Problems with the strength of gear coming from easy mode Alexander

[Azrael]

It sounds like you play for the sake of gear and not for the sake of raiding. If you love raiding, you'll do it despite what incentives it provides.

The point of the expert roulette/ 24man face rolls is so casuals can attempt the raids. If you love raiding so much, you wouldn't need to bother and would attempt it before the gear progression even comes into play.
Personally I don't think it's 'hardcore' to get the easiest gear and then do the raids. The hardcore ones are the world firsts trying to do it with sub-par standard gear.

Everything in this game technically is a 'waste of time', it's just how much you enjoy wasting it. If you don't, then I don't know why you've subscribed since May 2011.

If you did read the other posts you would know that I took many breaks so i haven't been subscribed since May 2011, even if I started the game in 1.0.
I enjoyed the 2.0 and played this game until I figured out how it worked.
There are other aspects of the game that I enjoy so that's why I'm still here hoping for a change. Nobody is saying casual raids shouldn't be in place problem comes when they obtain the same gear as raiders with less much effort, which this topic is about.
Considering world first as the norm is just trying to hide the truth of this fact because we all know most guilds fully clear raids months after world first.

[Asmodai]

1. Then don't do it. Your opinion.

Why would I do that when I am free to voice that opinion in the hopes it changes?

[Nezerius]

I would instead like to see a return to 2.x's model. The crafted gear released on even-numbered patches and the gear from the easy mode raid should be the same item level as the previous raid's gear.

Assuming I understand your post completely here, this is what 3.x would be like with your suggestion:

3.0: i210 Gordias (Savage), i200/i210 tomestone, i180 Gordias* (Normal), i180 Crafted*
3.1: i180 Void Ark*
3.2: i240 Midas (Savage), i230/i240 tomestone, i210 Midas (Normal), i210 Crafted
3.3: i210 Weeping City of Mhach
3.4: i270 Final Alexander (Savage), i260/i270 tomestone, i240 Final Alexander (Normal), i240 Crafted.
3.5: i240 Final Mhach raid

(*presumed iLvls, since there's no previous tier, but the later tiers has these types of gear at 30 iLvls below savage gear)

Unless you're also suggesting the removal of tomestone gear, a lot of players who don't clear the 8-man raid will still vastly outgear the 24-man raid, by the time it's released.
It would also kill off the crafted gear market, since non-raiders will prefer to just farm the uncapped tomestones, while raiders will already have better gear.

This also isn't the 2.x model, since crafted gear was only 10 iLvls below the unupgraded tomestone gear added in 2.2 and 2.4.


Sorry OP, but your suggestion doesn't look all that great to me.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Pretty much, yeah. In the 2.x series this is more or less how it was (as I recall).

2.0 i90 raid/i95 weapon
2.2 i90 crafted/i95 leviathan; i110 raid/i115 weapon
2.4 i110 crafted/i110 shiva (she also dropped 120 bracelets which were an upgrade - good system imo); 130 raid/135 weapon

The issue here is you now have to tailor new raid content around the old ilvl. Midas, for instance would be ilvl 210, and rendered borderline easy once you unlocked enough ilvl 240 gear. The current system keeps it raids remain challenging throughout their entire life cycle.

Reason why only 1% of the community raids is because there is almost 0 incentive to do it, and most raiders are leaving/will leave this game for other MMOs with better endgame.
I raided hardcore in every MMO, I also raided on FFXIV, cleared T13 in 2.0 and bismarck/ravana in 3.0, then I just stopped, until recently where I cleared the last EXs (the weapon bismarck dropped was a joke compared to the huge dps check needed you beat him, it was only needed to unlock ravana).
I played outside of this one but I don't feel like doing it in FFXIV because I think it's just a waste of time considering the itemization that we get here, no need to put in so much effort and stress myself with raiding if I can achieve the same just by doing some experts and 1 24 man faceroll raid each week.

Incorrect. You can go to any game and the hardcore playerbase will always be a distinct minority. Most players aren't interested in extremely difficult content, thus why games in general are relatively easy. Making the gear rewards from Savage vastly outpace any other weapon in its patch cycle isn't going to suddenly bring in more raiders. They aren't raiding for gear, but the fun and challenge of doing so. And what would that accomplish, really? Now you have gear so good, you'll push multiple phases and Savage won't be a challenge anymore.

