Endgame gearing in FFXIV

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

When you have the chance to learn something new, when someone wants to teach you something new, when the chance comes, grab it, it may never come again. Sit down, shut up and LISTEN.

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Trust me, I've tried. But every word of 'wisdom' that comes out of your mouth is nonsense and it's gotten to the point where it grates my ears.

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Originally Posted by Kazhar

But then you say shit like you don't need experience from this game to know the inner workings of its raiding scene. Why don't you apply your own advice?

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Because they're not as wise as they think they are. If they were, they would indeed take their own advice.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

Because they're not as wise as they think they are. If they were, they would indeed take their own advice.

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Which is a pity, because their advice should be a good one. Always seek to learn.

But when it's followed by "btw I don't need to learn anymore I'm experienced", we're left with nothing but peak boomer nonsense.

Raiding on even a 2nd role after your main feels noticeably worse into the tier, i farmed barb EX at release perfectly fine on drg and sage and at this point i wouldn't even consider playing healer in savage or criterion lol. and if i decide i wanna heal in ex farms i'm basically making the kills take a minute longer every time.

Good points from OP and people actually engaging with the topic. Posting mostly so that this thread stays relevant as I hope it will be acknowledged by the devs.

The current system has been in place like this since Heavensward and Gordias if I'm not mistaken. There were 13 jobs at that time. While the system assumingly worked back then and still works somewhat currently, we have 19 combat jobs now and with 7.0 will probably be having 21.

The change of having gloves, head and feet only cost 4 books now is appreciated and definitely a step in the right direction, but surely not enough. As others have mentioned you get shoehorned into playing one role/job and cant really diversify yourself. If the party is not a min ilvl party why would I join with my healer wearing crafted if I could bring a BiS tank to the group, me wanting to play healer does not outweight the fact that I could contribute more to the party as a tank imo.

Honestly I'd be fine if the current savage tier would be unlocked with the following odd numbered major patch instead of 6 weeks before the new tier. Also cutting tome piece cost in half would be a good addition as well but doubling tome cap is not the way to go in my opinion, unless they double tome rewards also. With the additional 2 weeks they gave themselves per patch that'd mean that there's still ~4 months of what we have currently but 6.3 would be a true catchup patch, since it'd give everyone a decent amount of time to gear alts or just a different job for content like ultimate. People are still doing alliance raids for glamours, so even unlocking savage earlier would not invalidate alliance raids completely. Although with the addition of augmented crafted why not raise alliance gear to (savage itemlevel -5) so it longer stays relevant for casual players?

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Now you're just making stuff up, because it's pretty obvious to see that I full cleared last tier and have the mount from it. Didn't do this tier because my static imploded but that's a whole different story.

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Stop replying to the troll.
The man hasn't even stepped foot into Asphodelos or Abyssos on savage.

If he enjoys his mid tier content like Extreme's, let him. But just ignore anything that comes out of his mouth about savage content because his opinion does not matter as he does not do the content.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

Something I've noticed for a long time now, is that the issues people often seem to have, are entirely self inflicted. You all bring these problems on yourselves.

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See this alot with people that constantly imply that they wont do savage because 'its too hard' or because they are 'scared of being called out'.

Just practice and go in, nobody is going to say anything. If they do, move on and find another group.

Snowflake society is real.

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Originally Posted by Johners

Going forward I'd like to see Square Enix take a leaf out of WoW's book. For PvE gearing, Mythic+ and Raiding can reach the same peak of the item level curve entirely independently of each other and you can do high level Mythic+ keys without ever needing to raid. Likewise the inverse is true if you like raiding but don't want to do Mythic+. This would require Criterion dungeons to be fleshed out into a system that's ready at the start of each raid tier so you can enter with the crafted/normal mode gear and progress to the same need point.

In general I do think the pace of gearing is far too slow, especially if you want multiple gear sets to be as powerful as possible on multiple jobs while playing a single character. Definitely feels like it's balanced solely to keep you playing longer and subscribing for more months per raid tier... although that's a somewhat expected design decision for a subscription MMO.

