Here is what I don't understand about the CT Lockout

If Crystal Tower gear is supposed to be catch up gear/gear for those who aren't capable of running coil yet to use to be able to run it - Why is a lockout in place?
How on earth are you supposed to catch up if it takes you 5 (assuming there's only 5 pieces to collect) weeks to do it?
It simply does not make sense, Crystal Tower was always marketed as an alternative for those incapable of handling Coil yet to use to prepare.

Going to quote this here, because someone pointed something else out and said it much better than I could.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

True but there needs to be a balance stuck here. We want to level alt jobs but they are useless to us because we cannot gear them. A cap on top-tier gear is acceptable, but capping 2nd and 3rd tier just prevents us from enjoying all of the available jobs. I can easily handle (skill-wise) healing in coil, but I simply cannot acquire the gear for it, as my main job is a DPS. I cannot enjoy the other classes in end-game content, as doing so would require sacrificing progressing my main job. That is the problem.

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But FFXIV is great, you can level all jobs on one character! (good luck gearing more than 2 a year though, LOL)

What I don't understand is......why?

I was just talking about this with a few friends because I misinterpreted the translation a little, and after doing a little back reading I determined how wrong I was.

However, I thought it would be cool if instead of CT locking out of the loot pool for the week, it locks out the pool after you acquire a piece of gear. Design the system where it's only possible for a player to lot on one piece of gear per floor/turn/map per week. Just one piece of equipment that they want to get and you can keep running until it drops. Once you get your gear, you're not allowed to see the pool until next week.

You can put a limit on the "retry count" to say three times per week (15 attempts at each turn/floor assuming 5 floors for CT initially) if you want to prevent people from just constantly running CT, but I don't think that'll be an issue and it'll keep people coming back each week to get that one piece of gear per floor for their mains (and then alts) until they have a decent set of gear.

We consume content faster than it can be produced. Lockouts help tremendously in controlling the rate of consumption.

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Originally Posted by Zfz

We consume content faster than it can be produced. Lockouts help tremendously in controlling the rate of consumption.

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If done properly. If it was class/job based, then yes. If it is character based it supports 1 day raid logging and makes people bored and want to quit.

So... you wanted a loot lockout instead of content lock, and this is what we get?
Coil : you get up to 8 drops for your 8 member party assuming you clear all 5 turns every week. One would hope you get 1 per person but RNG you might get nothing for weeks/months or more likely not the piece you wanted. Rewards Myth so you can clear 200/300 cap and reduce your grind time unless you're farming for Philo tomes.
Crystal : you can run as often as you want to get that 1 piece you want every week. This also may reward Tomestones which reduces the grind in WP/AK. You can repeat content after getting your drop to help your friends gear up.



Seriously you don't need to be able to full gear a class in a day/week/month. Right now gear treadmill looks like this:
hit level 50 ...
probably already have WP / AK armor (il55 or il60), and a primal weapon (il 60/70)
potentially already have some/full Darklight (il70), and a group to get your relic (il80)

still to do:
Farm Crystal Tower for 1 piece per week to upgrade il70 > 80
Farm Coil for MAYBE an upgrade piece for 70/80 > 90
Farm Myth to for il90 armor for 70/80 > 90 (average about 1 every 2 weeks)

Tower still fills a spot in being able to equip your characters, and the ability to return until you get the drop that you want DOES help.

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Originally Posted by Zfz

We consume content faster than it can be produced. Lockouts help tremendously in controlling the rate of consumption.

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True but there needs to be a balance stuck here. We want to level alt jobs but they are useless to us because we cannot gear them. A cap on top-tier gear is acceptable, but capping 2nd and 3rd tier just prevents us from enjoying all of the available jobs. I can easily handle (skill-wise) healing in coil, but I simply cannot acquire the gear for it, as my main job is a DPS. I cannot enjoy the other classes in end-game content, as doing so would require sacrificing progressing my main job. That is the problem.

