When do the training wheels come off?

[Rivxkobe]

Decent gear - when you are low level, spamming dungeons, you can often move up several levels and discover your gear is less than optimal, but sufficient anyway, you just move on.

Are you seriously saying I should spam something like the vault until I upgrade all my gear, and only then move onto great gubal library?

No one does this - you spam the vault a couple times to reach level 58, then you spam library, and whatever gear you get along the way is bonus.

You also do this because you are clearing the dungeon rather than wiping, so the gear equipped is sufficient, meaning there's little incentive for seeking out much better gear.

I'm going to state this once.

Please read it carefully:

Doing the MSQ and Class/Job Quests gives you equipment. There is no reason, beyond being neglectful, that anyone doing ARR should end up going into a dungeon/trial with equipment more than (a lenient) 10 levels below the dungeon's/Trial's level. Not only that but equipment is insanely cheap to purchase from stores if you are THAT hard up for a piece of equipment. This all excludes Accessories because they don't actually matter much while leveling.

Also, you aren't wiping because the other players are carrying you.

[NzomiKujo]

Not really related but I'm leveling an alt on balmung and I just hit 45 and finished a dungeon.... I did NOT get loot at the end. I'm guessing this only happens in stormblood and shadows cause leveling under 60 I have NOT gotten gear thur the dungeons like you do at max. So thats a thing. And ofcourse gear on the market board cost too freakign much for a new player with no gil. I've been stuck with 20k for 15 levels. And buck those crafters selling rings you can't get at venders between the 30's and 50's being over a mil gill each >:O. I can see how new players aren't geared if they are running into gear issues like I am. Lucky enough I had to BEG a friend of mine to loan me some gil so I can buy the stuff off the MB. But yeah.. I knew I wasn't crazy.

The MSQ gives you gear. You can buy stuff from NPC, no need to buy it from marketboard, can buy gear from Grand Company too.
But gear won't help you if you use freestyle rotations. GCBTW

[Lmcgyver]

Decent gear - when you are low level, spamming dungeons, you can often move up several levels and discover your gear is less than optimal, but sufficient anyway, you just move on.
Are you seriously saying I should spam something like the vault until I upgrade all my gear, and only then move onto great gubal library?
No one does this - you spam the vault a couple times to reach level 58, then you spam library, and whatever gear you get along the way is bonus.
You also do this because you are clearing the dungeon rather than wiping, so the gear equipped is sufficient, meaning there's little incentive for seeking out much better gear.

No one expects you to have a full set of gear from the previous dungeon before reaching the next one; that is an unreasonable expectation given that loot is random.

What is expected, however, is to at least make an attempt to make sure your gear is appropriate for what you are doing. This tank had "a mix of caster, dow gear and 2 tank pieces all below level 35", in a level 44 instance. As a general rule, you shouldn't be letting your gear get any lower than 5 levels below your current level where possible, with every effort made to keep it within 10 levels. You certainly shouldn't be equipping gear inappropriate to your role (i.e. caster gear on a tank; DoW gets a grudging pass from me, as it does at least have more physical defence than caster gear and provides STR, but it's not ideal). Quests provide plenty of options for gear, and there's always NPC vendors selling level-appropriate gear in every area of the world that only costs a handful of Gil. I find that the only reasons for people being in this situation is ignorance of how poorly the Recommended Gear button is implemented at low levels or how different stats affect them (in which case, elucidation of the feature is required), ignorance of the fact that they can get acceptable gear from a vendor (prompting a quick pointer to what vendor sells gear they can use; or if I'm feeling generous, a free, full HQ set for their job when the duty is finished that'll be good to last them 10 levels), or just outright laziness (which is not an acceptable excuse).

[Barraind]

strict requirements

Yeah, how dare we expect people to wear appropriate gear, not spaz out as a tank in a game that decided positionals are great, and do their job quests?

We're monsters.

Decent gear - when you are low level, spamming dungeons, you can often move up several levels and discover your gear is less than optimal, but sufficient anyway, you just move on.

Are you seriously saying I should spam something like the vault until I upgrade all my gear, and only then move onto great gubal library?

Only if you feel like doing it.

You shouldnt be running around in a mix of Cutters Cry pinks and level 48 nq white gear though.

[Mahoukenshi]

Not meant as an excuse: But the mix of caster/healer, dps and tank gear is partly the fault of the the auto-equip function as was mentioned earlier or a similar topic. I noticed it by chance when I levelel one of my alt-job tanks and have made it a habit to double-check since them . Well, I don't know if in the given example the higher-leveled tank never looked at what was equipped under the premisse of using the recommended gear function, though.

[Sorciechan]

Are you seriously saying I should spam something like the vault until I upgrade all my gear, and only then move onto great gubal library?

