Suggestion: Rebalance of the Tomestone System

[Amberyl]

oh youre right, reread it and i shouldve worded it differently. nah we were a tightknit group that values rl over the game, so not raiding from time to time wasnt an issue.

Good luck with the altered group composition.

[Moonleg]

On the other hand, a causal player not raiding savage doesnt even need that gear except for glamour purposes, since everything besides savage is so insanely easy, it can be done in full ilvl 170 law gear (at this stage of the expansion).

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

[KihraJhin]

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

i never said that causlas shouldnt get higher ilvl gear, just that current causal content (everything besides savage) is already laughable easy, unless you dont bring the skill. and even then with enough time passed the gear will outbalance the missing skill making it easy even for those. the only place you need gear and skill even when youre fully 210 is savage. thats a fact no one can deny. ive seen ppl wipe to alex 1 nomal with ilvl 200 weapons, which is almost impossible if you remotely play your class well, the thing is 80% of the player cant do that, thats why at some point they get the ilvl 210 stuff without raiding. and im totally fine with that and nothing i said or suggested int he first post says otherwise. causals can be casual but that doesnt mean we couldnt get a bit of flexibility when raiding savage.

[LunaHoshino]

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

It doesn't "just barely" get you through content. In most cases, it's more than is needed to progress with ease in everything but the hardest of hard content.

My old static cleared T9 in a mix of i110/i120 gear and i110/i115 weapons and that was enough to only get us 3 or 4 meteors, which is well under the 6 maximum that you need to be able to get to pass the DPS check.

If you can't meet non-cutting edge content DPS checks in anything less than the highest level of gear, the problem isn't not having "good enough" gear.

[Noxifer]

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

Like has been said 'just barely get through content' isn't really the case ^^; That would be a full set of non-upgraded Law gear. That gear would "just barely" get you through Alex Normal, which is considered the 'casual' raid. Of course, just because us 'casuals' don't at the moment have much of a chance of beating Alex Savage doesn't mean we won't try to upgrade as quickly as we find possible (depending on how much online time one has, and how much drive at doing pve stuff one has, since some are more concerned with glamour and/or crafting and/or gathering).

But you seem to have missed where OP isn't trying to make the argument that "this should only be for hardcore raiders, not for casual players" -- they're rather making the argument that because getting the top gear matters less for casual players in terms of stats and durability (due to not having to beat the DPS checks and survive/recover from tanksplatters in Alex Savage), it shouldn't really matter to raiders if casuals gear up the capped tome gear for all jobs as quickly as is now done for one job. Raiders will still be the ones with the upgraded versions (and Alex Savage drops) until they relax that limit with the release of the next raid tier, and make the upgrade items available through non-raid means. At least that's how I interpreted what they said.
(And also, like OP said, because for many casual players, the important part is what the armour looks like, and why limit glamour to a slow grind, locking each job behind months of tomestone gathering?)


Personally, I don't quite agree with the "character screen method" described, and not quite with the second either. But I do think that they should allow some kind of "refund" system where you can return tome gear (at least for the capped currency) and get tomes back for it. Not the full price, because that would clearly favour raiders, who could then return gear after they get Alex Savage drops for that part and not 'lose' any raid capability. But, say, 50% back. It would still make it a lot easier to switch main job than it is now. (Not sure how it would work with upgraded tome gear... But my guess is that upgraded wouldn't be included if SE decided to implement something along these lines. At least not at first.)

[KihraJhin]

Personally, I don't quite agree with the "character screen method" described, and not quite with the second either. But I do think that they should allow some kind of "refund" system where you can return tome gear (at least for the capped currency) and get tomes back for it. Not the full price, because that would clearly favour raiders, who could then return gear after they get Alex Savage drops for that part and not 'lose' any raid capability. But, say, 50% back. It would still make it a lot easier to switch main job than it is now. (Not sure how it would work with upgraded tome gear... But my guess is that upgraded wouldn't be included if SE decided to implement something along these lines. At least not at first.)

Yes, the first suggestion is quite overpowered and i merely included it to have some sort of other example which goes in the same direction asm my second suggestion. If that first would ever be implemented in the current game, a raider would simply get some pieces and once he has a drop would just switch it out for another piece at 0 addiotinal costs, gearing him up
faster.

the second suggestion is the real one, which should go in the direction of more flexibility. i also included the background story so ppl would get a little insight on what im getting at, but i think this has been widely misunderstood. the main point is, lets say you have a fre spot in group to fill and only 2 classes would be a suitable addition to progress in alex savage (progress means now and not after months when no one cares anymore). but you know that one of your players can play one of those classes perfectly fine, so essentially you could look for these 2 classes but ALSO for the class of that person, giving you more freedom and better chance at finding someone. the problem with that is, that if that person has alsready bought 4 eso pieces and he would switch jobs, he would not have that gear on that job, but that gear is actually needed in savage. by having some kind of unlock system he could freely choose a job without losing gear. and this wouldnt even be an unfair advantage in savage, since you will not gain more equipment faster that way. it doesnt matter if one job has 4 eso items and the other has 4 too, or if one has 4 and the other has 0. because if that is the case, as it is now, that person will simply not play the job that has 0 eso gear.

