Gearing Systems need a revamp.

[Kolsykol]

Imo I think that the books are fine as just a gradual upgrade every now and again.
However...

I think you should be guaranteed a chest.
Lets say you clear all four floors and you lose all of the chests, you should be able to reclear a floor you haven't already and it should give you a random chest ( once ).

Regardless of how people want to solve it tho.
I do think he has a very strong point in that this game is a lot about playing a lot of Jobs on one character, so locking you out like this is pretty insane.

Edit: I'd be in favor of allowing you to buy lower '' tier '' stuff with higher '' tier '' books too tho.
For example a book 4 should work to buy anything that book 1-3 could buy too.

[Shurrikhan]

Solutions:
1. Increase the Tomestone cap to 900 or I'd argue 1350. What this achieves is actual choice for some people. If someone want's to blow all 1350 tomes on one job, and get gear to go ham in raiding, let them. If someone want's to allocate X amount of tomes for 1 job, and the other Y tomes for another job, let them. This allows them to be flexible in their jobs, and not shoehorned into one job. This would actually help the PF's fill faster. I can say as anecdotal evidence, due to me playing multiple jobs, I can always fill a role in PF, this leads to more PF's filling, more raiding going, and not so much sitting around waiting for a PF to fill.

Increasing available resource neither increases nor decreases our agency over where to spend that resource. PFs that increase ilvl requirements to the greatest amount that can feasibly be had without relying on direct Savage drops would simply adjust accordingly, still requiring that all time-gated currency be spent on a single armor class.

2. Make it so books aren't worthless. Let me trade my books for other books. Example as follows. P1S books. 1 P2S book = 2 P1S Book. 1 P3S = 3 P1S Books, 1 P4S books = 4 P1S books. Given That you have cleared the fight!

This merely moves up the timeline for one's first purchase, assuming they wouldn't simply wait to buy the higher value-per-page item. By generalizing the currency, one can purchase a chest-piece, for instance, in the first week, accelerated from the fourth.

Now, I do think that'd still be fine, especially if it allows us to trim the inventory bloat of having multiple page types per tier (with purchase choices instead simply being locked out based on clears), but I don't see how it would ultimately change what you seem to find a problem. Getting to full BiS would likely be no shorter except on jobs with minimal BiS from raids.

3. Make our BIS worth getting. Our bis is simply invalidated the moment the next tier drops. This feels terrible, and imo a bad design decision.

While, honestly, overmelding should probably be removed altogether -- thereby giving the previous tier a fighting chance at maintained relevance when a new tier drops since the unique benefit of crafted gear would thereby be removed -- you still definitely want people to go and do the next raid. The only room for adjustment then, is that crafted gear.

You note this yourself; I just think simply dropping overmelding altogether would be the far simpler and accessibility-favoring solution.

4. Make Savage loot work like the normal raid loot. Keep the loot tables. But make savage loot work like normal raid loot.

As in using coffers instead of direct drops? Not only would that remove some of the traditional RPG vibe (of little value, imo, but notable to many), but such would slow initial gearing, given that 2-4 coffers may be required for a single item, especially for non-static groups.

There's no reason to Timegate gear like this. The fact as a raider.. the most fun time raiding a tier, is week 1. And Months later when you unlock the loot. Cause i can log into the game, raid and have fun, and have it not feel like a chore. That is a problem.

By your own admission, since you've sunk time towards getting your BiS (or at least max ilvl), the more sub periods that would take you, the more sub periods you're likely to play. While there's doubtless a breaking point that'd cause you to forgo a tier altogether, it's worth remembering that the game is funded primarily by subscription revenue and will make decisions largely based around that fact.

*End of critiques*
________________________

My own $0.02:

I think we should be doing more to make a feature, rather than a counterintuitive weakness, of "all jobs on one character" and to attempt to delay burnout even for players who want to level and gear up as efficiently as possible.

