[dev1007] Voidwatch: Obtaining Spoils

[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".

[Yinnyth]

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".

Is that what you base your calculations on? Cherry picked-testimonials (check the thread about 11 pairs of fajin boots, then base your math on that) from people on the internet (the most reliable place to find nothing but truth) which you then base merely the drop rate of ONE item divided by the number of players there. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that you attempted to express your frustration in a mathematically quantifiable way, but there are a few fallacies in there.

First of all, how generous a loot system is cannot be based solely on how many loot pools don't contain the desired item. I will attempt to list the factors of what determines how generous a loot system is:
1. Desirability of all items, not just one.
2. Difficulty of the battle and consequences of failure (full wipe in Salvage means no more attempts that day).
3. Average time required to go from not doing the battle (in town, having just finished the same fight previously, gathering pop items, etc) to victory.
4. How frequently the fight can be repeated.
5. Competition/claim rate, if applicable (King Behemoth)
6. Drop rate of desired items.
7. Arverage percentage of needs met per drop (Solo KB and he drops defending ring? 100% of needs met).

I'm probably forgetting a few factors to consider, but that's what I can come up with right now. So comparing it to 35 usu feet, that's just one of the 3 drops you need to finish the desired item. Imagine you need to get 3 drops from VW to make those bodies. Also, Skirmish can choose not to spawn, imagine popping the VW, and it's a low quality mob which can't drop what you want. Also, Salvage can be done only once a day, imagine if you only had that one chance per day in VW. Also, Skirmish (back in the day) required a cell grind before you could reach him, so imagine if you had to fight several lesser VWs before getting to your NM.

I could go on a bit more, but this is tedious to write (and I imagine twice as tedious to read), so I'll just say

TL;DR:
You're oversimplifying things intentionally to exaggerate your point.

[Insaniac]

TL;DR:
You're oversimplifying things intentionally to exaggerate your point.

It's nice that you decided to define generous but you're still wrong. Salvage easily put out more -> wanted <- gear than VW does per man hour invested. Only the 3 kings/competition part of your argument holds water but any moderately motivated shell could cap their core members on everything but D. ring eventually and camping kings is in no way equal to the amount of effort required to cap/kill VW nms. A full window king camp required between 7 and 23 minutes of actual effort. For the record imo old FFXI bottle necks sucked too but VWs loot system makes me long for the days of no pop ramparts and DI camps.