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.

[Caketime]

I've participated in some VW with my shell, we finished the 3 cities up to T4 and completed the bosses of each for KI. I found myself getting pretty bored, and I was on WHM those nights. Usually keeping people alive and rotating buffs is enough to keep me interested, but I noticed that on each fight they did the exact same strategy and just spammed temps. It worked, but those items really make fights super boring, and the instant death moves making them required don't help. :(

I found myself drinking more beer than anything else, so I guess VW is pretty awesome if you want to get drunk.

P.S.: Our SAM got a Tefnut wand and wouldn't sell it to me, electing instead to seek maximum profit via the auction house. He is a butthole.

[Sephiran]

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).



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

Don't feel bad at all about it. At the time, I had not looked at Coruscanti. I concede.


P.S.: Our SAM got a Tefnut wand and wouldn't sell it to me, electing instead to seek maximum profit via the auction house. He is a butthole.

While I have withdrawn my argument, I cannot help the fact that your SAM was a jerk. Like I said, I attribute difficulty to aspects that are strictly "hard". I don't count stuff for being time consuming nor do I consider the factor that dirtbags abound.

That being said, I withdrew the argument because now I realize that VW is not "fair". Some of the drop rates are flat-out unreasonable and give no semblance of progress. To expound, I will give the following example:

Say you have to get one helm of Briareus for an Almace or Kannagi instead of 50, but the drop rate was around 1%. That's harder in my book because there is no progress. You could kill Briareus 100 times with no helm and your work accounts to nothing because the trial is based on a binary complete/not-complete basis rather than the work-in-progress basis that we have, which at least guarantees that you'd have enough helms for both weapons assuming you lotted everything. In one system, what you accomplish progresses towards a weapon's completion. In another, each instance where the helm drops does not bring you closer to your goal at all.


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.

I guess you're right.

[Nawesemo]

Why!? Because they're ninny sissies who know nothing of 0/1987 k club runs, thats why!!!! It will be his, o yes, it will.

[Afania]

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:


Lol you're trolling right? Right??







But fine I'll bite.




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.



Troll detected!

How does that 0.1% of chance to get T3 body and 0.01% chance of getting Qilin dagger be "rewarding" in any way. You can kill 700 T3 or Qilin, with red capped every fight, and still can't get what you want.

How is that "rewarding" in anyway?

Of course you can tell me that old HNM system is even less rewarding when you have to wait for years for items like D-ring. But we're not comparing VW with old pre-Abby FFXI here. Compare with post Abyssea FFXI event, VW is less rewarding than Abby/Neo Nyzul/legion and neo dyna, at least I got gear much faster in legion/Neo nyzul/neo dyna/abby etc.

If 0.1% of 0.01% of chance of drop rate is "rewarding" to you, then other events are even more rewarding.

And no, everyone have a gold chest isn't almost a promise of items if it doesn't drop in your chests.

Also, VW is almost too easy as an event, some ppl when they play the game, they more or less wants something that isn't killed in 1~2 min with nearly 100% win rate.....but I guess it's nice to have both harder and easy event to suit every player's needs, so I wouldn't say easy is a bad thing.





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.


/bits more troll bait


No, Nyzul doesn't require "elite" player. Go to Port Jeuno, check how many ppl have Nyzul gears, majority of players has.

If it requires "elite" player, you will see only 1~2 players wearing them once in a life time. But you can see many players wearing it every day.

So how does Nyzul requires "elite" "best geared" player?


When I finished Nyzul back at April/May, the gears I used on my BLU are: Lv 85 Almace(which isn't the best, because 90/95/99 almace are better), +2 STR magian sword(which isn't the best either, cuz it's not fully upgraded), +5 STR rings(which also isn't the best, cuz there are +7 STR rings), Suppa/Brutal full time(which also isn't the best, cuz you're supposed to swap them when you WS/use spell), no proper req WS neck, I also did not have any proper WS/TP head/neck and WS belt, and had to borrow them from friends. And I did not use any 3rd pt tool either(that's also inferior to ppl that used)

I'm not hardcore, nor near perfect, but I still finished Nyzul after 1 month. So how does the statement of needing hardcore and elite to clear nyzul be true. Although I agree that Nyzul is harder than VW as content.

If there's anything wrong about reward effort ratio, then the biggest problem is, VW being easier content but takes longer to get gears, while Nyzul being a bit harder but doesn't take as long to get gears, which just isn't right.

If Nyzul can be done in 1~2 months on a subpar geared player, then VW, being easier content should be done faster, but not slower.

But no matter how I see it, VW is less rewarding than Nyzul. I do agree that there are something that's still good about VW, for example, it's pretty relaxing. If you have random schedule, or in different timezone, you can still log on anytime and start doing it with /shout pt. You can't do so with Legion/Nyzul etc, as it's not /shout friendly and you need to play as same time as other ppl. Majority of VW is easy enough with no real chance of wipe/fail if done correctly, and requires less focus level than Neo Nyzul/legion. It also offers a lot of EXP/cruor, so nice way to get them fast too. As a causal friendly event, it's certainly not a "bad" event to participate, at least.

However, the fact that you need to do hundred and hundred of VW to get item, pretty much just says "gtfo" to real causals, real causals isn't going to spend hours to /shout, camp /shout, and spam same NM for 1000 times for certain items.

That's why many ppl dislike VW, it's not rewarding, average players will feel it takes too long and frustrated to get drops, and it has no real challenage for any hardcore/elite players.

[Sephiran]

No, this is not an attempt at trolling. And furthermore, I already said I withdrew my argument.

However, I want to know then...Is it seriously possible to take a non-Duardabla BRD in Nyzul Uncharted and make at least floor 80?

[detlef]

I wouldn't ever go on BRD to Nyzul. You don't bring enough to the table and your buffs take too long to cast.

[Sephiran]

Then can you take PLD to Nyzul? What about RNG without Gandiva? What about SCH without an Embrava setup? What about RDM without...hmm...okay I got nothin'. What about RDM with everything?

Addendum (pun semi-intended): Do I think it's possible to take these jobs with the aforementioned setups in? Yes. Do I think that parties for Nyzul Uncharted will be flexible enough to let me in with these jobs? No.

[Kristal]

When fighting older content you would never have to fight a monster 200 times for an item.

When fighting older content, you had to fight a monster 200 times if you weren't best buddies with the LS leader. Assuming they didn't come up with fake violations of unwritten rules to kick you back down the list when it was your turn. (In my case, that was bringing PUP to a sky pop farm session instead of being RDM #5.)

[saevel]

When fighting older content, you had to fight a monster 200 times if you weren't best buddies with the LS leader. Assuming they didn't come up with fake violations of unwritten rules to kick you back down the list when it was your turn. (In my case, that was bringing PUP to a sky pop farm session instead of being RDM #5.)

Ummm no...

I've been in my fair share of EGLS / HNM's shells, even the unfair stupid ones. And at no time did someone have to fight something 200 hundred times, the drop rates don't work out that way. If your low priority or don't have points (depending on loot system) then you may have to wait 12~20 before being allowed to lot or gaining priority.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

When fighting older content you would never have to fight a monster 200 times for an item

True, but you also had to wait 24~72 hours before potentially fighting one NM for one chance at the best items, that or wait plenty of times to get the pops to pop and NM to get another pop for one NM.

At least the 200 times can be done in a few days and quite a few people will also gain that item and more in NM fights you could probably do with your eyes closed... Voidwatch is bad, but old style NM's were just as tedious, it's just easy for people to forget that.

VW is bad, the old hNM system and timed/forced pop NM's was bad, about the only thing that wasn't was Abyssea.

[tyrantsyn]

You know VW has one strange side effect on the community, comradery. Who hasn't stood around with a alliance, bitching about the millionth Mantis eye or petrified log. Or hasn't seen the same shout by the same guy for 4 to 5 weeks. I'll tell you what. That guy party's rarely fail....... and they always go so smooth. But that's just my personal experience.

