Change Gear/PVP/World/Rewards

GEAR

Many players feel that after investing so much time and effort to push through challenging encounters, the fact that the next gear tier is dominated by crafted items can make that grind seem unrewarding.

It almost feels like all that pressure and hardship were negated by simply switching to crafted gear, which in turn devalues the skill and perseverance earned in savage raids.

Old Raids become unsync content or overlevel and people will just forget about them.

In summary, while the grind in Savage content is meant to be challenging, it often feels counterintuitive when the progression is bottlenecked by a gear tier that’s bested by crafted

Solution would be make the crafted gear less powerful than the previous Savage content before the new patch arrives , you can trade your already existing Savage BIS for the upgraded version example.

a Savage BiS iLVL 600 becomes a 645 when traded on the new patch content with a new NPC and the new crafted gear remains 630 less iLvl to catchup or join Raids.
That way you would be supporting the Raiders that do the content to feel that their grind is useful in someway!

Also for Ultimates for the Hardcore players
I know many people take PTO or do extra hardcore week 1 , or 2 why not reward them with something special?. we could have the Float system like CSGO if you clear the first week your weapon will have a special glow or Aura that it will look way different that the ones cleared 1 month after etc. also it could be possible that each tier or time it passes the weapon loses the intensity or colors if you choose to do the content with newer pots or gear , if you Min iLvl with the BiS at the moment you could get the 2nd month color glow


WORLD ZONES MAP and PVP could change that!
Equally concerning is the state of many zones on the map, Outside of the MSQ and Fates, large portions of the world feel empty and devoid of meaningful content.
lacking the vibrant encounters or immersive details that could make exploration feel rewarding, this not only reduces the overall immersion but also makes the world seem static and underutilized, as if the focus is solely on the instanced content rather than a rich, living environment.


Continue on 2nd post

PvP System

This system is designed to foster both spontaneous combat encounters and organized battles while balancing risk, reward, and player progression.

Designated PvP Areas in World Map:
Make several zones outside the cities where PvP is always active. These zones could be separate from main city hubs and might include wilderness regions or small camps.

PvP Rewards and Consequences

Risk of Loss:
In PvP zones , introduce mechanics where a defeated player might lose some temporary buffs, or have a chance to drop a minor piece of gear , for this to avoid abuse any Sprout or person who has not completed MSQ till Dawntrail gets full protection and cant be attacked in any way

Cooldowns and Penalties:
Introduce cooldown periods after death in PvP to prevent spawn camping and to allow players to recover.

FCS:
Make FCS really a thing that you would like those players to have ur back in case you get killed collecting Onions by a random MCH main.


will add more ideas later

The problem with some of these suggestions is...

Fundamentally FFXIV is a short-form game, it is not a long form game, and how the game works just doesn't support long-form very well at all.

I can get behind the idea of something like having an Augment on raid gear, so you can upgrade those specific pieces to be on par with crafted, but I still do think that crafters should be utilized for obtaining that augment rather than a freebie or something exclusive through combat... Having crafted and battle content intricately tied together is a good thing.. You can argue on the merit or downsides, as regardless those exist with whatever option you pick... But I do think that should be exclusive for raid gear. I think crafted at battle should at the worst be equivalent, rather than raid exceeding the crafted variant, by, say 630... As the problem you have with this is... What do you balance it around? Do you balance it around 645, for example, and then effectively make 630 redundant.. Or do you balance around 630, and then risk turning DPS checks into a joke? - Having them off like this also effectively puts players into a position where if they want to get into raiding later on, then it is essentially going to put those players in a position where they need to complete a previous tier to progress the subsequent tier, which isn't really friendly from a game design perspective, especially for a game like this where it is so short-form. Once the raid tier has been exhausted and a new one comes out; for those that have already done it; it essentially becomes redundant.

Old raids being unsync'd is a healthy thing, at least for extreme and savage, just simply because the content dies off once the expansion has been exhausted... Could you say that doing E8S for example in 7.2 would garner even a miniscule amount of attraction if your only avenue were to do it sync? The content has been exhausted and the rewards are irrelevant. The question I have is what would you do to make cross-expansion raid tiers relevant for long-form? To actually have something like a sync system. Ultimate is one of those things where it works because it is capstone difficulty. It isn't a transitional difficulty like Extreme or Savage.

----------
In an ideal universe the game should be a world zone rather than instanced in the way it is. How it currently works makes the world feel too small, and honestly it is too small under this current design to function a designated PvP area like Wilderness (e.g., Runescape)... If the game had a large enough world and wasn't segregated by instancing then I would say definitely go for it... Place drops/loot in the wilderness as well.. Can be rare, items in demand that fetch a nice price.. To create a risk to reward.. But if we're talking about the currently zone implementation, then no, it would be far too miserable.

PvP isn't balanced around 1v1. And if the idea is to allow a total freeform encounter design, then you'll end up like in eve online where who has the biggest blob of friends will steamroll over any opposition.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

PvP isn't balanced around 1v1. And if the idea is to allow a total freeform encounter design, then you'll end up like in eve online where who has the biggest blob of friends will steamroll over any opposition.

---

The biggest blob prepared to set alarms at 3am to defend sov. Yeah. I don't have that kind of commitment IRL.

Sounds like it would be a hassle to play.