Pink aetherial items were good, actually

Okay, before you judge the thread by its title, let's talk a bit about the history of pink items, and how they were either relatively underused or even misused first.

Vanilla ARR Aetherial gear

Pink items in vanilla ARR are fixed items with semi randomized substats and come with the "aetherial" prefix. I call them semi rng substats because they seem to follow relatively strict distribution, not going overboard or too low, and overall prove similar to the rest of the loot.

-> Those are still in the game but don't bring anything much different from normal loot. Even before, they didn't bring anything much beyond their semi rng substats and their base, fixed appearance, which in my opinion, has been greatly underused. On the other hand, you constantly change gear when leveling up as you get better stuff, so I'm not sure there is much to do with that as a concept beyond introducing the notion of crappy loot and superior loot, which would only last a little shorter or longer until the next few dungeons... Still, I find it interesting enough not to glance over it.

Diadem 1.0 pink gear

https://i.imgur.com/JbaBFsk.png
https://i.imgur.com/gOlwkHZ.png

Pink items in old Diadem v1.0 were item lvl210 loot with rng substats, where stat variance was a lot more freeform and could prove superior to identical normal i210 tome gear, or be actually much inferior depending on how many substats points you'd get on them. They mostly dropped from the hard version of Diadem from gold chests.

Obviously harder to obtain and extremely subject to rng, those items were literally competing with augmented tome gear and savage gear of 3.0 (outside of savage weapons of i215) with a possibility to be better, or worse. Diadem was the first exploratory area and served as the base for Eureka and Bozja in the later expansions, with various area mechanics, spawning NMs watching over bronze/silver/gold chests (i150, i180 and i210 pink randomized gear with rng appearance as well).

-> I actually do think that there was a lot of potential behind those items. We actually used to see a lot of people walking around with pink items here and there in their equipment and I do feel it was great for many, many reasons:

- They offered gearing alternatives, which this game cruelly lacks, especially for casual players that are stuck with tomes as the only option (because alliance raid gear or bozjan gear is inferior).
- They didn't make high end raid gear obsolete since the item level was equivalent, and since Diadem came out in 3.1, casuals just gained a slow access to augmented tome (i210) with Alliance raids augments, and Gordias was already 4 months old and raiders were already on their BiS for a while. In fact, I do think it was cool to shake the bis a bit more and provide opportunities for raiders playing the more midcore Diadem to meagerly improve their builds and customize them with unique rng items. Imagine suddenly breaking new thresholds of speed BLM just for the memes, or actually getting surprising results in the old raids that came in the previous patch? You know, once those raids become less serious and the competition is over for long, why not have a little fun with this?
- This offered a lot of replayability for players that wanted to invest time in the game. You could always try to gamble a bit and try to get better items here and there, or for other jobs, which wasn't tied to the tomestone cap. Extremely good for player retention, but unfortunately Diadem proved to be a disaster in terms of gameplay. Still, imagine this system with an actually engaging exploratory zone?

Diadem 2.0 pink gear

https://i.imgur.com/DQN2Q9X.png

Pink items in old Diadem v2.0 were exclusively weapons of ilvl 280 gated behind the infamous emergency missions. They had better item level than savage weapons (i275), but their rng substat distirbution in the fashion of Diadem 1.0 could make them worse, or way better, depending.

-> This went a little overboard and caused back then a huge uproar as they dropped from Emergency Missions, which were not a guarantee to happen in the 2 hours long Diadem instances (and you couldnt just leave and reset, you were locked out for 2h), and required 72 players to run and dropped a single Coven weapon in the chest, so you had 1 chance out of 72 to get yours (perhaps better if it was for your job, but I don't remember if need was even allowed for rolls). However the uproar was mostly due to this literally nullifying BiS weapons for raiders, but I do believe that it was grossly misinformed as Diadem 2.0 was patch 3.55, essentially the tail end of an expansion where Relics themselves were better than raid weapons already. Still, those Coven weapons were obviously designed with prestige in mind more than anything and I do believe them being i275 would have worked just fine and caused a lot less uproar. If anything, what was bad, again, was the Diadem instance, not the gearing, and the method to get those weapons (way too gamba / fighting with other players).

Where am I going with this?

It is pretty obvious that going in exploratory areas and having a lot of gearing options is what literally drives progress. If players constantly have means to improve their gear, get their hands on new pieces here and there to fill their different slots, or gear up other jobs, it provides a lot of player retention for an extended period of time, provided that the area doesnt suck.

