Seriously, VW loot system..come on.

[FrankReynolds]

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

[Tile]

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

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

[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.

[Frost]

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

[saevel]

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.

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.

[Runespider]

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).

[Tamoa]

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

Remember this?:

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.

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.

[Runespider]

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?

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.

[Tamoa]

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.

[Finuve]

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.

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