Request : In Stormblood, allow us to gear without tomestones

[Talraen]

I'm not understanding what is really being asked for here. If you run a dungeon over and over for RNG drops, you're also getting tomestones. This would let you gear up faster, but in the exact same way as before (running dungeons). Chances are if they did do this, they'd give you less tomestones to compensate, and possibly less gear drops as well. Otherwise this is just a gear speed acquisition upgrade. Unless I'm missing something?

[SenorPatty]

Do you guys skim TC posts or do you guys simply prefer selective reading? Because it seems to me-and I could be wrong about this- that some of you have missed the part where OP has not made a single mention about replacing the tome system. He's suggesting an ALTERNATE way to obtain gear. A best of both worlds kind if thing.

Holy moly. Let us try not rush reading so much, mmkay?

[Reynhart]

I'm not understanding what is really being asked for here. If you run a dungeon over and over for RNG drops, you're also getting tomestones. This would let you gear up faster, but in the exact same way as before (running dungeons). Chances are if they did do this, they'd give you less tomestones to compensate, and possibly less gear drops as well. Otherwise this is just a gear speed acquisition upgrade. Unless I'm missing something?

Yes, I'll gain tomestones, but I'm bored of running <insert_dungeon_name_here> for tomestones over and over. I'd love to have a clear goal when I enter one specific dungeon, sometimes. And now, apart from the first clear, there's no reason.

I also talked about why I'd decrease the tome reward of dungeons, so that RNG-farming would not benefit much from tome gathering, like tome gathering rarely brings meaningful drops. But, on the other hand, I'd increase tome rewards from roulettes so that daily tome farming wouldn't be nerfed...except if you farm tomestones out of roulettes a lot. (But that's not part of my initial idea)

If I'd have to sum up, I'd only say that I'd like to be able to access normal raid without any tome gear.

[Kaurie]

I agree that I would like to see more ways to obtain gear.

One cool option in WoW is with their WQ system - where quests have a random chance to drop eq set to your approximate gear level, and you can see what the reward is before heading to pick up the quest. It helps keep more people in the open world and adds more variety to your login.

[Ghishlain]

While I personally don't mind the idea of a dual system, I think you do have to consider that the gears rewards for dungeons are most likely considered an appropriate step forward in gear progression for the minimal ilevel and content type. Consider the following:

3.4 Dungeons
Min ilvl = 210
ilvl of Gear = 225
+15 ilvl from min

3.3 Dungeons
Min ilvl = 200
ilvl of gear = 215
+15 ilvl from min

3.2 Dungeons
Min ilvl = 180
ilvl of gear = 195
+15 ilvl from min

3.3 Casual Raid
Min ilvl = 205
ilvl of gear = 230
+25 ilvl from min

I've omitted 3.0 and 3.1 because to me it's clear they wanted to (unsuccessfully) shake up the ilvl arrangement via how they did weapons and raid drops and reverted back to a more normal system afterwards.

If we follow your request and using the same trend S-E seems to want to keep, current dungeons would have to have a minimal ilvl of 245 and drop i260 gear (Scrip gear), effectively locking out anyone in the same way it was pointed out about how 3.0 "locked people out".

Of course that means they could change the system to allow for higher ilvl gear to drop but I imagine S-E would not like that either. Remember, even though 90% of us are already decked out to the brim from the previous patch cycle to get into any content doesn't mean the new players are. The dungeon gear might be useless for most of us but is still upgrades for those who are new or perhaps gearing alts and S-E deems these dungeons to be an appropriate power creep for the purpose it serves.

[Reynhart]

While I personally don't mind the idea of a dual system, I think you do have to consider that the gears rewards for dungeons are most likely considered an appropriate step forward in gear progression for the minimal ilevel and content type.

Problem is, they don't offer any real "progress". Dungeon gear has only effect on content you already cleared without them.

It's like those super weapons you get in single player RPG only when you have killed everything already...

If we follow my request, Neverreap/Fractal would drop i170 gear, Antitower/Cityr would drop i200 and Gubal/Xelphatol would drop i230. As for odd patches expert dungeons...I'm not sure.
I don't see a problem in giving more i170 items when player can already farm them as much as they want.

[Istaru]

Would you reduce dungeon tomestone to 0 and increase roulette to keep the run count down for casual players. Then we could farm the dungeons for gear of the same ilvl as the upgraded gear from the previous set?

New EX dungeons: 240 gear
New Alex/crafted: 250 gear
New Tomestone: 260 gear
New Upgraded/Alex-S: 270 gear

Full 240 gets you into Sophia EX and Alexander.

