All Greed on Alliance loot

[KisaiTenshi]

Too many people complained about players using Need for drops to use for glamor or allied seals or retainer equipment over players that needed the gear for upgrades. I can't even bring myself to be mad anymore. Those players asked SE to fix the problem. They did in the only way they could without changing more of the game. It stinks but this is a good lesson in why its not always a good idea to ask a company to fix community created problems.

People wanted fair, they got fair now.

They should never have made Alliance raid gear desynth/gc seals. Glamor-only would have solved it pretty darn quick, or tokens/collection-book style would. The reason people can keep "need"'
ing on things they already have is because they've out-geared it, and have either turned it in already for seals, desynthed it, or stashed it in the chocobo bag/retainer.

Even with an "all-greed" solution, they should have forced "greed" only on all content that they've out-leveled, while still allowing players to "need" items that is "better" than what they've already equipped for their role.

So would it be something similar to the Challenge Log (after doing content X times you get token, but if you don't finish it by reset, then progress is lost), or the tome system (can only gather {amount} per week, but erase what has been acquired)? Also would getting a piece from the raid erase your token progress (since SE seem to really like their one item per week rule), or no?

The suggestion I made earlier was to make something like the Collection book Khloe has, where all raid gear is in it and marked down as you complete those raids, and you could then redeem it. That gets rid of all these otherwise-trash items taking up space in the inventory.

[CaptainLagbeard]

So would it be something similar to the Challenge Log (after doing content X times you get token, but if you don't finish it by reset, then progress is lost), or the tome system (can only gather {amount} per week, but erase what has been acquired)? Also would getting a piece from the raid erase your token progress (since SE seem to really like their one item per week rule), or no?

Well, I don't know how exactly it would work, or if the game would even support it. But it would be something like the challenge log, but it would have to get locked once you loot a piece of gear from the raid as it's not supposed to be a second loot, but rather an alternative to the raid not giving you chances to roll for your loot.

[BillyKaplan]

A challenge-log-esque system does sound like the ideal. They could even make it relatively easy on themselves by actually adding it to the challenge log (hide it from us if they feel inclined, just use the system). The award given to you when you hit the max is a gear token. To get around the problem of giving you multiple tokens per week, runs you continue doing (for whatever reason) on that week might still tick for the challenge, but when you hit max it'll check if you're still eligible or not. If not, it just silently goes into the shadows.
They'll still need to add some minor tweaks but the core system for something like this already exists.

[Fyce]

- People can still have their normal roll, the tokens would be on top of that. So if they can go into this a few times a day they could still get their gear by simply only rolling on it when it comes up (and since it would still have need, they would even get a big chance to own that) Also right now you still only get one loot per week thanks to the limit, so I dont really understand that argument. If you get one item on your first run you wont even run that raid again for the rest of the week because you wont get any gear loot till reset..tokens or not wont change that. Those that run it more than once per day either run it because they are unlucky and did not get what they want or because they do it for other reasons. Those other reasons would not be touched with tokens.

I misunderstood that you wanted to also keep the current system. My bad.
So yeah, that solves the issue of not being able to "brute force" what you want. But keeping the current system doesn't solve the issue they have in JP where they have trouble gearing alts since they feel pressured into going in with their main. They'd now have some kind of safety net, but the main issue with chests still remains... Unless you switch to the all greed rule as well.
Whatever the case, a token system ontop of the chest one would increase the number of equipment you can get per week. You didn't gave any numbers, but I'll assume that one week worth of tokens can give you at least one piece. So now you'd have twice as much pieces of equipment as before per week. While players would rejoice, it's probably not something SE wants to change.

- First you said that running it more than once a day is now useless and now you are saying that this would force people to run it once a day? Again these tokens are on top of that. You dont need them. Its only there for those that may either have really bad luck or that want to gear up other jobs. Nearly a lot of stuff in this game will put people behind it if they dont do it daily/weekly. Be it beast tribes, tomestones (weekly), all the dungeon/instances where you get one loot per week (because you will not get that loot if you did not do it per week) And those that can only play at the weekend are always behind because they have less chances per week to get the loot they need. With tokens they raise their chance because they just get them when running the content anyway. So without tokens they might run it four weekends without the loot they want and have nothing to show at the end while with tokens they might still run that many times but they get a token each time and thus might be able to at least get one piece after those weekends. So winning for them too.

