Seriously, VW loot system..come on.

How about mobs can't die unless all lights are capped (Brigandish Blade style).

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Originally Posted by Camate

Please let us know what you think.

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Almost every problem with Voidwatch that has been mentioned, from popular or unpopular monsters to players using procs mainly for the drop-related bonuses, starts and ends with one thing. Extremely low drop rates that are further lowered by the "totally random thing is totally random" distribution system.

People fight the same monster 600 times because it is entirely possible to go 0/600 on a very desired drop. People fight a different monster only a half-dozen times because fighting the other thing 600 times has taken a heavy toll on their supply of Voidstones. It's not that some horrible monsters are unloved while others are the object of adventurers' pointy affections; it's much more a matter of limited resources due to forced repetition of fights.

People use procs to affect drop-rate and the number of drops in hopes that something desired will, against all odds, actually drop. Like a man on death row praying to the admittedly made-up deity that is the Flying Spaghetti Monster to wrap it's pasta-tendrils of love around his midriff and remove him from that dark cell and spare him his terrible fate, people will try anything when faced with what's effectively a 0.25%-0.75% drop rate.

The personal chest system isn't a bad idea in and of itself, but combined with punishingly low drop rates even with capped lights, the extra level of complete randomness it adds can be infuriating. Nine-tenths of the whacky things that players do in Voidwatch comes from being infuriated by the lack of drops and trying (and failing!) to obtain a drop in spite of it.

I literally can not imagine any way to make the drop-rates for desired items worse, so any change would be a welcome one. Open your minds and follow your hearts and implement whatever nutty thing you want. Even something ridiculous such as making logs edible, with a food effect of "Red Light +1000%" to "Red Light +3000%" depending on the quality of log eaten, would be a huge boon.

That said, lowering AoE damage or making it easier to cap lights aren't bad changes by any means. It just feels like such changes avoid the core issue.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Howdy!

I would like to make an addition to a planned adjustment that was announced earlier.

The issue at hand is the highest priority issue that we would like to address first before we make any other adjustments. There are many other adjustments we would like to make, but if we make too many adjustments at once, the following issues may occur:

• The balance is shifted too quickly, possibly making the game worse
• It is difficult to see improvement because too many changes are made
• An unexpected adverse effect occurs due to the changes overlapping

To avoid these problems, it would be best to plan adjustments in order based on priority and their effect.

In response to us making adjustments in stages, many of you may feel that we are not making enough adjustments, but we hope you understand that our plan is to continuously make adjustments.

Also, when leaving feedback I would like to ask that you provide detailed opinions with suggestions for improvement, rather than simply stating whether you like or dislike a proposed adjustment. This would be very helpful for us.
　
Now, I will address some feedback that has been submitted.



We understand your concern that players will simply switch to their strongest jobs due to the removal of the necessity to proc weaknesses and we’re carefully planning to address this issue.

In order to avoid content becoming monotonous, an idea we are looking into is not completely separating weakness and loot by increasing the maximum bonus attained through cells and other ascent items. As a result, if there are few players involved, using cells will replace having to proc weakness, and for larger parties, it would be possible to avoid paying the high cost for cells by procing weakness as usual.

We may discover some issues with the above proposal upon our extensive review, but we believe that if we completely separate weakness and loot, it is inevitable that players will lean toward using only their strongest jobs.

In order to allow creative freedom in battle, it is necessary to improve the effects of procing weakness, so that it is more enjoyable to use various tactics to proc weaknesses rather than resorting to using the strongest job available. This is a long term goal for us, so it is not possible to make this change all at once, but we will be taking steps one by one to achieve this goal.

Please let us know what you think.

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...What? Alright uh, somebody needs to fill me in here. Since when is using your strongest job a bad thing? Isn't the whole reason it's your strongest job because you like to use it?. Why would anyone want to play a weaker job because they're forced to proc crap? This seems absolutely absurd to me and I literally just yelled at my computer after reading this. There's a whole topic on getting rid of proc systems! What makes you think people want this?

