My Solution to the gear treadmill

[Genaxx]

I'm not a game designer, nor do I know what everyone wants to improve this game (or if they even think it needs improving) but these are just some idea's I had. There's probably flaws somewhere and I doubt it will ever be considered but I felt like doing this anyway.

Adjustments to Item Level

All new end game gear will be set at Item Level 250
All gear can be upgraded using Aetherial Core's

Number of Aetherial Core's required to upgrade.
Head 2
Body 3
Hands 2
Waist 1
Legs 3
Feet 2
Accessories 1

Aetherial Core's can be obtained via the following methods;
Weekly;
The Gift of the Archmagus Quest
Completion of Alexander - The Burden of the Son.
Completion of Alexander - The Burden of the Son (Savage)
Completion of Void Ark
And any other weekly stuff I forgot.

Other Methods;
Leve chests
Treasure Map chests
Diadem chests
Elite Marks
Beast Tribe Tokens
PVP
Guildhests
Any Dungeon/Trial/Raid Chest.
Maybe tomestones of Lore too?
Basically almost everything.

Aetherial Core's can also be traded and sold via the market board.

Upgrading Gear

You can upgrade gear by speaking to <npc> while holding the required amount of Aetherial Core's.
Each upgrade will increase the gear's item level by 10 and increase the stats accordingly.
The cap for item level will continue to increase as more patches are released, however all new end game gear will still be at Item level 250.
Unless that also increases every 6 months or a year so new gear isnt really far behind?

Changes to Gear

You can now find certain gear with bonus affects. such as Vit +5%, Fire resistance +5, Blind resistance +2 and so on.

e.g The Brand New Cuirass obtained from the novice hall has +5% Vitality. However its only ilvl 17 but you could increase it to ilvl 250 or higher if you put alot of Aetherial Core's into it. Coupling that with the other matching pieces that also give +5% Vit would be a good set for endgame tanking.

There could even be relic armor that starts at ilvl 1 and has a good bonus.

Changes to Tomes

The weekly cap for tomes will be increased to 900 and be job specific.

Adjustments to the combat system

Enemies will now have elemental damage and can deal status affects.

Adjustments to the materia system

All gear will now have materia slots.

The following materia can now be purchased from <Random NPC>
Cactuar Foot I
Coeurl Eye I
Aurelia Kiss I
Bison Hoof I
Funguar Shriek I
Treant Root I
Chocobo Down I

This materia now works with PvE, scaling at +1 = 10% reduction to duration. Therefore slotting 5 x Cactuar Foot I to your current gear would give you 100% reduction, making you immune to the effect of Slow.

This will not affect PvP

Changes to elemental Materia

Elemental Materia also has weakness including resistance.

Before

Fire Materia I
- Fire resistance + 1

Ice Materia I
- Ice Resistance +1

After

Fire Materia I
- Fire resistance + 1
- Water Weakness +1

Ice Materia I
- Ice Resistance +1
- Fire Weakness +1

This continues to follow the elemental chart.

Resistance & Weakness scaling:
Resistance + 10 = 10% elemental resistance
Resistance + 20 = 20% elemental resistance
etc.
Weakness + 10 = 10% elemental weakness
Weakness + 20 = 20% elemental weakness
etc.

[MihaelB]

I like this more than the current system, especially the PVP materia melds on PVE gear

[Ultear_Milkovich]

A lot a very good ideas here. I would prefer this rather than the current system .

I always enjoyed customization, materias, enchantments or special effects on items.

What i like : "here's a dark armour of darking. It has 5% less overall resistance than the top tier armour, but it will grant you a specific protection against slashing/magic/who knows". This, or Dark Souls-like accessories, with slight stamina/regen etc increases instead of the basic +42 deter +36 acc...

What i dislike : "here's your 450 tomes weekly item. It has acc/parry everywhere lulz but given the ilvl/dps/hp scaling of this game you just can not bypass it for the next contents."

[Kosmos992k]

My solution to the gear tread mill.