Scenario A (current):
- player A plays WHM and has 4 eso pieces
- group is looking for a mnk or nin
- player A can play a nin, has 0 eso pieces on the ninja

Scenario B (new):
- player A plays WHM and has 4 eso pieces
- group is looking for a mnk or nin
- player A can play a nin, has the same 4 eso pieces on the ninja as on the whm

In scenario A the group would just continue to look for a ninja and monk.
In scenario B the group will look for a ninja, monk AND whm. Better chance at finding a player, cause that is seriously hard on some servers.

Scenario C (current):
- player A plays PLD and has 4 eso pieces
- Because of the current balancing of classes, using a DRK/WAR is a better combo then PLD/WAR
- player A can play a DRK, has it on lvl 60, but 0 eso pieces on it

Scenario D (new):
- player A plays PLD and has 4 eso pieces
- Because of the current balancing of classes, using a DRK/WAR is a better combo then PLD/WAR
- player A can play a DRK, has it on lvl 60, and the same 4 eso pieces on it as on the PLD

In scenario C the PLD would just stay PLD and bring mediocre dps to the fight, as well as mediocre utility (ok thats a bit personla opinion here, but there are lots of discussion threads about the current PLDs already, so go and look into them if you wanna discuss that)
In scenario D the PLD can simply switch over to DRK.

The same two scenarios are possible for the current heal jobs. While I agree, that scenario C and D would essentially mean an increase in progress for the group on certain floors, it doesnt really unbalance anything, since the top end groups already min maxed their party composition BEFORE even reaching the dreaded first gear wall in A3S (which pales in comparison to A4S), but every group out there would be able to adjust better to the balancing. Especially now after the AST buff, I think there are a few that would like to make a switch, but cannot due to gear limitations, unless they wanna lose 5 weeks of gear and progress.

As Ive explained in the OP, to balance out the fact that we gain gear on all jobs at the same time, the limit of the weekly currency would need to be lowered. So instead of having 4 pieces after 5 weeks, you only get 3 but on all jobs. To retain the current speed of progress you can swap around jobs to increase your kill speed OR it simply takes even longer to clear, which should be exactly what the devs had in mind when putting that huge gear wall into savage.

The only downside of this I see is, that it takes at max 20 weeks to have all the eso gear on all jobs (when goin with 300 weekly esos), it basically eliminates the needed grind at the end of a patch cycle, when esos are becoming the new law. So instead of gearing one job now in 14 weeks, you would weekly grind esos to gear all jobs in 20 weeks. and about the grind we would now have to gear all jobs: once esos are the new law Ill be sure to gear a few jobs in eso gear, but in no way that is enjoyable with just 2 lvl 60 dungeons in the game at this point. So by saying they wanna keep ppl in the game by giving them stuff to grind, they also say, we give you this grind because we cannot implement any alternatives. But thats just my personla opinion, but one which i have seen on these forum a lot these past weeks. I can only agree with the rest that does it like me: log in, do expert, log off, log in for raid, log off. Because atm there is nothing really to do tha isnt a grind. grind for levels, grind for esos, grind for law, grind for red scrips, and all of that with the same content every day. But Im getting a bit side tracked here, didnt wanna turn this into a rant thread, so take it as i said and ignore it please :/

[Renault]

Savage should not be on farm before the next chunk of content is out.

Uh...Yes, yes it should.

[Noxifer]

i also included the background story so ppl would get a little insight on what im getting at, but i think this has been widely misunderstood.

Oh, I quite got your background story/example =) And I know that's what you intended it for, but the refund system would still favour, "oh, I got a lucky drop! Now I don't need this chestpiece I bought three weeks ago, I'll go return it and buy another piece or two!" use. Which is a lot less okay. I agree completely that it should be slightly easier to switch your main job if you need to rotate static roles for some reason, but 100% refunded would be way too overpowered, even if the weekly cap was to be lowered. Because with a 50% (example rate) return, it's still mostly raiders who would use it when switching roles for the foreseeable future (or until that gear is easier to get) or when they get their loot drop (and could then start gearing up secondary roles with the returned tomes unless they had other gear parts they still neeeded for their primary role), but it wouldn't be as big of an FU to non-raiders. And... while the 'switch role' part might come up, I'm fairly certain the other scenario would happen a lot more often.
Also, it wouldn't make any sense -- from a business perspective -- for Rowena to take back used armour and give you the same price you paid for it when it was new ^_~


