Suggestion: Rebalance of the Tomestone System

I haven't seen a proper subforum for ingame suggestions, only website suggestions, so I'll just leave this here. This will a bit longer posts and while not completely fleshed out, I think it can prove to end up in a good discussion.

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First a bit about myself. I am part of a raid group that is currently progressing in Alexander Savage floor 3. Just this past week lost a member to the rl and now have to fill up that slot. Our previous composition was PLD/WAR/WHM/SCH/DRG/BRD/BLM/BLM. We were aware from the start, that this is not the optimal setup to progress remotely fast in Savage, but we went with it, because our group existed long before 3.0 and that was what everyone wanted to play for personal reasons. We went ahead with this, because first of all we value fun over hardcore progress an we were aware that we would potentially be slower than groups running the optimized setup.

Now after losing a BLM we thought, while being a little sad of losing one of our comrades to the real life, we now have a chance at getting a slightly better composition by taking in another melee, preferably a Ninja. I'm on Shiva and good players that can handle Alex Savage and are progressing in floor 3 are scarce, so it will take quite a while to find a suitable replacement. One thing that makes this even harder is, that neither of us are in a position to switch jobs ourselves without losing out on a lot of gear, first and foremost esoteric gear.

I as a bard could very well go ninja too, if it wasnt for the lack of esoteric gear on that job. While i share my accesories with the ninja, the entire left side is not. So if we would want another melee, be it ninja or monk, we would need to find a player that already mains this class.

Now for my suggestion about the tomestone system. This game promoted having all classes and jobs leveled on a single character. But if you spend your esoterics on one job, you cannot have that gear on a different job, making switching mains hard. On the other hand, a causal player not raiding savage doesnt even need that gear except for glamour purposes, since everything besides savage is so insanely easy, it can be done in full ilvl 170 law gear (at this stage of the expansion).

For raiders on the other hand, that gear is important to be able to clear the later floors, but it provides 0 flexibility once you've spend these stones. If you end up in a situation like ours you either take whoever you can get, or you look around for a long time until you find the perfect match for your team. Even if you find a nice player that fits into your group, it could still be that he cannot join because hes the wrong job. Or course we had two BLMs before, but thats an exception, because we were all friends that have known each other for over a year, now finding a new player would mean that we don't even know him. I wouldn't want a second BRD or MCN or a third heal or tank in our group, because I cannot judge a new player in my team in just one day and say "yeah i dont care if we go double BRD, because youre like the nicest guy ive ever met". I'm pretty sure that some of you will comment somthing like "so you don't wanna take that BRD just because you already have one but on the other hand had two BLMs". This is not a thread about my groups composition in the first place, but a thread about the suggestion to improve felixibily I will make down below.

So what if we had a different Tomestone system. There are two suggestions that came to my mind. Both of these change the spendable tomestones into a permanent currency to unlock equipment. While this may have an impact on materials purchased with the current tomestones, it would be easy to just have the current spendable tomestones for these kind of items while having a completely different value for these new systems I suggest now.

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First suggestion, this one came to my mind first and I'll post it here to complete this post, but it has less of an impact on flexibility then the second suggestion.

You can gain a maximum amount of currency, just like it is now. So for a better comparison, lets just say it's also 450 each week. The cost of each item is still the same, so 825 for a body piece, 990 for a weapon, etc.

So for example lets say youve farmed for a few weeks and currently hold 2800 of that currency. That means you could have a weapon, the body piece and the legs, which would all together costs 2640. So you go into your character screen, maybe a new tab, you can pick your job from a drop down list and then there are all esoteric items for that job listed. you tick off the weapon, body and legs and your currency would say 2640/2640 for that single job, leaving you with 160 currency left. So basically you spend 2640 currency on that job. So that job now has the weapon, body and leg piece you can wear. And when you get more currency, so you go from 160 to 375, you can then spend even more on that job and unlock the belt or an accessory. And here is the catch. While you did unlock these items for this job (basically the same as it is now), you CAN decide to "sell" your body piece for 825 points and get something else. so for that last example of 2640/2640 currency invested into that one job, you sell the body and will be at 1815/2640 currency now. So you cannot spend that currency on a differen job, but you can now buy the belt or the hands instead of the body piece. So lets say you get the hands, you will then be at 2310/2640, having the weapon, belt and pants.

