[Dev] Voidwatch: Response To Feedback

I'm not skewing anything. If no one in your alliance is getting a money drop of some description or any of the desirable r/ex drops off of an NM in an entire run, then I would wager that none of the people in your alliance are trading cells or capping lights.

Honestly, it's a fact, if you don't like RNG and having to grind to get what you want, then you're in the wrong genre of game.

We are all painfully aware of how mmos work broseph, that doesn't mean the current system isn't HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE at best and sadistic at worst

or that we have no right saying its ***and they need to do something about it

And I have the right to explain why it's nearly identical to what we've been dealing with for the past 9 years. Why now it's suddenly more severe than it has been for the better part of the last decade boggles my mind.

is it 2003 or 2012 im not exactly sure

You don't want this. As it stands there are many NM's that will one shot multiple DD's at any point in time. Phil has hit me for 2K+ with flanking movement and I didn't have any +DMG gear on at all. Kaggan will spam aoe's and can hit those in front of him for 2K+ damage. And Akvan can just aoe death you, or just single cast death you.

And those are the older T3 Jeuno NMs, the newer ones are even more outrageous with their offensive abilities. The Zilart path has a NM that does aoe doom aura. That's right anyone standing nearby will be doomed and die shortly.

So when people complain about fights with fanatics spam, they seriously need to pull the stick our their arses and realize the fights would be nearly impossible without them. The only thing worse then a 0.5% drop rate, is a 0.5% drop rate that you'll lose to 90% of the time due to the NM being cheap.

But its not lol you didnt do HNMs/Sky/Sea/Einherjar with randoms, you had a collective linkshell filled with people who enjoyed certain jobs more than others and the loot was distributed (hopefully fairly) to the people who had worked for such things and desired them

now you join a pickup with a bunch of random jackasses and the COR QDing in lv1 bullets on pil gets the body and you never see them again

Since you don't do it much then you probably won't get it. Freeze/zerg the mob then kill is way faster and more efficient to spam it, also makes the event more fun. When you can kill one NM in 2 min, you can kill 20 NMs in a 1~2hr run.

Now if they're nerfing temp spam and makes fight requires taking it down slow, you're killing one NM in 20~30 min and only get to kill 4 in a 1~2hr run.

That's just a pain in the *** when you need to do 100~300+ NM to get the drop you want.

Also less efficient if you want to use VW as a way to merit your jobs or upgrade atmacite.

At one point of time I actually enjoy VW alot even though I rarely get anything besides logs. It's a really fast way to cap merits since each fight gives 20k EXP and only last 2 min, and a lot more fun to merit than Abyssea EXP pt. And more accessible to none-hardcore players since they can still get some compensation(EXP/cruor) if they don't get ex/rare. If they're going back to slow kill 30 min fight I don't know if I would still enjoy the event as much. Pretty sure it's less incentive for many ppl to join as well if it takes that long for a run.

Really don't remember the loot system being this bad when Abyssea was around, nor do I remember having to worry about people getting the gear and never coming to your shout again which leaves you with an even further limited pool to choose from when you need 12+? On my server there is usually always the same people doing VW. When one person gets an item, they stop coming. I don't see how that isn't a flaw? Isn't that the specific reason they adjusted CoP, level capped fights?

For me, the biggest upset is that SE reverted to another 18-man event. As a casual player who only plays about five hours a week, I don't really have a shot in the dark of obtaining anything worthwhile. My choices are pretty much: a) Join a shout group that is grossly underprepared for the given task, or b) Don't do VW. I have generally chosen the latter option to avoid another so inevitable wipe. I'd love if they changed the proc system so that even shout groups or small skilled groups could get stuff done, as well as maybe increasing the time limits on fights. I don't know, I'm just QQing because I can't reliably do VW.

/brb quiting job, dropping out of school, and breaking up with gf.

Also in the old days, things were sellable. So you could work towards them through other means, such as gil. You can't sell these drops or distribute them at all because they will only appear in the same peoples chests with a favorable IP address.

Duplicate pieces should be dispersed more effectively. However, I do not agree with your "people who worked for it" statement. If you feel that the COR shooting lv 1 bullets wasn't up to par and working hard enough, then it's your own damn fault that you A) stayed in the group or B) did not remove that COR from the group.

Everyone's working just as hard to secure a victory in a healthy voidwatch alliance. If they aren't, the problem needs to be corrected on more of a root level rather than just complaining about it later, similar to maintaining a linkshell.

You may go 1/10, or 1/90, perhaps even 1/400, however it's unfair to say that the guy who got it before you "didn't work for it" just because he got lucky. If you were on a DKP system in a relatively aged linkshell, you'd likely have tons of competition for that Toci's Harness that may or may drop once every 20+ fights, and you'd be complaining the same way then.

