Request : In Stormblood, allow us to gear without tomestones

Many threads have popped these last weeks where people complained about the boring aspect of tome farming. Personally, I'm one of those...

So, what if Stormblood could grant you gear throughout your full progression without ever needing tomestones ?

Nowadays, dungeon gear has pretty much no impact at all when it comes to accessing content. If you wanted to access Gordias in 3.0, you needed almost a full set of upgraded Law. In 3.1, Arboretum and Sirius dropped i185 gear, so this time, you wouldn't need tome gear to enter Void Ark.
3.2, i195 drops from dungeons, i200 requirement for Midas...and since VA does not drop accessories, you're back to a bit of tome gear again, and so on and so forth...

What could be interesting in Stormblood is to lessen the ilvl gap between tomes and dungeon gear to cater to two types of players at the same time. You don't mind doing the same roulette over and over for a 100% reward ? Tome gear is for you.

You like going into a specific instance to gain one particular piece of gear at random ? Dungeons are the way to go.

Everybody wins.
For the record, I'd split the drops between the two dungeons so that you'd have t do both if you want the full set whatever your job is.

What do you think ?

EDIT : Since some people seems to have trouble grasping exactly what tome gear I refer too, I'll clarify it here. The idea is that EX dungeons would drop gear the same ilvl as uncapped tome gear. i.e Neverreap/Fractal would have dropped i170, Antitower/City, i200, Xelphatol/Gubal, i230. The goal is not to easily gain more powerful items, but just having another way of unlocking normal raid (So, i170 for Gordias, 200 for Midas, etc...), without having to farm tomestones, which can be boring. And, of course, the tome system would remain, so that you're not forced to rely on RNG drop. I don't really know where to put odd-patches EX dungeons, though...

Second EDIT, since apparently, one is not enough :I don't ask for any nerf in the tome system. You would still be able to farm tomestones as you want, this would just be an alternate way of earning enough gear to meet the ilvl requirement of the corresponding normal raid.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

What do you think ?

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If people want to subject themselves to RNG, their call! I like it the way it is and don't want things changing for me.

Basically.

I don't mind if there was a way to gear up entirely with dropped or crafted gear - I just don't want to have to rely on that. I like tokens! I like the knowledge that if I just do content X an Y amount of times, I'll get everything I want from it, guaranteed and no questions asked. That's what's important to me. I wouldn't mind having the EX Trial/Savage system for all content >.>

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Originally Posted by Zojha

If people want to subject themselves to RNG, their call! I like it the way it is and don't want things changing for me.

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Like I said, the two systems can exist at the same time. There's no reason for dungeons drops to be lower than uncapped tome gear.

You already can. It's called raiding, and to an extent, crafting. I think you forgot about crafted gear in your OP, because even half a set of crafted gear would set you way above the requirement for midas.

Sure, you need tomestones to be best in slot, but only hardcore players will fault you for skipping it entirely.

I wouldn't mind if they took a page from wow's new endgame model by almost entirely scrapping the weekly cap system.

Basically, to gear you'd do world quests(which are basically similar to fates except they aren't all "kill this amount to win") to gear up for mythics. Also, each day there's an emissary quest which asks you to do 4 world quests for a faction so you can be rewarded gear and a reputation boost. However, you aren't pressed to level up reputation since outside of the pathfinder achievement, you won't be missing much. Once you're ready for mythics, you can just get gear from there. If you don't feel like doing mythics all the time, you can still get better gear from world quests if you're lucky. With that system, you can gear at your own pace and still not be left behind as opposed to meeting a (very easy to reach) weekly quota.

inb4thisisnotwow or ifyouwantwow,playwow

Those overused responses were long thrown out the window ever since this game copied off of the game's systems. They even for some reason brought over Garrisons.

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Originally Posted by Phireblast

I wouldn't mind if they took a page from wow's new endgame model by almost entirely scrapping the weekly cap system.

