Weekly Gear Lockouts Kill Gameplay

complaining about weekly lockout in an MMO is like complaining about paying tax.

Meanwhile literally any other MMO: "You want to run the raid on a different class? By all means. Have fun. Enjoy yourself."

Not here, though. Here, you have to engage with the absolute dog water way this game treats alts, where you can't even mail yourself items, because that'd take away precious retainer money. Get bent.

What do you need all that gear for anyway? You can queue for all of the current content just with your level 100 gear and jewelry from dungeons or tomes. I've got 3 different roles kitted. Are all of them perfectly optimized? No, but they're all more than good enough to get the job done.

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Originally Posted by Isala

Meanwhile literally any other MMO: "You want to run the raid on a different class? By all means. Have fun. Enjoy yourself."

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Because in other MMO, playing in another class usually mean playing on another character?

I have 4 max level in FF14, I'm sure enjoying my 4 different lock out per week, you know you can too right?

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Not here, though. Here, you have to engage with the absolute dog water way this game treats alts, where you can't even mail yourself items, because that'd take away precious retainer money. Get bent.

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Valid complain but ... the heck it has to do with raid lockout. Annoying sure, but not that hard to get around to get the benefit of increase the # of lockout you have.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

Because in other MMO, playing in another class usually mean playing on another character?

I have 4 max level in FF14, I'm sure enjoying my 4 different lock out per week, you know you can too right?



Valid complain but ... the heck it has to do with raid lockout. Annoying sure, but not that hard to get around to get the benefit of increase the # of lockout you have.

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It has everything to do with raid lockout because of how FF treats classes/characters. A big "selling point" is that you get all the convenience of being able to do it all on one character, instead of needing to do different things on different characters. HOWEVER, unlike XIV which treats characters as completely different entities to the point where you literally cannot interact with your own alts, in other MMOs, outside of certain Bind on Pickup items, such as currencies, or Dungeon/Raid drops, everything can be shipped between alts, so you can basically treat them as, to use the SWTOR term, a Legacy. It is infinitely easier, and often times rewarded, to create other characters in MMOs to experience all of the content, such as crafting/gathering etc. And, they also come with the benefit of giving you increased EXP gain, or bonuses in other ways. They also get their own, individual lockout.

Here. No. Your alts are separate, there's no way to interact with each other, and the only way to get another lockout is to get a completely new character, go through the same grind you went through the first time, just to get back to a point where you can start playing the content you wanted to play in the first place. It's miserable, and a downgrade from every other MMO for no reason.

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Originally Posted by Lann_Gallowfield

You have a system that encourages playing every job but you are only allowed to gear one character unless you wanna spend millions of gil on crafted gear. What if someone doesn't want to craft? Yoshi's view on the game is someone shouldn't have to do certain content to get certain gear yet if you DON'T have penta melded crafting gear you are griefing.

You make an expansion that promotes playing continually then turn your savage content into a once per week event and do not allow people to go back and play them again without griefing other people's rewards. This system is fundamentally counter to the nature of this game, it needs improved because it's not fun it doesn't make any logical sense.

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Unfortunately it has been happening for years now, and even though I love this game and it's my favorite MMO, this situation is something that annoys me too.
The actual problem that I have with it is that they barely seem to do anything to address it? We saw some changes on the final raids last expac, which was nice to see and it was definitely a step in the right direction but it's far from enough.

What I really don't get is why all four raid stages stay locked for as long as they do until almost the end of the raid cycle. Can't they remove weekly limitations for the first battle after like a month for example? I don't think anyone would really complain as I feel a month is a good enough time for the first battle to be tackled and completed, and you'd be able to at least get all the accessories you want/need for the classes you wanna do savage with PAIRED with weekly tomestones (this should be increased a little too, they MIGHT do this, here's hoping.)

Having full access to everything from day 1 though is something that I disagree on heavily, but FOUR months of RNG if you want to gear up more than one class is also not working.

Though... one thing this expac that has me hopeful is that Yoshi-P said him and the team were going to do their best to surprise players. So far, battle content and focus has been superb, so it makes me believe they have something on their sleeves to show on the next cycle as they let players first get used to the increased challenge and battle design they're going for.

