Can we maybe slow the power creep down a bit

[Lord_Zlatan]

I think as long as FFXIV retains such a strongly vertical progression system, there's little chance of power creep slowing down. As others pointed out, the percentage increase of +2 damage now is roughly equivalent to the +1 damage we got in ARR.

That said, I think the power creep is a god-awful idea, and it has dealt a severe blow to my motivation for end-game content (there are other reasons I avoid it as well). Not only do small incremental boosts feel boring and worthless, I also know that the same boosts will be a lot easier to get in three months.

SE would be well-advised to start branching out, introducing gear that improves ability performance in certain ways to adjust how jobs play (a pseudo "skill tree" system, built via gear). Give me WHM gear sets that add a Stoneskin effect to my Cure, or increases the performance of my Regen. Give me gear that alters how Lilies behave and makes them more useful. Give me gear that adds a small AoE effect to Esuna, or an additional debuff effect for Break. These changes would be fresh, they'd provide a smaller damage buff than we get via item scaling, and they'd be easier to build stable content around (SE could simply test content sans bonuses to ensure proper balance).

That said, SE has demonstrated nothing but rank incompetence and an astonishing lack of creativity when it comes to itemization. I've little faith they'll ever move in this direction. Still, Eureka might surprise...

more people need to like this post, as this is the true issue in this game.

[kikix12]

more people need to like this post, as this is the true issue in this game.

Unfortunately, developers SPECIFICALLY do it that way. It's not lack of competence or lack of creativity. They want gear to be strictly stat boosts, and furthermore, they want the choice of gear to be a case of "ilvl check, if higher then equip". You can see that with how almost every piece of healer gear have piety in the 61-70 range, so even if you'd be willing to sacrifice a tier of gear to have lower stats, but different ones, you rarely can. You'd have to pick a gear that just can't keep up.

This is in an attempt to simplify the game, to make it more "casual friendly" and to avoid situations in which players fail to pick a working "set", by focusing on "wrong" stats. And I'm sure to make balancing easier...All in all, for it to change, the developers need to realize that people play RPG games for options. For straightforward advancement, they play action or FPS games.

[Lord_Zlatan]

Unfortunately, developers SPECIFICALLY do it that way. It's not lack of competence or lack of creativity. They want gear to be strictly stat boosts, and furthermore, they want the choice of gear to be a case of "ilvl check, if higher then equip". You can see that with how almost every piece of healer gear have piety in the 61-70 range, so even if you'd be willing to sacrifice a tier of gear to have lower stats, but different ones, you rarely can. You'd have to pick a gear that just can't keep up.

This is in an attempt to simplify the game, to make it more "casual friendly" and to avoid situations in which players fail to pick a working "set", by focusing on "wrong" stats. And I'm sure to make balancing easier...All in all, for it to change, the developers need to realize that people play RPG games for options. For straightforward advancement, they play action or FPS games.

I agree with you in that I completely understand why they do it. But eventually its just going to continue to be more of the same, over and over. This is tolerable for a game that is by all accounts a good game, but even then it will get stale after 6, 7, 8 years.

Maybe once we reach i500 (just throwing an arbitrary number out there), they will do away with minimum scaling iLevel (500 will be the flat entry level) for end game content, and allow players to gear up/pick pieces of gear up based on certain encounters. I really would just like augments for abilities. FFXI got a bit carried away with gear abilities and in addition gear swapping (PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO GEAR SWAPPING), but is it so hard to give a weapon for a DRG that gives it a bonus to a major skill, while also giving it the draw back of increased enmity? I dont think so, if they give multiple options and give a drawback as well.

In fact, they started doing it with the books for Novus (maybe wrong on that) weapons. But instead, maybe they can add materia that you can slot into your weapons that give them different bonus/abilities/increases.