Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[Illmaeran]

Agree with everything. One idea I've had for a while is for savage raids to drop "tokens" that can be consumed to unlock gear on a vendor similar to how you can redeem artifact gear. Consuming a hand token should unlock hand gear for every job for instance. They can expand the system to tomestones too but I also agree that substats in their current form are restrictive at best and multiple builds should be viable. I shouldn't be screwed out of playing DRG well if I have pieces with skill speed on them.

I agree, a slot token would be a good solution to this issue. The OP's point about gearing up multiple jobs per tier being essentially unachievable is valid and goes against the One Character, All Jobs paradigm. Having a single token give all sub-sets of gear for that slot at once seems a bit too fast at 9 weeks to get all slots filled, 10 if you can have two of the same ring (I don't raid so don't know). Perhaps letting a player get 3 generic tokens per lockout to redeem however they want would work well. That would let people get a full set of gear every three weeks for a total of 21 weeks, or just over five months, to fill out all slots for all roles (Fending, Maiming, Aiming, etc). It may be less, I can't remember how much overlap jewelry has. A scheme like this would allow people to gear up secondary jobs relatively quickly to give their group some flexibility in composition while also keeping the upgrade drip-feed going at a rate that's still exciting enough to encourage long-term farm groups.

Then we have to look at what an RPG is, and who plays it. This actually affects casual players more than raiders, because those who are casual(In this context, I refer to players not doing savage raids.) have it even worse: Tomestones. These take forever to get, 450 per week, and god forbid if the game we played were to have one of its main qualities about playing multiple jobs on one character it would be a huge slog to actually get gear on most jobs in a timely manner. Savage players aren't AS concerned about this because they DO have savage gear (bis isn't 100% necessary for ultimate, it just stacks all cards in your favor so running non-optimal pieces is still valid just not sought after or desired).

Now, one can make the argument:
"But Mia, they casuals don't need that higher item level gear. The content they do doesn't require it!" and while in essence, it would be true, who plays an RPG and wishes to live in a stalemate for for 7 months with gear? RPG's and especially games with items with increasingly higher stats, everyone aims to get stronger and stronger.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I don't raid, so tomestones are the only reliable means of improving my gear. Sadly, the low rate of acquisition and knowing that come X.5 I'll be able to get the BIS tomestone gear is very demotivating. Why should I bother grinding all those time-gated tomestones when I'll be grinding them out come X.5? I understand the philosophy of wanting to spread out top-tier tomestones over time, but Poetics and the mid-tier tomestone should have their rate of acquisition increased and caps removed. There are seven gear sets each so the left side alone is 35 pieces to gear all types, not to mention the right side stuff. I'm the kind of player that wants to have a max level job for each role and have them all well geared even if I never play them except to level during the next expansion.

I haven't bothered this time around since the top-tier non-raid tomestone gear's an ever moving target and takes so long to accomplish. The irony of the situation is even though I'm "only doing roulette/DF" content and don't need top-tier gear, the difficulty in getting full sets as tiers increase has caused me to stop doing content when it's the tomestones themselves that are the reason to do the content to get ever better gear. In general I could care less about the glamours, I just want to progress my character's gear at a rate that will let me complete each set before the next tier comes out rather than just sit back, not engage in content, and wait for the time to do the big push to prepare for the next expansion.

I enjoy the game a lot and generally find something to do on a daily basis, but I'm not as engaged with the game now as I am when there's a meaningful goal or means of improving my character at a sustainable rate. I'd gladly do my roulettes every day if I felt it would have a meaningful impact on my character's progression, even if it only means gearing out various jobs and/or my retainers with gear. As it stands now, grinding PvP to get the rank 25 reward each series is about the most significant thing for me and that's only because they're time-limited items. Other than that, the majority of my play time is doing little, non-progression, things and sitting in venues chatting with friends.