Final Coil Party Reward Restriction

[Sessurea]

I think it's there to allow ppl in with other groups in order to assist training.....

I believe what se did is a response to " I would love to help my friends learn coil, but I cannot do this due to weekly restriction". And in light of this, the change is perfect. It's not there to help ppl who missed their statics raid day.

Keep looking for ways to profit from it though guys.

[Jinrya-Geki]

I think it's there to allow ppl in with other groups in order to assist training.....

I believe what se did is a response to " I would love to help my friends learn coil, but I cannot do this due to weekly restriction". And in light of this, the change is perfect. It's not there to help ppl who missed their statics raid day.

Keep looking for ways to profit from it though guys.

Cool if you can clear it, but then it becomes exactly like Cape Westwind.

[Kayko]

One person helping is not really much help, lets be honest here.. 4 on the other hand is a huge difference. If you have do 2 full groups available, one group can run through, get their loot and then split into the groups up to give a far better chance to get the kill so the loot chance stays the same for both groups, 1 piece for 4 people... and there, penalty negated and carries/sales abound.

Allowing 1 person to help, yes, the loot chance for the remaining 7 does increase slightly, however that 1 persons ability isn't the reason they will take down an encounter. Also, for most groups, the person filling in is going to be of about equal skill. It's not as if someone from say Collision is going to hop in with a group that is struggling on the adds in FCOB turn 1, they are going to find someone that maybe has a couple turn 1 kills or even a turn 2's under their sash. Allowing 1 without penalty would not have significantly increased the rate at which the gear was obtained other then by allowing groups to more quickly find that one replacement for the night the rest of their group can all set time aside to play.

As it has been pointed out, loot tables in this game are down right near broken. Look at weapons, FCOB turn 4, each group has a 10% chance to get a weapon they need. A perfect world means it takes 2 months for each player to get their weapon and we all are perfectly aware that it takes far longer with repeats and non played job weapons appearing. My group had a player get a DRG weapon (3rd or 4th one we saw) well before they got their main job weapon.. and their DRG wasn't even 50 yet. We already are getting offspec loot from 10 so for the most part (starting to look like the first month of Coil turn 1 all over again), we are going in expecting only 1 chest to have something usable. So now, whats the point for us? One person can't make it a given week, why bother bringing someone in if the chance at something is approaching ever closer to 0%? Why not take our 7 we have and go do treasure maps and just mess around? or call it a early night and visit our families?

Also, as someone stated, this is it for ARR, no more after this, 4 man dungeon gear will replace everything we are getting in about 5 months from now. There are people who have yet to clear coil turn 5, let alone Scob 4 and how many are not going to get to see the cutscene after FCOB 4? Unless they remove the lockout in 2.5 (which I think would just promote selling runs doing that so quickly) whats really is the harm is allowing players to have that insignificant increase in drop chance and allowing people to play with friends that may be normally in different groups that happen to run different nights?

[Kiara]

the system remains total bullcrap either way. this was completly unneeded. instead what we need is a token system or smaller lootpools instead they got even bigger thanks to nin coming to the game. with the lockout in place and considering fcob lifespan beeing MUCH shorter than scob or first coil before because of the release of heavensward with lvl 60 cap will mean that unlike scob, fcob will become instantly obsolete once the xpac hits this time. this means the lockout is just plain bs. it took some people over 40 runs of t9 to finally drop thier weapons. now try that with a lockout still in place and no reward is given to some players. thats just total bullshit. anyone who is able to clear these turns SHOULD be rewarded. not just the "lucky" ones who are blessed by RNG. thats a very bad reward system in the first place.

As it has been pointed out, loot tables in this game are down right near broken. Look at weapons, FCOB turn 4, each group has a 10% chance to get a weapon they need. A perfect world means it takes 2 months for each player to get their weapon and we all are perfectly aware that it takes far longer with repeats and non played job weapons appearing. My group had a player get a DRG weapon (3rd or 4th one we saw) well before they got their main job weapon.. and their DRG wasn't even 50 yet...

Also, as someone stated, this is it for ARR, no more after this, 4 man dungeon gear will replace everything we are getting in about 5 months from now. There are people who have yet to clear coil turn 5, let alone Scob 4 and how many are not going to get to see the cutscene after FCOB 4? Unless they remove the lockout in 2.5 (which I think would just promote selling runs doing that so quickly) whats really is the harm is allowing players to have that insignificant increase in drop chance and allowing people to play with friends that may be normally in different groups that happen to run different nights?

Well said Wind, Kay.

I wonder if a Token System might not be a better route? On a high level, it's Yoshi P's decision to go with a 100% Loot Drop per Chest System that has led to the situation we are in today.

* In FF XIV 1.0, Yoshi P introduced a Token System where after beating a Boss (e.g., Garuda or King Moggle Mog back in 1.0 (these were much harder back then than now)), the Chest had a Low Chance for a Treasure Drop (Weapon) *and* it had a 100% Guaranteed Token Drop.

And No Lockouts.

Collect Enough Tokens and you could trade them in for the Treasure of Your Choice.