I see it as trade-off. You might be locked out a week after getting a piece of gear, but you are pretty much GURANTEED getting a new ilvl80 piece every week, granted you run enough CT, so you will steadily gear yourself up WHILE you do your BC runs. You will be consistently getting ilvl80 gear while *maybe* get an ilvl90 item sometimes if you can clear the required turn for a drop.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

True but there needs to be a balance stuck here. We want to level alt jobs but they are useless to us because we cannot gear them. A cap on top-tier gear is acceptable, but capping 2nd and 3rd tier just prevents us from enjoying all of the available jobs. I can easily handle (skill-wise) healing in coil, but I simply cannot acquire the gear for it, as my main job is a DPS. I cannot enjoy the other classes in end-game content, as doing so would require sacrificing progressing my main job. That is the problem.

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Excellently Stated Sinth....

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Originally Posted by EmSix

If Crystal Tower gear is supposed to be catch up gear/gear for those who aren't capable of running coil yet to use to be able to run it - Why is a lockout in place?
How on earth are you supposed to catch up if it takes you 5 (assuming there's only 5 pieces to collect) weeks to do it?
It simply does not make sense, Crystal Tower was always marketed as an alternative for those incapable of handling Coil yet to use to prepare.

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Cause a few pieces is plenty to put casuals into coils. You don't need the entire set. People were not in coils with complete sets of anything prior to 2.1. Is it beneficial to have many pieces, yes, but not necessary.

Lockouts are to prevent things like problems occuring in duty finders from happening. We are having enough issues with 4 people, take that and multiply it by 2.

Lockouts also prevent people from getting lucky and getting all their gear in one week and never showing up ever again. Not everyone joins a FC and raids for the same reason.

For example:

Half your FC raids to progress, while half raids for gear. If lockouts are removed and half of your FC gets all their gear in 1 week, you are instantly down to have half a raid group. Now you are stuck looking for more people. The process will rinse, repeat a milion times.

Lock-outs force people to come back every week so you have people to raid with, so you have a chance at some gear. Remember not every member in your FC is morally nice and will show up to raid when they have had their complete set for the last 14 weeks.

Any MMO designer or MMO analyst or MMO veteran can tell you that lock-outs are to keep the community together and stable. We pay a small price to keep the MMO community healthy. Is it annoying? yes. But are lock-outs essential to MMOs, yes and some of the biggest MMO titles and longest living MMOs use lock-out systems because they keep MMO communities healthy. Remove it and we will see Duty Finder players all day.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

True but there needs to be a balance stuck here. We want to level alt jobs but they are useless to us because we cannot gear them. A cap on top-tier gear is acceptable, but capping 2nd and 3rd tier just prevents us from enjoying all of the available jobs. I can easily handle (skill-wise) healing in coil, but I simply cannot acquire the gear for it, as my main job is a DPS. I cannot enjoy the other classes in end-game content, as doing so would require sacrificing progressing my main job. That is the problem.

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100percent right.

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We want to level alt jobs but they are useless to us because we cannot gear them. A cap on top-tier gear is acceptable, but capping 2nd and 3rd tier just prevents us from enjoying all of the available jobs. I can easily handle (skill-wise) healing in coil, but I simply cannot acquire the gear for it, as my main job is a DPS. I cannot enjoy the other classes in end-game content, as doing so would require sacrificing progressing my main job. That is the problem.

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You have two routes for ilvl90 gear. If you are grinding ilvl90 myth gear and then running Coil to replace that same Job's ilvl90 with other ilvl90 gear, you're doing it wrong.

Use one path for your main job, and the other to outfit your 2nd job.

Was there an official announcement on Crystal Tower having a lockout? The fact that it is a duty finder instance with two other random parties made me think it wouldn't be.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

I'm sorry, but I was under the impression you could buy ilvl90 gear with tomestones...

With the myth cap raised to 450 per week, you could easily run Coil for your main, and use AF+1 to gear up your alt.