So this first suggestion introduces a system, where you would spend you permanent currency to unlock items for a certain job, but you are not limited to that item you just bought, you can switch around your currency on that job to fill in spots you want atm.

(I'll talk about balancing at the end of this post)

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Second suggestion, this one addresses the flexibilty in the raid environment.

The idea is the same as for above, but instead of unlocking item slots for a single job which you can swap around, you unlock a single fixed slot for all your jobs (battle jobs).

Example: You farmed for weeks and you have now 2800 currency. You get the weapon, body and legs slot. You now have these 3 ilvl 200 pieces on all your lvl 60 jobs available.
This will enable you to switch to a different job without losing all those stones youve farmed these last weeks. So in my case I could go ninja without losing my body, legs and weapon and it enables us to look for a bard too, instead of just another melee (for a better raid setup). So after buying these three slots i end up having only 160 currency left, no way to get it back, but i permanently unlocked the ilvl 200 gear for these 3 slots on all jobs.

The reason why I suggest this is: it doesnt really matter for the broad masses. I say let them have all that gear on all jobs, they play one causally, they play the others casually, and its decent enough to clear alexander normal. Savage isnt for the braod masses and those that raid there should be able to have a bit more flexibility in their raid composition. For example that PLD bashing in the last weeks. Most progress groups take a DRK/WAR combo, simply because in terms of dps while still having mitigation, the PLD is worse than the other two tanks. Having this system of unlocking would enable every PLD to go DRK if they chose to do so.

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Now about balancing. My first suggestion definitely is pretty unbalanced, and i also only mentioned it here for good measure, its stil something to discuss, although i don't find it that good either, but it gives a good impression on how an unlock system would work.

Having items "unlocked" means that with the current raid of tomestone gain and item cost, one would unlock everything in a short time. I think we need 6000 stones for all slots, so around 14 weeks. Whats important to take into account is:

1. the next gear is 6 months away
2. getting to many pieces fast would make savage easier too fast

So to balance this unlocking system in my second suggestion, the maximum amount of currency earned to unlock slots would need to be reduced. If we get 300 each week it would take us 4 weeks to get a weapon, 3 weeks for a big piece, 2 weeks for any other pieces (not counting the left over currency now) and all in all 20 weeks for all slots. 20 weeks are 5 months, so one month before the next patch you would have all slots for all battle classes unlocked, but only ilvl 200. I think that is still a good time table in terms of ilvl gain for the raid and item gain over the cource of one gear cycle.

Now the gear can be upgraded again and for this I didnt think of a suitable system yet. But loot from alex savage is still ilvl 210 and if you get a drop, then its still the same as it is now, for a single job (or more, depending on the class and item), but no unlock for an ilvl 210 slot. That means that if you unlock the ilvl 200 currency belt and the ilvl 210 drops, you can wear the 210 for the increase of stats but you will not get any other benefit from having that currency slot unlocked. So just like now, if you have the belt and get a drop, you put the belt away until you can upgrade it to 210 and the stats are better again. So this unlock system works just fine with the current loot system in savage. As for upgrading the unlocked slots:

1. You upgrade a slot, getting 210 for all jobs
2. You upgrade a slot for a single job, giving more balance.

But I havent out more thought into this at the moment.
So with the lowered currency gain, the raid should still take quite a while to be cleared, so I dont think the balancing of that is affected too much. The basis of this concept is flexibility in chosing your party setup in the middle of a gear cycle. Youre not forced to be playing a single job, if you have mastered more than one then feel free to swap around without losing out on weeks of gear (except drops from savage maybe or upgraded items, but a baseline of ilvl 200 is still better than 190).