Yeah but that safety net is a daily thing you now have to do if you want your shinies. Players will not see it as something they don't need, they'll see it as a another method of getting loot, and they'll feel the need to do it anyway. In short, you're making 24-raids a daily thing to do, even if these tokens are "optional". Not doing them would be pretty detrimental. Thus my point about someone who can't play everyday still stands, that player would not be able to get their gear at the same pace as others, which drastically changes how people play 24-raids and their purpose. FFXIV, regarding that aspect, is more about being a weekly thing than a daily one.

- And its completely more fun to run this content 40x without ever getting that drop that you need? There will be people who dont like the tokens and they simply can throw them away. But I believe that quite a bit of people love to have a way to battle bad RNG. I mean we have tokens for the primals and as far as I know this change was taken quite positive by the playerbase.

That can already happen right now, not only on 24-raids but also 8-raids normal. Besides, if you take an outliner of the normal distribution as an example, I could take the other extreme with people who get their stuff on their very first run.
Anyway, yes, a progress bar is more bland and boring than a system where you can have these satisfying moments of luck. That's game design 101.

This solution would be something on top of the normal weekly roll. It would help those unlucky people that would lose the roll against others (as DD) or that never see their gear when they play it. At least with tokens they know that they will get loot x after y runs. It also helps all those with more than one job because you can simply gear two of them. One with the roll that you normaly have and another with the tokens. (At the same time)

I am sorry but I cant see any of your arguments as good ones against these tokens. People that love to run it more than once daily can still do it because the normal rolls still exist, all those that cant play daily are already falling back because they have less chances to get the loot per week and with the greed only option they may get even less chances to get stuff. With tokens they might at least have something after a bit of time. (And honestly people with less time will always be behind, thats the way MMOs functions). And those that dislike such a progess can simply throw the tokens away and do it the normal way.

So, overall, unless you switch to the all greed system, you won't solve the main issue in JP, you'll increase the number of obtainable equipment per week, and you'll make people feel compeled to do the lastest 24-raid once per day. That changes almost everything to simply try to solve a loot issue.

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You might not like them but these could still be solutions. Nothing will ever be perfect.

It's not a question of me liking them or not, but here you're changing a lot of things that don't need to be changed. The goal of implementing a new loot system is to solve an issue without bringing new ones or drasically changing what's already working.

One token system that would do exactly that would be this one:
- Switch to all greed to solve the JP issue, the overflowing tanks in queues and people going in with some alt they don't know how to play (or simply don't want to play in 24-raids).
- To then fix the feeling of unfairness from players getting outrolled by others on something they want, add a special token awarded at the end of the run:
-- This token would share the weekly lockout of chests. So you cannot get both a token and a chest loot. Only one of the two.
-- 1 token to buy 1 piece of the player's choice.
-- This token wouldn't have a 100% chance of being awarded. We'd have to run some metrics to see roughly the current average chance of a player getting a specific loot, and adapt that token droprate to it. Overall, it'd probably be an increase in chances of getting something. The rate might be somewhere around 10% to 15%, I guess.
-- It would be given in the same way materials were given upon exiting a dungeon during the Zodiac Brave step of the relic (during the black screen, you'd have the "kathching!" prompt appearing... or not). So, you'd have to roll on the final chest, or not, depending on what you'd want to do: try to get something from the final chest, or try to get the token after leaving the instance.
-- A side effect of this token would be that people won't leave the instance if they didn't get what they wanted on a specific boss, because of the second chance they'd have by completing the instance.

If you want to do a safety net without having to change anything else, while also not making it appear like a simple progress bar, that's the way to do it. This token would have another beneficial side effect in terms of psychology: this final roll on your token would be the thing people focus the most on, leaving their eventual unlucky run behind them (whether the piece didn't drop, or they didn't get a good roll on it and someone else took it). And for the lucky ones to get their token, it'd be a great feeling.

