Gear swaping could be ok, so long it don't work during combat.
Gear swaping could be ok, so long it don't work during combat.
I focus heavily on progression, and play quite a lot. However, none of this has to do with a lack of self-control. Just a matter of time availability. Next to working 46 hours a week, sporting 20 hours a week and sleeping roughly 50 hours a week there's still 52 hours remaining for other stuff to do. And when there's nothing else of interest to fill that time with, FFXIV gets to do it for a sizeable portion. If something else comes by, it's very easy to let FFXIV pass by. And I know numerous players for whom this is very similar.
Not reading text in this game also has nothing to do with simply being progression focussed. I am progression focussed in every game I play, MMO or not. Skipping on text has all to do with the quality of story. And as SE was sending me out as an errand boy for the Sylph still as I was closing in on endgame, it was enough for me. The story in this game has been utter crap straight from the start and all way through to that point, it is very unlikely to get any better beyond that. So I stopped reading.
If SE wants their story to be enticing and worthy enough to read, they should actually have given a damn about it.
The gear treadmill isn't totally the problem I feel, every mmo has gear that you'll need to grind out to perform better, the problem really lies within the lack of "different" gear.
Basically every job in this game will be the same gear wise save for relic weapons and how people want to spec them, maybe accessories to with materia but that's it. It's very bland as you'll know that once you get all the "best gear" that someone else on the same job as you will have the same set of gear with no difference.
FFXI had the option of having so many choices for gear, certain gear enhanced abilities or shortened cooldowns, raised your elemental defense more, increased your attack speed, increased the number of hits you could put out, ect ect. This way players could build around certain endgame content or for any other thing that they'd want to do, it added interesting variety because players would have varying gear setups even after you had gotten a good amount of endgame gear, and there was plenty of that to go around as well, not just "Oh this 1 set is the best at the moment till the next patch of ilvlxxx gear."
I'd be much happier if instead of adding a higher gear level items SE added same gear level items with different stats that maybe enhanced different abilities or any other thing instead of just slapping on an extra +xx amount of str/vit/dex/int blah blah blah.
Just give me this and make all gear somewhat relevant, and in turn make the events they come from relevant outside farming tomestones.
This is all pretty accurate. Note that making lots of content remain relevant not only provides gear variety, but actually provides for content variety, because nothing gets "replaced." All those events listed are mechanically very different from each other and have varying party size requirements, while XIV just has three: 8-man endgame, 24-man catchup raids, and 4-man facerolls for grinding.
Also, XIV's system kind of screws over players in the "middle" of time commitment and progression. People at the top are always ready for the next thing, while the most casual players benefit from the easing of previous content, but there's this place in the middle where you finally complete a set just in time for it to be replaced with another and for what you just got to be made much easier to do. And a lot of people fall into that middle category.
You Spiritbond the gear and then you do whatever with it, you don't need to carry 50 sets... No inventory issue outside what unique gear (which plenty of people already hold onto for potential Glamours) already creates.
It's exactly the system Final Fantasy IX had, and you didn't carry every single piece of gear that game had now, did you? Once you've unlocked the stat you do away with the gear.
How about you actually read the thread I linked? You've clearly missed the part where you Spiritbond the gear and then do not need the gear to have the stats.
It doesn't bloat your inventory, because you don't need to carry the gear around. It doesn't devaluate gear, because you can still wear Dreadwyrm Tabard Of Aiming with Enhances Ballads after you've Spiritbond Choral Shirt. No idea what link you read...