Proposed Voidwatch Adjustment

I would like to start off by saying, no I do not want VW to be made easier, I am simply wanting to see it changed to allow it to continue in new content.

As we are all aware, certain gear sets require a multitude of VW drops, but after years of farming VW people still do not have certain desireable items.

Heka Kelarsis, Toci's Harness etc some of these pieces are used in the most optimal gear sets for various jobs, but the drop rate has always been abysmal, now that said it was never a real issue, as VW was some of the most advanced content in the game, but now people have moved away from VW lowering the overall frequency for VW shouts etc.

It is MY proposal that all VW drops should be raised considerably, including heavy metal pouches, alternatively Airlixers could be added to VW drop pools (not my preferred option).

I'm not sure on the % to keep "Balance" but I think making certain drops such as heka around 5% instead of 0.01% would be a step in the right direction.

Anyone have any thoughts or want to start a Bitchfest at SE on their forums with me to get something done about this?

After how many years did SE fix BR ramparts? So can gen an idea...

Very true, however the new Dev team does seem to be changing certain things.

I missed most of the voidwatch era so I empathize about the whole missing drops thing. I think a lot of times SE does adjust older content to make it easier to catch up. Maybe they will do that here as well.

Incoming VW Double Droprate Weekend! That Toci's now has a 0.02% chance to drop. Huzzah!

oh boy! I got 8 Crystal Petrifacts instead of 4! totally worth my time!!!

SE should do something about that, ATM is practically impossible to,get empy's to 99, not coz the cost, just the low to almost no supply off the items.

I think it would be better to leave the drop rate low and require glowy/flashy items for future synthesis recipes of ah gear. Kind of the way they have managed to keep speed belts somewhat valuable. Focus on keeping people interested in the content, not make it easier. Just my thought.

This.

T H I S.

You made Emps shitty, so fix the droprate on HMPS and Rift items or have them buyable using plasm or obsidian frags or... something.

It shouldn't take someone a year of Akvan spamming to get one body piece. A few months, sure. But a year+? No. Even with cells the drops are just way too low. And buying the pulse cells, while an option, is too expensive to be worth it.

Just increase the plate/pouch/cinder/ross % so its more pheasable for someone to accomplish a 95-99 emp.

Or ad plates to lower tier NMs that are low man-able. Since no one does vw as it is, at least make a way for people to make upgrades on a "possible farm" that isnt going to be a waist of there time and walk away with nothing.

Toss the rest of ideas out the window, gear and upgraded weapons are meant to be rare and take a extended amount of time/luck to attain. As it is most everything in game gets nerfed cuz people QQ that its to hard.
If you didnt get the gear then you missed the train because VW has expired!

I just "hope" they add VW in Adoulin ... and that they drops plates like mirror drops... I don't see them "fixing" old/current VW, and new gear might replace T3 bodies "soon"... just need to replace Heka's atm..

Is increasing a drop rate making it easier? No it removes grinding for hours on old content where people dont want to be doing old content.

Your idea of making a glowy item........ NO god I don't think I've ever heard such a bad idea. UNLESS you meant "requires a Heka to make a Heka +1" or something, but this again doesn't help people who didn't get it originally, and those people who had the "luck" on drop rates won't be doing the old content, so this doesn't promote old content.

The only way it would work, is if you added new high end gear to the AH, and made some of the craft items a VW drop only, but then there's the issue that if only 1 NM drops this item, everyone will spam 1 NM and armor gears etc are again neglected.

With ref: to Glowy dropped weapons such as with Qilin (Hereby doved Qiling {verb}) and the "nonexistantdagger" you again neglect NM's that drop Armor. This would only benefit Heavy Metals and Riftcinders etc.

Or don't increase the drop rate but make the procs more simplified so that smaller groups can do this content while being able to cap out on lights.

It's not hard, it's just a pain in the ***. if you say gave someone progress like kill 200 of a NM and GARANTEED drop, then sure! thats fine, cos you know you're gunna get it eventually from hard work. is it hardwork you got it 1/1 no thats luck. Luck based content is Irritating, and silly on old content, that people no longer do.