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You think you do, but you dont. Its not uncommon in wow to go entire tiers or months/years without ever even coming close to your bis due to how much variance on gear/ilvl/stats there is.

Some of you sound ridiculous talking about savage tier like there's any kind of actual secret to this whole thing that I could never figure out without having been through it. You do the dances. You get the gear. You get the mount. GG. I'm very familiar with the scene from other games where it was actually worse, waiting to earn points to even roll on gear. This is nothing.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

Something I've noticed for a long time now, is that the issues people often seem to have, are entirely self inflicted. You all bring these problems on yourselves.

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It's very much self-inflicted and people would rather bicker and argue and try to make claims about other people's experience than come up with actual solutions to present to the devs.

For what it's worth, I came up with one, but I'm debating if it's worth sharing.

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Originally Posted by Shenlao

I think I just wanted to add that the end goal for me at least on speaking up about this is not I want bis on every job 8 weeks in or some nonsense.
I want steps to be taken that just enable me a more casual player to play at least one other job than the one I'm most geared with in a PF setting. It just feel immensely discouraging to trying any other roles for an average joe like me that doesn't clear week 1 and actually ramps up to it over several weeks of party finder grinding.
This clearly doesn't mean I need that job at bis ilevel but the acquisition rate at the very least should keep up with the average pf listing which after 4 weeks was like 615 and right now more and more 620 are popping up.
Gear acquisition seems to be the easiest thing to adjust on that front because there are certainly other solutions that could achieve the same thing but would actually hurt the larger player base.
For example disabling a pf item level requirement higher than the min ilevel requirement would achieve this for me too. But it also would hurt a lot of players that are able to beat savage because of the gear they slowly accumulate and for a healthy savage scene you want those people to get through it too over time.

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The current situation is awful. I got crafted gear for my alts as its the only gear that is not time-gated, not penta-melded as that is too much investment for alts as well, but guess what, for the new criterion what would I play, my tank main that is 626 or 610 alts and feel like I am griefing?

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

Something I've noticed for a long time now, is that the issues people often seem to have, are entirely self inflicted. You all bring these problems on yourselves.

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Dang you are so right. I should've just made 7 alts for an 8-way splits savage group! Then I can gear alt jobs properly :).

/s

Using poetic/token to buy role token thats weekly capped. yes.
Poetic uncapped.

I get that left side can be left separate because of glam and individual class identity. But why can we have universal right sides.

Hell every expansion we even get an universal earring. So just unify all of the right sides across all the jobs.
You know what that also free up all the armory inventory for the left side.

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Originally Posted by JoseiToAoiTori

Agree with everything. One idea I've had for a while is for savage raids to drop "tokens" that can be consumed to unlock gear on a vendor similar to how you can redeem artifact gear. Consuming a hand token should unlock hand gear for every job for instance. They can expand the system to tomestones too but I also agree that substats in their current form are restrictive at best and multiple builds should be viable. I shouldn't be screwed out of playing DRG well if I have pieces with skill speed on them.

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I agree, a slot token would be a good solution to this issue. The OP's point about gearing up multiple jobs per tier being essentially unachievable is valid and goes against the One Character, All Jobs paradigm. Having a single token give all sub-sets of gear for that slot at once seems a bit too fast at 9 weeks to get all slots filled, 10 if you can have two of the same ring (I don't raid so don't know). Perhaps letting a player get 3 generic tokens per lockout to redeem however they want would work well. That would let people get a full set of gear every three weeks for a total of 21 weeks, or just over five months, to fill out all slots for all roles (Fending, Maiming, Aiming, etc). It may be less, I can't remember how much overlap jewelry has. A scheme like this would allow people to gear up secondary jobs relatively quickly to give their group some flexibility in composition while also keeping the upgrade drip-feed going at a rate that's still exciting enough to encourage long-term farm groups.

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Originally Posted by XaiQ

Then we have to look at what an RPG is, and who plays it. This actually affects casual players more than raiders, because those who are casual(In this context, I refer to players not doing savage raids.) have it even worse: Tomestones. These take forever to get, 450 per week, and god forbid if the game we played were to have one of its main qualities about playing multiple jobs on one character it would be a huge slog to actually get gear on most jobs in a timely manner. Savage players aren't AS concerned about this because they DO have savage gear (bis isn't 100% necessary for ultimate, it just stacks all cards in your favor so running non-optimal pieces is still valid just not sought after or desired).