Basically, to gear you'd do world quests(which are basically similar to fates except they aren't all "kill this amount to win") to gear up for mythics. Also, each day there's an emissary quest which asks you to do 4 world quests for a faction so you can be rewarded gear and a reputation boost. However, you aren't pressed to level up reputation since outside of the pathfinder achievement, you won't be missing much. Once you're ready for mythics, you can just get gear from there. If you don't feel like doing mythics all the time, you can still get better gear from world quests if you're lucky. With that system, you can gear at your own pace and still not be left behind as opposed to meeting a (very easy to reach) weekly quota.

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Not to be rude but world quests are awful please keep them far away from this game.

Won't happen. This would let people gear up too quickly and so for every patch cycle people would "take a break" a lot sooner. The tome grind and cap are there to artificially increase the amount of time players must play to get what they want, and unless they find another way to do this, it won't be removed

Crafted gears= gear you can get without tomes

Ingame since 1.0

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Originally Posted by Ashelia_Ferron

Won't happen. This would let people gear up too quickly and so for every patch cycle people would "take a break" a lot sooner. The tome grind and cap are there to artificially increase the amount of time players must play to get what they want, and unless they find another way to do this, it won't be removed

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The traditional way would be direct drop from a chest with the chance of Atma pre nerf.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Not to be rude but world quests are awful please keep them far away from this game.

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Fates aren't any more imaginative, buddy.

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Originally Posted by Phireblast

Fates aren't any more imaginative, buddy.

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So you're saying we should keep content drab and uninteresting then? Never do anything new, just put in slightly altered versions of what we already have?

Good shout. :P At least FATEs are nothing more than a way to obtain experience.

To be honest, 3.2 changed a lot when they finally made crafting gear more on par with the current raid. We've gotten new tiers of crafting gear in 3.2 and 3.4 and it seems to be a very good system and it's great for the economy. You could literally get crafting gear and just forget tome gear.

Granted the crafting gear cost a lot but this is where your FreeCompany will come into play.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

So you're saying we should keep content drab and uninteresting then? Never do anything new, just put in slightly altered versions of what we already have?

Good shout. :P At least FATEs are nothing more than a way to obtain experience.

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You're telling me about drab and uninterest and yet you want the fate system to remain the same? Actually, don't bother replying. This will just end up in an argument in which either side will refuse to admit whether they're wrong or right.

Here's my thing. I like the tome system in general. It ensures that the player at least gets something out of doing content. One of the most frustrating things in a game is constantly throwing yourself into content, and coming out with no reward at all. On the other hand, if there isn't enough incentive to do the content in the first place, then you run the risk of it becoming dead content.

The tome system allows reward for doing content, and something to work for, making sure you continue to do the content.

The problem I have with it, however, isn't so much the gathering of tomes, but rather having to replace the base gear constantly, and having maybe one upgrade to it. Instead, I would like to see some form of base gear added, for each job (AF4?), that could be continually upgraded. Where the investment for the initial gear is somewhat lighter, but the investment with upgrading it takes some time. Kind of like the relic weapons, but not that much of a time sink. Maybe one upgrade could require tomes, but then the next upgrade might need something from a dungeon (like a cloth/leather obtained from clearing it).

I would just like to see something other than the current cycle of obtaining a piece, upgrading it once, then tossing it when the next piece rolls around. And I'd also like to see gear upgrading less reliant on luck, or randomness.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

You already can. It's called raiding, and to an extent, crafting. I think you forgot about crafted gear in your OP, because even half a set of crafted gear would set you way above the requirement for midas.

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No, I didn't forget about them. When 3.0 launched, you had no crafted gear that could grant access to Gordias. And since dungeon drops were i160, you couldn't even enter Gordias to raid. What should be is that dungeons gear grant access to normal raid, normal raid grant access to 24-man raid, savage raid and odd patch dungeons, odd patch dungeons drops gear to grant access to even patch dungeons, etc...If you want to avoid tomestones, it mean you only access 3-months old content. Besides, crafting gear can be really expensive, especially if you only want normal raiding, and doesn't change the fact that dungeons gear is basically useless.

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Originally Posted by Ashelia_Ferron

Won't happen. This would let people gear up too quickly and so for every patch cycle people would "take a break" a lot sooner.

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No, this wouldn't. You can already farm uncapped tomestones as fast as you want, and it grant any access you need apart from Savage. The only difference would be that dungeon faming is RNG based, while tome farming is time based.