I for one will wait and see, and I feel Yoshi-P will be able to deliver, as he highly dislikes having players feel disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Isala

Meanwhile literally any other MMO: "You want to run the raid on a different class? By all means. Have fun. Enjoy yourself."

Not here, though. Here, you have to engage with the absolute dog water way this game treats alts, where you can't even mail yourself items, because that'd take away precious retainer money. Get bent.

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Don't those other games also require loot from said raid series to clear it? Like, week 1 clears in wow aren't a thing from my understanding.
You don't need raid or tome gear in xiv to clear content. So in that sense, yes, you can do anything on 1 character.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

What do you need all that gear for anyway? You can queue for all of the current content just with your level 100 gear and jewelry from dungeons or tomes. I've got 3 different roles kitted. Are all of them perfectly optimized? No, but they're all more than good enough to get the job done.

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You do not need gear for dungeons and normals, you need bis just to enter ultimate.

Besides, just for savage having more gear on tanks = more hp less damage taken less stress on healers, same goes for dps/healers .....

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Originally Posted by Isala

It has everything to do with raid lockout because of how FF treats classes/characters. A big "selling point" is that you get all the convenience of being able to do it all on one character, instead of needing to do different things on different characters. HOWEVER, unlike XIV which treats characters as completely different entities to the point where you literally cannot interact with your own alts, in other MMOs, outside of certain Bind on Pickup items, such as currencies, or Dungeon/Raid drops, everything can be shipped between alts, so you can basically treat them as, to use the SWTOR term, a Legacy. It is infinitely easier, and often times rewarded, to create other characters in MMOs to experience all of the content, such as crafting/gathering etc. And, they also come with the benefit of giving you increased EXP gain, or bonuses in other ways. They also get their own, individual lockout.

Here. No. Your alts are separate, there's no way to interact with each other, and the only way to get another lockout is to get a completely new character, go through the same grind you went through the first time, just to get back to a point where you can start playing the content you wanted to play in the first place. It's miserable, and a downgrade from every other MMO for no reason.

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- FF14 is the only game in which if you don't have to create a bunch of alt to be self-sufficient.

- You don't have to log in and out a bunch of time to consolidate material to craft one single piece of equipment.

- It allows you to always join farm group in your geared and most proficient job instead of griefing the raid on an undergeared alt.

- It has the Amory system and the poetic system to help you level efficiently, just like similar other system.

- EW is a wash in term of relic weapon, but looking at Booza or Eureka ... it was a massive benefit that you only have to do the main grind ONCE and from then just have to do a bit of extra grind for additional weapon. In other games, you literally gonna have to go through the whole process every single damn time you want a new weapon.

Focusing on the limitation without mentioning the benefit as if the multiclass system was all lies with no benefit is unfair. If I recall correctly, I have (had) 8 alt in WoW, 12 alts (or more) in KOTOR, 10 alts in GW2, and current 4 in FF14. So one - I know everything you're saying, and two - to me FF14's system is the most superior. Is it perfect? No. But the thing is, if you want, with a bit of effort you can make the system in FF14 works in a similar way like the one in other MMO, but no other MMO will let you do what FF14 allow you to do.

I didn't really play alt in the first 3-4 years of FF14 because it felt sufficient, but once I realize the limitation and the fact I can get around it, I just starting adding a new alt each expansion. And by "getting around the limitations", I mean I just have to put in the same effort I would have to put in another other games anyway, but I do get more in return. Can't have a cake and eat it too ... but no one said you can't just buy a second cake.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

- FF14 is the only game in which if you don't have to create a bunch of alt to be self-sufficient.

- You don't have to log in and out a bunch of time to consolidate material to craft one single piece of equipment.

- It allows you to always join farm group in your geared and most proficient job instead of griefing the raid on an undergeared alt.

- It has the Amory system and the poetic system to help you level efficiently, just like similar other system.

- EW is a wash in term of relic weapon, but looking at Booza or Eureka ... it was a massive benefit that you only have to do the main grind ONCE and from then just have to do a bit of extra grind for additional weapon. In other games, you literally gonna have to go through the whole process every single damn time you want a new weapon.

