Diadem highlights FFXIV's biggest flaw: Lack of Horizontal progression

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Right which is okay and not everything that buffs something should be used over gear that doesn't.
Not "any" raid environment, but if you're talking about straight up no-nonsense proven progression, sure.

But what if the i260 body piece does prove to be more beneficial to the party make-up?
Then it's an either or thing, again situational. These things already existed so it's not hypothetical theory craft.

If it proves to be more beneficial than it would be BiS. Healers who didn't have their relic had to overmeld a 250 Scintillant ring for accuracy needs and Bards took a 260 one due to higher overall stat weights. The same would happen were enhancements of some sort added. If they were only situational than it'll either be negligible enough not to matter or mathematically better and thus, expected. No one cares what you have in dungeons or EX Primals (unless it's Soar skipping related lol) provided you met the ilvl requirements. This all only matters in raids due to optimizing. Now they could make content where situational gear becomes relative ala FFXI but I, personally, hate systems like that. It's needlessly cumbersome and doesn't make content anymore interesting imo. I just open a menu, toss on a different piece of gear I've likely glamoured to look identical to what I already have on and forget about it.

[TarynH]

Yoshida has stated that he does not want to add situational gear to this game.

I feel he's on the right path with that sentiment. I don't like the idea of situational gear in a shared gear system. The main reason it worked in FFXI was because it was arbitrarily forced. They purposefully put [ability+1] stats on gear, to make it seem important, and to push players into content. Some might say "that's good," but it also had drawbacks. It led to a lot of elitism. Eg. "You don't have X gear, so we won't allow you to go X job, because you're not as good as X person, because X person has 1 piece of gear you don't have, because you didn't care for X content, and chose not to do it." OR "X gear works better on X job. Do you have X job? Yes = stay and equip X gear. No = gtfo." Long run-on sentences aside, that was how it usually went down. Most times they wouldn't allow you in the group at all without certain gear.

Shared gear solves a lot of gearing up issues on the game, but doesn't do much for the individuality of the specific jobs. It would be a lot better progression-wise if it was tied to the job, instead of the role. For instance, say you had WHM and SCH leveled, but you had gear that enhanced your pet's healing abilities. You wouldn't want that on WHM, but definitely on SCH. However, you decide to play WHM one day, and you use that shared healer gear. Someone sees you have that pet healing enhancement, and either asks you to switch to SCH (if you haven't gone in yet), equip something else (which you don't have the option for), or get out of their group (you noob).

The problem I see with adding job-specific abilities to gear, though, is that it would possibly have to be on every single piece after that. Or at least until the ilevel caught up with the enhancement. If you had your pet healing ability enhanced gear, it would be "situational" to wear that most of the time. However, it would slowly get behind in ilevel (the main attraction in this game) and you'd eventually dump it for better gear. That better gear might only be better in main stat numbers.

However, if you had SCH artifact gear, specifically designed for SCH, and it gradually progressed, this type of system could work. Your pet enhancement would stay on one piece, as you continued to increase the ilevel of that piece. It would become your "main" gear, as you happily grudgingly reluctantly leveled it up with each patch.

Meanwhile, dungeon gear would fill in the gaps. And raid gear would maintain a slight edge, maybe with different enhancements. However, this would all remain shared gear, and perhaps not offer the same bonuses as leveling your artifact gear.

tldr; Horizontal gear progression could work if it was geared for jobs rather than roles. Situational gear probably won't work in current system.

[TarynH]

Now they could make content where situational gear becomes relative ala FFXI but I, personally, hate systems like that. It's needlessly cumbersome and doesn't make content anymore interesting imo. I just open a menu, toss on a different piece of gear I've likely glamoured to look identical to what I already have on and forget about it.

I won't allow this without the constant character blinking in and out, which makes the healer drop target and harder to re-target to cure. (Yeah... people tend to forget that was a thing.) Totally agree, gear swapping is a complete hindrance and does not enhance game play at all. I don't care how many lines we have for it in macros.

[ShinMetsu]

I won't allow this without the constant character blinking in and out, which makes the healer drop target and harder to re-target to cure. (Yeah... people tend to forget that was a thing.) Totally agree, gear swapping is a complete hindrance and does not enhance game play at all. I don't care how many lines we have for it in macros.

Gear swapping was not a hindrance at all. Not in any way at all.
And it did enhance the gameplay by so much, since it would allow for way way more min/max'ing.
And i don't think without gear swaps there will ever be true horizontal progression like FFXI had.

Gear Swaps would never work with FFXIV's system anyway.

[TarynH]

Gear swapping was not a hindrance at all. Not in any way at all.
And it did enhance the gameplay by so much, since it would allow for way way more min/max'ing.
And i don't think without gear swaps there will ever be true horizontal progression like FFXI had.

Gear Swaps would never work with FFXIV's system anyway.

People forget about character blinking. Lack of macro space. Macros failing because of lag. Inventory space. Carrying around gear that is maybe only used for resting MP. All of that was a hindrance. None of which enhanced the game, imo. (Rose colored lenses again.)

All for what? +1/-1 "balance," because they could never give you a positive stat without a negative. It was all arbitrarily forced by the community, and later the devs, because we "accepted" it all as "good design," when it was anything but. They very easily could have combined stats as gear got better. Instead of having to hold onto 8 level 51 staves when you're level 75 (or worse 99). (Yeah they combined them later, but for years it was 8.) Not to mention other lower gear that was held onto, in case you needed +1 to Third Eye, or some other situational function. Imagine using a piece of level 30 gear while you're running 60 dungeons, because it has +1 pet physical damage.