You have two routes for ilvl90 gear. Why not use them both?

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What about the other jobs that are in the game, and the other jobs to be added to the game. I want experience the games content on all the jobs, not just a couple... In other games you can at least have different specs for one character. With this game you can have 1 spec/job at endgame and maybe one slightly less, and a ton of other jobs that sit there rotting.

Does not sound like the "expansive armory system" that was boasted about arr to me...

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

I'm sorry, but I was under the impression you could buy ilvl90 gear with tomestones...

With the myth cap raised to 450 per week, you could easily run Coil for your main, and use AF+1 to gear up your alt.

You have two routes for ilvl90 gear. Why not use them both?

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Because if you're wiping in coil, you can't justify holding out on further gearing your "main job" so that you can buy i90 gear for another job. When you commit to coil, you'll have to hope for drops and spend your myth because that is was your FC expects in order ot increase the chance of success.

If this was any other p2p game, or even f2p game (rift), as soon as I was done using monday or tuesday finishing cap in coil, myth for warrior, I could log onto my other character and cap them as well.

As it stands now, as soon as one job is capped, there's no other way for my to use myth or coil on my second job. My second job is tied to my character, where as in other mmos it's tied to another character. So what started out as a great selling point for FFXIV, is turning out to be a burden. As someone who loves playing 3 to 4 different jobs, I have no effective way to advance them with my FREE time. I've had an artificial cap placed on my playing time where such a restriction does not exist in another game.

The most hilarious part about people defending the need for the lockout for whatever various reasons (don't break away from casuals, extend the game, etc) is that the lockout hurts casual players and players having difficulty with Bahamut's Coil/Turn 5 more than any single group.

The people clearing Bahamut's Coil 1-4 easily, clearing Turn 5 easily, they don't care (call them hardcore, whatever) because this change doesn't effect them. They get 7 pieces of gear and 1 i95 weapon per week from Coil and anywhere from 1-2 pieces of Mythology gear every 2 weeks. Regardless of whether it's the gear you wanted, if everyone took one piece that's 3 items a week of i90 or above and doesn't even include items from Extreme Primals. Instead of wasting Myth on +1 relics, they'll have the Primal option, instead of dealing with a 1 item/week lockout, they get 2-3 pieces of gear a week of a higher item level. We're already gearing other classes in Coil and have been for a long time, I'll still do CT and lot my item per week/get tomes, but past that it doesn't hurt me or slow me down or effect the little time I get out of this game if I can only lot/win that one time.

For the people not in my situation, this is definitely intended to hurt you and impede your ability to play the game or get caught up.

Uh there is still DL. That has no cap...

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Originally Posted by Zell

Because if you're wiping in coil, you can't justify holding out on further gearing your "main job" so that you can buy i90 gear for another job. When you commit to coil, you'll have to hope for drops and spend your myth because that is was your FC expects in order ot increase the chance of success.

If this was any other p2p game, or even f2p game (rift), as soon as I was done using monday or tuesday finishing cap in coil, myth for warrior, I could log onto my other character and cap them as well.

As it stands now, as soon as one job is capped, there's no other way for my to use myth or coil on my second job. My second job is tied to my character, where as in other mmos it's tied to another character. So what started out as a great selling point for FFXIV, is turning out to be a burden. As someone who loves playing 3 to 4 different jobs, I have no effective way to advance them with my FREE time. I've had an artificial cap placed on my playing time where such a restriction does not exist in another game.

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In rift we had several different roles and specs on the same character that are viable at the same time on end game content. Here we have one class/job with one rotation for the endgame content. So by those standards even one character in rift offered what would take 4 separate characters to do here.

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Originally Posted by NeonC

Uh there is still DL. That has no cap...

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Screw DL gear... That wont help my alts be viable for anything as dl gear sucks and has low vitality and will be worth nil in 2.2 and 2.3.

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Originally Posted by Zell

. As someone who loves playing 3 to 4 different jobs, I have no effective way to advance them with my FREE time. I've had an artificial cap placed on my playing time where such a restriction does not exist in another game.

