Feedback related to Vana'Bout

Greeting adventurers,

We'd like to hear about your experiences with Vana'Bout! We’ll be sharing this information with the Development team for their consideration.

1. What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?
2. How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?
3. What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

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* Before posting your feedback, please read through the recent replies and “Like!” any posts that you agree with, rather than create a new post with the same opinion. This helps us get a better view of how many people agree with a certain opinion.

The idea is cool, using RoE for points. But Ambuscade everyday....no thanks!

Players who can clear very difficult ambuscade will exhaust all relevant rewards from ambuscade itself long before reaching the plaudit goals. This means that those players are expected to do ambuscade solely for the minimal plaudit reward or the sense of satisfaction in helping attain the cooperative goal. Because each reward in ambuscade is limited, and players will cap on the better rewards first, there is a natural taper so the pace at which plaudits are accrued is likely to slow throughout the challenge period.

This is poor design, players are not likely to be incentivized by that. It would have been better to use an event where rewards are not front-loaded, and remain constant. Or, spread the objectives across a variety of different events so that players can continue to contribute while doing events that provide rewards.

I think the concept of this event is fantastic. I think each months vana'bout should have different content for the ROEs. The biggest issue is the daily ROE. I think the content should be Weekly ROE and just make the ROE worth more event points per ROE.

Overall I love the idea of a community event but it just needs fixes.

Scheduling it during the holiday time, while festive, was a mistake. People will be travelling during this time or spending time with family and will have less time to do the event.

Setting the Gold tier reward so close to maximizing the goals every day is challenging, especially considering the above.

The individual rewards are not very special, and the reward tiers are also strange. The Gold tier rewards are the weakest in my opinion, and none of them are very exceptional.

Making the objectives require certain jobs (healer, magical damage, doing WS) could be annoying for players who only play certain jobs.

The original goal of plaudits for the community was much too high.

It is difficult to be excited for extended campaign durations when we don't know which campaigns will be taking place next month.

Those problems aside, I think it's a great idea to have cross-server rewards and something to work on as a community. I like the idea of the extended campaigns and the Ambuscade reward is very potent.

The structure was too rigid. Do all of these things, every single day, or else you won't get the points you need. Some repeatable goals and a an overall limit on plaudits earned per day or week would have felt a lot better than ten objectives for 100 plaudits, take it or leave it.

Tying the entire event to one kind of content wasn't a great choice; if it's content players are willing to do, it leads to congestion, and if it's content that players don't want to do, it sours the event. Maybe consider spreading objectives out across a few different aspects of the game? Ambuscade, Sortie, and Campaign would make one repeatable instanced option, one daily instanced option, and one non-instance option, to spread the load out a little and give players just a bit of variety. Crafting or gathering would be interesting options too if they weren't the entire focus.

A little more insight into what the prizes are actually good for would be nice too. I was pretty excited about that Kupon I-Aby, until I learned how many items it actually provides on use.

like or dislike: From everyone I have talked with the idea is awesome and fun, the execution/choice of event is not. Having to do 12 days of ambuscade (even doing V2 on normal) it will take you about 3 runs day at about 10mins per run to get your dailies done. No one wants to spend that much time grinding an event for very little ambuscade points or plauds. That is 6hrs of work, for what a lock style of a weapon we already have, but now in new color? Not really worth doing it. Plus the other rewards are not great, a Beitetsu Box, i can spend 5-6hrs to get one, or i could do one Oddesy Run, and make close to a million gil and buy two stacks of 99 in 30 mins. I think this boils down to the fact were not all 20 something year old's with unlimited time on our hands were grown adults with jobs and families and kids who loves playing this game. I am not asking for free loot or anything like that, just make the rewards more, rewarding. Make them worth the time/effort, Even the Extended campaigns, while good, a lot of them people don't need any more, so if new ones like Sortie or Odyssey were added it might draw more people into to doing them. Something like Odyssey you get 1 free mooglephone per day (so you can go farm 2x) or Sorite gives you 2x points for your first run per week or something like that.

objectives/difficulty: They don't seem to hard, but putting them into something like Ambuscade where there is wait times, only leads to congestion. Plus the fact that objectives are personal meaning if I go in with a group of friends, only 1 person get it, so a healer won't get "Execute a skillchain" unless they go back in again after changing jobs.

The future iterations of Vana'Bout: Consider new ROEs for things that people do or need help with, Odyssey, or Sortie, Things like extra points for those if we beat the vanabout, people would flock to those things. Or even new rewards, i realize that the team is small and just doing minor things, but add in more cosmetics that are new. If you added in Iconic Final Fantasy weapon skins people would do these events in droves in hopes of getting a Gunblade, or Buster Sword etc.

TLDR: The idea is great and sounds amazing, the rewards for time spent is lackluster.

As a returning player, my playtime is limited so when I login I have to decide if i want to do sortie, segment farm, omen, xp, or actually play the game. I was going to pass on Vanabout to utilize the time I have per night, but the 100 deeds is a huge time saver since I have another four months to get Monbro.

Sometimes I feel like the developers lost sight of that message that I have to click on every time advising me to care for the time I invest my friends and family and to not lose sight of that. All these "dailies" seem against that message and the vanabout event on top of that is making playing a chore instead of feeling fun. The event should have been a month and not two weeks with holidays and the current campaign bonuses going on.

Also increase the amount of RoEs we are allowed to have active. Vanabout is taking about 15 slots.

It would be great if you could bring Vanabout to other older less utilized areas like Legion, etc. My friends enjoyed that content.

Again I am just sharing my perspective as a returning player who started over earlier this year.

Other events! Oh gosh how about HNM killing blows, just to capture that 2005 competitive camping feel! Also a great opportunity to get people co-ordinated to play Ballista, Monstrosity or er Pankration?

The low-tier reward of an Ethereal Weapon once a month is fine. The other personal rewards seem ok. The overall rewards seem a bit lame - extending the thing we're doing? How about unlocking Cornelia or Matsui-P Trusts for a month? Unlocking an old item on next month's login points? Unlocking an old seasonal mini-game and associated rewards for a month?

If you want people to do daily events that add on to all the other daily events we already have to do, the rewards must benefit.

I suggest that if you meet the vanabout goal, for the next month there is a 2x Gallimaufry bonus added until the next update. Sortie is one of the main events going on in game. Vanabout should focus on the events that players are acutally working towards. Yes some do ambuscade but since there is a reward cap on items, the hallmarks/gallantry are quickly reached by those that can do VD.

