A Variant of a Problem: Gearing

I'm pretty sure you've heard from influencers about how gearing is becoming a major pain point for the game right now due to how little gear we have between iLv to the point that end-game BiS is locked behind Savage alone(with no guarantees on getting a piece no less).

For casuals, this doesn't matter too much - they can go on about their merry day and play normally. For Raiders it's a different story. Raiders can't even swap jobs because of the very fact we have a systematic problem that is hindering job diversity into the next tier.

1) Tomestone Cap. The Cap is 450 per Week. This is too low considering we have 5 Roles and 21 Jobs(21 Weapons). 500 Tomestones per Weapon(PLUS THE WEAPON TOKEN) to even get that piece. It costs 825 for Body and Pants, and 475 for Head, Hands, and Feet. 325 for Accessories. That adds up in a role, because some equipment sets aren't for every job or just get skimmed over. Regardless, you essentially are waiting 2-3 Months to gear up an entire role with Tome Gear. While their main concern is people clearing the content too fast, go look at Hardcore, Developers. They clear that sh*t in literal DAYS. There is no reason to cap it at 450 and not uncap it by the X.X5 Patch.

2) Savage Loot. The Savage Loot System since Shadowbringers was revised to allow you to get a whole slew of equipment instead of having to fight over pieces that only drop in certain spots in Normal. In Savage, you are fighting over the BiS itself against 7 other players. The Books themselves are a PITY system. However, people can pity for different fights. If you can't reach M10 by Week 1, then you lose a page before you're able to get in there on Week 2 after your Week 1 M9 clear. This cascades based on your prog point throughout the raid tier until completion. The biggest problem is that the pity system does not address the gearing problem - it attributes to it.

How you ask? Same problem as say, the Tomestone issue. It's Weekly. One Clear. Let's say you get hardstuck on M11 because Split is impossible for PF to do for a while and you're still farming books weekly on M9 and M10 for BiS and not winning a roll. The gear progression is sluggish and feels really bad all because you don't win that piece of gear. Statics don't have to worry about this and it's why it's less problematic in those instances; but I'm talking about the average player going into PF here.

If anything, they should consider doing what Alliance Raid does: A Dual Lockout. One for one piece of Gear from that Savage Fight, the other for the Book. The Gear Lockout would also attribute to Glaze, Twine and Ester - this way people aren't losing out every damn week just because they get screwed over by RNG Rolls in PF while one guy takes everything. The books stay as an added tier of progression for that fight and can be used to make it easier to gear other jobs. It would definitely make finding statics easier if the player decides to play two or three different roles in a tier to make them more viable for a spot.

3) Lack of Gear Progression Outside Savage and Tomestones.

This one has been talked to death among influencers, and is harming content. Oh, what's that? You want a Twine or Glaze to come from content that's released mid-way before the next major patch? Too bad! Instead, enjoy a crapton of Fireworks, Materia, and some Glams! Also, we made a couple hard versions with no gear progression to be added whatsoever!

That is current Variant in a nutshell and people don't like it because of that. There is no carrot on that stick. There is only stick because once people have the glam and complete the content? They're gone. They're not coming back to it. It's been a problem with Variant since Endwalker and continues even now. Heck, an easy solution is simply just make people do Advanced for say, Ester, Twine, and Glaze on a Weekly Lockout if you really want to put it that way. It isn't rocket science to make gearing better the later you go into a raid tier - in fact, it actually makes people become more diverse when it comes to job gearing.

Did I also forget that Occult Crescent failed as well in this manner with the i745 gear sets with the upgrades not even helping push the iLv up to say, 755 or something during that time when we had Cruiserweight? It kinda becomes moot when you don't even allow that and makes gearing harder(because let's be honest, Relic Armor was kinda cool back in Eureka).



So, let's circle back around to another argument that has some relevance here: Rewards. Rewards aren't just glams, Materia, whatever - rewards also can come in the form of gear that is a straight upgrade for the character and can help them get into harder content with some more leeway than a person in full crafted so to speak if we're talking about current high-end. Every step of the way in Dawntrail they have failed to reward the players for their time. Cosmic Exploration may have been something, sure - but it still suffers the same "got mine, i'm done" behavior that players often do when they finish or obtain all the content has to offer; not to mention, the Dawntrail Patches haven't held up on their own pretty well as in-betweens.