This concludes my suggestion about a different tomestone system. While I am but a single person, theres no way I can think of all possible ways how this could be abused or is imbalanced, so feel free to leave your comments. I hope I didn't forget to mention something.

Esoteric will be the next Law in no time at all, and you don't need to clear Savage now, this instant, just because it's there. The current tome system ensures the top end and the bottom end of the endgame player base don't drift too far apart, and throttles progression to a rate that almost fits overall progression.

Changing it so everyone can do everything, optimally, instantly, will just lead to a loss of subscription fees, and a negative long-term prognosis for the game.

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Originally Posted by Amberyl

Changing it so everyone can do everything, optimally, instantly,

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It nowhere says instantly. its still limited by time, it just gives the option to switch around. and as you said once the eso cap is gone you can have every single piece on every job and by then theres the new raid with higher gear requirement. it doesnt affect casuals in any way and once the new tomestones are out no ones cares about esos anymore. and like i said you dont even need eso gear for the current content except savage which will be obsolete once esos are uncapped. I can do alex normal with any class in the min ilvl required and all it takes are a few dungeon runs to get a complete set of law gear. right now im at 2k law, having 4 classes fully geared and dont know what to do with law anymore. I can freely go into normal mode with whatever class i want as long as i have ilvl 170, but getting a few ilvl 200 pieces to progress in a alex savage is impossible wihtout weeks of farming. so having the option to switch classe swould be a huge QoL improvement.

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Originally Posted by KihraJhin

its still limited by time, it just gives the option to switch around.

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Not by enough, no. One group hits the world first with optimal make-up, everyone else can immediately replicate, if they've put the time in to level their alt classes. Savage should not be on farm before the next chunk of content is out.

Sorry, it's a patience thing. There's no requirement for you to have finished it yet. There's a desire, sure, but there's no need, and no pressure, other than that you and your group put on yourselves.

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Originally Posted by Amberyl

Not by enough, no. One group hits the world first with optimal make-up, everyone else can immediately replicate, if they've put the time in to level their alt classes. Savage should not be on farm before the next chunk of content is out.

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You fail to understand the situation in which this would be used. Just because on makeup is the best doesnt mean that its easy finding players that can play their class good. the best setup was known even before savage was cleared and even having the best setup does not guarantee a kill at this point. but if you have one slot open and want to fill it but cannot find a player, why not give the option to have one switch in the team so you can take the player to fill your spot.

edit: so lets say you have a melee spot open, so you can look for 2 jobs. What if your whm can play a really good ninja. If he could swap to ninja without losing out on tomestone gear, you could then go look for a melee or a whm (or ast if the partner is e.g. sch). He would lose his ilvl 210 savage pieces but still have a baseline of ilvl 200 gear which he had on his heal. its still a dps loss in terms of gear but its not so huge as it is now, since in savage you need every piece you can get. but that would still be better taking another heal instead of looking for a melee for 3 weeks.

ff14 promoted having all jobs on one char, but every job except one is useless in endgame because of the gear restriction. the only time you can freely use them all in the latest endgame is when that endgame isnt endgame anymore.

This is why I don't have any interest in leveling a second job. I have Summoner geared, I'm still gearing it, and I'm not splitting my esos to another job. I could level MCH or MNK, but lack of top gear going to those jobs instantly talks me out of it. I don't see the point of having a second DPS job leveled if I'm never going to bring it to anything because it's going to do less DPS than my geared DPS job. And God knows the party finder groups for something like Bismarck Extreme need all the DPS they can get, so I don't really feel like bringing anything but my best into content.

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Originally Posted by KihraJhin

You fail to understand the situation in which this would be used.

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No, I don't think I do. You open your post with dismay that you've lost a player due to having a non-optimal group, and struggling to progress because of that. You then suggest a system which would have avoided that.

While you have my sympathies for the trouble within your social group, that's no reason to realign the premium tomes before their capped era is up.