One recommendation I would put in place would be if you keep the ROE as daily, to add like 5K or 10K Exemplar Points to the completion of the daily ROE. This would encourage more of the veteran player base to want to participate, since the rewards appear to be more lackluster.

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What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

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Likes: A cooperative event that spans servers.
Dislikes: Doing a bajillion Ambuscade runs.
This event should have spanned multiple content types.

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How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

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Some of the objectives are redundant and can/should be combined. For instance, you are essentially guaranteed to complete three of the daily objectives just by doing ambuscade three times, so these objectives will always complete at the same time and could be made to take up one RoE slot instead of three.

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What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

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Already answered this above, but feature different content types. Maybe have an objective for crafting. For Sortie. For general grinding.

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What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

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Likes: Earning points through RoE is a great idea, especially through a shared goal across all servers.
Dislikes: The objectives shouldn't be restricted to Ambuscade because this incentive was exhausted by players YEARS ago. The objectives can be anything across FFXI (See below). Also, I would prefer that rewards can be spent multiple times, as 1 reward per tier is extremely demotivating in a given month. (Yes, I understand that multiple 100 deeds rewards might be a problem, but choosing one reward from each tier is extremely frustrating, especially not knowing what might come the following month).

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How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

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The objectives are repetitive and that's fine. However, they do not universally apply to each member in the party. Many players only attempt Ambuscade on VD difficulty daily, so there is little incentive to do Ambuscade, as the satisfaction of earning plaudits alone, just isn't enough. On the otherhand, many players, solo Ambuscade on Normal to hoard as many daily objectives for themselves, which creates congestion and stifles collaboration.

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What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

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There should be a mix of Pre-99 and Item-Level ROE objectives, daily/weekly, such as:

• Kill 3 Kings, Kill a Salvage Boss, Kill Shadow Lord, Get to Floor 100 in NNI
• Kill a Dyna-Divergence Wave 1,2,3 Boss in a single run
• Kill all sortie top-floor bosses (major and minor).
• Kill all sortie basement bosses (major and minor).
• Help another player get an Odyssey V0/V5/V10/V15/V20/V25 Clear! (Repeatable)
  
• I would like to suggest rewards from Vanabout that apply to Odyssey and Sortie:
  • Give Odyssey Mog Amplifiers as an Ambuscade Reward.
  • Give a reward that forces or removes the random Aura from Odyssey bosses.
  • Give out a Sortie Seal that gives the effect of Gaulimaufry+25%
  • Give us an all jobs movement speed item that is usable in Sortie.
  • Remove RARE tag from NYAME Armor set or earn a Second/Third/Fourth Augment set.
• Generic rewards should exist, such as Rainbow and Gold mog pells (for various points and costume/vanity items).
• Event Timing: Points should allowed to accumulate! As each day passes, our potential plaudit earnings decreases! Someone who starts on Day 1 vs Day 7, should be able to earn as much plaudits as possible!

We need to stress to SE that the Vanabout rewards provided are extremely low-value items, that are easily obtainable elsewhere (such as similar costume items and furnishing come from as little as 100 login points!).

We need group RoE objectives, better rewards and insight into the next month's campaign schedule that we are working so hard to augment!

Thank you.

1. What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

I like the idea of Vana'bout. The concept of working together for a common goal is core to the FFXI Experience so something that leans into that is a good decision for me. It's implementation is just lacking. The point values are all wonky (just look at the fact that the group goal had to be cut down to a fourth of what it was originally intended). Some work needs to be done to work out how to have that all work and be sensible.


2. How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

I think the objectives are fine, to me. As someone playing a bit more casually I've not exhausted the unique rewards I can get from just doing Ambuscade. In fact I'm actually using it as a way to motivate myself to build a Naegling finally but that brings me to the to the general issue. Half of the Daily Objectives basically need you to come in with a Mage Job that can do Ambuscade reliably. I am only in such a good position because I was already gearing up Red Mage and was at a position where I can actually get some rewards I want out of Ambuscade. If Ambuscade is the only thing you can do for points and you basically need nothing for it you run out of stuff to get from just grinding it 3 times a day.

3. What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

Several Things:
Make the Point Balance better. Right now getting Max Tier means playing every day. On top of that, the aforementioned goal nerf shows that gains by day weren't what was expected. Maybe aim to have lower goals and more "stretch" goals at higher percents instead of a high 100% for any group rewards?

Diversify the kinds of objectives. Make it not just one content but spread it out a bit so it's not so monotonous. Also, as others have said, it's basically locked to level 99 characters. Due to the Crossover Raid with FFXIV there's actually a handful of newbies checking the game out right now. Making this something they can work on for rewards too would help the old players be incentivized to help out newbies more.

Better structure with the rewards. As it stands, while the Gold Level is hard to obtain, the rewards don't seem worth it. If you're gonna put things like Exemplar and Job Points on it, give us a ballpark of how many we get. Ideally I would make something like that it's own reward tier that's like "you'll get to pick a pile of one or the other that scales based off points as a category in addition to tiers with other rewards." That way they are there as a reward that keeps going up in between Tier Benchmarks. You can maybe also put a bump on that reward category as one of the overall goes like "If we get to this level of overall points, the amount of Exemplar Points or Job Points gained by everyone is boosted a bit."

Since it's the big Endgame Grind right now too, you might even add Gallimaufry as one of the options in this category to help shave off the Prime Weapon Grind.


Vana'bout is a generally idea and I would be sad if it just faded into obscurity after a rocky launch. It just needs some polish to shine.

1. What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?
2. How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?
3. What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

1. I liked that I could solo the objectives, having limited time on my hands and not being able to reliably group up for things makes it difficult to complete objectives that require a group. What I disliked was the lack of repeatable objective that could be used as a catch up mechanic incase I missed a few days logging in or could not complete all the objectives, I also disliked being forced into one type of content with no way to contribute outside of said content. As it stand due to only being able to play 2 hours a day a few times a week because I work at minimum 10 hour shifts I wont be able to get any rewards worth while so my desire to do this event wound up being pretty low.

