Please Remove Tomestones currency

[NocturniaUzuki]

The underlying issue here is that players grind then quit without these limitations in the first place. If more human beings were less pathetic, they wouldn't need to resort to annoying limitations to hold onto players who apparently enjoy quitting the game they "like" as soon as they "finish" it.

[LalaRu]

The "I don't like this or that so it must be removed from the game" meme is evergreen. Will add "tomestones" to the list of subjects.

[Legewiel]

never!! tomestones are awesome, I don't want crazy RNG drop like in wow

[Dzian]

This sums it up. Look at wow, they took away limited currency, implimented tons of rng and the game suffered for it. Tons of wow players have asked for years to have the currency system restored in wow. Its a better system, as it allows you to progress towards something at a steady pace.

Combine both. Ffxiv has a really good loot structure in place that exists within ex primal. Even though it's quite heavy on RNG it still guarantees players can progress at a present minimum pace.. The RNG offers them the chance to speed that progress up. But at the same time it can never fall below that preset speed...

So while you.might in theory win get 11 weapons from 10 primal wins. You are guaranteed a minimum of 1 for every 10 wins.

It's not supposed to be fun. It's supposed to lengthen the time gear and content is relevant, while also preventing a severe ilvl imbalance between people who have loads of free time and those who do not.

I would argue against this. What the lockouts do is actually shorten the time gear is relevant or current.

If it takes you 11 or 12 weeks to complete a set of time gear then your already halfway through a patch cycle and every piece you pick up has a shorter life span than the last. The bit you pick up in week one might last 6 months. The bit you pick up in week 12 might last 3.

If you removed the lockouts then it could in theory all last 6 months which would mean gear lasts longer..

As for burn out that's nothing new. Hell many players are done with a patch on its first day. This game severely lacks content. That's why players get burnt out. Because there's only ever 1 maybe 2 things to do...

4.5 lands people will probably spend most there time running the same 24 man raid 20 times a week hoping to get a weekly drop.. same raid over and over and over and over. Because there's nothing else to do... That's why they get burnt out.

[Xlantaa]

Yes, let's remove it because you say so. Tomestones is the best thing they could do. What you prefer? Roll on everything and get all the time 7 u 9? It was like 12 weeks since new Raid release, you know how many loot I got from chest in this 12 week? 3, and 2 are form a different job than my main. It is thanks to tomestones n other tokens I have gear.

I rather have all currencies in the world if they will give me gear at 100% chance and not fight with RNG.

[Malzian]

There's always going to be an end game token to collect and trade for gear. Literally every MMO (with few exceptions) do this and generally there's a cap. Not going to get around it, sadly.

[PyurBlue]

There's always going to be an end game token to collect and trade for gear. Literally every MMO (with few exceptions) do this and generally there's a cap. Not going to get around it, sadly.

"Everyone is doing it" isn't really a strong defense. Having more people make a mistake doesn't make it any less of a mistake. OK, software companies want to make money and avoid risk so doing whatever has worked before when possible over innovating is to be expected. Even then, I think it's worth pointing out what is flawed with the current system and trying to push them to do better. I hate that many things in MMO's boil down to carrot on a stick. Games should be designed to be fun, and playing them should be the reward in my mind. If SE needs to include tomestones to keep people playing, there is room for significant improvement in their game's structure. Give us more content and keep us interested. Yes, it will be harder and take effort on their part (and hopefully the community's part as well, how to do this should be a back and forth discussion) but I feel that it would be worth it. It would improve the player experience and make it harder for competitors to usurp FF14 in the long run.

[Vidu]

"Everyone is doing it" isn't really a strong defense. Having more people make a mistake doesn't make it any less of a mistake. OK, software companies want to make money and avoid risk so doing whatever has worked before when possible over innovating is to be expected. Even then, I think it's worth pointing out what is flawed with the current system and trying to push them to do better. I hate that many things in MMO's boil down to carrot on a stick. Games should be designed to be fun, and playing them should be the reward in my mind. If SE needs to include tomestones to keep people playing, there is room for significant improvement in their game's structure. Give us more content and keep us interested. Yes, it will be harder and take effort on their part (and hopefully the community's part as well, how to do this should be a back and forth discussion) but I feel that it would be worth it. It would improve the player experience and make it harder for competitors to usurp FF14 in the long run.