Something like that?

[Ghishlain]

Problem is, they don't offer any real "progress". Dungeon gear has only effect on content you already cleared without them.

It's like those super weapons you get in single player RPG only when you have killed everything already...

If we follow my request, Neverreap/Fractal would drop i170 gear, Antitower/Cityr would drop i200 and Gubal/Xelphatol would drop i230. As for odd patches expert dungeons...I'm not sure.
I don't see a problem in giving more i170 items when player can already farm them as much as they want.

Developer resources pending and if you follow S-E's current design philosophy, the better suggestion may be recommending adding another dungeon that allows for that mid step at the same time. This set gives 225, have another dungeon that's for 225 to 240.

Admittedly I don't see a problem with the current gear system if you consider the following:

i225 allows you access to Sophia. Win a i255 weapon and your average item level is now i230 (approximately, might need a lore accessory to push that). You're now i230 and can push into Alex normal for i250 gear which then leads to attempting Savage if desired.

The current content curve seems to be working, especially if you consider the next patch to provide the next tier of appropriate dungeon gear for the one-ilevel-per-two-patch pattern S-E has been holding. The current dungeon will also allow most people to enter the next dungeon in 3.5 as well as be pretty close to the next VA ark (most likely to require ilvl 235).

So, yeah, upon the train above I feel there's "enough" progression that S-E needs to get people up to the raid tier if needed. Between getting the tomes in doing dungeon runs to get your i230s and i240s from Lore and i260s from scrips and the gear drops, you're getting prepared for Raid tier which would include drops from Alex Normal, crafted gear, and scrips gear.

When I write this out, I actually kinda like how systematic S-E's approach seems to be >>; Heh.

So, uh, yeah, I don't think we need another way to get "current tier" gear when we already have quite a bit and will be getting another tier of it next patch.

[edit] Again, remember progression can mean multiple things. In this case dungeon progression allows the player to attempt harder content such as the EX primals and normal Alex (admittedly "harder" in the latter case is very subjective)

[SendohJin]

Holy moly. Let us try not rush reading so much, mmkay?

he's saying a very complicated thing. 3.0 had 2 sets of new tomes, one capped set and one uncapped set.

you can't have unlimited dungeon drops that's close in performance to the capped set. unless you want to cap the dungeons to 1 item a week, but if you make the dungeon drops this good, even at 1 item a week you have to increase the difficulty so that vote abandon is a common occurrence (at a similar rate to Ex trials).

i don't really want to read into how he wants to change the iLvs to make all this make sense. as long as unlimited dungeon gear is not close to performance as the capped tome set and the raiding gear, i don't really care if they make dungeons drops equal or close to the uncapped set.

i also think the Lv 55 and 60 job quests should've given out weapons, so i hope they do that with the Lv 65 and 70 job quests.

[Reynhart]

Would you reduce dungeon tomestone to 0 and increase roulette to keep the run count down for casual players. Then we could farm the dungeons for gear of the same ilvl as the upgraded gear from the previous set?

Not necessarily down all the way to 0. For example instead of 80/50, Gubal could drop 40/20 but the expert roulette could be increased to 120/50.

As for the ilvl of dungeons, I'd say EX dungeons at i235. With a ring Midas ring (220) and a Nidhogg's weapon (235), it would put put you at 233, to enter Creator. If you could have two rings, having i230 in EX dungeon would be enough.

i225 allows you access to Sophia.

Sophia EX requires i235. Without any tome gear, you don't have access to anything above the current EX dungeon, even with a Nidhogg's weapon.

The current dungeon will also allow most people to enter the next dungeon in 3.5 as well as be pretty close to the next VA ark (most likely to require ilvl 235).

If you look at odd patches, EX dungeons give you enough ilvl to enter the corresponding 24-man raid. Why don't we have the same for even patches and 8-man raid ? Again, it's not as if those items would break any balance since there are already unrestricted items with the same ilvl, and more powerful restricted items.

he's saying a very complicated thing. 3.0 had 2 sets of new tomes, one capped set and one uncapped set.

Simple : even patches EX dungeon drops = 5 ilvl higher than uncapped tome gear (Thus 5 ilvl lower than upgraded uncapped tome gear).

Like I said above, if you could use two meaningful rings, having the EX dungeons drops at the same ilvl as uncapped tome gear would be enough.
I'm just soooooooooooooo bored of having to farm tomestones for years........