Focusing on the limitation without mentioning the benefit as if the multiclass system was all lies with no benefit is unfair. If I recall correctly, I have (had) 8 alt in WoW, 12 alts (or more) in KOTOR, 10 alts in GW2, and current 4 in FF14. So one - I know everything you're saying, and two - to me FF14's system is the most superior. Is it perfect? No. But the thing is, if you want, with a bit of effort you can make the system in FF14 works in a similar way like the one in other MMO, but no other MMO will let you do what FF14 allow you to do.

I didn't really play alt in the first 3-4 years of FF14 because it felt sufficient, but once I realize the limitation and the fact I can get around it, I just starting adding a new alt each expansion. And by "getting around the limitations", I mean I just have to put in the same effort I would have to put in another other games anyway, but I do get more in return. Can't have a cake and eat it too ... but no one said you can't just buy a second cake.

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Literally mentioned the benefits in my first couple lines...

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A big "selling point" is that you get all the convenience of being able to do it all on one character, instead of needing to do different things on different characters.

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That's it. That's the benefits of XIV. Being able to do everything on one character.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

complaining about weekly lockout in an MMO is like complaining about paying tax.

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I do get the complaint, to be honest. When you hit the "raidlog" / "raid or die" portion, it isn't all that entertaining.

Still, I don't think the loss of lockouts would actually solve that issue at all. It would merely frontload player activity to the beginning of the patch cycle and leave the second half of the patch dead in the water.

The actual people that play so many jobs and want top gear for all of them are infinitesimal, compared to the more normal players that play 1 or 2 jobs.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

The actual people that play so many jobs and want top gear for all of them are infinitesimal, compared to the more normal players that play 1 or 2 jobs.

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I only raid for glam, my level of participation of any type of content is "does it have a good glam". I don't do savage for BiS, I do it because I want the look.

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Originally Posted by Stasya

You do not need gear for dungeons and normals, you need bis just to enter ultimate.
Besides, just for savage having more gear on tanks = more hp less damage taken less stress on healers, same goes for dps/healers .....

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Outgearing ain't the point of raiding savage, to be frank. Yeah it gets easier the more gear you get. That's one very good reason for these lockouts, since the nerf over time that the increase in item level represents is supposed to ... you know: TAKE TIME.

As a raider I always felt that gear is just a tool I need in order to be ready for the next tier. Sure, some items looked fabulous (great bonus) but getting better stats on my gear was never my motivation to raid. Progressing and beating the challenge was. In fact, I despised boring farm raids and opted out whenever I could. :'D

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

I only raid for glam, my level of participation of any type of content is "does it have a good glam". I don't do savage for BiS, I do it because I want the look.

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Oh, a kindred spirit. :'D

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

What do you need all that gear for anyway? You can queue for all of the current content just with your level 100 gear and jewelry from dungeons or tomes. I've got 3 different roles kitted. Are all of them perfectly optimized? No, but they're all more than good enough to get the job done.

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same, without even trying. about to be on my 4th today. thatll be whm drk mch and vpr, so technically 3 gearsets since vpr shares accessories. i have run expert roulette 0 times this expansion so far but still have all the tomes ive needed. can farm more tomes by spamming the new raids for first clear bonus galore too lol

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

I only raid for glam, my level of participation of any type of content is "does it have a good glam". I don't do savage for BiS, I do it because I want the look.

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I can relate to this.
I tend to call myself a "semi-collector". I only collect stuff if it really catches my eye.

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Originally Posted by 1313

same, without even trying. about to be on my 4th today. thatll be whm drk mch and vpr, so technically 3 gearsets since vpr shares accessories. i have run expert roulette 0 times this expansion so far but still have all the tomes ive needed. can farm more tomes by spamming the new raids for first clear bonus galore too lol

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Hardly surprising, since you farm ENTRY LEVEL gear right now.
The time gated tome gear comes next week when you can farm 450 tomes per week as usual. Combined with savage drops (weekly lockout).

Crafting gear will then be your quick way to i710 (I think).

I still wished theyd at least meet us in the middle and let us farm per role... it takes so long to farm for multiple jobs, once im done i can already start over again - and im not even gonna start about the upgrades.