Relic Weapon currently is a mess because of the reintroduction of Demi-Atmas that everyone hates, then getting Aether, THEN dealing with finding 1200 pieces of paste that I buried Gerolt in. As much as I understand it's longform, it's not long-standing - especially with the level of tedium they have gone to make sure that the content is stretched as thin as possible. What kind of reward is that for doing all these macguffins? Cool looking weapon, sure, but not a good balance compared to say Shadowbringers Relic Weapons.

Regardless, the argument is the same: Players aren't rewarded enough in content - especially High-end - to be able to have the ability to swap jobs if they so choose to do so mid-way through a tier for some reason or another. The Content in turn suffers for it, just as Variant is suffering heavily from lack of meaningful rewards. We should not have to beg or plead the dev team for this, but they need to get their act together after this fiasco if they want to stand up for another ten years.

When I think everyone laughs when I point at the single thing Diadem 1.0 did right: rng loot for people to go after. Especially casuals. It was fun seeing all those people running around town with unique gear sets with half pink gear, and some of it with funny substat distribution.

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Originally Posted by Valence

When I think everyone laughs when I point at the single thing Diadem 1.0 did right: rng loot for people to go after. Especially casuals. It was fun seeing all those people running around town with unique gear sets with half pink gear, and some of it with funny substat distribution.

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Diadem 1.0 was definitely a ride. I still remember farming Dinos there and seeing people get insane gear.

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Originally Posted by Valence

When I think everyone laughs when I point at the single thing Diadem 1.0 did right: rng loot for people to go after. Especially casuals. It was fun seeing all those people running around town with unique gear sets with half pink gear, and some of it with funny substat distribution.

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Not gonna lie...

For as much as people dunk on and hate OG Diadem...

It was a unique and cool experience that I personally enjoyed a fair bit of.

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Originally Posted by Valence

When I think everyone laughs when I point at the single thing Diadem 1.0 did right: rng loot for people to go after. Especially casuals. It was fun seeing all those people running around town with unique gear sets with half pink gear, and some of it with funny substat distribution.

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Unless the loot is guaranteed to be sub-optimal (ie. not max item level), then I disagree on RNG stats. When I saw that it was RNG I immediately was demotived to even bother with Diadem and went for Savage and relics instead.

I want to enjoy the game, not have the headache of bashing my head against a wall and not getting what I'm after even after 100 attempts.

This system existed for the relics in Eureka Pyros and it was frustrating there as well. I put all this work into it to get stuff like... Tenacity? Skill Speed on PLD? And often with undesirable values if there was a good stat.

Around the time this existed in Eureka Pyros, people were quitting World of Warcraft in droves because their BfA expansion had similarly frustrating RNG, except that it was seen as a requirement. They would spend insane amounts of time grinding for their gear, only for the stats to be useless and they needed to try again, while some of their friends were extremely lucky. It was such a waste of their time that even their top raiders were coming to this game in the latter half of Stormblood.

It's no surprise that SE didn't do it again and acted like it wasn't something they'd ever done in future expansions.

I don't mind a certain amount of RNG, but it can't be too many layers of it. RNG on which stats, then RNG on the amounts of those stats, is really too much, unless the gear is just 785 so it's guaranteed not to be the best.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Unless the loot is guaranteed to be sub-optimal (ie. not max item level), then I disagree on RNG stats. When I saw that it was RNG I immediately was demotived to even bother with Diadem and went for Savage and relics instead.

I want to enjoy the game, not have the headache of bashing my head against a wall and not getting what I'm after even after 100 attempts.

This system existed for the relics in Eureka Pyros and it was frustrating there as well. I put all this work into it to get stuff like... Tenacity? Skill Speed on PLD? And often with undesirable values if there was a good stat.

Around the time this existed in Eureka Pyros, people were quitting World of Warcraft in droves because their BfA expansion had similarly frustrating RNG, except that it was seen as a requirement. They would spend insane amounts of time grinding for their gear, only for the stats to be useless and they needed to try again, while some of their friends were extremely lucky. It was such a waste of their time that even their top raiders were coming to this game in the latter half of Stormblood.

It's no surprise that SE didn't do it again and acted like it wasn't something they'd ever done in future expansions.