Nothing has changed other than the method of distribution, which does need tuning.

As for abyssea being less of a grind, you can dress a turd in doll's clothing and call it a Barbie, but it's still a turd. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, it was a cleverly disguised grind. It's all a grind. You will not escape that, as this is an MMO.

A lot of VW /shout pt had no problem killing on NM in 2 min, especially the JP one. The entire process of 1 VWNM run doesn't take more than 1~2hr to kill at least 8.

no ***dawg

I agree that rarity is good. The problem is that personal loot is absolutely *** HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE and negates everything that made rarity good.

The drop rate seems to have been adjusted account for the fact that 18 people have a chance to obtain the item independently vs. a collective drop rate. The result are extremely rare drops with the caveat that you don't have to wait behind other people.

While some people who hate Linkshells/"The Man" enjoy this, for the most part it makes the system absolutely HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.

First, by making it such that extra people don't mean extra splits, there's absolutely no incentive to limit your group size to anything less than 18. This places less premium on organization and strategy and contributes to the pug shout temp item blitz.

Second, there was a point in having loot distributed by the group -- to reward dedication and skill, and penalize retardation. By having the loot randomized, the group doesn't get to choose to reward those who deserve it nor can it deny loot to those who don't deserve it. I can't count the amount of people who simply don't try because they know as long as it's a win, it has absolutely no bearing on their chances on getting loot. People that cannot contribute enough to stay in a Linkshell get to skate by through hopping onto shouts.

Third, you get Mages getting R/Ex meele gear they can't use, and meeles getting R/Ex Healer gear. Group distributed loot allows people who actually need the gear to get it.


The key difference is the presence of open competition. Now you are going to say that claiming was just another level of arbitrariness. However it is undeniable that the biggest group that camped the most had the best opportunity to claim. As such, they probably got more loot.

If a larger group brings more people, isn't that more comparative effort that should get rewarded with a proportionally higher claim rate? That's not arbitrariness, that's reward for dedication.

Moreover as I pointed out before, personal loot greatly pushes the style of end game towards pick-ups. The thing about rare drops in open competition is that they encouraged stable linkshells. Being a successful HNMLS demands a much different skillset from its members. You may label it drone work, but it is a skill set 80% of the players in this game lack. It tests timing, understanding of positioning, reaction time, and yes the ability to simply *** listen. I think people who lack these skills shouldn't succeed at this game. Temp item blitz pickups remove elements of coordination. Moreover it means that you can get gear even if you are a retard; in the HNM days you usually needed to be useful enough such that an LS that can do whatever content you wanted gear in would keep you around.

That "useful enough" usually means you need to play 5 hours a day, high enough attendance, level jobs you don't like, can't play with your friends during event time, cyber with LS leader and so on. I don't know what's so fun about it and how that makes a player more "skillful"

IMO the situation that really test your skill is actually solo/lowman with limited resource instead of an event with 20+ ppl.

Meh i think it would of been better to make it a point based reward system. Where each time you won you got a random 1k-10k points (VW specific points) and each body piece cost 100k+ points. so its still random when u get the piece. but theres also a minimum times you need to win to get it.

DO IT! DO IT OR YOU DON'T LOVE HER!


Wait, what?

I'm sure it is very easy for you to maintain the "yay-rah" teamwork mentality when you personally have the luck to get a body in 10 runs. However, it seems clear that you cannot empathize with those people you know who have gone 0/100+, and spend 100-120K in void stones on every set of 4 runs as they continue to spam the same mob for one item, while you have long moved on to whatever other mobs you plan on getting drops from without cells.

My idea for "fixing" Voidwatch that I posted on the officials a week and a half or so ago:

Having the monsters scale their difficulty, but also scale drop rates, based on the number of players engaging them, say from 6 to 18, would be a reasonable strategy to make Voidwatch more accessible while still making it profitable for a larger group to take part in the event. Obviously the drop rates would also have to be reconsidered as making them even lower than they are now for smaller groups would be preposterous, perhaps have a smaller group of 6~10 people have the drop rate that exists now while a larger group would benefit from enhanced drop rates. A larger group would also benefit from having more reliable procs.

This would serve to, again, make Voidwatch more accessible while still making it rewarding for larger groups, and it would also retain the difficulty of some of the T6 fights (which I personally enjoy).