Now, one can make the argument:
"But Mia, they casuals don't need that higher item level gear. The content they do doesn't require it!" and while in essence, it would be true, who plays an RPG and wishes to live in a stalemate for for 7 months with gear? RPG's and especially games with items with increasingly higher stats, everyone aims to get stronger and stronger.

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I agree wholeheartedly with this. I don't raid, so tomestones are the only reliable means of improving my gear. Sadly, the low rate of acquisition and knowing that come X.5 I'll be able to get the BIS tomestone gear is very demotivating. Why should I bother grinding all those time-gated tomestones when I'll be grinding them out come X.5? I understand the philosophy of wanting to spread out top-tier tomestones over time, but Poetics and the mid-tier tomestone should have their rate of acquisition increased and caps removed. There are seven gear sets each so the left side alone is 35 pieces to gear all types, not to mention the right side stuff. I'm the kind of player that wants to have a max level job for each role and have them all well geared even if I never play them except to level during the next expansion.

I haven't bothered this time around since the top-tier non-raid tomestone gear's an ever moving target and takes so long to accomplish. The irony of the situation is even though I'm "only doing roulette/DF" content and don't need top-tier gear, the difficulty in getting full sets as tiers increase has caused me to stop doing content when it's the tomestones themselves that are the reason to do the content to get ever better gear. In general I could care less about the glamours, I just want to progress my character's gear at a rate that will let me complete each set before the next tier comes out rather than just sit back, not engage in content, and wait for the time to do the big push to prepare for the next expansion.

I enjoy the game a lot and generally find something to do on a daily basis, but I'm not as engaged with the game now as I am when there's a meaningful goal or means of improving my character at a sustainable rate. I'd gladly do my roulettes every day if I felt it would have a meaningful impact on my character's progression, even if it only means gearing out various jobs and/or my retainers with gear. As it stands now, grinding PvP to get the rank 25 reward each series is about the most significant thing for me and that's only because they're time-limited items. Other than that, the majority of my play time is doing little, non-progression, things and sitting in venues chatting with friends.

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Originally Posted by Illmaeran

I agree, a slot token would be a good solution to this issue. The OP's point about gearing up multiple jobs per tier being essentially unachievable is valid and goes against the One Character, All Jobs paradigm. Having a single token give all sub-sets of gear for that slot at once seems a bit too fast at 9 weeks to get all slots filled, 10 if you can have two of the same ring (I don't raid so don't know). Perhaps letting a player get 3 generic tokens per lockout to redeem however they want would work well. That would let people get a full set of gear every three weeks for a total of 21 weeks, or just over five months, to fill out all slots for all roles (Fending, Maiming, Aiming, etc). It may be less, I can't remember how much overlap jewelry has. A scheme like this would allow people to gear up secondary jobs relatively quickly to give their group some flexibility in composition while also keeping the upgrade drip-feed going at a rate that's still exciting enough to encourage long-term farm groups.

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Perhaps you could have the bosses drop the tokens as suggested but only have the token vendor give 620 gear (or similar depending on tier)? Then have the raid bosses drop the upgrade item, or the 24 man on off patch like normal. That way you can get full 620 gear for alts easy, but getting them up to 630 would still take a little bit of farming. Of course, if I were to do this, I would slightly increase the drop rates on the upgrade items, add em to a couple more bosses like have one of each drop off the last floor or whatnot.

10 pages in this was probably already suggested:

Don't increase tome caps. That would add more time required to gear up, which wouldn't make alt gearing that much better. Rather than increase the cap they should decrease the prices... The grind is the same as it is, but you would take half (?) the time to gear up your first choice of role before being able to work on a secondary.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

10 pages in this was probably already suggested:

Don't increase tome caps. That would add more time required to gear up, which wouldn't make alt gearing that much better. Rather than increase the cap they should decrease the prices... The grind is the same as it is, but you would take half (?) the time to gear up your first choice of role before being able to work on a secondary.

