is golden, but the implementation dose not seem well thought out. It is a horrid hybrid beast of the new and vibrant system that is yet to be completed and the undead husk of the old unbalanced system.
The low rate items appear in these chests is one issue. I was under the impression from abyssea and the changes to dynamis and salvage that the days of endlessly spamming content for .5% drop rate item was over. I rather liked that idea and it disheartens me to see reports of how scarce the better weapons from voidwatch chapter two are. Is it not the purpose of targeting weakness to be able to work for your items and put effort in for a noticeable increase at the chance for the desired items? Needing to repeatedly target weaknesses and trade ascendance items to upgrade your light potency to 350% for a 1% chance at the desired item spits in the face of that concept.
The most frustrating thing is seeing great items go to people who cannot make use of them. Recently in a battle against Qilin I was hoping NOT to get faijin boots or coruscanti so it wouldn't depress thieves present that someone with a mere 220 dagger skill and only subjob level thief and ranger got an item they desired so much. Likewise I am thrilled to be the owner of an omphalos bullet but the two sceamol bands were treasure I was significantly less enthusiastic to find. There is just no sense in seeing items you can't equip on ANY of your jobs or rare items that you already own and can't even remove from the chests.

I propose before beginning a battle with this style of reward we are allowed to chose which items we want to work for. A simple selection at the planar rifts (or verticle conflux in walk of echos) comprised of: armor, weapons, accessories, and magian trial upgrade items, would be great for taking some of the randomness out of the system and maybe spur on the community at large to embrace these events which seem to have a lukewarm reception.
I do NOT believe the ability to pool items would be healthy since if you chose to keep something your companions dubbed irrelevant for you there would be a heavy stigma of greed associated with not pooling items -if there is going to be an element of luck to it don't make the players responsible for placing a bandage on the misfortune of those around them- real friends will find a way to help regardless.


P.S. Please take it easy on the death and zombie curse dev team. I'm glad you guys are exploring new design space, but that stuff is seriously not fun when it's in every other fight.

[MarkovChain]

SE doesn't care on what each individual can get, they care on the global rate of armor distribution on a whole server. For them wether a "good gear" (let's assume that exists) goes to a gimp with the wrong jobs leveled instead of the guy that has an empy, a relic and a mythic in the job doesn't matter.

[Elanabelle]

If the game can tabulate your amount of Zeni based on how many stupid photographs you give to a NPC, and can tabulate your amount of Therion Ichor based on your victories in Einherjar ... then there is NO reason that S-E can't or shouldn't implement a similar system for Voidwatch loot.

"Void Points" (or whatever the hell you'd like to call them) could be awarded for each victory in Voidwatch. The more difficult VWNM's would award larger amounts of "Void Points". "Capping your lights" would award slightly more "Void Points". S-E could implement a daily cap on the number of times one can be awarded "Void Points" for each VWNM (this would prevent groups from spam-killing the really weak VWNM's for Points).

Then, the player exchanges his/her "Void Points" for items.

I do not see why this wouldn't work or shouldn't be implemented.

The current system for Voidwatch loot is absolute crap, and everyone knows it. It's really too bad, too, because (outside of Temporary Items abuse) many of the Voidwatch battles are challenging and can be fun.

[Kristal]

"Void Points" (or whatever the hell you'd like to call them) could be awarded for each victory in Voidwatch. The more difficult VWNM's would award larger amounts of "Void Points". "Capping your lights" would award slightly more "Void Points". S-E could implement a daily cap on the number of times one can be awarded "Void Points" for each VWNM (this would prevent groups from spam-killing the really weak VWNM's for Points).

Then, the player exchanges his/her "Void Points" for items.

I do not see why this wouldn't work or shouldn't be implemented.

The current system for Voidwatch loot is absolute crap, and everyone knows it. It's really too bad, too, because (outside of Temporary Items abuse) many of the Voidwatch battles are challenging and can be fun.

The loot system isn't crap. People just hate not being in control of who gets what or how many times.
Oh, and logs logs logs. People hate logs. Except woodworkers.

Even with a point system, you will still not be able to just buy anything. Taking Einherjar as an example,
you could buy crafting items to make a Nefer Kalasiris, but you would not be able to buy a Heka's Kalasiris.
Accesories such as (ear)rings or Deluxe Animator, but not any armor or weapons.