I would also propose the addition of a token system, similar in fashion to the Trophy system added in Heroes of Abyssea. Tokens would be NM specific and could be traded in to an NPC for the items that the NM drops. Tokens per NM would also be based on group size to maintain the larger groups still being worthwhile. Only the higher tier NMs of their designated chapter and branch would drop these tokens.

Let's say...

Hahava - Intolerable Token
30 tokens - Ganesha's Mask
50 tokens - Ganesha's Mala
80 tokens - Mextli Harness

Voidwrought - Impenetrable Token
30 tokens - Strendu Ring
50 tokens - Strendu Mantle
80 tokens - Fazheluo Radiant Mail

Pil - Varna Token
30 tokens - Aliyat Chakram
50 tokens - Dilaram's Sollerets
80 tokens - Toci's harness

Kaggen - Mantoptera Token
30 tokens - Mantis Eye
50 tokens - Phasmida belt
80 tokens - Mekira Meikogai

Qilin - Zodiac Token
30 tokens - Houyi's Gorget
50 tokens - Fajin Boots
50 tokens - Lux Pugio
100 tokens - Coruscanti

Etc.

Could also add an option on the NPC that allows you to trade certain tokens for certain Magian Trial items so that, after someone already has the drops that they desire from each NM, they still have a reason to repeat the fights.

For example:
5 Akvan, Kaggen, Pil, Qilin, Aello, or Uptala tokens - 1 Riftsand
10 Akvan, Kaggen, Pil, Qilin, Aello, or Uptala tokens - 1 Heavy Metal Plate
80 Akvan, Kaggen, Pil, Qilin, Aello, or Uptala tokens - 1 Heavy Metal Pouch

10 Gaunab, Ocythoe, Kalasutrax, Ig-Alima, or Botulus Rex tokens - 1 Heavy Metal Plate
50 Gaunab, Ocythoe, Kalasutrax, Ig-Alima, or Botulus Rex tokens - 1 Riftdross
50 Gaunab, Ocythoe, Kalasutrax, Ig-Alima, or Botulus Rex tokens - 1 Riftcinder

1 token per fight for a group of 6~11
2 tokens per fight for a group of 12~17
3 tokens per fight for a group of 18

This would still mean that content is repeated several times, but it will also mean that you are eventually guaranteed the drop that you're after. This sort of system would not shorten the lifespan of this content for most people, quelling any concerns that the Developement Team may have toward that topic, however it would allow peace of mind in that after a certain number of successful fights, you are guaranteed to be rewarded.

I agree. Always thought that a reward point system would have been the best idea to solve this.

Are you implying there is something wrong with the loot system currently in place?

I've thought about that before and I have to completely agree. People can say "keep at it and you'll eventually get it" all they want, but in simplest terms there should really be a cap on how much effort one should have to endure to get this stuff when there are over a dozen NM's with noteworthy drops that people would like to get.

Abyssea saw increased drop rates only because it increased how much stuff people wanted, doing nothing but creating an albeit effective illusion. This was accomplished in part by making leveling more accessible. By having more jobs, you want more stuff for all of them.

Which, ironically, is probably the downfall of returning to the previous system. I'd say odds are in my favor of betting someone is Q_Qing over gear for a job they've leveled since Abyssea.

Does the game reward those who play more? Yes. Is this arbitrary? Certainly. But isn't everything arbitrary? Talent itself is arbitrary too. It's not my or your fault we weren't born with Michael Jordan's talents in Basketball and didn't become multi-millionaires. The issue in life is determining which arbitrary factors we are going to reward.

I happen to support competitive meritocracy because that is the most logical to me; the best we can do is simply to reward whoever produces results rather than who has the best excuse for not producing results. It makes no sense to me to reward those least qualified; but that system is no less arbitrary than a system that rewards the most qualified when qualification is a result of arbitrary talent.

Leveling jobs you don't like? Suck it up or make your own group. You need to be useful, and if you aren't too bad for you. It's up to you to make that decision to pursue gear.

Playing with your friends? Isn't that a choice inherent in anything you do? You can choose to join that shout group or help your friend.

And I discussed a number of things you must be able to do in an LS that you completely dismissed.

As far as "lowmanning" being challenging.

