Future Plans for Equipment

[Camate]

Greetings,

Below are some comments from Akihiko Matsui in regards to equipment plans for the future.

Matsui here.

Are there any plans to add shields stronger than Ochain and Aegis? How about instruments that surpass Daurdabla and Gjallarhorn? Ranged weapons that are stronger than Yoichinoyumi and Annihilator? And if so, will they have weapon skills?

All of the items in your question possess extremely high stats, so we’d like to make it easier to enjoy playing jobs such as paladin and bard by adding equipment that will fill this gap.

The strong point of Ochain is in its extremely high block rate, but damage reduction wise the Killedar Shield has been set higher. We will be adding an item level 119 shield in the future, so please know that we will be reducing this gap even further.

In regards to instruments, we are currently looking into adding an instrument that will add another song, but I can’t promise a time frame just yet.

Finally, in regards to ranger, as everyone is already aware, the enmity-related stats for Coronach are very high; however, we've tuned content so that it can be completed even without Annihilator if you put Decoy Shot and Camouflage to use. Ranger is a job that we’d like players to pay careful attention to enmity, so we do not have any plans at the moment to introduce equipment or weapon skills that largely reduce enmity.

Speaking in terms of the overall situation, we feel that enmity is lacking for high item level tanks, and as such we would like to look into enmity adjustments as a larger framework.

Matsui here.

I’d like to discuss the fundamental plans for upgrading equipment with item levels, as there are questions and uncertainty in regards to the future.

First, the equipment we are currently planning to make upgradeable is the reward equipment from Rala Waterways, Cirdas Cavern, and Yorcia Weald skirmishes. You’ll be able to perform the final upgrade to item level 119 with the new skirmishes that are to be added.

Besides these items, we do not have any plans to upgrade other equipment with item levels. Also, we’ll be introducing brand-new rewards in the skirmishes to be added after the next round.

If we were to continue adding upgrade items, players would have to keep a large amount of equipment and this is tied to inventory space consumption, so moving forward when we implement higher-tier versions of existing content and make adjustments to content levels we would like to adopt the method of adding new equipment rewards.

Basically we will not be making it so you need to have older equipment to obtain the new equipment, and for the exceptions where you can upgrade and there are requirements to exchange existing equipment, we feel it necessary to make it easier to obtain the original item as well as have a way to recover the items if they were thrown away.

In regards to inventory expansion, just as Yoji Fujito has commented here, it is being investigated, but we need to create a new system from scratch and it will take some time.

[Tamarsamar]

As long as item level is a thing, there can be no guarantee that anything that we're playing with now won't be obliterated (not just obsoleted) by the next version update. This is the main issue I take with the game as it is; this is why, in spite of my overeager excitement to explore the western continent, I have refused to use my money to purchase the Seekers of Adoulin expansion, where this madness all began; and this will certainly be the cause for the playerbase to plummet further if left unchecked.

Who's stopping you guys from creating Item Level 120 items on a lark? 139? 159? 9001? If Vana'diel intends to survive for another 11 years, we need stronger levies against such rampant, spiraling power creep between players and enemies both.

[MDenham]

Who's stopping you guys from creating Item Level 120 items on a lark? 139? 159? 9001? If Vana'diel intends to survive for another 11 years, we need stronger levies against such rampant, spiraling power creep between players and enemies both.

The answer, obviously, is "nobody except themselves", but...

The thing is, the alternatives are either a stagnating cap (the better part of a decade where the cap was 75 and everything was situational; arguably we could be heading back toward that if the iLevel cap stays at 119 for an extended period) or raising the actual level cap (which would probably be directly accompanied by converting all of the iLevel gear to just have the associated level, and pretty much "be damned to all of you who were getting bigger boosts under the old scheme" - that is, this would be a nerf to pretty much every job that isn't at the forefront of any specific category).

Given the options, I prefer the current system - where, for now, it's going to sit at a cap of 119 on iLevel gear, and there's room to keep bumping it up in the future without causing stagnation or gut-punching everyone who's second best or worse in their field.

On the note of "future iLevel increases and inventory": My opinion here would be to have that process progress very slowly - a one-level jump every six to nine months - but have part of it be "let's give you a reason to get AF, relic, and Empyrean gear to iLevel 119/120/121 respectively first, then starting at 122, we introduce a fourth set that gradually subsumes the other three sets into it and gets upgraded as you go along". A finished set of AF4 ("Crystal Armor"?) would probably sit at about iLevel 129, but would very much be the be-all and end-all for job-specific armor... and that'd give a 5-7 year plan for things, introducing various content along the way.