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Nobody is stopping you from making an alt Char if it's really that important to you.. FF has the job system, but you can just as easily ignore it and make other chars then same the way other MMO's are set up.

Last I checked, you can make 8 alts per server if you have the higher tier service. That's one alt for each class.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Nobody is stopping you from making an alt Char if it's that important to you.. FF has the job system, but you can just as easily ignore it and play the game the way other MMO's are played. Last I checked, you can make 8 alts per server if you pay for the premium service. That's one per class.

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No offense but don't you think that we should have been told of SE's plans on loot lockouts BEFORE we decided to level jobs on the same character? Wouldn't have I wanted to know this 4 months ago?

All this time spent on leveling jobs on the same character, thinking that is what made FFXIV great was a lie. If I was given the truth when it mattered, I may have just done that, or at least, had a great reason to.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Nobody is stopping you from making an alt Char if it's really that important to you.. FF has the job system, but you can just as easily ignore it and make other chars then same the way other MMO's are set up.

Last I checked, you can make 8 alts per server if you have the higher tier service. That's one char per class.

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That is complete BS, why on earth would we want to have to have 8 separate characters to do what we could do with 1 or 2 in other games that allow multiple roles/specs on one character.

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Originally Posted by Zell

No offense but don't you think that we should have been told of SE's plans on loot lockouts BEFORE we decided to level jobs on the same character? Wouldn't have I wanted to know this 4 months ago?

All this time spent on leveling jobs on the same character, thinking that is what made FFXIV great was a lie. If I was given the truth when it mattered, I may have just done that, or at least, had a great reason to.

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Well, you know right now... And does leveling jobs really take that long? I see a thread a week about how ppl just race to 50 via FATEs.


My point is, if lockouts and caps really affect players that much, they should just go make alts like they do in other MMOs.

Because at the same time you can get Myth and buy i90 to mix and match with it, in addition to only needing i70 (besides weapon) to start coil with for even more i90 to mix and match with.

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Originally Posted by Zerosix

Screw DL gear... That wont help my alts be viable for anything as dl gear sucks and has low vitality and will be worth nil in 2.2 and 2.3.

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Umm.. full DL is all you need to beat up to turn 4 in coil.. the only thing you need ilvl90 items for is turn 5. So the only thing your alt jobs cant do is twintania.. and you likely wouldnt take them there anyway because it isnt your main. by 2.2 and 2.3, allagan and myth gear will be the DL of that time. replaced by ilvl 95 and 100 gear. but you wont NEED it except to do the final battle.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Nobody is stopping you from making an alt Char if it's really that important to you.. FF has the job system, but you can just as easily ignore it and make other chars then same the way other MMO's are set up.

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...and FFXIV has the Armoury System which promotes the leveling of multiple classes on the same character, so your suggestion is stupid.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Last I checked, you can make 8 alts per server if you have the higher tier service. That's one alt for each class.

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So your suggestion is to pay more money to play other classes properly? Man, SE must be making a killing.

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Originally Posted by Hanabira

Umm.. full DL is all you need to beat up to turn 4 in coil.. the only thing you need ilvl90 items for is turn 5. So the only thing your alt jobs cant do is twintania.. and you likely wouldnt take them there anyway because it isnt your main. by 2.2 and 2.3, allagan and myth gear will be the DL of that time. replaced by ilvl 95 and 100 gear. but you wont NEED it except to do the final battle.

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Read my original post, CT has always been marketed as a way for those currently incapable of clearing coil to do so, meaning that yes, there are people who aren't capable of killing maybe even Turn 1 in Darklight, Crystal Tower was designed/marketed for them, so they could attempt it.

