Feedback related to Vana'Bout

Make it every 3-6 months.

Yeah, 3 - 6 months sounds about right. The Cornelia stretch goal makes 6 months sound like kind of the intended "optimal" timing, but it would be neat to see trusts on 6 month cycles and something else in between. Like... I dunno, "Cornelia for 2/4/6 months", "Abyssea trophies added to next 1/2/3 login campaigns", "Matsui-P for 2/4/6 months", and... man I can't even think of a good fourth one.

Six months does potentially put them at May (anniversary) and November (11th month) though, which is pretty big symbolically for FFXI.

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Originally Posted by Zenion

Yeah, 3 - 6 months sounds about right. The Cornelia stretch goal makes 6 months sound like kind of the intended "optimal" timing, but it would be neat to see trusts on 6 month cycles and something else in between. Like... I dunno, "Cornelia for 2/4/6 months", "Abyssea trophies added to next 1/2/3 login campaigns", "Matsui-P for 2/4/6 months", and... man I can't even think of a good fourth one.

Six months does potentially put them at May (anniversary) and November (11th month) though, which is pretty big symbolically for FFXI.

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Indeed, I'd be fine with that for the anniversary and November events. Since we usually get return to the game campaigns around these months too.

I posted my opinion about how unfair this round of Vana'Bout has been for those seeking the title here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/t...-Seeking-Title

To recap, basically you need a perfect score to be in the "top ten rank", so missing even one daily objective completely disqualifies you. I point out in the linked thread more details, but this was incredibly unfair to those who were impacted by the bug, and was also disproportionally unfair to American players, giving Japanese and European players a huge advantage. I saw this feedback thread as hope that SE cared about their English-speaking playerbase, but it seems that was naive.

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Now that Vana'Bout is over, the results for the title ranking are even more unfair than I previously considered. Speaking for Bahamut, there are exactly 10 "rank 1" winners, and the second-highest score (highest 'non-perfect') is at rank 11. Here's the thing, though... several of the 10 winners are all the same person. So, one person on the server dragged his alternative accounts along with him while he did the objectives, and basically stole the title from other players who actually deserved it. Fewer than 10 players on Bahamut got the title! This is incredibly unfair to the hard working players who actually deserved it, and were denied an opportunity due to one jerk's alternate accounts getting carried through.

Again, SE should award this title to players who have achieved some high but reasonable threshold of plaudits, or at the very least, expand it to more than just 10 "players" (really fewer than 10 on Bahamut at least). Perhaps award it to the 10 highest scores, not counting ties?

I'm not just suggesting this as feedback for a 'round 3', I'm asking SE to fix this now for the players that worked hard during round 2. Please include a fix in your next update.

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Originally Posted by Aslani

I'm not just suggesting this as feedback for a 'round 3', I'm asking SE to fix this now for the players that worked hard during round 2. Please include a fix in your next update.

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The only realistic immediate fix is "give the title to everybody" or just "remove it and the competitive facet unless and until there's something you can actually compete in"

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

The only realistic immediate fix is "give the title to everybody" or just "remove it and the competitive facet unless and until there's something you can actually compete in"

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Not necessarily true, the quick and dirty fix would be to change how the ranking works so instead of "1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9, 11" it would be "1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5." It dilutes the title a little, but there is simply no good way to do "top 10" anyway - either there's an 11-way tie and more are handed out than expected, or ten random people out of a pool of however many at the top score get it, making it a game of... I don't know, "who has the lowest character ID number" or something, since it sorted consistently but not alphabetically.

But yeah, this one is... I really hope the titles for the top 10 thing goes back to the drawing board, it had good intentions but the implementation was a bit of a dumpster fire.

