Verminion Penalty for Tutorial ?

[Zhexos]

Thanks for all the feedback in regards to Lord of Verminion. I'd like to share with you the current situation and the direction we're planning to take for adjustments.

Lord of Verminion Tournament

Of all the feedback we received in regards to the tournament, the issue regarding the calculation of how points are earned needed to be addressed the soonest. Therefore, we will be addressing this by guaranteeing 30 points for winning a match in next week's hotfix.

Normally, we would consider canceling the tournaments until this had been addressed; however, the tournament schedules are managed by the server software, and in order to change the schedule, it would require halting the tournaments for an extended period of time. For this reason, the development and operations teams have decided to prioritize the hotfix instead. Therefore, please keep in mind that the hotfix may be applied during the course of an active tournament. Please note that if the hotfix has been applied while the tournament is taking place, the winning points from before and after the hotfix may fluctuate.

Player Matching

Currently, many players are participating in a wide variety of content released in Patch 3.1. Due to this, there are times where there are less participants available for the Player Battle (RP) mode. As such, the dev. team is aware of the situation where players are being matched with other players who have exceedingly different levels of rank points. We are hoping more players will participate in Lord of Verminion in the future; however, as a permanent measure, we are considering changing the matching system from World-only, to a Data Center-wide matching system, similar to the Duty Finder. It would require some time to make this change, but we're currently considering this option.

Tutorial

The first Verminion Challenge "Stage 1: Tutorial" has the same 10 minute time limit as other challenges; however, we have received feedback from players mentioning this is too short. Therefore, we will extend the time limit on the tutorial from 10 minutes to 20 minutes. Additionally, we'll adjust the entry MGP cost to zero at the same time.

MGP Consumption During Battles

No matter which mode you participate in, players spend MGP to enter. For this reason we have received feedback where players are unable practice. In next week's hotfix, we will make adjustments to Verminion Challenge "Stage 1: Tutorial," and Player Battle (Non-RP) so it can be played without paying any MGP.

Also, we'll be reducing the amount of MGP awarded for winning a Player Battle (Non-RP) from 100 MGP to 50 MGP. Previously, players were rewarded the same amount of MGP required to participate; however, now that the MGP required to participate in this mode has been removed, players will be able to earn 50 MGP as a bonus for winning.

HUD settings for Lord of Verminion

We have received requests to make it possible to adjust the HUD settings for Lord of Verminion outside of matches. However, this requires a large amount of adjustments, and will take some time to address. We will continue looking into this, but for the time being, we would like players to use the tutorial, or Player Battle (Non-RP) which won't cost any MGP, to adjust their HUD settings.

We would like to make further adjustments based on your suggestions and feedback so make sure to post any comments you may have!

[Gunspec]

Also, we'll be reducing the amount of MGP awarded for winning a Player Battle (Non-RP) from 100 MGP to 50 MGP.

Don't these battles usually take about 5 minutes? So that's 10 MGP per minute. It will now take 70 solid days of grinding Lord of Verminion to earn a Fenrir mount or a Cloud Triple Triad card, up from 35 solid days. It will also take about 13 solid hours of play just to earn the ponytail hair design.

Was this a number really in need of getting nerfed? Who is the design genius who said, "but wait, we need to nerf these numbers, the reward for content is too high". Is he the same guy that is saying "we really wish this content would be more popular"?

Well, I earn 99% of my MGP via mini-cactpot, like a majority of the community, so oh well. The rest of the gold saucer could catch fire and I might not notice.

Edit:
just got 10k from one of my daily cactpot tickets, that's 17 hours of non-rated LoV. Think about that for a moment.

[Talraen]

I agree that Verminion doesn't give much MGP, but the next sentence after the one you quoted clarified that this is actually an increase. It went from costing 100 and awarding 100, for a total of a break even, to costing 0 and awarding 50.

[Rjain]

Was this a number really in need of getting nerfed? Who is the design genius who said, "but wait, we need to nerf these numbers, the reward for content is too high". Is he the same guy that is saying "we really wish this content would be more popular"?

