[dev1007] Voidwatch: Obtaining Spoils

[MarkovChain]

Nope I've been saying it's complete fail.

[Sparthos]

Good to know Pchan is still adept at spewing verbal diarrhea.

Overall Voidwatch is piss-poor on all fronts.

Storywise? The story is phoned in, there is no reason behind monsters popping out of vortexes and the immersion is about as deep as the puddles that dot the Dangruf Wadi. Where Abyssea subtracted story for more in your face loot rewards, Voidwatch subtracts any ounce of storyline in exchange for droprates that make Poroggo Madames blush.

But hey, im crazy for expecting good storyline from Square-Enix, a company that prided itself on delivering memorable RPG storylines for the past two decades.

Drops? While Voidwatch episode II added some good drops across the board, it doesn't even touch a hair on Abysseas head. You've got good drops like the HQ2 bodies and aura weapons and then you have garbage that are barely upgrades over staple Abyssean loot. It's like level 75 is making a comeback after 3 updates of solid upgrades worth chasing.

I haven't even touched the worst lootpool system designed ever. As SE has shot down the idea of pooling loot, I have presented my opinion on a point based system yet this wasn't considered since the second Voidwatch came to life.

If SE wants to make content "last longer" then tie rewards to points and allow people to gather them and spend them as they please. You can stack high values on HQ2 bodies and weapons while making the lesser drops a fair number of points such that every battle is a victory with an emphasis on hitting procs for more points. This is the fairest system to everyone participating yet it wasn't even considered when designing this content.

Overall: Voidwatch gets a D+ grade. It's not F material like Evoliths but boy does it try to come close.

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Neo-Dynamis. It's a decent playground for building/finishing relics or collecting old as piss relic armor but overall the Arch NMs are a huge disappointment.

The pools are shallow respective to the average number of standard players it'd take to complete the content (6-12), the droprates are arbitrarily low in an event that's already set at once a day, the NMs are boring rehashes of the original NMs with the same tricks possessing more HP and the drops just aren't good enough overall to warrant wasting the time doing the content other than saying you're doing something new.

I criticized the Arch Dynamis Lord after the first Dynamis patch because it could have been so much more like all Arch NMs overall. Instead of a boring, uninspired reskin of the original Dynamis Lord (complete with clones that you can't kill but can OHKO you easily) you could have had a much more strategic battle like the Fiat Lux equivalent featured in WOTG. SE is clearly just throwing these mobs together because the lootpools should be far more expansive than they are now if they expected to sell this as new content.

The lack of effort speaks volumes regarding the condition of the development team. It's clear they are overworked, low on staff and in need of reinforcements.

[MarkovChain]

... points. This is the fairest system to everyone participating yet it wasn't even considered when designing this content.

The fairest system is an event that you can join at will and where you get a chance at the drop everytime. So VoidWatch IS fair, just not from a fixed 18-man LS point of view. I've already said that the goal is to make it a random shout event, like doing ENMs was at 75. They have removed the dumb requirements that we had in Einherjar, Limbus and ZNM where you had to clear all previous NM to pop the next one. It only doesn't sound fair if you make it a point going with a fixed group of people. Globally every time you kill a VnM you have a chance at the drop and same chance as the other people in the group, and what NM you do has little to do with the amount of work you previously did. If you want more chance all you have to do is join all the random /shouts you see. It's like salvage but with an individual loot pool and a nearly unlimited entry condition.

Anyone that has farmed Limbus would have been happy if they had the chance to lot nashira legs at every boss run every day even if it is low drop rate. The difference now is that the system forces you to gather 18 persons with is compeltely dumb.

[MercureXI]

Seriously, I don't know if Tanaka is behind this or not, but FFXI dev team needs to remember that FFXI players hate shitty drop rates and tedious events that you need to spam about 45 times a day for 3 months to get your gear (-cough-salvage).

They went from Abyssea, where you needed procs to make gear actually drop with 3-6 people, to VW where you need 18 people to proc decently, with about 0.1 chance at gear dropping ... randomly into any of those 18 players' chest !

We gave you a bunch of good ideas to make this event "enjoyable" ("add to loot" option, prevent R/E gear to drop again if you already have it, etc), yet SE seems like keeping on making everyone angry at their only source of endgame for now, is actually a good idea and will prevent people from mass quitting FFXI.

News flash dev team : retarded events are what made people quit FFXI back in salvage / dyna-boring / camping kings / days. VW needs an adjustement just like WoE needed one ... let's hope you wont need 1 year or 2 to fix this like you did with WoE !

ps : not to mention every VW chest from T3 Zilart / Jeuno should load a Heavy Metal pouch ... would make people try and do the event a LOT more often !

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Seriously, I don't know if Tanaka is behind this or not, but FFXI dev team needs to remember that FFXI players hate shitty drop rates and tedious events that you need to spam about 45 times a day for 3 months to get your gear (-cough-salvage).

They went from Abyssea, where you needed procs to make gear actually drop with 3-6 people, to VW where you need 18 people to proc decently, with about 0.1 chance at gear dropping ... randomly into any of those 18 players' chest !

