Gear Progression Continues to Make Little Sense

[Rafaelhades]

Alexander Normal isn't hard. It's essentially a mini CT and meant for those who complained that Coil was too hard to do for the story. i190 gear is just a carrot for those not interested in story to progress their characters in preparation for Savage. Esoterics gear are meant to be side options for your main job and for that "Class" feel. Also, I wish people would stop saying i190 will be invalidated, as you would still be using those i190 pieces both for farming Esoterics (and alongside them as you gear up to prevent progress drought) and gearing your other jobs that share said gear when you acquire Job-specific ones for your main until you can clear Savage consistently. At which point, you replace i190 shared gear with i210 shared gear.

[Ladon]

Alexander Normal isn't hard. It's essentially a mini CT and meant for those who complained that Coil was too hard to do for the story. i190 gear is just a carrot for those not interested in story to progress their characters in preparation for Savage. Esoterics gear are meant to be side options for your main job and for that "Class" feel. Also, I wish people would stop saying i190 will be invalidated, as you would still be using those i190 pieces both for farming Esoterics (and alongside them as you gear up to prevent progress drought) and gearing your other jobs that share said gear when you acquire Job-specific ones for your main until you can clear Savage consistently. At which point, you replace i190 shared gear with i210 shared gear.

Why do you need i200 gear to farm i145 dungeons? All you are really telling me here is how the current system works. Thank you, but I was able to figure that out myself.

It doesn't mean that it makes logical sense. Gear progression is actually a very simple concept. You collect lower level gear until you can take on harder content (as expressed by required iLevel) to get even better gear. But this game seems to follow this maybe half the time and then we get silly explanations like "oh that gear is actually meant for your secondary classes."

This just straight up poor, illogical design.

[Ronyx]

Why do you need i200 gear to farm i145 dungeons? All you are really telling me here is how the current system works. Thank you, but I was able to figure that out myself.

It doesn't mean that it makes logical sense. Gear progression is actually a very simple concept. You collect lower level gear until you can take on harder content (as expressed by required iLevel) to get even better gear. But this game seems to follow this maybe half the time and then we get silly explanations like "oh that gear is actually meant for your secondary classes."

This just straight up poor, illogical design.

Well They will keep adding more content that will requiere more ilevel. When 3.1 comes we most likely have 3 new dungeons with maybe minimum ilevel of 170 or 180 and etc as more Patches come... harder dungeons will show up. They are just slowly preparing us for that.

[Dorfentyme]

Well They will keep adding more content that will requiere more ilevel. When 3.1 comes we most likely have 3 new dungeons with maybe minimum ilevel of 170 or 180 and etc as more Patches come... harder dungeons will show up. They are just slowly preparing us for that.

I'm not entirely convinced that the content patches of Heavensward are going to be as large as the content patches in 2.0 were. 2.0 launched with how many dungeons(16)? Heavensward launched with 8. 2.0 had guildhests. Heavensward had none(content is content, and guildhests were a decent boost in exp every 5 levels). 2.0 had hunting log. Heavensward didn't extend this at all, just took the hunting feature that was already present and slapped level 53/56/59 version to it. And, even though the zones in Heavensward are a decent size, you can move through each one really quickly. Hell, even the leves were just copied and pasted into Heavensward, so no real effort was done there. I really hope that 3.0 is not a sign of things to come. They gave less content, while expecting people to level all their jobs from 50-60 and Square wanting it to be as long as 1-50 was. Bad idea. I'm not looking forward to fate grinding 50-60. Yeah, I could do roulettes, but I did those long before Heavensward, and I'm kinda over that. I want to run new content, not old content. I think the fact that N. Thanalan was the place to be to level up your alts showed how little they thought that through.

Before someone says something ridiculous like "If you hate it so much why don't you quit playing it?!". I love the game still, just merely pointing out my observations that Heavensward under delivered in certain areas with the content. You can love something and still have criticisms.

[Luvbunny]

2.0 launched with how many dungeons(16)? Heavensward launched with 8. 2.0 had guildhests. Heavensward had none(content is content, and guildhests were a decent boost in exp every 5 levels). 2.0 had hunting log. Heavensward didn't extend this at all, just took the hunting feature that was already present and slapped level 53/56/59 version to it. And, even though the zones in Heavensward are a decent size, you can move through each one really quickly.

2.0 also feels bigger because you have 50 levels, with dungeons are for 3-4 levels stretch (20,24,28,32, etc). 3.0 dungeons are for 2 level stretch - that cater for 50-60. But I can see why you feel 3.0 does not feel as big as 2.0. I sure hope that patch 3.1 will be coming in end of August or early Sept - and not November or December

[Kaedan]

I'm not entirely convinced that the content patches of Heavensward are going to be as large as the content patches in 2.0 were. 2.0 launched with how many dungeons(16)? Heavensward launched with 8. 2.0 had guildhests. Heavensward had none(content is content, and guildhests were a decent boost in exp every 5 levels). 2.0 had hunting log. Heavensward didn't extend this at all, just took the hunting feature that was already present and slapped level 53/56/59 version to it. And, even though the zones in Heavensward are a decent size, you can move through each one really quickly. Hell, even the leves were just copied and pasted into Heavensward, so no real effort was done there. I really hope that 3.0 is not a sign of things to come. They gave less content, while expecting people to level all their jobs from 50-60 and Square wanting it to be as long as 1-50 was. Bad idea. I'm not looking forward to fate grinding 50-60. Yeah, I could do roulettes, but I did those long before Heavensward, and I'm kinda over that. I want to run new content, not old content. I think the fact that N. Thanalan was the place to be to level up your alts showed how little they thought that through.

Before someone says something ridiculous like "If you hate it so much why don't you quit playing it?!". I love the game still, just merely pointing out my observations that Heavensward under delivered in certain areas with the content. You can love something and still have criticisms.

Sorry, but your post doesn't make any logical sense.

2.0 had more content at the get-go because it was full, new game. Heavensward is an expansion, so it doesn't have as much content at the get-go (though the MSQ is still very large and nearly on par with the MSQ that existed at 2.0 launch).

However, none of that matters for how much content they create for major patches. None of the stuff you mentioned was added to in content patches in 2.0. There's absolutely no reason to believe the content patches won't be just as big with HW as they were in 2.0. Let's look at the pattern for major content patches:


-Additional MSQs
-Dungeons
-Primals/Trials
-Side Quests
-Hildebrand
-Raids

Some or all of these have been present in all 2.x major patches... nothing that can't or won't appear in HW patches.

[Stanelis]

Alexander Normal isn't hard. It's essentially a mini CT and meant for those who complained that Coil was too hard to do for the story. i190 gear is just a carrot for those not interested in story to progress their characters in preparation for Savage. Esoterics gear are meant to be side options for your main job and for that "Class" feel. Also, I wish people would stop saying i190 will be invalidated, as you would still be using those i190 pieces both for farming Esoterics (and alongside them as you gear up to prevent progress drought) and gearing your other jobs that share said gear when you acquire Job-specific ones for your main until you can clear Savage consistently. At which point, you replace i190 shared gear with i210 shared gear.

If would be a valid reasoning if the content where the tomestones are farmed weren't already very easy at ilvl 160. Also, Alex normal is very easy too at ilvl 170.

Therefore the ilvl 190 is currently useless as the top end players will start alex savage with crafted gear and the rest of the players with (mostly) ilvl 200 gear (I fear alex 190 isn't enough for alexander, for the huge majority of players).