A 'returning customer discount' would favour both raider and non-raider, though I expect it would favour non-raiders a bit more (at least in the form I'm thinking of it). Say you buy the WHM chestpiece. The next chestpiece you buy with that type of tomestone would have a slight discount, say 5-10%. The third chestpiece you buy would have a slightly higher discount, say 10-20%, the fourth even higher (15-30%), and so on -- up to a certain limit of course, because Rowena isn't made of charity ^_~ I'm sure she'd set a hard limit at 50% discount, no matter how much you buy from her.
The discount would be counted on a piece-per-piece basis, of course, so if you've bought three pairs of gloves and one chestpiece, the pricing on your next chestpiece wouldn't benefit from the gloves you bought.

This would favour those who wanted to "catch 'em all", to use a popular phrase, but it wouldn't offer nearly as much benefit to someone switching role for the good of their static. It would also favour the stand FFXIV has claimed to take, that you should level all classes/jobs on one character, since this sort of discount wouldn't benefit anyone who was only interested in playing just ONE role/job.


I could see both of these systems, on their own, in the game. But it seems clear to my eyes that they have two very different 'customers' in mind. One system favours the "focus on one job at a time" mindset, and the other favours the "all the jobs all the time" mindset. Could they be combined without becoming too unbalanced? Probably, but only if returning a gearpiece for a refund was subtracted from your number of gearpieces (of that kind) bought. And probably with either a lower and static 'refund level' or a variable one depending on where on the 'discount ladder' you were -- meaning your refunded tomestones would be calculated off of what your next piece of that type would cost, not off of the initial cost of it.
(But looking at it from Rowena's viewpoint, it wouldn't make much sense to pay a returning customer less than you'd pay a bought-from-me-once stranger, as the variable refund would pretty much mean that.)


Gearing up all jobs at once would, of course, favour both, but it would also mean that the gearing-up part would take a lot less time. Even if you go by the tomestone phases with shared gear, that's tank+healer+caster+ranged+drg+mnk+nin. Seven sets for the left side, five sets for the right. At a pace of 'four pieces per month', that takes almost 17 months to get all gearsets ((6x7+5x5)/4=(42+25)/4=67/4=16.75), by which time the tomestone has been uncapped for about a year, and subsequently discarded. Of course, the uncapping means you're no longer limited to that pace and would gear up a lot quicker if you were interested in doing so.
Buying all pieces when you buy one, that means you have a total of 10 pieces to buy (since you use two rings and would only need to buy one). To prevent people from going "oh, I'll gear up everything in two months, then unsubscribe until the next raid tier is released four months from now", you'd have to set the weekly cap so low it would take longer to gear up one job than it does now (like you mentioned), but this would in itself be detrimental and only delay further those 'semi-raiders' who want to do the extreme raid but need a bit more gear to do so since they can't push their DPS as hard as the hardcore raiders ^^;


I'm totally rambling, so feel free to poke holes in my badly puzzled-together logic =D

[Fevelle]

My only problem with the current Eso gear is that the augmentation items needed to make it dyeable are only dropped by Savage Raid. I don't like hardcore content at all, and I really want to dye my equipment. I don't care if the people get better stats when upgrading, but dyeing gear should be for everyone.

[Noxifer]

My only problem with the current Eso gear is that the augmentation items needed to make it dyeable are only dropped by Savage Raid. I don't like hardcore content at all, and I really want to dye my equipment. I don't care if the people get better stats when upgrading, but dyeing gear should be for everyone.

I agree ^^; Of course, the upgrade items will (if they follow previous methods) be available outside of Alex Savage at a later time. Whether that's 3.1, 3.15 or 3.2 -- or even later -- we of course have no clue =/
In a way, I can see how they probably meant for it to be something to strive for even for non-raiders, since a lot more people are interested in glamours (and thus dyeing) than are interested in going into savage raids against all odds. (My guesstimate; your opinion may vary.) If the base gear was dyeable, one might ask why people less interested in the stats would bother with those pesky upgrade items even after they make them available. I suppose it's also a handy way to tell the difference between upgraded and non-upgraded at a quick glance.
A slightly more cynical side of me is guessing it was equally due to thus having a convenient excuse as to why they didn't make the old tomestone sets dyeable. Except they did just that with the Darklight sets. All the other tomestone sets have been made dyeable through upgrades, including the i90 through the convoluted means of 'augmenting' our i50/55 AF gear with the ability to accept dyes (and at the same time making our armoires unable to accept those augmented versions).

Cutting my rambling short here, cos... yeah. It's getting ridiculous xD

TL;DR - I agree, dyeing should be available to everyone (who has done the dyeing quest). All dungeon/raid gear should be dyeable, as well ;_; (Looking at you, High Allagan/Dreadwyrm sets...)