[Afania]

Then can you take PLD to Nyzul? What about RNG without Gandiva? What about SCH without an Embrava setup? What about RDM without...hmm...okay I got nothin'. What about RDM with everything?

Addendum (pun semi-intended): Do I think it's possible to take these jobs with the aforementioned setups in? Yes. Do I think that parties for Nyzul Uncharted will be flexible enough to let me in with these jobs? No.

Not having a Nyzul job leveled/geared doesn't make the event only clearable with "elite" and "best players". It's completely player's choice to choose what job to level, if someone choose to bring BRD RDM PLD etc to Nyzul, it's your choice and your monthly fee, but you suffer from the consequence of your choice. It's as simple as that.

Needing embrava set/empy etc for DD doesn't make the event for elite/best players only also. You also need an empy DD/embrava set for VW, unless you want to leech a spot and let your pt member do more work(in that case, someone else in ally still has to do enough dmg too). Majority of VW pt also doesn't take jobs like BST and so on, so can I argue that VW pt has to flexibility? Should I argue that RDM isn't needed in VW, SCH with 300 enhancing isn't wanted in VW, my DD without empy is useless in VW because I parsed 0.5% in ally, thus VW doesn't have flexible setup because an ally can't kill VW with a pt of perle DD with axe skill level 200 and no merit WS/relic/empy etc?

That doesn't work, needing appropriate job/gear to do the event doesn't make the event elite/for best players only. FFXI been needing appropriate job/gear since launch, when certain jobs don't get invite to EXP pt, players without SJ doesn't get invite, and players doesn't skill up doesn't get invite either. If an event needs appropriate job/gear, then lv appropriate job and work on appropriate gears, or find a way to clear with none-appropriate job/gear, or deal with it and give up.

[Afania]

Abyssea.

Never understand what's up with all that Abyssea obsession, Abyssea is one of my least fav content due to how it works, and whenever I said I hate Abyssea I'm being labelled as elitist right away ;<

[Nawesemo]

You know VW has one strange side effect on the community, comradery. Who hasn't stood around with a alliance, bitching about the millionth Mantis eye or petrified log. Or hasn't seen the same shout by the same guy for the 4 to 5 week. I'll tell you what. That guy party's rarely fail....... and they always go so smooth. But that's just my personal experience.

/em pounds his fist on the table and nods.

[Plasticleg]

Never understand what's up with all that Abyssea obsession, Abyssea is one of my least fav content due to how it works, and whenever I said I hate Abyssea I'm being labelled as elitist right away ;<

That's not elitism.

related:
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/27005791.jpg

on topic:
Make petrifacts drop in log slots only and so many of these drop rates will improve.
Fat chance on it, this is SE.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Never understand what's up with all that Abyssea obsession, Abyssea is one of my least fav content due to how it works, and whenever I said I hate Abyssea I'm being labelled as elitist right away ;<

Abyssea rewarded you at a really good rate.. I don't personally like it, but I'd be a fool to try to deny otherwise.

[Nawesemo]

Never understand what's up with all that Abyssea obsession, Abyssea is one of my least fav content due to how it works, and whenever I said I hate Abyssea I'm being labelled as elitist right away ;<

O.o. its because every one checks the pearl sam/drk/war...etc... When they show up, and promptly kick them, and start making jokes about them in /l.

[Kari]

My main issues with VW are the amount of people required, the crappy drop rates, and the fact it will likely be outshined by other content.
For example, if I get the body from Akvan, it's not likely I'll do much Akvan anymore unless I go for generic VW drops, which isn't much. Eventually, even with abysmal drop rates, people who want X item will get it. Less and less people will participate in battles against that NM, and unlike Abyssea where the content was low-mannable with decent players, you'd have a hard time with most of the worthwhile VWNMs without at least 12.

Either way, I always fear that I won't get everything I need from VW before other content becomes more "now".

[Phogg]

My thoughts are I enjoy the content, organizing city clears and parties, battling through all those clears, overcoming challenges along the way, and a bit of a story line all makes for good times.

The bad times come when after that is done, you go fight (for ex.) Qilin 2348972345789345 times with capped lights and get 15 sets of boots, 30 gorgets and not the dagger you actually want.

[Demon6324236]

I like this thread. No offense but I mean it shows what I think SE thinks of VW, and how they view it. Admittedly a good event on most bases but the massive problem with rewards is what makes it hated among most of the players who do it. If it were made with a reward ratio that made it take 20~50 fights for the best piece of gear and you could get the rest along the way, it would be a different story. In otherwords, VW is not by any means a bad event. It is a good event plagued with bad drops, which makes the event annoying, frustrating, and often unrewarding, leaving it in a bad way with the players.

[Hayward]

I like this thread. No offense but I mean it shows what I think SE thinks of VW, and how they view it. Admittedly a good event on most bases but the massive problem with rewards is what makes it hated among most of the players who do it. If it were made with a reward ratio that made it take 20~50 fights for the best piece of gear and you could get the rest along the way, it would be a different story. In otherwords, VW is not by any means a bad event. It is a good event plagued with bad drops, which makes the event annoying, frustrating, and often unrewarding, leaving it in a bad way with the players.

You have hit upon the very reason a lot of people don't care for VW as compared to Abyssea. No one likes to do something for nothing, and Voidwatch all too often is an example of doing something for nothing. I'd be very willing to join in a VW run if I knew, in the end, I'd walk away with something good rather than crafting items that I'd never use. On top of that, can anyone honestly say that the gear so outclasses AF3+2 that it warrants such a low drop rate?

I wouldn't say, by any means, that Voidwatch was a bad idea. The execution, however, was flawed at best and S-E acknowledged this in their subsequent attempts to fix the event (though their eagerness to avoid fixing the drop rates is glaring).

[Afania]

You have hit upon the very reason a lot of people don't care for VW as compared to Abyssea. No one likes to do something for nothing, and Voidwatch all too often is an example of doing something for nothing. I'd be very willing to join in a VW run if I knew, in the end, I'd walk away with something good rather than crafting items that I'd never use. On top of that, can anyone honestly say that the gear so outclasses AF3+2 that it warrants such a low drop rate?

I wouldn't say, by any means, that Voidwatch was a bad idea. The execution, however, was flawed at best and S-E acknowledged this in their subsequent attempts to fix the event (though their eagerness to avoid fixing the drop rates is glaring).

If you can't accept doing an event and get nothing, then I'd say MMORPG isn't for you. There aren't a whole lot of MMORPG that give you something everytime you do it. And VW isn't the only event in this game that you may do it and get nothing. NM camp, if no drop you get nothing. Dyna/salvage/limbus etc, if it doesn't drop you get nothing. 99% of my life in FFXI, I do something and I get nothing, but there isn't much I can complain about it...because that's what MMORPG goes, you keep playing for gears, and once you get every gear you want there are no reason to keep playing, until next update hits and replaced old gears with new gear, and go back to get new gears again.

What's the point to hand out everything everytime you do it anyways, once you get everything you want you just want to quit because you have nothing to do. MMO is supposed to let ppl keep playing, have some items you don't have so you try to work on it and keep spending time on it, not handing out every items and have ppl run out of things to do. Abyssea era has most players "complained" that they have nothing to do after 1 year of Abyssea released, but not a lot of ppl complained they have nothing to do pre/post abyssea era. Hand out items fast(like Abyssea) only means dev need to release new content to replace old content more often, you really happy with capping gears in 3 months, and gears outdate/replaced every 3 months?

As VW gear v.s AF3+2, it depends on which gear/which slot/which job.....some of the VW gear beats AF3+2 for certain WS/TP/spells etc, they're not completely useless.

[Demon6324236]

Hes not saying you always do, or always should, get something, but VW's rates are insane. The fact people have went over 100 fights of the same NM are proof enough of how flawed it is. The idea of something should be to have high difficulty, and perhaps if needed also a rare drop rate. When I say, rare is 5% at the least, 20% at the most, 1% does not fly well with me. Why not? Simple, when you do something the 1st time, it might be fun, it also may be a challenge, however, once you have fought the same thing 10 times, it becomes annoying, 50 times, 100 times, 500 times, it gets worse as time goes on.

