Please, please, PLEASE do something about WoE and Spell Drops!

[Zubis]

Definitely the wait time should go. I got lucky in a Walk and got a Primeval Brew - which meant I was able to solo the entire run. While the mostly Japanese players with me seemed to be happy with a quick clear time, it did mean that about 34 people then had nothing to do for about 55 minutes.

Regardless of brews most Walks only half a half hour or less so it really does need to go.

[Phafi]

I have done some thinking!

As far as the previous census goes for the empyrean path to walk of echoes path comparison:

Verethragna 3,177 | Revenant Fists 2,766
Twashtar 1,238 | Daka 1,293
Almace 2,285 | Badelaire 747
Caladbolg 720 | Espafut 477
Farsha 433 | Alard's Axe 141
Ukonvasara 1,910 | Maschu 1,469
Redemption 283 | Penitence 457
Rhongomiant 314 | Cerastes 212
Kannagi 5,173 | Tobi 1,822
Masamune 2,894 | Hiradennotachi 1,350
Gambanteinn 420 | Canne de Combat 348
Hvergelmir 205 | Taiaha 56
Gandiva 933 | Harrier 653
Armageddon 648 | Bedlam 342
Daurdabla* 103 | N/A
Ochain* 498 | N/A
Total 21,234 | Total: 11,599
*Only counted the Lv.85 and Lv.90 versions as I was unsure if just the bought shield and harp counted toward the amount.

This data states that there is 1.83x the amount of empyreans than walk of echoes weapons. The totals are from quite a long time ago and I'm assuming is a much larger gap between the the two classes of weapons due to the easing of farming the key items to pop the monsters.

Now, Why shouldn't it be so that walk of echoes path outnumber empyrean at least 2:1 or 3:1? It may be too late to fix that now, but it can still be altered to help some if the system were to get another major overhaul.
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First, for my idea to work, a sixth coin would have to be added as well as a walk of echoes path for a shield and a harp. Possibly do something like:
Shield -> Utilis Shield (Augmented) DEF+7 for first trial [30 of sixth coin]
DEF: 15 for second trial [Kindred's Crest x20]
DEF: 25 for Lv.90 trial [High Kindred's Crest x50]
DEF: 30 Converts 20% of damage taken to MP upon successful block for the Lv.95 [Devious Die x100] (keep it as a size 3 kite shield for block rate and block absorption)
DEF: 35 Converts 25% of damage taken to MP upon successful block for the Lv.99 [Liminal Residue x100] (possibly give this Lv.99 version of the shield like an Aegis type block rate and block absorption?)

Harp -> Pyf Harp (Augmented) String skill +2 for the first trial [30 of sixth coin]
String skill +5 for second trial [Kindred's Crest x20]
String skill +5 Singing skill +5 for the Lv.90 trial [High Kindred's Crest x50]
String skill +7 Singing skill +7 for the Lv.95 trial [Devious Die x100]
String skill +10 Singing skill +10 Grants an additional song effect for the Lv.99 trial [Liminal Residue x100]
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Now that there would be six types of coins, have Veridical Conflux 1-6 each be assigned one of the six coins to drop so that people can know what they are going after when they enter the battlefield. The next step would be to increase the coin supply to a point where people can obtain the level 90 version of the weapons relatively easily with any old pickup group of however many they may need to complete the battlefield.

Change the box system to yield two types of chests, a gold pyxis and brown pyxis. Should a player select a gold pyxis they will not be able to receive coins, but are guaranteed at least one piece of equipment from that conflux as an incentive for players who do not need coins to do the event anyway. Should a player select a brown pyxis, they guarantee themselves at least one pouch of the coins assigned to that conflux. Have Veridical Conflux 7 be a wildcard where you are guaranteed at least one pouch in your chest, but it is random.

Now for Veridical Conflux 8 through Veridical Conflux 15, add a box for Devious Dice that would yield between 3 and 10 or something and place them in the brown pyxis in confluxes 8 through 11. The same can be applied to Liminal Residue for confluxes 12 through 15. To add even more of an incentive for players to participate in these higher tier confluxes, add conflux specific rare/ex equipment WORTH GOING TO DO THE EVENT FOR so that players can not simply say "somebody else will do it, I'll buy it on the auction house when it gets there." If players go to do walk of echoes to obtain equipment they cannot get anywhere else, people that are working on their weapons will also go and actually progress beyond the level 90 version.

For all fluxes: upon not completing the objective within the time limit, the monsters will despawn and only the brown chests will appear for a chance to obtain single coins(1-7), dice(8-11), residue(12-15) depending on completion percent. For example 0-33% may yield a 50% chance of one coin/die/residue, 34-66% 100% chance of one coin/die/residue, 67-99% 100% chance of one coin/die/residue and a 50% chance of a second.