At present, one can only spend time-gated loot towards a single armor class, until reaching BiS in that tier, if not wanting to hold one's party back. Do otherwise shortchanges one's progression job. That should not be the case, and there is an easy fix:

Suggestion 1: Once armor for a given armor slot has been purchased via weekly currency, allow that same slot to be purchased for uncapped tomes. For instance, if I were to buy the weekly-tomes' chestpiece of Casting, I could thereafter buy any weekly-tome chestpiece with uncapped tomes. The first purchase for the given slot acquires and unlocks that slot, such that I could by the same slot for all other armor classes as soon as I'm able to gather the uncapped tomes for them.

Reducing burnout, however, is far harder. Primarily, this comes down increasing the efficient means of acquiring (time-gated) currency or other worthwhile resources. What counts as an "efficient means", however, is itself a matter of balance. No single means of acquisition can be so significantly ahead of others as to outweigh personal preference for the typical efficiency-minded player -- at least, without essentially turning all other means into "non-choices".

In this regard, I favor the idea of investing the time, in the short term, to create a procedure, for long-term gains, of easily scaling up content. Thereafter, I'd suggest making further use of such systems as Challenge Logs, Wonderous Tails (or some new, similar system), or the like, while decreasing the efficiency-lead of choices like Expert Roulette. For that matter, Expert Roulette should perhaps itself be repurposed, with the strict "last 2-3 current level-cap dungeons" being absorbed into the "Level <Cap> Dungeons" roulette.

It's worth noting also that with the above system, the relevance of uncapped tomes, too, would be greatly increased (at least for those who've leveled jobs in multiple armor classes).

To summarize, then...

Suggestion 2: Broaden, at fairly tight balance, means of efficient acquisition of useful resources (such as weekly tomes, etc.) through methods that offer those grinds more fun and flair. Ideally, this would not require players to (i)level sync down just to see more than a scant few instances of relevance.

[technole]

Xeno is speaking mainly from a tank role position, and not everyone is going to agree immediately because the issue is mostly some jobs are more gated than others to i600 BiS. Just because your role isn't tome-heavy on upgrades this tier, you could be next in 6.3.

Like healers best-in-slot is mostly savage drops for i600 gear whereas some melee and tanks need more twine tome upgrade needs than others. Healers only need a twine for pants at minimum, maybe two if they want the head. Even if you clear the whole tier week one, that's 1 twine i600 upgrade for the group that really can't be used until the 2nd week because of the 450 tome cap.

If anything I've advocated they should figure out a way to allow people to buy gloves, head, or feet on week one. Whether they drop the price of those pieces to 450 or up the cap to 495. This would lighten the burden a bit for some jobs that have to sit on tomes before they can upgrade. It's not a lot, but it would certainly prevent the week 1-2 items from sitting in inventories waiting to be used because of the cap. Maybe drop two twine upgrades in the 3rd floor because of the amount of jobs and tome piece upgrades needed.

Caps are obviously meant to keep people subbed, but I think the underlying condition is they don't really balance BiS around what drops from savage and tome gear.

Like the savage i600 head shouldn't be just BiS for one role, just okay for another, and garbage for the rest. Should probably be a few roles it's BiS for. That'll go along way around making gearing fair.

[Anonicat]

snip--

1. PFs can do that too, but more than likely to their detriment. Agency in the sense, that if i gear a Samurai... im not stuck only gearing a samurai or im behind a week. Which is what happens with the current system. I had to PF the tier, on 5 different jobs to get close to a kill. And I was only in crafted gear.
3. I'd be okay with overmelding being gone, but crafted would still give a boost in main stat which is far more important which is i suggested making it the same ilevel.
4. No. Make it so you can get 1 piece of gear per boss a week. Like if i kill a boss the first time, I don't get loot. I can go back in and get a coffer or something.
5. Im unsure if the subscription revenue is the majority of Square Enix's income. If you can point me to a source that says it is. I'd happily retract a statement.