As for AF3+2, his point was that the gear isn't worth the effort by compare. Can you look at any NM in VW and tell me its worth doing 50~200 times for a piece of gear, because it is seriously that much better than your AF3?

[MarkovChain]

Salvage droprate are much better ! I'm hoping they will not fail this one (they kept it last for a reason). Personnally I find all of the VW mob retarded, hate reste move after 2k aoe damage tp move, the NEED to bring 18 persons along, and as a general statement, the fact that the gear sucks. The other day I saw a scroll of meteor for 11M in bazars ; it's supposed to be *the* reward from VW & legion ; man a single umbral marrow is going to be enough to get this.

[Demon6324236]

the fact that the gear sucks.There is good gear in Prov, Legion, and VW in general, just not good enough to warrant a 1% drop rate.

[hiko]

If you can't accept doing an event and get nothing, then I'd say MMORPG isn't for you. There aren't a whole lot of MMORPG that give you something everytime you do it. And VW isn't the only event in this game that you may do it and get nothing. NM camp, if no drop you get nothing. Dyna/salvage/limbus etc, if it doesn't drop you get nothing. 99% of my life in FFXI, I do something and I get nothing, but there isn't much I can complain about it...because that's what MMORPG goes, you keep playing for gears, and once you get every gear you want there are no reason to keep playing, until next update hits and replaced old gears with new gear, and go back to get new gears again.

never left dyna/limbus/salvage(but BR) with nothing, always get @ least a bunch of currencies.VW also have some currencies but with the same crappy drop rate than everything but useless synth that not even worth put on AH.





What's the point to hand out everything everytime you do it anyways, once you get everything you want you just want to quit because you have nothing to do. MMO is supposed to let ppl keep playing, have some items you don't have so you try to work on it and keep spending time on it, not handing out every items and have ppl run out of things to do. Abyssea era has most players "complained" that they have nothing to do after 1 year of Abyssea released, but not a lot of ppl complained they have nothing to do pre/post abyssea era. Hand out items fast(like Abyssea) only means dev need to release new content to replace old content more often, you really happy with capping gears in 3 months, and gears outdate/replaced every 3 months?
ok, i'm not really happy with capping gears in 3 months, and gears outdate/replaced every 3 months, but i'm even more unhappy to not get gear for 1years, gears getting outdated/replaced....



As VW gear v.s AF3+2, it depends on which gear/which slot/which job.....some of the VW gear beats AF3+2 for certain WS/TP/spells etc, they're not completely useless.
yes but no longer worth the effort

[Camiie]

If you can't accept doing an event and get nothing, then I'd say MMORPG isn't for you. There aren't a whole lot of MMORPG that give you something everytime you do it.

Just because it's how everyone does it doesn't make it right. It's way past time MMOs evolved beyond the Everquest model.


And VW isn't the only event in this game that you may do it and get nothing. NM camp, if no drop you get nothing. Dyna/salvage/limbus etc, if it doesn't drop you get nothing. 99% of my life in FFXI, I do something and I get nothing, but there isn't much I can complain about it...because that's what MMORPG goes, you keep playing for gears, and once you get every gear you want there are no reason to keep playing, until next update hits and replaced old gears with new gear, and go back to get new gears again.

The reason we can't have nice things is because people like you are apparently OK with this. It doesn't have to be this way. MMO devs are just generally lazy and unimaginative. They don't know how to make an event fun first and a loot distribution method second.


What's the point to hand out everything everytime you do it anyways, once you get everything you want you just want to quit because you have nothing to do.

If that's the case then the content isn't entertaining in its own right.


MMO is supposed to let ppl keep playing, have some items you don't have so you try to work on it and keep spending time on it, not handing out every items and have ppl run out of things to do.

An MMO is supposed to be fun before everything else. Gear is a means to an end.



Abyssea era has most players "complained" that they have nothing to do after 1 year of Abyssea released, but not a lot of ppl complained they have nothing to do pre/post abyssea era. Hand out items fast(like Abyssea) only means dev need to release new content to replace old content more often, you really happy with capping gears in 3 months, and gears outdate/replaced every 3 months?

Yes.

[tyrantsyn]

My thoughts are I enjoy the content, organizing city clears and parties, battling through all those clears, overcoming challenges along the way, and a bit of a story line all makes for good times.

The bad times come when after that is done, you go fight (for ex.) Qilin 2348972345789345 times with capped lights and get 15 sets of boots, 30 gorgets and not the dagger you actually want.
Could you imagine the zone's next to the planar rift's if those Item's actually appeared on the ground. They'd look like a land fill's by now.

[Komori]

The other excrutiating part of Voidwatch is the ability to not add to the lot pool. And I think things could go alot smoother if that could happen. I know plenty of people still doing Kaggen after Mekira Meikogai because they can get multiple Mekira but cannot for the life of them get the belt. When for most people, they get multiple belts and have to wait ingame centuries to finally get a body.

[Zubis]

I'm one of those people. I went roughly 1/50 on the Mekira Meikogai but I'm easily a further 0/100 on the belt.

So I gave up.


If you can't accept doing an event and get nothing, then I'd say MMORPG isn't for you.

That might have been true 10 years ago, but it's certainly not true any more. Which is not to say you should get the best equipment in the game without effort, but the days of spending a year with nothing but luck to try and get something are thankfully fading from MMOs.

[SNK]

I LOVE THAT I'M 0/400+ ON TOCI'S!!! GREAT EVENT GUYS!!!!

[Demon6324236]

See, only real complaints about VW are about the drops, everything else is fine.

[Zubis]

This happened a few hours ago to me and I felt it was quite relevant:

http://thesoulstillburns.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ffxi_2012.09.20_22.39.24.png

Look at my jobs - if I could give it away I would, I know at least one person that wants it badly.
It's from Botulus Rex - not even remotely as farmable as say, Qilin.

[Afania]

Just because it's how everyone does it doesn't make it right. It's way past time MMOs evolved beyond the Everquest model.

The reason we can't have nice things is because people like you are apparently OK with this. It doesn't have to be this way. MMO devs are just generally lazy and unimaginative. They don't know how to make an event fun first and a loot distribution method second.

If that's the case then the content isn't entertaining in its own right.


An MMO is supposed to be fun before everything else. Gear is a means to an end.





Even majority of MMO past everquest, you still don't get items everytime you do the content.

Look at wow(the most successful MMO) and 1000000 other WoW clone MMO out there, you're not going to tell me it's not "grind gear MMO" no?

How about Diablo3? Again, "grind your gear". Unless it's MMO with another theme such as PVP focused MMO, or F2P MMO where you buy items with real money, in the end it's extremely hard to jump off the boat of "Do this, get item, if you didn't get it do again" loop, because it's a forumla used for ages, and successful for ages.

Can you please tell me are there any PvE based MMO past EQ, that you only need to do raid/dungeon/boss ONCE and you can get the item you want, and still successful?

I highly doubt it, because if you only need to do it ONCE and you get the item, and you keep doing new content when you only do old content ONCE, then how many boss/raid/dungeon it needs to release every month? No company will have the resource to add content this fast.
Once you completed all the content, you quit the game.

As for being "fun" or not, this is a really subjective matter.

Personally I had fun with VW, it's easy, you see big dmg numbers, you spam WS over and over again. However, after you do it for multiple times, it got boring for majority of ppl.

And this applies to every content every game.

No matter how they design it, and no matter how "fun" it is when you do it for first time, after you do it for 1st time and cleared, it's no longer "fun" when you do it again. Even if they handed item after your first clear, it's still no longer "fun" on 2nd run because there are no point going it back.

It's just the way it goes.

I also have to point out that getting items 100% is sometimes, less "fun" than not having 100% drop rate, due to lack of surprise when you see it.