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Originally Posted by TarynH

Here's my thing. I like the tome system in general. It ensures that the player at least gets something out of doing content. One of the most frustrating things in a game is constantly throwing yourself into content, and coming out with no reward at all. On the other hand, if there isn't enough incentive to do the content in the first place, then you run the risk of it becoming dead content.

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For me, I'd increase the tomes rewards on roulettes, and reduce them from dungeons themselves to compensate for better drops, to separate more the two ways of earning gear.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

You can already farm uncapped tomestones as fast as you want, and it grant any access you need apart from Savage. The only difference would be that dungeon faming is RNG based, while tome farming is time based.

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But then someone could still farm their gear from dungeons in the first week and be done with it. It also puts more pressures on other players to "catch up".

Also more complaints of "I have max gear give me something to do!" and those people unsubscribe until next patch. SE won't want that.

I like it is right now, we gear up continually over time. What's the rush?

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

No, this wouldn't. You can already farm uncapped tomestones as fast as you want, and it grant any access you need apart from Savage. The only difference would be that dungeon faming is RNG based, while tome farming is time based.

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Because RNG is such a great system -_-

I prefer systems that reward effort, not luck.

If anything this game is moving AWAY from RNG. Savage and EX primals now have token systems. Primal birds even use those tokens after time. Even the recent Relic steps have been just time consuming, not luck based.

No one likes it when they run a dungeon 100+ times and still don't get their drop while someone else runs once and gets theirs. It was a bad system in Final Coil, it'd be a bad system for all gear

I can only be happy that while I'm certain some of the Devs revel in our misery, they at the very least don't commit to half-baked ideas like this.

While I despise tomes, my hatred for RNG is even greater. Fuck RNG. That said, your idea also undermines the balance that the tomes maintain. Ultimately, everyone who at least maintains the weekly cap are guaranteed to all be at the same ilvl at the end unless they split their tomes among multiple classes. This is healthy for a community overall and, in the long run, the game. Basically, MMOs need to stretch content out to retain players in the long run and caps and lockouts also provide breathing room to the players with less time to feel they aren't dragging behind, yadda yadda yadda.

The issue with putting complete and competitive gear in dungeons is obvious, and you could use some weekly token or lockout bullshit but that also subverts the idea of tomes retaining players. In general, if they had thought it a good idea to do it they'd have done it by now, but they've seen that in the end it's healthier to just not add it in.

That said, I'm all for having more avenues of content with greater difficulty to provide gear for those of us who do want to go beyond, I'm totally down for that. It'd be boss to have primal accessories again along with our weapons, or if they introduced three tiers of Raids and that middle tier being that level of primal challenge, if not just a bit more if necessary.

The only thing that should ever circumvent the window of time and commitment that the game needs to instill is putting yourself in the fire and working for it. Even those should have their own lockouts of course, but the smart player will map out where to best put their efforts.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

But then someone could still farm their gear from dungeons in the first week and be done with it.

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Yes, like they can now. It wouldn't be faster or slower, just...different

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

It also puts more pressures on other players to "catch up".

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Not, it does not. Again, the RNG method wouldn't be automatically faster or slower, and the tome system woud still be he same as it is now.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

I like it is right now, we gear up continually over time. What's the rush?

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What does "rush" have to do with it ? It's only a different method.

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Originally Posted by Ashelia_Ferron

Because RNG is such a great system -_-
I prefer systems that reward effort, not luck.

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Personally, I find the token system to be really boring after several years...but even without my opinion, why should we have only one system ? Dungeons already drop gear now. You just have to increase the item level (On par with uncapped tomestones) so that they'll grant access to the normal raid, and voilà !, problem solved.

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Originally Posted by Lewtskie

While I despise tomes, my hatred for RNG is even greater. Fuck RNG. That said, your idea also undermines the balance that the tomes maintain.

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No, it doesn't. You can gear any job you want as fast as you want with uncapped tomestones. Capped tomestone would still be higher, but you never need this to access a content. For example, right now, to enter Creator, you need i230. So, the only options you have is tome gear (Uncapped is enough) or crafted. Gubal and Xelphatol drops 225 gear...if they'd drop 230 gear, it would grant access to Creator...

