Vana'Bout Round 2 Rollout Unfair to Those Seeking Title

[Aslani]

One of the new additions in the latest round of Vana'Bout is awarding a title to players with a top 10 ranking at the end of the event. Unfortunately, as a result of in-game bugs, and choices made regarding the timing of the Vana'Bout rollout and communications regarding daily events, many players who might have been interested in this title and willing to work for it will be unable to receive a top ten ranking due to reasons beyond their control.

1) SE has confirmed an issue (to be fixed later today) that prevents some players from receiving the Vana'Bout daily objectives. Any players who experience this bug (which is SE's fault, not the player's) will be highly disadvantaged if their intent was to go for the top ten ranking. This is incredibly unfair to these players.

2) The first "day" of Vana'bout was not a full day, and only lasted 7 hours. Because this is an international game, these 7 hours impact players differently depending on which timezone they are in. For example, a US player living in the central timezone would have had to complete all of the first "day" objectives between the hours of 3-10am on a weekday (when they likely would have been sleeping / preparing for work). Japanese and European players were not similarly disadvantaged. This is discriminatory. Did SE choose these rollout times specifically to give the Japanese player base an unfair advantage?

3) The fact that "daily" objectives do not reset every day and that players can complete them on the following day was implied to have been implemented as a flexible alternative (or catch-up mechanism) to the round 1 daily objectives. Many players interpreted this to mean that they could take two days for these objectives and still receive full credit. This is not true. Since the objectives only get rotated at midnight, missing a daily objective in round 2 of Vana'bout has exactly the same consequences as missing a daily objective in round 1. In fact, this is worse, because if an objective was not completed due to it being too difficult for the player, they are now penalized for two days in a row. There are certainly players who were interested in the title, but skipped a daily (and now will likely not be able to obtain it) due to this miscommunication from SE about how the objectives work.


*** I am requesting that SE reconsider the conditions required to obtain the new title out of fairness towards to the player base. My proposal:

* Instead of only awarding the title to the top ten players, set a high (but reasonable) plaudit threshold, and any player who submits a ranking above that threshold receives the title. Based on my math, I believe a threshold of 2000 plaudits is reasonable. This is difficult to obtain, requires much more work than the gold tier rewards, but includes flexibility for those players who were impacted by the above issues.


I understand that this is new content, and problems will always arise when trying something out for the first time. Overall, I like the changes that SE has made to round 2 of Vana'Bout. Traveling the world and such is much more interesting than only doing Ambuscade. However, I would greatly appreciate it if SE would consider implementing a change to be fair to their most loyal players. Thank you.

[Alhanelem]

Calling it discriminatory implies an intent, I don't think there was any intent, it was most likely just an oversight resulting from limitations in how things can be timed in game.

However, if people are unable to get plaudits due to a bug and that bug has been acknowledged and gets fixed, compensation should be provided. Frankly more leeway should have been given in the first place such that any kind of issues that crop up would not prevent players from achieving the goals, which is the real issue, all the other stuff i see more as symptoms of not preparing for the possibility that issues could occur.

[Aslani]

I can certainly see how the discrimination may not have been intentional, but the fact remains that SE introduced a competitive element to this round of Vana'Bout that introduces a significant disadvantage to US players in favor of other nationalities. If Vana'Bout would have started at midnight like many other in-game events, this would not have been an issue and would have been fair towards everyone.

I agree that compensating players who were faced with the in-game bug with plaudits would go a long way towards introducing fairness, however, this is the case if only those players who were impacted with the bug were reimbursed, and only by the amount of plaudits they lost. This would have to be handled on a player-by-player basis, and is highly unrealistic.

Giving every player on the server an additional amount of plaudits (500, as was SE's decision) does NOT help compensate for the unfairness regarding players wishing to earn the title.

Since SE chose for the title to be earned by only the "top ten ranking" players, this introduces competition, where the number of plaudits does not matter, only the relative amount as compared to other players. Since there is a hard set maximum that can be earned total (set through daily objectives), missing any of these objectives all but guarantees that a player cannot earn this title (especially on a high population server such as Asura). Giving everyone a plaudit reimbursement does nothing to change the relative number of plaudits between players, and does nothing to fix the unfairness with the ranking.

My suggestion in the OP was to change the title acquisition condition so that it is based on number of plaudits earned, rather than relative ranking. This makes it so that earning the title is now cooperative (people will want to help each other complete objectives now), rather than competitive, and SE's resolution of awarding everyone 500 extra plaudits does fix the unfairness with this system.

Again, it is not too late for SE to change how this works. They have the ability to make this fair to everyone if they choose to do so. Seeing how the theme of Vana'Bout is for all of the players across every server to work together towards a common goal, introducing an unfair competitive element seems very out of place.

[Alhanelem]

Giving every player on the server an additional amount of plaudits (500, as was SE's decision) does NOT help compensate for the unfairness regarding players wishing to earn the title.

I'm not sure how compensating players for plaudits they could not have earned isn't compensating them for plaudits they couldn't have earned...

I'm not saying they can't do more but you're being disingenuous here. There was unfairness with the first day and SE saw that and addressed that by way of compensation. There isn't any other unfairness that I can see.

[Aslani]

I'm sorry, I really don't mean to be impolite or start an argument, but you do not understand the topic of this thread. I tried to explain my point clearly in the latter half of my second post, but I will try again.

For those unfamiliar with Vana'Bout (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/t...l=1#post660202), round 2 continues the trend of awarding personal rewards for a total amount of plaudits earned but also introduces a competitive element where a title is awarded to the "top ten ranking players". This thread is highlighting the unfairness of how Vana'Bout has been handled with regards to the competitive title.

