Feedback related to Vana'Bout

[Herraa]

One recommendation I would put in place would be if you keep the ROE as daily, to add like 5K or 10K Exemplar Points to the completion of the daily ROE. This would encourage more of the veteran player base to want to participate, since the rewards appear to be more lackluster.

[Alhanelem]

What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

Likes: A cooperative event that spans servers.
Dislikes: Doing a bajillion Ambuscade runs.
This event should have spanned multiple content types.

How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

Some of the objectives are redundant and can/should be combined. For instance, you are essentially guaranteed to complete three of the daily objectives just by doing ambuscade three times, so these objectives will always complete at the same time and could be made to take up one RoE slot instead of three.

What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

Already answered this above, but feature different content types. Maybe have an objective for crafting. For Sortie. For general grinding.

[Gwydion]

What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

Likes: Earning points through RoE is a great idea, especially through a shared goal across all servers.
Dislikes: The objectives shouldn't be restricted to Ambuscade because this incentive was exhausted by players YEARS ago. The objectives can be anything across FFXI (See below). Also, I would prefer that rewards can be spent multiple times, as 1 reward per tier is extremely demotivating in a given month. (Yes, I understand that multiple 100 deeds rewards might be a problem, but choosing one reward from each tier is extremely frustrating, especially not knowing what might come the following month).

How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

The objectives are repetitive and that's fine. However, they do not universally apply to each member in the party. Many players only attempt Ambuscade on VD difficulty daily, so there is little incentive to do Ambuscade, as the satisfaction of earning plaudits alone, just isn't enough. On the otherhand, many players, solo Ambuscade on Normal to hoard as many daily objectives for themselves, which creates congestion and stifles collaboration.

What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

There should be a mix of Pre-99 and Item-Level ROE objectives, daily/weekly, such as:

• Kill 3 Kings, Kill a Salvage Boss, Kill Shadow Lord, Get to Floor 100 in NNI
• Kill a Dyna-Divergence Wave 1,2,3 Boss in a single run
• Kill all sortie top-floor bosses (major and minor).
• Kill all sortie basement bosses (major and minor).
• Help another player get an Odyssey V0/V5/V10/V15/V20/V25 Clear! (Repeatable)
  
• I would like to suggest rewards from Vanabout that apply to Odyssey and Sortie:
  • Give Odyssey Mog Amplifiers as an Ambuscade Reward.
  • Give a reward that forces or removes the random Aura from Odyssey bosses.
  • Give out a Sortie Seal that gives the effect of Gaulimaufry+25%
  • Give us an all jobs movement speed item that is usable in Sortie.
  • Remove RARE tag from NYAME Armor set or earn a Second/Third/Fourth Augment set.
• Generic rewards should exist, such as Rainbow and Gold mog pells (for various points and costume/vanity items).
• Event Timing: Points should allowed to accumulate! As each day passes, our potential plaudit earnings decreases! Someone who starts on Day 1 vs Day 7, should be able to earn as much plaudits as possible!

We need to stress to SE that the Vanabout rewards provided are extremely low-value items, that are easily obtainable elsewhere (such as similar costume items and furnishing come from as little as 100 login points!).

We need group RoE objectives, better rewards and insight into the next month's campaign schedule that we are working so hard to augment!

Thank you.

[CeviAN]

1. What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?

I like the idea of Vana'bout. The concept of working together for a common goal is core to the FFXI Experience so something that leans into that is a good decision for me. It's implementation is just lacking. The point values are all wonky (just look at the fact that the group goal had to be cut down to a fourth of what it was originally intended). Some work needs to be done to work out how to have that all work and be sensible.


2. How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?

I think the objectives are fine, to me. As someone playing a bit more casually I've not exhausted the unique rewards I can get from just doing Ambuscade. In fact I'm actually using it as a way to motivate myself to build a Naegling finally but that brings me to the to the general issue. Half of the Daily Objectives basically need you to come in with a Mage Job that can do Ambuscade reliably. I am only in such a good position because I was already gearing up Red Mage and was at a position where I can actually get some rewards I want out of Ambuscade. If Ambuscade is the only thing you can do for points and you basically need nothing for it you run out of stuff to get from just grinding it 3 times a day.

3. What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

Several Things:
Make the Point Balance better. Right now getting Max Tier means playing every day. On top of that, the aforementioned goal nerf shows that gains by day weren't what was expected. Maybe aim to have lower goals and more "stretch" goals at higher percents instead of a high 100% for any group rewards?

Diversify the kinds of objectives. Make it not just one content but spread it out a bit so it's not so monotonous. Also, as others have said, it's basically locked to level 99 characters. Due to the Crossover Raid with FFXIV there's actually a handful of newbies checking the game out right now. Making this something they can work on for rewards too would help the old players be incentivized to help out newbies more.