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Originally Posted by Amberyl

No, I don't think I do. You open your post with dismay that you've lost a player due to having a non-optimal group, and struggling to progress because of that. You then suggest a system which would have avoided that.

While you have my sympathies for the trouble within your social group, that's no reason to realign the premium tomes before their capped era is up.

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1. we didnt lose him because we were non-optimal, his work load in rl is spiking atm
2. since were rebuilding, and since savage IS the hardest content in the game so far, why not go with a better make up than before (i think i mentioned this in my post, i was sure someonne would bring up this petty reason)
3. i never stated it should change now, it can very well be rebalanced when the eso time is over. no one would rebalance current content to such a degree, common sense pls.

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Originally Posted by KihraJhin

1. we didnt lose him because we were non-optimal, his work load in rl is spiking atm

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Fraid that's not how your OP came across. Without being too flippant, the td:lr when I read it was, 'we're failing because we're non-optimal, we lost a guy because: impatience, suggestion - we should be able to switch when we want.'

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Originally Posted by Amberyl

Fraid that's not how your OP came across. '

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oh youre right, reread it and i shouldve worded it differently. nah we were a tightknit group that values rl over the game, so not raiding from time to time wasnt an issue.

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Originally Posted by KihraJhin

oh youre right, reread it and i shouldve worded it differently. nah we were a tightknit group that values rl over the game, so not raiding from time to time wasnt an issue.

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Good luck with the altered group composition.

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Originally Posted by KihraJhin

On the other hand, a causal player not raiding savage doesnt even need that gear except for glamour purposes, since everything besides savage is so insanely easy, it can be done in full ilvl 170 law gear (at this stage of the expansion).

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I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

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Originally Posted by Moonleg

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

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i never said that causlas shouldnt get higher ilvl gear, just that current causal content (everything besides savage) is already laughable easy, unless you dont bring the skill. and even then with enough time passed the gear will outbalance the missing skill making it easy even for those. the only place you need gear and skill even when youre fully 210 is savage. thats a fact no one can deny. ive seen ppl wipe to alex 1 nomal with ilvl 200 weapons, which is almost impossible if you remotely play your class well, the thing is 80% of the player cant do that, thats why at some point they get the ilvl 210 stuff without raiding. and im totally fine with that and nothing i said or suggested int he first post says otherwise. causals can be casual but that doesnt mean we couldnt get a bit of flexibility when raiding savage.

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Originally Posted by Moonleg

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

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It doesn't "just barely" get you through content. In most cases, it's more than is needed to progress with ease in everything but the hardest of hard content.

My old static cleared T9 in a mix of i110/i120 gear and i110/i115 weapons and that was enough to only get us 3 or 4 meteors, which is well under the 6 maximum that you need to be able to get to pass the DPS check.

If you can't meet non-cutting edge content DPS checks in anything less than the highest level of gear, the problem isn't not having "good enough" gear.

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Originally Posted by Moonleg

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

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Like has been said 'just barely get through content' isn't really the case ^^; That would be a full set of non-upgraded Law gear. That gear would "just barely" get you through Alex Normal, which is considered the 'casual' raid. Of course, just because us 'casuals' don't at the moment have much of a chance of beating Alex Savage doesn't mean we won't try to upgrade as quickly as we find possible (depending on how much online time one has, and how much drive at doing pve stuff one has, since some are more concerned with glamour and/or crafting and/or gathering).

But you seem to have missed where OP isn't trying to make the argument that "this should only be for hardcore raiders, not for casual players" -- they're rather making the argument that because getting the top gear matters less for casual players in terms of stats and durability (due to not having to beat the DPS checks and survive/recover from tanksplatters in Alex Savage), it shouldn't really matter to raiders if casuals gear up the capped tome gear for all jobs as quickly as is now done for one job. Raiders will still be the ones with the upgraded versions (and Alex Savage drops) until they relax that limit with the release of the next raid tier, and make the upgrade items available through non-raid means. At least that's how I interpreted what they said.
(And also, like OP said, because for many casual players, the important part is what the armour looks like, and why limit glamour to a slow grind, locking each job behind months of tomestone gathering?)


