My Opinion on XIV's Gear Progression

[Borgan]

As someone who mained BLM for all my XI career, I absolutely loved the min/max design of the gear system and horizontal progression.

There was always a reason to log in, find some content to do, and work towards that next piece of gear.
Which in turn helps you do the next tier of content. Which in turn helps you to gear up for NMs or HNMs and even higher tiers of content.

Just on BLM, I had gear sets for Nuking, Enfeebling, Dark, Haste, Spellcast Speed, Recast Speed, Physical DMG Reduction, Magic DMG Reduction, Movement Speed, Elemental Resist Nuking, Buffs, Debuffs... Maybe a few more I'm forgetting !

To get the most out of macroing all this gear, boy there were over a dozen content you could do..
Dynamis, Limbus, Salvage, Assault, NM, HNM, Story Quests, Maze Mongers, Crafts, Nyzul Isle, Sky, Sea, Einherjar, Zeni, Abyssea, Skirmish, Delve, Voidwalker NM, Trial of the Magians...
The content to truly min/max your character was huge. Always something to go do.

The only high end content for XIV is Savage content, which to me personally, is pointless to gear up from, because there is no content to use it for.. besides the next tier of savage.
You don't need it to do normal raids, or the next story patch, or the next patch of dungeons and raids.
As long as you gear up from tomes and upgrade mats, your character is more then adequate for the next patch.

Now that I am older however, part of me loves the fact I can enjoy 95 (99?) % of the game without the massive grinding, gearing up, and content XI required and expected.
But part of me really misses that experience the game created, the way a LS would band together for its members, and the sheer joy of myself or my friends finally getting that awesome or elusive piece of gear.

[Connor]

I completely agree that FFXIV’s ‘gear progression’ (if you can call it progression, it’s more of a cycle) is boring and uninspired. You could even be very harsh and call it sheer laziness. But the developers will not ever change the way it works, not in 4.5 nor 8.5. Main reason being that they don’t want people for more than a short period of time (which seems counterintuitive considering this is a sub based game but idk much about gaming business).

Personally, I don’t see why ‘horizontal’ progression has to mean endless year-round grinding. Surely it can be adjusted and altered to fit the FFXIV philosophy? Just because a similar system was in XI doesn’t mean they can’t adapt it

[Lunafreya]

FFXIV is not FFXI but I do agree with points that the gear treadmill is just incredibly boring. They should add more stuff to do instead of primals > savage > repeat.

[Zojha]

Personally, I don’t see why ‘horizontal’ progression has to mean endless year-round grinding.

Well, it depends on what you want to achieve with that progression model.

Fact is that the faster you acquire gear, the sooner you reach the end of a given progression path. The more paths you have, the longer it takes to reach the end of progression.
Since the relevance of content is tied to the relevance of the rewards, that means that the sooner you get your stuff, the sooner content becomes obsolete. Example:

Extreme start: Dump all gear in the game on the character right from the start. All further gear rewards from content instantly become obsolete and thus, the content does as well.
Extreme end: It takes a full year of grinding to get one item. Each grinding spot will be relevant for a full year for each player, because that's how long it takes to get the item. If people even endure long enough.

In between, the transitions are fluid. But the gist is that the longer gear on a progression path is meant to last, the longer it must take to acquire it. So if longevity is the goal you want to reach with horizontal progression, more grinding is inevitable.

Different progression paths are already in the game - Jobs. The gear for tanks, healers, NIN, DRG, SAM/MNK, BRD/MCH and casters is separate and players who reached the end of one path can go and work on the other paths. The issue with that is that it is not very well supported due to weekly caps and the pace at which new items come out, which aims more towards players that play a single job or two at most.

You could put up more progression paths for single jobs as well - Nature Resistance Gear, Coeurl Form Gear, Anti-Dragon Gear... whatever situational gear you can think of. The issue when those become relevant however is that the effort to gear multiple jobs increases exponentially. You'd need to create bonuses to make playing multiple jobs feasible and drastically increase inventory/armory space as well.

