So anyone else tired of grinding tomes weekly for gear?

[ErzaScarlet77]

how does gearing up late game work in other mmos?

[Colorful]

how does gearing up late game work in other mmos?

That would depend on the game, really.

WoW: Do the raid once per week and pray that the piece you want drops, same goes for glamour runs since the weekly restrictions are still there from several year old raids. I hear they've made this better with Garrison drops and so on, but I can't say.
Korean MMORPGs: Farming endless hours for an enchantment item (or a few), only to fail the enchantment and get your item destroyed wasting several dozen or hundred hours. Alternatively, throw a few thousand dollars at the screen.

[Dualblade]

Well you only have one job per character in other MMOs so it depends on how their gearing progression works, like how people talk about "horizantal vs vertical" progression and all that.

FFXI really is the closest I can see for comparison since its the only other MMO I am aware of that lets you do mulitple classes/jobs on one character.

Also while I don't remember if it was a Korean-based MMO to start out as I can vouch for that type of grinding in one of the ones I've played the longest.

[Cinno]

Tomestone is a raid drop; you don't need to use midan gears.

Could anyone be a little more specific about which raid drops the high-capacity tomestone? I've googled and the only things I can find talk about the 7 weeks of midas..

[Sylkis]

how does gearing up late game work in other mmos?

Gear doesn't get trashed as fast (although times are changing) so you gear up once with workable gear then work hard for BiS which is optional or trophy-like. Mostly, once you get up to workable gear you go and do the content. BiS may even be situational, so it is near impossible to have everything but none of it is needed (think red scrip class specific crafting gear vs shareable gear, except red scrip is not necessary, unlike the red scrip gear here). If you had BiS for some situation maybe you could pull off some cool video worthy stuff or have that moment of fame in a party.

In other words you don't gear up - you go and do content with mediocre gear and have fun doing the content because it's fun. (But again, times are changing)

[Dualblade]

Could anyone be a little more specific about which raid drops the high-capacity tomestone? I've googled and the only things I can find talk about the 7 weeks of midas..

Alexander The Cuff of the Son (Savage)

[Adire]

how does gearing up late game work in other mmos?

In The Secret World, the best gear in the game came from doing Nightmare difficulty dungeons and raids.

There were intermediate drops from the Nightmare dungeons themselves, and you had a daily (iirc, maybe weekly?) limit of a currency called Black Bullions that could be used to purchase upgradeable gear that started out slightly worse than Nightmare drops, but could be upgraded with custom stats to surpass dungeon drop gear considerably. There were different kinds of gear you could get from DPS, to healing, to tanking, and you could mix and match stats to create hybrid gear for hybrid builds.

One of the more common hybrid gear sets/builds was for leech healing. Done correctly, and someone could be heal based on how much DPS they were doing.

You could also add signets of varying qualities that do different things (such as add raw % increases to stats, trigger procs when certain conditions are met, etc).

Not all that different from FFXIV really, just with more gearing choices, daily limits if I recall correctly instead of weekly limits, and unlimited second tier gear drops (think pre-upgrade Midas vs pre-upgrade Lore except without lockouts).

Edit: Also in TSW, you can play any role or any mix of a role. Your "role" depends on a mix of what two weapons you choose of the many available, and what abilities you pick for those weapons of the many available. So also like FFXIV, roles and classes are boundary-less, though the system works a bit differently and gear is only as specialized as you choose to make it.

[Transmigration]

I honestly enjoy fishing more than group content these days. I love this game for many reasons, but combat and dungeon/raid design are not two of them (outside of primals).

Yes, I'm tired of it. Yes, I want more FFXI style endgame content. Yes it was 100x more interesting and memorable.

[MistyMew]

Dungeon grind does get to me after a while, but gear grinding in any mmo does. I take breaks from all the games I play simply because they all get "icky" after too long of a spell.

I think this is equally the fault that most games lack enough choice AND the natural result of someone playing mmos for a long time now.

The longer we play, the harder it is for game designers to offer new and exciting things, we the players are very critical and usually expect every "good aspect" of every other game we ever played to be present (and every one of us has a different definition of that lol) all wrapped up in one ...or else! I am just as guilty of that and always hope the "next one" will have it all and make me feel as excited as I was for them 15+ years ago, but again, that's not reality..

Wow raids/dungeons are generally the same design as is Rift too. Im not comparing difficulty, or mechanics, just the fact that you have to grind for gear in a repetitive few dungeons or raids. Or some event that is also....repetitive beyond words.

Ffxi was just a grind as well. A much longer and far worse definition of "grind" in fact, it was no more "exciting", the only difference was it was a "newer thing" and we were far far more forgiving and naive then we are now, BUT it did offer more choice of gear and how to obtain it. Which imo was a huge "plus".

A lot more avenues to get gear would be welcomed by me. Is that realistic given the inner workings of ffxiv? idk, none of us know....but it is a hope I will cling onto.

The gear could be different (appearance wise/stat wise) or the same, linear or vertical to me is irrelevant, but a large and varied choice on which journey I choose to undertake to obtain it...is the lure and the important part for me.

Offer many varied avenues and that would get me even more interested.

I don't have specifics of what they could offer us and also wouldn't try to in here.

MMOs = grinds , always, which I am ok with or else I would not have played them for so long, but my blanket statement is simply more variety of the grind would be a blessing.

[Lemuria]

I spoke out against the treadmill before Heavensward was even released and people took offense. People prefer comforting lies to unpleasant truths, so they'll tune out what they don't want to hear. This doesn't help anyone in the long run, because change is a vital part of every MMO and is why the genre has been so successful. Shaking up the status quo every once in a while can only help the game.

The problem now is that SE are a bit set in their ways. We already know EXACTLY how each major update will play out for the next year. Each update will contain: Two new expert roulette dungeons, a new tombstone currency, the removal of the oldest tombstones, and more story missions. It used to be three dungeons, but I guess SE decided less is more.

Honestly, the gear treadmill might not be as boring if there was an alternative means to get decent equipment. Stats are the only thing anyone gains from new equipment. There's no real customization since the base stats on all gear is equivalent to everything else of the same item level. Compare and contrast with the original game, which had unique bonuses on certain special gear. The original relic curtana, for example, had a chance to restore MP among other things.

Why are additional stats useful? Because it means that the flow of the game can go sideways instead of just up or down. Right now it's just about getting to the next tier, but add in gear which has equal main stats, but different supporting stats and you add the potential for significantly greater content. Due to caps and daily/weekly rewards, there is no merit to spending hours of the game grinding for gear. You're better off doing the one dungeon or raid for your gear per day and logging off. That is not healthy for an MMO, which needs to thrive on its community.

At this point, I don't even know how they'd go about fixing the problem. They've dragged along the same path for so long that I'm starting to think they're out of ideas. I do think it needs to be done, however, and before people start to tire of the storyline which is the only thing that has kept some of us subscribed.