So Linkshells / "FC" could set up events where you could take an odd number of LS Mates / Friends, etc. You just rotated them in (after doing a few attempts here or there).

But at least everyone could participate.

In Final Fantasy XI there were so many events where it was more flexible (to bring / rotate in your Linkshell Mates / Friends):

* Kings: You could rotate in LS mates if people died during, say, Nidhogg or Tiamat. You could have an Alliance of 18 members go.

* Dynamis (Early Days): 64 Players could join in and you had Multiple Objectives / NMs / Drops to go after.

* Sky: Going on regular Kirin / Suzaku / Byakko / Seiryuu / Genbu battles, and you could rotate in members / friends as needed.

Sure it wasn't 100% Drops per Chest but you usually got something (except Kings, which had the super low drop rates early on).


So would a Token System be better? Or a Non-100% Drop Rate System but remove Lockouts (so FC / LS / Friends can run things more than once a week and beyond just 8 Static Members) be better for the health of the community?


Lastly, when did our community become so cynical? (I mean this with genuine curiosity.)

Maybe I got lucky on my server in Final Fantasy XI and in XIV 1.0, but at least for me and my friends:

* It is ALWAYS better to have a system that allows more Flexibility in rotating in / attempting Content with More Players (differing sizes in Free Companies / Linkshells (Guilds), doing fun stuff with Friends), than to have a stringent Weekly Lockout limited to only 8 Players.

I see the move to open up running End Game content for more than a static 8 People as a GOOD THING. Not every Free Company or Linkshell is made up of *exactly* 8 People (to do raids).

Most people have more than 7 Friends.

Instead it's surprising to see so many cynical people cry about "selling runs / carries." I guess that exists nowadays, but not on my server (nor did I notice it in XI early years).

It's always felt overly stringent and very Anti-MMO with 2.0's "8 Players ONLY" / Weekly Lockout mentality. It's very frustrating / indirectly causes bad feelings when you have to tell Friends and FC / LS mates, "Sorry, you can't join us for this raid. We already have our static filled (7 other players only)."

So wouldn't it be ideal that 3.0 Heavensward has an improved Raiding System for participation / drops, so that we can get out of this awful mentality of "8 Players Only / Static," No More, No Less?

[Sapphic]

One person helping is not really much help, lets be honest here..

Not exactly true, one person with experience to farm point on content can make a huge difference. EG. they are struggling on a mechanic, that extra player can see what they are doing wrong and help them to improve due to their experience. So yes, 1 person can make a noticeable difference.

Stop looking at it as carrying, but training/helping.

[Kayko]

Not exactly true, one person with experience to farm point on content can make a huge difference. EG. they are struggling on a mechanic, that extra player can see what they are doing wrong and help them to improve due to their experience. So yes, 1 person can make a noticeable difference.

Stop looking at it as carrying, but training/helping.

I'm not looking at it as a carry or selling, though the current way it is set up, it makes sense to use it as such with splitting into groups of 4. In either case, 4 experienced players with the 4 that are struggling would be better in "training" the other group and on top of that, as I stated before, the first group can clear, 4 of those people can help 4 of the other group then can help the other 4, thus "teaching" them all instead of just the raid leader and keeping the same drop rate of 1 loot to 4 players.



It should have never been allowed to have 4 people join in the first place. I was hoping the setup would be created for 1 person to help fill in for a missing player on any given week and perhaps 2 or 3 can be used to help better in the teaching area. You can start imposing a penalty at 2 or more. At one, the increase overall loot chance is negligible, gaining loot ~3% faster is not going to make or break the endgame for most players. In addition to that, I doubt most groups that would be in need of a fill-in are going to be experienced enough in other jobs to min-max the loot chances per job, they are going to try and fill in what they are normally missing. Example: Group 2 is missing their BRD for the week, they will more then likely fill that spot with another BRD, the loot chances for the WHM doesn't change. If BRD loot drops, what good does that do the WHM? and if WHM loot drops, great, he was going to get it anyways!

[niwaar]

While I believe you speak mostly the truth I will counter a few things in regards to your statements about how XI worked...

1) Kings had a fixed spawn window. Which were in essence a lockout for everyone who didn't happen to get the pull. Non-Kings had 1 chance per day for an entire server population. Kings had a chance to spawn every 4-8 days locking out whatever group did not pull them. Do we want to go back to the days where those with the lowest latency or the better bots controlled the lockouts?

2) Dynamis did in fact have a lockout. A strict 3 day lockout on content that had first 5 then 9 different loot zones. If your zone on your server was taken during your Dynamis period... well you were locked out. (Sure this wouldn't happen in today's instanced content driven world but still...)

3) Sky/Sea were driven by a token system. Most of which were locked out a combination of 1-3 hour spawn windows. If you did not obtain the trigger from defeated the monster or finding the ??? during that window, you were locked out. Sure it was for a much shorter time, but it was locked out.

All in all XI ran off a different system of Lockouts than most modern MMOs. It ran on a system of competition resulting in a fixed number of loot opportunities across the entire server. (And then they were not a 100%)

XIV runs on a fixed opportunity for loot per person. Resulting in a "fair" chance for everyone to loot something per week. While XI's system was imbalanced easily by strong competition.