2. Most of the objectives were fairly easy enough with some research and having already having jobs I could use as a sub job on warrior to magic burst and heal. I can however see where this could be an issue for some players and kill their desire to participate if they lacked the means to complete some of the objectives, thus preventing them from ever acquiring the top rewards,

3. I would like to see future vana'bouts be more accessible in regards to what you need to do to complete the objectives, let us do some sort of repeatable objectives any where in the open world as well as doing content like ambuscade and sortie or omen at the same time. Don't have the objectives locked to just one place and give each place a repeatable like defeat monsters or acquire xp or do X amount of damage like we already have with ROE so people are able to catch up if they missed out on a few days, and those that want to contribute more can. I would love to see better rewards, especially in gold tier, I have long thought we needed an alternate avenue of acquisition for items like the Mogbonanza weapons and this would be a great way to do that in some fashion.

I have played off and on since 2004 and have covered a multitude of games during my time as a game journalist and have even worked on a couple of MMORPGs, I think this event round just simply missed the mark in terms of incentive and accessibility but I don't think it was necessarily a bad event.

What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?
Good idea, cooperative event.
Ambuscade is already something players have to do, forcing it even more doesnt make sense.
Its a missed oportunity to revive old content or zones which noone does anything anymore, use those contents to generate plaudits.

How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?
They are fine but we need more incentive to do them , give EP (10k EP) rewards to them

What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?
EP rewards to daylies.
Dont use content for RoEs we already do on a daily basis.
The objectives should not be individiual but obtained if one in the group obtains it

There is no reward in that list that's worth a month of grinding Ambuscade every day. As has already been stated, this is just going to further reward those who are already catapulted ahead.

The dailies are horrible, there's plenty of things to do before doing that, and spamming Ambuscade is meh.
The reward are a bit meh too, but, you can add a yearly bonus to in reward (whole server wide) like currencies bonus +xx% (ex: CP bonus +15%), etc... Some bonus that will shortened the time to gather some currency we need years to acquiert.

Some example :
- Abyssea NM will drop 1 more empyreal weapon/armor seals drop.
- Gallymaufry +20%
- Ambuscade points +20%
- Capacity Point +30%
etc....

Bonus for everyone, that could year monthly/lastly.

that would help newcomer like older people to keep up.

I can't do Vana'Bout as a new player which is a huge disappointment. There should have been more options for newer players to take part. I came back to enjoy the world I loved in the 2000's and see the stories. I did not come back to rush to max level and grind one piece of content.

Others have captured my thoughts about how this was implemented. It's holiday time and spamming ambu was not what I was expecting at all.

Personally, I was hoping for this event to be something like the Treant event where the servers got teleport points. I was expecting something more general for the servers.

My hopes were things like:
- Have timers to be reduced for re-entry to Dynamis D, Omen.
- Allow 2 or even 1 person to enter Dynamis D and Vagary
- More teleports (I know we have a TON now so I am not complaining that we NEED more).
- Maybe new strategic teleports (I'm looking at you Yorcia wields with your moving bushes! even though hopefully I'm past having to deal with that now)

Basically, some general QOL changes.


I need more ambuscade stuff, so in a way, I don't mind the goals, but I can't imagine how tiresome this has to be for people who don't need ambuscade gear. I've decided to do what I can and leave it. It's the holidays. I know I can't sit there and spam it constantly.

I do appreciate that SE wanted to do a server wide event and hope they will continue to do stuff like this. I do love this game.

What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?
The idea of a "competition" to encourage engagement is a great idea. Giving players both personal goals and community goals can encourage players to take part. Earning points by setting RoEs is a good system.
I would love to see a future VanaBout that isn't tied to "you have to log in every day and grind objectives", though.


How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?
Given the content required (Ambuscade), the objectives are too strict and actually interfere with regular Ambuscade runs. Keep in mind that most players only do a few Ambuscades every week, so having to do at least 3 very specific runs every day doesn't make a lot of sense. While having varied objectives is an ok idea as it incentivizes having multiple jobs, the reality is that most players focus on one or two specific jobs and may not be able to complete all of the objectives.
The vast majority of points comes from grinding Ambuscade daily - and this just isn't how players these days actually play the game.


What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?
The first major change would be the rewards. The rewards are, quite frankly, awful for the amount of time you need to spend to get them. I actually don't mind the Etheral Weapons for a low-tier reward, but the Silver and Gold tiers really don't incentivize players to get them. The only real standout award is the 100 Deeds, (at Silver) but all three tiers should have had multiple choices of similar value to really make the event worth it. Also, the reward for reaching the community goal is...you get to do more Ambuscade with free Seals next month. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
Tying VanaBout to a daily RoEs also seems like a poor choice. Yes, you want players to log in every day but a large portion of your current playerbase only logs in maybe once or twice a week and that type of player should be able to take part in the event too.

One final note: The initial estimate of global points to achieve was WAY off, I have no idea where the number came from but it really speaks to the fact that SE has difficulty understanding just who and how many players actually play the game at this point. Yes, it is a 21 year old game, but getting active player counts shouldn't be too difficult. Even with the 75% reduced goal the playerbase still might not hit it as the rewards vs the time investment aren't really worth it.
I would like to see other VanaBouts that focus on content that doesn't need to be grinded every day.

I like the addition of sparks rewards and RoE's. However (as mentioned before)... Can the ability to store more sparks be implemented (similar to pot pourri as an example)?

The spending cap is there for a reason and should remain, but storing them would be nice... There are so many ways to gain sparks now, that most get wasted because there is no where to store them.

What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?
I appreciate that it's Ambuscade, if it were all objectives for Sortie or whatever I wouldn't be able to do them.

How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?
It's a little weird that the objectives are limited. For an event that's about everyone hitting a goal by filling a progress bar, there's no way to pick up slack. It seems likely some people will get fatigued and stop, or stop because the holidays, or hit their personal goal of 900 plaudits for the 100 deeds and stop. If that happened there wouldn't be anything the remaining players could do to make up for it. And I just started doing it yesterday, so I've already missed days and there's nothing I can do to make it up. It would make more sense to have repeatable objectives so that overachieving players could do more than their share, and everyone could grind at their own pace.

What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?
Either change the daily objectives into repeatable objectives or add additional repeatable objectives.

It's been said, but I'm going to repeat it. Dailies are bad. Stop piling daily content on to us. I already am not doing sortie every day because I hate it, adding this didn't make me any more inclined to log in.

