People don't like the 1% droprates on rare/ex equipment. You should make NM-specific ex items that drop 100% of the time when red alignment is capped and allow players to trade in 100 of those items for one rare/ex piece of equipment.
For example, a player gets 1 Qilin fang in the chest with 100% probability when red alignment is 525%. The player trades 100 Qilin fangs that are stackable to 99 and is allowed to obtain one of the following: the speed boots, the hq dagger, the nq dagger, or the gorget. There is also a very tiny chance of those pieces of equipment dropping without having to trade any Qilin fangs.
This will not reduce the expected amount of FFXI people have to play to obtain the rewards and it will make the voidwatch experience more palatable. And it will eliminate a minority of people from going 0/500 on drops. And it won't remove the excitement of possibly hitting the jackpot by getting an item in a few number of kills. People like to quantify their progress, like with the abyssea empyrean trials. They preferred collecting 50 items that had a guaranteed drop plus a chance at a second drop, instead of killing 25-50 (or 500) times for one item with a low chance of dropping.
please don't click the thumbs up icon or reply to this thread. i hate forums.