I simply wanna be able to play multiple jobs and not be behind in gear.. it feels bad.

[Anonicat]

Xeno is speaking mainly from a tank role position, and not everyone is going to agree immediately because the issue is mostly some jobs are more gated than others to i600 BiS. Just because your role isn't tome-heavy on upgrades this tier, you could be next in 6.3.

Like healers best-in-slot is mostly savage drops for i600 gear whereas some melee and tanks need more twine tome upgrade needs than others. Healers only need a twine for pants at minimum, maybe two if they want the head. Even if you clear the whole tier week one, that's 1 twine i600 upgrade for the group that really can't be used until the 2nd week because of the 450 tome cap.

If anything I've advocated they should figure out a way to allow people to buy gloves, head, or feet on week one. Whether they drop the price of those pieces to 450 or up the cap to 495. This would lighten the burden a bit for some jobs that have to sit on tomes before they can upgrade. It's not a lot, but it would certainly prevent the week 1-2 items from sitting in inventories waiting to be used because of the cap. Maybe drop two twine upgrades in the 3rd floor because of the amount of jobs and tome piece upgrades needed.

Caps are obviously meant to keep people subbed, but I think the underlying condition is they don't really balance BiS around what drops from savage and tome gear.

Like the savage i600 head shouldn't be just BiS for one role, just okay for another, and garbage for the rest. Should probably be a few roles it's BiS for. That'll go along way around making gearing fair.

Tome gear that requires savage kills to get BIS for.
And his perspective in a way applies to those who have to PF the tier, and get unlucky with loot.

[technole]

Tome gear that requires savage kills to get BIS for.
And his perspective in a way applies to those who have to PF the tier, and get unlucky with loot.

Gear inflation is a thing, they don't want to leak out too much i600 from a single savage clear hence rolls and having to wait 4 weeks for a twine. Dropping two twines would be a better benefit because that'd benefit those who have to free roll versus a static, but also benefit the tome-heavy upgrades. Up the cap to 495, and allow all non-body/legs to be bought once/weekly.

They aren't going to change the 8-pages for weapon/body/pants, that's a bigger upgrade than what a body tome actually costs. Plus there is always the guaranteed drop from the 4th floor, and having two weapons drop QoL. Although we might be getting to a period they should add another weapon drop as RNG (for a total of 3 weapons, 1 coffer, 2 RNG). That could lessen the 8 week burden for a raid group.

A previous tier we always got SAM weapons as the RNG drop for weeks and no one wanted to play the job, so that 2nd weapon was always a wasted drop.

[Shurrikhan]

4. No. Make it so you can get 1 piece of gear per boss a week. Like if i kill a boss the first time, I don't get loot. I can go back in and get a coffer or something.

In that case, unless you reduce the value of each drop, such as by turning it from a direct/whole piece of loot to a mere partial piece (i.e., via currency), see the comment below.

5. Im unsure if the subscription revenue is the majority of Square Enix's income. If you can point me to a source that says it is. I'd happily retract a statement.

Design decisions for separate entries under a parent company are made according to the revenue model of the entry itself, not the parent company as a whole.

My point, moreover, was simply that it's not worth hoping that they will design out any and all time-gating, a backbone of subscription-based MMOs. That they have plenty of whales on the side does little to change that.[/QUOTE]

[Nezerius]

I have to simply ask "Why is gear timegated?" the tier is cleared in 2 days. It's not like its a long tier, or where people are having to reclear in world first to get gear to be able to achieve world first.

So if players have been able to clear it in 2 days, that obviously meant most (if not all) of them were wearing fully crafted gear. If it's possible to clear it this way, what's stopping you from simply obtaining the easy-to-obtain crafted gear and jumping into Savage content on any alt jobs? Why do you need BiS before starting to do so?