If you're going to complained that content is not "fun", and complained that dev is not creative enough, then I challenge you to come up with a MMO(none PvP focused) system, that 1. Can keep players play for years, without having to add new dungeons every week(no company has that kind of resources) 2. Players always have fun, never feel repetitive 3. They never do a content and get nothing. And you can't be too unrealistic with the solution(that means you can't use the resource of 200 ppl team, you have to keep the resource used minium)

Majority of MMO do it this way, is because it's proved a winning forumla for them to sell the product. WoW, Diablo, PSO etc. If there are other MMO try other way, it's a risky gamble because it's not a winning formula.

And no, Abyssea is never the solution, players cap gear in 1 month with little skill/pt organization, and players no longer have "fun" in Abyssea when they cap gear in 1 month(majority of players don't go back to abyssea after they get what they want too, proved that Abyssea is not "fun" to begin with and people only do it for gears too). Personally I had no fun in abyssea, and never understand what's so "fun" about not having anything to work on/don't want any items when you log on to the game. Game is really only interesting, when there are goals you haven't accomplish no? You log on with your mule, play for 1 month, killing easy mob by cure5 bombing DD with your WHM mule(instead of other real players), you got every item, sit in Jeuno and not knowing what to do, you honestly think that's really "fun"? You can blame other player that hates abyssea all you want, but you can't change the fact that Abyssea is overratted.

I'm totally ok with anything that doesn't make every player sit in PJ with capped/identical gear playing with their WHM mule.

As I stated before, if you're not happy with do content and get nothing, go play single player RPG or something, when you only need to do everything ONCE and beat the game. But MMO(at least majority of mainstream MMO) is meant for you to keep playing, not do everything ONCE and quit.

[Caketime]

WoW content is set up like Abyssea, you have a particular amount of stuff to collect for your gear and each time you do the daily quests you get a set amount of runes toward your next upgrade. It's actually pretty fun, I used to play Paladin until they gutted it and turned it into RNG derp class.

Personally I find VW to be rather boring, I wish it were more interactive instead of just a boss fight for logs. I really like Einherjar and would like to see another battleground sort of event where we fight groups of monsters instead of just one boss, it's so boring being a healer at these events when everyone is using damage immunity temps and zerging. The limit points are nice, but the fanny/fool combo makes it a snoozefest.

[Afania]

Personally I find VW to be rather boring, I wish it were more interactive instead of just a boss fight for logs. I really like Einherjar and would like to see another battleground sort of event where we fight groups of monsters instead of just one boss, it's so boring being a healer at these events when everyone is using damage immunity temps and zerging. The limit points are nice, but the fanny/fool combo makes it a snoozefest.

I guess that probably depend on your job and so on. I don't deny Einherjar is probably my fav event in XI(although the reward/effort ratio is even worse than VW for me, I do Ein for years and don't really get anything truely worth noting), but there are something I do enjoy about VW, it's not as intensive, pt has little chance to wipe, and it doesn't require a set schedule so anyone can log on anytime and start /shout or join /shout. It doesn't require 100% focus level, and not being fully focused won't really wipe the ally and make everyone unhappy. Although I appreciate harder events that require more pt organization and focus level, sometimes having event like VW to do isn't half bad when I'm not in the mood to be that focused and just want to relax.

Note that despite majority of time ppl won't get what they really do VW for, it's still semi-nice income if you sell plate/cinder/dross/cruor after VW, sometimes a couple hundred K or even million+. I know that ppl who do VW not for gil probably won't give a shit and would rather want Toci, but it isn't really completely 0 reward whenever Toci doesn't drop. I mean, ppl spam Qilin/T3 all day long for a reason. I still often join Pil /shout even though I don't need anything from it, just for some easy quick cash.

Although Abyssea is also like this, but there are several key differences between Abby and VW that made me dislike Abby more. Abby era totally closed off the interaction between every player. During Abyssea era, everyone and their mother duo or trio with their close friend or mule, so entire social connection is seperated. It's fairly annoying to log on, just to see everyone is in Abyssea 24/7 with their mule/close friend doing their own stuff. You don't really need others, you just need yourself, or your roommate/wife/gf. So there are little social aspect IMO. While in VW, I ended up having to interact/pt with many other players from other LS. Having to cooperate with players from other LS that I don't know, is a new aspect that doesn't exist in HNMLS era(when you only play with your LS), nor Abyssea era(when you only play with Mule/close friend). My connection actually expanded during VW era, which never happen during Abby/HNMLS era.

Another reason is purely personal and probably won't apply to everyone. I'm COR main, and often try to push the DD aspect of this job. VW is probably the only event I ever do that made me feel DDing on this job is quite satisfying. In abyssea this job is nearly useless, every other event it's output is nowhere near a real DD, VW is the only event(barring 75 pink bird merit pt) ever exist that is nearly on the same level as real DD in terms of output, thanks to wing spam and free TP. It's a high WS dmg low TP phrase dmg job, so all the free TP makes it kinda catch up to real DDs, and that just really fun. After all the high VW parse, and go back to legion where I parse much lower, it's like a huge slap in the face ;<

Just like previous post stated, there's nothing wrong with VW in general, and there's nothing wrong with having a brainless easy event, you still get event like Legion if you want event with 100% focus level. The only problem is how drops are dealt with, or the fact that whoever can't use the item will get them first. After pulse cell introduced, the problem is less unbearable though. Ppl have the item can make some quick cash, and ppl with 0/700 or really want the item can just pay for it. SE should really introduce cell for every VW ex/rare IMO. Make every ex/rare sellable or have cells, and there will be a lot less VW complain.

[Mefuki]

And no, Abyssea is never the solution, players cap gear in 1 month with little skill/pt organization, and players no longer have "fun" in Abyssea when they cap gear in 1 month(majority of players don't go back to abyssea after they get what they want too, proved that Abyssea is not "fun" to begin with and people only do it for gears too). Personally I had no fun in abyssea, and never understand what's so "fun" about not having anything to work on/don't want any items when you log on to the game. Game is really only interesting, when there are goals you haven't accomplish no? You log on with your mule, play for 1 month, killing easy mob by cure5 bombing DD with your WHM mule(instead of other real players), you got every item, sit in Jeuno and not knowing what to do, you honestly think that's really "fun"? You can blame other player that hates abyssea all you want, but you can't change the fact that Abyssea is overratted.

It wasn't just Abyssea. It was also Trial of The Magians. These two systems allowed for the player to log in and make some progress in their gear acquisition. I remember when I made my Almace how tedious it felt to finish BUT I could at least say to myself I was one step closer to my goal. I'd much rather have that then constantly putting in the time and effort and having nothing to show for it.

Wouldn't it be better for the game to recognize my effort by recording my progress? What if the events that use the RNG for gear drops also had a tracker that said, "Hey, you've finished this event/fought this NM literally hundreds of times...Do you maybe want this piece of gear it drops?"

[Camiie]

Even majority of MMO past everquest, you still don't get items everytime you do the content.

"Everyone does it" is not a justification.


Look at wow(the most successful MMO) and 1000000 other WoW clone MMO out there, you're not going to tell me it's not "grind gear MMO" no?

It is, but every time you do a max level dungeon you at least get points to spend on relevant gear. I know you get cruor and vendor trash from VW, and you can make gil from that, but that's a rather roundabout method of gear acquisition.


How about Diablo3? Again, "grind your gear". Unless it's MMO with another theme such as PVP focused MMO, or F2P MMO where you buy items with real money, in the end it's extremely hard to jump off the boat of "Do this, get item, if you didn't get it do again" loop, because it's a forumla used for ages, and successful for ages.

So you agree that it's not a very innovative formula.


Can you please tell me are there any PvE based MMO past EQ, that you only need to do raid/dungeon/boss ONCE and you can get the item you want, and still successful?

I never said SE weren't the only idiot developers out there. They're just one of the worst offenders. The drop rates are extraordinarily low and there's no real secondary reward system to help ease the pain. With WoW you do usually have to kill a boss multiple times, but not hundreds upon hundreds.


I highly doubt it, because if you only need to do it ONCE and you get the item, and you keep doing new content when you only do old content ONCE, then how many boss/raid/dungeon it needs to release every month? No company will have the resource to add content this fast.

The real limiting factor is development time. It's not that the larger companies don't have the resources, they just choose to allocate them to different things.