Get rid of the need to proc on higher tiers (to stay alive), and let people come the jobs that they want to for once (since pre-abyssea...).

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Originally Posted by Helel

...What? Alright uh, somebody needs to fill me in here. Since when is using your strongest job a bad thing? Isn't the whole reason it's your strongest job because you like to use it?. Why would anyone want to play a weaker job because they're forced to proc crap? This seems absolutely absurd to me and I literally just yelled at my computer after reading this. There's a whole topic on getting rid of proc systems! What makes you think people want this?

Get rid of the need to proc on higher tiers (to stay alive), and let people come the jobs that they want to for once (since pre-abyssea...).

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It won't be "your strongest job that you like to use". It will be the jobs that kill the fastest and whms on all but the toughest nms that actually require procs. Atleast right now a majority of jobs are involved in the event.

Trust me when I say that I understand what your major concerns are and that discussions are taking place about them. However, when the team outlines other areas of adjustment, it does not mean that ways of improving what you care most about is not on their radar.

As a side note, being rude to me or other members of the team is not going to help your case or make the development team look at these points of concern any quicker. Please try to keep your comments on target without being rude or offensive.

Why was my post deleted, I only commented on the "Add to Treasure Pool" comment. /sigh

It's interesting in that this reveals that their intention with the VW proc system was to encourage job variance, but I nisist still that it's not a very effective means of doing that. The reason players will gravitate towards "the strongest jobs" is because they are the strongest. That's the disparity that should be resolved. It shouldn't be "Golly Gee Whiz, we need a dragoon in this party or we're not going to get treasure!", it should be "A Dragoon would be a nice addition to our team! let's get one!"

Replace dragoon with your job of choice.

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Originally Posted by Frost

Camate, before I report YOUR POSTS for being OFF TOPIC....

Read the first two lines AT LEAST in ANY post in ANY voidwatch post/thread. Start with THIS THREAD that you are "responding" to.

Feedback:

Everyone is saying it repeatedly, listing in order of importance:

1) The REWARD item distribution system* for Voidwatch is demoralizing, insulting, painful, and borders on punishment for participating in the event.

>> Simple solution: Add an "Add to treasure pool" option to the chests.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

2) Voidwatch is a Fun event; The challenge and "play" is there, and sufficient. It is dynamic, requires group play, teamwork, and is just difficult enough a bad pickup group cannot progress, but a good one can. No other aspects of the actual event other than the reward item distribution system* need changing at this time.


*Stating "Reward Item Distribution System" because for some unknown reason I think the devs think we're talking about "Temp Items". I say this based on YOUR feedback being so off the mark you'd have to do post graduate work in stupidity to be that dense.

You say you play the game, Prove it. There's no way you could be this off the mark.

Help us out here man.

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Wow, really dude? You've heard of "don't shoot the messenger" right? I'm positive Camate is relaying everything we say about Voidwatch, it's not his fault that the dev team keeps dancing around the issues and giving him crap to report to us.

@Helel: I think what the devs are trying to avoid is the DD job selection in Voidwatch dissolving to "WAR MNK SAM ONRY!"

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Originally Posted by Camate

In order to allow creative freedom in battle, it is necessary to improve the effects of procing weakness, so that it is more enjoyable to use various tactics to proc weaknesses rather than resorting to using the strongest job available.

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No. No no no no no.

That is fundamentally wrong. It is not necessary to throw a tedious bandaid on a gaping wound in game design. If anything your highest priority, your necessary adjustment, should be fixing the fact that such imbalances in job choice exist to begin with. Otherwise you just end up making roundabout adjustments to all your content that do technically fix the issue but often not in such a way that makes the jobs that have been made artificially desirable fun to play in said content. The backlash from "balanced" procing jobs (speaking of which, notice how they're specifically referred to as "procing jobs" by the community - should make it painfully obvious that this is the only reason they're getting invites and as such they're expected to focus on procs rather than actually playing their job) should have clued the devs in to this months ago.