I appreciate that ROE was implemented in a very clunky old game to try and streamline some things, but ROE is also old and clunky now. I don't even want to assign 9 dailies every day, let alone DO 9 dailies every day. If you are going to make these events use ROE they need to use the same system as the limited time challenge ROE that is always active and changes every 4 hours, have it activate for everyone automatically during the event and reactivate at whatever arbitrary intervals you decide on, this way it also won't count toward the already very limited ROE cap.

In a game with a monthly sub, trying to make this content done via limited daily events is unnecessary. Make the quests repeatable, if someone wants to crank out their 1300 in one day, let em. If they want to keep cranking out more until the event ends, let em.

The rewards are awful. They just are. There is no carrot here. Give us something cool to get or don't be surprised when we choose not to waste our time.

The initial community goal was laughably wrong and blaming it on "congestion" is embarrassing. I sincerely hope the dev team (?) takes this opportunity to reflect on how out of touch they are with the community and perhaps reevaluate some of the other egregious decisions they've been making recently.

The idea behind this was good, I like the generic idea, but the implementation from start to finish is really poor.

For starters, the timing was awful for an event that requires daily participation. Forgetting the problems with daily content for a moment, you are running this across multiple major holidays where people are going to be out of town, away from their computer, with family, or doing other things. Reaching gold tier and requiring daily participation across this season really wasn't a good idea.

The initial objective of ~16m was absurdly out of touch. Someone did the math and it would require around 10,000 people to do it daily and reach gold tier, that's just not going to happen. The current goal is more reasonable, but I think you would struggle even with better rewards to find 10,000 people willing to participate daily, again considering the holidays especially, but also considering the rewards and general state of the playerbase right now.

The RoEs themselves are OK. I am not as irritated about the objectives themselves as some, but I would prefer to see options that cater to a more endgame focused crowd, like Sortie or Odyssey. I realize this is exclusionary but Ambu doesn't do much for the endgame crowd and I think we'd rather focus our time doing things that are engaging or interesting, not fairly trivial or mundane daily events. This also plays into the rewards, because for endgame players the time spent doing this would be better off just farming the same reward while doing something more engaging or interesting. I also think there are too many, cut it down to 3-4 daily and make them more challenging or engaging (note: doing something 50 times is not challenging or engaging, I mean make the objectives actually require some engagement and thought). Ideally, this wouldn't even be daily, maybe weekly or something that you can stack up if you can't do it one day, but still I'd prefer to see fewer.

The overall campaign reward itself was pretty poor, as well. The choice of Ambuscade makes some sense as it caters to lower level characters, but most endgame players would just run V1VD a few times rather than spend the time to do objectives and try to reach the goal. It really just isn't worth our time. There is no real motivation to reach the goal across servers for the people who are capable of doing this solo. I think for campaign rewards, you'd get a better response if you ran a combined EP/CP/Exp campaign, this can help the entirety of the playerbase including endgame players. I'd like to see Galli and Odyssey (RP and/or segments), both of which I think would benefit most of the player base. It'd also be ok to rotate if you plan on doing this every so often, run it with Ambu as a campaign to help lower level characters, then a month or two later run one that caters to endgame characters. The other problem is that we don't know if this reward is even going to be reachable or interesting, because Ambuscade runs in rotations with some of them being really annoying or not clearable readily. For example, what if we put all this work into making progress and hitting the objective, only to find out you run the Sahagin ambu next month and no one can take advantage of the campaign? Finally, one single boost to hallmarks/gallantry really isn't that appealing to endgame players especially daily, basically you are running a daily event that must be done on a day to day basis, only to unlock a campaign that....also must be done daily to take advantage of. That is too much daily and not enough opportunities for us to participate or take advantage of the reward if we have to do it every day.

As a rule in the game, you really need to back off forcing people to do things daily, we aren't 17 years old anymore. Most of us have jobs, families, and other commitments, we can't login every day and the time we do have, we'd rather spend doing interesting and engaging things, which these goals aren't, and th rewards aren't worth the time. I think the devs need to take an honest step back when they add content and look at their own lives in light of what they are adding, asking themselves when they go home from work: "Would I want to spend my limited free time doing this?", because that's the question the playerbase asks whenever stuff like this comes out and it feels like no one at SE is asking themselves that question..

The individual rewards leave a lot to be desired. Basically the only rewards worth doing are arguably the Aby Kupon, which could be obtained in less time anyway but does have some value, and the Deeds if you slacked on Deeds or are a little behind. Everything else is just not worth the effort. The gold tier rewards in particular are really poor, I am not logging in daily to spend 20-30min doing mind numbing RoEs across major holidays just to get 10k EP, I could earn that in under 20 minutes with friends in a single day. These rewards do not appeal in any way or form to endgame or experienced players or basically anyone who is "finished" with the critical parts of Ambu.

I really like this as a general idea. I think it has potential to bring engagement to content that is otherwise overlooked or that needs a bit of a boost, but you need to recognize that players are not in high school anymore and logging in daily especially during holidays is really just not feasible for most people, even if the rewards were worth it. Make the rewards worth it, give us a margin of error or make it not tied to dailies, and people will do it. Otherwise, you are just wasting resources on implementing game systems that people dislike.

Also, please, no more lockstyle rewards. There are enough as is. Give us things we can actually play with.

Possibly community-wide campaign ideas: EP/CP/Exp boost (Ep being the critical addition), Gallimaufry campaign, Segment campaign, Odyssey RP campaign, Sortie earring box campaign (boost # of +1s), subjob unlock in Odyssey Gaol during campaign, Sortie movement speed boost

Individual rewards: +1 cases, Ody RP vouchers, EP boost rings/items, Pre-charged Mog Amplifiers for Ody, Amplifier-type effect for Sortie

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Originally Posted by Velodan

I can't do Vana'Bout as a new player which is a huge disappointment. There should have been more options for newer players to take part. I came back to enjoy the world I loved in the 2000's and see the stories. I did not come back to rush to max level and grind one piece of content.

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Just something to consider: reaching max level doesn't really put you at endgame any longer, it's more like reaching lvl18 in 75 cap. There is a lot of progression involving gear, earning RP, and such after lvl99 that happens. Most of the more interesting content starts at level cap, which is a little different than it was during 75-cap. I wouldn't hesitate to push to 99 as quickly as you can, there is a lot going on after that, including Ambuscade. So while I get your frustration, expecting new content to cater to players below level cap isn't really reasonable considering the majority of the player base has at least one 99.