We gave you a bunch of good ideas to make this event "enjoyable" ("add to loot" option, prevent R/E gear to drop again if you already have it, etc), yet SE seems like keeping on making everyone angry at their only source of endgame for now, is actually a good idea and will prevent people from mass quitting FFXI.

News flash dev team : retarded events are what made people quit FFXI back in salvage / dyna-boring / camping kings / days. VW needs an adjustement just like WoE needed one ... let's hope you wont need 1 year or 2 to fix this like you did with WoE !

ps : not to mention every VW chest from T3 Zilart / Jeuno should load a Heavy Metal pouch ... would make people try and do the event a LOT more often !

And some people hated Abyssea style content.

PS. Stop speaking for every FFXI player.

[saevel]

And some people hated Abyssea style content.

PS. Stop speaking for every FFXI player.

No one "hated" abyssea content.

What they "hated" was easy drops for the mass's and the lack of "exclusivity" they previously felt over having dolled out enough oral manipulation to their LS leaders. Abyssea didn't require an LS to get what you wanted, LS's made things faster but they weren't a requirement. Abyssea was designed for small groups to go out and get everything, PUG's broke it down into "4 man" events to maximize personal loot distribution, but friends could easily do 5,6,7 man runs to get people what they needed / wanted. XP was no longer a grind, you could level any job you wanted and play around on it without having to devote months to getting it to "75". In essence abyssea was about the 95% of a games population that doesn't go around bragging about how much gear they have or which relic they recently acquired. The 5% hated this vehemently and just happen to be the most vocal about ~everything~. Abyssea also had a built in difficult adjustment. If you felt it was "too hard" you could get crour buffs and atma's to make it "easier". If you felt it was "too easy" you could chose not to get the buffs and go all "hardcore". Guess how many people chose to do thing without the buffs?

Those same people who complain about abyssea being "easy" are the ones complaining that everyone has an "emp" and that everyone else's emp is better then their relic.

[cidbahamut]

No one "hated" abyssea content.

What they "hated" was easy drops for the mass's and the lack of "exclusivity" they previously felt over having dolled out enough oral manipulation to their LS leaders.

This crap again? Honestly?

[Yinnyth]

No one "hated" abyssea content.

What they "hated" was easy drops for the mass's and the lack of "exclusivity" they previously felt over having dolled out enough oral manipulation to their LS leaders. Abyssea didn't require an LS to get what you wanted, LS's made things faster but they weren't a requirement. Abyssea was designed for small groups to go out and get everything, PUG's broke it down into "4 man" events to maximize personal loot distribution, but friends could easily do 5,6,7 man runs to get people what they needed / wanted. XP was no longer a grind, you could level any job you wanted and play around on it without having to devote months to getting it to "75". In essence abyssea was about the 95% of a games population that doesn't go around bragging about how much gear they have or which relic they recently acquired. The 5% hated this vehemently and just happen to be the most vocal about ~everything~. Abyssea also had a built in difficult adjustment. If you felt it was "too hard" you could get crour buffs and atma's to make it "easier". If you felt it was "too easy" you could chose not to get the buffs and go all "hardcore". Guess how many people chose to do thing without the buffs?

Those same people who complain about abyssea being "easy" are the ones complaining that everyone has an "emp" and that everyone else's emp is better then their relic.

Argument you're opposing: Some people hated Abyssea.
Your opening argument: No one hated abyssea.
Supporting argument: Only idiots and jerks hated abyssea, and they were only 5% of the population, they're just really loud.

Btw, I disliked Abyssea. It's half the reason we're having this discussion over VW loot. VW loot is more generous than pre-abyssea loot systems, but because it's not as generous as abyssea, we have a sense of "downgrade". That is to say, each hour we put into VW doesn't put out as much as it did back in the last days of abyssea. Note: the first 3 zones were a lot like other events in the game at the time, and it wasn't as easy because people didn't have 9 zones worth of abyssite and atma. The same is still bound to happen to VW, though probably not quite to the same magnitude.

[Nynja]

VW loot is more generous than pre-abyssea loot systems, but because it's not as generous as abyssea, we have a sense of "downgrade".

Yeah, ummm....not quite. I'd say the drop rate is on par to salvage (based on testimonials that people have gone 20+ fights without seeing a body piece on any char, with individual treasure pools I'm allowed to do this calculation 20x18 = 0/360), except you cant pick your item destination. Imagine doing ramparts, and those lovely usu ft 35's drop...but the game says "your whm gets em, no discussion".

[Elro]

Finally decided to log in to the forum for the first time just to post on this topic.

The loot distribution for Voidwatch and it's associated drop rate is probably one of the worse if not worst system ever implemented in a MMORPG. I thought getting seals you didn't need or want (but couldn't share) from doing ops and quest was bad, annoying and frustrating but VW system puts it to shame.

Abyssea was fun, at least for me and my group. I felt it was a move in a positive direction. Unfortunately Voidwatch and recent trials seems to be detrimental move in the wrong direction of horrible drop rate and excessive amounts of efforts for mediocre returns. Is SE trying to drive their player base away? If they are they are doing a good job.