Spamming arbitrary triggers is NOT ENJOYABLE. I don't know how I can make that any clearer. It was tolerable in Abyssea because you only had to deal with a maximum of three procs per kill with a very limited pool of triggers to draw from (though still annoying in that my job choice was dictated by procs as much as job suitability - guess why I hardly ever play BLU when farming Abyssea?), now it's almost unbearable. If anything, the procs system should be removed entirely and temp item reception/mob mechanics redesigned from the ground up to compensate. A lot of work? Yes, but the low droprates of Voidwatch combined with the inability to pass drops to other members dictates that anybody wanting rare drops will also be putting in a lot of work.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Trust me when I say that I understand what your major concerns are and that discussions are taking place about them.

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How are we supposed to know?

It's a nice thought, but discussion needs to be followed by results. When we see words like "highest priority" and it doesn't line up with what the playerbase wants, especially if the playerbase has seen their wishes shitcanned previously (adding VW loot to pool, nevermind the rage at the "logic" behind it), there is definite cause for concern and we will naturally become more vocal about our desires in the hopes that tangible results will follow quickly. Dev time is a very limited resource, it should be spent wisely. Even if it's not always what we want, it should at least have a solid rationale behind it and that has been noticeably lacking without significant prodding from the community (hello RDM/enfeebles in general).

I'm sure that you know given your job on the community team (and I don't envy your position one bit:(), but if the devs were really listening I'd think we'd see a shift in content design away from undesirable mechanics and this has been largely lacking. It seems to be slowly coming, but not enough and not widely enough. I'd be more comfortable if shifts were happening without origin in vocal complaints, and I'll also happily offer praise for the devs when/if that happens.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Also, when leaving feedback I would like to ask that you provide detailed opinions with suggestions for improvement, rather than simply stating whether you like or dislike a proposed adjustment. This would be very helpful for us.

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I got a one, Distroy chest without obtaining any items after looking in it. doing so would increase the low % of getting a rare item and lower the % of getting logs etc. let people keep doing this for as many times as they want, with no cap on how high it goes, only to reset after you take a item from the chest. so after around 20 fights the chance for the super weapons and bodies are no longer 1% but 50%

that way doing the fight over and over again will be helping you rather then just making people get madder.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Trust me when I say that I understand what your major concerns are and that discussions are taking place about them. However, when the team outlines other areas of adjustment, it does not mean that ways of improving what you care most about is not on their radar.

As a side note, being rude to me or other members of the team is not going to help your case or make the development team look at these points of concern any quicker. Please try to keep your comments on target without being rude or offensive.

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Here, I'll be nice: Back in the Dragoon thread I made a very long list of common concerns among Dragoons and for the millionth time asked about Camlann's Torment. Could you please, kindly, respond? Look, I'm not trolling or hazing for once!

People realize that Camate, Rukkirri, and Bayhone aren't on the Dev Team right? They can only give us information that the Dev Team gives to them to relay to us. Don't blame them for the Dev Team's missteps and shortcomings.

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Originally Posted by Prothscar

People realize that Camate, Rukkirri, and Bayhone aren't on the Dev Team right? They can only give us information that the Dev Team gives to them to relay to us. Don't blame them for the Dev Team's missteps and shortcomings.

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people have forgotten the phrase, Dont shoot the messenger

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Originally Posted by Camate

Trust me when I say that I understand what your major concerns are and that discussions are taking place about them. However, when the team outlines other areas of adjustment, it does not mean that ways of improving what you care most about is not on their radar.

As a side note, being rude to me or other members of the team is not going to help your case or make the development team look at these points of concern any quicker. Please try to keep your comments on target without being rude or offensive.

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I think a ton of frustration and ire could have been avoided if this response had been given a month and a half ago or more. You may have passed on the fact that the drop/chest system is near universally hated to the devs and received word back from them that it was being discussed. However, of all the community rep responses regarding VW, not once was it stated that this was the case. So from our point of view the number one concern surrounding VW wasn't being understood or was just straight up ignored.

people also realize that the answers the dev team are giving us are crap and the reps are the only ones that can relate our message that the answers are crap back to the dev team

and if they are relaying that message back to the dev team, we are either getting nothing from them, or told that the things that are crap need to stay for some BS balance

and to tangent, THIS GAME HAS NO BALANCE

I think you should FIX BLUE MAGE WHAT THE HELL BLUE MAGE IN VW IS THE LEAST FUN THING EVER HOLY SHIT.