Eureka and Bozja did introduce +1 and +2 gear, but in my opinion it suffered greatly from two things:
1) +1 and +2 was just some elemental and haste gains, not the most exciting beyond (I am stronger and my rotation speed loopium is fucked).
2) Players only got access to those at the tail end of every instance, which turned them into rewards for completing the instance where it made them stronger if they wanted to keep playing in.

Sure, cool, but what about the whole process through the actual instance to get there? Imagine if you could constantly get your hands on leveling gear pieces and whatnot? With rng substats and other things?

Now imagine if said gear had a lot more exotic stats and effects? Haste is just the most basic of it. Imagine non tank gear that suddenly gives crazy highphysical defense, or magical defense? Imagine tank gear giving boosted damage? Imagine being able to customize all of this within the frame of those areas? And obviously, disable that for serious content like savage/ultimates. Or even just make it active only within said exploratory zones and just keep the normal rng substats active everywhere, idk.

I do think honestly that this is just scratching the surface of a lot of possibilities. I do think that if SE manages to find better, funnier gameplay loops above fate grinding and mob farming to do, combined with this, this could literally bring a lot of hype and fun and replayability into the game. Imagine if we had rogue lite instances or elements to pair this up with as well?

Wilder effects we could imagine finding on some common or less common items: auto-protect (phys def up), auto-life (re-raise once), auto-regen, auto-shell (mg def up), guardian stance (damage down defense up on chest pieces), enmity up (on any piece), enlargen (big damage up on weapons but slow effect), haste, etc. Go wild, just don't break the game really. Essences and logograms already provided something similar anyway.

I just want alternate ways to get BIS in the same patch as savage that’s not savage itself

People always say field content was only successful because of the relic and that people wanted the relic they didn’t want the field content but nobody thinks about what savage participation would be if it didn’t exclusively lock BIS


Coven weapons were a good idea executed absolutely terribly

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Coven weapons were a good idea executed absolutely terribly

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That could be said about the Diadem as a whole.

The only problem with the Diadem gear was that you could not roll need in a random party. So when your BiS gear finally dropped everyone rolled on it to sell it for some tokens. Of course nobody was interested to grind for that gear then and the Diadem failed.

I remember seeing the Diadem weapons and being like "no". I thought some crazy players would bother but most people wouldn't and from what I could see, a lot of people indeed didn't bother and just did Savage or the relic like me.

Then I was forced to try this system, effectively, because Eureka weapons actually had RNG stats. I went through the entire grind, got trash stats, and had to repeat, eventually just settling on whatever. I didn't like not being able to plan my grind and know what I'm getting.

Around this time, WoW was going through its BfA expansion and people were flocking to this game because of the extreme RNG for their version of gear progression, where they'd go through a huge grind just to get nothing good and have to restart, while others did not. They were done and they seemed miserable. This was ages before all the media came out about Blizzard too. SE probably saw what was happening over there and stopped the RNG going forward.

I came from WoW a few years ago and I currently only play ffxiv to socialize and be creative with Housing Design. But I might as well mention some of the things that prevent me from enjoying pve in this game and led me to not commit to it. It starts off with itemization and how in all my experience of leveling and doing msq and dungeons. Gear feels ineffective. Tbh it feels like gear doesn't exist or stats don't matter. Even in WoW, gear gets replaced every few patches / expansions, but at least in WoW, when you gain +15 agility, you can see your crit chance go up from 31% to 33% or something, and Trinkets in wow make for some very satisfying gameplay.

In WoW Classic, getting a rare epic world drop feels amazing, especially because you can sell it for huge chunk of Gold or use it your self to Wreak Havock in pvp or dungeon. Gear that actually matters for leveling, and the fact pvp can be enjoyed at any level, against players of similar levels. And world PvP. It all makes gear feel like it truly matters, but ffxiv seems to push me away from its pve and pvp because i feel like stats do nothing and everyone is the same.

The Essence of an MMO like WoW and the main appeal of it is that you can work hard to get the best gear to literally be the strongest player. Gear matters A LOT! And you feel it. Every upgrade is something you feel in combat. More crits, bigger crits, bigger non crits. Faster hits, trinket procs etc.

ffxiv combat feels bland, looks bland, gear is stale and stagnant as far as stats and power go. My opinion is that ffxiv could use an entire overhaul of Combat, Stats and Gear.

I am here to stay, though, and I love this game. I will continue to be a housing design addict and social butterfly and I will continue to do MSQ when I am in the mood, but i cannot see my self getting into this game's PvE and PvP because it feels like an even bigger waste of time than getting invested into Gearing in WoW.
Not to mention Talent Trees and all the different specs players can try for each class in WoW. Haste builds, Crit builds, Attack Power/Spell Power builds. Players have so many options for combat in that game and they all feel great. Ffxiv combat never felt great to me, or even good.