It's do-able, but it's not easy. And it definitely means more grinding than now if you want the change to increase gear longevity, either because you're simply grinding more gear, or because you're grinding longer for a given piece of gear. That much is regardless of the progression system however, it's just the nature of progression as such.


There is another way out of course and that's to find the magic formula that makes the content itself so enjoyable that you don't need to think much about rewards. But that phenomenon is pretty much exclusive to PvP games.

[Okamimaru]

I don't mind the gear in this game (and I came from a game where gear was the most customized thing you could do in the game)... this game isn't meant to have that kind of gearing... we already have people excluded from groups because of ilvl, class, and parses... you add required gear to that and you will have a mass exodus of casuals and maybe even midcore players... maybe their next mmo will blend the 2 better...

[AxlStream]

Am I the only one that thinks a level 30 item on XI was still used in max level end game is a tad silly?

[Riko_Futatabi]

Am I the only one that thinks a level 30 item on XI was still used in max level end game is a tad silly?

What item are you referring to that would be used in "max level end game"? There were items you could use to level for a long time for sure, but not "max level end game" as you put it lol. And yes, it was a tad silly, but in the end FFXI had -in my opinion- the most varied and customizable gearing of your character in any MMO, ever. You have at least 12 slots of gear that you can switch at any time. The game offered so many different stats that you could make sets for many, many things. Depending on the situation. Physical Damage reduction, Magical Damage Reduction, Elemental Resistances and of course the regular "TP Sets" and varying "WS sets". MND and INT sets for the differing debuffs you could use. Ah mah gad, I could go on way more but I won't. I love that gear system so much.

[Gemina]

Go play FFXI.

This^

Seriously, if I personally felt like XI did so many things better than XIV, I would be playing XI. These comparisons are getting quite old, especially when considering that XIV is a more modern mmo. FFXI did so many things wrong, especially when it came to QoL. If those early 2000 era elements were present in FFXIV, no one would play the game.

I'm not exactly sure what the issue some players have with gear progression in the game, or at least it hasn't been explained in a way I comprehend. XIs stat system was convoluted. A stat like +15 accuracy was huge because very few items gave an ACC bonus, so it was highly sought after and sometimes even mandatory to get into endgame content. That's how it was when I left. I haven't the slightest clue why anyone would favor such a system in this game.

Gear does get outdated very quickly in XIV. So what? It's also easy to obtain. Why do you think current tomes have a max cap and a weekly cap? Relic weapons are the only thing I can think of requiring a true grind that is anything comparable to the grinds FFXI provided when it comes to gear. They also serve a similar purpose. You grind for it so you can continue to use it. If/when it gets outdated, you glamour over the superior weapon with it. Under the right perspective, what you're really doing is taking the superior stats, and giving it to the weapon you grinded for.

We're getting relic armor next, and this is very exciting. I have no doubt that these items will be gorgeous and worth the time put in. Not for the stats though. For the appearance. At the end of the say, stats are just numbers and glamour is the true endgame.

[SavageCipher]

Its hard to be nihilistic in a game you're currently paying for, so I stay away from those schools of thought. I like running duties, I like doing quests. Give me new gear that I can easily obtain to do raids, and I'm content. Ultimately its all a grind with the current modal of mmo's. Do stuff, to get stuff, that helps you beat stuff, wherein you get your final stuff...now you don't have to participate in this, but SE makes it so easy, even WoW took the idea.

[AxlStream]

What item are you referring to that would be used in "max level end game"? There were items you could use to level for a long time for sure, but not "max level end game" as you put it lol. And yes, it was a tad silly, but in the end FFXI had -in my opinion- the most varied and customizable gearing of your character in any MMO, ever. You have at least 12 slots of gear that you can switch at any time. The game offered so many different stats that you could make sets for many, many things. Depending on the situation. Physical Damage reduction, Magical Damage Reduction, Elemental Resistances and of course the regular "TP Sets" and varying "WS sets". MND and INT sets for the differing debuffs you could use. Ah mah gad, I could go on way more but I won't. I love that gear system so much.

To me it sounds more bothersome than an actual enjoyment...