1. This argument plays on a logical disconnect. When we talk about lowmanning we generally think about it as something is supposed to be challenging. What we envision is reducing the amount of people necessary by having everyone pick up slack: everyone does double work, therefore you need half the people. It is impressive if done right because that means that everyone was skilled enough to do the work of two people. The reality of lowmanning in post-Abyssea is not reflective of what we envision when we use lowman to describe something challenge. You used to need an Aegis PLD and a GHorn BRD to be able to be self-sustaining with a lowman on something truly challenging (say, 6-person Tiamat). However lowmanning is the norm in Abyssea, not the exception. Either the game is easier such that groups who would have been unable to lowman before can do it, or the playerbase became magically more talented and skilled. All the reasons I have already elaborated upon indicate that it is the former is more logical. It is not the case that every single group is going with less people doing more work, it is simply that the encounters themselves require less people. When a Monk tanks in Abyssea it is not as if he adds on the duties of a Paladin to his previous damage dealer function, he does not need to add the duties/tasks of a Paladin to his repertoire. It is simply the case that in the process of doing what he previously did, he will be fulfilling the role of the tank. You used to need an Aegis PLD and a GHorn BRD to be able to be self-sustaining with a lowman on something truly challenging (say, 6-person Tiamat).

2. Lowmanning does not accurately compensate for the challenges removed from the game. While one could say that increased MP pools and Refresh rates are negated by having a double load to heal, it does not address the fact that Abyssea has effectively removed entire types of things one has to do. When one healer does not need to manage enmity that does not simply facilitate them taking over the job of two healers, it removes entirely something that the healer had to do before.

3. There is a natural challenge inherent in large group situations that cannot be attained simply by adjusting the amount of people down. The larger the fight the more opportunities for intricacy. It requires a higher level of collective skill when you impose the need for organization/coordination. I alluded to this earlier by pointing out that removing the need to rest removed the need for a group to show restraint and employ proper crowd control. Those were organizational/coordination challenges. The group had to be able to collectively react to a situation and work together. When fights are limited to lowman groups the level of intricacy is constrained.

Yes, you can have a multi-faceted encounter with just 7-9 people. However the level of complication is always shallower than with 18 people. Think about it this way: a group of three people tasked with additional spawn crowd control can be charged with controlling more mobs than three times the amount one person should be able to handle. If a single person handles crowd control the spawns must be limited by however many spells he has. The encounter has to designed such that one person can do it all. However if you design the encounter for a large group and can assign three people to crowd control, you can increase the amount of spawns by more than three because they can stagger their spells. The very nature of a larger group expands the challenges you can throw in because you can force them to rely on good timing and organization to handle more than they could each do individually. This is the essence of a good team becomes greater than merely the sum of its parts.

Case in point: The Wyrmking Descends. You needed a tank and support for Bahamut, a tank for Wyrm pops, add control for Vrtra and Ouryu's adds, all while maintaining DPS on Bahamut. The important part of this fight was not just that you needed a lot of people, but people who can hold their weight. In a fight like this, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If one of the add control groups messes up it could have implications for the entire group. You cannot get this level of intricacy on a smaller fight.

One might point out at this time that a lot of older content was doable by lowman groups before Abyssea came around and that this is evidence that Abyssea is no less challenging. However when Kings/Wyrms/Kirin/Limbus/Dynamis were first released there was no way any of that content was doable with groups under 8 people respective to their time. Fafnir was hard back in the day because we tanked it with completely different gear (Adaman Paladins with Earth Staves). There was a reason we slept Fafnir: it was intense to heal that fight with Paladins eating so much damage and the wings constantly *** up your alliance. Low-manning became possible because of innovations in FFXI tactics (tanking with PLD/NIN and NIN/DRK and eventually RDM/NIN), changes in game mechanics (2H forumlas, Hasso), and increases in player capabilities (merits and gear). Moreover while top shells could do Fafhogg, KB, Aspid, Tiamat, Ixion, and Lambton with 6-10, a group of average players could probably not accomplish this. This goes back to my first point about norms. Everyone lowmans in Abyssea, not everyone could lowman older content.

Never said there wasn't, however the people making a mountain out of a molehill making it seem like this is any different from what the game's been like since its inception are dead wrong.

I once built a house with my Voidwatch drops, then the big bad wolf blew it away :/