Once you completed all the content, you quit the game.

People also quit because the stuff they want never seems to drop for them.


As for being "fun" or not, this is a really subjective matter.

They're not even trying. All they do is hang up a loot pinata with no loot in it.


Personally I had fun with VW, it's easy, you see big dmg numbers, you spam WS over and over again. However, after you do it for multiple times, it got boring for majority of ppl.

Because it's not sufficiently rewarding or engaging.


And this applies to every content every game.

No matter how they design it, and no matter how "fun" it is when you do it for first time, after you do it for 1st time and cleared, it's no longer "fun" when you do it again. Even if they handed item after your first clear, it's still no longer "fun" on 2nd run because there are no point going it back.

Then why do people replay other games, even ones with no special reward for doing so? Once you beat Bowser, pummel M.Bison, or win the Madden Bowl why go back and do it again? Oh, because the game play is fun.


It's just the way it goes.

This is how innovation doesn't happen.


I also have to point out that getting items 100% is sometimes, less "fun" than not having 100% drop rate, due to lack of surprise when you see it.

Not everyone likes surprises or gambling. Some people like to work toward a goal and earn their stuff.


If you're going to complained that content is not "fun", and complained that dev is not creative enough, then I challenge you to come up with a MMO(none PvP focused) system, that 1. Can keep players play for years, without having to add new dungeons every week(no company has that kind of resources) 2. Players always have fun, never feel repetitive 3. They never do a content and get nothing. And you can't be too unrealistic with the solution(that means you can't use the resource of 200 ppl team, you have to keep the resource used minium)

That's what I pay them for. Why should I do it?



Majority of MMO do it this way, is because it's proved a winning forumla for them to sell the product. WoW, Diablo, PSO etc. If there are other MMO try other way, it's a risky gamble because it's not a winning formula.

Considering most MMOs aren't that successful, I wonder how much of a win this really is. WoW is a monster because it actively minimizes the pain of the grind. Diablo is not an MMO.


And no, Abyssea is never the solution, players cap gear in 1 month with little skill/pt organization, and players no longer have "fun" in Abyssea when they cap gear in 1 month(majority of players don't go back to abyssea after they get what they want too, proved that Abyssea is not "fun" to begin with and people only do it for gears too). Personally I had no fun in abyssea, and never understand what's so "fun" about not having anything to work on/don't want any items when you log on to the game. Game is really only interesting, when there are goals you haven't accomplish no? You log on with your mule, play for 1 month, killing easy mob by cure5 bombing DD with your WHM mule(instead of other real players), you got every item, sit in Jeuno and not knowing what to do, you honestly think that's really "fun"? You can blame other player that hates abyssea all you want, but you can't change the fact that Abyssea is overratted.

Weren't you saying something about fun being subjective before? Abyssea is a blast for me, and I still go to it and still enjoy it. It's things like the old school HNM, Salvage, old Dynamis, VW, and WoE that get on my nerves and wear down my patience. Going time and time and time again and getting nothing but a slap in the face by the random number generator is very very tiring. I and my friends could beat every NM to a bloody pulp. It gets to the point where we could practically sleepwalk through every fight because we did them so often because stuff just wouldn't drop. Where's the fun in that? That's fun to you?


I'm totally ok with anything that doesn't make every player sit in PJ with capped/identical gear playing with their WHM mule.

Other people having the same stuff as me is of no concern.


As I stated before, if you're not happy with do content and get nothing, go play single player RPG or something, when you only need to do everything ONCE and beat the game. But MMO(at least majority of mainstream MMO) is meant for you to keep playing, not do everything ONCE and quit.

Games are meant to be fun. That needs to come before anything else.

[Arcon]

"Everyone does it" is not a justification.

"Everyone does it" is an indication that maybe there's a good reason for it, which happens to be the case. You probably don't understand it because of this:


Abyssea era has most players "complained" that they have nothing to do after 1 year of Abyssea released, but not a lot of ppl complained they have nothing to do pre/post abyssea era. Hand out items fast(like Abyssea) only means dev need to release new content to replace old content more often, you really happy with capping gears in 3 months, and gears outdate/replaced every 3 months?

Yes.

No. You're not happy with that and neither is anyone else. That's not what makes MMORPGs attractive and it's not what anyone plays them for (yes, I love generalizations). MMORPGs are meant to attract through the prospect of building your character. Whether that consists of gear or experiences or stories and company is up to everyone to decide. But instant gratification is not what we play this for. That's what Angry Birds and games of that sort cater to. Even shooters qualify a lot more in that regard compared to a MMORPG (any MMORPG, not just this one). You're kidding yourself if you believe you're any different. You wouldn't wanna invest time and effort in doing something that you know you'd just forget about in a few months and will be completely irrelevant to you then.

It's not only that MMORPGs shouldn't work any other way, but they couldn't. It's impossible to sustain rapid development like that, even with generic content like Abyssea. Even doing something like that every year is a challenge, let alone three months. Developers have to find a balance between a release cycle they can maintain and not boring their customers. Too fast and they can't hold it up, which is especially dangerous because people build high expectations for it (the people that remain, which isn't everybody). Too slow and they risk boring people and start forgetting about the game or moving on to greener pastures. Grinds are what makes games like these work.

It's the developers' job to design events that can be grinded without getting boring. If events really were boring, people would lose interest after a while and stop doing it (which is the case with Voidwatch, as I'm sure many people on different servers can confirm judging by the number of shouts compared to a while ago). However, making them short-lived (for example by handing out rewards quicker) is not a solution, because it will equally stop people doing them, which brings us back to the shorter release cycle. Instead the goal should be to make them more interesting, so people would actually want to do them.

[Camiie]

"Everyone does it" is an indication that maybe there's a good reason for it, which happens to be the case. You probably don't understand it because of this:

"Maybe" is a big qualifier. I get it. We're prone to the Skinner Box effect... blah blah blah yadda yadda...



No. You're not happy with that and neither is anyone else.

Thanks for letting me know. I really had no clue what made me happy and what didn't....


That's not what makes MMORPGs attractive and it's not what anyone plays them for (yes, I love generalizations). MMORPGs are meant to attract through the prospect of building your character. Whether that consists of gear or experiences or stories and company is up to everyone to decide. But instant gratification is not what we play this for.

You do realize there's a nice wide space between "instant gratification" and "I did this same fight 400 times and have nothing to show for it" don't you? Happy mediums are happy. Where we are now is NOT a happy place.


That's what Angry Birds and games of that sort cater to. Even shooters qualify a lot more in that regard compared to a MMORPG (any MMORPG, not just this one). You're kidding yourself if you believe you're any different. You wouldn't wanna invest time and effort in doing something that you know you'd just forget about in a few months and will be completely irrelevant to you then.

Obsolete happens. I'm grateful for all my friends' help and proud of the effort I put forth, but stuff is just stuff. Gear is a stepping stone. It's a means to an end. Should top of the line gear today be top of the line 6 months from now? A year from now?


It's not only that MMORPGs shouldn't work any other way, but they couldn't. It's impossible to sustain rapid development like that, even with generic content like Abyssea. Even doing something like that every year is a challenge, let alone three months. Developers have to find a balance between a release cycle they can maintain and not boring their customers. Too fast and they can't hold it up, which is especially dangerous because people build high expectations for it (the people that remain, which isn't everybody). Too slow and they risk boring people and start forgetting about the game or moving on to greener pastures. Grinds are what makes games like these work.

I know that it's a balancing act, and I feel that SE's balance is way off. No Tanaka puns intended. Everyone wants to say what happens when the grind is too short, but tell me what happens when the grind is too long.


It's the developers' job to design events that can be grinded without getting boring. If events really were boring, people would lose interest after a while and stop doing it (which is the case with Voidwatch, as I'm sure many people on different servers can confirm judging by the number of shouts compared to a while ago). However, making them short-lived (for example by handing out rewards quicker) is not a solution, because it will equally stop people doing them, which brings us back to the shorter release cycle. Instead the goal should be to make them more interesting, so people would actually want to do them.