The gear lockouts do suck. The main reason they are even there is because they are aped off of other MMO strategies for keeping people playing by making sure they got something to keep running after. Unfortunately the companies that implement the systems don't understand that this is an incredibly fragile way to keep people playing, because it depends on making an illusion of value on something that gets trivialized later. That and once people understand and have felt the pain of how all their effort ultimately is worthless, they usually don't do hard content again except for the sake of doing something more structured than the normal stuff.

Problem with FFXIV is that there is no catchup gear.

Savage and upgraded capped tomestone gear mix remains BiS until next savage patch. Alliance gear is glam-only, since its -10 ilvl. And while alliance gives alternative to upgrade mats, it does not help with tome weekly caps.

In the past it was less important, but now you need savage gear for ultimates and criterion dungeons were added that needs you to be geared as well.

Its hard to have multiple jobs ready for this, more so if you are midcore player (less raid playtime/week) or only PF - for the latter with bad luck you might not even have enough time to get what you want if you have to resort to books.

IMO SE can leave savage stuff as is, but given how many jobs we have alliance patch really need to allow proper catch up by having alliances give BiS. Yoshi-P even floated the alliance savage version idea, this for sure should give good gear which will keep it active.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

The gear lockouts do suck. The main reason they are even there is because they are aped off of other MMO strategies for keeping people playing by making sure they got something to keep running after. Unfortunately the companies that implement the systems don't understand that this is an incredibly fragile way to keep people playing, because it depends on making an illusion of value on something that gets trivialized later. That and once people understand and have felt the pain of how all their effort ultimately is worthless, they usually don't do hard content again except for the sake of doing something more structured than the normal stuff.

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Its just pointless... "try hards" will just craft/buy crafted gear and call it a day, might not return till the next patch. Others will be lazy and only gear their main and MAYBE one more job... ppl who dont actually wanna play wont either way and it might only be a tiny fraction thats actually lured in with this...

I do wish they'd find another system for raid gear (normal and savage).

I really like the normal raids this time around, they're fantastic. But I did them on Tuesday. And then I have nothing to do for seven days? Why isn't it grindable? Why is that the only thing to get besides a minion? It just feels like a relic from an era when the levelling process mattered in terms of playtime, so there were other things to do.

I'm good with weekly lockouts, but they need to be cumulative over the tier so you can catch up after breaks or if your savage prog was slow.

What's even more important is once you own a piece of gear for one job, the same savage/tome piece should be DRASTICALLY (like 75% cheaper) faster to get on another job.

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Originally Posted by LilaIronman

Thats why its called END GAME RAIDING not Casual Game Raiding

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This has nothing to do with anything. Waiting a week isn't difficulty. Not letting me flex mid-tier from DPS to healer isn't difficulty, it's just annoying.

There are reasons why there are limits placed week by week, but I'd argue the system we have is too restrictive.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Its just pointless... "try hards" will just craft/buy crafted gear and call it a day, might not return till the next patch. Others will be lazy and only gear their main and MAYBE one more job... ppl who dont actually wanna play wont either way and it might only be a tiny fraction thats actually lured in with this...

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It became bigger in shadowbringers with the job changes making a lot of things more accessible. But my feeling is endwalker probably burned out a lot of people because of how harsh the 8-man jump rope was. It's funny because the streamers were having a blast doing it supposedly, albeit I bet if anyone watched all the death footage and had the voice chatter recorded there would be a different picture. A lot of people did not like dying over and over to RNG from connection issues, people having a bad night, etc, on p10s and p12s. P12S was probably the worse of the two but it got off easy because it was the final encounter. p8s was rough due to the bleeds.

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Originally Posted by Aurora428

Not letting me flex mid-tier from DPS to healer isn't difficulty, it's just annoying.

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Curious but ... what stop you from flexing mid-tier from DPS to healer? Because I know it's not the gears that stopping you.

Realistically speaking, with how many jobs we're at and how many we'll likely be getting... Yeah they need to reconsider gearing methods. At the very least separate weekly stuff by roles, the game encourages you to have all five up with the role quests. It'd be nice if there were other gearing methods like criterion and what not too, make other content more valuable (which they said they wanted to do anyway with the whole 1.5x more rewards for DT). The gearing system is literally 1:1 based off of WotLK's from what 2008? It could use a good review and update.

