Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[Elizasylen]

This has been a problem for a decade now. You think they’re gonna change it now? Lol. This game is about designing with the least amount of effort at the lowest cost relative to most amount of subs they get for it.

You miss 100% of the shot you don’t take.

[XaiQ]

Ironically many would say it's too fast.
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I personallly would like to see the gearing slow down but at teh same time make gear itself more interesting and feel more worth while... players would be more motivated to acquire stuff if it wasnt just something theyd throw away.

The problem really is that the game truly emphasizes on your ability to play every job on one character, without the needs for alts. And that's great! But when it comes to endgame content, they aren't quite emphasizing on that quite the same way.

Every player plays differntly, and some may see this as more of an issue, and some less. But we have to remember that an RPG in essence is about making yourself stronger. But we're limiting how strong we are.

Let's look at it like this, I will use 6.0 -> 6.1 for when tome gear gets upgradeable weekly as an example. If you don't raid, your best option for gear is i590 gear which is the tomestone gear. To get a full set of tank gear, no weapon, you need 5010 tomestones to achieve that. And then, if you want to get weapons for all tanks(aka you don't do Extremes) you need another 2000 tomestones on top of that, putting youy at 7010 tomes to gear all 4 tank jobs. This puts you behind in gear on any other job archetype by then, and THEN you have the option in 6.1 to upgrade your Crafted gear AND Alliance gear. Now from 6.1 to 6.2, there's not that much time, and that's the point when you start getting weekly i590, and THEN it's very close to new patch and such "May feel you replaced your gear very fast."

To gear a single job archetype (all fending, all aiming, all healing, all casting, all striking, all maiming or all scouting) to all tome items, that will take you 16 weeks of tomestones. What if you want to achieve that on two jobs, that's 32 weeks. For two jobs.

You can argue "bla bla you don't need that gear anywhere" but it's an RPG, people want to grow stronger. I refuse to believe(but I'll gladly be corrected) that anyone enjoys to play the game for months and months without seeing any significant power increase. And this is speaking for casual players, it's not as bad as a raider but raiders actually need the gear for the content that's given to them (ie. in this case, Ultimate. It's not needed for Savage.) and this means you are very limited on which jobs you can play in a game that emphasizes you can play all on one job to clear the content while it still is relevant.

Now, if it takes me 16 weeks of tomestones to upgrade as a casual to ONE job in 10 ilvl behind raid gear, and then another 15 weeks after to augment them, that to me - is very slow progression. You can't reasonable as a casual gear yourself up for more than 1 job archetype (all tanks for instance) within a tier cycle (x.0 to x.2 or x.2 to x.4)

As for the "throw away" element, I kind of agree. I enjoyed in WoW the progress you did, and every tier your old gear didn't get neglected. It sadly doesn't work with the way XIV plays out and it would require an entire overhaul at how endgame raiding works in XIV, needing you to find a group to complete previous tiers and farm the bis there before you move on to the next.

[ElysiumDragon]

Absolutely agree with the augmented. It honestly wouldn’t be so bad if not everyone needed almost the same things. Like the Tomestone chest and boots are basically bad across the board. However there’s like no jobs that desire the Abyssos legs. Almost everyone except i think Striking prefer Tomestone legs. In my static were literally got no one that has it for BiS but everyone and literally everyone wants augmentation.

As a tank I’m in line just waiting for the DPS to get all taken care of before i can even get considered for gear. It’s for the better good of the group but it feels pretty bad tbh

I'll add my own experiences to this as well.

As a DPS, I've won precisely zero augments through drops, and only managed to buy A coating with books after a month's worth of clears. With my gear as is (i625), the only progression I can continue to make is through augmenting my existing tome gear, augments that everyone in my static is still rolling against me for. Augment materials are IMO far too scarce, and another means of earning them would be most appreciated.

[ThaCa]

I would like for them to utilize more content when it comes to BIS gearing and secondary stats. Just having the 24man pieces in the catch up patches being upgradeable with some Savage books or w/e to similar ilvl and different secondaries would be a nice step for some variety and making them less one and done content to high end people.

There's a lot of potential with Criterion and other alternate sources too, if they feel spicy they could even mix in PvP stuff or have things like the EX weapon upgradeable to bit short of upgraded tome weapon earlier in the patch cycle.

