[Dev 1054] voidstones

[Nynja]

the RMT witch hunt is back...
hey, if indeed RMT are selling all the voiddust, and you "dont want to support RMT", where did the RMT get the IS/AN/CP to buy all that voiddust with their abyssea burned characters? hmmmmmmm

[Xantavia]

As for me being "addicted" to vw. Not really 12-18 VW take 2-3 hours if your slow. There is not much else to do atm for me.

Doesn't sound right to me. If you are having a hard getting voidstones, the "not much else to do" could translate to farming gil/AN/CP/IS for additional stones.

[Zinato]

I wanted to add/review a few things to this topic.

#1 The implementation of FoV, GoV even years ago has stunted CP gain. The pages offer no CP for completion and are most effective on either Easy Prey (low CP:exp gain) or Incredibly Tough monsters. (back when people did 6 man parties)

#2 Also on CP, these require EXP to be earned to increase and drop at a 1/10 rate meaning 20k exp for one stone. For frame of reference leveling a job 1-99 is 2,051,349 experience excluding all FoV and GoV as well as the difficulty of finding things to kill past 75ish (remember you cant use FoV to help exp gain) that means 205,134 or 100 stones or anyone brave enough to level a job fully to 99 outside Abyssea with no help from pages of any kind. And just for fun its 235,550 exp to 49 so sub jobs earn 11 stones under perfect conditions.

#3 Now for IS, First of all with merit parties (assuming back then a player had the proper job to get into one) gone IS is limited to low man or event gain. Now besieged is only ~once a day and does not give more then 4k IS from what i recall. Also, like with CP the only other method of gain is though exp gain and at the same rate meaning 2 stones each day IF you catch besieged as it happens and the same gain as CP.

#4 AN now AN is arguably the best method to farm stones however, #1 its an event many people do not approve of (well that is not an argument Zinato! you say?) Yes, its a weak argument but, never the less. Why should people participate in a dead event they dislike to join something they wish to do? The other reason is, Campaign is nearly empty now meaning the only real effective way to do it is solo, as such it is not always possible to refresh tags due to an enemy fighting you. While some DD may take 3 minutes to dispatch an enemy some jobs are not so lucky BRD WHM BLM PLD and so on. This also means you have done WoTG far enough to lock medal at its maximum or are committed to enough regular campaign to keep it there. This is all to do a separate event. Do besieged to get tags for assault hmmm...

*Side note, right now at the price of 30k Gil per Voidstones are worth roughly 15k Cruor assuming you wish to make the conversion. The issue with this is it relies on other players stock and supply/demand (which I have noticed a lot of players do not quite understand) while Gil is a temporary solution it does not increase the servers overall supply and in addition encourages inflation. Bottom line is while Gil will work for now eventually these stones will end up in a similar state to Alexandrite where the main stock is used up and the replenishment is too low to sustain, remember each run of 18 people takes anywhere from 18-72 stones from the servers overall inventory. (one group run is my personal career savings of CP)

#5 Voidstone vs Traverser Stone now admittedly the Traverser stones were originally meant as limiters however, even in the very beginning 1 stone in 20 hours you could gather 4 and get ~120 minutes of Abyssea at once every 4th day. The difference? VW has absolutely no method of TE, even assuming players did not exploit that system for unlimited Abyssea time the fact that each stone is worth 30 minutes of anything a player wants + a few TE here and there makes the Traverse stones far superior. Right now VW is the center focus of the game, that is what the Devs want but all things considered 20 hours of waiting for a 4 minute fight is not really reasonable. Traverser stone 30 minutes+ any number of enemies vs Voidstone ~4 minutes and 1 enemy = same?

#6 Now to drop rates, personally I do not care if the drop rate is 1/100+ so long as the option to fight is available. What is not OK is 1 fight for 4 minutes of entertainment once a day for a 1% chance of a decent drop. The larger issue with this is most groups you join want that 1% drop and so do 4+ runs and usually only take members willing to fight 4 times. Basically, if you are low on stones you cant even get into the event for the 1 run you get each day.

#7 Last thing is lets assume a New player joins and does nothing but solo (so none of this Abyssea noob, GoV noob nonsense) they get to 99 and have 23 stones worth saved up what do they do now? All the players who have been here since pre-Abyssea ignore old stuff, so much so that people are not even willing to spend 30 minutes helping someone get a Promathia win. So why cant they enjoy VW and why should they be punished by this system?