I don't mind a certain amount of RNG, but it can't be too many layers of it. RNG on which stats, then RNG on the amounts of those stats, is really too much, unless the gear is just 785 so it's guaranteed not to be the best.

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The grind for Eureka Pyros Stats really sucked. Hated it for that honestly, and it's a good thing they didn't go that route - but I would like at least more gear options like we had in Stormblood. It was actually a good time because we had more varied options before Shadowbringers came around thanks to Relic Armor actually scaling up plus all the other gear that were options through Eureka.

I think they could certainly do with trying the alliance gear system for a tier and see how it works out. One positive is that it may get more people in PF. A lot of statics focus on gearing dps first. Mine certainly does. I'm progging ahead of them this tier and have a raid alt so it's not an issue, but it would be quite a few weeks before I got anything as a healer if I was just running with the static. But if someone in a static who didn't get something that week could go into PF and pick up their piece, it could help populate PF. Goodness knows filling groups this tier has been very hard. Usually waiting for one or two final roles for a decent amount of time.

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Originally Posted by Valence

When I think everyone laughs when I point at the single thing Diadem 1.0 did right: rng loot for people to go after. Especially casuals. It was fun seeing all those people running around town with unique gear sets with half pink gear, and some of it with funny substat distribution.

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They should do this but have a effect where in savage (or higher content) the gears stats become worse. (To the point it would never be optimal)

Would make it a funny way to gear if your a casual player with funny stats without ruining the Balance in actual endgame content.

Honestly please just go wild with casual content, let savage be safe or whatever so people dont cry about balance, but casual needs wackyness to it or it becomes boring bland soup water like it is right now.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Unless the loot is guaranteed to be sub-optimal (ie. not max item level), then I disagree on RNG stats. When I saw that it was RNG I immediately was demotived to even bother with Diadem and went for Savage and relics instead.

I want to enjoy the game, not have the headache of bashing my head against a wall and not getting what I'm after even after 100 attempts.

This system existed for the relics in Eureka Pyros and it was frustrating there as well. I put all this work into it to get stuff like... Tenacity? Skill Speed on PLD? And often with undesirable values if there was a good stat.

Around the time this existed in Eureka Pyros, people were quitting World of Warcraft in droves because their BfA expansion had similarly frustrating RNG, except that it was seen as a requirement. They would spend insane amounts of time grinding for their gear, only for the stats to be useless and they needed to try again, while some of their friends were extremely lucky. It was such a waste of their time that even their top raiders were coming to this game in the latter half of Stormblood.

It's no surprise that SE didn't do it again and acted like it wasn't something they'd ever done in future expansions.

I don't mind a certain amount of RNG, but it can't be too many layers of it. RNG on which stats, then RNG on the amounts of those stats, is really too much, unless the gear is just 785 so it's guaranteed not to be the best.

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I won't lie and say that I liked the relic pyros rng (I didn't), but the reason I didn't was because the content was a hassle to farm, and also because some of the pyros relics were actually BiS with enough substats — which spread to most weapons in Hydatos as a result. That's the main difference.

Pyros was also a relic farm, where Diadem was just finding literally loot chests that could be any kind of piece of gear. That's what I found a lot more enjoyable because that rng was casual and random by nature. It didn't feel like a lottery system to me, unlike pyros which was essentially gathering enough points to put into the relic pachinko and hope you get better results every time.

Remember the Coven weapons shitshow for Diadem 2.0? Yeah, that's crazy levels of bad design right there. We're talking about casual content, you don't need to insert scarcity, quite the contrary, and it will feel a lot less miserable. But there is certainly a fine line to walk there. And you certainly don't want to have this compete with savage and other pieces of content where balance actually matters a great deal.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I won't lie and say that I liked the relic pyros rng (I didn't), but the reason I didn't was because the content was a hassle to farm, and also because some of the pyros relics were actually BiS with enough substats — which spread to most weapons in Hydatos as a result. That's the main difference.

Pyros was also a relic farm, where Diadem was just finding literally loot chests that could be any kind of piece of gear. That's what I found a lot more enjoyable because that rng was casual and random by nature. It didn't feel like a lottery system to me, unlike pyros which was essentially gathering enough points to put into the relic pachinko and hope you get better results every time.