No one does this

I do, actually.

At least, I do when I have gear less than 5 lvls below my and/or the dungeon's level. The stat increase makes a difference.
Plus, xp is xp. You're gonna have to grind it one way or another, so why not spam the dungeons you need to get the gear from?

[Insertcoins]

The MSQ gives you gear. You can buy stuff from NPC, no need to buy it from marketboard, can buy gear from Grand Company too.
But gear won't help you if you use freestyle rotations. GCBTW

Not if you're already done the MSQ. On my alt Im at the 75 quest but I got bored of the main I had on her and switched. So my highest on her is 75 which means there's no MSQ to do on an alt job. And no I couldn't buy gear at the vender cause the level I'm at there's no vender that sells the rings from 39 to 50 I believe. My only choice was the MB and all of those rings are stupid high. Again I ONLY have 20k That aint getting you much.

Thats why I had to beg a friend of mine to loan me gil. the only rings I see are 39 and a massive jump to 50 at the other vender. So those 40's I had/have to buy from the MB and those are over priced like a mug. WHY are those rings so over priced????!!!??!?!

[Awful]

I'm just really surprised that people still can't que into dungeons with proper gear, let alone missing a freaking job stone of all things they made things a lot more streamlined for tanks as well as other classes, like you get your tank stance at lvl 10 now, most tanks have a 1-2 AoE step combo while leveling, Provoke, etc. There's literally no excuse to not be a PLD by lvl 30 just like there's no excuse to be a burden in your group at lvl 44 as a GLD in Garuda normal, if it was me I'd have just kicked em after the first pull I'm not giving someone a free pass in any kind of content if they don't know how to play might as well just 3 man the dungeons n what not.

I also don't get why people defend this garbage they're the reasons we have ice mages, SMNS not using DoTs and spamming Ruin 2, tanks not tanking, people queing into lvl 65+ dungeons with ilvl 120 weapons and ilvl 39 right side, it's not okay to let people get free passes.

[Hawklaser]

I'm getting the impression that there's a general consensus that things were more difficult in ARR?

I played during that time and I don't remember it being harder.

Hauke - people maybe wiped at the last boss due to the lamps, but that still happens. People unaware they should click return after the second boss was a bigger issues, and remains so. The ease of brayflox largely depended on how much your tank wanted to pull, which I think remains the case.

I always felt the only difficult dungeon pre-50 was Stone Vigil.

Hauke wasn't just the void lamps. The patroling maidens with their aoe terrorize could easily wipe groups as well. Not everyone would stun that cast or realize to focus them down. Brayflox was more just about being up to date and paying attention, more for healers as some nasty poisons there. Qarn's bees with final sting which could wreak a tank, as well as its crocs with their rear cone attacks. Dzamel where need to fight in specific locations for the first portion, and not get knocked over a ledge in a later one. Stone vigals delayed spawn ice sprites. Aurum Vales fruit mechanic. Each added a small degree of challenge to their respective dungeon, either by adding a little more complexity or a little more difficulty. Not enough to really be much of a hurdle to most, but enough to catch those coasting along as well as be appreciated by others. Just enough of a change of pace to be noticed but not also warrant going up a full difficulty setting, as they very carefully built up the difficulty across the dungeons in ARR much like one would expect from a single player game. ARR's MSQ expected more out of the player as they progressed through it.

The expansion dungeons and MSQ have not felt that way yet. Having to prioritize specific trash mobs for stuns/kills is rare, and instead we just mass aoe them all. Very few twists are applied to any mechanics. In short, very little in the new content tries to get the player to step outside of normal play. So once see and understand the gimmick, its easy. As the gimmick is usually just an odd aoe pattern.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

So... In defense of the 'new player' part, I'm pretty sure you don't lose the sprout until you finish ARR msq. With that said, for those people who are new to mmo, the class/job system is not readily explained (not even by the Smith system, which basically just explains roles). Its something you kind of have to know. This is my first MMO. I had a bit of a time picking up how THM worked because I was used to how caster worked in stand-alone FF, which is VASTLY DIFFERENT. Having been playing for a few years now, I realized that the most popular MMO are largely cookie-cutter games that reuse a lot of concepts, making it easier to pick up for MMO vets. However for those new to MMO in general its a steep learning curve. I believe the devs expected a large portion of initiation to be done by FCs (and the Mentor system, but we all know how that worked out).

That person only had one class (assuming i read that correctly). That was obviously not just a new player but a person new to basic MMO concepts. Instead of being a hero, you decided to be something else. I know its annoying but your tolerance should be higher in low end shenanigans than in high. Because the higher you go, the less excuse you have--assuming you started from the bottom. Maybe next time give the person some advice instead of salt packets.