[loreleidiangelo]

I have a relatively harmless question for people interested in superior gear from raiding: what sort of orders of magnitude are we talking, here? Something like the original i100 weathered gear vs. the High Allagan/unweathered i110 gear? Basically, removing the catch-up patches so that raiders go into the new content with an edge?

What kind of disparity are we talking about, exactly?

[Azrael]

Assuming I understand your post completely here, this is what 3.x would be like with your suggestion:

3.0: i210 Gordias (Savage), i205 tomestone, i190 Gordias* (Normal), i180 Crafted(meldable)*
3.1: i200 Void Ark*
3.2: i230 Midas (Savage), i215 tomestone, i200 Midas (Normal), i190 Crafted(meldable)
3.3: i210 Weeping City of Mhach
3.4: i250 Final Alexander (Savage), i225 tomestone, i210 Final Alexander (Normal), i200 Crafted (meldable).
3.5: i220 Final Mhach raid

Edited it for you, your numbers were a bit strange, this would make much more sense to me, not 100% accurate but should give an idea, only problem I see with this is is the gap between tomestone and crafting gear, which could be adjusted in some ways and might think about it

And what would that accomplish, really? Now you have gear so good, you'll push multiple phases and Savage won't be a challenge anymore.

That's because of the lack of horizontal raids/content in this game, since there isn't anything on par with savage difficulty to use your hard earned gear on, you will end up using your savage gear only to kill savage faster than before and nothing else.

Incorrect. You can go to any game and the hardcore playerbase will always be a distinct minority.

And i never said the opposite, true, but not like in this game, even the devs know that very few people are interested in raiding and they still don't know why.

edit: slighty edited for errors

[Ashelia_Ferron]

Your suggested "idea/range of ilvl numbers" is horrible. Sure it makes the raiders happy BUT look at it.

In the entire expansion, nonraiders would only go up 20 iLvls. That's over a year's worth of content, and non raiders would not "feel" any stronger than before.

It also means all the nonraid content would be
1. Of 0 interest to raiders.

2. Even more faceroll than it is now. If every patch you're only going up at most 5 iLvls, the difficulty will not see any noticeable change.

That would literally be catering to the 1%.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Your suggested "idea/range of ilvl numbers" is horrible. Sure it makes the raiders happy BUT look at it.

In the entire expansion, nonraiders would only go up 20 iLvls. That's over a year's worth of content, and non raiders would not "feel" any stronger than before.

It also means all the nonraid content would be
1. Of 0 interest to raiders.

2. Even more faceroll than it is now. If every patch you're only going up at most 5 iLvls, the difficulty will not see any noticeable change.

That would literally be catering to the 1%.

Agreed, this would be horrible.

[Zojha]

That's because of the lack of horizontal raids/content in this game, since there isn't anything on par with savage difficulty to use your hard earned gear on, you will end up using your savage gear only to kill savage faster than before and nothing else.

That seems pretty cyclical either way, tho.

End-Gear being pointless is simply a consequence of it being rewarded from the hardest content. If the content already is the hardest there is, the gear attained from it can only serve to make this or easier content easier. It cannot be used for any harder content because it's already the hardest content there is. It can only be used on easier content or content of the same difficulty, which would drop equivalent gear.

[Azrael]

Slighty edited my post because some numbers weren't looking good, not so easy to balance it all in some minutes.
I'm aware that many people will think that it looks horrible but still I think that it would be more fair compared to the actual content.
Raiders shouldn't, in fact, be forced to do lower tiers to get upgrades, unless they are designed to do other kind of activities (relic quest for example or gear up other jobs).
You are forgetting the lockouts, not every patch should be supposed to upgrade only your main job.
Tomestone gear would be only 15 itemlevel lower than savage gear.

That seems pretty cyclical either way, tho.

End-Gear being pointless is simply a consequence of it being rewarded from the hardest content. If the content already is the hardest there is, the gear attained from it can only serve to make this or easier content easier. It cannot be used for any harder content because it's already the hardest content there is. It can only be used on easier content or content of the same difficulty, which would drop equivalent gear.

Obviously there will always be a content harder than the other one, unless they are designed to be of the same difficulty.
If for example there was a kind of raid that dropped only the right side of the gear and savage only dropped the left side we would already see something different.