I do not have a "Main" I want to gear all jobs, change weekly gatings?

[Krotoan]

I want max performance with slight OCD issues...

So if I'm reading this correctly, you have a problem because you can't max out all of your characters and you don't want to invest because you don't know which job has the best .. numbers at max gear?
I'm trying to see this from your perspective and I guess being a casual player makes it difficult. Does actual like of character mechanics come into it at all?

And a friendly reminder: they are "savage" encounters as in Rough and Brutal. No "L" . Salvage means recovering destroyed items. I understand what you mean, but it may be something someone would try to use as a counterpoint later and nobody likes that.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Fair enough. Granted that MSQ grants experience across its entirety, enough even to outperform the armory bonus after 61. It's probably the disgust of listening to the shit more than once, and regathering all one's aether currents, etc., more than the actual time spent. Which... doesn't bode well.

I'd likely still have 3 characters going if not for one simple thing: I don't like the other two as much, character-wise, as I used to. I like this one. I want to just play this one. And so there went the ability to fully gear 3 gear sets at once. Which then becomes 6 and eventually all 7 with time over a given tier, before resetting. Now I get the one, which I have to split over the largest roles (MNK/SAM only because I didn't want to play casters or ranged this time, and tanks and healers).

I am much the same way. I snuck alts onto Balmung ages ago with the full intent of leveling them to dodge Specialists and to possibly pug on another character without screwing my static. Alas, I have yet to get around to it mostly because I have an attachment to Cassandra, both in a game sense and because I recreate her nearly every game I play where I have the option to create a female character. Perhaps I am too pessimistic on the idea, but given the examples we've already seen with Light farming, Verity and etc. I just don't see people capping every week only to complain later there isn't anymore content. Which is why I feel the bigger issue is content itself. There needs to be more variety. Speaking on that subject...

Either way this isn't likely to happen with the system currently set in place. Just imagine how clunky that would look, with Creation Tomes of Striking, Maiming, Scouting, Aiming, Fending, Healing, and Casting. It would look horrendous. No, this would have to be design philosophy of something new, that can make it work so people don't feel any more like they have to grind away at tomestones, tombstones, or whatever any more than they do not—hopefully less. They should feel more encouraged and able to play the game how they want and for want of just playing the game. I just really think that when we move towards that system, alt-friendliness shouldn't be limited to multi-character setups.

If they were to ever branch out gear progression this way, I suspect tomestones would be abolished and gear would be funneled into different content. Something like how Diadem was supposed to be another alternative. Another possibility could be allowing us to choose the stats and that being our progression instead of an ilvl. I'm less inclined to believe they would be open to that though, if only because secondaries are weighed nearly as highly in XIV as other games. Perhaps some way to upgrade crafted gear might be something they add. At least in this scenario.

A BiS alternative would have to be 340, competing with the augmented and Savage gear. And ideally, you'd want it to be upgradable with the next introduction of currency to whatever the new weekly cap gear would be. I'm sorry, I totally lost track of where I had gone into which details. That is totally on me. I've been jumping down your throat so at least I should assume that my "alternative" would be entrusted mutatis mutandis.

I thought this might be the case after posting, and it wouldn't change much. Although, it does step on Savage a little bit since you would have two 340 pieces; a drop and the token upgrade. Either way, you're fine. We both probably were caught up in the moment at some point.

Yeah, that's gotta be it. It just feels immensely hypocritical and counter-intuitive to me. in other words, it hits me right in the trigger button. And I know a lot admittedly small enough group of people to be wholly susceptible to sampling bias of people who have felt the same.

In some ways, it is. But until it stops working for them, they really have little incentive to change. This is where I think variation would help-- which may come within the next few patch cycles. The way I see 4.0 is the devs relying a bit too heavily on the idea job changes would force people to relearn everything when most picked up their jobs within much fuss. If there is one thing they are horribly guilty of, it's always taking the absolute safest route possible.

In truth, I'm the same way. For instance, I appreciate gating in that I'm not expected, therefore, to put in as many mindnumbing hours. People often think it holds us back, but all it really does imo is give a more level playing field from week to week for competitive players (progression players and record-breakers), and reduced the portion of our time spent in preparation for the things we play more for their inherent enjoyment (such as raiding, comparatively speaking, and varying from person to person), all while keeping a larger portion of the population useful to you. Those are all really good things...