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Originally Posted by Finuve

people also realize that the answers the dev team are giving us are crap and the reps are the only ones that can relate our message that the answers are crap back to the dev team

and if they are relaying that message back to the dev team, we are either getting nothing from them, or told that the things that are crap need to stay for some BS balance

and to tangent, THIS GAME HAS NO BALANCE

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They can relay what we say, but they have no power over what the Devs listen to or use. You can't blame the reps.

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Originally Posted by Coldbrand

I think you should FIX BLUE MAGE WHAT THE HELL BLUE MAGE IN VW IS THE LEAST FUN THING EVER HOLY SHIT.

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It's only not fun if you're bad at it.

everyone load up on cells 3 brd 3 mage rest dd zerg rinse repeat.... wait for drops 70% of the time during zergs lights cap and vwnm drops within 4-5 mins and if u drop cells in chances increase slightly u will get better then logs and stones for crafting so people just buy cells off ah and rinse repeat zergs... and really to me at this point in vw find it boring as he|| and got lots of the rarest drops but maybe just me being bored waiting for something new and challenging even though i think chalenge left this game 3 years ago or so...

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Originally Posted by Prothscar

They can relay what we say, but they have no power over what the Devs listen to or use. You can't blame the reps.

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nowhere did I blame the reps

ok lets simply go back to suggestions to fixing VWs loot system

"Add Item to Loot Pool"

could people still sell drops again? yes, is it the end of the world? HELL NO

this would fix people getting drops they will never use (Like me getting a mage body) and fix people getting duplicates

and, it would be balanced, real balance

I think you should eliminate the situation where you have 'stronger jobs'. What is the point of talking about balance if you are going to leave the jobs unbalanced. It's very contradictory. People would bring what they like to play if whatever they liked to play was actually as powerful as everything else in one fashion on another. Seems relatively blunt and simple, but you should really take a second to realize why this is so important. It may affect the future of your game.

Also, the ability to give my lucky drops to people would be appreciated. I received a deluxe animator after 3 runs of a mob. I can't just hand it to my friend who is a dedicated PUP. Do you have any idea how much of a dick that makes me feel? 'Oh sorry buddy, this loot system is just going to rub how lucky I am in your face and there is nothing I can do about it.' I am legitimately a social and caring individual who plays with several hard working friends. It's really not cool that I can't give things I don't want to people that do want them. That is part of the point of team work, is helping each other out.

Only not fun if you're bad at it? So you enjoy casting such almighty spells as BLASTBOMB? Grow up kid. Yeah, I LOVE constantly resetting spells and being completely crippled.

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Originally Posted by Camate

As a side note, being rude to me or other members of the team is not going to help your case or make the development team look at these points of concern any quicker. Please try to keep your comments on target without being rude or offensive.

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Bravo Camate. Bravo.

Problem 1: certain VW fights arent repeated, nor have been done at all by some players, while some get constantly repeated. Why is this?
First, SE made it that people can "help" without having proceeded through previous content. Thats like being able to do CoP dynamis without having done CoP...
Second, low tier NM drops are AHable, therefor people can merely buy desired drops from the AH. Supply will hit general market. rare/ex drops pretty much go to where they fall, and with some people having an obvious luck stat, some people tend to get 2-5 rare/ex item while some people go 0/300. Thats why some fights are repeated and some fights arent.


Problem 2: theres too much reliance on temps, especially fanatics/fools drinks.
Yeah...cause the mobs have something like 200khp and can constantly deal out 1.5k damage at will. This comes back to the stupid statement of "abyssea was a mistake"...but it seems that the SE devs found it necessary to rehash mob damage capabilities from abyssea. We dont have 2.5k hp anymore, my thief has 1468 hp as thf/dnc. The solution to "everyones TPing in haste gear and destroying things fast" shouldnt be "lets force everyone to constantly wear max pdt available, since if they dont they'll get 1shot".