(The "AF4" idea here would start with a quested "-3" set at iLevel 122; pieces could be upgraded through an NPC to Crystal -2 gear [iLevel 123] by trading in the iLevel 119 AF along with materials, to the -1 [iLevel 124] through a second series of quests, NQ [iLevel 125] by trading in iLevel 120 Relic along with (at least partly different) materials, +1 [iLevel 126] through a third series of quests, +2 [iLevel 127] by trading in iLevel 121 Empyrean and more materials, +3 [iLevel 128] through more quests, and finally +4 [iLevel 129] through some other means - possibly a final fight against Atori-Tutori, maybe something else. It's just a rough idea and I'm sure other people would have their own ideas about how to progress job-specific armor to a "this is the last suit you'll ever wear" stage.)

[Karah]

All I can really add is iLevel is still iRetarded.

[Rwolf]

TL;DR - FFXI has too much power creep as it is. They need to start adding incomparable weapons/armor/rewards and create content going forward with alternate goals than kill X within X minutes.

In complete agreement with Tamarsamar (+1'd). Matsui and the dev team are playing dangerously with content that is feeding power creep. Each time they release a new set of gear that completely destroys anything before it, some players take it as a good time to just quit instead of continue what they know from experience of Seekers of Adoulin is to be a continued power creep. And my hypothesis based on how they've introduced gear so far. Skirmish 3 gear will likely topple over a good deal of Delve boss gear, some AF pieces that don't have niche uses and some Ark Angel gear. Just to justify getting people to do the new content.

This is bad. A MMO is supposed to be a perpetuating experience yes, but at the same time what makes players feel the need to stay around is the attachment to the investment of things they work for. If a new update every 1-2 months tells you your investments are worthless or temporary, it loses value. Which means the game itself loses value. Why work hard all month to complete a set of gear if you're just going to get a better set that's easier to build next month? While some will still do it, it becomes more and more unattractive to players. Just look at the difference between the server population pre-Seekers of Adoulin compared to now. It's not just FFXIV: ARR or that the game is 11 years old.

In 9 months we went through several sets of gear that were outdated. That is some crazy power creeping. We definitely need new content and I am in no way advocating going back to HNM camping and all the other bottlenecks that still exist on content. Instead of making content with clearly better gear each update, make incomparables.

We need rewards that cannot be easily compared to other gear as better. We need content that is not won the exact same way. They need to go back to the templates that was Assault, Moblin Maze Mongers, and Meeble Burrows. Once there is endgame content that is variable, it will open the amount of imcomparable rewards they can add. Thus releasing the valve on power creep.

Even Monstrosity could be good (good as in there's a good percentage of the population who play it) but there's not enough reward to justify leveling a job from scratch. And by reward, doesn't mean add some set of Monster gear at 120 that beats everything else. Incomparable rewards. Adding sidegrade gear, new accessories like they've already started. Also adding heavy metal plates, alexandrite, riftcinders, colorless souls, umbral marrow, etc that already have a bottleneck. I know the devs will say well we'd have to look into balance. But seriously if anyone is going to solo level a bunch of monsters to 99 and hopefully do some dungeon content they said they'd add. You deserve some of that.

I think it's odd that they are afraid of allowing people to make R/M/E weapons by alternative and longer means, but have no issue adding gear that just tramples all over stuff and is easier to obtain.

[Tamarsamar]

The thing is, the alternatives are either a stagnating cap (the better part of a decade where the cap was 75 and everything was situational;

Ah yes, the 75 cap. A period of time when--in spite of lacking the myriad of quality of life improvements that we practically take for granted today--the game was at its peak with a variety of things for players to do that were still relevant. Back then as now harder content was rewarded more-handsomely, but not so dramatically that you were expected to have all the best stuff or GTFO (because, well, the content was freaking hard!).

Or am I forgetting anything here?

[Sapphires]

More skirmish armor upgrades really? That armor is so ugly, so generic, everyone has been super happy with the 109/119 AF reforged armor and getting out of that ugly skirmish junk.

You really need to consider doing a 109/119 of the AF2 (relic) or AF3 (empyrean set) , you really dont need to create more new different armor, just let us build on alot of our beloved pre existing pieces that we already carry around for JA/situational macro pieces.
We don't need item level higher than 119, seriously just let us 109/119 sidegrade for the next year AF2/AF3.

[Draylo]

Please don't let skirmish 3 be a snooze fest like the previous one ><

[Demonjustin]

Agreed, Skirmish for Yorcia was nice but at the same time it was horrible, the fact it went so slowly, made it just so boring. Also, please improve Skirmish by increasing the number of Fragments obtained, you currently need an obscene amount to buy +2 stones and NQ/+1 fall from the sky anyways so no real point in buying those anyways. Getting as few as we do per kill makes it so our only reliable way of getting fragments are from the rifts, and those are only once a run, and with those included, it would be around 25 runs with fully T5 pops for a single V.Stone +2, which is absolutely insane in my opinion.

[Sapphires]

Please don't let skirmish 3 be a snooze fest like the previous one ><

totally agree, waiting for the next monster 'wave' to spawn had to be the most agonizing boring thing ever. Best cure for insomnia ever

All they really had to do was add some trigger you could hit at the tent that would force the next wave to spawn (and possibly improve the spoils by doing so) and it would have improved the event 10x