"Give us more content" simply isnt possible, no matter how much effort they put into this - or at least isnt not possible to give us enough content to keep us busy the whole time between patch cycles.
I dont know how long it takes them to develop a dungeon, but I can tell you how long it takes a group of 4 people to clear said dungeon (15-30 minutes, usually) and I'm pretty damn sure that it takes them longer to design that...

So, they need to give us reasons to repeat the content - for once, because they cant produce enough content for us to have a new dungeon ever evening and secondly because people play at different speeds and start the game at different points and "veterans" still need a reason to go back into "old" dungeons again, so new people can clear them.

How often would you play a dungeon or a trial "for fun"? Three times? Four times, maybe? Probably a fifth after not seeing that content for a year?
"Fun" is the reward when you play the dungeon for the first time, but since they cant give you a new dungeon to play for the first time every day and there are people who still need that first time experience, you still need some sort of reward.
That can be RNG-stuff (music, mounts, minions, glamour...) but that can get annoying and demotivating fast, because you do your run, get nothing and feel like you've wasted your time (because the dungeon just isnt new, exciting, intresting and much fun anymore on your 35th run).
Or they give you a guranteed reward, like tomestones, to make sure that you'll get something out of the run for sure. By making them limited weekly, they also add a certain value to them - you cant just go farm them "whenever".

There is no way they can keep us busy all the time without sending us back into old content, but they need to give us a reason to do so. Even the most fun dungeon isnt much fun on your 10th run anymore - but they need you to run it way more than that, for the sake of new people for example.

And if you really dont want to run those dungeons for anything but fun: you can ignore the tomestones alltogether and use the other gear-options the game gives you.

They cant possibly put enough money and/or effort into this game to keep us busy and "intrested" all the time without recycling content and sending us back to repeat the dungeons.
If you however think thats possible... I'd like to hear your suggestions - only throwing money at it, isnt a valid one.

[PyurBlue]

"Give us more content" simply isnt possible, no matter how much effort they put into this - or at least isnt not possible to give us enough content to keep us busy the whole time between patch cycles.
I dont know how long it takes them to develop a dungeon, but I can tell you how long it takes a group of 4 people to clear said dungeon (15-30 minutes, usually) and I'm pretty damn sure that it takes them longer to design that...

Yet they already have content generators that are faster than groups running dungeons, namely PoTD and HoH. They could perhaps focus on improving these dungeon generators to produce more diverse content. It's unlikely that these random generators will match the work of skilled developers fine tuning individual dungeons by hand, but I see a lot of potential for a good compromise.

So, they need to give us reasons to repeat the content - for once, because they cant produce enough content for us to have a new dungeon ever evening and secondly because people play at different speeds and start the game at different points and "veterans" still need a reason to go back into "old" dungeons again, so new people can clear them.

I'm not arguing against repeating content. Ultimately you're going to have to go back and do something you've done before. This shouldn't be a bad thing, players should be looking forward to at least some of it. I enjoy some dungeons more than others, although level sync can take away some of the fun. Changing it to stat sync instead would improve the experience in my opinion. Making existing older content more relevant is additional content as far as I'm concerned. I hope that staying relevant means more than "gives tomestones" though. I'd like them to be relevant relative to my class level as well.

The difficulties that you're pointing out are completely valid, but I don't think they're insurmountable. The devs have some reasoning behind their decisions, but is it the system the best that it can be? I don't think so.

How often would you play a dungeon or a trial "for fun"? Three times? Four times, maybe? Probably a fifth after not seeing that content for a year?
"Fun" is the reward when you play the dungeon for the first time, but since they cant give you a new dungeon to play for the first time every day and there are people who still need that first time experience, you still need some sort of reward.
That can be RNG-stuff (music, mounts, minions, glamour...) but that can get annoying and demotivating fast, because you do your run, get nothing and feel like you've wasted your time (because the dungeon just isnt new, exciting, intresting and much fun anymore on your 35th run).