Better structure with the rewards. As it stands, while the Gold Level is hard to obtain, the rewards don't seem worth it. If you're gonna put things like Exemplar and Job Points on it, give us a ballpark of how many we get. Ideally I would make something like that it's own reward tier that's like "you'll get to pick a pile of one or the other that scales based off points as a category in addition to tiers with other rewards." That way they are there as a reward that keeps going up in between Tier Benchmarks. You can maybe also put a bump on that reward category as one of the overall goes like "If we get to this level of overall points, the amount of Exemplar Points or Job Points gained by everyone is boosted a bit."

Since it's the big Endgame Grind right now too, you might even add Gallimaufry as one of the options in this category to help shave off the Prime Weapon Grind.


Vana'bout is a generally idea and I would be sad if it just faded into obscurity after a rocky launch. It just needs some polish to shine.

[Darion82]

1. What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?
2. How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?
3. What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?

1. I liked that I could solo the objectives, having limited time on my hands and not being able to reliably group up for things makes it difficult to complete objectives that require a group. What I disliked was the lack of repeatable objective that could be used as a catch up mechanic incase I missed a few days logging in or could not complete all the objectives, I also disliked being forced into one type of content with no way to contribute outside of said content. As it stand due to only being able to play 2 hours a day a few times a week because I work at minimum 10 hour shifts I wont be able to get any rewards worth while so my desire to do this event wound up being pretty low.

2. Most of the objectives were fairly easy enough with some research and having already having jobs I could use as a sub job on warrior to magic burst and heal. I can however see where this could be an issue for some players and kill their desire to participate if they lacked the means to complete some of the objectives, thus preventing them from ever acquiring the top rewards,

3. I would like to see future vana'bouts be more accessible in regards to what you need to do to complete the objectives, let us do some sort of repeatable objectives any where in the open world as well as doing content like ambuscade and sortie or omen at the same time. Don't have the objectives locked to just one place and give each place a repeatable like defeat monsters or acquire xp or do X amount of damage like we already have with ROE so people are able to catch up if they missed out on a few days, and those that want to contribute more can. I would love to see better rewards, especially in gold tier, I have long thought we needed an alternate avenue of acquisition for items like the Mogbonanza weapons and this would be a great way to do that in some fashion.

I have played off and on since 2004 and have covered a multitude of games during my time as a game journalist and have even worked on a couple of MMORPGs, I think this event round just simply missed the mark in terms of incentive and accessibility but I don't think it was necessarily a bad event.

[helmaru]

What do you like or dislike about the latest Vana'Bout event?
Good idea, cooperative event.
Ambuscade is already something players have to do, forcing it even more doesnt make sense.
Its a missed oportunity to revive old content or zones which noone does anything anymore, use those contents to generate plaudits.

How do you feel about the objectives and their difficulty?
They are fine but we need more incentive to do them , give EP (10k EP) rewards to them

What changes, if any, would you like for future iterations of Vana'Bout?
EP rewards to daylies.
Dont use content for RoEs we already do on a daily basis.
The objectives should not be individiual but obtained if one in the group obtains it

[Xerius]

There is no reward in that list that's worth a month of grinding Ambuscade every day. As has already been stated, this is just going to further reward those who are already catapulted ahead.

[Cdryik]

The dailies are horrible, there's plenty of things to do before doing that, and spamming Ambuscade is meh.
The reward are a bit meh too, but, you can add a yearly bonus to in reward (whole server wide) like currencies bonus +xx% (ex: CP bonus +15%), etc... Some bonus that will shortened the time to gather some currency we need years to acquiert.

Some example :
- Abyssea NM will drop 1 more empyreal weapon/armor seals drop.
- Gallymaufry +20%
- Ambuscade points +20%
- Capacity Point +30%
etc....

Bonus for everyone, that could year monthly/lastly.

that would help newcomer like older people to keep up.

[Velodan]

I can't do Vana'Bout as a new player which is a huge disappointment. There should have been more options for newer players to take part. I came back to enjoy the world I loved in the 2000's and see the stories. I did not come back to rush to max level and grind one piece of content.

[kylani]

Others have captured my thoughts about how this was implemented. It's holiday time and spamming ambu was not what I was expecting at all.

Personally, I was hoping for this event to be something like the Treant event where the servers got teleport points. I was expecting something more general for the servers.

My hopes were things like:
- Have timers to be reduced for re-entry to Dynamis D, Omen.
- Allow 2 or even 1 person to enter Dynamis D and Vagary
- More teleports (I know we have a TON now so I am not complaining that we NEED more).
- Maybe new strategic teleports (I'm looking at you Yorcia wields with your moving bushes! even though hopefully I'm past having to deal with that now)

Basically, some general QOL changes.


I need more ambuscade stuff, so in a way, I don't mind the goals, but I can't imagine how tiresome this has to be for people who don't need ambuscade gear. I've decided to do what I can and leave it. It's the holidays. I know I can't sit there and spam it constantly.

I do appreciate that SE wanted to do a server wide event and hope they will continue to do stuff like this. I do love this game.