[quote='Sylph.Gredival' pid=1703887][quote='Ragnarok.Afania' pid=1703860] That "useful enough" usually means you need to play 5 hours a day, high enough attendance, level jobs you don't like, can't play with your friends during event time, cyber with LS leader and so on. I don't know what's so fun about it and how that makes a player more "skillful" IMO the situation that really test your skill is actually solo/lowman with limited resource instead of an event with 20+ ppl.[/quote] Does the game reward those who play more? Yes. Is this arbitrary? Certainly. But isn't everything arbitrary? Talent itself is arbitrary too. It's not my or your fault we weren't born with Michael Jordan's talents in Basketball and didn't become multi-millionaires. The issue in life is determining which arbitrary factors we are going to reward. I happen to support competitive meritocracy because that is the most logical to me; the best we can do is simply to reward whoever produces results rather than who has the best excuse for not producing results. It makes no sense to me to reward those least qualified; but that system is no less arbitrary than a system that rewards the most qualified when qualification is a result of arbitrary talent. Leveling jobs you don't like? Suck it up or make your own group. You need to be useful, and if you aren't too bad for you. It's up to you to make that decision to pursue gear. Playing with your friends? Isn't that a choice inherent in anything you do? You can choose to join that shout group or help your friend. And I discussed a number of things you must be able to do in an LS that you completely dismissed. As far as "low manning" being challenging. 1. This argument plays on a logical disconnect. When we talk about lowmanning we generally think about it as something is supposed to be challenging. What we envision is reducing the amount of people necessary by having everyone pick up slack: everyone does double work, therefore you need half the people. It is impressive if done right because that means that everyone was skilled enough to do the work of two people. The reality of lowmanning in post-Abyssea is not reflective of what we envision when we use lowman to describe something challenge. You used to need an Aegis PLD and a GHorn BRD to be able to be self-sustaining with a lowman on something truly challenging (say, 6-person Tiamat). However lowmanning is the norm in Abyssea, not the exceptional. Either the game is easier such that groups who would have been unable to lowman before can do it, or the playerbase became magically more talented and skilled. All the reasons I have already elaborated upon indicate that it is the former is more logical. It is not the case that every single group is going with less people doing more work, it is simply that the encounters themselves require less people. When a Monk tanks in Abyssea it is not as if he adds on the duties of a Paladin to his previous damage dealer function, he does not need to add the duties/tasks of a Paladin to his repertoire. It is simply the case that in the process of doing what he previously did, he will not be fulfilling the role of the tank. You used to need an Aegis PLD and a GHorn BRD to be able to be self-sustaining with a lowman on something truly challenging (say, 6-person Tiamat). 2. Lowmanning does not accurately compensate for the challenges removed from the game. While one could say that increased MP pools and Refresh rates are negated by having a double load to heal, it does not address the fact that Abyssea has effectively removed entire types of things one has to do. When one healer does not need to manage enmity that does not simply facilitate them taking over the job of two healers, it removes entirely something that the healer had to do before. 3. There is a natural challenge inherent in large group situations that cannot be attained simply by adjusting the amount of people down. The larger the fight the more opportunities for intricacy. It requires a higher level of collective skill when you impose the need for organization/coordination. I alluded to this earlier by pointing out that removing the need to rest removed the need for a group to show restraint and employ proper crowd control. Those were organizational/coordination challenges. The group had to be able to collectively react to a situation and work together. When fights are limited to lowman groups the level of intricacy is constrained. Yes, you can have a multi-faceted encounter with just 7-9 people. However the level of complication is always shallower than with 18 people. Think about it this way: a group of three people tasked with additional spawn crowd control can be charged with controlling more mobs than three times the amount one person should be able to handle. If a single person handles crowd control the spawns must be limited by however many spells he has. The encounter has to designed such that one person can do it all. However if you design the encounter for a large group and can assign three people to crowd control, you can increase the amount of spawns by more than three because they can stagger their spells. The very nature of a larger group expands the challenges you can throw in because you can force them to rely on good timing and organization to handle more than they could each do individually. This is the essence of a good team becomes greater than merely the sum of its parts. Case in point: The Wyrmking Descends. You needed a tank and support for Bahamut, a tank for Wyrm pops, add control for Vrtra and Ouryu's adds, all while maintaining DPS on Bahamut. The important part of this fight was not just that you needed a lot of people, but people who can hold their weight. In a fight like this, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If one of the add control groups messes up it could have implications for the entire group. You cannot get this level of intricacy on a One might point out at this time that a lot of older content was doable by lowman groups before Abyssea came around and that this is evidence that Abyssea is no less challenging. However when Kings/Wyrms/Kirin/Limbus/Dynamis were first released there was no way any of that content was doable with groups under 8 people respective to their time. Fafnir was hard back in the day because we tanked it with completely different gear (Adaman Paladins with Earth Staves). There was a reason we slept Fafnir: it was intense to heal that fight with Paladins eating so much damage and the wings constantly *** up your alliance. Low-manning became possible because of innovations in FFXI tactics (tanking with PLD/NIN and NIN/DRK and eventually RDM/NIN), changes in game mechanics (2H forumlas, Hasso), and increases in player capabilities (merits and gear). Moreover while top shells could do Fafhogg, KB, Aspid, Tiamat, Ixion, and Lambton with 6-10, a group of average players could probably not accomplish this. This goes back to my first point about norms. Everyone lowmans in Abyssea, not everyone could lowman older content.[/quote]

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