I'm not so sure that the lockout is as punishing as people are making it out to be. I'm not a huge fan of them, but gear is not necessarily the biggest limitation players are facing from tackling end game content. It helps, but like others have stated; everyone started somewhere. Honestly, 1-2 months to acquire the pieces you want out of new content is acceptable. You can still:

- Spam Phil farming to get DL.
- Cap myth are collect pieces every 1-3 weeks
- Purchase iLVL 70 gear and meld it

The bigger issue I see in the game are players geared to the nuts who really don't know enough about their class skills and abilities. If the community slows down as a whole a little and gets more experience so higher level content can be tackled by the masses... I'm all for it. I'd imagine that's not the goal of a lockout, but it's actually not such a bad byproduct.

What we have here is another avenue to start gearing up long term, with some cool content to look at along the way.

1. Not being able to spam anything worthy is a real shame.
2. I wanted to gear my other jobs (not mains) using CT.
3. Now, I see CT as a way to "duct-tape" my 3 Main jobs until I get the Allagan pieces I want.
4. My other jobs will remain ungeared (ilvl.70).

Basically, the only spammable content is to get low-grade 55 and 60 gears... and get enough Philosophy to gear all jobs (already done for some).

"Complete your weekly events and play PvP if you still want to play" shouldn't be the main message of a subscription-based PvE-oriented MMORPG.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Nobody is stopping you from making an alt Char if it's really that important to you.. FF has the job system, but you can just as easily ignore it and make other chars then same the way other MMO's are set up.

Last I checked, you can make 8 alts per server if you have the higher tier service. That's one alt for each class.

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I know the damage control unit are out in full force here but try and at least understand our point-of-view here;



The problem we're encountering is;

•Do Turns 1-5 [Done]
•Do Crystal Tower for your weekly piece of gear

-Now what?

The other content will dry up before the end of the year is out, and that's not even the try-hards headbutting the content from day one.The extreme primals, daily quests and treasure hunts will not last until April/March.


The idea of the game was to promote the armoury system "No need for an alternative character!". We're getting into the generic MMO pattern of locking people out of content which makes it useless for the rest of the week.
It's only feasible to currently gear one of your classes currently, and as of 2.1 you can get a piece of week for your alternative choice.

It's settling into the 'I'll log in Mon/Tue to do these things, and then sit a twiddle my thumbs for the rest of the week'.

How is this considered good?

It will take 5 weeks to gear one class ASSUMING there's only five pieces of gear.
Assuming there's 6 set of gear for all nine individual jobs, it would take around 30 weeks to gear them all.

So instead of The Crystal Tower becoming a viable 'catch-up on coil' option, its become another raid-lock out for vanity pieces, as at this rate you can gear faster in coil than you can in the tower, it's ridiculous.

Lets put it this way. I get tired of spamming fire 1 and want some melee and tank action. In rift I would be able to do range, melee, and tank on one character on endgame content. In ffxiv I cant, and ffxiv was supposed to have freedom of jobs on one character. All because they are making lockouts character based instead of job based.

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Originally Posted by Zerosix

Lets put it this way. I get tired of spamming fire 1 and want some melee and tank action. In rift I would be able to do range, melee, and tank on one character on endgame content. In ffxiv I cant, and ffxiv was supposed to have freedom of jobs on one character. All because they are making lockouts character based instead of job based.

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I disagree. You can, just need to invest some time. Fully melded ilvl70 gear is more than enough to clear coil. There is no limitation to how many of these items you can acquire, aside from earning coin.

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Originally Posted by EmSix

...and FFXIV has the Armoury System which promotes the leveling of multiple classes on the same character, so your suggestion is stupid.

So your suggestion is to pay more money to play other classes properly? Man, SE must be making a killing.

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http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp...0k3po1_400.gif

You really ought to read the statement by the person that was being quoted in that. There was kind of a reference to the use of multiple characters for the sake of avoiding the lockouts in other games, hence the reply that the option does still exist here. The suggestion makes far more sense than your reply to him.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp...0k3po1_400.gif

You really ought to read the statement by the person that was being quoted in that. There was kind of a reference to the use of multiple characters for the sake of avoiding the lockouts in other games, hence the reply that the option does still exist here. The suggestion makes far more sense than your reply to him.