Personally, I think it would be better if SE gave an option to peek into the chest first, and if you don't like the looks of it, send it back into the void and get 1 heavy metal for it. Possible a few more if there's rare/ex stuff in it. It might require some balancing, so that metal drop rate is adjusted based on the popularity of the NM. VW officers could give NMs a priority, and extra metal droprate would improve or decrease based on this priority ranking. Killing a NM often lowers it's priority rank, leaving one alone increases it's priority rank.

[Urat]

Personally, I think it would be better if SE gave an option to peek into the chest first, and if you don't like the looks of it, send it back into the void and get 1 heavy metal for it. Possible a few more if there's rare/ex stuff in it. It might require some balancing, so that metal drop rate is adjusted based on the popularity of the NM. VW officers could give NMs a priority, and extra metal droprate would improve or decrease based on this priority ranking. Killing a NM often lowers it's priority rank, leaving one alone increases it's priority rank.

I was thinking maybe add the option to send the chest back, and in return you get 100% all lights capped on your next fight. That'd be a pretty solid temporary fix.

The main reason SE isn't do anything in regards to item drop rates atm is probably because they're still screwing around with difficulty levels of the fights.

Once they've managed to hit a nice level of difficulty for VW then we can expect them to turn to drop rates, and change the drop rate to reflect the difficulty level.

Right now as of white procc and fanatics/fools, VW is set to super easy mode, and I'm sure SE is going to turn the difficulty up a bit more with each update until we get a nice level. Once we hit that I'm sure we can expect something to help with drop rates to reflect difficulty level. Until then it's hard to do anything about drop rate when there's no difficulty level to reflect off of.

Edit: Actually now after going through the voidtone thread, I think there's an even more perfect solution:

Add the ability to destroy your chest instead of take anything out of it, and in return you don't use up your voidstone, and you only get the equivalent rewards as if you had never used the stone in the first place.

This would extend the use of our voidstones and make getting double drops a lot less worse, while also giving us a psuedo secondary reward, which is basically a new voidstone in a way from the chest.

[Dreamin]

I didn't forget about you guys! I’ve been discussing all of your concerns and comments with the team regarding the Voidwatch drop system, and it has taken some time to reach a final conclusion.

It was decided that there will not be any fundamental changes to the drop system to make it possible to add item drops to the treasure pool, as the team does not believe this is not where the main crux of the problem lies.

However! The development team will be making adjustments in the future to reduce the overall length of each battle. In addition, when they add more chapters to the Voidwatch system, and introduce even stronger monsters, the drop rates for these tougher challenges will be increased beyond what is currently in place.

Camata, maybe the Dev Team dont' understands the frustrations the playbase have with the Loot System. And here's how you can tell them how the playerbase feels:

Tell them to go "POUND SAND". THAT is exactly how we feels right now.

I think most of us feels like we are freaking talking to a wall here with all the feedbback that we are giving. It's CLEAR that they are so detached with the playerbase that they should NOT be developing anything for us anymore. Seriously, just let the game die. That's how I feel at this point.

Sorry that you're taking on all the heat and I understands you're just the messenger.

[Camate]

Greetings!

We will be implementing the below adjustments to Voidwatch during this week’s test server update.

• Addition of same battle content as Route: Jeuno 2 - Fort Karugo-Narugo [S] to Beaucedine Glacier.
  ※Beaudedine Glacier has been added to the list of teleports offered by the Atmacite Refiner.
  ※The above addition is a provisional change.

• The below monsters’ AoE damage to non-targeted players (※) will be lowered.
  ※Amount of damage dealt to pets will also be lowered.
  
  

  Route	Battle Area	Monster Name
  Route: San d’Oria	King Ranperre's Tomb	Hahava
  Route: Bastok	Dangruf Wadi	Celaeno
  Route: Windurst	Outer Horutoto Ruins	Voidwrought
  Route: Jeuno	Qufim Island	Kaggen
  	Lower Delkfutt's Tower	Akvan
  	Behemoth’s Dominion	Pil
  Route: Zilart	Ru'Aun Gardens	Aello
  	Ve'Lugannon Palace	Uptala
  	The Shrine of Ru'Avitau	Qilin
  Route: Jeuno 2	Grauberg [S]	Ocythoe
  	Vunkerl Inlet [S]	Gaunab
  	Fort Karugo-Narugo [S] Beaucedine Glacier	Kalasutrax
  	Valkurm Dunes	Ig-Alima
  	Buburimu Peninsula	Botulus Rex

We will continue to make adjustments as we see how the current AoE damage adjustments affect battles going forward, so please be sure to submit any feedback you have.