Please Fix Shinryu.

[Kylos]

By Yoji Fujito in July 2021:

"We would like to address the situation regarding the congestion in ★The Wyrm God. Our ideal solution would be implementing a multi-layer area or reservation system to allow players to enter the content more smoothly, but this is unfortunately impractical due to the tremendous complexity of adding these for the area used in this particular content. After hard consideration, we have decided to increase the number of merit points required for phantom gems from 10 to 30 in an effort to allow more players an opportunity to enjoy the content.

Since this adjustment by itself would only become a burden for players, we will also increase the chances of obtaining certain rewards (particularly equipment) across all difficulty levels. We’ll perform an emergency maintenance to apply this change once it’s ready for implementation. Furthermore, this adjustment is not a temporary workaround; it will remain this way moving forward. We offer our humblest apologies for the inconvenience this has caused."

After almost two years of The Wyrm God battle being changed, I would like to submit the following argument to not only have it scaled back to its original 10 merits per battle, but also to revise the drop rates.

1) When this battle was implemented, it was understood that there was a ton of congestion. It was notably apparent on the Asura server, and possibly 1 or 2 others, but none of the smaller servers suffered from this. After 2 years, it is likely that many players acquired equipment either directly from, or more likely via AMAN Trove. Therefore, reverting to 10 merits per battle would unlikely cause any serious congestion. It “could” happen on Asura if everyone was to rush over to spam immediately after an update, but this would eventually die down. I am aware of the restrictions placed on the entry to Abyssea - Empyreal Paradox, and that you cannot change how it works to give us an efficient queuing system.

2) When you stated the drop rate would be fixed to make it easier for players to obtain equipment, this did not happen. Outside of the three common drops (Pebble/Earring/Ring), the rest are likely tied to the same, extremely rare drop slot. If that isn’t true, then at least the Scythe & Dagger share their (very rare) own slot, while the head/body armor share another (super rare) slot. Therefore, if players are lucky enough to see these, the slot would choose one piece out of the list to put into the treasure. However, these drop slots are far too rare! Also, the issue is made worse by needing 30 merits per kill. It only allows a party to fight Shinryu twice (three if they have one before farming merits) before needing to return to merit farming. This makes grinding The Wyrm God exceedingly annoying.

Players are not against working hard to earn equipment, but the rarity of drops discourages linkshells from scheduling events for it. As I’ve said several times to my LS members... "you’re more likely to get Shinryu equipment from AMAN Trove". I got my Crepuscular Scythe from there. I know others who got daggers and bodies from there. But hardly do I ever hear anyone buzzing that they got something from Shinryu. I’d like to point out how this is a similar gameplay issue to Tartarus Platemails in Vagary (mostly found in Leafallia & AMAN) and Omen Bodies (AMAN). Rather crudely, these drop rates encourage players to hope on AMAN Trove more so than the content it comes from.

Is it by design that the equipment was made so rare? I don’t believe so. The FFXI team likely wanted to ensure they weren’t too common, and that’s a good thing! We’d be bored if we got everything in 2-3 days. Fujito promised it would be better, but it isn't. All it did was make it so very few players want to fight Shinryu. It is disheartening to do this content without being adequately rewarded for our efforts.

3) If you cannot change the amount of merits per entry, nor the drop rates for any reason, I have an alternative solution. I would highly recommend adding a system that gives a new form of currency earned by defeating Shinryu on “Very Difficult”. Basically, you could make it so defeating Shinryu, for example, 20 times, would give enough currency so you can trade to an NPC for a dagger. You could make it 35 times for a body piece. I’d even accept beating Shinryu 50 times for a body. Why? Because at least then I’ll know that repeatedly defeating this will eventually get me something. It’s a quantified progression that isn't heavily relying on a random number generator to work in our favour.

4) The latest bug in The Wyrm God allowed players to fight Shinryu with a Primeval Brew. This was a golden opportunity that many (I wasn’t subscribed but I know players who were) jumped at, and I understand why. Up to that point, many had given up. They couldn’t be bothered with the endless grind. So, for players who had millions of cruor stored up over the years, they began spamming VD to see if they could gain anything from it. If it wasn’t the most perfect example of how wrong the content is, I don’t know what else would be. Even with access to spamming VD Shinryu repeatedly, players were still annoyed with drop rates. The FFXI team likely has records of what happened. Was that not enough to tell you that the content needs tweaking?

Conclusion

Nobody is asking for a handout. I assume most of the player base wants to earn their equipment. I’m not asking you to make anything as common as the Pebble/Ring/Earring... but at least make it fair. That’s the word I was looking for. “Fair”. If whoever reads this understands what I’m talking about, because they have experienced the unfair nature that is Shinryu, please give this a message a thumbs up. I know the team reads comments, but only those that are well-received are taken under consideration. Thank you.

[Kruel]

I think it's coming up on 2 years since it got released, think it was summer 2021, and as someone who is approaching 500 VD kills of him I can't agree more.

Nothing should take 2 years to get never mind the fact that 5!, yes 5 pieces of gear from this fight are all Tartarus Platemail droprate levels of bad.

I'm one of the unfortunate ones who is seeing one of the rare drops every 100 kills or so, but every single one has been the Scythe.

4 Scythes in all my kills and 2 years of effort.

[Velner]

750 VD kills here and have never seen a Dagger. Of course, I stopped farming it about a year ago when they added the gear to TROVE. Fun Fact: These items are more common from TROVE than the actual BCNM. Absolute fail at the drop rate.

[Pixela]

To be fair, they added these items to the Aman Trove pool and with a high drop rate in the first month.

I doubt they will do this because they tend to calculate number of these items in the game to calculate if there is a problem or not, and due to AMAN there are quite a few now.

[Vyre]

If anything, they could at least throw us a pity change, and make it require 25 merits per entry to at least allow 3 kills per capped merits.

[Sirmarki]

These items are more common from TROVE than the actual BCNM.

Yeh, that doesn't make sense really in my opinion.

[Aragan]

If anything, they could at least throw us a pity change, and make it require 25 merits per entry to at least allow 3 kills per capped merits.

That good idea lets SE thinking and fix that

[Dexprozius]

I'd shouted from the rooftops on this issue a few months post change and it fell on deaf ears. I couldn't agree more with the pathetic state of this BCNM. I'd love nothing more than to grind it out myself or with groups on D+ difficulty to have even as low as a 1/50 drop rate at a "very rare" item, but the drop rate from experience of the community, not just my personal bias, is far lower and warrants completely avoiding the fight all together. This is in dire need of a change SE. Please listen to the community here

[BobbinT]

out of curiosity... how was drop rate comparison with the old Abby version back on WotG days? I do recall that auto-RR on those armour sets would make a person very happy.

[Pixela]

It's cool to try get some action on this but from a dev point of view there is no way they are going to do it after adding it to trove, it's just not going to happen. I'm saying this so you don't get your hopes up.

Trove has kind of turned into the fix all content in relation to drop issues, hell I even got my last piece of malig from trove on an alt and I would say 80% of the Tart mails are prob from that too (vagary is ass content)