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

No, I didn't forget about them. When 3.0 launched, you had no crafted gear that could grant access to Gordias. And since dungeon drops were i160, you couldn't even enter Gordias to raid. What should be is that dungeons gear grant access to normal raid, normal raid grant access to 24-man raid, savage raid and odd patch dungeons, odd patch dungeons drops gear to grant access to even patch dungeons, etc...If you want to avoid tomestones, it mean you only access 3-months old content.

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So much this, had a friend restart a new chara and were having trouble getting him to even get close to current as all the gear to enter that stuff is locked behind hunts, and his ilevel i too low to start doing dungeons and hes new and basically cant afford crafting gear essentially, so like potd is about the only thing he can grind to get his ilevel up

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Originally Posted by Ashelia_Ferron

Because RNG is such a great system -_-

I prefer systems that reward effort, not luck.

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Totally agree with this.

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Originally Posted by Yeol

Totally agree with this.

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I still fail to see how having two systems compels you to rely on RNG when you don't want two ?
(Considering that dungeons already drop gear, and that ilvl is arbitrary decided...)

Hey I LIKE the tombs. It's simple and direct and I know what I need. Why does that need to change or go away? I get it tho you're bored, but doesn't raiding kindof solve this if tombs isn't your thing? I'm actually asking.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

For me, I'd increase the tomes rewards on roulettes, and reduce them from dungeons themselves to compensate for better drops, to separate more the two ways of earning gear.

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I wouldn't reduce them at all. If you truly wanted to give people more choice, then allow for one group to continue farming tomes if they want. Perhaps they'd rather bypass the gear from dungeons, and just collect tomes. Roulettes are only once a day. Players that like to grind for tomes outside of the roulette system, might find themselves frustrated by the reduction in reward for time spent.

Personally, the only reason I can halfway stomach the RNG of 24-man raids, is the fact that I'm also being rewarded with tomes, and upgrade tokens. Otherwise, I have to pray the piece I want drops, and that someone isn't needing the same piece. Or even worse, lotting it for seals, or to gear their retainer. Randomness and luck absolutely suck sometimes.

OP, good luck.

I am bored of the tomestone system too.

(Begin edit)
However, I accept that this system is preferred by many people and isn't going to lose that status. People don't want to feel like they are being "left behind" since people who can play more can outgear them faster.
(End edit)

We are not going to get things like we have had in the past with this game. Times have changed and many people do not want to do the things we used to do. Just how it is.

For me, I'm using crafted gear to get into content and don't care about gearing up anymore. Glamour is the real endgame of FFXIV after all.

You know, I kinda like this version. You are slowly turning into my favorite poster here on the general forums. I'm totally fine with having guaranteed useful loot via tomestones. Although I'm getting bored of Allagans so naming the tokens dunno mhachi scrolls of something would be and improvement. So I am against doing away with tokens.
But balancing actual drops in a way to make them as useful as tomestones is a great idea. It shouldn't be that hard to implement anyway because you are doing the same dungeons anyway. It is essentially wider horizontal progression without the need to create more content for a single dungeon tier.

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Originally Posted by cammi

Hey I LIKE the tombs. It's simple and direct and I know what I need. Why does that need to change or go away?

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Originally Posted by Istaru

I am bored of the tomestone system too. However, I accept that this system is liked by many people and isn't going away.

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Can one of you point the one sentence where I asked it to go away ? Because I sure didn't :p
And adding another system doesn't change the tome system in any way.

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Originally Posted by TarynH

I wouldn't reduce them at all. If you truly wanted to give people more choice, then allow for one group to continue farming tomes if they want.

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Roulette would still allow you to farm tomestones very fast (Especially if the roulette reward is increased). The reason why I would do this is so that people who farm using the RNG method wouldn't benefit much of the tome method.
But yes, it's clearly not necessary. My basic idea is only to give incentive to do a specific dungeon from RNG drops if you want to farm that way, while still keeping the tome system for those who prefer steady progression.

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Originally Posted by Istaru

For me, I'm using crafted gear to get into content and don't care about gearing up anymore.