Remember the Coven weapons shitshow for Diadem 2.0? Yeah, that's crazy levels of bad design right there. We're talking about casual content, you don't need to insert scarcity, quite the contrary, and it will feel a lot less miserable. But there is certainly a fine line to walk there. And you certainly don't want to have this compete with savage and other pieces of content where balance actually matters a great deal.

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I think the main difference we need to make between Savage and Casual Content Gearing is just how close you can get to Savage. In general, I think it'd be fair to at least have gear 5 iLv under Savage and Augmented Tome Gear so that it's a choice if people are still progging the tier once we're at the halfway point we are now(because let's be honest: The Savage Tier is already kinda dead after four months, which is the average lifespan of Savage anyhow).

Relic doesn't become BiS until the final step is released towards end of Expac which is understandable as a secondary weapon choice, but I think in general just looking at the steps they've chosen to set the Relic iLv at has been a bit baffling in regards to gearing looking at the past. If anything they could consider making it at least on par with normal Tome Weapon on release and stronger than EX Weapon(which is 5 iLv under the current Tome Weapon) just by iLv. It's already stronger via substats, but they could go the extra mile in that case considering Relic is an investment and is released later than the tier. Getting an Ester isn't possible until Alliance Raid comes out, and even then it's really at the end which makes it not matter as much. The only other place to get Ester is in the 3rd Tier Fights of Savage, so having that option earlier would probably allow people a better choice on what they want. Is it bad to fight between two weapons on the same iLv? Sure; but one can be used in the interim and you'll have the other to upgrade if you can't complete M12S yet.

My go-to solution for the tomestone cap wouldn't be to get rid of it, or raise it, but to add crafted gear of the same level. That gear would require tradable materials which come from a variety of top-level sources - dungeons, raids, PvP, gathering instances, Golden Saucer - all combined. And that together with materials from all the previous expansions, so that lower-level characters and alts have the means and reason to meaningfully contribute to the economy. So if you have the money, you can buy the gear, and if you don't (or don't want to spend it), you have multiple ways to grind for them.

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Originally Posted by LeCorbeaux

My go-to solution for the tomestone cap wouldn't be to get rid of it, or raise it, but to add crafted gear of the same level. That gear would require tradable materials which come from a variety of top-level sources - dungeons, raids, PvP, gathering instances, Golden Saucer - all combined. And that together with materials from all the previous expansions, so that lower-level characters and alts have the means and reason to meaningfully contribute to the economy. So if you have the money, you can buy the gear, and if you don't (or don't want to spend it), you have multiple ways to grind for them.

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I really dig the idea but you'd need more restraints else you're just removing the whole point of gearing up and progressing if you can just buy/craft it just like that and get all your jobs to max ilvl instantly.

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Originally Posted by LeCorbeaux

My go-to solution for the tomestone cap wouldn't be to get rid of it, or raise it, but to add crafted gear of the same level. That gear would require tradable materials which come from a variety of top-level sources - dungeons, raids, PvP, gathering instances, Golden Saucer - all combined. And that together with materials from all the previous expansions, so that lower-level characters and alts have the means and reason to meaningfully contribute to the economy. So if you have the money, you can buy the gear, and if you don't (or don't want to spend it), you have multiple ways to grind for them.

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Crafted Gear is already a thing that drives economy, if not glamour items, so it doesn't make sense to add more to it when the economy is rolling along just fine. I think it's more important to note that if you were to add crafted gear of the same level, you'd have the problem of the system generating trash gear. Piety and Tenacity aren't really used for Tanks and Healers unless absolutely necessary, and Skill/Spell Speed is avoided like the plague for majority of jobs unless again, absolutely necessary.

There's a lot of clean-up they'd have to do to fix gear stats on the backend looking at it because I still remember hearing about how they gen their stats on gear. In general, gear choice should also point to a playstyle - whether it be a mix of gear or simply just a set of gear that pushes you in a direction. BLM wanting high Spell Speed? Then put a set of Casting Gear with Spell Speed on it. Don't want Spell Speed? Have a second set of gear that has Crit/Direct Hit on it. There needs to be more playstyles for each job to be able to expand the catalogue so to speak because otherwise, we'll wind up with one set winning overall and the masses merely following the "Best Gear" put out from the Balance.