Time to adjust Voidwatch again?

[Kylos]

With the release of pulse cells, it made things a lot easier on the playerbase. We could get our hands on certain pieces of equipment that could allude players for dozens, if not hundreds and hundreds of battles.

So why am I still having to fight Hahava for a Ganeshas Mala?
I see certain Voidwatch fights being shouted for over and over again for one particular item, and it is always the same story. Somebodys white mage mule gets it, while those who have spent countless hours, over many months since, have still not got what they should have earned.

With Seekers coming out, it is even more important for the playerbase to be able to progress through Voidwatch, and collect the gear. Of course, difficulty and having some luck should always be a factor, but in some cases, the drop rates are so bad, you could compare it to winning a rank 1 prize in the Mog Bonanza.

I am tired. I am so very tired of having to do the same fight over and over again for nothing. I have done a lot of different voidwatch, and a lot of the drop rates are acceptable, whereas others are not. In my case, a Ganeshas Mala is a drop that should be awarded to those who are either very lucky, or managed to kill Hahava a set amount of times. Would it be so difficult to add a feature where you could actually achieve one award for killing a certain Voidwatch NM a number of times?

I would much rather kill Hahava one hundred times, and be able to get a Mala, then kill it five hundred times, to see nothing but Mextli Harness, Hahavas Mails, Potions, Logs, and the worst one, Ganeshas Masks.

This is not fun. It is not challenging, it is an absolute huge waste of time, and one of the worst aspects of the current endgame in FFXI. Just like Pulse cells, certain items should be added so you can acquire these by trading/buying from others. Please consider doing this, I actually enjoyed doing Voidwatch in the beginning, it was exciting content, with some challenging battles, but now it is nothing but work.

I would love to move on from this. Progression is key, and you talk about progression, but Voidwatch holds players back. Let them move forward in the game, thank you.

[Arkista]

0/1000+ on Coruscanti I gave up. VW is one of the most depressing events in FFXI.

[Kylos]

I know, I have done Qilin countless times and never seen anyone win a Coruscanti. I am going to make a list of drops that are absolutely ridiculous. The only VW fights I have not done so far is Botulus Rex and the Provenance fights.

[Kylos]

Extremely Rare drops list.

Equipment with no Pulse Cell.
Hahava - Ganesha's Mala

Pulse Cell items: Although some pieces of equipment are becoming much more available, others are that rare, that it may take an unbelievable amount of time camping the Auction House for Pulse Cells, while constantly repeating the same Voidwatch.

It can get extreme to the point that you have to save millions of gil just for these purchases, and is very likely that someone will get them before you. Sometimes these items don't drop to the point that people run out of voidstones, and have to switch into buying voiddust for a few months. With Seekers of Adoulin being released, it worries me that people will be stuck doing Voidwatch instead of helping out in the new content.

It also worries me that new content will bring out pieces of equipment that are better then those in Voidwatch, which took players many months of grinding and praying. The Pulse Cell situation did help, but there is still the major problem that hardly any actually get sold. As you can imagine, when someone finally gets the item, why would they continue to do the same Voidwatch battle?

Of course you do get players who continue to do them just to get some money, but a lot of players, including myself, would (for example) get my Coruscanti and never do Qilin ever again. With Matsui talking about "progression", it makes sense to make these pieces of equipment more available so people are not as upset when something is released which blows them out of the water.

Below is a list of Pulse Cells that range from rare to super rare. The numbers next to them are the average selling rates on my server.

Celaeno - Anhur Robe (0.517 sold/day)
Kaggen - Mekira Meikogai (0.633 sold/day)
Pil - Toci's Harness (0.188 sold/day)
Akvan - Heka's Kalasiris (0.343 sold/day)

Out of the above four body pieces, Toci's appears to be the rarest, and personally once I got Dilaram's Sollerets (Which was trumped by Karieyh Sollerets in the update) I never wanted to do Pil ever again. Mekira and Anhur seem reasonable, but Toci's and Heka's could do with a helping hand. Continuing on ...

Aello - Ephemeron (0.004 sold/day - One Cell ever sold on AH on Cerberus)
Qilin - Coruscanti (0.076 sold/day - 5-8 Million each on all servers)
Uptala - Murasamemaru - (0.703 sold/day - Used as a rank three reward to sell for money. 9-10 Million each)

As you can see, Ephemeron and Coruscanti are ridiculously rare to the point it is depressing. The only reason Murasamemaru has that rate of sold/day was due to Mog Bonanza, otherwise it would be under 0.1.

Ig-Alima - Borealis (0.106 sold/day - This VW is done everyday by groups, and this drop rate is still bad)
Botulus Rex - Asteria (0.014 sold/day - The difficulty of this NM, and the rarity of Asteria, makes this one of the hardest daggers to get in the entire game)
Morta - Aytanri (0.048 sold/day - This VW is rarely done on my server)
Bismarck - Delphinius (0.037 sold/day - Used to be done regularly, but over the last few months, I have not seen it)

Abjurations are somewhat decent, because they can drop off different NMs, but as Aht Urhgan and Tavnazia NM are done a lot less as of late (Except Vanasarvik), it is pretty rare to see anyone get them.

A change of drop rates could see people coming back to do these events more often, and progress. It also gives people more incentive to join and help others get clears, as they may get a Pulse Cell out of it and be able to sell it for a decent amount. Of course with a better drop rate, pulse cells will be more common, and will sell for less, but I think that would be fair seeing as newer gear from Seekers may be better, and possibly easier to obtain.