I'm aware you cant really answer this, and I've never fought the mob, but I've read about it on community sites...How is anyone supposed to survive Rex's chainspell meteor without Fool's Drink?

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Originally Posted by Cybernetic_Empire

I think a ton of frustration and ire could have been avoided if this response had been given a month and a half ago or more. You may have passed on the fact that the drop/chest system is near universally hated to the devs and received word back from them that it was being discussed. However, of all the community rep responses regarding VW, not once was it stated that this was the case. So from our point of view the number one concern surrounding VW was that it wasn't being understood or just straight up ignored.

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Oh it was discussed... They said no, because then somebody could amass all the loot for themselves. God forbid somebody get 90 logs, how are you even supposed to hold all that crap much less multiple fights worth? And it completely misses the fact that you can't force somebody to pass anything to you anyway. If somebody gets a Mekira and wants to keep it then by all means, but when the MNK/DNC main gets one or I go 3/4 on Athos's Gloves it's just wasteful.

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Originally Posted by Coldbrand

I think you should FIX BLUE MAGE WHAT THE HELL BLUE MAGE IN VW IS THE LEAST FUN THING EVER HOLY SHIT.

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It's not so bad now that I don't have to set spells every time a proc comes up. Still annoying, but BLM is arguably much worse. At least I can still CDC things most of the time. Being able to contribute with spell utility as well would be fantastic but one thing at a time I guess... if it ever happens, they've sure made it a pain to use magic on high level NMs. Fodder onry my ass.

And wow, forgot I had this open for quite a while >.>

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Originally Posted by Coldbrand

Only not fun if you're bad at it? So you enjoy casting such almighty spells as BLASTBOMB? Grow up kid. Yeah, I LOVE constantly resetting spells and being completely crippled.

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Just because you don't know how to play the job doesn't make it any worse in VW. You should not be relying on spells at all, with 3 or 4 fights out of the several dozen available being exceptions.

While I agree that my post was strongly worded, it was hardly rude.

It is however frustrating when the thread is about "The Voidwatch drop system" specifically, and titled: "Seriously, VW loot system..come on." and none of the responses form the community team have anything to do with the topic: "Voidwatch loot system". It's a little irksome.

And then ask "please give us feedback"? It comes off a little rude.

Forgive me if my words cut a little close to the bone. It's not my intention to 'shoot the messenger' by any means. But when you've told the messenger repeatedly what to say and he comes back with everything but what you asked for. With no indication that the messenger has asked what your entire group has asked... It looks a little suspect. There's only so much stuff that can happen before you start to wonder if it is perhaps the messenger.

My humble apologies Camete. Nothing personal.

In the future, if you're responding in a thread specifically discussing a specific issue, would you be so kind as to address that issue in your opening comments just to acknowledge you're on the same plane as us?

There have been a number of these threads, and it does get frustrating; and it's not all voidwatch. There was a thread about, specifically, 'Corsair Shots' where the community rep response was all about Corsair Rolls, and had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

The impact of an action like that supersedes your intent.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Trust me when I say that I understand what your major concerns are and that discussions are taking place about them. However, when the team outlines other areas of adjustment, it does not mean that ways of improving what you care most about is not on their radar.

As a side note, being rude to me or other members of the team is not going to help your case or make the development team look at these points of concern any quicker. Please try to keep your comments on target without being rude or offensive.

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np, apologies for before.

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Originally Posted by Nynja

Second, low tier NM drops are AHable, therefor people can merely buy desired drops from the AH. Supply will hit general market. rare/ex drops pretty much go to where they fall, and with some people having an obvious luck stat, some people tend to get 2-5 rare/ex item while some people go 0/300. Thats why some fights are repeated and some fights arent.

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I agree with the rest of your post but this is flawed. People still woudn't do the fights that they don't do already. In fact by not having the this it would mean even less people fighting it more then once or twice to help those that need the fight to progress.