Seems like they're failing all the way around then. The content is dull, the grinds are too long, and the release cycle is too slow.

[Mirage]

Hey how about if they made the currently rare VW loot easier to get (5-10x the current drop rate, maybe?), and then added items to all VW drop pools that let you slowly but surely upgrade this gear to even better versions?

You could make these upgrade items be a bit uncommon, but not so rare that you could spam VW for 5 hours and not even see one single of them. This way, people would get their cool and already pretty good gear after not too long, and people would keep doing VW after that in order to upgrade it even further. Because these items aren't very uncommon, few people would go a long time without never seeing one drop, and each time they got a drop, they'd be closer to getting the even better version. While the initial item would be obtainable within a week or two for most people (95%+), the even better version could take perhaps 2-4 months, and the increase in power should be noticable, but not so much that NQ was considered "gimp".

I would suggest for these items to drop from several different VWNMs, be exclusive, and for one item to be usable on several different types of gear. They could add three different of these items, I guess. One for heavy armor, one for medium armor and one for light armor. Perhaps a 4th for weapons.

[Arcon]

You do realize there's a nice wide space between "instant gratification" and "I did this same fight 400 times and have nothing to show for it" don't you? Happy mediums are happy. Where we are now is NOT a happy place.

I didn't say that we were. SE have no idea about MMORPGs, even after all this time. They're a horrible developer in certain aspects.


Should top of the line gear today be top of the line 6 months from now? A year from now?

As always, it should be balanced. The answer is neither no nor yes. Some gear should, but old gear should not lose its meaning (the "Abyssea effect").


I know that it's a balancing act, and I feel that SE's balance is way off. No Tanaka puns intended. Everyone wants to say what happens when the grind is too short, but tell me what happens when the grind is too long.

Agreed.


Seems like they're failing all the way around then. The content is dull, the grinds are too long, and the release cycle is too slow.

In some aspects, sure. In others not. VW is a horrible example, because I know nothing even remotely as bad in terms of rewards. Especially after Abyssea it came as a huge shock to people who just got used to getting rewarded at a more steady and reliable pace. Overall it's not too bad. Legion is hard, but the drops come in steady, same with Odin v2 and Limbus v2. Only it's not as obvious to most people, because most people don't do that content, because of the steep difficulty curve and high manpower requirements. I'm still hopeful that it will get better in the future.

[Khajit]

I LOVE THAT I'M 0/400+ ON TOCI'S!!! GREAT EVENT GUYS!!!!
Do what I did and win a khrepri jacket from bonanza. It's a far more efficient use of time.
The sad part is i started off sarcastic and then realized it actually is easier to win the items from the bonanza than the actual VW content.

[Camiie]

Do what I did and win a khrepri jacket from bonanza. It's a far more efficient use of time.
The sad part is i started off sarcastic and then realized it actually is easier to win the items from the bonanza than the actual VW content.

I seem to be pretty good at getting gear I don't actually need. That seems to be the trick. The less you need it or want it, the better luck you'll have. You can't fake it though. You actually must have no desire whatsoever.

Right now the banes of my existence are Ogier's Breeches and Toci's Harness. Breeches aren't even pulse gear, but they will not show up in my pool. I've gotten enough Stoertebekers to arm my own pirate crew, but heck if I can find a decent pair of pants. It's so frustrating when someone in the ally says "Oh another pair of pants... /toss." Is that SUPPOSED to be encouraging? It feels more like a slap in the face than an encouraging pat on the shoulder. I actually feel stupid sometimes for continuing to try. It's like I'm banging my head against a wall. Making one feel that way can't be the intention of the system, can it? I guess it's naive, though, to think the devs care about our feelings as long as we're continuing to pay. Money from a miserable person spends just as well as money from someone who's happy. Still, I can't help but think somewhere at SE is a bright-eyed young dev team member who wants more than anything for people to have fun with the game. Probably not though.

[Vivivivi]

I love void watch. My only complaint- it NEEDS a "add to lottable spoils" option.

[Komori]

1/2 Portho's Byrnie, I play Dark Knight once every blue moon because I'm white mage, blue mage or thief to everything. :D

[Demon6324236]

I seem to be pretty good at getting gear I don't actually need. That seems to be the trick. The less you need it or want it, the better luck you'll have. You can't fake it though. You actually must have no desire whatsoever.

This is so true.

List of things I didn't want, but got:Ganesha's Mala, Mextli Harness, Wroth Scythe, Hoarfrost Blade, Ace's Mail, Fajin Boots, Strophadic Earring, Lux Pugio, Bizen-Osafune, Langeleik, Whirlwind Dirs, Ogier's Gauntlets, Ogier's Helm.

List of things I wanted, and got:Heka's Kalasiris, Phalania locket, Rubeus Spats, Rubeus Boots.

I think I'm starting to lose my desire for Ephemeron... should go spam Aello a few more times, might get lucky. Sadly though, your right, you cant really fool it by trying to.

[Afania]

"Everyone does it" is not a justification.



It is, but every time you do a max level dungeon you at least get points to spend on relevant gear. I know you get cruor and vendor trash from VW, and you can make gil from that, but that's a rather roundabout method of gear acquisition.



So you agree that it's not a very innovative formula.



First of all I'm going to point out that MMORPG is a merchandise, it's made to be selling and make profit. In the past 15 years or so(I think UO released in 1997?), many MMORPG released, and dev slowly find the forumla to make more money and attract more players.

If everyone is doing it, that means it's a successful formula, nothing more and nothing less.

You can try to come up with something new, but it doesn't mean it will sell better. If it's a fail MMO, then you lose money to make it, it's as simple as that.

There are MMOs tried to do something new every once a while. One of the old SE F2P MMORPG, called Fantasy Earth Zero, actually come up with a lot of new things, even in the realm of F2P MMO. It's highly PvP based instead of "grind your gear", and puts the impact of grind gear to minium. As a F2P, it also sells gears that you have to buy with real money, but those gears aren't really overpowered. But players that didn't spend any real money can still compete with those who did with just skill. There are many other design that changed the concept of how F2P MMO should be, but none of them made this MMO sell better.


IMO, the current MMORPG market is fairly small, and have very little room to come up with ZOMG awesome design concept that have no grind your gears involved. Every once a while you see a MMO tried to be new, and after a while it died.

There's always a winning formula for any type of game, that will make the game more popular than it is, if everyone does it, that means it worked for ages, need anymore explaination?

Innovation is good, but it doesn't make your product sell everytime.

As for "collect point and get gear", FFXI already has such event, that is Einherjar and Legion. However, this sort of thing will face another problem- Can you get ALL the gear by just spending point?

Both Einherjar and Legion doesn't let you get ALL the gears by spending point. So if you want Odin drop, you still have to kill Odin. If you want Gallu/Rex drop, you still have to kill them.

If they let you get ALL the gears by spending point, then nobody will do Odin/Gallu/Rex, everyone would just grind T1 hall/chamber with small pt over and over until they can get everything, doing harder boss become pointless. If boss reward only drop after you kill them, then causals still can't get them, so it's exactly the same as you complained, that ppl can't get what they want and do event for nothing.

Personally I think legion has the most correct Reward:Effort ratio as an event in this game though.




I never said SE weren't the only idiot developers out there. They're just one of the worst offenders. The drop rates are extraordinarily low and there's no real secondary reward system to help ease the pain. With WoW you do usually have to kill a boss multiple times, but not hundreds upon hundreds.



Time wise, the way they design VW, doesn't have the room to give players gears in 5 kills. Each VW dies in 1~2 min, if you only need to kill 5 times, you can get the gears in 5~10min of work.

If a rare gear require 20 hours of game play to get it(spending 20 hours of play time to get a gear in MMO is very common in many other games too and certainly not too high), and VW only need 2 min to kill, then 600kill is about 20 hours of work.

Then the entire problem is VW being killable in 2 min, thus you need 600 kills.








The real limiting factor is development time. It's not that the larger companies don't have the resources, they just choose to allocate them to different things.



It's very logical to put your resource/investment on things that can make profit.