The main equipment that does not have a Pulse Cell, which is grinded over is Mala. People still do Hahava a lot, probably on all servers. If anyone would like to add anymore to the list, feel free to do so.

[Luvbunny]

It would be great if they adjust Voidwatch and Walk of Echoes. We all know those two event sorely need adjustment to make it viable again for players. Otherwise any future returning players or new players will never have a chance at experiencing this due to low interest.

[Kojo]

I'd also suggest making a way of adding drops to lottable spoils OR when you relinquish your drops it gives you cruor per item.

[Asymptotic]

Hahava has approximately a 2% drop rate on Ganesha's Mala. This is not particularly rare considering:

The expected value of a geometric distributon with p=0.02 is 50 (the average number of Hahavas before a player receives a Mala is 50). The standard deviation is 49.5 so 68% of players will receive the Mala in 1-100 Hahavas. 95% of players will receive a Mala within 150 Hahavas and >99% of players will receive a Mala within 200 Hahavas.

It sounds sort of awful, but SE doesn't consider a single Hahava to be an event - they consider one "event" to be 6 Hahavas. In other words, 68% of players will have a mala within 17 runs - 95% in 25 runs, 99% in 33 runs.

We can calculate the actual value of how likely you are to get it in a set of six but we can also extract it from the above information! Based on this progression your actual chance to get a Mala in a single "event" has a standard deviation of 8. Since we know it follows a geometric distribution, we can determine:

8 = sqrt( (1-p)/p^2) --> 64p^2 +p -1 = 0
---> p ~= 0.117 (this is slightly on the high end since we did a lot of rounding)

So you have a ~11.5% chance to get a Mala every time you do a set of Hahavas, which is pretty reasonable in my opinion.

As for pulse weapons, they are supposed to be extraordinarily rare and most of them are so incredibly situational (if they're useful at all) that you shouldn't be pulling your hair out over them anyway.

[Kylos]

I got my Mala today, but I still stand by the fact that some of these drop rates are ridiculous, and with Seekers coming out, these gears should become slightly more available so we can "progress" a little easier like Matsui has suggested.

I feel bad for the leader of the alliance today, he has done more runs then me, and I was sick and tired of this "fun event".

Its not really a matter of just giving away gear easily with little effort, it is a matter of just how much patience one needs to do the same fights over and over and over again, and just hope that it drops, and if it does, it goes to you. That is the depressing nature of Voidwatch, and it was done to keep people in the game before Seekers, but now Seekers is here, so the need for stupidly low drop rates is not required as much.

Also the super rare situational weapons are even worse, because who is seriously going to want to buy, or grind for one of these weapons? I could agree with the drop rates if these weapons were the best you could find in the game, but they are not, so what is the point?

[Asymptotic]

Shiny, etc. See: Afterglow RME

[Minikom]

Motivation: SE should add plates to cities T4 with decent drop rate,so if you dont have luck enough to get item, ppl should join to those shouts more often because they drop plates. I see this the main reason why ppl rarely join to those battles

[Creelo]

Honestly, I think it would just be awesome if they mimic how drops work the way Provenance Watcher does for ALL VWNMs. By this I mean, Hahava itself would have a chance to drop Mex. Harness, Mala, and Mask. Perhaps it would be the same drop rate as it would come from the chest, but I think doing this would aid greatly in helping certain people get those stubborn drops.

[Kylos]

I saw a post today on www.ffxiah.com about Voidwatch needing a rehash. Since I originally posted this back in April, I would like to see if players feel even strongly about changes to Voidwatch now that Seekers content is taking up the majority of more accomplished players time. I am sure there are a lot of newer/returning players who recently worked their way up to 99 and have been working on their Abyssea gear, only to find that nobody wants to do Voidwatch.

Players are having to resort to doing Abyssea for certain pieces, grinding away in reives for bayld to get Karieyh/Thurandaut etc, only to sneak their way into Delve parties despite them being severely under geared for the content.

[Tsol]

As is the case most of the time, as new content comes out, older content moves into obscurity, but with the way Voidwatch is designed it is something that needs to remain relevant. There are quite a few pieces still in Voidwatch that are very desirable for jobs but at the moment it is 1) difficult to obtain and 2) difficult to put together groups obtain said equipment.

Voidwatch was originally designed as an event for alliances and now that people have moved on, the event needs to be adjusted to account for that. I firmly believe that one of the biggest hindrances to putting a Voidwatch group together is the weakness system. There are just way to many possible weaknesses for this content. It still takes at least a good 10 people to be able to effectively do this content just to be able to cap lights for a chance at the best possible rewards. Blue Mage alone as 24 possible spells and you can't set them all at once. Black mage has 92! 92 spells! The weaknesses really should be adjusted to a more reasonable level.

I won't even go into the drop rate on the items from the event as that was already discussed by the OP.

People want to be able to do this content, to get the gear they want for their jobs but to also be able to build their Empyrean weapons up to level 99. And as it stands right now, it's not nearly as accessible as Dynamis is for being able to build a Relic to 99. Dynamis was adjusted to allow people to move on with new content but still made Relic building accessible. Voidwatch needs the same treatment.

[Daemon]

0/1000+ on Coruscanti I gave up. VW is one of the most depressing events in FFXI.

Seriously??? I'm 0/2000+ I got to watch 4 people get the dagger twice. 3 people who barely played VW and was new pulse it my face because they didn't play the job for it.

You think you are depressed? Lol this game is offending.