Arthars: FFXIV should take a few hints from Dragonflight

[Sindele]

I think they are advocating g for a return to the old coil gearing method. Random drops and no books. Instantly increases raid longevity!

'til they all quit, anyway!

It's funny, because I really am sympathetic to some of the thinking that says 'yes, the market research and the retention data says one thing, but the slow rot that sets in to every game that triples down on it says something way more complicated'. I do think there's ground in the MMO space to reel back some of the comfort-first "QoL" adaptations that have become utterly ubiquitous. But truly, I think I am willing to die on the hill that says this isn't one of them.

Of course, tons of personal bias in that line of thought because I am so, so, so very over gear treadmilling (and, to nod to Fenyx, this feeling is intrinsically tied to why I spend very little time in Savage and have largely not bothered in years.) It's just that I am not only over how XIV does it - I am deeply over most of WoW's forms of it, too.

Well the current system in WoW he talks about where you do content, get gear upgrade that gear with tokens you get from doing content. When you find a better piece in that slot it will have reduced upgrade costs till it gets to the tier that your previous piece of gear was at. WoW also has dungeon drops upgrade to a higher ilvl depending on what patch the game is on, so the base ilvl drops from like heroic dungeons at level cap will go up as the ilvl goes up with new patches. It lets you pretty easily hit the new baseline to do the new content or at least a good starting point for it. Plus with the last major patch the story quest and quests in their new zone gave you a baseline set of gear as well to start upgrades on and to help you get into content without necessarily needing to go through a massive loot treadmill to do anything.

Obviously the dungeon part gets a little weird as FF14 doesn't really do optional dungeons anymore other than the 2 extra level cap dungeons in the x.0 patch and dungeons unlock as the story moves on in subsequent patches as opposed to WoW just having all of their dungeons scale up to level cap as you level so there is no real way to replicate how they approach that aspect. I like Xenos idea about letting Alliance raids drop equivalent ilvl as savage raids to provide alternate gearing (a basic level of horizontal gearing) or catch up gear and with it coming out 4-5 months after the tier has been going on it doesn't affect savage raiders and the loot is limited at release anyway.

The thing is: how does this really materially differ from XIV's treadmill? The sources differ, of course - dungeon gear automatically scaling and story/zone resetting the baseline are absolutely different approaches, but XIV has roughly-equivalent "advancing baselines" in crafted gear and the tomestone cycle, supported by the off-patch augmentations and Alliance Raids.

But, maybe that's the point. Maybe it's really just a matter of perception - where it feels more rote and formulaic because we've been doing it for years, even though loot systems in modern-day MMOs seem to coalesce back into a similar form near-inevitably. Maybe what's really needed is just that fresh coat of paint and shuffling the deck chairs. I don't see that as really 'changing gearing', but...? Food for thought, I suppose.

I wouldn't take anything from you seriously after you said you were good at " Cleric Stance " without any Savage clears during HW, it honestly sounds like you just hate every form of skill expression.

Oh, please tell me about all the deep skill expression present in gearing up. I would love to hear this one.

Did you think Sindele actually watched the video ? No, she just puts down everyone's ideas and acts mightier than thou but really she cannot come up with anything herself either.

I mean, one way or another, you're totally right here. I don't watch Arthars because I think he's obnoxious and very rarely has anything useful to say that I haven't already heard elsewhere, and I do very much love poking at the holes in ideas. As for why I don't often post my own, there's two main reasons: the first is that I'm familiar with what it takes to turn a glimmer of an idea into a production-ready concept, and that takes a level of work I'm not willing to put into throwaway forum posts; and the second is that my literal job description is to tear at the holes in both designs and implementations. It's a mindset that comes naturally to me, and I don't see much reason to turn it off.

Intriguing that you finally care about someone's posting career being overwhelmingly negative, though.