Seriously, VW loot system..come on.

[Greatguardian]

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.

[Tile]

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.

this would help so much, players would be willing to do them even after they got their Body or weapon. because that would be a chance at 5 plates on some fights.

A specific adjustment we have planned is to set blue and red alignment at their maximum values at the beginning of the battle.
※It would be possible to raise these values even more through ascent items.
As a result, players will not have to worry about exploiting weakness in order to obtain better loot. Our aim is for players to only have to consider exploiting weakness as part of their battle strategy. Also, this adjustment will address the difficulty of smaller parties obtaining loot.

people dont care about Blue lights because it just means more logs. if you made the change suggested by Greatguardian. then we would love the blue light always start at Full. all the old Classic NMs didn't have only 1 slot for rare items, they dropped many rare items in many slots, so why do we have to suffer with the 1 Slot, please pass along this suggestion.

As a person getting sick of VWNM I dont even go on 3/4 of the runs for the higher Tiers because its all dissappointment. Yes I could get a Plate that could be put into Circulation and help someone trying to finish their weapon but the odds are just to low so I dont bother.