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Originally Posted by Okieeomi

Greeting adventurers,

We'd like to hear about your experiences with Vana'Bout! We’ll be sharing this information with the Development team for their consideration.

1. What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?
2. How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?
3. What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

* Please follow all forum guidelines and only post feedback related to Vana'Bout in this thread.
* Before posting your feedback, please read through the recent replies and “Like!” any posts that you agree with, rather than create a new post with the same opinion. This helps us get a better view of how many people agree with a certain opinion.

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1) The rewards are not strong enough to give players motivation. I'm not talking much about the player-specific rewards that you can choose from the three tiers, but more about the "collective" rewards. Could use more relevant stuff like unlocking special Trusts for a month, boosting Gallimaufry rewards next month, boosting Exemplar Points rewards next month and so on

2) Objectives were cool and fun

3) In addition to the daily and monthly objectives I would add weekly objectives too, and I would give more space for people to be allowed to miss a couple of days of objectives, but still manage to reach the top rewards tier. Feeling like you "have" to do every single day or you're not gonna make it is a stressing pressure on your shoulder and takes part of the fun away from this.

1. What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

I like that you're doing anything at all with the game. Everyone seems happy about the ability to catch up on deeds. Giving us something to work on casually is a good idea, in theory.

I dislike that it doesn't encourage or introduce alliance content since that seems like it would bolster the community aspect of the event.

I dislike that it doesn't address the fundamental pain points of your endgame. There is nothing to use Prime Weapons on that is new and exemplar points are not something you can casually accumulate while doing adventurer campaign events.

I dislike that the Overall rewards for doing a bunch of ambuscade is to be able to do more ambuscade. That's just not an adventurer campaign I want being extended. There are limits to how many capes you can make so it's overkill.


2. How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

The objectives are poorly planned and executed. They created artificial congestion on your servers which lowers the quality of the gameplay experience for your customers. Don't link them to anything that has a solo queue unless you want that queue to become terrible and defeat the purpose of an event that was designed to be enjoyable and rewarding for the community. Womp womp.

These are daily objectives, which is hated by your older/aging community. Sortie is daily, odyssey is daily, this new community feature is daily. People want to log in on the weekends and play for several hours, maybe the whole day, and actually accomplish something. You continue to deny a good game play experience with decisions that cheapen the customer service aspect of your game and the value of your subscription. If you include any kind of daily lock out for ANY content, you should understand that people don't have flexible schedules to play every day. Those daily activities should be weighted much less than weekly or monthly objectives if you want people to continue to want to play. Which we actually do.

If someone has limited daily play time (most of your community), why would they prioritize these dailies instead of all the other dailies you've already packed into the game that have rewards that we will miss out on if we don't do them?

These objectives were clearly created with data you had for ambuscade. A large portion of your ambuscade is done by bots. Those bots don't care about doing community events. Your target numbers being completely unrealistic confirms this. Please take a closer look at your game so you can make choices that that positively grow your actual player community and the longevity of the game.


The difficulty is fine. Difficulty has never been an obstacle for this community. This is not where you are failing to motivate people.

3. What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

Eliminate the required daily aspect of the system. Weekly and Round RoEs only. You have too many other events that have to be done daily. We can do Vana'Bout on the weekends after we've run through all the dailies we can do. That way the adventure campaigns add value to our play time instead of detracting from it by making us choose between forced daily login ins that we might not be able to do or missing out on rewards.

Give us a reason to party up and do stuff together. The larger the party, the more the community building aspect of this will be felt. Pick things that allow for more than a single party and rotate them monthly with an associated adventurer campaign to enhance as the flex goal.

Past Campaign is perfect for this with reworks. You can leave the original zones untouched for returning/new players and as you get close to the throne room or beastman strongholds, the difficulty ramps up significantly to iLevel to encourage people to band together. These zones give experience points, capacity points, and exemplar points for evaluation rewards to incentivize all players to want to participate and keep them cleared. The Union registration process is eliminated during this month and everyone is automatically registered to the Vana'Bout Union so everyone is eligible for potential coffer spoils at the end of a battle without going through the extra tedious menu steps to get rewards. Make the experience/capacity/exemplar points from evaluations increase with party size to encourage parties and alliances. Even if they are just superfluous for the sake of rewards, it will still encourage socialization and community building.

The weekly rewards for Vana'Bout would be to just open X amount of Union coffers in a week. When you get done with that RoE another identical RoE opens up after it so that you don't have to take up more than 1 RoE slot with weekly RoEs. There are 7 of these RoEs, when you're done with your weekly RoEs you are capped on Plaudits just like the current system and will get more once the week rolls. Less clutter for players and less maintenance for devs coming up with unique objectives. Save that for the Round Objectives.

The Round Objectives can be anything but I wouldn't want more than the 5 we have right now for RoE space concerns. They don't even have to be tied to the current event.

The overall goals being met means people can do campaign ops for longer if they need materials for making weapons and a larger window for campaign battles that rewards capacity and exemplar points. Make sure both are lucrative enough to be a reward that people will want to do them and you will address anyone that plays this game.

The additional benefits of this approach are: Valaineral and Noillurie will be readily available for new players going through the Voracious Resurgence, the Stronghold Campaign OPs (Splitting Heirs, Cracking Shells, Plucking Wings, and Fiat Lux) will actually be available on the month of their bonus, there is no experience loss penalty on death when under the Allied Tag effect so people can bring whatever jobs they want, you can play with campaign weapon skills on something relevant, normal leveling zones will be less congested, and there is no queue to clog up.

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Dust off Voidwatch. You can do a lot with Voidwatch because it still has good rewards. The only thing you have avoid is clogging up the spawn points by making some of them much more lucrative than others. The weekly objectives are open any voidwatch coffer X times. If a voidwatch location doesn't drop plates/cinders/dross, then during the campaign, they drop plates at the same rate as a plate only mob like Akvan. That's what makes the adventure campaign worth trying to get to the extended goal. To add iLevel adjustments for more geared players, do it to Aht Urhgan and Tavnazia encounters so that it won't get in the way of new players using the event to fast track the story. Include capacity and exemplar points to the voidwatch coffers in that area that scale up with the size of the party/alliance. That is 10 mobs with 3 locations each that can accommodate 18 people, so 540 spots. That's probably larger than some servers total population at this point.