The phrase "don't shoot the messenger" does not really apply in most cases on these forums. It is very clear that no one here is trying to get a rise out of camate et al. Out of all the posts I've read (and I've read far more than I care to admit), I can't really recall any that were directed at a community rep specifically. Almost every angry / belligerent post on this forum (that wasn't directed at another poster) has been out of frustration with the decisions made by whoever is in charge of the direction the game is going, and (most likely) the people in charge of deciding what information is announced on these forums.

I was under the impression that the community reps were here merely as translators and well community reps. I have yet to read anywhere that they have any power / position beyond the conveying of information from one party to the next. Maybe I am wrong, and they do in fact help develop content. Maybe they do more than pass on feedback from the forums and translate the developers responses to said feed back.

As of now though, I have yet to see any reason to believe differently, and therefore don't see how any of the comments about the developers, or the direction of the game reflect poorly on the community reps, or why they would be upset by them, unless they are in fact somehow responsible for the things that we are all complaining about.

In short. No one is shooting the messenger, and no one should be shot by the messenger just because he doesn't like the news he is expected to deliver. This really isn't something that should ever be brought up.

If Community reps feel slighted by the posts here, I humbly apologize. Perhaps clarifying that they are in fact posting a translation, and not their personal opinions would help.

IE. "here is some information about pankration that was posted on the JP forums. We translated it for you:... "
instead of "we feel that splitting the timers on steal and despoil would make thief over powered".

In the case of this thread, it is would be beneficial to all parties involved if the players assume that the reps are very clear on the topic, and are unfortunately not in a position to make things better. It would also be a good idea for the community reps to assume that the players understand this, and stop taking things personal.

But just to be sure it's understood. THE LOOT SYSTEM IS THE PROBLEM

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

But just to be sure it's understood. THE LOOT SYSTEM IS THE PROBLEM

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I think 70% of the player base would agree with this statement. the other 30% are mules and dont get a vote

Okay, I know Cam's been getting a lot of shit lately so I'll try to stunt my headache (which could honestly never be as bad as his must be right now) long enough to give a calm, clear explanation of what exactly we feel is being lost between ourselves and the Developers.

In one of the recent developer responses/interviews concerning the Voidwatch loot system, the Developers expressed concern about the fact that, if trading of chest items was allowed, one player could walk away with 18x5 = 90 items.

However, this is misleading. In actuality, and the Developers know this (it's their game, of course they know this), each reward chest in Voidwatch only ever contains 1 Voidwatch-specific drop slot. The other 1-4 slots are guaranteed junk. In this case, the most any "hoarder" would be able to accumulate is 18x1 = 18 items per run. That is still a lot, but it is far less intimidating than 90.

I should not need to inform the developers that it was their own decision to restrict the treasure casket to a maximum of 1 Voidwatch-specific drop slot which has obsoleted the entire concept of Blue light and Cobalt cells. I don't think it can be said any more clearly that the player base does not consider gold ore, steel ingots, and ebony logs as viable rewards. We generally, in almost all cases, do not even introduce these items into the player-based AH economy, choosing instead to simply drop, ignore, or NPC them.

Understanding these premises, I would offer two decently viable solutions to this dilemma:

1) Remove the slot-based restriction of loot in the Voidwatch Treasure Casket. By this I mean to say that all 5 slots in the casket should have a chance to load Voidwatch-specific drops at the same rate that the first slot loads now. This will essentially quintuple all drop rates for players who choose to use Cobalt cells and cap Blue lights. This will also allow a single player to obtain multiple Voidwatch drops in a single run. Is that really so bad? The players say no.

2) Just allow us to transfer loot to the treasure pool. Seriously. It's not that big of a deal. The devs can't scare us with that "oh no, 90 items to one person" line. We're smarter than that. Frankly, we're also more mature than that. This is 2012. The community has evolved over the past 10 years. Linkshells consisting of 15 slaves working for the benefit of 3 leaders just don't exist any more, and where they do exist they hardly thrive. People aren't that dumb. We're capable of being responsible for ourselves. We don't need extreme built-in protection against corruption or hoarding. We can handle it, I promise.

