Interim Report – Sorry to keep you all waiting!

[ManaKing]

On any content that will be like VW in the future, and maybe void watch itself, you should implement a system that rewards longevity. I'm pretty lucky as far as drops go, but even I get frustrated in VW, because it's hard to tell how long it's going to take before you actually get a pay off.

I'm personally still trying to get an Ephemeron off of Aello. I've gotten every other drop besides the actual HQ sword. The more I do Aello, the less rewards I get because I can't pick up the random items anymore. Whirlwind Dirs are nice and I use the Earring as well. But when I get them now, I'm not particularly happy because I can't do anything with them. When you relinquish mob specific drops, you get nothing for it. It doesn't do anything for the player, in fact it pretty much makes it so that you won't get any plates off mob (or so it feels like).

Furthermore, you can't make the sword from pulse cells, because no one ever gets the sword to begin with. So even though I would be happy to throw all of my gil at the problem, like it was implied would be possible when they introduced pulsing, I can't because they honestly don't exist. Unlike the rest of the gear in VW, which has very low drop rates, the drop rates for Pulse gear is absolutely terrible.

What I would want is a system that rewards my repeated attempts with increased odd of drop for pulse items. The way I would want that to be established would be to permanently increase your Red values the more you relinquish mob specific drops until you gain the actual pulse item. In the case of Aello, if you relinquish the earring, pants, or NQ sword, you gain an extra 5%, 10%, or maybe even 20% for the items depending on the rarity of the drops. Make it so that this effect can stack very high so that players can continue to be reinforced to go for the items that they want. As the red value increases so will the chance at getting heavy metal plates and other desirable VW specific drops. As soon as you actually get the pulse item to drop, it completely resets your progress.

As a strategy, this allows players 3 benefits. Primarily, it allows players to get the extremely rare items they want if they put in enough time and motivates them to continue trying because eventually your red value will be high enough that the items will drop. Secondly, it motivates players that already have pulse items to continue to fight the mobs because the event will be more lucrative the more they do it. If a player is intentionally relinquishing all of their rare drops to increase their chances of getting heavy metal plates, then they are going to be doing VW more often. As their red value goes up, it becomes easier to farm plates for money or for their weapons. Third-ly, there will be more pulse cells available for purchase and more heavy metal plates for upgrades. When they finally do get the pulse items, they won't be completely upset that they got the item because they can always pulse cell them and make a profit off of the sale of the sell.

If you don't want to do that, then at least don't make the drop rates for pulse gear as bad as they are. Because they are terrible. I got the Kaggen Body after like 20 tries. Super Lucky. Akvan still hasn't dropped after over 100. I've heard much worse drop rates than mine and I feel terrible that people that are trying aren't getting rewarded. It really is a turn off when you are playing and doesn't do anything but frustrate your player base.