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They're not going to decrease prices either. They might consider providing a reward for putting in the work to gear up completely, which is what I'm proposing elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

how smug to not notice he edited it after I posted, but please continue.

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I did notice. His edit was obvious BS.

If your reaction was one of dis pleasure, which it seems to have been, then you appear to be misjudging who, exactly, my post made an insinuation about.

Agree it's to slow in some way but can also be too fast. for me it lacks ways of getting gear just very stale for me at this point I kind of want more content with more ways to get same gear within sort same time frame.

Gearing alone is truly such an investment of both time and effort. People who have that time and energy might not see the problem with that. Tomestone capping alone takes a long time.

Now, I'm a casual player, but I play consistently because I'm a completionist, I'm always grinding away at multiple features of the game. I don't have a true need to get BiS gear, and I'm usually more interested in getting gear for the purpose of glamour or just the satisfaction of having a high item level.

That being said, the sheer amount of grinding that goes into getting tomestone gear is legitimately a lot. I often end up waiting until the next round of tomestone gear is cycled in and the old tomestones become easier to obtain in larger amounts, and then there's no weekly cap at all.

I think that duties should award a bit more tomestones. At the very least, reaching the weekly cap should be a bit quicker if it's still necessary for some reason for tomestone gear to take a longer amount of time to obtain every piece.

good take ♥

I fully agree with most of these points. Gearing is simply too restrictive for the patch timeframe.

Personally, I'm indifferent to the fact that there are only two sets of max iLvl gear, the issue to me is the amount that you can earn on a weekly basis. The price of tomestone gear should be cut slightly in addition to the weekly cap being doubled. There needs to be more sources of upgrade materials, period. The two you're guaranteed from floors 2-3 aren't enough. I'd heard someone once mention that the door boss for every final fight should drop a guaranteed right/left side upgrade material and I think this is a good solution. Floors 1-3 in any given tier should drop a random extra item every week, and the final floor should drop an extra random chest piece, like it already does a random weapon. Book exchanges should be decreased by 2 for every piece across the board (except for Helm/Hands/Feet) which feel ok at the current 4. This means that upgrade mats/accessories should be 2 books, and chest/weapon should be 6. I'm not saying we should be able to gear every job in a patch cycle, but the way I'm proposing it should net players a very respectable amount of gear.

Regardless of the player base's differences on the minor points regarding gear, I think it's safe to say that most of us feel that something, anything, should be done about this at least for the first tier of 7.0.

Normally this wouldn’t really affect me because I am in a static even if I want to switch to alt job(s)… until yesterday. I saw a DPS created a PF for Criterion at iLv623 or higher, something that’s beyond me as a healer main who casually raids savage tier with very limited raiding hours weekly. Mainly because it’s more beneficial for our DPSes to get the upgrades first before the support roles. They all get the good stuffs first, ours will come later.

Now I’m not saying we have to gear up faster on main jobs (I mean I frankly would welcome the ease but Idk how it’ll affect the game so fingers crossed!), but if I were to try out alt job(s) in iLv610 in just about most current tier savage in PF right now… I don’t think folks want to deal with that. There has to be additional way to gear up the alt job(s).

Lovely take from OP.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Normally this wouldn’t really affect me because I am in a static even if I want to switch to alt job(s)… until yesterday. I saw a DPS created a PF for Criterion at iLv623 or higher, something that’s beyond me as a healer main who casually raids savage tier with very limited raiding hours weekly. Mainly because it’s more beneficial for our DPSes to get the upgrades first before the support roles. They all get the good stuffs first, ours will come later.

Now I’m not saying we have to gear up faster on main jobs (I mean I frankly would welcome the ease but Idk how it’ll affect the game so fingers crossed!), but if I were to try out alt job(s) in iLv610 in just about most current tier savage in PF right now… I don’t think folks want to deal with that. There has to be additional way to gear up the alt job(s).

Lovely take from OP.