Look, I know you're just doing your job, and you must want to tear your hair out right now, but if there's one thing and one thing alone that the Devs need to understand before anything else can happen, it's that they cannot continue to underestimate us. We are smarter than they give us credit for. We understand far more than they give us credit for. And, frankly, despite what it may look like on the surface of these forums, we're far more mature than they give us credit for.

This is not the same player base that they were working with in 2005 and 2006. Much of the ire that is directed towards the Developers and, by proxy, yourself and your team members, is due to the fact that the Developers do not seem to be taking us seriously. We do not feel that the developers comprehend just how much we already know and understand about their game. A vast majority of Developer responses to the player base can be likened to a father telling his 5 year old son that light bulbs work through magic and electricity after the son asks about the difference in electromagnetic potential between 50W and 100W bulbs. And no, this is not your fault. This is not something that can be rephrased, or lost in translation. The wording is unimportant. It is the content which speaks for itself.

I do not feel that the Developers respect their player base as intelligent human beings, and this will only lead to problems for them. When the players ask for something that's both reasonable and plausible, the typical Dev response is "No, we can't do that because blank." We're not worried about blank. I'm sure that the Devs are reasonably intelligent people, but so are we. If they want to implement something but don't know how, they are allowed to ask us for help too. I promise we're not all NEETs. Many of us are computer programmers and sysadmins ourselves. Despite what they may want to believe, some of us even have a decent understanding of how the game code functions. And if we don't, nothing is stopping them from explaining the situation in more specific terms.

In fact, that's really the root of the issue. The developers don't seem to think that there are elements within the playerbase that are capable of understanding them if they just use technical jargon or give a detailed, precise answer to a question. Instead, they just jot down some general, layspeak jumble that they think will fly with us. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't fly with those of us who know what we're doing, and instead it just incenses us to know that they sincerely believed that people would accept such baloney at face value.

I'm sorry, but the first thing the Developers are going to need to do if they want to calm the playerbase down is show us a modicum of respect. We're not a bunch of children who need coddling or babysitting. We're intelligent, capable human beings, some of whom are likely smarter and more experienced than the Devs themselves, and we demand to be treated as such. As a programmer myself, Rule #1 for those in my profession is "Never forget that there will always be someone out there smarter than you". Rule #2? There is nothing wrong with asking for help.

Wow GG, that was exceptionally well written. I hope everyone takes the time to read that, not just the reps or the devs, everyone.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Camate

Trust me when I say that I understand what your major concerns are and that discussions are taking place about them. However, when the team outlines other areas of adjustment, it does not mean that ways of improving what you care most about is not on their radar.

As a side note, being rude to me or other members of the team is not going to help your case or make the development team look at these points of concern any quicker. Please try to keep your comments on target without being rude or offensive.

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Camate many of us do not blame you or the other CR's. You guys (girls?) have a tough job relaying information back and forth and having to directly deal with an enraged player base.

Many of us have given various easy to implement solutions. What we've seen from the CR's translated feedback is that the dev's do not care what the players want or desire. Under no system should it take a player fighting a NM 200+ times to acquire an item. There is no way to describe such a random requirement in a positive light. The event of Voidwatch is fun, but only if your actually getting rewards from it. As most players are not receiving rewards, or rather the rewards they want, it has deteriorated into all these angry players.

The reactions of the playerbase could of easily been predicted if you (or the devs, or FFXI team leads) had studied DR. B. F. Skinner's research. He specialized in behavioral studies and did many experiments involving animals, levers and food pellets. He eventually created something known as a an Operant Conditioning Chamber.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant...ioning_chamber

It was a device used to train and instill certain behavioral characteristics into lab animals to study how to best train them. It has since become a staple device in any behavioral study.