[Socram]

I agree with everything you said, and I think there are multiple simple solutions that woudn't change the current core gameplay loop of the game:

1 - make tomestone gear be tradable with books as well. Currently as the tier progresses we start accumulating books

2 - make tomestone gear cost decrease everytime you buy a piece. Like for example, the second piece you buy is 50% off

3 - make augment items drop from criterion dungeons. There's no reason a difficult content like that shouldn't reward the player with meaningful stuff

4 - make so that you can exchange items from a role to another role so that changing role mid tier isn't as painful as it is now. Maybe add a extra cost like 250 tomestone or something, just to avoid people constantly changing roles and potentially griefing PF parties

[TomsYoungerBro]

Ironically many would say it's too fast.

it's a pretty common complaint you see quite a lot that players are fed up of the endless treadmill grind. and how short lived everything is.

Isn't that akin to the gear progression being too slow, and not too fast? Savage/Tome BiS is set for 2 major patches, so about 8 months. In a hypothetical extreme example, if everything could be farmed to the maximum day 1 and BiS could be acquired day 1, then that would be almost 8 months of no gear progression, meaning your BiS would be good for a full 2 major patches of content, and it wouldn't be an endless treadmill because you would complete said treadmill sooner. Now if gear progression slowed down, you would get BiS waaaay later, lets say on average 7 months into the tier as again a hypothetical extreme example. In this example, BiS would only be good for about a month before the next set comes out, putting you back on the treadmill.

(Disclaimer: i don't want completely farmable gear day 1, if you were thinking that XD)

In short, i'm not sure how your argument contends with increasing gear progression speed..

[Dzian]

Isn't that akin to the gear progression being too slow, and not too fast? Savage/Tome BiS is set for 2 major patches, so about 8 months. In a hypothetical extreme example, if everything could be farmed to the maximum day 1 and BiS could be acquired day 1, then that would be almost 8 months of no gear progression, meaning your BiS would be good for a full 2 major patches of content, and it wouldn't be an endless treadmill because you would complete said treadmill sooner. Now if gear progression slowed down, you would get BiS waaaay later, lets say on average 7 months into the tier as again a hypothetical extreme example. In this example, BiS would only be good for about a month before the next set comes out, putting you back on the treadmill.

(Disclaimer: i don't want completely farmable gear day 1, if you were thinking that XD)

In short, i'm not sure how your argument contends with increasing gear progression speed..

There's loads of ways they could address the issue,
one would be diversifying encounters and monster arch types which could open the doors for multiple character builds and gear sets.. in a way 1.23 and a few other games did this.. certian monsters or bosses right require a build that focuses more on mobility or evasion, another boss might favor a built that trades mobility for pure defence, anthoer boss may favor raw attack power, another may favour armor penetration... there's loads of ways they could go.

could also help make content feel fresher and more engaging, gets quite stale and mundane when every encounter is basically the same. just a striking dummy with a different glamour.

another could simply be diversifying the sets a bit more rather than having one generic set for every tank / healer / caster. making more unique sets with more unique stats and attributes.. or make them more interesting. like old scholl whm in 1.2 for example had options. you could go mind for stronger healers / nukes with cleric, or you could build vit for stronger protects regens stoneskins etc..

both of these things could not only take longer to complete but give players more to work towards as a whole, and if done right could allow gear to both feel more powerfull and last longer. if a new piece of contert dropped and had a boss that dropped mobility focussed gear pieces then sure you may upgrade a few of those but the other stuff might still remain viable especialy for non mobiliy builds..

it would create an enviroment where you're tweakiing builds and gear at a rather steady pace but doesnt feel like your just out right replacing entire builds over and over and over again..

[Jeff_Batis]

I hope SE reevaluate how gearing works right know, I think a simple solution could be make to weakly lockout per class tank/healer/dps, since the game encourages the player to play multiple jobs it should also make the gearing based of classes

[ShyTheBard]

So lets hurry to get fully geared for our jobs so we can then complain there isnt stuff to do. Don get me wrong i would love to get stuff quicker but i also know the quicker i finish gearing whatever im playing the sooner im gonna be logging in trying to figure what i want to do. My circumstances might be different then your because im not into the highend compedative savages and ultimates. Some catchup alt gear might be a little nice but dont think you need to play all jobs in the high end stuff either.

so you only log on to get gear, what's the point then if you'll do nothing with it?

[AurisNix]

So EW was for me the first time adventuring into savage content and i largely enjoy it but i definitely felt this lack of accessibility to 620 / 630 gear, its frustrating that i can only jump into savage content with my main job, and VC dungeons were a missing opportunity to at least have a 620 gear, they gave us good gear system in bozja/zadnor (late but good system) and it should have existed a similar system for VC as an alternative to the slow weekly cap on tomes and books, i do really hope they acknowledge this problem cuz it is a problem, playing criterion or savage goes against the philosophy of "play any job you want", my other jobs are a potato cuz i can't gear them SE.