FFXIV is amazing game but if i want to do combat, I would prob go back to WoW

Also, even effects on items in WoW are 1000% more appealing. I love weapons and trinkets that say "chance on hit: trigger x effect"

I also feel like ffxiv is BLOATED with Useless Items that Nobody wants or needs. Stuff that isn't even used for crafting. In WoW, i can get excited in any leveling zone while looting random mobs, just because of the fact that greens, blues and epics can drop in random places like that.

Ffxiv has NOTHING rare in the world to find. Nothing that makes the environment worth exploring. Very stale. Anyway sorry for the rant, but i had to share my thoughts on what makes ffxiv Combat, Gearing, and Items so BORING compared to WoW's.
<3

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Originally Posted by Feathetaria

The Essence of an MMO like WoW and the main appeal of it is that you can work hard to get the best gear to literally be the strongest player. Gear matters A LOT! And you feel it. Every upgrade is something you feel in combat. More crits, bigger crits, bigger non crits. Faster hits, trinket procs etc.

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This feels like you described the exact reason why I never bothered giving WOW a shot and have no interest in changing that.

RNG stats are fun while leveling but I'd have zero interest in a system where getting BIS beyond what Savage offers required RNG procs of some sort on top of actually obtaining the item.

WoW used to do this thing called "warforging" where anything that dropped could randomly gain 6 item levels for no reason beyond a roll of the dice. Then they expanded it to "titanforging", where one instance of warforging was now +5 item levels instead of +6 but getting it would also tell the game to roll for warforging again, and if you got 3 or more procs on the same item, the "warforged" identifier on the item changed to "titanforged". The system would keep rolling until it failed once, and the end result there was that literally any drop in the game could randomly become BIS if you got lucky enough.

This was fun for casuals because they'd randomly get an upgrade as a result of the same pair of world quest pants they earned 8 times last week suddenly dropping with +25 item levels on it. This was also unfun for high-end raiders because they were stuck running everything on every difficulty every week just in case something titanforged into an upgrade. That combined with AP (which warrants its own wall of text) basically burned the living daylights out of anyone who played Legion and BFA at a high level.

And then BFA added "corruptions" to its gear on top of all that. Think about games like Risk of Rain 2, where once your run has gone on long enough, the overwhelming majority of your damage is coming from your items chain-proccing off each other and all you really have to do is use one or two attacks and let the procs do the rest. BFA corruptions were like that. Most of your damage came from them rather than your raw stats or damage rotation, and whether or not you even had access to corruptions in the first place (let alone the good ones for your class) was wholly reliant on RNG.

I couldn't unsub fast enough.

FF14's gearing is definitely stale, but adding more RNG to it isn't going to make it any better IMO. It's just going to cause frustration in the long term.

Been saying it for years, people dunk on Diadem 1.0 but it was great fun, just a load of lads getting together to nuke adds in the hopes of Diablo type loot drops. All they had to do was make it so it didn't drop gear that was better than Savage and they were sweet, if it were 5ilvls behind it would still be great to farm and pass the time to gear alt jobs. Gearing alt jobs is absolutely miserable at the minute with lock outs. This was a reason to log in and do something with actual players.

Ah, i forgot to mention that I quit Retail WoW years ago, so the things i'm praising wow for are based on WoW Vanilla, TBC, Wotlk, etc. I'm not saying ffxiv needs titanforging or any other weird new retail systems blizzard tried that players hated xD.

All of my friends had a blast playing wow tbc classic and we all loved it while it lasted.

WoW vanilla is and always will be GAMEPLAY-wise and GAMEPLAY-socialwise the best MMO. The gameplay drives into grouping up in the world. Gearing is best, gameplay is simple but challenging, classes are unique with their own quirks

In a game where gear progression is entirely vertical I do wish they added 1 or 2 other tiers of dungeons for uncapped characters that dropped gear that lasted longer but was also more challenging to complete.
For example in parallel to the Lv71, 73, 75, 77 and 79 MSQ duties have a Lv72 and a Lv76, duties that were tuned significantly harder than the MSQ ones but the gear from the Lv72 outlasted the 73 and 75, and the 76 duty outlasting 75~79. Then do something equivalent every 2 major patches in relation to every 2 added MSQ dungeons.

Or it could not even be dungeons necessarily. As long as it's not "boss arena" kind of shit, of which there already exists too many series of content.

