'Bout; Slightly Less Worse Each Time

I'd list myself as slightly more than casual player and the main draw was the AF3 Kupon. My friends did sort of drag me thru it, which I do greatly appreciate. One friend, who definitely is more of a hardcore player (and who is going after Mastery for Hoxne) did get the title.

Now, what to spend the Kupon on as I don't know what to do with it lol...

Definitely understand the want for 700 points. That's 30m and dozens of hours. I've been a proponent of get silver tier (now gold) ever since the 1st bout.

Specifically, cap though. Why keep going after 700.

Some for the hoxne
Some because it was only 10 days and/or because the objectives were considerably simpler than previous bouts
Some because I already did half of it why not

So many more capped than expected. By a lot.

In my case, a hedge against the future. Wanted it on main for mastery/hoxne reasons, but wasn't that much extra work for the alts and you never know when they're gonna add more ***like vorseals that require random-*** completionist stuff.

If you squint you can kinda draw a line from atmas through vorseals to mastery/hoxne and then extrapolate out into some future content. If after atmas were introduced you tried to describe a system like vorseals, you wouldn't sound that crazy... but if you jumped to hoxne you'd definitely seem crazy.

I also think that, even for people who weren't aware or didn't care about the title or Hoxne, it wasn't much of an additional lift to hit the 1400 cap.

If I'm gonna do the 700 points for AF+3 reward, may as well get to 1200 for the other stuff since that's a decent reward too (I took Old Cases on my main, but 107 job points on my alt). And once you're already at 1200 for the final reward tier, and there are only two days left and they're pretty easy events that you've just done 1-2 times so they're fresh in your memory... eh, why not just knock them out solely for the "I did it, perfect score!" bragging rights? That kind of completionist mindset doesn't seem that out of place for habitual FFXI users (like me!)

I wouldn't have ever been in that position if not for the good rewards in the 700/1200 tiers motivating me to get involved, but since I did, may as well go all out and get 100%.

Before anyone says "but then why did those people even bother to log in right on Day 0 and knock out the first partial day's VBD tasks?"... well, for me it was just insurance. I knew you couldn't miss much to hit the 1200 final reward tier, so wanted to give myself every opportunity in case I forgot a day, got a messed up or cancelled RoE, etc. But then I DID keep up the whole time and got my 1200 tier on the earliest day possible, and at that point... might as well just do the last two days' VBDs too!

As they made the objectives generally less onerous over time it should have been expected that there would be more characters with capped plaudits.

The sort order could be total plaudits (descending) > timestamp of the very first registration for a given Vana'Bout round (not the time of your most recent registration).

This would explain why characters with registration date March 31, 2026 are sorted ahead of those with registration date March 30, 2026, e.g., everyone in the top 100 visible ranking on Ragnarok has registration date March 30 except for 23 characters with registration date March 31 (rank 5, rank 10, rank 80-100).

Doesn't seem they will accommodate those who didn't make the visible top-100 ranking but still tied for first. On the OF, I saw a JP player put a bug report on this (it got moved to Working as Intended) and then some pedant also insisted that this was working as intended when I submitted a report.

While not usually presenting myself as a mind-reader able to divine dev intent, I don't think they actually intended for people to be disqualified because there were more than 100 characters with max points.

If the sort order really is as described and they don't change anything, you will want to register on day 0 of a future Vana'Bout ASAP (just do one objective then register to secure your final spot then continue working on objectives) versus registering for the first time on the last day.

The one time I'd give them benefit of the doubt. No one expected more than 100 people to max out.

The one and only time in recent square dev where it's just an oops and not a *** you.

It was the 10 days for me. I took two of my characters through for 1400 and a buddy's character as well since he could not play that week. Easy objectives definitely helped, but knowing it was the shortest duration to date, I was going to make sure I got the title on any characters that hadn't gotten it before.

Man, I saw Hoxne mentioned and I thought I missed a hidden reward tier...