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Originally Posted by Zenion

Not necessarily true, the quick and dirty fix would be to change how the ranking works so instead of "1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9, 11" it would be "1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5." It dilutes the title a little, but there is simply no good way to do "top 10" anyway - either there's an 11-way tie and more are handed out than expected, or ten random people out of a pool of however many at the top score get it, making it a game of... I don't know, "who has the lowest character ID number" or something, since it sorted consistently but not alphabetically.

But yeah, this one is... I really hope the titles for the top 10 thing goes back to the drawing board, it had good intentions but the implementation was a bit of a dumpster fire.

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As I wrote earlier in the thread, the main issue is just they wanted to throw in a little friendly competition.... but there is no way for it to actually be an interesting competition because its literally impossible to catch up on or overtake someone who's ahead of you. If there's no way to challenge someone's dominance, there is no competition.

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Originally Posted by Aslani

I posted my opinion about how unfair this round of Vana'Bout has been for those seeking the title here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/t...-Seeking-Title

To recap, basically you need a perfect score to be in the "top ten rank", so missing even one daily objective completely disqualifies you. I point out in the linked thread more details, but this was incredibly unfair to those who were impacted by the bug, and was also disproportionally unfair to American players, giving Japanese and European players a huge advantage. I saw this feedback thread as hope that SE cared about their English-speaking playerbase, but it seems that was naive.

------

Now that Vana'Bout is over, the results for the title ranking are even more unfair than I previously considered. Speaking for Bahamut, there are exactly 10 "rank 1" winners, and the second-highest score (highest 'non-perfect') is at rank 11. Here's the thing, though... several of the 10 winners are all the same person. So, one person on the server dragged his alternative accounts along with him while he did the objectives, and basically stole the title from other players who actually deserved it. Fewer than 10 players on Bahamut got the title! This is incredibly unfair to the hard working players who actually deserved it, and were denied an opportunity due to one jerk's alternate accounts getting carried through.

Again, SE should award this title to players who have achieved some high but reasonable threshold of plaudits, or at the very least, expand it to more than just 10 "players" (really fewer than 10 on Bahamut at least). Perhaps award it to the 10 highest scores, not counting ties?

I'm not just suggesting this as feedback for a 'round 3', I'm asking SE to fix this now for the players that worked hard during round 2. Please include a fix in your next update.

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I hate to break it to you, but this is how you "win" in an MMO. You simply have to have more time than the next person. But I do agree with you, it could made more fair.

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Originally Posted by Gwydion

I hate to break it to you, but this is how you "win" in an MMO. You simply have to have more time than the next person. But I do agree with you, it could made more fair.

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The problem is, as I said it isn't even a competition. This is not about putting in more hours than the next guy, all you have to do is get all the paludits for each day. If you miss even one plaudit, you lose- There's no way to get it once you miss it, no way to overtake someone else if they are ahead of you unless they don't do something the nexty day. So there is nothing to make it interesting.

Thank you for tweaking Vana'bout!

- In general the changes seem good, though the battlefields could be difficult or impossible for some to tackle (mostly requiring a party of three or more).

- The rewards could definitely use some more tweaking, as others have already mentioned.

- One thing that caught my attention in particular, was the placement of the Vana'Bout objective category [1]. Me and many others have gotten very used to opening the Quests menu, then pressing up once, and then confirm to enter the Objective List. I would recommend placing the Vana'Bout menu back somewhere under the Objective List menu. The current placement seems rather odd, especially since the menu is disabled a lot of the time.

- The ranking system seems something that should be looked into as well, as it does not seem to be very fair at this time.

- There seems to be some inconsistency on the spelling of Vana'bout. I suppose it's Vana'Bout in most places, but there are some where it is capitalised as Vana'diel is: Vana'bout (Coordinator Moogle dialogue for example).

- There were/are some misspelled objective titles (Heroes' Combaat, and I believe at least one other, but I can't find a note of it nor remember what it was), and at least one that had text overlapping other text in its description (Incursion (VDB)).

I think that's all I can think of for now.

Thank you!

1. Vana'Bout Category Placement Feedback