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No, no they did not.
They simply stated that such a cap does not exist in other games. They made no mention to leveling alts to bypass such restrictions.

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Originally Posted by Shioban

snip

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Try pointing out any recent content from any game that doesn't run dry for someone within a few months. There really isn't any. They could provide 10 raids (years worth of content) in a single patch, and I can guarantee it'd "run dry" for a number of people in a matter of months, even if it were as difficult as T5. It's easy to criticize, but your peers are essentially the people who live and breathe this stuff. Do you really think any amount of content won't just be attempted to be cleared immediately? Remember how fast people were criticizing T5 as "impossible"?

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Try pointing out any recent content from any game that doesn't run dry for someone within a few months. There really isn't any. They could provide 10 raids (years worth of content) in a single patch, and I can guarantee it'd "run dry" for a number of people in a matter of months, even if it were as difficult as T5. It's easy to criticize, but your peers are essentially the people who live and breathe this stuff. Do you really think any amount of content won't just be attempted to be cleared immediately? Remember how fast people were criticizing T5 as "impossible"?

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Absolute Virtue.

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Originally Posted by EmSix

No, no they did not.
They simply stated that such a cap does not exist in other games. They made no mention to leveling alts to bypass such restrictions.

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Originally Posted by Zell

Because if you're wiping in coil, you can't justify holding out on further gearing your "main job" so that you can buy i90 gear for another job. When you commit to coil, you'll have to hope for drops and spend your myth because that is was your FC expects in order ot increase the chance of success.

If this was any other p2p game, or even f2p game (rift), as soon as I was done using monday or tuesday finishing cap in coil, myth for warrior, I could log onto my other character and cap them as well.

As it stands now, as soon as one job is capped, there's no other way for my to use myth or coil on my second job. My second job is tied to my character, where as in other mmos it's tied to another character. So what started out as a great selling point for FFXIV, is turning out to be a burden. As someone who loves playing 3 to 4 different jobs, I have no effective way to advance them with my FREE time. I've had an artificial cap placed on my playing time where such a restriction does not exist in another game.

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Bolded and underlined for yah.

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Originally Posted by Kleman

Absolute Virtue.

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Do you really think AV is considered "content" by your peers these days?

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

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I never ran out of things to do in FFXI, so bang goes that theory.

In the case of World of Warcraft, the period between "We've run out of content" and new content being released was very short.

Because the content they're releasing has no longevity, it has a lock-out to compensate that.

They're afraid of using some of the older tactics that games used to incite people to put more effort and or wait longer and try harder for a reward.


The "I can play this for a few hours a week and still progress as far as everyone else" nonsense is my issue, I completely understand it's hard to find a balance to appease both sides but currently one side is getting a sourer taste than the other.


Essentially we're being prevented from utilising the armoury system they boasted would "seperate FFXIV from other MMOs!, change your job on the fly!", but with these lock-outs you simply can't gear it to the same level, there's no option other than to sit and wait till the next week to do it.

For the most part people have said they'd like the option of a really low drop-rate in favour of being able to run content more, simply because they're left with nothing to do for the rest of the week.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Bolded and underlined for yah.

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That's cool, but let's take a look at the portion Zantetsuken chose to quote.
I even took a screenshot for yah.
http://i.imgur.com/GXEGtho.jpg

Due to the lack of content, and horrible restrictions placed upon us we've resulted to arguing about this game. Even those who are defending it are bored and ran out of things to do, otherwise they wouldn't be here arguing.

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Originally Posted by EmSix

That's cool, but let's take a look at the portion Zantetsuken chose to quote.
I even took a screenshot for yah.
http://i.imgur.com/GXEGtho.jpg

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So you chose to purposely ignore something critical, and attempted to argue with another person (that wasn't arguing with you in the first place) without fully understanding the basics of their argument? Smart move bro!