That being said, the "4 and 8 player only" content locks XIV into a system that is not ideal for long term. Not because it does not allow us to "swap others" in and out, but because of the "single job" loot and the larger job pool brought on by Heavensward and beyond. We need a larger group size, possibly 12 or 16 players. The reason why XI worked even with the sheer number of jobs it had was because of the larger alliance size and the free form content style. The more jobs we get the worse this issue will become. The system needs to be modified and fixed going into Heavensward. (While we are at it, maybe add in Support Classes)

[Kiara]

That being said, the "4 and 8 player only" content locks XIV into a system that is not ideal for long term. Not because it does not allow us to "swap others" in and out, but because of the "single job" loot and the larger job pool brought on by Heavensward and beyond. We need a larger group size, possibly 12 or 16 players. The reason why XI worked even with the sheer number of jobs it had was because of the larger alliance size and the free form content style. The more jobs we get the worse this issue will become. The system needs to be modified and fixed going into Heavensward. (While we are at it, maybe add in Support Classes)

Hi niwaar,

Yes, that's true (about XI). I think the reason why it was more acceptable (for myself and my friends back then) was because there was always something to do during the week. It wasn't just a "Coil Event" for one night and you're locked out / done for the week. Rather you could have your Dynamis runs (twice a week), with multiple objectives, or going to Sky another night, or Sea the next night, or if you got Kings camping / claim, or even minor NMs solo / duo / small group of friends, etc. I'm *not* advocating long timers on HNMs like XI.

Instead just noting from a player perspective, it was much more friendly to having a more Flexible amount of players participating in various events, and you could even swap people out of the Alliances if problems arose (deaths during the battle, or if someone couldn't make Sky, Sea or Dynamis, they could go again next time.

It was a healthier community, and not one fixated on "8 Player Static Only" (everyone else might as well not even exist).

And besides that in XIV 1.0, Yoshi P's team created a 100% Token System with a Less-Than-100% Drop Rate for the Real Desired Treasure, for the main challenges back then. So you had the best of both worlds:

* The "Lottery / RNG" Feel that he seems to like sometimes *and* the "Steady Progress Towards a Goal" (Tokens) if you were unlucky.

It's sad that they got rid of this concept in 2.0. It could've benefitted many players in a variety of events (Atma (pre-nerf), Coil, Primal Mounts).

And "yes," I agree the Loot Pool per Chest is getting ridiculous as well (and going to get worse in 3.0). Farming T9 forever and still haven't gotten a couple weapons I was aiming for. It's silly, but that's RNG.

[Staris]

The RNG drop system is the one that makes the most amount of sense for SE as a company, and for most groups (admit it or not makes no difference).

Just on psychological principle a random interval reward is a far better motivator then a scheduled interval. This means highest amount of subs per time. This is not speculation it is a fact of our behavior as humans. (google it)

If the token system existed, say you cleared final coil 5 times, or 8 times, or whatever and everyone got a weapon for mainspec, the motivation of many groups (or individuals) to keep running content would drop like a rock afterwards. With time between content being what it is, people would quit, groups would fall apart, time would be wasted gearing new people and recruiting.

If it was say 20-30 clears, to pace it with new content better, groups would be behind ones that cleared earlier, people would get angry at the system, more casual players would never see a weapon, ever. Many would never even attempt it.

Its also not the end of the world if you never get any drops.... 5 item level difference on weapon slot. You can still hit 130 if you never see a rng drop. You could easily have beaten turn 11 without 115 weapons, and gotten a 120. Yes it is not ideal, however, it is also highly unlikely your entire team would not have 115 weapons by then.

RNG = more subs, longer group life, more excitement when you win something.

If you don't like it, make your own game and see how well it does. (Free 2 play in days).

[Kiara]

Hi Staris,

Oh I've definitely seen the motivation of pure RNG. :P Not sure if you were around for 1.0, but you should've seen the absurd amounts of groups spamming our hardest content back then for RNG drops via the Cutter's Cry / Aurum Vale 5 Chest Speed Runs. I knew one JP friend who did over 250+ runs and never got their Chest Drop. Pretty awful.

While it may be the most popular / highest subs, there should be room to improve systems as time goes on. On that principal, why wouldn't everyone copy McDonald's (whose success of Billions upon Billions of Customers is undisputed)? Because there is room for different types of success.

Pure RNG (w/ Low Drop Rate) is definitely a throwback to earlier days of MMOs. We've seen the outcry on Atma (pre-nerf) in 2.0. While I got my full set of Atmas in a reasonable time, I know a couple friends who never finished their Atmas (and not for lack of trying). One friend went on a streak of over 200 FATEs with not a single Atma drop.

A hybrid system seems like a good compromise in this era of instant gratification: You can still get your RNG motivation as you say (that "lottery feel"), and still offer Tokens. It just depends on how many Tokens are required for a trade-in is all.

If that gets us to a point where there's less of a stringent Weekly Lockout and can get more players helping each other, it's something I know I'd relish far more than what we have now.