Now, I wanted to add that while Cruor to Voidstone seems like a solution, I also pose the question of to what extent? Fact is many VW fights give 10K+ Cruor per kill on the flip side Abyssea save very specific conditions (IE Cruor farm party) has a lower rate (not saying hard to get just saying lower) At what ratio is it fair to buy a Voidstone with Cruor? Anything under ~14-16k would result in unlimited stones assuming you have a moderate store of Cruor. Even ~18-20k (this basically just equates to -2k Cruor per kill from your stock) would result in near unlimited access. Voidstones would need to cost 25-30k just to end up costing the players 10-15k from personal stock. Suppose 25-30k each is better then nothing.

I apologize for such a long post but, I had a lot to say and did not want to post multiple times.
The bottom line of why its an issue is this is a finite resource with a very limited life span, and a great need for it.

[Kaisha]

Make white !! proc grant a free stone, problem solved for people that keep a variety of jobs on hand.

[Afania]

Voidstone system is flawed. Some ppl do 40X NM a day, each NM only takes 2 min to kill, you can kill 20 NMs in a 2hr run. And one stone takes half a day to recharge.

That's just not baranced, no?

You can say just buy it, do campaign blah blah, but why we have to spend that much amount of time to do another event that we may not enjoy/want to just for another event? That just doesn't make sense...like how we need to do lolassault for salvage.

At least RvB only takes 5 min to do, and you'll get enough AP for a 2hr event. How long you gonna do campaign for 20 stones? You need to grind 40k AN for a 2hr event, that's just not reasonable.

Atm I have like 709 Abyssea stones, and have no where to use it, why not give an option to turn abyssea stones into voidstones? Not like we need that many Abyssea stones nowadays(unless you just bought abyssea expansion or something). Where is the barance?

Limited stones supply also makes it harder do VW with friends/LS....since some ppl just refuse to spend stones on NMs unless it's NM with priority item.

And why does being old/new player has anything to do with this? That just makes no sense. Flawed system is flawed, no matter you're new/old or w/e, you have right to give suggestions to SE to fix the system. Even if someone's new and no IS/CP/AN w/e, it doesn't change the fact that the stone doesn't charge enough for this spammable event. And shouldn't force them to do lolbesieged/lolToAU EXP/lolcampaign to enjoy the new event. Why do you need to be old with stockpile of CP/IS/AN to be allowed to enjoy the new event?

If one VW fight really last 30 min as SE planned, and ppl ended up only do 4 NM in a 2hr event, and do event 3 times a week, then this system may work. But that's just not how it work now, ppl do 20 NMs in 2hr, and stones are just not enough.

[Asymptotic]

People like Tsukino_Kaji are absolutely ludicrous. I really wonder how that guy has enough of a brain to use a computer, much function in FFXI.

Drop rates on items such as Coruscanti are 0.2% or less.

At a 0.2% drop rate, it takes 347 Qilins, or 5552 hours / 231 Days worth of stones to have a 50% shot at obtaining this single item.

And there are many other items with similar drop rates in Voidwatch.


Voidstones need to refresh at the worst once per 8 hours.

[Behemothx]

I still do dyna everyday and I help people in abyssea when they need it but exactly. VW is the only current endgame thing that really matters at the moment.

Void stones are becoming an extreme limiter to enjoying void watch. My void watch group does 12-24 fights a day. I personally do 8-12 fights.

lol, Dude! I would be VERY concerned if I were you, your significant other or your kids/family. Remember that notice just before you enter the game, about your job, your family, your friends?

[Zinato]

8-12 fights is under 120 minutes for a decent group. not a huge commitment. The other thing is if content cant appeal to casual and hardcore alike it is not very well done.

[Behemothx]

8-12 fights is under 120 minutes for a decent group. not a huge commitment. The other thing is if content cant appeal to casual and hardcore alike it is not very well done.

Still, If you're talking about every single day, even a 8 hour replenish rate wouldn't help that guy.

the RMT witch hunt is back...
hey, if indeed RMT are selling all the voiddust, and you "dont want to support RMT", where did the RMT get the IS/AN/CP to buy all that voiddust with their abyssea burned characters? hmmmmmmm

Hah, I wish all the RMTs would do some campaigning for AN and bring back zones to cities

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Voidstones need to refresh at the worst once per 8 hours.

It's not that type of content. If you want 8 hour stones, go back to abyssea. You should be thankful just for the fact that you can obtain more anytime you want. You can't pay someone 20k to go back into dynamis every 5 minutes.