If they (SE) wanted to be really lazy they could just uncap the limit that Rubicund cells count towards the maximum and make it so you spend idk 7 or 10 cells to cap your red lights. It even has the added beneift of making Rubicund cells a nice income source for people who wanna do something useful with their cruor or allied notes. It'll effectively turn it into something low mannable (capped red means you can just zerg the crap out of it) and something you can throw money at just like any other Legendary weapon.

Edit: Maybe less than 7-10 cells but same general idea

This is a good idea, it would allow low man groups for people who don't have the best gear to old content, this would increase the no. you could do and let newer players gear again, I do feel certain gear drops are a stupid %, I don't want it 100%, but I feel 0.01 is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.

I would have to agree with Conagh on this since people do so many runs on certain VwNM's to name a few (Akvan / Pil), its kind of getting old since the % is so crappy that trying to get the old content is still hard to get with the current % it is set at right now.

Drop rates really suck, but the procs are the biggest C@#$ block atm. Right now you need like 10 ppl minimum to cover the "basics" and seeing how everyone is moving on, it takes forever to fill spots because of this.

I already put forward this idea back in April. Let me see if I can find that link ...

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/32667-Time-to-adjust-Voidwatch-again

Like the OP, leave some feedback. SE take more notice of likes then anything else.

Agreed, all those various "dead" currency need to be spent somehow. They should do double drop rate months for Voidwatch, add those HMP, Riftcinder etc on other contents such as BCNMs, Walk of Echoes. Heck make it drop from Abyssea NMs as well to give more reasons to help those returning players farming their AF seals, or make Empyrean weapons. Considering Matsui already declared RME are dead, and he wants to move on from that content, why punishing people who wants to make those weapons...

I doubt it, seems like the stance is SoA content from now on, he will be focusing on new solo and small group friendly contents for SoA. Old contents are pretty much abandoned if you read their update list. All the contents released after Abyssea pretty much "stalling contents" until SoA - and they also use it to "experiments" and testing ground for SoA contents. I doubt they will go back to adjust them. But they do need to make double triple drop rate celebration months for all older contents - let people savor those and "complete" them so they can move on to SoA.

I also made a post a little further down on my topic stating which drops I believe need a major adjustment. With the pure lack of VW shouts due to Delve and other Seekers content, it is even less likely to find pulse cells for certain pieces of equipment.

Since I made that post, I have done Provenance and the Cats, and it was really easy to be honest, but a lot of those drops are useless so I just went along for the key items. I am still waiting on a Bismarck and Botules Rex shout, they are the only two VW I never had the chance to fight, as by the time I caught up, everyone had moved on.

Why only some months and not forever? It isn't a big difference anymore and players don't get butthurt if they are in holiday.

Just for those who did not read my topic, this is what I showed SquareEnix back in April. (Data taken from the items respective pages back in April.)

Extremely Rare drops list.

Equipment with no Pulse Cell.
Hahava - Ganesha's Mala

Pulse Cell items: Although some pieces of equipment are becoming much more available, others are that rare, that it may take an unbelievable amount of time camping the Auction House for Pulse Cells, while constantly repeating the same Voidwatch.

It can get extreme to the point that you have to save millions of gil just for these purchases, and it's very likely that someone will get them before you. Sometimes these items don't drop to the point that people run out of voidstones, and have to switch into buying voiddust for a few months. With Seekers of Adoulin being released, it worries me that people will be stuck doing Voidwatch instead of helping out in the new content.

It also worries me that new content will bring out pieces of equipment that are better then those in Voidwatch, which took players many months of grinding and praying. The Pulse Cell situation did help, but there is still the major problem that hardly any actually get sold. As you can imagine, when someone finally gets the item, why would they continue to do the same Voidwatch battle?