Personally, I don't quite agree with the "character screen method" described, and not quite with the second either. But I do think that they should allow some kind of "refund" system where you can return tome gear (at least for the capped currency) and get tomes back for it. Not the full price, because that would clearly favour raiders, who could then return gear after they get Alex Savage drops for that part and not 'lose' any raid capability. But, say, 50% back. It would still make it a lot easier to switch main job than it is now. (Not sure how it would work with upgraded tome gear... But my guess is that upgraded wouldn't be included if SE decided to implement something along these lines. At least not at first.)

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Originally Posted by Noxifer

Personally, I don't quite agree with the "character screen method" described, and not quite with the second either. But I do think that they should allow some kind of "refund" system where you can return tome gear (at least for the capped currency) and get tomes back for it. Not the full price, because that would clearly favour raiders, who could then return gear after they get Alex Savage drops for that part and not 'lose' any raid capability. But, say, 50% back. It would still make it a lot easier to switch main job than it is now. (Not sure how it would work with upgraded tome gear... But my guess is that upgraded wouldn't be included if SE decided to implement something along these lines. At least not at first.)

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Yes, the first suggestion is quite overpowered and i merely included it to have some sort of other example which goes in the same direction asm my second suggestion. If that first would ever be implemented in the current game, a raider would simply get some pieces and once he has a drop would just switch it out for another piece at 0 addiotinal costs, gearing him up
faster.

the second suggestion is the real one, which should go in the direction of more flexibility. i also included the background story so ppl would get a little insight on what im getting at, but i think this has been widely misunderstood. the main point is, lets say you have a fre spot in group to fill and only 2 classes would be a suitable addition to progress in alex savage (progress means now and not after months when no one cares anymore). but you know that one of your players can play one of those classes perfectly fine, so essentially you could look for these 2 classes but ALSO for the class of that person, giving you more freedom and better chance at finding someone. the problem with that is, that if that person has alsready bought 4 eso pieces and he would switch jobs, he would not have that gear on that job, but that gear is actually needed in savage. by having some kind of unlock system he could freely choose a job without losing gear. and this wouldnt even be an unfair advantage in savage, since you will not gain more equipment faster that way. it doesnt matter if one job has 4 eso items and the other has 4 too, or if one has 4 and the other has 0. because if that is the case, as it is now, that person will simply not play the job that has 0 eso gear.

Scenario A (current):
- player A plays WHM and has 4 eso pieces
- group is looking for a mnk or nin
- player A can play a nin, has 0 eso pieces on the ninja

Scenario B (new):
- player A plays WHM and has 4 eso pieces
- group is looking for a mnk or nin
- player A can play a nin, has the same 4 eso pieces on the ninja as on the whm

In scenario A the group would just continue to look for a ninja and monk.
In scenario B the group will look for a ninja, monk AND whm. Better chance at finding a player, cause that is seriously hard on some servers.

Scenario C (current):
- player A plays PLD and has 4 eso pieces
- Because of the current balancing of classes, using a DRK/WAR is a better combo then PLD/WAR
- player A can play a DRK, has it on lvl 60, but 0 eso pieces on it

Scenario D (new):
- player A plays PLD and has 4 eso pieces
- Because of the current balancing of classes, using a DRK/WAR is a better combo then PLD/WAR
- player A can play a DRK, has it on lvl 60, and the same 4 eso pieces on it as on the PLD

In scenario C the PLD would just stay PLD and bring mediocre dps to the fight, as well as mediocre utility (ok thats a bit personla opinion here, but there are lots of discussion threads about the current PLDs already, so go and look into them if you wanna discuss that)
In scenario D the PLD can simply switch over to DRK.