If you need to add an Alliance Level Primer so you can have an Ambuscade for the month, go for it. Dynamis D and Omen both accommodate alliances already and have adventurer campaigns to enhance. Just make sure you add enhanced Exemplar points to the adventurer campaign event and you'll make everyone happy.


All of the Alliance content I'm suggesting shouldn't be harder than Dynamis D or Omen is currently. The point is to let people casually work together to accomplish a goal and encourage people to group up for the rewards and avoid congestion in instances from solo queues.

I envisioned Vana'Bout as something like an updated besieged that did something like rebuilding Ishgard from FFXIV. A live event that we could enjoy as a community and see some kind of tangible progress or rewards. To me, the reward is being able to play the events that are put on adventurer campaigns more similar to how we used to when the game supported alliances and the social rewards that came with it.

Have no issues with the daily objectives (although they are not "fun"), however, when you look at the rewards, the only truly unique reward is the 100 Deeds. Everything else can be found easier with less effort, either by doing the content, or by paying for it on the Auction House. Some will get the 100 Deeds and not bother with the rest.

Having this tied to an annoying fight like the Soulflayer/Imps makes it a chore for anyone wanting to get Hallmarks/Gallantry for their monthly income. It seems mostly catered to those who solo the Flan on Very Easy difficulty. Teaming up should be heavily encouraged in any newly introduced content, and defeating higher difficulties should be more rewarding. Also, the objectives should line up with the fight you are doing. How many groups are using Ice/Thunder magic with Magic Bursts this month? I would say very few.

And then there is the monthly goal reward, which in itself is underwhelming. It basically offers you a free Abdhaljs Seal each day, but you then feel obligated to do more Ambuscade. Players didn't need more encouragement to do Ambuscade. It is already well-established as the most rewarding content in the game.

Instead, Vana'bout should be about encouraging players to do other, lesser-done content with significant rewards for doing so. To provide an example, you could tie a month to the Odin/Alexander/Cait Sith/Lilith HTMBs, and give players who already have all the equipment, the motivation to do it in a party of six. This may encourage players to bring others who have yet to do this content, so they can pick up the equipment, while the veterans accumulate plaudits for unique rewards. You could do the same with Dynamis-D. Give significant rewards for clearing wave 1, 2, and 3 bosses in an alliance.

This content feels poorly implemented. Square Enix should have gathered more information from its player base before introducing something like this. It felt like the developers don't really understand how its players view the game in 2023. However, SE has a track record of this. Look at what happened to Unity and the Assist chat channels. Nobody uses them, because it makes little sense to use them when we have linkshells. Get people who actually play this game onboard, and this could end up being a nice addition to the monthly campaigns.

PS: If you are going to add lockstyle rewards, make sure those lockstyles look BEAUTIFUL! Nobody cares for Ethereal Weapons because they look terrible. Otherwise, I'd rather you added some sidegrade equipment that either helps returning players to reach endgame, or are proper choices for veteran players in some scenarios, without blatantly killing off other equipment.

Look at what players are using for spells like Stoneskin and think... could we replace Shedir Seraweels/Haven Hose with something stronger? We shouldn't still be using Limbus gear for anything. There are so many ways to make new equipment interesting without churning out a bunch of red models of old weapons, and then calling them "Ethereal"... like that somehow makes them worthy of wasting time for.

What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

I like that it gives players that aren't doing sortie and odyssey something more to do. I find it to be OK in pace. Players that are maxpilled are probably not going to benefit from this system. Ambuscade queue can be long at times.

How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

I have been able to complete all daily objectives on a red mage with out any challenge in DynaD/Pre-Odyssey gear on Normal Mode. I would like to see objectives outside of ambuscade and higher-tier difficulty objectives for more reward.

What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

More objectives in other battle systems, while remaining solo/low man. Offer slightly better rewards from moogle and or reduce the cost. Level 99 Campaign Battles. :o

Feedback from people who can't post on the official forums:

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It's simple, they design the content for a party of 6 like usual, but then just allow up to 18 to enter if they all meet the entry qualifications.

And that's it, no need to screw with rewards or scaling or anything to discourage or punish friends casually hanging out.

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If they made Sortie 18 man I’d resub.

I get why Ody is 6 man. That’s fine. Albeit 18man Mboze would be hilarious.

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Feel free to delete if this isn't allowed.

I enjoy the concept, unfortunately cannot play literally a single day because I'll be traveling. Having these events right before holidays is rather bad timing.

I was intrigued by Vanabout before it started, I thought it would be something fun to work on over the holidays and earn some cool stuff, maybe even boost my gear a bit or something.

Kind of disappointed in what we got.

Ambuscade is probably the worst possible content to choose for round 1.

New players under 99 can't participate in any of it until they 99 and geared, even then they may struggle.

This month, Players without the correct jobs cannot do V1VD forcing people to solo V2, creating congestion even on quiet servers. (Asura must be hell to get ambu)

Pure melee jobs such as MNK, THF, WAR etc have difficulty doing the elemental magic damage dailies.

The rewards are very poor for the effort it takes. The bronze tier is all trash, except maybe the dark matter. Silver the only good one is 100 deeds. Gold isn't worth it either. Where is the incentive? You could have, 5K Alexandrite, 500 Heavy Plates, 5k Beitestu, byne bills, etc. A couple of the Kupons that let you select gear like full 75 relic sets etc. Gold tier could have a Kupon to give 12 of all rem chapters. There is so much potential to make this fun and rewarding for everyone, no one 'wants' to grind for little trash rewards. You should think of these rewards as a mini bonanza, put some crazier stuff in here, and make the choice hard not because all the options are trash but because they are so good.

Make the daily and weekly objectives spread over multiple contents, and refresh some older ones. EG: daily objects: complete 3 campaign battles, complete a besieged, kill XX Amount of enemies, Level up, or get merits points, This way newer players can participate and old stale content will get an uplift.

Also, the whole community works together to beat the score and all we get is an extra campaign. A seal per day is nice but it's still kinda of lacklustre, It takes a few days to empty the ambu vendors of their loot, so the rest of the month that bonus is wasted. Double the vendor capacity, and reduce the prices for a time. Make it a bit more special.