I would like to see a return of aetherial gear, I think it would give some replayability to dungeons that really desperately need it and at endgame something on par with tome/savage gear, you could even have a function for crafters to adjust the stats.

People are so formated in the XIV endgame community that they think this is about BiS. There is no BiS in such a system. There is no best. That's the whole point.

I also mentioned the possibility to disable the system in the high end duty finder if it comes to that. There is many things they could do if there are worries about high end duties. They could even just start as a system purely confined with the exploratory zone at least at first. They don't need to make things super duper rare either because it's going to end up an exercise in frustration like Coven weapons were. Everybody should have regular drops by playing the content.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I would like to see a return of aetherial gear, I think it would give some replayability to dungeons that really desperately need it and at endgame something on par with tome/savage gear, you could even have a function for crafters to adjust the stats.

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Man I really want something like that.
Actually paying attention to dungeon gear outside of glamour.
Working on that gear as a crafter even if only to make it dyable.
It could be a form of a mini relic with gear to work on over the expansion (with different paths or templates for the looks you can work on) or just alternate gear with different stat distributions.

I really want dungeon gear to matter again instead of tomestone farm simulator 7.0.

The ARR Aetherial Items were just HQ Crafted Items with randomized 1 to 3 secondary stats, usually between a few points higher or lower than what you'd find on the crafted items... You could find an absolutely amazing random drop occasionally as you could have 3 useful stats on it.

While it is a low level item, I found a good example of what kind of item you could get with Aetherial items
https://i.ibb.co/ssysgJb/aetherial.png


I wouldn't be upset if non-raid loot became like it again, it's mostly going to get relegated to Glam gear anyways after a patch or two.

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Originally Posted by Valence

People are so formated in the XIV endgame community that they think this is about BiS. There is no BiS in such a system. There is no best. That's the whole point.

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Can you explain to me how there is no BiS in such system? there is always going to be a specific stat combination that is mathematically optimal for any given thing you are trying to accomplish, and there will always be a specific possible outcome in randomized system where that combination, or at least the closest within its allowed rules, will happen, making that outcome the BiS, all this would do is to make it harder in a frustrating way to get such item, as you would be put in a position where you have no control over its outcome, unless I am missing something by what you mean?

Best in Slot implies that there is a best for a specific gear slot. If your gear has randomized substats, then there is no single best piece that can be identified for any slot. The fact that some substats are favored over others is beyond the scope of that thread and I'd love for SE to flesh out the battle system and bring back something meaningful, but even with what we have today certain jobs will favor certain substats over others, and that's part of the game.

If the worry is that the rng formula can be identified in order to find the total stat cap and then the "best item wit the correct combination of substats" that could be generated, then I think that's fair, but on the other hand, if the chances of seeing it drop is one out of millions, then it's as if there was no best. It's a mathematical asymptote: for a single gear slot, the better the gear you find for it, probably after many successive replacements, then the less likely you're to find a better, suitable replacement. To top it of, the way substat tiering works in XIV means that some stats are wasted if not reaching the next threshold, so your very best, unicorn item, may not prove better than something still exceptional, but a bit more likely. And if some people really feel like they do need an unrealistic unicorn in every slot that will give them a 0.01% edge or whatever, and burn their lives into playing the lottery, then they can be my guest if that's what floats their boat. If I get something good in most slots I'd be happy already. Do you think people never stop playing games like borderlands until the mathematically perfect weapon finally drops? Even though they'll have already probably seen a hundred outstanding weapons they could be happy with already? The big idea is that if people feel like they want to see if they can get something better, they can and play the game to their fill, and if they decide that they're happy with what they have, they can also stop. That's what happened with Pyros weapon rng substats (not saying that pyros system was great though). Do you know anyone that got the mathematical best out of this? People are ultimately happy when they get a great result.

And then if we get more exotic effects on some items additionally, then it makes substats even more of an afterthought as long as the base amount is decent/solid. You could even get items with crazy spicy effects, but poor substats.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Best in Slot implies that there is a best for a specific gear slot. If your gear has randomized substats, then there is no single best piece that can be identified for any slot. The fact that some substats are favored over others is beyond the scope of that thread and I'd love for SE to flesh out the battle system and bring back something meaningful, but even with what we have today certain jobs will favor certain substats over others, and that's part of the game. .

