Gear system need innovate

Regarding the equipment system, I don't think the problem is the Tomestone limit or anything like that. I think the fundamental issue is that items from previous expansions are useless, and even dungeons one level lower drop terrible gear compared to the next level. I don't know if you're familiar with the Final Fantasy XI MMO, but the drop system there is fantastic. Every monster drops, or has a chance to drop, a chest with gear, consumables, or equipment. Some notorious monsters that appear under certain conditions even drop equipment that can be useful in high-level areas because it doesn't just depend on stats. The equipment itself has skills like Auto-Resurrection, which automatically revives you if you die, or things like increased luck in the chance of obtaining rare items or an EXP boost. This isn't endgame; it's in the open world, and you can start farming these lower-level monsters at level 3 or 4 and sell the equipment for a lot of money. Initially, this is incredible for new or veteran players, and in the endgame... Fantasy 14 doesn't have that; the dungeon gear in chests is garbage, either synthesized or used to exchange for seals, which is useless in your adventure. I think they should take the path of FF11, at least in this drop system. In FF14, there's no incentive to explore the world other than doing trains or completing the 60 Fates per zone. The monsters in low-level areas drop junk, not chests, and the A, B, and S ranks are nothing particularly rare, making exploration worthwhile or fun, even alone or with

I don’t dislike the suggestion, because I also find gear progression mostly meaningless in this game.

Right now, the loop looks something like this:

Step 1: (At expansion release only) : Reach max level, get your job gear (mostly free), and upgrade it with very little effort.
Step 2: For every even patch, craft or buy the crafted raid gear.
Step 3: Each week, get one tomestone piece and, if possible, one raid piece.
Step 4: Repeat Step 3 until the next patch.
Step 5: If you don’t raid, wait for the odd patch and use the 24-man raid to upgrade tomestone gear.

The problem is: most of this ends up feeling pointless.

With crafted gear alone (Step 2), you can already clear the Savage tier. Everything that comes afterward just makes content you’ve already cleared easier. There’s no real progression goal tied to the gear itself.

It would be much more meaningful if raid-tier gear actually unlocked or enabled something—like another layer of challenging content that requires you to gear up first. That would give a real purpose to the entire system. And by that, I don't necessary mean having an ultimate fight, but something of the same level of the savage.

As it stands, dungeon gear is almost irrelevant like you said. If it’s not used for glamour, it gets discarded immediately for mats or seals. Maybe leveling players use it briefly, but that’s about it.

And even reaching BiS doesn’t really change the experience—it doesn’t unlock anything new or give you a meaningful advantage beyond making already-cleared fights easier.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AlliciaCapulet

I don’t dislike the suggestion, because I also find gear progression mostly meaningless in this game.

Right now, the loop looks something like this:

Step 1: (At expansion release only) : Reach max level, get your job gear (mostly free), and upgrade it with very little effort.
Step 2: For every even patch, craft or buy the crafted raid gear.
Step 3: Each week, get one tomestone piece and, if possible, one raid piece.
Step 4: Repeat Step 3 until the next patch.
Step 5: If you don’t raid, wait for the odd patch and use the 24-man raid to upgrade tomestone gear.

The problem is: most of this ends up feeling pointless.

With crafted gear alone (Step 2), you can already clear the Savage tier. Everything that comes afterward just makes content you’ve already cleared easier. There’s no real progression goal tied to the gear itself.

It would be much more meaningful if raid-tier gear actually unlocked or enabled something—like another layer of challenging content that requires you to gear up first. That would give a real purpose to the entire system. And by that, I don't necessary mean having an ultimate fight, but something of the same level of the savage.

As it stands, dungeon gear is almost irrelevant like you said. If it’s not used for glamour, it gets discarded immediately for mats or seals. Maybe leveling players use it briefly, but that’s about it.

And even reaching BiS doesn’t really change the experience—it doesn’t unlock anything new or give you a meaningful advantage beyond making already-cleared fights easier.

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As it stands, there are fights where the extra damage you get from full BiS might not matter because the script will progress up to certain points regardless of what the boss's HP is at. Dead Stars in FT:B was the first instance of this that I'm aware of, but it's not an isolated thing.

Let's be honest, it's not just gear progression that is pointless. As it stands right now the mainstat and substat systems are also pointless, because there is no meaningful choice to be made.
Your mainstat is always fixed, you won't see a Gunbreaker wearing dexterity gear for...idk, more dodge or something, because they quite literally can't. And besides, all these stats do is either increase your health or increase how much damage/healing you do, there is no tangible difference between them.

Same situation with substats really. If you need any skill/spell-speed you get exactly enough for your rotation to function properly and everything else goes into Crit, Direct Hit and Determination, just 3 flavours of "do more damage". And even if you were to pick the two useless substats of Tenacity and Piety instead, none of them change how you play in any shape or form.
There is also no choice to be made here either, players aren't wearing skillspeed/tenacity tomestone pants because they want to, they do it either because they don't know any better or because it's the only option for them. They don't do savage so they quite literally can't get the objectively superior pants.

And because gearing itself is so linear all these stats are essentially just numbers that exist as an illusion of RPG elements.

They could be removed tomorrow and nothing would really change...but they shouldn't. I know the devs are more than happy to remove things that don't quite work anymore, but this one really needs proper fixing.

We had plenty of stats, does anybody remember Accuracy materia? Elemental materia?
Everything has been dumbed down, so their Excel spreadsheet can spit out numbers faster

The game lacks deep, complex gearing system. And I dont see any change of this to be honest. You're better off waiting for a new MMORPG with new systems and engine, lol.
Everything has been eliminated to reduce "workload" from dev perspective.