I'm kinda glad that the rewards from Vanabout are total trash, so I have no fear of missing out. So uh, I'd say, good job on that part without being ironic at all. If I was forced to do Ambuscade daily to get something that is worth the EXTREME and out of touch effort that you're asking for, I'd rage and still not do it. In this event, I get to go on with my normal business withoug raging, as I can completely ignore it.

Also, having 15 more objectives for the same pool of 30 RoE is a bad idea. If you wish to continue in this direction, please enhance the RoE pool. It may be old and clunky as previously mentioned, but right now, it's also being overloaded with daily objectives.

And I would like to repeat two of the previous comments, because it looks like the developers often don't seem to realize it:

- This isn't FF14. Although I want to touch the stretching Mithra in the bonecraft guild in places I shouldnt even be thinking about at my age, this game is not about lockstyle.
- 75% of the population is ran by bots. This needs to be considered when gathering data.

Looking at the rewards this feels like a catch up event for new/returning/casual players which I think is a great idea. However the implementation is completely not friendly towards that targeted player base. These players just aren’t going to log in to do 4-5 Ambuscades every day, and that’s assuming they even have the available jobs to complete the objectives.

I think there needs to be fewer, more generic repeatable RoE objectives so people can knock this out at their own pace. Daily activities suck.

Maybe make the objectives things that people don't have to go out of their way to accomplish, and make party members' actions count to encourage people to team up.

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I dislike that it doesn't encourage or introduce alliance content since that seems like it would bolster the community aspect of the event.

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I disagree, alliance content doesn't really foster community the way you think it does, it just frustrates people who don't have friends to team up with since PUGging for large group content in this game is really bad. I don't like alliance content in general, and they clearly wanted to create something everyone could participate in. Alliance content generally excludes less serious players. This is why they haven't made any, the last thing they're going to do is make an event that promotes it.

Having said that, I agree there's too much daily stuff in the game now. There's too much pressure to spend hours doing like a dozen daily things. Make it objectives that you complete over the course of the event duration instead, so you can play more haphazardly and still participate.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I disagree, alliance content doesn't really foster community the way you think it does, it just frustrates people who don't have friends to team up with since PUGging for large group content in this game is really bad. I don't like alliance content in general, and they clearly wanted to create something everyone could participate in. Alliance content generally excludes less serious players. This is why they haven't made any, the last thing they're going to do is make an event that promotes it.

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There are two types of alliance content: content that requires a fully geared / efficient alliance (early Dyna, Dyna-D, early Omen, basically all alliance content when it gets initially released) and content that can be done by 6 people but allows more (Omen currently, for instance). I think when most people make this comment, they are referring to the latter. It's really frustrating when you have a steady group of 8-9 people, but end up having people left out because they got on 10 min late and weren't racing to get on in time.

I think when most people talk about alliance content now, they are just trying to balance the fact that they have more than 5 people they like to do things with and want everyone to be able to participate together. I agree that the old style alliance content breeds drama and it's not something I think the game should return to, but allowing people to bring more than 5 friends especially to more trivial content can help community. Looking at Omen now is a good example, 6 people can do most or all of it, but they are able to bring lesser skilled/geared players on to participate.

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What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

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I enjoy the concept of it but there are several dislikes in the implementation that feels like a lack of familiarity with how the players interact with the game as well as the design for the endgame progression. While it might theoretically be ok for an opener in a vaccum, the playerbase is heavily skewed towards veteran players to the point that relic, mythic, empyrean, or even prime weapons are not completely unusual to see.

The objectives take up too much space in my objectives list. A temporary Vanabout Armband (key item) that tracks our progress may have been better if resources were available for a basic implementation. I think it's too late for that now as you've already made the framework for how you want to implement Vanabout, so streamlining some of the objectives together or focusing more heavily on the long term objectives is a simpler idea.

Daily grinds are tiresome and I can't even let the objectives carry over like certain other Records of eminence objectives that rotate the same objectives with different IDs like "kill multiple enemies" so that I work on them every few days rather than a race to endure. I personally believe that it should have been a weekly set of objectives even with the risk of congestion on a weekend as there are still plenty of players that would work on them during the mid week in order to avoid the congestion, but simply being able to save 3x of the same type or rotation before actually "losing out" would have been a welcome middle ground. Overall I prefer to pick one or two things I'm doing for the day rather than spreading out across several events. Eg work on Mastery or job points one day. Farm omen detrius on another once the omen KI have racked up. Divergence on another. My current participation level is entirely because I do not want this idea to fail when it can be a fun new thing you have given us with better implementation once tweaked a bit rather than an interest in rewards.

The reward system is rather... strange. Many players have noted that they will not be aiming for the Gold tier or are disinclined to after getting the tier they want because they can just buy a stack of beits easily instead. The effort/reward ratio is extremely off. The main reward of interest to players right now is the 100 deeds and nothing else as it is easier to get the rewards or something comparable without participating in Vanabout. Players simply have almost anything else in the game they could be doing that would be a better use of their time playing like actually participating in the campaigns rather than trying to extend them.

I have a great deal of space dedicated to lockstyle gear thanks to all of the room Moogle slips gave me that has been tested to the max by Sortie earrings. At least make something more unique if I'm going to lose space for these or find a way to make us use /equipsets to lockstyle gear stored on a slip/npc. Or the xiv style junkmongers that let me buy items that are not storable via moogle slips back for 100 gil after I've registered them so that I can start tossing things?

The objectives run counter to the core concept of teamwork the entire game was designed upon. I and everyone else is motivated to carry out these objectives solo as it becomes detrimental towards helping anyone that is actually at the level of content chosen for this vanabout. While I appreciate the ability to carry out content on my own, actively ruining the ability to team up by not allowing fellow players to increase objective progress as a party does not fit the general underlying core of why we are playing this game in the first place. The longevity of this game is due to the community that was fostered and this event actively breaks it despite this also being a community event. People do not like it when you take away choices and you effectively took away the choice to work together as the v1 ambusade alternative where the monsters actually have enough HP to survive several players attempting objectives or following the strats does not line up with actually being able to complete the objectives or fight. It does not have to require a full party, but I want to at least be able to try vanabout with others.

I also suspect your initial numbers were based on many misconceptions like the idea that every character on an account that made it to 99 is a fully active character when in reality many players after the silver voucher campaigns have taken to leveling their "mules" to 99 so that they can partake in AMAN once a month or get extra dark matter campaign augments. A month with moogle Bonanza in particular has many characters that exist entirely for the lottery.

