Aetherial gear, itemization and a rant.

[Etrius]

SE, for the love of what is sacred to you, bring back aetherial gear as end-game rewards!

I'm already tired of being a carbon copy of every other player in game.
The only things that are customizable are character appearance and glamour.

I barely have interest in extreme/savage content, mostly because the gear is insignificant compared to its "casual" same iLv counterparts and the amount of effort required to clear said content.

Aetherial equipment drops for this type of content would be just perfect to keep players interested in getting a better gear.

As of now I have zero interest on keep playing, I log in, do random stuff with a few FC members whenever they need help and then log out.
Every patch adds more of the same stuff we've been seeing since 2.5-ish... It's getting harder for me to keep paying a sub to do a week worth of content.

I kind of appreciate the amount of effort from the devs on designing dungeons, boss arenas and new mechanics (when they happen), but that spark only lasts for a couple of days.

[Elamys]

They brought it back in Diadem and it wasn't fun at all. I don't want to waste run after run because I got a useless statted piece.

[Nixxe]

The only thing I liked about the aetherial gear from Diadem is that it was 265 and basically free, so it made for decent catchup gear for leveling jobs I didn't bother to get Shire gear for. RNG stats do not create fun or compelling gameplay. If you lack productive things to do in the game, that's better addressed by looking at the sorts of content that they provide, not trying to artificially inflate the lifetime of said content. WoW chose the latter option over the last two expansions and you'll notice that, as a result, I am here and not there.

[Vidu]

Are you talking about gear with random stats?
If so: no, thanks.
After all, each job has certain stats it mainly wants to focus on - I wouldnt want to have to farm for ages to get a bard-piece with crit and direct hit while throwing out all the ones with det and speed... I'd much rather look at whats available to me, create a BiS-list and work towards getting those items. We've got enough RNG in the game, we dont need it here aswell.

...or are you talking about being able to customize gear, like we were able to do with Relic Weapons?
That would be far more intresting and I think with the Eureka-gear they're exploring that road - having 5 slots that can be filled with grade VI materia allows to customize at least a third of substats. Sadly the ilvl of that gear is way to low for the current state of the game...

In regards to not being intrested in Savage because the gear isnt significantly better than tomestone gear: I wouldnt expect that to change - and for very good reasons.
Making Savage gear that much better than tomestone-gear (or other alternatives) would create a very large gap between raiders and non-raiders. Catching up or getting into raiding late in the cycle would be made extremly difficult. (We're kinda seeing that with crafting - you can only craft the new endgame-crafter-sets when you've got the previous one pentamelded. If you werent a mastercrafter from the start of SB, you have a hard time getting into the game - unless you comission someone to make you the newest stuff)
Seeing how sets are shared between jobs and how those jobs dont always have the same stat-priorities (for example: BLM wants all the spellspeed they can get, while SMN and RDM want to avoid that), we need several different sets to reach a BiS for every job, aka: if the Savage-chestpiece has no spellspeed, the Tomestone-one can have, so both BLM and the other casters are happy. For that those sets need to have the same ilvl though.
Personally I also never raided for the gear, but for the enjoyment of the fights and challenge... if you dont enjoy that enough in the first place, shouldnt you be happy that you dont have to do it to get decent gear?

I also dont understand how a mindless grind while praying to RNGesus to finally, finally let a piece of gear drop that has your desired stats on it would motivate anyone to keep playing when they're not motivated in the first place...

[Tint]

i'll take the randomized gear! more options are always good and i really like grinding. especially since i am not raiding, i need more brain-dead endless grind content. that's what i am here for after all.

yess, i am also not interested in raiding but in substats. strange, huh?

i take tome gear, normal raid gear and craftet gear and mix it together. now we had the eureka armor as well. in odd numbered patches i mix upgraded tome gear and 24 man raid gear together.

maybe you could say i care more about substats than mainstats - and it is true. but i don't want to fall too far behind in item level.

[Vstarstruck]

...where did you get the idea that someone has to raid to care about their substats?

First off you can totally care about your gear and stats without also caring to beat the most challenging content in the game.
Second: some jobs are a lot more fun to play when you invest in the right substats - for example a high-crit bard that gets more procs is more fun to play than a low-crit bard without procs, no matter if you play it in O8S or Ala Mhigo. Same goes for crit on scholar (...and most other jobs, actually - you can enjoy seeing a crit in Sastasha as much as in Savage), or spellspeed on BLM.
Third: Even though there are good reasons to care about your substats, you dont have to give a damn about them even if you raid. Its not like you cant clear Savage if not everyone has the optimal substat-builds...

Caring about playing/gearing to the best of ones abilities isnt limited to raiders - why should it be?

Yes it is why I told Elamys not to bother with that player. They are only here to start fights. If no one replies, then they have no one to fight with, simple, that or report it.

[Vstarstruck]

Well that was quick, I did not expect that meany posts to get removed>.> I did not think there was anything wrong with getting a point across that you do not have to be a raider to care about what substats you get.

The rng in aetherial gear is pretty offputting.

(edit for those are confused, it seems SE may restore some posts, vindu may not have a post restored because it may of quoted a post in violation but I am glad it is back since it explains a bit better on what this post was supposed to be referring to.)

[Canadane]

It was a bit fun getting a really nice piece from the Diadem.
I still have a chest piece with stats that were fantastic. I never had the heart to convert it.

Maybe not as endgame gear but something close enough as a catch-up would be nice.

[Mahrze]

We got relic armor this time around and we can penta-meld it at leisure. Aetherial gear wouldn't compare simply cuz of "RNG".