Best Gear in Coil needs to end

[Huntington]

To be honest the high-end gear in Coil does have one major problem. A heavy percentage of XIV is in the "Casual" side of everything, the people who play the game when they can and have fun with CT and just playing with other people, and having the best gear doesn't heavily matter for them. The Hardcore people like the Raids and the challenge.


The Soldiery tomes allow you to get better gear at a weekly pace, that will still be decent even if you don't go for the Sands of Time and Oils of Time in Second Coil, but this also means that your gear and the weapons you can get, which means you still need to beat Coil to acquire, will be stuck at 100. Most of those people in the Casual side of things will never likely touch those things, I doubt I'll ever touch beyond T7 myself and I play a lot right now. You get locked out of the content and the Echo buff doesn't make things easier, it just lightens the load that you need to do, but if you can't play the game without moving around and knowing the fights, then you will never proceed in the game. And without multiple ways to get gear, and I'm talking equipment not the Animus weapons, you won't ever progress in the game besides normal every day to day leveling and Beast Tribe Quests.

There needs to be multiple ways of progressing your character without having to hope you will get lucky and meet someone who has a Static for Coil, because if you don't know any of those people or come across anyone who runs them, you will never get to them. And that honestly seems dishonest for an MMO. We need to have hoards of unique gear and things to collect, there should be multiple ways to gear up your character with decent gear. Of course you would have to rival how you get that gear compared to going into Coil, which I personally think could happen through Notorious Monster battles in the Duty Finder. We recreate monsters and enemies from the past and put them into Trials. The drop rates for the gear could be spread out across all of them and it would have to probably be low in the process, but with what SE is doing with everything being fair and equal for everyone, besides everyone actually being on a fair and even ground, you can't just add something like that if it's not behind very troubling content.

Then the people who are doing Coil will wonder "why do all of this work here if I can get the same thing somewhere else with the same reward but less work?" And its true, if everything is equal, there has to be several ways to get the same tier of gear. But if everything is balanced, then everyone will likely just go the path of least resistance. Because no one should want to willingly grind something hour for hour and then come away from it with nothing to show for their time. You want your time to feel worth it and well spent instead of sucked into nothingness. I made Party Finder groups for Titan EM earlier, probably 30 different attempts with different people, got very close several times, but still failed, and then had nothing to show for it. If I can't get through it ASAP, a time may come when no one else will be doing anything involved with it and I'll be locked behind that wall for the rest of the game's lifetime, even 100% Echo buff won't help people through a fight like that.

This worries me myself because I'd like to progress through things at some point. All in all just my opinions.

[Raenryong]

There needs to be multiple ways of progressing your character without having to hope you will get lucky and meet someone who has a Static for Coil, because if you don't know any of those people or come across anyone who runs them, you will [B]never[B] get to them. And that honestly seems dishonest for an MMO.

That's just how MMOs work though - certain gear will never be acquired by everyone, especially if they are not in a top tier guild. Even in FFXI, the vast majority of people were never going to touch a relic or mythic. A good chunk would never touch an Empyrean. In other games like Rift or WoW, only an elite few would touch the very top. Equality of opportunity, not outcome!

[Huntington]

That's just how MMOs work though - certain gear will never be acquired by everyone, especially if they are not in a top tier guild. Even in FFXI, the vast majority of people were never going to touch a relic or mythic. A good chunk would never touch an Empyrean. In other games like Rift or WoW, only an elite few would touch the very top. Equality of opportunity, not outcome!

True, I could have started working on my Relic and so on over there in XI, but that's such a massive time-sink, if people think the ATMA and Animus grind is bad they need to go do that again. I just think it's unfortunate that once you hit 50, the tier progression goes like so: Darklight > Myth or Allagan > Weathered > High Allagan. There needs to be more "well for Weathered you can also go this route for this other gear, it won't be as easy to get, but it's different gear and it's still available to you outside of Soldiery" or something else that gives us more choices. Like for the Aetherial gear, best stuff you can find before 50 will be Aetherial. But once you hit 50 it gets completely phased out, could there be a chance to get level 70 Aetherial gear that's superior to Darklight but rarer? Very possible. After all, there's people going into HM Primals and CT for things with 100+ gear, it's not as if it would throw too much off if there was some alternate superior gear that was out there. All that matters is that it is out there, and ready to be acquired if you go for it.

[Bigpurpleharness]

True, I could have started working on my Relic and so on over there in XI, but that's such a massive time-sink, if people think the ATMA and Animus grind is bad they need to go do that again.

FFXI Relics were also amazing for the most part (Not touching Claustrum), and you could farm NMs, low man dynamis (I had a group of 6 that full cleared Dyna Sandy for cash weekly at 75), or PUG dynamis. It was a lengthy path, it was a grind, and it was worth it. An Animus though? Hell, their relic path in general is always outclassed by a raid weapon. 1,500 myth x9 after 9 atma farming for a weapon that's terrible compared to the raid drop? Eh, I'll pass. Weapon DMG is kind of important in this game.