If you're the one running company, you need to analyze what to do will make most profit, so you don't spend money on nothing.

A 10 years old MMO, you put a 200 ppl dev team on it to make 100 more super big dungeon/raid, you won't get approprite return when active subscribers so small. And a 10 year old MMO isn't going to attract new player to support such big investment also. If you want to attract new players, you need to do something like FFXIV 2.0, re-release the game under a new name and new game engine. And even that can't promise whether it will attract new players or not.
FFXIV is currently a very huge gamble SE made, just to save the name of Final Fantasy.

Putting large resource into a 10 year old MMO is not the smartest thing to do, from game dev's POV. As a customer, if you don't like it, you don't pay for it. It's as simple as that. Not putting large resource in FFXI is not a crime or "stupid thing" to do, you just don't pay for it if you don't like it.

If SE put a 200 ppl dev team on FFXI to release new dungeon every week, and ended up having less profit, you think that's a smarter option for anyone running a company?






Then why do people replay other games, even ones with no special reward for doing so? Once you beat Bowser, pummel M.Bison, or win the Madden Bowl why go back and do it again? Oh, because the game play is fun.


Considering most MMOs aren't that successful, I wonder how much of a win this really is. WoW is a monster because it actively minimizes the pain of the grind. Diablo is not an MMO.



Weren't you saying something about fun being subjective before? Abyssea is a blast for me, and I still go to it and still enjoy it. It's things like the old school HNM, Salvage, old Dynamis, VW, and WoE that get on my nerves and wear down my patience. Going time and time and time again and getting nothing but a slap in the face by the random number generator is very very tiring. I and my friends could beat every NM to a bloody pulp. It gets to the point where we could practically sleepwalk through every fight because we did them so often because stuff just wouldn't drop. Where's the fun in that? That's fun to you?


Talking about sleepwalking the NM, that's exactly what Abyssea did, lol.

I don't replay content in single player games, after I beat it for 1st time it's no longer fun for me. I replay same content in FFXI for other reasons, other aspect that single player game or even multiple player game doesn't have.

And I do think that everyone wearing same gear is more harm than good in a MMO.

Player base will have both hardcore and causal, and somewhere in between, you can't expect every player be causal, some ppl bound to play 10 hours a day instead of 2, and some ppl play 4 hr, some plays 6hr etc.



So the best way is to make every gear have different value.

If every gear in the game only need 5hr to obtain, After 1 week of release, hardcore player cap gear and quit because they can no longer make progress. After 2nd week, semi-hardcore also cap gear and quit, after 3rd week, semi-causal also cap gear and quit, after 4th week, causal players won't have anyone to play with.

Thus ideally there should be gears you spend 5hr to get, and some gear you spend 20 hours, some gear you spend 100 hours. That way no matter you're causal or semi-causal/hardcore, or very hardcore, you always have something to work on.

Thus Abyssea only is a bad idea, and Abyssea era is bad. I'm not hardcore in anyway, I play only 2~4hr a day, not 10hours, and I didn't say this because I want to be different or something. I don't mind players playing 10 hours a day have better gear than me, I'll just stick with my 2~4hrs a day semi-causal gear and be happy with it, because that's what I am, semi-causal with 2~4hr a day play time. I'm semi-causal, so I wear semi-causal gears. Let causals wear causal gears and hardcore wear hardcore gears, it's all fine by me.
Irl is the same as well no? You don't see rich person dress up the same as person living on street.
Forcing everyone wearing same gear no matter how causal/hardcore you are, just makes the game less fun and more harm than good for MMO, and less diversity too. It removed sense of community/virtual world to a certain degree. Unless this game implement some sort of score/achievement based system, or have score shows up after every raid, it makes no sense to make every gear causal only.

Server merge happened twice during Abyssea if I remember correctly, proved that Abyssea didn't save this game at all. I don't mind game has event such as Abyssea, so Causals can have something to do, but if ENTIRE game is nothing but Abyssea, then that's where it went wrong.

[Demon6324236]

As for "collect point and get gear", FFXI already has such event, that is Einherjar and Legion. However, this sort of thing will face another problem- Can you get ALL the gear by just spending point?

Both Einherjar and Legion doesn't let you get ALL the gears by spending point. So if you want Odin drop, you still have to kill Odin. If you want Gallu/Rex drop, you still have to kill them.

If they let you get ALL the gears by spending point, then nobody will do Odin/Gallu/Rex, everyone would just grind T1 hall/chamber with small pt over and over until they can get everything, doing harder boss become pointless. If boss reward only drop after you kill them, then causals still can't get them, so it's exactly the same as you complained, that ppl can't get what they want and do event for nothing.

I give you, Voidwatch, the Ticket Point System idea! (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/25303-Voidwatch-the-Ticket-Point-System-idea.?p=336289)


I have posted this idea in many other threads in the past however this is a more in depth look at my idea and how it could be implemented. It has been adjusted to go with current and upcoming changes being made to VW since the idea was originally presented. This is my Voidwatch Ticket Point system!

1 ticket is awarded for each win against a VWNM. Tickets are exclusive to a NM, and are locked to the rifts in the area the NM is spawned in. For instance, when fighting Kaggen in Qufim Island, you will get a ticket for Kaggen's items only upon winning a fight. Also you may only spend these tickets when at one of these rifts. If you are in Lower Delkfutt's Tower you will not be able to spend Kaggen's tickets, instead they will be Akvan's tickets, and only ones retrieved from Akvan may be spent.

Tickets should be just as cruor is, when finishing a VW fight, you will be told the amount you have with the 1 you earned. With enough blue light, such as 500%+, you would earn 2 tickets. Also the amount of tickets you have are only seen at the proper NPCs, or rifts.

To show an example of how a chart would look for drops, I will use Kaggen and its drops.




Example:Kaggen

Notable Drops
-Mekira Meikogai
-Phasmida Belt
-Kaggen's Cuticle
-Mantis Eye
-Heavy Metal

Ticket Buy List
-Mekira Meikogai = 100 Tickets
-Phasmida Belt = 75 Tickets
-Pulse Cell: Me = 35 Tickets
-Kaggen's Cuticle = 30 Tickets
-Heavy Metal = 5 Tickets
-Mantis Eye = 5 Tickets
-Crystal Petrifact = 1 Ticket

Trade List
-Mekira Meikogai = 25 Tickets
-Phasmida Belt = 20 Tickets
-Mantis Eye = 2 Tickets



With this system, R/EX gear does not goto waste, rather it can be used to provide more tickets to go toward the rewards you are pursuing. Items will not seem unattainable, or severely luck based, they will allow players to obtain the items they wish given time and determination! Tickets will only count for the NM in question, you will not be able to have tickets from Kaggen used for Akvan drops, however, this is why Heavy Metal is in the buy list, it provides a use for tickets even if one already obtains all drops while having tickets left over. This would also heighten the supply of Heavy Metal, making Emp95 easier to obtain.

Adding to this, with the new update allowing "Obtain All" to ignore R/EX items in the case you have it already, these could automatically be changed to tickets, allowing for fast disposal of gear unneeded, and giving the player better rewards.



That is my idea for the ticket point system, it would allow a fair chance at rewards given time, would remove the need for wasting R/EX items, increase the supply of items such as Heavy Metal, and give a good reason to keep coming back to VW more and more.You see this idea allows you to get points for killing a NM, however the NM in question must be beaten for points to be spent on it, beating another NM will not give you points to spend on any gear, only the gear tied to said NM. This makes sure players do not spam NMs such as T1 City NMs for points to buy drops from T6 Mobs, and keeps balance in the drops. It only allows players to obtain items after many fights with the same enemy, so long as luck does not give them the item of their desires.

[SNK]

Do what I did and win a khrepri jacket from bonanza. It's a far more efficient use of time.
The sad part is i started off sarcastic and then realized it actually is easier to win the items from the bonanza than the actual VW content.

Oh you! I didn't even win anything on the Golden Gobbie Bag contest!!!!

