Quote Originally Posted by Edax View Post
And yet, hard work via mining, blacksmithing, woodcutting, fishing, ect, in Old School Runescape equals reward with money. More hard work means more money. The more money you earn, the better gear you can get until you have the best.
Hard Work in FFXIV is gated. Hard Work is only rewarded by a very narrow set of FFXIV game mechanics and the rewards are spiritbound. That armor was earned in Runescape, it was not just handed out. More importantly the player had more freedom in acquiring that armor via the player-driven economy.
But Runescape and FFXIV are not the same game; they aren’t even the same type of MMO. Comparing the two seems like a pointless endeavor to me. Are you wanting FFXIV to be like Runescape—a more sandbox versus themepark? As Vaer said, such a change is unlikely given the game’s development team. Personally, I think what attracts people to FFXIV (aside from name brand) is that there’s something in it for everyone, and it’s fairly casual in terms of play (and casual play is rewarded with similar tier gear, just that it takes longer—non-raiders can be full i370 at the end of the tier if they do a little bit here and a little bit there for it, and raiders get it faster because they did more for it: the “more” here being “harder content”).

FFXIV doesn’t have a focus on earning gear through DoH/DoL simply because the game itself is structured around battle content as opposed to crafting/gathering. I’m not sure the reason for this; it could be that battle jobs are simply more popular compared to crafting/gather, or that they didn’t want to have to restructure the MSQ and solo instances/duties for crafters/gathers; I cannot say. I’m not opposed to more systems for gear progression, but it’s doubtful that they would ever implement a system where one could just craft “the best gear”. Not only would that invalidate raiding, but it would also invalidate the Tomestone gear if the gear could be sold on the market board, all of the Extreme primals for weapons, and probably even relics if we’re talking about +5 item levels—why run content for gear when I can spend a couple million Gil for it (if that, considering how flooded markets get with gear)? That isn’t to say that the raiding community is “fragile”, either—just that people like getting rewarded for their efforts. If they feel like the rewards aren’t worth their time or their effort, they won’t do the content. Just look at Pagos.
If you want to get technical, one can technically buy the Savage gear—one way is allowed, and the other is not. It’s the player’s choice, but people typically don’t think highly of those who buy high-end gear because it wasn’t earned by them. And it’s usually easy to tell who earned their Savage gear, and who paid for it when you meet each other in combat (or, with regards to some content, if you know where to look). But I digress...

The armor in FFXIV is earned in its own right; it isn’t just handed out. I’m not entirely sure of the parallel you’re trying to make there, if I’m being honest. The gear dropped from each piece of content is a bit related to the effort that would, on average, go into clearing it: clear something easy, then you get lower-tier gear; clear something hard, then you get higher-tier gear. That’s the reward structure at the beginning of a tier; it later shifts to allow players that weren’t clearing the higher-tier gear to catch up.

If you started rewarding “the best gear” from every piece of content—the majority of which, in FFXIV anyways, is considered casual/non-raid/non-demanding content—the reward structure would be off with regards to the difficulty of the content and its drops. Completing Swallow’s Compass or Ridorana is not the same as completing Phantom Train Savage or Chadarnook Savage, to give an example. As easy as Savage has become as the years have passed, it still requires a different level of skill and awareness to complete compared to a regular 4-man or 24-man (the difficulty in 24-mans typically isn’t the bosses, but the 23 other adds present in the arena; and some 24-mans have had some teeth to them—Weeping City, Dun Scaith—though less teeth than Savage still). Thus raiders are rewarded before non-raiders with better gear (Savage gear + upgrade items for the Tomestone gear pieces they would need + a high-tier weapon).

Plus, the better gear is put to use for those who go on to prog Ultimate—you need the gear for damage to meet the checks, and to meet HP requirements so that you can survive mechanics (and even then, you have to meld VIT onto your accessories). It may be overkill for other content, but it is needed in Ultimate.