It's literally just the inconsistency there that gets me on principle. Its really a fairly separate issue for me, as passionate as I get about it. Ideally, there are a lot of ways I'd like to see small changes have significant effects to the game. I'd like to see a greater sense of consistent planning—something less tiered, more continuous—for progression, for catch-up mechanics, for alt-gearing, for example. But a lot of the fundamentals are more or less fine, apart from the very basic issue of the primary spenders of our game-time (e.g. Expert dungeons) aren't particularly fun in themselves, while we could be having a lot of fun even just meeting the basic everyday efforts of the game—it just feels like the carrot-and-stick is presumed sufficient, which may be symptomatic of the biggest problem I see with general design. 'Virtual' content. And not the best disguised, accessible, or reiterative form at that. I mean, WoW can often give us the exact same instance in a way that feels more exciting across two iterations (challenge levels) than two entirely separate Expert dungeons may feel here.

That's fair perspective, honestly. As noted above, they do approach things far too safe. On the one hand, people argue the skill level is low, thus they can't make harder or more engaging content. My rebuttal has always been it's because you can coast through so much that skill gap exists. Take dungeons, for example. While I like most of those released in Stormblood (Template of the Fist can sod right off though), what I found engaging is healing through Bardam's Mettle with all Shire gear. The fact I had to make so many adjustments instead of the typical Holy spam made it a far better experience that I wish you got more consistently once you reached 70. This is where I feel WoW does a much better job with re-imagining its content. Unfortunately, it's hard to incentivize running a harder difficulty, though that could be where an alternative gear method comes into play. Like you said, the fundamentals are all there and the foundation is solid. They could just do with expanding it more with or without tomestones.

[Snow_Princess]

So if I'm reading this correctly, you have a problem because you can't max out all of your characters and you don't want to invest because you don't know which job has the best .. numbers at max gear?
I'm trying to see this from your perspective and I guess being a casual player makes it difficult. Does actual like of character mechanics come into it at all?And a friendly reminder: they are "savage" encounters as in Rough and Brutal. No "L" . Salvage means recovering destroyed items. I understand what you mean, but it may be something someone would try to use as a counterpoint later and nobody likes that.

TY, a lot, as you seen, love twisting my words around, like the few posts above yours.

If you want to understand fully, here is why I posted the thread in the first place:

In 2.0, I was harassed and kick abused contently because I was not in 120 gear. After learning people did this because people are too used in seeing i120+, I kept saying I am new I am trying to get currency to gear, can you pull slowly? 60% of the time it was "no" *full mega pull* > kick me because I did not have enough healing power, said I suck etc. The time gating here prevented me to catch up to handle stuff like that in an appropriate time frame. When I leaned about the existence of CT, I farmed that place for 16 hours straight once, and not once did I win that body and people with higher ilevels kept rolling it over then me. I would of just preferred to farm the tomestones on my own time and get around that abuse. I am guessing that abuse ended up too common, and in HW and SB, have frequent gating to prevent oversized mega pulls for situations like mine. Back then however I was just a WHM and PLD, and did not fully grasp the time gatings and how it applied to other jobs. I also knew i was not on even from a skill level stand point since I accepted my focus in crafting.

In HW, I started just before v2 came out (void ark 2, the city place), I just hit 60 whm a few weeks before it. So during that time, I struggled to understand what needed to be done and how get tomestones etc, though at this point I was starting to understanding the recycled concepts.

Then came 3.4 crafting and gathering geared for 60 and a few more jobs leveled past whm and PLD. This point when I leveled a new job to play with, I just used connections or my own skills (specialist gated) to be pure 250 to start out with. I remember someone mocking me over "buying market board gear" most likely praser harassment in a9N. over my MCH. So now time continued on, and put my time gate investments in BLM or MCH, depending what the sub stats were. (since gear is quickly replaced, the bad sub stat gear could be replaced with the newer stuff first) I thought I could perform well on MCH so i went to try do that relic, then did blm as a backup encase I could not perform enough on that, and in the mist of this WHM got gear, but due to gated, best WHM could get weapon wise was 255 from deep, so it was stuck that way for a while. So I could not really do well on MCH, the whole burst dependent did not seem to do well with me and the need to hit so many Ogcd buttons.. I couldn't do it fast enough so I just did savage on BLM. Because of the gear splitting, I could not meet those i270 farming pfs, so in order to do so, to talk to them, I got on my BLM, put on healer right, and explained I was a 262 whm and that was high enough for lore/light farming (or in the case of blm 265 ish something to 269 by itself) so because of the time gating and "picking wrong" it made it hard to join pfs and had to bypass it by mixing my gear and talking to people. I explained exactly what I was able to, to be able to join, if it was ok, and how I do fine farming at the gear level I was and that they where asking too much. (WHM DPS is important for lore farm speed, you want to clear it in 11-13 mins) Sometimes I went blm though and met other DPS/healers that where not quite skilled, despite having better gear (big skill gaps)

So now I am in SB and wish for the abuse not to repeat, so i am reluctant to time gear dump on a job when I only get one pick. The game should not be forcing me in one job when the supposed appeal is play all jobs on one character, something you can't do with the current system.