[hiko]

First of all I'm going to point out that MMORPG is a merchandise, it's made to be selling and make profit......
agree

As for "collect point and get gear", FFXI already has such event, that is Einherjar and Legion. However, this sort of thing will face another problem- Can you get ALL the gear by just spending point?

Both Einherjar and Legion doesn't let you get ALL the gears by spending point. So if you want Odin drop, you still have to kill Odin. If you want Gallu/Rex drop, you still have to kill them.

If they let you get ALL the gears by spending point, then nobody will do Odin/Gallu/Rex, everyone would just grind T1 hall/chamber with small pt over and over until they can get everything, doing harder boss become pointless. If boss reward only drop after you kill them, then causals still can't get them, so it's exactly the same as you complained, that ppl can't get what they want and do event for nothing.

Personally I think legion has the most correct Reward:Effort ratio as an event in this game though.

see demon's answer




Time wise, the way they design VW, doesn't have the room to give players gears in 5 kills. Each VW dies in 1~2 min, if you only need to kill 5 times, you can get the gears in 5~10min of work.

If a rare gear require 20 hours of game play to get it(spending 20 hours of play time to get a gear in MMO is very common in many other games too and certainly not too high), and VW only need 2 min to kill, then 600kill is about 20 hours of work.

Then the entire problem is VW being killable in 2 min, thus you need 600 kills.

yes the problem is short easy fight with stupid low drop rate.


nobody asked to get gear in 5 kills, but nobody like going 0/200+ when other people toss (or get gils if pulsable item)10* the item you want

+the mob die in2 min doesn't mean you spent 2 min to do it. /sh, repop time, warp to refill stone...(you spend more time waiting than fighting when you do VW)






And I do think that everyone wearing same gear is more harm than good in a MMO.
I don't care what other player wear
I won't get a mythic weapons, I'm ok with this because I don't make the effort for it, not because Mr RNG said "NO!"
i'm not ok with not getting wanted VW item because Mr RNG keep saying "NO!" no matter how many effort i did




Player base will have both hardcore and causal, and somewhere in between, you can't expect every player be causal, some ppl bound to play 10 hours a day instead of 2, and some ppl play 4 hr, some plays 6hr etc.

So the best way is to make every gear have different value.



I aggre on this but Mr RNG is not a good value metter. And there is some casual that finished VW before some hardcore because they average 1/10 on wanted items while the hardcore is still 0/100+ on anything




Thus Abyssea only is a bad idea, and Abyssea era is bad. I'm not hardcore in anyway, I play only 2~4hr a day, not 10hours, and I didn't say this because I want to be different or something. I don't mind players playing 10 hours a day have better gear than me, I'll just stick with my 2~4hrs a day semi-causal gear and be happy with it, because that's what I am, semi-causal with 2~4hr a day play time. I'm semi-causal, so I wear semi-causal gears. Let causals wear causal gears and hardcore wear hardcore gears, it's all fine by me.
Irl is the same as well no? You don't see rich person dress up the same as person living on street.
Forcing everyone wearing same gear no matter how causal/hardcore you are, just makes the game less fun and more harm than good for MMO, and less diversity too. Server merge happened twice during Abyssea if I remember correctly, proved that Abyssea didn't save this game at all. I don't mind game has event such as Abyssea, so Causals can have something to do, but if ENTIRE game is nothing but Abyssea, then that's where it went wrong.

ok everything being "abyssea level" is bad, but abyssea area isn't bad in itself it's bad because it lasted too long without anything good added.
abyssea was a level cap filler and was perfect as it. lvl cap was locked on 90 for too long but that's not abyssea fault
lot's of abyssea gear is still best gear, but once again that' not abyssea fault.

[detlef]

It's too bad, I actually like the personal chest idea. Very pickup friendly and also can reduce drama in a linkshell setting. It's not too far off from being good. Adding a rare/ex drop to the treasure pool really would fix everything. In a linkshell setting, you're now after 1 drop to load within the alliance rather than 1 drop having to load within the alliance in the correct box. In a pickup setting, using that option would be optional and people could still pulse their treasure or pool non-pulse items like Rubeus/Ogier/Athos or things like Phasmida Belt/Omphalos Bullet etc.

[Komori]

To solve the linkshell from monopolizing lucky members, just make it so you have to have the item already to toss it into the pool or direct it to someone else.

[Arcon]

To solve the linkshell from monopolizing lucky members, just make it so you have to have the item already to toss it into the pool or direct it to someone else.

Am I missing something? What good would that do? And how can a LS monopolize "lucky members" (disregarding, for a moment, the fact that there's no such thing)?

[Komori]

People asked why couldn't voidwatch have an "Add to Treasure Pool" option. And some people complained that in linkshells, members would be pressured to give their drops to someone else. This was the VERY reason for personal chests from Voidwatch in the first place, so that no one could "make" someone give up their armor or weapon drops. To add the option and to keep people from being pressured into giving up their rare drops to higher ranked members, just have it so that the option is only available after obtaining such gear.

[Arcon]

People asked why couldn't voidwatch have an "Add to Treasure Pool" option. And some people complained that in linkshells, members would be pressured to give their drops to someone else. This was the VERY reason for personal chests from Voidwatch in the first place, so that no one could "make" someone give up their armor or weapon drops. To add the option and to keep people from being pressured into giving up their rare drops to higher ranked members, just have it so that the option is only available after obtaining such gear.

1. That would only make people not bother with events anymore once they got what they needed.
2. It would still mean a mule would get something before a real player could and there would be no way for them to give it to the real player, so the same frustration persists.
3. With a personal chest no one can pressure you even if they wanted. If you want the item get it. No one can know what you had and even if they did, they can't force you to give it up.
4. If you have a LS that does such retarded things it's the LS's fault, not the system's. It's like the people complaining about greedy Dynamis leaders back in the day. If anyone ever was under a greedy leader, it was their fault, not the leader's. A leader is nothing without their members. I've known a lot more fair linkshells than unfair ones with bad leaders. And if you're that desperate just make your own. There's plenty of people who want a fair linkshell and would join you.

[Camiie]

It probably can't be done in FFXI so I guess it's a moot point, but in WoW one can trade dungeon loot with people who were in the dungeon with you up to 2-hours after it ends. That would be kind of cool, although I suppose "add to lottable spoils" would be a much easier solution since the mechanic already exists.

[Crimson_Slasher]

If i had to take a loot system into consideration to replace with VWNM, id go to the BCNM method of locked drop slots. I know to some degree it uses this already, but what if taken a step further to say....Lets look at akvan. Slot one for akvan could be say;

ALWAYS Drops one of:
Heavy Metal Plate(50%)
Screamol Band (30%)
Omphalos Bullet (15%)
Heka's Kalasiris (5%)

With slot 2 being one of X log or petrifact, Slot 3 being X ingot/ore or petrifact, slot 4 being misc jewel/fish/meat/med or petrifact. Something like that so you KNOW every time you will get something to drop in your first slot. Course im good with a point system too, love einherjar, and old nyzul's objective based floor system. Neo-nyzul is too luck-based for me. Maybe if floor skips could be no less than 5 floors... But thats beside the point...Ahem... If you wanna add more obscure mobs to the spamming list, im not aware if theres an adamantoise VWNM, but perhaps add something else cool like a 1% chance of a NQ/HQ pop for the old land-kings. Perhaps if off a similar type (the behemoth in jugner, the dragon in ifrit's). Just brainstorming. Course i just passed 0/800 on heka's, but am 1/6 toci's. At the time i got toci's i didnt have a reasonable job for it, but have since changed that.

[Waldrich]

Meeble Burrows is the idea I've always TOLD, SUGGESTED to Square Enix.

I hope this is something like this.
Too weak version = 1% drop rate.
Easy prey version = 3% drop rate.
Decent Challenge version = 5% drop rate.
Tough version = 9~10% drop rate.
Very tough version = 13~15% drop rate.
Impossible to Gauge version = 20~25% drop rate.
Extreme version = 30-35% drop rate and change it according to each drop or something.
people want to fight everything and some people can fight harder versions for better drop rates.