Step off the tread mill, wait a patch or two, then start playing normally. Gear is easier to come by, there is some horizontal progression and your playing time is no longer about grinding out tomes for gear.

[Ibi]

It's not clear, to me, exactly what problem this is the solution to.

Your first section addresses item level. Based on your proposal, it seems like your premise is that you're dissatisfied with outright replacing your equipment every six months, and would like to keep a single piece of equipment and just keep upgrading its item level instead. Functionally, however, that's the same thing. To use existing gear as an example, what's would be the difference between an Aoidos' Cloak that's been upgraded from i210 to i240, compared to an Augmented Torrent Tabard of Aiming? I guess it might "feel" like you put more work into the former, but the end result is no different (barring some potential shuffling of secondary stats).

And isn't this just a treadmill of a different design, with smaller intermediate steps? You're still just grinding some sort of item, Aetherial Cores in this case, in order to advance your gear. The fact that it still has the same appearance as it did when you first got it hasn't really changed that.

There's also the problem you briefly allude to of what happens to new players (or existing players leveling a new job) if two years from now the only gear available on hitting 60 is i250, but people who've been playing the job for the two years between now and then all have i350 gear or higher? As you say, it's possible to add higher level gear as the baseline as time goes on but then you're not really differing that much from the situation we have now?

Secondly, you bring in bonus effects on gear. The way you propose them (bonuses to stats or resistances) don't really enhance variety and, if anything, would actually make the treadmill effect (as far as that can be described as constantly remaining in motion to not actually get anywhere meaningful) far worse, especially if it becomes desirable to have to find low level items and pour time and resources into bringing them up to a satisfactory item level to even be usable.

Finally, you bring up elemental and status effect materia. I assume this is to attempt to address the frequently voiced opinion that there's not enough variety in terms of stats. This wouldn't help that though. It would just mean that everyone needs to acquire a fire resist set for the fire boss, an ice resist set for the ice boss, a blind resist set for the blind boss, but everyone's going to end up with more-or-less the same set of gear for any given encounter. You might take a little less resist materia for a little more throughput materia, but the differences between dragoon A's gear and dragoon B's gear will be very minimal.

[Lemuria]

I think there are some good ideas here, but they need fleshing out. I would personally like to see a return of elemental weakness and resistances in mobs, but that will never happen because they did a real number on our poor Black Mage (sorry, I meant fire and ice mage) so certain fights would make them rather redundant (hint: Fire versus Ifrit -- he should be absorbing those hits not taking damage!).

If SE cared about horizontal progression, we would have seen the introduction of special bonuses. Gear which enhances our special skills, or otherwise does something more unique than +1 extra strength. FFXI was full of the stuff. Everything from refresh bonuses to cure potency bonuses. Boosts from weather effects, boosts to specific skills, even HP/MP absorption and additional damage on auto-attacks.

I think the only bonus I've ever seen in FFXIV is the Hermes' Shoes which give a bonus to Sprint in towns. Sadly, no one can obtain them any more.

My solution to the gear tread mill.

Hmm, not a solution. Not even an attempt at a solution. In fact, if everyone went with your solution, people would only play for the one month after each major patch, and FFXIV would fold faster than a single pair in a poker game.

[FoxyAreku]

Stop making solutions for things that don't need to be fixed.

[Ashelia_Ferron]

You basically turned FFXIV into Destiny The Taken King. So no thanks.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Good idea; but way too complicated. I will just wait 3-6 months until its made easier/replaced with a new ilvl.

You pretty much turned the gear into even more of a treadmill and made it worse. It sounds even MORE grindy and unfun then before.

[Skyler_Hawkins]

Aetherial Core's can also be traded and sold via the market board.

Everything but these one part seems welcoming. If you players can just buy their way to the top in the game then there is no real need to work hard in the game.

As far as the i250 cap, I feel like SE might already be doing something like that since ever since the Party Finder was Created it always had a cap at i250. Back then it seemed crazy because the top was only i110 when it came out, but now it's almost in reach and they have never updated it to go any higher ands been a long time now since its been out.

I think you might be on to something here lol