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Personal anedcedote: Personally observed the general P5S group requests for iLvls no lower than 615. I believe Criterion's arrival has in fact worsened Demand for unreasonable iLvls. In fact Criterion being a no lock out system was one place where players were likely to play their off jobs. Which further brings the issue to the forefront.

I hope they find a resolution soon.

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Originally Posted by Sfia

Snip

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https://media.giphy.com/media/l3q2Xh...1Ts4/giphy.gif

As someone who's been playing the game for a far less amount of time, but began taking savage raiding far more seriously in 6.0 -- these are some of the same exact thoughts I've been having, but put to words far better than I ever could, which makes sense given Sfia's wealth of experience in this game, in all aspects not just at the very top levels of raiders. Sincerely hope this feedback is taken into consideration and some changes begin to get made.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

Just having the 24man pieces in the catch up patches being upgradeable with some Savage books or w/e to similar ilvl

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This is a very underrated outlook, I think. The ability to upgrade gear outside of the hardest content, using items from the hardest/difficult content, to its relevant ilvl. Obviously it'd have to be restricted in minor some way, but would be an interesting experiment for at least one expansions lifespan. For better or worse.

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Originally Posted by Sfia

Substats are a problem for balance and creativity.

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This is a topic that I think a lot of people don't fully grasp unless you've played certain expansions of WoW or, FAR more relevant, FFXI. They can absolutely better adjust substats in this game currently to give it a kick to make it feel more impactful, but it'll ultimately result in similar complaints down the road. When we talk substats and wanting something truly noticeable and impacting, we're going to be discussing convoluted stats based on mathematical formulas and self adjustment (e.g. diminishing returns or even negative returns for overdoing a stat).

At some point, it'll be inevitable that we're going to be talking horizontal gear progression and possibly removing gear lock during combat, akin to how swapping gear works in FFXI. Those are two completely game altering functions tied to the purpose of stats for this game and I really doubt the XIV community is going to like what such drastic changes actually means. For example, I'd wager a ton of players will not like the fact that they won't find much reason to do Savage raids because the new gear lacks specific substats their BiS stat formulas require and they have to use gear from previous raids (e.g. current xpac or possibly even old ones). That is just how horizontal gear works.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

This is a topic that I think a lot of people don't fully grasp unless you've played certain expansions of WoW or, FAR more relevant, FFXI. They can absolutely better adjust substats in this game currently to give it a kick to make it feel more impactful, but it'll ultimately result in similar complaints down the road. When we talk substats and wanting something truly noticeable and impacting, we're going to be discussing convoluted stats based on mathematical formulas and self adjustment (e.g. diminishing returns or even negative returns for overdoing a stat).

At some point, it'll be inevitable that we're going to be talking horizontal gear progression and possibly removing gear lock during combat, akin to how swapping gear works in FFXI. Those are two completely game altering functions tied to the purpose of stats for this game and I really doubt the XIV community is going to like what such drastic changes actually means. For example, I'd wager a ton of players will not like the fact that they won't find much reason to do Savage raids because the new gear lacks specific substats their BiS stat formulas require and they have to use gear from previous raids (e.g. current xpac or possibly even old ones). That is just how horizontal gear works.

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Yeah, especially since we're likely to hit a level cap at some point. Even 11 had a somewhat vertical progression while you levelled up, with the horizontal system being adopted for its endgames.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

Yeah, especially since we're likely to hit a level cap at some point. Even 11 had a somewhat vertical progression while you levelled up, with the horizontal system being adopted for its endgames.

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Agreed. It's good that you brought up the leveling part being vertical progression, since with that in mind, the impact that formulaic stats had was almost unnoticeable in most regards lol. Not entirely unlike how it is while leveling in XIV, assuming you geared your job at least a little bit along the way for both games. Meanwhile, absolute values like with +MP did make a huge difference with how XI operated. Not a big deal in the leveling regards to not be noticeable, even here.

Imagine if we still have belts!