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For that to work, it means that crafting gear needs to be introduced at the same time as tome gear on each ilvl increase. It wouldn't fix the controversy of the price but at least it would be an option...one that we didn't have in 3.0 and I'm afraid we won't have in 4.0 since it will be the next time we'll get two new tomestones at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Balipu

You are slowly turning into my favorite poster here on the general forums.

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I didn't expect anyone to say this. Thanks :)

Instead of removing the tomestones (thing SE will never do i assume).
Why don't they implement others way to get tomestones ? Actually you can't cap yourself without doing expert roulette, well you can but it takes so looooong compared to a 20min run.
They just need to add more variety to the way we acquiere tomestone.

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Originally Posted by Phireblast

You're telling me about drab and uninterest and yet you want the fate system to remain the same? Actually, don't bother replying. This will just end up in an argument in which either side will refuse to admit whether they're wrong or right.

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I never said that....? It's pretty obvious I don't like fates by my prior posts in this topic, but the thing is, this topic was never about fates, I really don't understand your logic man. You suggested to add world quests to the game, which is basically fates but worse due to being something you do solo for gear on contrary to in a group for xp, and yet you say you hate fates and you're trying to turn the topic to be about them all of a sudden.

Make up your mind what you are wanting to talk about, because currently you're taking the discussion all over the place.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

No, I didn't forget about them. When 3.0 launched, you had no crafted gear that could grant access to Gordias. And since dungeon drops were i160, you couldn't even enter Gordias to raid. What should be is that dungeons gear grant access to normal raid, normal raid grant access to 24-man raid, savage raid and odd patch dungeons, odd patch dungeons drops gear to grant access to even patch dungeons, etc...If you want to avoid tomestones, it mean you only access 3-months old content. Besides, crafting gear can be really expensive, especially if you only want normal raiding, and doesn't change the fact that dungeons gear is basically useless.

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That was a mistake by the devs and has been rectified. You should look at the current system that has been used for midas/creator, not one that flopped and has already been fixed.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Can one of you point the one sentence where I asked it to go away ? Because I sure didn't :p
And adding another system doesn't change the tome system in any way.

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You did not say that, I have edited my post to be a little clearer. I apologize for my poor choice in wording.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

For that to work, it means that crafting gear needs to be introduced at the same time as tome gear on each ilvl increase. It wouldn't fix the controversy of the price but at least it would be an option...one that we didn't have in 3.0 and I'm afraid we won't have in 4.0 since it will be the next time we'll get two new tomestones at the same time.

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I craft everything that I use and my friends use. I do agree that price can be an issue for people who do not have friends that are endgame crafters. I hope they change their stance and do it for 4.0, but you are probably correct.

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Originally Posted by Istaru

You did not say that, I have edited my post to be a little clearer. I apologize for my poor choice in wording.

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So, if the system stay as it is, those who like it will earn gear the same way.
And by increasing the ilvl of dungeon drops, those who're too bored of tome farming can run dungeons differently.

To put that into perspective, this is what I'd do for 4.0.
4 Expert dungeons on even patches (2.0 had 4 lvl 50 dungeons, and 3.0 had 3) that all drops parts of a set for each role. A complete dungeons set (Requiring to run the 4 dungeons several times) would give enough ilvl to grant access to 8-man raid normal mode.
On odd patches, I wouldn't add any expert dungeon, but other type of content, like Diadem (A working version), PotD, etc...and still the 24-man raid.

They also hinted at 3 difficulties for 8-man raid, you'd have normal and hard on even patches and savage on odd patches.

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Originally Posted by Istaru

I hope they change their stance and do it for 4.0, but you are probably correct.

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I fear with two new tomestones, they'll want to give as much incentive as possible to farm them...which will probably what makes me quit the game for two months between each patch.

I'm not understanding what is really being asked for here. If you run a dungeon over and over for RNG drops, you're also getting tomestones. This would let you gear up faster, but in the exact same way as before (running dungeons). Chances are if they did do this, they'd give you less tomestones to compensate, and possibly less gear drops as well. Otherwise this is just a gear speed acquisition upgrade. Unless I'm missing something?