There are lot of things to consider in answering this question. If there is only one fun dungeon then you can burn it out rather quickly. If on the other hand there are many choices, that will prevent things from feeling stale for much longer. You also have to consider dungeon design, which is totally static right now, but doesn't have to be. A dungeon could be designed so that after 35 runs you've had 35 different experiences. Personally, I find a good bit of replayability in just switching classes. This is especially true if I'm not great at a given class as I'll go back and rerun the content to optimize. Increasing difficulty, or providing an option for increased difficulty, would put more pressure on me to optimize and give me more reason to rerun the content.

Or they give you a guranteed reward, like tomestones, to make sure that you'll get something out of the run for sure. By making them limited weekly, they also add a certain value to them - you cant just go farm them "whenever".

Tomestones are infinitely better than random drops, you won't see me argue otherwise. The weekly cap doesn't add value though, it just makes it annoying slow to gear up. That reduces the number of options I have when it comes to playing high level content.

There is no way they can keep us busy all the time without sending us back into old content, but they need to give us a reason to do so. Even the most fun dungeon isnt much fun on your 10th run anymore - but they need you to run it way more than that, for the sake of new people for example.

Well again, if there was only one piece of content to run, you would hit the 10 "limit" quickly. If there were say 10 dungeons, you'd have 100 dungeon runs before you burnt out.

And if you really dont want to run those dungeons for anything but fun: you can ignore the tomestones alltogether and use the other gear-options the game gives you.

Well the thing is, the game is designed around rewarding you with little tidbits at a time. I want a shift in focus where there is more content delivered that is about the experience than what you get at the end. FF14 is what is at the end of the day, even if I got what I wanted, it would be the same game. SE can't turn it into something completely different because of the costs involved and also the risk of alienating the people that are comfortable with what exists now. I'm not trying to turn FF14 into a different game, just trying to nudge it in a direction that I'd prefer.

They cant possibly put enough money and/or effort into this game to keep us busy and "intrested" all the time without recycling content and sending us back to repeat the dungeons.
If you however think thats possible... I'd like to hear your suggestions - only throwing money at it, isnt a valid one.

If they're going to keep to the current formula you're probably right. There are other ways for them to approach the problem though. The automated dungeon generation that I mentioned above seems like it would be within their reach.

[Andevom]

"Everyone is doing it" isn't really a strong defense. Having more people make a mistake doesn't make it any less of a mistake. OK, software companies want to make money and avoid risk so doing whatever has worked before when possible over innovating is to be expected. Even then, I think it's worth pointing out what is flawed with the current system and trying to push them to do better. I hate that many things in MMO's boil down to carrot on a stick. Games should be designed to be fun, and playing them should be the reward in my mind. If SE needs to include tomestones to keep people playing, there is room for significant improvement in their game's structure. Give us more content and keep us interested. Yes, it will be harder and take effort on their part (and hopefully the community's part as well, how to do this should be a back and forth discussion) but I feel that it would be worth it. It would improve the player experience and make it harder for competitors to usurp FF14 in the long run.

Gates are a necessary evil, and that *is* the reason just about every MMORPG out there has them. XIV's gates are actually pretty sparse, hence people complaining about being starved for content. Remove tomestones and that problem just gets worse.

Even if patches somehow contained double or triple the amount of content, removing the tomestone gate and weekly lockouts would result in this being blitzed early and having a sizable portion of the community left with no real incentive to do any of it. You'd be in the same position of having players not logging in until the next patch, but much sooner than we currently experience.

So gates are not a "mistake" that's being made in the genre; it's vital to keep players active. You can despise it as a cheap gimmick to keep subs going, but you're not trying to fund future content. If it was truly that big a turnoff after all these years across a multitude of games, no developer would even think to have something like that in there.