Method To His Madness II: Is 0/400+ in VW "Working as Intended"?

You aren't going to like my answer.

This post is inspired by the following BG rant by NynJa:


Abyssea era
Playerbase: Theres massive congestion at NM pops, is there anything you can do?
SE: We've reduced the respawn timer of the ???'s to 1 minute
Playerbase: Its a good start, but theres still plenty of DNC soloists and MNK+WHM duos who spend 20-30 minutes fighting a NM, completely locking everyone out.
SE: we have created two additional ??? marks for all top tier NM's

Playerbase: The repop timer of timed NM's is ridiculously long, considering stones are supposed to be worth 30 minutes at base.
SE: We've reduced the repop timer of timed NM's from 30-60 minutes to 10-15 minutes

Cool, thx!


VW Era
*announcement and discovery of relic/mytic 99 trial*
Playerbase: So after 10 trials of grinding out WS kills and teamup NM kills and what not, you then want us to kill ADL 20 (I think it was 20) fucking times PER relic weapon? Are you fucking insane? Do you realize how long that will take PER weapon, on top of the fact you're going to need insane amounts of teamups?
SE: deal with it
Playerbase: No, you're fucking nuts, I'd like to accomplish shit in this game BEFORE i retire from my fucking job
SE: okok, we'll drop it to 10, deal with it
Playerbase: Cool, so I can accomplish shit in this game before I turn 40, awesome!
SE: Fuck, fine, we'll drop it to 5.
Playerbase: Its still a fucking luck based fight, do something
SE: no

Playerbase: I'm 0/300+ on a drop from VW, yet my mule has received THREE of the same drop in 50 kills.
SE: Working as intended
Playerbase: No this isnt fucking working, your individual loot pool looks great on paper, but in practice its fucking stupid, it makes no sense that r/e items should be trashed.
SE: Working as intended
Playerbase: You're going to lose majority of your playerbase if you dont resolve this garbage
SE: Ok ok, we'll add a ticket system, where if you get a r/e item that you own, you will receive a ticket in place to give to someone else so they can trade for the item, they'll need a good amount of tickets though.
Playerbase: Thats not at all gonna fix the problem, but lets see what you can do with this
*10 months later*
SE: Ok we're ready to unveil the ticket system, we've decided to make the tickets EX, and you'll need 3, and they have to be picked up at the time the mob is killed, and you cant mix and match.
Playerbase: ........what the fuck


ABYSSEA KILLED FFXI
 
One step at a time on this one...

Basically, NynJa is stating that Abyssea killed FFXI, probably not only because of the fact that it created a bunch of high-level players whom, IHODO, had no business wielding that kind of power, but also because, once Tanaka came back to FFXI after fucking FFXIV straight up the asshole, Tanaka began to effectively rage by allowing Voidwatch to happen, and, well... 

You see, there's at least one person I know who claims (and, from the amount he is shouting for it, I can believe him!) that he is well over 0/400 on the body drop on Kaggen (the Mekira Meikogai).

It is my personal opinion that, for two very strong reasons, Tanaka would be, in fact, CORRECT to state that the ridiculously low droprates on Voidwatch are EXACTLY "working as intended"!

1) The ridiculously low droprates are the only thing keeping FFXI afloat right now, and, with (as an example) Leviathan now averaging about 1200 players during the week when I'm on (and maybe 1600 on the weekends?), any further drop in the playerbase is basically the end of the needed revenue stream for the online division to survive until they try to cram FFXIV 2.0 down our throats later this year.

2) It is no secret that Square-Enix vastly prefers the Japanese players and their attitudes to their American counterparts, especially since it appears as if BluGartr has successfully established itself in the last year-plus as the forefront of discussion on the game with the decline of the FFXI podcast community (especially LBR).

People tend to forget that most of the Final Fantasy games are little more than hyper-grinds once the main story is done, if you truly wish an "elite" experience.  One of the more flagrant examples for me is FFX-International.  I can finish the main game in about 40 hours.  Be competitive with the Dark Aeons?  Especially with the blitzball requirements, TRIPLE THAT.

The online division needs the money that FFXI players are providiing it to tide it over until they can basically cram XIV down our throats.  This is why I'm not 100% sold on the probability that the main announcement yet to come from VanaFest in a month or so is that the game is going F2P.

But when you literally make the drops a lottery-level situation -- where players are openly claiming 300-400 kills of the given monster and NO desired drops.  (I think I'm more like 0/32 or something, and 3/32 on the Rare/Ex Mantis Eye drop -- making for fun times in organizing my loot...)  Beyond about 1% or so (about 100 attempts), I believe it becomes obvious that, in fact, the droprate is so low, and intended as such (Salvage, anyone??), that it is meant as a time, gil, cruor, and real-life money sink -- the last as in your $12.95/mo.