The same two scenarios are possible for the current heal jobs. While I agree, that scenario C and D would essentially mean an increase in progress for the group on certain floors, it doesnt really unbalance anything, since the top end groups already min maxed their party composition BEFORE even reaching the dreaded first gear wall in A3S (which pales in comparison to A4S), but every group out there would be able to adjust better to the balancing. Especially now after the AST buff, I think there are a few that would like to make a switch, but cannot due to gear limitations, unless they wanna lose 5 weeks of gear and progress.

As Ive explained in the OP, to balance out the fact that we gain gear on all jobs at the same time, the limit of the weekly currency would need to be lowered. So instead of having 4 pieces after 5 weeks, you only get 3 but on all jobs. To retain the current speed of progress you can swap around jobs to increase your kill speed OR it simply takes even longer to clear, which should be exactly what the devs had in mind when putting that huge gear wall into savage.

The only downside of this I see is, that it takes at max 20 weeks to have all the eso gear on all jobs (when goin with 300 weekly esos), it basically eliminates the needed grind at the end of a patch cycle, when esos are becoming the new law. So instead of gearing one job now in 14 weeks, you would weekly grind esos to gear all jobs in 20 weeks. and about the grind we would now have to gear all jobs: once esos are the new law Ill be sure to gear a few jobs in eso gear, but in no way that is enjoyable with just 2 lvl 60 dungeons in the game at this point. So by saying they wanna keep ppl in the game by giving them stuff to grind, they also say, we give you this grind because we cannot implement any alternatives. But thats just my personla opinion, but one which i have seen on these forum a lot these past weeks. I can only agree with the rest that does it like me: log in, do expert, log off, log in for raid, log off. Because atm there is nothing really to do tha isnt a grind. grind for levels, grind for esos, grind for law, grind for red scrips, and all of that with the same content every day. But Im getting a bit side tracked here, didnt wanna turn this into a rant thread, so take it as i said and ignore it please :/

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Originally Posted by Amberyl

Savage should not be on farm before the next chunk of content is out.

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Uh...Yes, yes it should.

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Originally Posted by KihraJhin

i also included the background story so ppl would get a little insight on what im getting at, but i think this has been widely misunderstood.

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Oh, I quite got your background story/example =) And I know that's what you intended it for, but the refund system would still favour, "oh, I got a lucky drop! Now I don't need this chestpiece I bought three weeks ago, I'll go return it and buy another piece or two!" use. Which is a lot less okay. I agree completely that it should be slightly easier to switch your main job if you need to rotate static roles for some reason, but 100% refunded would be way too overpowered, even if the weekly cap was to be lowered. Because with a 50% (example rate) return, it's still mostly raiders who would use it when switching roles for the foreseeable future (or until that gear is easier to get) or when they get their loot drop (and could then start gearing up secondary roles with the returned tomes unless they had other gear parts they still neeeded for their primary role), but it wouldn't be as big of an FU to non-raiders. And... while the 'switch role' part might come up, I'm fairly certain the other scenario would happen a lot more often.
Also, it wouldn't make any sense -- from a business perspective -- for Rowena to take back used armour and give you the same price you paid for it when it was new ^_~


A 'returning customer discount' would favour both raider and non-raider, though I expect it would favour non-raiders a bit more (at least in the form I'm thinking of it). Say you buy the WHM chestpiece. The next chestpiece you buy with that type of tomestone would have a slight discount, say 5-10%. The third chestpiece you buy would have a slightly higher discount, say 10-20%, the fourth even higher (15-30%), and so on -- up to a certain limit of course, because Rowena isn't made of charity ^_~ I'm sure she'd set a hard limit at 50% discount, no matter how much you buy from her.
The discount would be counted on a piece-per-piece basis, of course, so if you've bought three pairs of gloves and one chestpiece, the pricing on your next chestpiece wouldn't benefit from the gloves you bought.