The majority of your post just seems rather confusing to me. You're saying you need BiS gear, but you're also saying BiS is pointless in the long run, because it eventually gets invalidated by the next tier's crafted gear. And then you follow it up with four solutions, three of which are meaningless band-aid fixes that would only help you in achieving your goal of obtaining BiS sets faster. Despite the fact that you've already stated that BiS means nothing.

The only solution in your post that isn't entirely meaningless, is #3. Making BiS worth obtaining. However, your idea on crafted gear works counter to what you're trying to achieve with this solution.
Unless the crafted pieces have terrible secondary stats, the extra overmeld slots would still make it better compared to the previous tier's BiS, despite being the same iLvl. For reference, that's an extra 264 secondary stats. This would also require SE to disable the option to use a grade X materia on the first overmeld (otherwise you'd end up with 528 extra secondary stats). But even with those 264 extra stats, you'd end up with the same issue of having the previous tier's BiS turn pointless, just slightly less so.

Now, you could of course just scrap the overmeld slots on crafted gear entirely. Give them the same amount of 100% materia slots as Savage/Tomestone gear. However, doing so will cause the idea to run into another issue.
An example: Patch 6.2 releases. A new type of tomestone gets added, while Astronomy tomestones become uncapped. New recipes for crafted gear get added. World first/hardcore raiders see no need to obtain the new crafted gear, because they already have BiS gear. Midcore/casuals see no reason to obtain the new crafted gear, because why not just get uncapped tomes for the Astronomy gear/get gear from the normal raid? It would almost entirely invalidate crafters as a whole, making them go back to the state they were in during patch 3.0 (crafters making gear for other crafters, or food/pots for raiders.).

BiS does need to be worth obtaining, but how do you go about it without making crafted gear completely pointless in the process?
Do you simply raise the iLvl of normal raid/primal loot by 10? You'd end up with something like this: Astronomy/Asphodelos/New Crafted at i600, Normal raid/Primal at i610, new capped tomestone at i620, new savage at i630/i635. However, this would still invalidate some BiS pieces at the start of the patch. It would also cause crafted gear to drop in value faster than it already does.

[technole]

Design decisions for separate entries under a parent company are made according to the revenue model of the company itself, not the parent company as a whole.

My point, moreover, was simply that it's not worth hoping that they will design out any and all time-gating, a backbone of subscription-based MMOs. That they have plenty of whales on the side does little to change that.

Exactly, you know the bean counters above YoshiP would totally be woken up if he removed time-gating when it's this early in the expansion.

You can get one role to best-in-slot within two months, that's how they want it. Anything more is up to luck and how early you clear the tier.

People got used to 900 tomes when there was no content for almost a year, but that's what they always do at the end.

[Anonicat]

--snip--

BiS means nothing because the developers have made it mean nothing with how quickly it is invalidated. Please re-read the post. I said i like to play the game at a high level. Push numbers to the absolute max on any job. Which includes BIS Gear. If it's confusing please give it another read. And not once in my post did i say, I needed BIS gear to get into savage. Re-read the post. Re-read the post. I've cleared the tier. In less than a month. I find the game extremely punishing to play for how I want to play. If i leave now. They aren't getting the 2 months of subscription that people say it takes to get bis on a character. Those points are mute.

BIS Gear is obtained.. but literally invalidated the second the next tier comes out. They could easily balance crafted gear to be equal in ILVL. Don't tell me they can't. Cause tbh as soon as BIS is invalidated its practically a waste of time. Especially if there isnt content requiring BIS to do like Ultimates.

Crafted gear can give set of stats allowing people to min max, and change gear on a whim for themselves.

Again the post never said. I NEED BIS BEFORE ENTERING SAVAGE. I DONT. . I've cleared the tier.

Just make the crafted gear equal to the BIS gear. What is so hard to understand. Who cares if I achieve BIS too quickly. Again. Do you know how fast someone can gear a main character if they do split raids, and have set statics.