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Originally Posted by NekiUno

Regarding your question, I must respectfully disagree. The desire is for players to continue running the raid even after obtaining their desired items. If players were given everything on the first day, there would be no incentive to run it again.

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Strong disagree. This is why the pets and mounts exist. They could also just create a new type of currency for cosmetic only rewards that you can only get from the current raid tier raids. Like an upgraded version of the moogle tomestone event, but its always active. With an ever increasing pool of items to get again. Like all the stuff that was taken out of the game that they said they'd put back in, like the old pvp series rewards... that would be the first thing I'd put in there.

I don't disagree with the complaint that the way gearing works is painful for people who like playing multiple jobs, but anyone who claims it is trolling/griefing to play content with a few bits of gear that aren't the bleeding edge maxed out bis is toxic as hell and it's going to be miserable playing with them even when you are fully geared to the absolute best.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

They gate the savage raid mostly for the 2nd hidden boss fight at the fourth tier. If it were just a gear grind people would drop doing it entirely because the only benefit is getting the dyable slots on raid gear and higher damage numbers, which are rendered completely moot by the next big content patch. But the fact it takes a specific group of people putting in over a hundred hours just to get the clear done optimally makes the content unaccessible to most people.

Also, some numbers so people get an idea of how insane savage really is (because our blessed content creators tend to have a bit of bias in the whole thing and don't seem to want to show people the ugly parts like arguing with your team mates and the time commitments)

A week 1 clear party generally puts in 12 hours a day with some minor breaks, and generally the later tiers require more than one week to clear for these groups. So a top tier raiding group can potentially race and clear in around 84 - 144 hours. FYI, most people aren't in this category and have to divide their times up each week hence why it can take 4+ weeks to clear. However, that isn't all of it. In truth, it takes even more hours for groups that do not dig into the fights every day because they often have to review and reprog older mechanics, since people forget things between last week wednesday and the current wednesday. So lets say an entire night gets wasted on reprogs and someone is doing 3 hour nights for three days in a week. Without counting reclear times, the number of weeks goes from 12-16 weeks to 14-18 weeks since those extra hours of reprog have to come out of something. Now lets say that those days people are raiding on are also representative of the time they have to do reclears. It takes a full night to reclear all the way to the 4th fight and the prior nights are basically getting cut down because of the reclear times. We're looking at anywhere from 19-20 weeks to 21-24 weeks easily. This is why people end up trying to get skips in later tiers because the increased difficulty in the 2nd and 3rd tiers are pretty brutal on groups.

And remember, the longer the time it takes to get through savage the more likely there is going to be drama and in-fighting, let alone having to go find another group in that case of a break-up. This is why it takes many people ages to clear a tier and why the content creator comments that savage is easy is kind of a stupid smoke screen for how much of a pain it really is. By tier 3 any sane person will want to tear their hair out with the amount of stupid stuff they likely had to deal with. The one good thing is at least the first tier is forgiving enough the social issues are not quite as bad.

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A first tier take around 20h-25hours to clear

My static for p4s took 22 hours to clear p1s-p4s, week 1

I like the weekly limits on things...it gives you the chance to go do something else. If I had to farm the raid gear non-stop until I had all the pieces then I wouldn't have time to farm scrips or something else. I can get my one piece and then go take care of other business

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

Curious but ... what stop you from flexing mid-tier from DPS to healer? Because I know it's not the gears that stopping you.

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Their Mentality of needing to max out every job to be able to play it. Necklace and Ring for DPS job ? Nahhh their not gonna play it because parsing is all
they think about.

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Originally Posted by ValynS

I don't disagree with the complaint that the way gearing works is painful for people who like playing multiple jobs, but anyone who claims it is trolling/griefing to play content with a few bits of gear that aren't the bleeding edge maxed out bis is toxic as hell and it's going to be miserable playing with them even when you are fully geared to the absolute best.