For what it’s worth the round 8 sort order was based on your final registration. I was number 90 on the list and was talking with someone who register a few minutes later. My first registration was one of the first 3 after the event started.

Thank you for that. So it isn't (just?) time of first registration during the event, then. This is why I hesitate to assert what is really going on with the sort order unlike pedant autismos on the OF.

I personally have gotten jumped repeatedly on the Vana'Bout rankings in the past after registering with maximum plaudits (me actually caring enough to take screen caps to remind myself) so it seems there is something more to this sort order than just when you got max points, or just when you did your final registration with max points.

It has been shown repeatedly that people registering later with max points will be put ahead of those who registered first with max points (see comments on characters with registration date March 31 jumping ahead of others). for the July Vana'Bout, I myself had one character pushed down from 8th on the list to 12th on the last day, including by 2 characters who were 9th and 10th with 1550 pts but jumped to 5th and 6th after registering max points (1630).

Yet 2 characters getting 1400 at the same time for round 8 and then registering with 1400 points at about the same time can still result in those 2 characters not being adjacent on the list (as attested in this thread).

So if the sort order can't be determined just by the time of final registration with max points, is not determined by time of first registration for Vana'Bout, and is not determined just by the time of obtaining max points, WTF is going on.

The "sort" order of all of the rank 1 participants in vanabout, is most likely sorted by each character's internal ID.

If internal ID correlates to time of character creation, that is also contradicted by older characters not jumping newer characters.

If internal ID also includes information about region of registration, JFL.

This, at least, I've seen contradicted. I registered myself and my alts. Someone else came while I was standing there and registered themselves and their alts, and all of their were behind all of mine.


Yeah, this would also be contradicted, in that my alts and I remained grouped even though our character registration dates vary from years to over a decade.

I don't think it's unreasonable for SE to explain the ordering if it means top 100 will always exclude someone - no point in them doing the event through to the end.

Perhaps it is a combination of time of initial and frequency of registration? Maybe other factors like nation ranks, or other Mastery Rank kind of stuff?

Not this last bout, but the one before, I had three separate buddies (actual people with different accounts and all) chasing the title pretty hard. They are also probably Day1 NA players and have decent amount of mastery rank stuff.

They ended up 1,2,3 on the list throughout the whole event, and at the end of it. They might have been the first three to register after the event was released the first day, but they weren't always the first to register each new game day, but they did make sure to register every day. I noted that they dropped in rank throughout the day until the registered.

Anecdotal.

Right. I meant to say "can (instead of will) be put ahead of those who registered first." It's not predictable.

For the July 2025 Vana'Bout, I had one character (alt) jumped by 4 others (moved from 8th to 12th on the list) on the last day but my (older and always been higher Mastery Rank) main didn't jump my alt (ended up at 15th on the list) when registering at the last minute (didn't want to screw over people with fewer than max points until they got pushed out of the top 10. But you will always have people who don't give a ***about others and will continue to go for max points).

I registered only once each that time so I don't know if frequency of registration (to update total points) is a factor here also.

Just adding from my findings.

One of the days during this Vanabout I was the first person to register max points for the day (~15 minutes after the new quests dropped) and was #1 overall after checking.

About 45 minutes later, I was dropped to third on the list(tied for first) as more and more people obtained max for the day.

By the end of the day I ended up about 15th on the list.

I’ve been doing my own testing on how the sort order works for several vanabout rounds and it seems to have been changed at least once. In at least some previous runs it seemed based on the order that the first in round registration was placed. I’m one of them for example I registered right after doing a quick ambu to get the first few obj done and for the entire run I remained at the first place within the rank I was currently in. This time I was 3rd to register on day 0 and 90th in rank 1 at the end. For the record my character was created on US PS2 launch and transferred to Asura around 2021 so character age as Felgarr suggested definitely isn’t relevant and imho there’s zero evidence that it was in any round thus far. For the current run it seems it was in order of the final registration

It wasn't. I registered 3 chars at within 15 minutes of each other. Two of them ended at 64 and 65 on the list, the last one I registered ended up at 14 on the list.

