Dev Tracker

[Eurell]

Even in the bad old days, nothing had drop rates as bad as the ~0.5% rates on what they're calling pulse equipment. Even if this was their rationale, they fucked it up badly. The ease of leveling and gearing through Abyssea made it so everyone has 5 to 20 jobs they want to gear, and doing that with VW drop rates and 95+ empyrean trials is pretty close to impossible. The fact that the nature of Voidwatch makes it even more important that you have diverse jobs geared only compounds this.

While I agree that shit is far from perfect, and VW drop rate should be adjusted. The fact that you can spam it all day, and will never have to deal with competition to claim makes getting drops waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster than anything before abyssea. Like Adaberk back before Odin had a 25%? drop rate off a mob that popped once a week.

Again, not that shit is good now, but it is definitely way better than it was pre abyssea.

[Eurell]

I might have missed it, but are the colored chips used to get to proto-omega/ultima used to get to neo-proto? Or do we not know what the items are going to be to get to neo-proto-mega-super-ultima?

Metal Chip to enter the new zone. Presumably the new zone will drop the entry item for Neo Omega/Ultima.

[MaachaQ]

While I agree that shit is far from perfect, and VW drop rate should be adjusted. The fact that you can spam it all day, and will never have to deal with competition to claim makes getting drops waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster than anything before abyssea. Like Adaberk back before Odin had a 25%? drop rate off a mob that popped once a week.

Again, not that shit is good now, but it is definitely way better than it was pre abyssea.

Umm, no. 25% chance once a week is still far far better than .5%, no matter how many times you can spam the fight (which unless you have a tons of stones saved up or you buy mass quantities of voiddust you cannot keep spamming the fight for long).

[Yugl]

He said before Odin, which means he's referring to HQ Fafnir. The 25% referred to Odin.

[Weeks]

No, the sentence is definitely referring to Nidhogg, who was about 25% too. The bigger point, of course, is that even if Voidwatch is a return to the kind of grind that kings were, it's a huge step back after they made a leap forward in accessibility with Abyssea. MMOs have to keep the 10 hour-per-day gamer grinding when they come out, but once they've been around this long and those players have moved on to careers and/or families, they scale back the time investment. You can't just go backwards on that and expect nobody to be upset about it.

[NynJa]

Still better than the .5% cuz you could very well go 0/600 and watch everyone in the alliance get the item you want

Blabla ticket system, if you do kaggen 600 times in a static and 17 mekigais load to 17 people, 0 tickets are created.

[Atoreis]

I think you all missing one biggest difference. Its .5% for everyone in ally. Thats 8% per fight that someone get the item. You also doesnt need to pass on your Real Life to camp some mobs in middle of the day or middle of the night then watch some no life with 2000 points in LS get the stuff.

Really the easiest proof is just go to port jeuno and check ppl or check ppl at BG. Most good players focused on their jobs got the bodys and other VW drops (I personally have Mekira 1/~200 and Toci 1/228 ). I got all that after I started working mon-friday 9h/day in RL. When I was teenager I was pretty much no life playing this game all the time and E body was still out of my reach (note that e body is only one of the many items I wanted and didnt get).

[arus2001]

More people doesn't just magically make the drop rate better. You just get more .5% chances. Everyone can still go 0/600 if SE hates them. In the end, justifying the faults of today through those of yesteryear is just dumb and a lot of these items don't warrant the hoops players have to jump through.

[NynJa]

I think you all missing one biggest difference. Its .5% for everyone in ally. Thats 8% per fight that someone get the item.

So if your mule gets a Meikogai, you can pass it to your main, right?

The only drop rate that matters is your drop rate, since everyone has individual chests, its .5%, theres no banding together everyones cumulative drop rates.

[Dotsudoku]

I fail to see how .5% ad infinitum is in any way less than 25% per Nidhogg, per week, pending claim, and pending competition within your linkshell.

[NynJa]

Except its not just "per week", Einherjar was made an acceptable event June 9, 2008, 2 years before the kings stuff died down. I'm not sure how long ago Atoreis was a "teenager with no life", but presuming you did it right, you could be doing an Odin every second week at a pretty good drop rate*, without the pending claim clause. Considering VW isnt designed to be a linkshell event, how do you get that Mekogai or Toci's when the Kaggen/Pil shouts stop coming?

*its been a while, but I think the drop pattern was
Odin abju 100% (10 items)
any King/Odin body abju 100% (E/A/W/P/H)
any King abju 100%
Odin item
any random king/odin abju

[Yugl]

Question: Why is VW rate worse than the probability of getting an Earthen Abjuration off Nidhogg pre-Odin?

Answer: Odin drop rates are good.

Oh, I understand now.

[Alkar]

But the problem is that they did listen to people to get into the mess we are in. The whole "Abyssea is too easy, drops are too plentiful" whine-fest created Voidwatch. One would say "well they should listen to us instead of the general forum", but the loudest people always seem like the majority. Even if someone does come up with a well-thought actually balanced idea, the usual Confederacy of Dunces would show up to trill and derail the thread into oblivion.