FFXI's Voidwatch system operates exactly like a Skinner's Box set to random reward distribution based on dynamic input. Long wording meaning your reward is a random percentage, each time a rat hits the lever there is a chance at the food (reward) being dropped. Due to the randomness the rat is conditioned to hit the lever as often as possible and becomes agitated when food is not delivered over an extended period of time. Using a Skinner's box on human beings is considered unethical by behavioral scientists and the medical community at large.

So they are trying to make VW more low-mannable now? While making legion which is 36 player content? Really I don't get what the team wants to push, low-man content or big alliance stuff.

I really hope a massive decrease in heavy metal plates trial is in the works (or increase plate drop rates/pouches), this will encourage almost everyone with an emp to do it. Right now almost nobody is upgrading emps (many people have multples and would upgrade them all is the trial wasn't stupid).

The real reason for doing VW should of always been the plates and upgrading emps, as it was the trial was too high so most people wrote it off completly and the only reason to do VW became the bodies/weapons. Due to the silly drop rates the trophy bodies being the main reason to do the event is what's causing uproar (especially after aby when players are used to not having to go 1/200). Timing for such an unrewarding event was silly.

Heavy metal plate trial is stupid, adjust it please. It won't change game balance because the upgrades are fairly weak anyway but it will encourage a lot more to do them and indeed make them want to do the next upcoming trial (not the last one lol).

To be fair, the dev team has already answered us regarding voidwatch drop system.

Remember this?:

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

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Now this here is exactly what Greatguardian is talking about. You have a large number - most likely the vast majority - of players who are unhappy (to say the least) with the current voidwatch reward system. Dev team's reply: "nope, not gonna change it, nothing wrong with it."

However, we're not given any explanation as to why the dev team thinks there's nothing wrong with it. We're not given an explanation why they want it to stay the way it is. We're not told why it's a good reward system (in their opinion). Why can't we not be given a proper answer to this?

Most of us would at the very least see a change made so it'll be impossible for a ra/ex item to appear in the personal chest of someone who already has said item. Could we please be given an explanation why this isn't possible? Giving us the ability to "destroy" a ra/ex item we already possess, is not a solution at all. The problem isn't that someone gets their 6th Aliyat Chakram and can't take it out of the chest. All they need to do to make the chest depop sooner, is to run out of range. The problem is when someone gets their 4th Toci's Harness. Or Heka's Kalasiris. Or Mekira Meikogai. How is that person being able to "destroy" that body piece, helping the person in the alliance who's just done his 237th Kaggen fight without getting said body piece? It just feels like insult to injury, seeing the "duh, just got my 4th body" in party chat.

Quote:

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Now this here is exactly what Greatguardian is talking about. You have a large number - most likely the vast majority - of players who are unhappy (to say the least) with the current voidwatch reward system. Dev team's reply: "nope, not gonna change it, nothing wrong with it."

However, we're not given any explanation as to why the dev team thinks there's nothing wrong with it. We're not given an explanation why they want it to stay the way it is. We're not told why it's a good reward system (in their opinion). Why can't we not be given a proper answer to this?

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Because nobody would do VW after a month if they eased up now, they need to add more reasons to do VW aside from the r/e drops (heavy metal plate trial fix/maybe greatly lower the amount of curor you get in aby to make VW more appealing for that).

A point system would of been nice but for whatever reason they think this is better, I suppose to try encourage casuals. They won't change the real issue players have so it's pointless to rage over it, if they did they would greatly decrease how many fights you could do for balance. They will never give you unlimited tries with a decent drop rate, hell they even have things inplace to stop hardcore players getting drops in VW.

But the thing is, I'm not talking about drop rates. I'm talking about the drop system. I've said it before and I'll say it again - personally I don't mind low drop rates so much, but when coupled with the fact that one person can receive multiples of the same ultra-rare ra/ex drop, that's what's really bad. That, and the complete randomness of it all, which makes one person go 1/3 on a ra/ex body, while another person goes 1/350 - and the possibility that someone can do 1000 fights and still not get the ra/ex drop. And the last part is why I personally would prefer a point system of some sort.

Quote:

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

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I do remember this, I think the development team needs informed that they are wrong and this is the main crux of the problem with voidwatch loot