The current batch of objectives overly incentivize rdm in order to complete them. I and everyone else in the game is used to there being a "flavor of the week" when it comes to ambuscade but this was far greater than the norm when coupled with the objectives. It was clear that the content of objectives were made in a way that prioritized lv 99 players in mind working on their first sets of ambuscade gear or job points, however somebody that fresh to lv 99 and ilv gear will not have the versatility of other players with multiple jobs nor is it plausible that they have an actual job leveled with regards to the all of the objectives set forth. The objectives essentially harm the portion of the playerbase that should be benefiting the most from this iteration of Vanabout due to this and my earlier mention of how the daily objectives heavily discourage any teamwork.

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How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

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Attempting the objectives on alternate characters in order to try and help community progress was sufficiently difficult due to a lack of character gear progress on rdm at the level of an experienced player, but it also felt like much more of a slog. Possibly due to having already done the objectives once already combined with the previously mentioned better things to do for players? I believe this event was tuned to the level of players that would be actually participating in ambuscade volume 2 content from this observation and that opening up collaboration on the objectives or more time to work on objectives would have readily solved this issue. On my actual main character the NM would easily die by accident because I was far beyond that content although I admittedly could use a much weaker weapon.

The cure objective is designed in a way that results in players having to manipulate their own hp via equipment in order to sufficiently cure while taking up valuable queue space in ambuscade on more congested servers. My trusts are very fast at curing, so completing that objective is generally not an option once engaged. In essence it's an objective that actually is good with teamwork nestled in an event that discourages it and as such leads me to just take a spot in the queue specifically to complete it. Altering the objective to not include self cures does not fix the main problem as players would simply dedicate an ambuscade instance to healing via hp manipulation with another () when a more ideal result is having a person that cures (most often the healer) count for the entire party's objective.

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What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

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There is currently a large influx of ffxiv player interest in the game due to an alliance raid series based on XI coming out in their new expansion. Several objectives that are nostalgic for veteran players while helping out new players would have been ideal for this first vanabout as an easy test concerning player participation this month. There was a community planned event of new players being helped by others through the game currently going on right now based on (but not limited to ) Bahamut server. There is another iteration/wave planned for approximately March as the game has often been on sale in the past around then. I suggest that a small amount of objectives during a late march or early April iteration the Vanabout may help welcome these new players into the game and showcase the different eras before getting into the post 99 content with the rest of the objectives. Not as many plaudits as the post 99 ones, but it would let these rookies or weaker players feel like they are participating while being reasonably simple to those post 99. Additionally make them in line with the current campaigns going on so that participating in the campaigns helps increase plaudits? Plaudit time is generally better spent participating in a campaign rather than plaudits because we'd waste more time on plaudits than we'd gain back from an extension.

Examples of possible objectives I can think of include:
Defeat any version of the shadow lord x times (mission. Dynamis lord, high tier battlefield, etc)
Defeat King Behemoth, Aspidechlone, and/or Nidhogg or their Kindred seal 99 equivalents (The pop items being obtainable via login points makes this one rather simple)
Occasionally attack twice with a jailer weapon and virtue stones equipped x times. (Do during the absolute virtue campaign month)
Participate in Salvage, Nyzul Isle, or Einherjar, Limbus,etc with another player.
Defeat an Abyssea Zone Notorious Monster boss (Eg Itzalpolatl, Briareus, Dragua )after activating a red/blue/greelow proc.
Have Oseem attempt to augment an item 10 times.
Summon a trust that is locked behind mission/quest/event progress.
Participate in skirmish/vagary.
Ambuscade objectives.
High tier battlefields associated with the current vanabout theme with objective progress based on difficulty as an attempt to simulate milestones they would have participated in back in the day?
Defeat a Unity Notorious monster of X level Y times. (In order to avoid congestion, base this on NM level which spreads everything out instead of a single NM)
Obtain X amount of Omen cards/objectives
Earn X segments in Sheol A B or C.(I would suggest adjusting segment earnings from A and B to be more in line with C at the same time)
Earn X rank points from a Sheol Gaol NM?
Kill a Sortie Boss or miniboss.
Have doom/curse removed if the theme of the vanabout is in line with this (Can be cheesed at Pashow if players find using holy water or getting doomed/cursed too tough as an alternative)
Participate in various types of BCNMs. (easily obtainable via login points with lower level ones resulting in less progress towards completion?)
Help a player complete a mission (be in the same zone and party at the time of mission completion. Repeatable missions also work so that sufficiently veteran players are not locked out of progress.)
Domain invasion or Geas Fete

I included a mix of various content that can be completed by both old and new players while also presenting some that would enable low level participation from those not at the extreme veteran end of the spectrum. Many of the later objectives even allow veteran payers to help rookie players become veteran players while doing an event that would benefit them rather easily if the rookies do not team up with each other to do so themselves. Please note that some of these do not work at all as a daily objective like anything that will have major competition or is based on a limited resource like login points.

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There are two types of alliance content: content that requires a fully geared / efficient alliance (early Dyna, Dyna-D, early Omen, basically all alliance content when it gets initially released) and content that can be done by 6 people but allows more

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And I particularly dislike the latter situation because I only think alliance content is fun/interesting if an alliance is actually needed to clear it. otherwise its just a couple people doing work and the rest being afk which is, honestly, bad game design.

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I think when most people talk about alliance content now, they are just trying to balance the fact that they have more than 5 people they like to do things with and want everyone to be able to participate together.

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I've never seen this as a problem, if you can fill an alliance, you can make three parties, just switch who's with who here and there, and chat in the LS about it. no one has to be excluded due to max player counts.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

And I particularly dislike the latter situation because I only think alliance content is fun/interesting if an alliance is actually needed to clear it. otherwise its just a couple people doing work and the rest being afk which is, honestly, bad game design.

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To be honest, that sounds like a player problem, not a design problem. If that was happening, I'd try to find better people to play with, not try to convince the devs to force everyone to play the way I prefer.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I've never seen this as a problem, if you can fill an alliance, you can make three parties, just switch who's with who here and there, and chat in the LS about it. no one has to be excluded due to max player counts.

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Unless you have 7 people. Alliance content doesn't necessarily mean a full alliance, as the second option in your first quote suggests.