Earning the title is NOT based on the total number of plaudits earned. It is based on the relative number earned as compared to other players.

So, to explain why "compensating players for plaudits they could not have earned isn't compensating them for plaudits they couldn't have earned" is unfair, let me lay out a scenario:

- There are total Vana'Bout period objectives and daily objectives. The daily objectives come out to 150 plaudits per day.
- Player 1 was either not affected by the bug that was recently patched and/or is a JP player. Player 1 was able to complete the first "day" (really only 7 hours) objectives. Going into the second day, Player 1 already has 150 plaudits.
- Player 2 was either affected by the bug or was a US player. Player 2 could not complete the first "day" objectives, and went into day 2 with zero plaudits.
- Now, let's say both players complete every objective every day. Player 1 will always be 150 plaudits ahead of Player 2. There is nothing Player 2 can do to catch up.
- When SE compensated players 500 plaudits, they did not only compensate those affected by Vana'Bout's problematic rollout, they gave plaudits to everyone.
- After compensation, despite the fact that Player 2 has 500 more plaudits than they had the day before, they are still behind Player 1 by 150 plaudits (because Player 1 also received an extra 500 plaudits). The compensation from SE did nothing to fix the unfairness from the first day.
- The top ten players will almost undoubtedly be players with the maximum amount of plaudits that can be earned throughout the event, especially on the high population servers (like Asura).
- Player 2 will not be able to earn this title due to reasons outside of their control. This is unfair to Player 2.



I am not being disingenuous with my posts, but I have perhaps been unclear in my point. I hope this illustrates it better and you can agree that the Vana'Bout round 2 rollout was unfair to many players who are interested in the title.

[Alhanelem]

I see your point, and frankly I agree that awarding a title when there isn't really even a way to compete (I imagine there will be like a 100 way tie for rank 1 on every server since a fixed number of plaudits are obtainable). is silly. I'd even go so far as to say they should either just eliminate it entirely or attach it to a prize tier instead. Now, if there wasn't an effective limit on plaudits earned, then a competitive element could work (i'd still say top 10 is too few given the infrequency of the event), but since there isn't, it shouldn't exist.

[Dragoy]

I did think they were only going to give the 500 to those who actually were not able to do the new objectives or so, but looking back into it, they stated "Players who meet the requirements to participate in Vana'Bout" so I guess those who have completed the Stepping Into Ambuscade objective (indeed I tried completing that one on a character not having had done it, and they automagically got the 500 Plaudits).

I can imagine that they didn't have a way to easily see who were able to do the objectives, and not give it to them though, so just giving it to everyone does kind of make sense.

All in all, I was worried about this ranking system when they first mentioned it, and it does indeed play out more or less just as bad I thought it would. I'm not sure about a 100 way tie for rank one, but I suppose that could happen. Little worried about all the additional characters controlled by one player... though I suppose a lot of them will not bother... but maybe a lot also will.

A set goal to reach certainly seems better for something like this, even though I do kind of see what they were thinking with it.

[Alhanelem]

All in all, I was worried about this ranking system when they first mentioned it, and it does indeed play out more or less just as bad I thought it would. I'm not sure about a 100 way tie for rank one,

There's a fixed amount of plaudits available. So everyone who earns all of them will be in a tie for first place- unless the players are ranked by the order in which it was achieved. Which would still be silly as everyone will achieve it within the same (final) 24 hour period.

There's no sense having a competition when there is a fixed end goal like this. I honestly don't mind making something slightly competitive especially when it's just a title (yes, you heard me, "just" a title. I know there are those out there who experience intense FOMO at the idea of a missable title, but to me its just a string of text you see when you examine something, not something I feel like I have to collect all of.), but there isn't really even any room for a competition here when everyone performing optimally can neither get ahead of, nor catch up to if they later fall behind.

[Aslani]

I'd even go so far as to say they should either just eliminate it entirely or attach it to a prize tier instead.

A set goal to reach certainly seems better for something like this, even though I do kind of see what they were thinking with it.

but there isn't really even any room for a competition here when everyone performing optimally can neither get ahead of, nor catch up to if they later fall behind.

I wholeheartedly agree.

In my OP I suggested exactly this, make some threshold (high, but still obtainable by every player) that the title is locked behind. If even a small buffer was calculated to account for the bug and/or rollout confusion/timing, this makes the system fair for everyone. I mentioned 2000 plaudits, but that was before the 500 compensation... so maybe 2500? I don't know the exact fair number, but something can be determined that every player can potentially achieve, regardless of rollout issues beyond the player's control. Additionally, this would be an easy fix to make, completely realistic with the current state of SE's resources.

SE, it is not too late. Please make this right.

[Dragoy]

There's a fixed amount of plaudits available. So everyone who earns all of them will be in a tie for first place- unless the players are ranked by the order in which it was achieved.

I have a feeling it works like Fish Ranking (which has not only one but four (4) titles!), and looking at the list, it does look very much the same.

So for example, there can be three rank 1, sharing it, but the one after those is 4th, not 2nd, so all in all only 10 people will still fit into the list of 10, even if sharing a rank (and indeed, ordered by date I believe).

While in Fish Ranking, if a rank is shared, they all do get the title (and the price money is divided between them), but here it seems only the first 10 will get the title.

I suppose they /could/ bypass all that and count shared ranks as one, but I'm more than a bit doubtful... would be nice to see though!