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I wouldn't say it is trolling/griefing, however, I would feel like I am griefing if I went into content on an alt job with worse gear than my main.
Consider this scenario which has happened to me quite a few times before in savage; I go into a PF and I want to play on an alt. We enrage at a low percentage, it's entirely possibly that had I been on my main, we might have killed it instead. In my opinion, I feel like I griefed the group. The other 7 people in the party are outside my control, but there were absolutely things I could have done that would have prevented the enrage, namely, playing a better geared job.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

I wouldn't say it is trolling/griefing, however, I would feel like I am griefing if I went into content on an alt job with worse gear than my main.
Consider this scenario which has happened to me quite a few times before in savage; I go into a PF and I want to play on an alt. We enrage at a low percentage, it's entirely possibly that had I been on my main, we might have killed it instead. In my opinion, I feel like I griefed the group. The other 7 people in the party are outside my control, but there were absolutely things I could have done that would have prevented the enrage, namely, playing a better geared job.

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It's a fact that any tier can be cleared in just crafted gear. That leaves this being a skill issue. This is not a knock, but if you are hitting enrage, it's 100% skill issue and not a gear issue. That doesn't mean just you personally, but as a group.

I didn't read all of this thread.
However, I would like to chime in with saying that I think weekly lockouts in the way they are now are fine if you play 1 single role.

However, if you play multiple classes, you have to choose which one you are gearing up for savage content.
I think for a game that prizes itself on the ability to play any class... this restriction for high end players is bad and contradictory to the rest of the game's philosophy for "play anything".
Heck, if you play MELEE classes, but you happen to switch between NIN and SAM (cuz you're a weeb) you have two different gearsets, even if you play the exact same role and positions in a group, but just two different classes.


I feel that, with the technology they have for Azeyma's earrings as well as Relics that you can re-spec the stats for, they can easily just give 1 single set of gear for savage that automatically applies the right stats for your job, with potential respec and upgrade options later on in the raid tier. Relic weapons would still retain their unique ability to have 3 substats and the highest ilvl possible, and possibly also make them have 5 materia slots by default... but this is then not locked behind a weekly lockout and it's just a minor stat buff to people who want to no-life grind out such relics.

It saves everyone on inventory space as well.
Instead, they can give additional rewards that unlock glamourer items only from savage.
But don't make us grind for stats, it feels absolutely awful if you want to play multiple classes.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Bullshit entitlement, if I ever saw any.

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Kinda a questionable turn of phrase for a game we pay both box price and a monthly sub for. You're god damn right I'm gonna feel entitled.

On the subject of the post, the gear lockout is fine in theory, but I would like to see it relaxed so that you can gear multiple roles at once.

i understand the desire to shotgun gearing multiple classes in one go but it's such a non-issue dude, imo the weekly gear lockout (this applies to Normal raids, Savage raids, AND Alliance raids) is genuinely beneficial game design that supports extending the longevity of this content and keeps people returning when it's still new. If you could get everything you wanted week 1 then you'd finish up week 1 and never look back.

You dont even need full crafted gear, grab the ex trial weapon, grab the ex trial accessory and for the left side grab normal gear stuff and you are good to go, crafted is only more worth because you can "overmeld" it which isnt even needed if you dont plan on clearing week1, you have more then enough gearing options and yea the weekly lockout should stay how it is.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

It's a fact that any tier can be cleared in just crafted gear. That leaves this being a skill issue. This is not a knock, but if you are hitting enrage, it's 100% skill issue and not a gear issue. That doesn't mean just you personally, but as a group.

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I week 1 clear the Savage tiers, I'm well aware of this. That doesn't mean I don't personally feel responsible if I could have prevented an enrage.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

It's a fact that any tier can be cleared in just crafted gear. That leaves this being a skill issue. This is not a knock, but if you are hitting enrage, it's 100% skill issue and not a gear issue. That doesn't mean just you personally, but as a group.

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cough cough P8S with horrible balance and devs not testing raids at all

Worse, there is no proof we won't see same trash again, since abyssos min ilvl for savage feels like a suggestion with rolling dice on not trash balance

And then there is the whole constant rush to get geared for the upcoming savage, yet they do not release crafted gear until the day of the savage drop and depending on what people got to do before that point, they might not even have had the time to do the EX fights. Not that it matters much since naturally everyone is going to not so subtly make having pentamelded gear a requirement somehow on the first two days of the first savage of the expansion. Seriously, they need that crafted gear to come out sooner and then just bump the normal raid gear iLvL up 5 points to compensate.