Do you guys skim TC posts or do you guys simply prefer selective reading? Because it seems to me-and I could be wrong about this- that some of you have missed the part where OP has not made a single mention about replacing the tome system. He's suggesting an ALTERNATE way to obtain gear. A best of both worlds kind if thing.

Holy moly. Let us try not rush reading so much, mmkay?

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I'm not understanding what is really being asked for here. If you run a dungeon over and over for RNG drops, you're also getting tomestones. This would let you gear up faster, but in the exact same way as before (running dungeons). Chances are if they did do this, they'd give you less tomestones to compensate, and possibly less gear drops as well. Otherwise this is just a gear speed acquisition upgrade. Unless I'm missing something?

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Yes, I'll gain tomestones, but I'm bored of running <insert_dungeon_name_here> for tomestones over and over. I'd love to have a clear goal when I enter one specific dungeon, sometimes. And now, apart from the first clear, there's no reason.

I also talked about why I'd decrease the tome reward of dungeons, so that RNG-farming would not benefit much from tome gathering, like tome gathering rarely brings meaningful drops. But, on the other hand, I'd increase tome rewards from roulettes so that daily tome farming wouldn't be nerfed...except if you farm tomestones out of roulettes a lot. (But that's not part of my initial idea)

If I'd have to sum up, I'd only say that I'd like to be able to access normal raid without any tome gear.

I agree that I would like to see more ways to obtain gear.

One cool option in WoW is with their WQ system - where quests have a random chance to drop eq set to your approximate gear level, and you can see what the reward is before heading to pick up the quest. It helps keep more people in the open world and adds more variety to your login.

While I personally don't mind the idea of a dual system, I think you do have to consider that the gears rewards for dungeons are most likely considered an appropriate step forward in gear progression for the minimal ilevel and content type. Consider the following:

3.4 Dungeons
Min ilvl = 210
ilvl of Gear = 225
+15 ilvl from min

3.3 Dungeons
Min ilvl = 200
ilvl of gear = 215
+15 ilvl from min

3.2 Dungeons
Min ilvl = 180
ilvl of gear = 195
+15 ilvl from min

3.3 Casual Raid
Min ilvl = 205
ilvl of gear = 230
+25 ilvl from min

I've omitted 3.0 and 3.1 because to me it's clear they wanted to (unsuccessfully) shake up the ilvl arrangement via how they did weapons and raid drops and reverted back to a more normal system afterwards.

If we follow your request and using the same trend S-E seems to want to keep, current dungeons would have to have a minimal ilvl of 245 and drop i260 gear (Scrip gear), effectively locking out anyone in the same way it was pointed out about how 3.0 "locked people out".

Of course that means they could change the system to allow for higher ilvl gear to drop but I imagine S-E would not like that either. Remember, even though 90% of us are already decked out to the brim from the previous patch cycle to get into any content doesn't mean the new players are. The dungeon gear might be useless for most of us but is still upgrades for those who are new or perhaps gearing alts and S-E deems these dungeons to be an appropriate power creep for the purpose it serves.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

While I personally don't mind the idea of a dual system, I think you do have to consider that the gears rewards for dungeons are most likely considered an appropriate step forward in gear progression for the minimal ilevel and content type.

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Problem is, they don't offer any real "progress". Dungeon gear has only effect on content you already cleared without them.

It's like those super weapons you get in single player RPG only when you have killed everything already...

If we follow my request, Neverreap/Fractal would drop i170 gear, Antitower/Cityr would drop i200 and Gubal/Xelphatol would drop i230. As for odd patches expert dungeons...I'm not sure.
I don't see a problem in giving more i170 items when player can already farm them as much as they want.

Would you reduce dungeon tomestone to 0 and increase roulette to keep the run count down for casual players. Then we could farm the dungeons for gear of the same ilvl as the upgraded gear from the previous set?

New EX dungeons: 240 gear
New Alex/crafted: 250 gear
New Tomestone: 260 gear
New Upgraded/Alex-S: 270 gear

Full 240 gets you into Sophia EX and Alexander.

Something like that?

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Problem is, they don't offer any real "progress". Dungeon gear has only effect on content you already cleared without them.

It's like those super weapons you get in single player RPG only when you have killed everything already...