Definitely agree about substats. There's almost no choice with them. My BiS as a healer is almost solely determined by avoiding piety. It is the anti-stat and I want whatever piece doesn't have it. Should we perhaps have more and more varied substats, so that they can actually alter how we play and not just a few single ideal priorities?
The weekly Dun Scaith item was a really good alternate way to get gear. More stuff like that would be excellent. Something from variant or criterion dungeons would be a solid way to do that right now.
Another issue might be the fact that relic weapons are always behind the curve. That's another piece of gear that could be in the mix to make real choices about your gearing and stats that we aren't currently making.

not a huge fan of Sfia's takes, as related to Dark Knight, and a few other things, BUT ....

1) I kinda agree to a point. it does feel, even at the lower level if endgame play i'm at, that it's 'pick one, MAYBE two jobs for the tier'. I mean sure, I enjoy being a tank, and that's not gonna change any time soon, BUT i like playing DPS to, and i would like to see being able to switch roles be a bit easier then it is, especially deeper into the expansion, cause, ya know. not all of us out here be sitting on hundreds of millions of gil to just buy all the crafted gear we want.

2) oh, right ... substats are a thing ... I kid of course, but it really does feel like a waste of time to meld materia what with how little it feels like it helping.

3) eh ... i kinda feel like this is MOSTLY fine as is, not a super huge fan of the idea of more sets, if anything i'd rather see the tomestone cap increased, or gear made cheaper, or, since there is really no point to them after week 7 if you've been keeping up, lock outs removed way sooner.

i don't do savage so 4 is moot for me.

I massively agree with this. I think substats are generally boring and i think the materia system as well really needs a hard look at. I think reworking materia and how its melded would be a huge start.

1: Remove materia slots from gear and move all the materria slots to the Job Stone. This will allow each job to be individually melded in any role that shares gear. Having to remelding gear just to fit each job constantly is such bad design.

2. Add materia melds that directly allow us to augment each jobs abilities. This would not be huge gamechanging materia but individual ability melds would see more noticable impact than substat melds (something like being able to meld 1 Finisher +5% dmg). Also instead of forcing things like Forced Crit on jobs through updates, allow the players to make that choice. Implement materia that allows you to force crit a Finisher with a trade off of crit power. Maybe a materia that increases resource gen for job gauges.

These changes i feel would go a long way in making melding feel way better than it currently does.

Also please remove this weird 2 minute burst window meta and rework speed stats to be more akin to haste to allow us to lower our Cooldown timers. Theyre so awful right now.

100% agree.

Tome gear. The weekly tome grind is the most boring thing to do in this game. It's nothing but a weekly chore. If they want us to grind tomes, at least make it fun.

Weekly locks outs. Also agree. The game says you can do everything on one character. Time gated gear says you can't. Didn't Yoshi P say in a recent interview something along the lines of he didn't understand why people have alts? Then in the live letter when addressing the healer shortage, he told people to try playing healer. I can't try playing healer due to weekly gear lockouts.

I can understand keeping 630 gear tied to savage. I see no reason not to have alternate options for 620 gear. The current gearing formula is stale and needs new life put into it.

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Originally Posted by Arcflare

I massively agree with this. I think substats are generally boring and i think the materia system as well really needs a hard look at. I think reworking materia and how its melded would be a huge start.

1: Remove materia slots from gear and move all the materria slots to the Job Stone. This will allow each job to be individually melded in any role that shares gear. Having to remelding gear just to fit each job constantly is such bad design.

2. Add materia melds that directly allow us to augment each jobs abilities. This would not be huge gamechanging materia but individual ability melds would see more noticable impact than substat melds (something like being able to meld 1 Finisher +5% dmg). Also instead of forcing things like Forced Crit on jobs through updates, allow the players to make that choice. Implement materia that allows you to force crit a Finisher with a trade off of crit power. Maybe a materia that increases resource gen for job gauges.

These changes i feel would go a long way in making melding feel way better than it currently does.

Also please remove this weird 2 minute burst window meta and rework speed stats to be more akin to haste to allow us to lower our Cooldown timers. Theyre so awful right now.