I don't think that's how it happened. Coincidence or not all this horrible mess started when XIV tanked and Tanaka was told to gtfo and came back in full force.
Either that or it was terrible planning from the start... releasing Abyssea and handing out exp and items at people that actually work for it just to kick them in the nuts when the new cap is reached.
Not only that but towards the end of the level cap increases I've started noticing a change in how abilities were added... for some reason at some point they stopped releasing useful abilities and spells and started adding something else or making the new spells only drop in dead events with stupid drop rates.
Is this part of their plan? Forcing people to quit the game? It felt like a huge step ahead with Abyssea just to trip and fall down an abyss with Voidwatch and all the "revamps" they're pushing out.
I'll wait and see what this Vanafest has to offer but I honestly have my doubts if this is the future of the game.

On a side note what happens if you enter the new battlefield as Galka? Do you get turned into a Mithra?

[Septimus]

I don't think that's how it happened. Coincidence or not all this horrible mess started when XIV tanked and Tanaka was told to gtfo and came back in full force.
Either that or it was terrible planning from the start... releasing Abyssea and handing out exp and items at people that actually work for it just to kick them in the nuts when the new cap is reached.
Not only that but towards the end of the level cap increases I've started noticing a change in how abilities were added... for some reason at some point they stopped releasing useful abilities and spells and started adding something else or making the new spells only drop in dead events with stupid drop rates.
Is this part of their plan? Forcing people to quit the game? It felt like a huge step ahead with Abyssea just to trip and fall down an abyss with Voidwatch and all the "revamps" they're pushing out.
I'll wait and see what this Vanafest has to offer but I honestly have my doubts if this is the future of the game.

On a side note what happens if you enter the new battlefield as Galka? Do you get turned into a Mithra?

I think there was a two-fold problem. Abyssea was probably supposed to be the last shout for FFXI- I think it was meant to be super awesome so that people were interested until they eventually switched on over to FFXIV. Now the problem is that FFXIV tanked so hard that its failure was visible from space, they had to keep milking the cash-cow, what are we to do? Low-drop-rate filler-content of course! Abyssea wasn't really thought of in the long-term because there wasn't supposed to be a long-term, so now they have to go back to the carrot dangling on the stick approach in order to keep the company afloat.

Yoshi P may be able to pull it out, and I hope that he does, because the brand has been damaged horribly by 14. If he can make the game awesome it will go a long way to rehabilitating the image, but they really need to be more protective of the Final Fantasy name.

And if the battlefield does turn you into a female (and that wasn't another character) I would guess Galkas would turn into Mithras.

[Genosync]

Except its not just "per week", Einherjar was made an acceptable event June 9, 2008, 2 years before the kings stuff died down. I'm not sure how long ago Atoreis was a "teenager with no life", but presuming you did it right, you could be doing an Odin every second week at a pretty good drop rate*, without the pending claim clause. Considering VW isnt designed to be a linkshell event, how do you get that Mekogai or Toci's when the Kaggen/Pil shouts stop coming?

*its been a while, but I think the drop pattern was
Odin abju 100% (10 items)
any King/Odin body abju 100% (E/A/W/P/H)
any King abju 100%
Odin item
any random king/odin abju

^ seriously when I came back to the game for a while I got an e.body tossed in my lap np. if you're going to go 1/200+ on two VW bodies, at least spend the fucking time doing odin. You have at least a 25% chance of seeing it drop once every two weeks for only ~3hrs (if your group doesn't suck at gathering) of your time. Looking at it statistically it'd be very odd to not see one within 7-8 attempts.

[Genosync]

Yoshi P may be able to pull it out, and I hope that he does, because the brand has been damaged horribly by 14. If he can make the game awesome it will go a long way to rehabilitating the image, but they really need to be more protective of the Final Fantasy name.

Also, Sept, this still puzzles me to this day as to why Tanaka was not completely fired. I can't even look at a regular FF game with the same eyes anymore.

[NynJa]

Question: Why is VW rate worse than the probability of getting an Earthen Abjuration off Nidhogg pre-Odin?

Answer: Odin drop rates are good.

Oh, I understand now.

First of all
Nid has two drop slots, one being 100% from a pool of 4 (25%), and the second being roughly a 20% drop rate from the same pool of 4, so the chance of getting an E.Bd off nid, by those numbers, is 30%.

Secondly, as I said, Odin was made a workable event mid 2008. Scars of Abyssea came out August 2010, Second chapter of VW came out September 2011. If this timeline seems so recent "so why does it matter", most NA got legitimately involved in kings in what...2005? Yes some got there in 2004, but I'm pretty sure at that point it was just a pipe dream where they got one or two claims per month.

Also, the whole "pending competition within your linkshell" is laughable since you dictate that fate, regardless if you're in a point LS or in a /point LS.

[Yugl]

Well I did own a hypno-toad , so I could tell people not to lot against me. You make a good point.

[NynJa]

Well you all seem to think im a clueless asshole who shits everything up, but this clueless asshole somehow found himself in very good standing in his LS. Surely you wouldnt have had problems? I was very anti-king back in the day, but i went to a couple camps during exam period. Claimed nid, n.lg dropped. There was like 4-5 people there w more pfs that me, but they had absolutely no use for it and/or would rather I had them.

If its a points system, you hold your own destiny. If you dont want to accumulate points, whos fault is it if youre #10 in line?

[Taruking]

To be honest I don't have issue with VW reward system, however it would have worked better if SE had simply focused on 4-5 "mega bosses" and make them each drop 5-6 desirable items so that players are less likely to walk away empty handed. Make life easier to organise runs too.