Of course you do get players who continue to do them just to get some money, but a lot of players, including myself, would (for example) get my Coruscanti and never do Qilin ever again. With Matsui talking about "progression", it makes sense to make these pieces of equipment more available so people are not as upset when something is released which blows them out of the water.

Below is a list of Pulse Cells that range from rare to super rare. The numbers next to them are the average selling rates on my server.

Celaeno - Anhur Robe (0.517 sold/day)
Kaggen - Mekira Meikogai (0.633 sold/day)
Pil - Toci's Harness (0.188 sold/day)
Akvan - Heka's Kalasiris (0.343 sold/day)

Out of the above four body pieces, Toci's appears to be the rarest, and personally once I got Dilaram's Sollerets (Which was trumped by Karieyh Sollerets in the update) I never wanted to do Pil ever again. Mekira and Anhur seem reasonable, but Toci's and Heka's could do with a helping hand. Continuing on ...

Aello - Ephemeron (0.004 sold/day - One Cell ever sold on AH on Cerberus)
Qilin - Coruscanti (0.076 sold/day - 5-8 Million each on all servers)
Uptala - Murasamemaru - (0.703 sold/day - Used as a rank three reward to sell for money. 9-10 Million each)

As you can see, Ephemeron and Coruscanti are ridiculously rare to the point it is depressing. The only reason Murasamemaru has that rate of sold/day was due to Mog Bonanza, otherwise it would be under 0.1.

Ig-Alima - Borealis (0.106 sold/day - This VW is done everyday by groups, and this drop rate is still bad)
Botulus Rex - Asteria (0.014 sold/day - The difficulty of this NM, and the rarity of Asteria, makes this one of the hardest daggers to get in the entire game)
Morta - Aytanri (0.048 sold/day - This VW is rarely done on my server)
Bismarck - Delphinius (0.037 sold/day - Used to be done regularly, but over the last few months, I have not seen it)

Abjurations are somewhat decent, because they can drop off different NMs, but as Aht Urhgan and Tavnazia NM are done a lot less as of late (Except Vanasarvik), it is pretty rare to see anyone get them.

A change of drop rates could see people coming back to do these events more often, and progress. It also gives people more incentive to join and help others get clears, as they may get a Pulse Cell out of it and be able to sell it for a decent amount. Of course with a better drop rate, pulse cells will be more common, and will sell for less, but I think that would be fair seeing as newer gear from Seekers may be better, and possibly easier to obtain.

The main equipment that does not have a Pulse Cell, which is grinded over is Mala. People still do Hahava a lot, probably on all servers. If anyone would like to add anymore to the list, feel free to do so.

X2 x3 x10... Drop rate, won't really help, as you can go 1/1 on drops you can go 0/999 too... Random drop doubled still random...

Inc NNI double jump for those who still not done with it.

Forever would be much better, but you know how it is with SE. If they even consider doubling and tripling stuffs in previous contents - that would be great. Double xp week should be part of Kupo Power. Double drop rate should also be a part of Kupo power. Make everything drops double rate including beastmen seals, kindred seals, etc.. (cough, like people do these anymore..) and yes make those Voidwatch things drop double rate. After all they are events outside Abyssea.

I agree, something should be done about the drop rates in VW. The NMs are easy (moreso if displacers are used) and beating them has never been the issue. There's no "skill" or "strategy" in winning the RNG lottery and drops shouldn't be exclusive to those who spammed the content in 2011-early 2012 when people were actually motivated to do VW. Yes I say "exclusive", being fully aware it's still somewhat possible to make a VW group today, but it typically takes a lot of time to form (at which point people often leave) and it won't fill to 18 or even 12 for less popular NMs.

The drop rate itself is demoralizing enough to prevent people from joining shout groups too, I'd think. It's pretty easy to burn yourself out on the same exact NM 100-300 times and think "that damn body's never going to drop, is it?".

Exactly the point I was trying to make to SE with my post. Please leave feedback on my topic on their official forums. The more people who take notice, the more likely SE will fit changes to VW into their schedule.

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