I miss FFXI's lateral end game system though. And the fact you could do a million and one things solo for real progression. Fun fact: My only truly amazing XI linkshell came about because I would farm gil then merc drops, the merc shell was truly impressed with me and offered me a pearl after a few runs. It made me a ton of gil since we sold anything we didn't need.

[Huntington]

FFXI Relics were also amazing for the most part (Not touching Claustrum), and you could farm NMs, low man dynamis (I had a group of 6 that full cleared Dyna Sandy for cash weekly at 75), or PUG dynamis. It was a lengthy path, it was a grind, and it was worth it. An Animus though? Hell, their relic path in general is always outclassed by a raid weapon. 1,500 myth x9 after 9 atma farming for a weapon that's terrible compared to the raid drop? Eh, I'll pass. Weapon DMG is kind of important in this game.

I miss FFXI's lateral end game system though. And the fact you could do a million and one things solo for real progression. Fun fact: My only truly amazing XI linkshell came about because I would farm gil then merc drops, the merc shell was truly impressed with me and offered me a pearl after a few runs. It made me a ton of gil since we sold anything we didn't need.

To be honest I was very casual with XI, only played for about 5 months altogether. I had my fill of Promathia and Abyssea and the past area, which I hated extremely. Dabbled with some of the Trials of the Magians, but ehh not for me. I've decided I'll get my Animus for DRG over WAR or SMN or BRD since the Gae Bolg is probably the best well-rounded with what stats it has at 90 Zenith, everything else I'll replace with other weapons and Soldiery stuff.

That's pretty true yeah, it took awhile to get around and do things which gave an artificial feeling of prolonged play, but there were enough areas to check out or things to do by this point.

[RumiP]

hope you will get lucky and meet someone who has a Static for Coil, because if you don't know any of those people or come across anyone who runs them, you will [B]never[B] get to them

You're doing it wrong.

Go here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/f...-Shiva%28EU%29

Look for threads of people and FCs recruiting for coil. If there are none for you there, keep an eye out in game. Start a PF saying you're looking. Join someone else's PF who is recruiting. Start your own static.

Be social. I've had 4 different statics since I joined, and none of them were any harder than the last to find.

[Huntington]

You're doing it wrong.

Go here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/f...-Shiva%28EU%29

Look for threads of people and FCs recruiting for coil. If there are none for you there, keep an eye out in game. Start a PF saying you're looking. Join someone else's PF who is recruiting. Start your own static.

Be social. I've had 4 different statics since I joined, and none of them were any harder than the last to find.

I already made a thread in the Shiva section about looking for allies to help with Titan, did you see it? :P No replies so far.

As for FC's, I'm already in one and not planning to leave, so it would be hard to convince someone I'm available to play all the time if I don't join their FC, I could start doing Second Coil of Bahamut, but still need to do T5, which requires a communicative group with some time. I still haven't practiced it enough. I'll keep on the lookout for people who need to get through the first one, but ehh I'm never really ahead of the rest of the server that's already going into T6 and beyond.

[RumiP]

I already made a thread in the Shiva section about looking for allies to help with Titan

Titan is kind of small game now when it comes to patch progression. That's something you would have to find folks in game to do I think.

FC's, I'm already in one and not planning to leave, so it would be hard to convince someone I'm available to play all the time if I don't join their FC

The FC/static thing sounds like a choice you've made then. Not all statics are FC based though, many are based only on an LS, so everyone can keep their individual FCs.

I could start doing Second Coil of Bahamut, but still need to do T5, which requires a communicative group with some time.

"communicative group" What is this? Start a group in PF saying its a T5 learning party and learn. Practice. It sounds like you just don't want to, in which case, why do you need i110 gear?

[Huntington]

snip

Party Finder more it is...
If I could get another linkshell that would be nice, could filter the chat out when I don't want to read other things while working with them for example.
Trust me, I've worked for a lot today. There was a point a week or so back where I was doing T5 practice very often, put Titan aside for the moment and tried that. Spent several hours with it over several different days, I learned about Conflags and Neural Links(I don't remember how it spells them) and made it some distance but ultimately not very far. Practice is well and good if it's with one group and the knowledge you gain is conglomerated with one set of people. That way everyone is ready and has that information retained when you try it again. But I was mainly doing Duty Finder since being in America on an EU server creates time zone issues. Thus, if I learned it, I'd get set back to zero if someone else was doing it for the first person, so I end up helping others, someone says they have to get off after ten minutes or a wipe or two, then it ends.

Practice just gets tiring when your progression gets reset each time you try again and you have nothing tangible to show for it.

[RumiP]

Practice is well and good if it's with one group and the knowledge you gain is conglomerated with one set of people. That way everyone is ready and has that information retained when you try it again.

Yes, do this. Practice with folks on your server, invite them to come back at another agreed upon time to continue. Boom, you made a static. Not so bad.