What’s surprised me the most is even on phoenix, the top 100 had 1400, insane. SE probably wasn’t counting on that

It's what I've been talking about, an unreal number of participants maxed out. It's insanity.

Only a little bit better and a little bit shorter than round 7, no rational explanation for such a participation(completion) spike.

I am absolutely beyond *** pissed I didn't get the title this time. I have been scraping the absolute bottom of the *** barrel to promote to Rank 9 ever since the rank cap was increased and now seeing that some players got promoted for the "Venerated Adventurer" title, and despite getting maximum plaudits this time, my name didn't appear on the leaderboard and so I didn't get the title because more than 100 people did and so all of my effort went to *** waste because of some arbitrary ranking scheme that chose some ***'s *** MULE RNG'D INTO THE TOP 100 IS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I *** despise this ***. *** the Hoxne Earring, it ruined everything. I hate Square-Enix for making this title so important but making it *literally random* who ends up getting it when >100 people qualify, I hate myself for caring so much, I hate Phoenix for doing so well, I hate life itself

I'm crashing out hard

Sorry, dude! You'll get it next time!

Or even more people do it next time since it'll be even slightly less worse

That absolutely sucks, I sympathize.

But maybe a warning for future 'Bouts... Although Phoenix did get a full top 100+ registered entries with 1400 points, there was a cutoff where only like 90 or so got them on the first calendar day, and the bottom 10 or so of the top 100 (and presumably whoever was cut off the viewable list - unless that's inaccurate, which would just be insane design) all show the next real life day. So besides doing everything, probably wise to try to register your max points title as early as possible on the final day of the event.

I won't go for max points again on chars that already have the title, for what it's worth.

Yeah same. Hopefully enough people realize the issue to leave some room for others.

It's very likely that your time of registration right as Day 0 ends, is what determines your initial position in the Ranking list. Every subsequent registration will update your position in the list. If you always have max plaudits at the time of registration, you'll always be on the top of the list.

So, it is very likely your initial position is first-come-first-served. Maintaining maximum plaudits at the time of your subsequent registrations will ensure you keep your high-ranking position in the list, even if many hundred or thousands of players register after you. As long as you maintain the maximum plaudits and register as soon as the game day 0/1 changes (within say, 1-60 minutes of day change), you'll maintain your high ranking position in the list, no matter when you update your registration later on. (This is true, even if additional players with lesser plaudits reach top rank and register before you. Your subsequent registration keeps your previously reserved position in the list).

Now, I imagine that if you're unable to keep max plaudits, your position in the list will get reassigned to a lower position in the list when you register.

How do I know the position is reserved with first come first served? Because Day 0/1 registration looks likes this (notice the date differences) despite plaudit differences:



TLDR: Vanabout Ranking is more like a first-come, first-served queue than a list. (I can't speak to why a ranking is designed this way, but it's very similar to positional indices of items when inventory updates occur).

Right there with ya, the same happened to me. What an awful system.

I didn't have max plaudits on any character until the very last day of vanabout and I still got in the top 100 on all three characters.

I also didn't register every day, either and didn't register at all on day 0.

Hey look, that's me! I'd add more pics to this data because I took a few over the course of vana'bout as I logged my points but I can't find them.

I left myself logged in overnight (i typically just leave ffxi open all day tbh), no-lifed vana'bout when I woke up and slammed in my day 0/1 plaudit registration at around 9 PM on day 1. I was the second person on the list with 500 points at the time.

I resubmitted my points daily each time I finished them every day, and was put roughly back at where I was each time, but with the same few folks consistently above me.

I would guess that it logs people based on who registers first regardless of how many plaudits you have, and THEN checks the total points. So if you registered with 100 points and were the 4th person to do so on the server, then came back later and registered with max points a week later, you'd be in the 4th position of the list of capped people. Just a guess, though.