Itemization... or the lack of it.

Am I the only person that dislikes how linear gear is?

Aetherial equipment was a nice feature, that was ditched after some whining over how powerful it could be because RNG.

The game offers zero customization in terms of character progression, everyone with the same gear have the same stats, not even a slight minimal range on min-max, just fixed numbers. Boring.

Bring Aetherial gear back, and make it the ultimate of end-game rewards, so people will stay busy grinding the best gear until the next patch drops.

Choosing between raid and tomestone piece is fine for me, I'm glad that I don't have to do unnecessary grind to get the best stat of aetherial Genji.

Maybe adding another route for gear progression is nice. (I'm looking forward how relic armors will be.)

Eureka might change something about endgame character progression. Will hear details on that soon.

Part of me wonders if a gear treadmill is outdated design, but it's definitely still very effective in getting people to do content.

Somebody suggested a junction system, attuning to The Twelve or something like that to unlock powers and character customisation and give an ongoing use for exp after hitting max character level. Well, exp grinds have a problem of being botted by cheaters, but it gets you thinking outside of the equipment upgrades model.

They do not want to make something irreplaceable. Look at Everquest’s Necromancer Epic 2.0, EQ introduced the 1.5/2.0’s a decade ago, yet serious necros still use that item (despite it having no Heroics and literally 8-10% of the stats of current gear) because of the effect. That’s the exact situation that FFXIV Devs want to *avoid*.

They have also touched upon the “illusion of choice” - if you have three roughly equivalent pieces of gear (same primary stat, same physical/magical defense) that contain different secondary stats, there is numerically exactly one optimal choice. Make the three pieces too far apart, and two of them are lesser choices; make them too close together and there’s effectively no difference between them at all. Either way, the choice is moot, and thus illusory : either there is only one real option to take and the others are not worthy of consideration, or the lack of difference makes it irrelevant which is chosen.

Yeah, this is one of the very few things about FFXIV that I don't like. Everyone is pretty much the same. I feel it's telling that it's real hard to screw yourself over by messing up your stats. Everyone is essentially the same, and it's hard to really excel because of the lack of choice. It's kinda like having an Apple vs an Android: everything is real pretty, it's hard to break it, but damn if you want to step out of the bounds.

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Originally Posted by Etrius

Am I the only person that dislikes how linear gear is?

Aetherial equipment was a nice feature, that was ditched after some whining over how powerful it could be because RNG.

The game offers zero customization in terms of character progression, everyone with the same gear have the same stats, not even a slight minimal range on min-max, just fixed numbers. Boring.

Bring Aetherial gear back, and make it the ultimate of end-game rewards, so people will stay busy grinding the best gear until the next patch drops.

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They had this with Coven i280 weapons and the uproar was great. I don't think they'll be bringing back something like that anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by killerVanilla

Yeah, this is one of the very few things about FFXIV that I don't like. Everyone is pretty much the same. I feel it's telling that it's real hard to screw yourself over by messing up your stats. Everyone is essentially the same, and it's hard to really excel because of the lack of choice. It's kinda like having an Apple vs an Android: everything is real pretty, it's hard to break it, but damn if you want to step out of the bounds.

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i like that everyone is the same because then you can't blame poor output on gear. it's on you to improve how you play the class.

Randomized stats and gear aren't fun when you know you need specific stats while others are completely irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

They have also touched upon the “illusion of choice” - if you have three roughly equivalent pieces of gear (same primary stat, same physical/magical defense) that contain different secondary stats, there is numerically exactly one optimal choice. Make the three pieces too far apart, and two of them are lesser choices; make them too close together and there’s effectively no difference between them at all. Either way, the choice is moot, and thus illusory : either there is only one real option to take and the others are not worthy of consideration, or the lack of difference makes it irrelevant which is chosen.

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That depends largely on content design and variety. When the only real difference between mobs and bosses for example is how much hp they have then yeah you end up with only 1 choice

However if you made mobs and bosses more varied then you can find all 3 choices to be desirable for different reasons or encounters. And now choice isn't an illusion it's a meaningful decision.

In many ways this already existed in 1.0. Bosses and mobs were all different. You had miser that was squishy but had loads of up so players then chose gear with more raw strength /int and power.

You had cholera who didn't had much hp and couldn't evade anything but had a bucket load of defence meaning players stacked more attack in order to break through that defence.

Or you had garuda that wasn't terribly high up neither was she particularly tough in terms of defence but she was evasive as hell. Which then meant players favoured higher accuracy in order to consistently land hits.

Choice then becomes meaningful and there is no one option. All options then have different strengths and are all viable decisions

It's actually something I miss from 1.2.
Tweaking gear around for various content. Pushing my hp higher if my paladin needed to survive or swapping out hp for more offensive power or a larger enmity modifier. Made gear a lot more interesting

having to have 3 or different optimized builds? no thanks

I'm not totally against the idea of the ability to change itemization, but implementing a system like the aetherial gear at endgame isn't how to go about that because it is, again, random. And if you've ever played Diablo 3, you know how unfun it can be to farm the same item you already have over and over just to try and get that perfect roll. (RIP that perfect Sacred Harvester I dismantled)

Perhaps an expansion of the materia system would suffice for this, but honestly, materia alone is probably enough. It's easier for SE to balance the classes when they don't have to take into account a bunch of player decisions.

The aetherial gear was nice, they had them in diadem... it sucked... I got a healer top with +6 piety, +115 Spell Speed and +15 critical... and there's no way of knowing you would ever get the perfect stat set up. (the +6 piety was so bad it was like why even....)
It would work as maybe levelling gear, like how it was in 2.0. When levelling the stats weren't as big a issue. At 70, doing savage, not really.