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I think we can stand to gain to at least move some of the materia slots from gear to the Weapon. Which is job specific. But that would hurt the pentameld crafted weapons specifically. I don't know about melding job stones because it's just... weird. I think more weapon meld slots would be good though most jobs already meld for DH/CRIT/DET so if we have at least 5 meld slots on weapons we can help work out Skill Speed and Spell Speed stuff.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

This is a topic that I think a lot of people don't fully grasp unless you've played certain expansions of WoW or, FAR more relevant, FFXI. They can absolutely better adjust substats in this game currently to give it a kick to make it feel more impactful, but it'll ultimately result in similar complaints down the road. When we talk substats and wanting something truly noticeable and impacting, we're going to be discussing convoluted stats based on mathematical formulas and self adjustment (e.g. diminishing returns or even negative returns for overdoing a stat).

At some point, it'll be inevitable that we're going to be talking horizontal gear progression and possibly removing gear lock during combat, akin to how swapping gear works in FFXI. Those are two completely game altering functions tied to the purpose of stats for this game and I really doubt the XIV community is going to like what such drastic changes actually means. For example, I'd wager a ton of players will not like the fact that they won't find much reason to do Savage raids because the new gear lacks specific substats their BiS stat formulas require and they have to use gear from previous raids (e.g. current xpac or possibly even old ones). That is just how horizontal gear works.

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That's assuming the stats are on gear in the first place. I don't think the armory chest would be able to handle multiple sets of gear for multiple jobs, so it may be necessary to move "progression" away from gear and levels and into an expansion-tied AA system of some sort. The upside is if your gear is flat at the new cap, we can have some sort of 75 era here where you can bounce between post-Endwalker expansions at will, almost like they're self-contained adventures. You might be level 10 in expansion 8, but only level 5 in expansion 7 -- this would translate to being able to farm savage in Expansion 8 but still be working your way through the MSQ in Expansion 7.

Similar to how a player that just unlocked Eureka nowadays is kind of weak in Eureka, even though they might have already cleared Endwalker.

Incentivizing this might be tricky, since the constant boom-bust crafting and raid cycle might freeze if things aren't handled carefully. I have no idea how it could be done, but it seems a heck of a lot more appealing to "get past the tutorial" of the MSQ, then go off on your own adventures in a post-expansion of your choice.

"People will come up with a META" never was and should never be an argument. Every game with any degree of player choice has a META. The industry would be a complete bore if every company had this fear the average XIV player has of flexible setups or character choice.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

"People will come up with a META" never was and should never be an argument. Every game with any degree of player choice has a META. The industry would be a complete bore if every company had this fear the average XIV player has of flexible setups or character choice.

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True, but the other side of the coin is an entrenched meta needs to be broken. The old XIV meta was garbage for players that weren't running a meta job. See also: Machinist.

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Originally Posted by vanaii

True, but the other side of the coin is an entrenched meta needs to be broken. The old XIV meta was garbage for players that weren't running a meta job. See also: Machinist.

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The XIV setup is worse for this because, since there's no choice in anything and no utility of note, damage is the only thing that matters. Take, for example, Classic WoW currently. Tons of non-meta, non-chart topping classes are taken because they offer unique buffs and perks to the raid, encouraging a diverse setup.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

The XIV setup is worse for this because, since there's no choice in anything and no utility of note, damage is the only thing that matters. Take, for example, Classic WoW currently. Tons of non-meta, non-chart topping classes are taken because they offer unique buffs and perks to the raid, encouraging a diverse setup.

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While I'd love to see more variety in jobs, the flipside of the WoW system is multistacking powerful classes. We at least have the safety net of the "one player per job" bonus.

I'm saying it's dumb to stack half of your raid with one class, just as it's dumb for the community to settle on one specific setup for everything or don't bother opening pf. Both metas need to be broken.

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Originally Posted by vanaii

While I'd love to see more variety in jobs, the flipside of the WoW system is multistacking powerful classes. We at least have the safety net of the "one player per job" bonus.

I'm saying it's dumb to stack half of your raid with one class, just as it's dumb for the community to settle on one specific setup for everything or don't bother opening pf. Both metas need to be broken.

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Well, you could encourage job diversity while still retaining the LB penalty for doubling up on jobs. They ain't mutually exclusive.