It didn't enhance anything but elitist playstyles and attitudes. (and the egos of hardcore stat watchers)

[ShinMetsu]

People forget about character blinking. Lack of macro space. Macros failing because of lag. Inventory space. Carrying around gear that is maybe only used for resting MP. All of that was a hindrance. None of which enhanced the game, imo. (Rose colored lenses again.)

All for what? +1/-1 "balance," because they could never give you a positive stat without a negative. It was all arbitrarily forced by the community, and later the devs, because we "accepted" it all as "good design," when it was anything but. They very easily could have combined stats as gear got better. Instead of having to hold onto 8 level 51 staves when you're level 75 (or worse 99). (Yeah they combined them later, but for years it was 8.) Not to mention other lower gear that was held onto, in case you needed +1 to Third Eye, or some other situational function. Imagine using a piece of level 30 gear while you're running 60 dungeons, because it has +1 pet physical damage.

It didn't enhance anything but elitist playstyles and attitudes. (and the egos of hardcore stat watchers)

Speak for yourself. I had none of those issues, not a single one.
And please don't go around calling 'rose colored lenses' on people, because that's certainly not the case here.

You don't have to like it, but I genuinely did.
Same as i absolutely despise FPS, does not mean there aren't people that enjoy it.
And it doesn't make them elitist or people big egos, just people with a preference.

My point still holds true though, without gear swaps there will never be true horizontal progression like FFXI had, some of the gear was BiS for a certain uses for many years.
And gear swaps wouldn't work in FFXIV, even if they did implement them because of how the combat works.
So i wouldn't expect to ever get horizontal progression in FFXIV.

Majority of the people seem to prefer vertical progression anyway.

[TarynH]

Speak for yourself. I had none of those issues, not a single one.

None? Not a single one? Never a problem with macro/inventory space in FFXI? Your character never blinked out when swapping gear? You never had to carry around gear several levels lower than your highest level job?

[ShinMetsu]

None? Not a single one? Never a problem with macro/inventory space in FFXI? Your character never blinked out when swapping gear?

Sincerely, never had problems with these. My character did blink, but it doesn't bother me when i blink. And it did not prevent me from doing my job as RDM e.g.
Using Windower in FFXI would fix those issues anyway, in case you did have issues. Which to be fair, Macros were more limited without Windower.

Depending on how much gear you use per Job, you sometimes had to move gear around in your mog house, but i could do that a lot faster in FFXI than i can in FFXIV.
FFXIV feels really sluggish to me in that regard, or maybe i'm just bad at moving stuff around retainers. (Drag or Right-click>Remove)

[TarynH]

Sincerely, never had problems with these. My character did blink, but it doesn't bother me when i blink. And it did not prevent me from doing my job as RDM e.g.
Using Windower in FFXI would fix those issues anyway, in case you did have issues. Which to be fair, Macros were more limited without Windower.

Depending on how much gear you use per Job, you sometimes had to move gear around in your mog house, but i could do that a lot faster in FFXI than i can in FFXIV.
FFXIV feels really sluggish to me in that regard, or maybe i'm just bad at moving stuff around retainers. (Drag or Right-click>Remove)

So you used 3rd party programs that were against the ToS to bypass the actual flaws that the game had? So you're saying the game wasn't the perfect red rose atop the snowy hill, just the way it was? You further proved my point of the rose colored glasses. Almost everyone who brings up FFXI and it's wonders, most of the time forget the serious flaws that existed.

FYI, I didn't hate FFXI. I liked it for it's own reasons. I don't want FFXIV to be the same game, as I like FFXIV for other reasons. I simply remember the flaws alongside the good things.

FFXI was constant character blinking. As the game got older (more memory heavy) it got even worse; taking longer to load the character. Especially if you changed your entire set of gear. Which most times you did, as you had a TP set (to gain TP) and a WS set for maximum damage. And other sets along the way to boost abilities. Every time you swapped visible gear, your character would blink. Was just a fact of the game. Maybe that didn't bother you, but it was a major complaint for healers. As it would cause them to lose focus on the people they were healing. Hindrance.

Macro space was a huge problem for those not cheating away on their 3rd party programs. You had 8 spaces in each macro. 4 of those lines usually had to be filled up with /wait 1. They later changed the /wait to be put at the end of the line, but before that, you could only fit 4 items to be swapped in each line. Hindrance.

Inventory space was a major problem with jobs like BLM. They constantly had to carry around up to 8 elemental staves if they wanted to be the best. Later they added 8 elemental obis. Along with rings and other gear, their inventory filled up fast. And it wasn't about visiting your Mog House. You couldn't do that out in the field. You had to have everything on you to do w/e content you were doing. Hindrance.

On FFXIV you can keep all of your gear, for every single job, on your person (armoury). I've never had to get any from retainer, so I can't relate to constantly moving it. On FFXI, however, it was a pain. You could at most keep two jobs gear on you, and that was pushing it. It was a pain to swap jobs all of the time, as it would mean emptying your personal inventory into another inventory, and then pulling all of the new job out into your personal inventory. Especially if you changed from something like BRD to DNC, that used a completely different style/set of gear. Hindrance.

If all of that is fun to you, then kudos. More power to you. I personally didn't think any of it was fun, or enhanced the game.

[A_Hortensia]

If it proves to be more beneficial than it would be BiS.

Thank you; except, not always.

This works in three different ways:
1) When that piece of gear produces comparable numbers to another, so they are virtually interchangeable, it gives you a different method of acquisition.
2) When that piece of gear produces lower numbers to another, but can produce larger number in a certain scenario.
3) When that piece of gear provides an asset to a specific mechanic.

The fourth is when that piece of gear doesn't provide any real benefit then it just exists as gear does now relying only on basic stats.

There is potential here to make certain gear special again, and thus longer lasting than being immediately replaced by a higher iLV.