[Ryce]

I've always wanted try WoE, but by the time I got around to obtaining access, no one was doing it anymore. Any reduction in the time restrictions would be nice. I'd love to be able to devote a playing session to that event every once in a while without worrying about long breaks in between.

Separate but related - I love the WoE shield idea. Ochain still feels out of reach and I'd really like a nice shield for PLD ^^

[Siiri]

These sound like great changes. As it is right now the only time WOE is popular is on JP time, and with most of us working during the week we only have sat and /or sunday to enjoy it. Then you have to wait at least 1/2 the time on tags. Plus if the AOE was adjusted some we could maybe take a small group on a week night.

[Glamdring]

keep the 50% restriction, especially if you are reducing the time for reentry, XP isn't the reason to do walks anyway, it's the drops. anything that can be done to increase the drop rate would be welcome... maybe removing the junk from the table, thus clearing space for something desired, like scrolls and coins. Skill-ups is needed everywhere, not just walks, but this will certainly help as well. However, fixing the system that calculates your contribution to the battle, that needs to be revisited to make healers and other support role players just as valued for their contributions; I'm actually starting to miss using my bard in end-game content now that I have other jobs that are welcome there. As is there is no reason to bring my bard here of any benefit to me, although the rest of the party appreciates it.

[SpankWustler]

Please let us know what you think.

The wait time on Kupofried's Medallion is the biggest non-log-related issue, and that's being removed.

Nightmarish Area-of-Effect attacks in something apparently meant for garbage salad-style groups is the biggest problem during the actual fights, and that is being adjusted.

These changes sound really good.

As for the random bonuses, whatever route is taken, I'd prefer to be notified of them. Whether it's my all-too-rapidly metastasizing bladder cancer or weakened skeletons on a series of imaginary floating rocks; I like to know about stuff early!

[Dreamin]

Still doesn't fix the problem where NO ONE does WoE other than weekend during JP peak time.

And most melees only go in and just do spam death to get points for chest when cleared (most absolutely contribute nothing to the boss fight). [There are also the alternate group of people who goes in and instead of just fighting the Boss, they only fight the smaller mobs to get points]. Half the BLMs would go in, afk til boss time, mass nukes on boss, die, and then just afk while weaken. Repeat and that's what most of the WoE runs are like now a day. So it's not like leechers doesnt' exist anymore and sometimes they're even getting good drop off chest while the ppl who does most of the work (SMNs) ended up with more Logs and Ores.

Seriously, I much rather go back to the old ways where ppl can actually go into flux and solo some mobs and gets coin/random drops that they can use especially during off peak time when there's no one else in there. Give a lot of ppl who never get the chance to try WoE a chance at it. Maybe set this up so that when there are less than X number of ppl in each flux, individual mob can have a chance to drop coin and when there are more than X number of ppl are in each flux, they will drop Temp Items like they do now. This way, it's more of an incentives for ppl to do WoE even when there are not enough to clear the flux.

[Randnum]

I am curious.

Is it possible to alter things in WoE fluxes based on the number of players in it? Not things like drop rates that are likely to cause player irritation, but 'can more people join after a certain HP %'.

Can we get an approximate idea of the balance intended by the Development team for this event? Players always seem to ask for a lot and believe we get ignored, but whether we are, or not, we are definitely asking for X Y and Z without having any idea of what the Dev team's aims are, therefore we can't necessarily make requests that are within their willingness to do.

I know it has taken me approximately 100 runs to get enough coins for Tobi. That's 100 hours for the base weapon.

In this time I have also seen 8 Devious die. If I assume that my droprate is relatively normal, that means it would take 1200 hours to get all the Dies myself.

Is it simply not intended for most players to have +3 versions of their WoE Genuine Fake Empyreans? There has definitely been some indication that as you get higher in a weapon's power scale, the design is that less people are supposed to have it at all.

That's my question set for WoE. It was said that the intention was to have things such that not everyone has certain spells or weapons.

In my personal opinion this is normally balanced by making the content either hard to do, so that one requires more skill to get what you want, or by making it a tradeoff in that players simply choose not to do the content because they have something else to aim for.

Should people just be ignoring WoE because the intent was to make the system tedious enough to 'encourage' them to spend their time on other things?

[Raksha]

First, for my idea to work, a sixth coin would have to be added as well as a walk of echoes path for a shield and a harp.

They could just add shield/harp to Ruin coins. Cause lolstaff.

[Tinuviel]

I may have missed it someone, but are there plans to improve accessibility of coins? My friend and I can quite readily farm the empyrean trials as easily as collecting 30 coins right now (can do both trials in ~ 2 weeks).

Removing the wait time and reducing the difficulty of walks will certainly make it easier to farm coins, but I'd like to see coins dropping from all walks with some level of consistency (Walks 8-11 seem to have like a <10% drop rate on coins from my experience. I would say this is too low).