Two things.

A) The nerf you are complaining about is a buff, considering it used to cost 100 MGP to enter and you were rewarded 100 MGP for winning. That means you either kept your MGP or lost 100 MGP by participating. Now it costs 0 to enter, and you receive 50 for winning.

B) People play this content to have fun and as something different to do. There are many other, much faster ways of earning MGP than this sort of content. If you are averse to having fun and just want to grind your life away to earn an item no one cares about you obtaining, you are capable of doing so through other means.

[Gunspec]

B) People play this content to have fun and as something different to do. There are many other, much faster ways of earning MGP than this sort of content.

The problem is that they are spending an enormous amount of time designing content for the gold saucer that doesn't provide rewards for the gold saucer. If you want to spend time developing content, and you want people to spend time playing that content, the rewards should be relative to the time invested.

2 months from now, I want you to check out the Verminion area and notice that there is no one there playing this extravagant mini-game. Then I want you to check out the mini-cactpot counter, which always has a half dozen people crowded around it. This is a design flaw.

Imagine if the entire game was designed around this concept. Once a day, you have an extremely simple mini-game with a decent chance of scoring an amount of XP, Law, and Esoterics equal to 10 hours of dungeons, raids, and fates. No one would be running the content added to the game, because a majority of the rewards are coming from a single daily lottery.

[PotatoTree]

snip

I completely agree, this is one of the bigger issues. It takes like a minute to do a mini cactpot, and the expected value is 1485 MGP if you do perfect play. So if you spend 600 MGP on 3 cards, it takes less than 3 minutes and your expected return is 4455 MGP for almost 0 effort.

This is compared to LoV, where matches ranges from 5-10m, require a lot of effort, and you win like what, 500MGP?

[Tadacho]

I completely agree, this is one of the bigger issues. It takes like a minute to do a mini cactpot, and the expected value is 1485 MGP if you do perfect play. So if you spend 600 MGP on 3 cards, it takes less than 3 minutes and your expected return is 4455 MGP for almost 0 effort.

This is compared to LoV, where matches ranges from 5-10m, require a lot of effort, and you win like what, 500MGP?

I got like 30k MGP from coming 27th in the last tournament and I only did 15 matches

That was a pretty big return for minimum effort on my part.

I think getting even closer to 1st place was yielding people up to 80,000 - 100,000 MGP.

[Zoner]

Don't these battles usually take about 5 minutes? So that's 10 MGP per minute. It will now take 70 solid days of grinding Lord of Verminion to earn a Fenrir mount or a Cloud Triple Triad card, up from 35 solid days. It will also take about 13 solid hours of play just to earn the ponytail hair design.

Was this a number really in need of getting nerfed? Who is the design genius who said, "but wait, we need to nerf these numbers, the reward for content is too high". Is he the same guy that is saying "we really wish this content would be more popular"?

Well, I earn 99% of my MGP via mini-cactpot, like a majority of the community, so oh well. The rest of the gold saucer could catch fire and I might not notice.

Edit:
just got 10k from one of my daily cactpot tickets, that's 17 hours of non-rated LoV. Think about that for a moment.

In b4:

"Thanks for all the feedback on MGP via mini-cactpot, we'll be nerfing that as well."

[Dotsusama]

snip

Gambling is always high risk, high reward. You are just as likely to lose 492 MGP doing mini cactpot as you are to win 29,400 MGP. (Getting 3x 36 rewards versus 3x 10k, minus the 600 you always spend for three rounds.)

If you want to earn MGP via LoVM you need to only worry about the tournament. It's not going to be a viable alternative to, say, grinding MGP via TT.

[PotatoTree]

Gambling is always high risk, high reward. You are just as likely to lose 492 MGP doing mini cactpot as you are to win 29,400 MGP. (Getting 3x 36 rewards versus 3x 10k, minus the 600 you always spend for three rounds.)

That is not true. As I said earlier, the expected value is 1485 MGP per match with perfect play. Getting 3x36 does not have the same probability at all as 3x10k.