Unpopular suggestion: Make raiding (great) rewarding again.

[Animarelic]

The first two points at the end are actually dangerous grounds to wish for. Having old school dungeon/raid crawling experience with MMOs, you REALLY don't want that these days. From what I gather, you're asking for a system that requires you to progress step by step through the raid scene without alternatives even as new content is introduced. When people complain that it takes too long to get gear or that things aren't done fast enough, do you really think people will have the patience to run old raids in order to gear up?

Point missed, You shouldn't have to raid old content to begin raiding every Patch, But you also shouldn't have to start from scratch every Patch.

People who cleared 3.2 raids should be able to jump into 3.4 raids with the gear they have and new players should be able to get entry level gear. Raiders shouldn't be forced to gather new gear when they cleared the old raid content, in no MMORPG is that a healthy practice nor is it done to the extent FFXIV does it. A reset every 3 months is Demoralizing and is the main reason the Raid scene is suffering.

[Welsper59]

Point missed, You shouldn't have to raid old content to begin raiding every Patch, But you also shouldn't have to start from scratch every Patch.

People who cleared 3.2 raids should be able to jump into 3.4 raids with the gear they have and new players should be able to get entry level gear. Raiders shouldn't be forced to gather new gear when they cleared the old raid content, in no MMORPG is that a healthy practice nor is it done to the extent FFXIV does it. A reset every 3 months is Demoralizing and is the main reason the Raid scene is suffering.

We're not resetting every 3 months though. We don't get the next raid tier until the 6 month interval, unless you're counting the somewhat uncommon occurrence of 24man gear being considered BiS (or near) for some jobs/slots.

I don't quite understand what it is you're saying that new players should get entry level gear, when you're also saying that they shouldn't have to run old raids. If it's not what I assumed you meant, where new players would get entry level gear to start raiding the old raids to creep up to current, then doesn't that mean you're saying they should be starting where the mentioned raider starts? I think you're conflicting certain things on the matter.

I mean, I get that you're saying you should be able to begin to clear the new raid with old raid tier gear, but... we already do? Or are you saying that the old gear should be all you ever need to clear ALL of the next new raid tier? They'll have to have a significantly larger amount of bosses if the need to upgrade at all in a new tier is to last longer than a week.

From another perspective, assuming you're not saying that and expecting raiders to gear up exclusively through the new raid tier to take on the next boss of it, since tomes wouldn't be anywhere near as good of gear, I highly doubt you or your peers would be content with the idea to farm a couple of them for weeks/months before taking on the next. Rinse and repeat for each boss following till finished. I've lived that, you and mostly everyone else wouldn't like it these days... at all.

Edit: It just hit me that you're obviously saying you should be rewarded with gear high enough to ignore the need to do any normal mode new tier and just skip into Savage. Fair enough on that. Not sure how you're thinking item levels should work out though on that, given you're thinking they'd keep ilvls low with so much content thrown in for non-Savage players. It's just not possible without heavy inflation if you're expecting Savage gear to ALWAYS maintain a significant difference in power.

[FoxyAreku]

Easy to say until you sink 300 hours into learning fights. At a certain point, it's about actually feeling like your character is getting stronger. The problem is all of your progress gets thrown in the toilet the second the next raid patch drops because of ~*easily obtainable crafted gear*~ being higher item level.

I want to use my gear that we fought for on the next raid. It's stupid that I could have just as easily not played 3.0 or 3.2 and be MUCH BETTER OFF THAN IF I HAD RAIDED because a small amount of gil will leapfrog me past progression entirely. In 2.x it was fine because even though crafted gear did come out, it was the same item level as the previous raid, which meant it didn't necessarily entirely outclass what you had earned. Crafted accessories came out on odd patches and were only outright better for tanks. Raid weapons were also still good and their primal equivalents weren't outright better (though Leviathan did have a super rare upgrade item).

I said this a couple of pages ago, but people went back and did post-nerf, post-echo Nael in 3.4 for catchup or alt weapons pretty regularly. How many people have gone back and cleared Gordias 4?

Yes, I actually made a post about that before I think.

Even as a crafter who made a fortune when midas released, I don't think it's healthy for crafted stuff to be better than the previous tier raid things immediately. It should really be staggered a bit.

[Cakekizyy]

It's called humor. I really want a sarcasm font.

That's what /s is for.

[StrejdaTom]

I feel like my thread became a bit more actual again, considering the new interview about the raids that just popped in on reddit/general discussion.

Apparently, Yoshi isn't planning to make changes to rewards/motivation of savage raiders at this moment.
Shame, I don't think I wanted that much.

[Brannigan]

Yeah, pretty disappointed with that. It seems like they're still debating incentives a little bit at least for 4.0. It seems like they have a really weird mindset about it though.

FFXIV in 2.0 gave people raid-level gear basically for free (tomestones, 24 man) and catchup gear (even-numbered patch crafted) without completely destroying the rewards for raiding. They talk about people feeling obligated to raid even though you got the same level of gear without raiding. Doesn't make a lot of sense to meeeeee.

You know it occurs to me that they could stick normal mode raids into that patch cycle's Expert Roulette. If it just dropped dungeon gear, and dungeon gear was the same ilvl as the previous patch's raid gear, that would let people catch up fast without invalidating raid stuff. It would also make Expert a little more varied. It'd also give raid gear something unique (how it looks lol).