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The thing is, because of how the devs design classes and fights, BiS gear generally is Crit and Direct Hit.
Speed maybe with enough of it can also be beneficial, if you can fit an extra combo in a burst window...
Det kinda just being too weak, they would need to buff it for it to give the same level of boost as Crit and DH do.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Do you think people never stop playing games like borderlands until the mathematically perfect weapon finally drops? Even though they'll have already probably seen a hundred outstanding weapons they could be happy with already?

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While I agree people by far and large wouldn't go that deep into the lottery burn, You've honestly picked the worst choice here for example. Speaking as someone very deep in the online Borderlands community through the years, someone who plays BL beyond just the story/fun with friends will almost certainly be the type to hardcore grind for "mathematically perfect" weapons. I still remember BL2 topics of people making journal updates of their journeys farming the perfect Norfleet of each element.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

The thing is, because of how the devs design classes and fights, BiS gear generally is Crit and Direct Hit.
Speed maybe with enough of it can also be beneficial, if you can fit an extra combo in a burst window...
Det kinda just being too weak, they would need to buff it for it to give the same level of boost as Crit and DH do.

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Determination has been marginally better than DH since the release of Endwalker. It's the go-to choice for most jobs in a vacuum unless you already have too much of it with lesser gains than DH.

But it doesn't matter ultimately, that's the beauty of rng loot. If you have bad stats on a thing, you're gonna try and replace it by something better. You're not stuck with a subpar piece of garbage like casuals are with tomestone gear as the unique option for their best gear, but instead you technically have an infinite amount of options. If anything it drives players to continue playing if they want. And the whole point of the thread was hidden between the lines, as this whole discussion and ideas are totally pointless and moot if the content being played is a tedious, boring grind, period.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

While I agree people by far and large wouldn't go that deep into the lottery burn, You've honestly picked the worst choice here for example. Speaking as someone very deep in the online Borderlands community through the years, someone who plays BL beyond just the story/fun with friends will almost certainly be the type to hardcore grind for "mathematically perfect" weapons. I still remember BL2 topics of people making journal updates of their journeys farming the perfect Norfleet of each element.

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And you didn't like doing it in BLs? Was it bad? Did it make any other great Norfleet feel useless in comparison? I'd love a system where both hardcore farmers and more regular players to find their niche with the latter not being completely outclassed by the former.

You have no power in this house, skill speed/tenacity gear.

I don't know about that, randomized boring stats are still boring :/

Now i give you that it would be a slight enhancement from what we currently have but it's like saying that a well polished stone is more interesting than a regular one.

Gearing/looting in this game is and has always been the most bland experience i ever had in a mmorpg, it's so bare-bone anyone could come up with a few ideas to spice it up :

Adding perks (double cast/ignore armor/multi strike etc ...) when you reach a certain threshold with a stat now that would make gearing/melding more interesting and maybe add a NPC that allow you to partially reallocate stats from any gears as you can already do when you reach a certain stage for your artifact weapon.

Adding new materia that don't do anything on their own but create some kind of unique effect when they are melded together like Rune words in Diablo 2.

So many things they could do but won't for the sake of easier balancing.

I'd like them to rework the whole battle system and make stats more relevant and meaningful, but that's beyond the scope of what I wanted to cover. Still, I gave some better, more exotic examples in the second post. I'm all for yours too.

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Originally Posted by Valence

- They didn't make high end raid gear obsolete since the item level was equivalent, and since Diadem came out in 3.1, casuals just gained a slow access to augmented tome (i210) with Alliance raids augments, and Gordias was already 4 months old and raiders were already on their BiS for a while.

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Incorrect.

Gordias and Midas both were insanely difficult for their time period, such that even by this point in that particular raid tier, not many serious raiding teams had even beaten Arm of the Father Savage (A3s). Many raiders did not and could not earn their Savage tier gear, and part of the irritation with the Diadem gear was that it made the already unstable raiding scene at the time seem even less worthwhile, causing yet more raiders to give up on raiding entirely.

I don't disagree with the premise of the thread, as I did enjoy pink gear and having alternative gearing methods, but part of the reason they shied away from it is because of the backlash they received due to adding it in a time like that. Trust and believe, when they overtune a raid tier even slightly the complaints become infantile and ceaseless. And Gordias was overtuned to a degree that it felt oppressive. But also believe that more people got i210 bodies from Diadem than they ever did from Gordias.

I mean, I don't know how to make it more plain, but even once they moved onto the next big patch, the last two Gordias Savage fights became unclearable by groups that COULD clear them due to the way their nerfed tank DPS in early-mid HW. Game was a mess back then. A fun mess imo, but a mess nonetheless.

idk if stats matter all that much anymore considering how bosses these days can just one-two shot punish you.