[Krotoan]

The game should not be forcing me in one job when the supposed appeal is play all jobs on one character, something you can't do with the current system.

That sounds incredibly frustrating and unnecessarily mean of those people you partied with and I'm sorry they treated you like that. This hasn't been my experience but that's probably because my FC and consequently my raid groups are good friends who don't "low ilevel we kick!" people. We've spent days trying and failing savage raids before actually getting them done. I've never been in a situation where I was bumping up on the cap of the latest savage raid.
In my experience (and I understand , MY experience), all content is accessible to any job you care to level to cap , which is what I'd venture SE means when they say all is accessible to one character. I contend they aren't falsely advertising this game which is one of the things I think people are bristling up against when you present your argument.

The limits you are bumping up against aren't content limitations for the sake of keeping you back, they're intended to keep people doing older content for longer. Gating to keep the game flowing.
Yes, you CANNOT play all jobs up to ilevel cap immediately. Yes you have to make a decision on what class you'd like to "main". This is what is keeping this game that we all love alive.

Yes.. there are probably better ways to do this and I hope they are found, but removing the artificial gate to progression would result in a surge and then death or at least severe degradation of server populations. This is why I argue removing caps is a bad idea.

[Shurrikhan]

I've been jumping down your throat so at least I should assume that my "alternative" would be entrusted mutatis mutandis.

Should have read "I've been jumping down your throat far too much to assume that my alternative would be entrusted mutatis mutandis." My typos creating yet more confusion....

That's fair perspective, honestly. As noted above, they do approach things far too safe. On the one hand, people argue the skill level is low, thus they can't make harder or more engaging content. My rebuttal has always been it's because you can coast through so much that skill gap exists. Take dungeons, for example. While I like most of those released in Stormblood (Template of the Fist can sod right off though), what I found engaging is healing through Bardam's Mettle with all Shire gear. The fact I had to make so many adjustments instead of the typical Holy spam made it a far better experience that I wish you got more consistently once you reached 70. This is where I feel WoW does a much better job with re-imagining its content. Unfortunately, it's hard to incentivize running a harder difficulty, though that could be where an alternative gear method comes into play. Like you said, the fundamentals are all there and the foundation is solid. They could just do with expanding it more with or without tomestones.

The sad thing for me was that my favorite moment in Bartam was imagining how cool it'd be to go hiking out there, free-form, while auto-pilot DPSing mass pulls as WHM. I had a couple pieces of Bartam gear carried over from leveling PLD, BRD, NIN, and SAM, and the tank was decently geared, but it just still ended up so muscle-memory that I couldn't help but chuckle a bit despairingly.

Some of ideas I've seen in the past include exchanging the Expert roulette (coin-flip) system for particular random daily bonus dungeons (50+) that are upscaled to meet your groups' level and item levels, potentially where you can add on a particular challenges for additional rewards and compete for best times for yet more rewards at the end of the day, revisions to or additional forms of PvP, entertaining overworld grindables (be that hunt revisions or new "Ruins" areas), missions (harking back to the 8-man instanced overworld scenarios, some of them decently difficult), new uses for our airships, etc. Many ranges of development effort necessary, and many ranges of potential resultant entertainment.

For myself, I'm not exactly sure where my focus should ideally be placed. I want to move away from the gear treadmill, or at least disguise it refreshingly, but more than that I just want to see the game as something I'd play even if there were no gear progression. But, trying to create ideas to that effect in a game (or indeed a genre) so firmly carrot-and-stick in design feels a bit... alien. And there are so many things I want to touch on even before that, from the way the story is delivered to the accessibility of lore and the openness of said story, the attractiveness of world interactions, the way cutscenes are handled (including their peeving stock animations every goddamn time), and plenty more.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

-snip-

I think I understand. Light/lore farming is hard on tanks and healers back then.
Everyone just wanted 1 tank and 1 healer for quick farm. Friend of mine also switched to dps
after a frustrating all tanks farm. I'm not sure if it was because you're in balmung and
no cross world pf back then. Most ilevel needed for me to join pf was 255 on Savage.
I specialized in dps, this is how I get each 7 dps relics done even crafting my own gear.

