We want more content, ok that's cool but...

[Zantetsuken]

The outdated issue is my biggest concern with the game too. I get the reasons why stuff should be outdated at some point, but if they want this game to be more fun all their previous content needs to be worthwhile. I personally find Darkhold to be very fun, and I would absolutely love to do it a lot more often - why don't I? because nobody in their right mind wants to unless they need the quest because the drops are all obsolete. The NM wave I was not much a part of as I had taken a break before it, and came back when Darkhold was released, but there is certainly little reason to do those either.

One thing that I've been having a lot of fun with in the game now are the Caravan Escorts. With a group, its really fun, worth the time, and just an overall fun thing to do. So then I'm like, hey... Lets go try a Grand Company Leve! Surely this are fun, right... RIGHT?! WRONG, no. I'm not entirely sure what SE was thinking, but having to save an NPC from a horde of one mob every so often for 15minutes is far from fun. But ok, so is the reward worth it? Oooh no, absolutely not. Lets take 15min you have to do, get 300 exp off the mob, and at the end take a whopping 90-115 seals. WOO HOO. How exciting.

My proposal to SE is to look carefully at the events on XI. In particular, my three favorites that I was quite involved with: Einherjar, Assault, and Salvage. So Assault... this to me is just screaming to be called company leves in this game. Make them GROUP content, with the option to solo some, and make them difficult and fun. Vary them up tremendously as you did with Assault... You know, even copy the same ones over - I don't care. But geez, do not give me two forms of company leves and call it a day. Make you progress through ranks, and get more leves or something.

Next, my other annoyance. There is no reason that you cannot put materia on rare/ex. What helps me defy this logic is by looking at the Sentinel's Plate set. All of it, aside from the pants, are able to be slotted with materia. So, by that reasoning, surely the sorcerer and sipahi are as well? Nope! Well, they certainly should be. Give me a reason to go down there and farm for it. They just are soooo not worth the effort, and I cannot imagine anyone holding up their linkshell at these things farming some of them for very long. Another big concern to me is the key ratio vs. item ratio in those chests. To me, the bosses were intially fun. That is, until you realize that they pop just about as soon as you defeat it. Then, when you finally get a key, it can take way more than a couple 3+ hour session to even get someone one piece of gear they are after.

->Good Solutions:

-Make the boss mobs appear every 20-30minutes, and pose a little more of a challenge. All of them now basically employ a burn strat. I want strats with more strategy involved, not just go crazy on it. Make the other jobs useful... Poor LNC,PUG,MRD are getting heavily shafted as they can't even hold mobs off a tank half the time and ARC and THM are the only DD people want.

-Make the drop rate from these mobs a little lower on the key, but make the chance to obtain the item from the chest much greater OR just make the boss mob drop the rare piece of gear in a LOOT LIST so you don't just pass keys to ppl to get what they want.

-Make all of this stuff able to be slotted materia on. Why not cap it at 2 materia total, while crafted can go 5 max. This should go for all R/EX for the most part^^

Anyway, just some ideas. ^^ Hope they get heard.

Good suggestions, I'd like to see more people take your approach.

Personally I disagree with the Melding U/U items and Yoshi-P has stated repeatedly his map for gear hierarchy, so I'm guessing there is a long-term plan involved.

Perhaps there was a bigger flood of materia on the market than they initially assumed and therefore the tier system might need to be adjusted, though we won't see the full picture until 2.0.

However, under current circumstances, I think it should work like this:

1) Crafted (+1)
2) 1x Meld
3) Green U/U
4) 2x Meld
5) Blue U/U
6) 3x Meld
7) etc..

In my experience, this structure parallels well with the difficulty/risk necessary to obtain each item.

I have stated that that future U/U gear needs to have special bonuses that materia can't give. Traits that reduce certain cooldown timers, speed up attacks, or grant bonuses to specific skills and TP moves would be nice. Also, set bonuses would give people a reason to farm and wear U/U gear as well.