[SendohJin]

This proposed change is a solution in need of a problem. It’s always made sense to me to run these as the job I’d like to get gear for.

It makes sense for you but it doesn't make sense for everyone.

I don't really care either way. I tend to run on whichever role lets me queue faster.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Well, to be fair, the reason people are using the class they want to gear up is to an extent caused by the loot system... But the all greed is very much not the solution to people wanting to maximize their chances of getting a certain piece when it does finally drop on the 20th run.

The best idea I've seen is still the idea that if you run the raid a few times during a week without getting anything from the bosses, it would give a token that counts as your weekly drop and could be turned into one piece of gear from the raid.
It would cap the amount of times people have to run it weekly to gear up.

Oh, I agree. My response was more to correct the previous poster blaming complaints about company seal and glamour for why this changed occurred when it's primarily a JP request—a very flawed solution for everyone else, unfortunately.

As for the idea, I believe I mentioned it myself. Simply take the EX Primal token system and apply it to Alliance. They could either give you a second token each run; allowing them to be exchanged for gear. Or have a single token be rewarded after x amount of runs should you have not received any loot that week. However they went about it, this is far superior to crossing your fingers this third time out of forty runs, you'll roll high and no one else out of seven people wants that Caster coat.

[whiskeybravo]

But keeping the current system doesn't solve the issue they have in JP where they have trouble gearing alts since they feel pressured into going in with their main.

Is that really why they are introducing this change? That's like, the poorest excuse I've ever heard. You don't need to be on your main to complete 24-man raids, nor even to be competitive if that's what's your after. I went in to Rab with trash 310 gear when I was trying to gear up my MCH and still managed to do better than most. You want gear for alt job then get on it and learn, otherwise you don't really need it at all.

[Sigma-Astra]

I thought for sure that the JP servers go on their mains for the sake of efficiency in 24-man raids and they're just angry because they want to gear their alts that they're not playing and people who play those jobs, that may not even need the gear anymore, just need for 100% RNG sake, especially if they're the only type of job in the party.

For example, one JP player goes in on bard but they want to gear their summoner, they're better at playing bard than summoner. Another JP player goes in on their summoner, has better gear than the Mhach gear, and rolls Need on summoner gear anyways that has dropped simply to either troll or just turn into GC seals. Most of the time, most people in Japan won't speak up about being wronged unless it's called for simply because of the cultural tradition of "don't make trouble for others and become a burden to your team".

[Tint]

does anyone know what the japanese actually think about this change? do they have a discussion about it on the JP board?

[whiskeybravo]

I thought for sure that the JP servers go on their mains for the sake of efficiency in 24-man raids and they're just angry because they want to gear their alts that they're not playing and people who play those jobs, that may not even need the gear anymore, just need for 100% RNG sake, especially if they're the only type of job in the party.

For example, one JP player goes in on bard but they want to gear their summoner, they're better at playing bard than summoner. Another JP player goes in on their summoner, has better gear than the Mhach gear, and rolls Need on summoner gear anyways that has dropped simply to either troll or just turn into GC seals. Most of the time, most people in Japan won't speak up about being wronged unless it's called for simply because of the cultural tradition of "don't make trouble for others and become a burden to your team".

I don't know, I'd like to believe that this is not really why. I really see no justifiable defense. All greed doesn't really help, then you just lose to someone else instead of the SMN in that example. Even going on the actual job it's not guaranteed, the gear could not drop at all or if you have another of the same/similar job to compete with on Need. Like, you're gonna get screwed either way eventually, or just get lucky af with a drop at the right time.

Neither way is an actual solution to the problem. Here is an actual solution: Just add a 3rd item (token) for each party after each boss which can be exchanged for gear of choice. If they make it an item that you have to roll on it would be easy to include it in the weekly reward (like, this "token" is your gear for the week = no more rolls). If someone wants the actual gear that drops then they can roll on it, otherwise you just run a few times until you get a token and then exchange for the gear you want. Couldn't be any worse.