This would favour those who wanted to "catch 'em all", to use a popular phrase, but it wouldn't offer nearly as much benefit to someone switching role for the good of their static. It would also favour the stand FFXIV has claimed to take, that you should level all classes/jobs on one character, since this sort of discount wouldn't benefit anyone who was only interested in playing just ONE role/job.


I could see both of these systems, on their own, in the game. But it seems clear to my eyes that they have two very different 'customers' in mind. One system favours the "focus on one job at a time" mindset, and the other favours the "all the jobs all the time" mindset. Could they be combined without becoming too unbalanced? Probably, but only if returning a gearpiece for a refund was subtracted from your number of gearpieces (of that kind) bought. And probably with either a lower and static 'refund level' or a variable one depending on where on the 'discount ladder' you were -- meaning your refunded tomestones would be calculated off of what your next piece of that type would cost, not off of the initial cost of it.
(But looking at it from Rowena's viewpoint, it wouldn't make much sense to pay a returning customer less than you'd pay a bought-from-me-once stranger, as the variable refund would pretty much mean that.)


Gearing up all jobs at once would, of course, favour both, but it would also mean that the gearing-up part would take a lot less time. Even if you go by the tomestone phases with shared gear, that's tank+healer+caster+ranged+drg+mnk+nin. Seven sets for the left side, five sets for the right. At a pace of 'four pieces per month', that takes almost 17 months to get all gearsets ((6x7+5x5)/4=(42+25)/4=67/4=16.75), by which time the tomestone has been uncapped for about a year, and subsequently discarded. Of course, the uncapping means you're no longer limited to that pace and would gear up a lot quicker if you were interested in doing so.
Buying all pieces when you buy one, that means you have a total of 10 pieces to buy (since you use two rings and would only need to buy one). To prevent people from going "oh, I'll gear up everything in two months, then unsubscribe until the next raid tier is released four months from now", you'd have to set the weekly cap so low it would take longer to gear up one job than it does now (like you mentioned), but this would in itself be detrimental and only delay further those 'semi-raiders' who want to do the extreme raid but need a bit more gear to do so since they can't push their DPS as hard as the hardcore raiders ^^;


I'm totally rambling, so feel free to poke holes in my badly puzzled-together logic =D

My only problem with the current Eso gear is that the augmentation items needed to make it dyeable are only dropped by Savage Raid. I don't like hardcore content at all, and I really want to dye my equipment. I don't care if the people get better stats when upgrading, but dyeing gear should be for everyone.

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

My only problem with the current Eso gear is that the augmentation items needed to make it dyeable are only dropped by Savage Raid. I don't like hardcore content at all, and I really want to dye my equipment. I don't care if the people get better stats when upgrading, but dyeing gear should be for everyone.

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I agree ^^; Of course, the upgrade items will (if they follow previous methods) be available outside of Alex Savage at a later time. Whether that's 3.1, 3.15 or 3.2 -- or even later -- we of course have no clue =/
In a way, I can see how they probably meant for it to be something to strive for even for non-raiders, since a lot more people are interested in glamours (and thus dyeing) than are interested in going into savage raids against all odds. (My guesstimate; your opinion may vary.) If the base gear was dyeable, one might ask why people less interested in the stats would bother with those pesky upgrade items even after they make them available. I suppose it's also a handy way to tell the difference between upgraded and non-upgraded at a quick glance.
A slightly more cynical side of me is guessing it was equally due to thus having a convenient excuse as to why they didn't make the old tomestone sets dyeable. Except they did just that with the Darklight sets. All the other tomestone sets have been made dyeable through upgrades, including the i90 through the convoluted means of 'augmenting' our i50/55 AF gear with the ability to accept dyes (and at the same time making our armoires unable to accept those augmented versions).

Cutting my rambling short here, cos... yeah. It's getting ridiculous xD

TL;DR - I agree, dyeing should be available to everyone (who has done the dyeing quest). All dungeon/raid gear should be dyeable, as well ;_; (Looking at you, High Allagan/Dreadwyrm sets...)