If we follow my request, Neverreap/Fractal would drop i170 gear, Antitower/Cityr would drop i200 and Gubal/Xelphatol would drop i230. As for odd patches expert dungeons...I'm not sure.
I don't see a problem in giving more i170 items when player can already farm them as much as they want.

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Developer resources pending and if you follow S-E's current design philosophy, the better suggestion may be recommending adding another dungeon that allows for that mid step at the same time. This set gives 225, have another dungeon that's for 225 to 240.

Admittedly I don't see a problem with the current gear system if you consider the following:

i225 allows you access to Sophia. Win a i255 weapon and your average item level is now i230 (approximately, might need a lore accessory to push that). You're now i230 and can push into Alex normal for i250 gear which then leads to attempting Savage if desired.

The current content curve seems to be working, especially if you consider the next patch to provide the next tier of appropriate dungeon gear for the one-ilevel-per-two-patch pattern S-E has been holding. The current dungeon will also allow most people to enter the next dungeon in 3.5 as well as be pretty close to the next VA ark (most likely to require ilvl 235).

So, yeah, upon the train above I feel there's "enough" progression that S-E needs to get people up to the raid tier if needed. Between getting the tomes in doing dungeon runs to get your i230s and i240s from Lore and i260s from scrips and the gear drops, you're getting prepared for Raid tier which would include drops from Alex Normal, crafted gear, and scrips gear.

When I write this out, I actually kinda like how systematic S-E's approach seems to be >>; Heh.

So, uh, yeah, I don't think we need another way to get "current tier" gear when we already have quite a bit and will be getting another tier of it next patch.

[edit] Again, remember progression can mean multiple things. In this case dungeon progression allows the player to attempt harder content such as the EX primals and normal Alex (admittedly "harder" in the latter case is very subjective)

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

Holy moly. Let us try not rush reading so much, mmkay?

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he's saying a very complicated thing. 3.0 had 2 sets of new tomes, one capped set and one uncapped set.

you can't have unlimited dungeon drops that's close in performance to the capped set. unless you want to cap the dungeons to 1 item a week, but if you make the dungeon drops this good, even at 1 item a week you have to increase the difficulty so that vote abandon is a common occurrence (at a similar rate to Ex trials).

i don't really want to read into how he wants to change the iLvs to make all this make sense. as long as unlimited dungeon gear is not close to performance as the capped tome set and the raiding gear, i don't really care if they make dungeons drops equal or close to the uncapped set.

i also think the Lv 55 and 60 job quests should've given out weapons, so i hope they do that with the Lv 65 and 70 job quests.

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Originally Posted by Istaru

Would you reduce dungeon tomestone to 0 and increase roulette to keep the run count down for casual players. Then we could farm the dungeons for gear of the same ilvl as the upgraded gear from the previous set?

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Not necessarily down all the way to 0. For example instead of 80/50, Gubal could drop 40/20 but the expert roulette could be increased to 120/50.

As for the ilvl of dungeons, I'd say EX dungeons at i235. With a ring Midas ring (220) and a Nidhogg's weapon (235), it would put put you at 233, to enter Creator. If you could have two rings, having i230 in EX dungeon would be enough.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

i225 allows you access to Sophia.

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Sophia EX requires i235. Without any tome gear, you don't have access to anything above the current EX dungeon, even with a Nidhogg's weapon.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

The current dungeon will also allow most people to enter the next dungeon in 3.5 as well as be pretty close to the next VA ark (most likely to require ilvl 235).

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If you look at odd patches, EX dungeons give you enough ilvl to enter the corresponding 24-man raid. Why don't we have the same for even patches and 8-man raid ? Again, it's not as if those items would break any balance since there are already unrestricted items with the same ilvl, and more powerful restricted items.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

he's saying a very complicated thing. 3.0 had 2 sets of new tomes, one capped set and one uncapped set.

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Simple : even patches EX dungeon drops = 5 ilvl higher than uncapped tome gear (Thus 5 ilvl lower than upgraded uncapped tome gear).

Like I said above, if you could use two meaningful rings, having the EX dungeons drops at the same ilvl as uncapped tome gear would be enough.
I'm just soooooooooooooo bored of having to farm tomestones for years........:(