Request: Culminative Tomestone Cap

Before I say anything else, I want to emphasize that I love FFXIV. The game has so much to do. Just today, I took a break from grinding to play some Triple Triad and do some chocobo racing. It was a blast. I have a to-do list of things in this game.

...Which is frustratingly not getting any shorter, despite playing for quite a bit. A while back, I suffered major burn-out and partly due to that, and for financial reasons, I even unsubscribed for about a month. When I came back, my big question mark was, 'What is the problem here?' What was holding me back from having the fun in this game I know I can easily find if I choose?

I recently realized the answer: The weekly Tomestone cap. The way the Tomestone system currently works, if you miss out on capping out any week, you fall behind in ilevel progress. That, in turn, directly impacts your endgame progress, since many groups demand a minimal ilevel, and it's the first thing a static looks at when recruiting. If you want to get into endgame, there's enormous pressure to hit the cap every week.

Hitting the cap is no small time investment. The #1 source of tomes is Expert Roulette, and for a DPS class, they *at minimum* are required to sink at least 40 minutes to complete the Roulette. That's assuming a 20-minute queu time, and 20 minutes to complete the dungeon. I've found it more often takes longer then that. And you have to this once a day for *six* days out of the week to hit the cap.

Now, obviously, player supplement the Expert Roulette with other roulette and sources of tomes, so they can get it done in less days. But this just eats up more time, and if you only have a few hours to play, it can leave frustratingly little time for anything else. It's gotten a little better with Deep dungeon, since it's not a zero-sum 'you have to get the daily bonus X days!' Like the roulettes. But even now, I'm worried about capping out (Literally Sidetracked by the Golden Saucer). I'm trying to prep for the Creator, and I've been slacking long enough that I'm also concerned I'll miss the initial learning boat due to not having a high enough ilevel.

Yoshida said in a few recent interviews that it's okay for players to take a break. But under the way tomestones currently work, taking a break for long enough is essentially saying 'Might as well wait till the next patch because you are not catching up enough to raid!' It skews a player's priorities, de-incentivizing other activities in favor of whatever gets them tomes. And this is a problem because there are so many enjoyable things in this game, but from a time-reward perspective aren't worth it until one has called for the week.

I've seen people propose raising the weekly Tomestone cap, and I'm 'NO.' That wil only make things worse, since tomes will still be a zero-sun game. If you don't cap, you are that many tomes behind. And I have enough trouble hitting the current cap, thank you!

Then someone made what seemed like the perfect suggestion: Making the Tomestone cap culminative. In other words, the cap would be 450 week 1, then 900 week 2, 1350 week 3, and so on. The number of tomestones you can have is still hard-capped, but it would no longer be the zero-sum game it currently is. Someone like me could, say, take a week to collect TT cards, then next week grind out the 900 tomes she missed. I would no longer have to panic about hitting doing roulettes X days every week. If someone suddenly decided to get into raiding, they wouldn't have to worry about being behind ilevel wise simply because they didn't start early enough.

So, my sincere request to the devs is this: Make the tomestone cap culminative. This will ease burnout, help open up the raiding scene a little (something badly needed since Gordias killed it), while still keeping a hard limit on how geared players can be. Most importantly, it allow players like me to enjoy the game a bit more.

(Apologies for any typos, I wrote this on my phone using a Bluetooth keyboard.)