I done some stats comparison for every jobs, and BiS never comes from 1 source. It's a mixed
ratio for each left/right side 2-1-2, 1-2-2, 2-2-1 depends on the job. from 3 different sources.
Tomes (light party), full party raids and 24-man raids. The time gate actually serves me better
so I can focus on raiding when I'm done with weekly. I'm sorry being too harsh, never had
bad experience like yours, but honestly I would wait until 24-man raids come before judging
any kind of BiS to get.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

This totally screams "I want it all and I want it now.

Recent posts seem to point more at "I want to be meta at all times therefore let me gear everything ASAP so I can always be in the meta".

[Snow_Princess]

That sounds incredibly frustrating and unnecessarily mean of those people you partied with and I'm sorry they treated you like that. This hasn't been my experience but that's probably because my FC and consequently my raid groups are good friends who don't "low ilevel we kick!" people. We've spent days trying and failing savage raids before actually getting them done. I've never been in a situation where I was bumping up on the cap of the latest savage raid.In my experience (and I understand , MY experience), all content is accessible to any job you care to level to cap , which is what I'd venture SE means when they say all is accessible to one character. I contend they aren't falsely advertising this game which is one of the things I think people are bristling up against when you present your argument.

The limits you are bumping up against aren't content limitations for the sake of keeping you back, they're intended to keep people doing older content for longer. Gating to keep the game flowing.
Yes, you CANNOT play all jobs up to ilevel cap immediately. Yes you have to make a decision on what class you'd like to "main". This is what is keeping this game that we all love alive.

Yes.. there are probably better ways to do this and I hope they are found, but removing the artificial gate to progression would result in a surge and then death or at least severe degradation of server populations. This is why I argue removing caps is a bad idea.

Not exactly what I mean, the problem it KEEPS! << you on one job, on a neverending treadmill that makes you feel you can't keep up.

For example, once you can get say 5 or so 330 gear, they are going to release some 24 man thing, that was just like labyrinth of the ancients/ void ark that drops 330 gear while some kind of quest to upgrade 330 to 340. Just as your getting near cap, they are going to come up with a new patch to uncap creation and a new 450 tome and it just repeats over and over and over while in the mist of this, whoever comes in mid patch will be forever behind till the next one, while in the mists throw in some abuses by community over not being geared enough or dps parse enough.

" all content is accessible to any job you care to level to cap"
This is not true, once you level cap a job you are gated behind some ilevel, something that was a huge issue in 2.0, and a bit of a less issue in hw, and SB nulled it by giving people the 1 dungeon drop thing + i290 from quests, then you move to running DFs that drop i300 gear along with the 310 tomestone (least they did improve on the ilevel gating issue when you hit cap level for the first time)

Sorry I got a bit off track when i said no to your statement, what I mean was, MNOs now a days (guessing) like FFXIV just hand you exp to get you max level. I was told instead of making you take a long time to level for end game progression, they get you up to that point as quick as possible and make endgame progress slow. So if you are going to give people exp in unreal amounts, they are going to have more then one job at max level, and they should have everything acceptable at max level if that is the mentality of making exp rates so fast. So to slow down someone the first time, they MSQ gate, the very thing that discourages character alt making. So when you gate endgame like any other game that is 1 job per character, you are def walking a line where you are not truly letting people have access on all jobs, esp when people demand you be on your max ilevel job for anything.

Recent posts seem to point more at "I want to be meta at all times therefore let me gear everything ASAP so I can always be in the meta".

again, no, it is a simple "tired of the same thing reskinned for 4 years while we lock you in playing one job" it is the same thing every 1-3 months, repeating itself,reskinning the same patches as was done in 2.0 and hw.

[Silver-Strider]

Well, this is one of those "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" type deals on SE's part.

Removing gates results in people spamming the content until they're geared out and then that content dies.
Leaving the gates, results in a limit on gear, resulting in slowly gearing out all their classes, which in turn makes playing those other classes feel less enjoyable because everyone complains how much of a hindrance you are to the group due to lackluster gear.

After seeing both systems in practice though, I prefer the gates to remain because when content dies off quickly like that, the game becomes stagnant as there is little character progress at that point and it becomes more of a Leaderboard race to the top, which I've never really enjoyed

[Ameela]

The only thing that bugs me about the current system is that if you for some reason don't get to play for a week or two you'll miss out on tomes and be set behind everyone else, I wish there was a way to carry them over into the week after (so if let's say you have a week where you don't earn any tomes then the week after the cap would be 900 instead of 450)