Why obtaining weekly raid gear feels bad, and a possible fix.

[Bibine_Bine]

Dunno where's really the best place to post suggestions, I have a feeling like the devs don't actually read the forums but whatever.

Gearing up currently feels kind of bad sometimes. Let me explain.

One token per boss per week. Tokens are specific to the slot (besides accessories, which are generic). So gearing up means either:
1. You go for a specific piece of gear, which means you have the potential to get unlucky and just get nothing, which means you have to fight the boss again.
2. You roll need on everything, which means you can end up getting a mishmash of tokens and likely won't get anything but accessories until the next week.

Even with option 2 which nearly guarantees one token every raid, you end up eventually running into the same problem as option 1 as your pool of gear pieces you want gets narrower and narrower.

My proposed solution:
Generic tokens. Have it cost the same (4 for chest and legs, 2 for helmet boots gloves, 1 for accessories) but you no longer need specific ones for specific pieces. This means that everyone can get a token per raid, there's no potential for tokens to be entirely wasted because everyone passed on it, and you no longer have annoying situations where people are holding out rolling on purpose to get a better chance at the piece of gear they want.
Functionally it works exactly the same, but without the tedium of having to repeat content in the same week that you don't want to repeat.

Let me know what you guys think, or if you have any alternative solutions you'd like to propose.

[Kandraxx]

Dunno where's really the best place to post suggestions, I have a feeling like the devs don't actually read the forums but whatever.

Gearing up currently feels kind of bad sometimes. Let me explain.

One token per boss per week. Tokens are specific to the slot (besides accessories, which are generic). So gearing up means either:
1. You go for a specific piece of gear, which means you have the potential to get unlucky and just get nothing, which means you have to fight the boss again.
2. You roll need on everything, which means you can end up getting a mishmash of tokens and likely won't get anything but accessories until the next week.

Even with option 2 which nearly guarantees one token every raid, you end up eventually running into the same problem as option 1 as your pool of gear pieces you want gets narrower and narrower.

My proposed solution:
Generic tokens. Have it cost the same (4 for chest and legs, 2 for helmet boots gloves, 1 for accessories) but you no longer need specific ones for specific pieces. This means that everyone can get a token per raid, there's no potential for tokens to be entirely wasted because everyone passed on it, and you no longer have annoying situations where people are holding out rolling on purpose to get a better chance at the piece of gear they want.
Functionally it works exactly the same, but without the tedium of having to repeat content in the same week that you don't want to repeat.

Let me know what you guys think, or if you have any alternative solutions you'd like to propose.

Tbf, they could just scrap the gear completely, make all the slots cosmetic only and do standardized ilvls for every content bracket.

Why bother? There’s no open world, no PvP, downscaling everywhere, there are no builds, no different playstyles, no exciting gear pieces like trinkets in WoW.

[SophiaDL]

Gear is literally useless in FFXIV tbh as the person above mentioned, it has 0 impact in any way, they could honestly just make gear cosmetic it would change absolutely nothing, this is one of the big problems with FFXIV, there's no progression at all on your character as everything is scaled up or down and the gear you wear is just... there.

As an old WoW player, I have 0 interest in the actual endgame content of FFXIV as nothing is satisfying or feels good to get, you get new gear and there's 0 excitement from it, it's something I dont understand with this game in general (and how people somehow are satisfied with the content the game provides and its rewards), thankfully a lot of other aspects of FFXIV are great, socialization and housing being one of the biggest ones.

[Voryn]

Normal raid gear serves a purpose other than glam: it’s an alternative to crafted gear for those who want to do the current Extreme or Savage raids but don’t intend to start on week 1, and/or don’t want to spend as much gil or materials. I use it for playing alt jobs in Savage PF without having to spend as much gil.

Functionally it works exactly the same, but without the tedium of having to repeat content in the same week that you don't want to repeat.

I like your idea a lot more than what we currently have, but a “problem” with the idea is that it’s better for queues if we do the normal raids multiple times per week, and that’s probably why the loot system potentially makes us need to redo them after losing the rolls for the totems if we want the gear. It might be nice to have your idea plus some other reason to redo the weekly raids, like maybe having them give bonus weekly tomes or some novaclusters or prismaclusters for the first two times per week we do them.

[Bibine_Bine]

Gear is literally useless in FFXIV tbh as the person above mentioned, it has 0 impact in any way, they could honestly just make gear cosmetic it would change absolutely nothing, this is one of the big problems with FFXIV, there's no progression at all on your character as everything is scaled up or down and the gear you wear is just... there.

As an old WoW player, I have 0 interest in the actual endgame content of FFXIV as nothing is satisfying or feels good to get, you get new gear and there's 0 excitement from it, it's something I dont understand with this game in general (and how people somehow are satisfied with the content the game provides and its rewards), thankfully a lot of other aspects of FFXIV are great, socialization and housing being one of the biggest ones.

I disagree. Gear still matters. Maybe not to the extent you would like it to, but it does.
You ever done new content week one and get your absolute ass kicked, and then done the same content a month or so later when everyone's gotten fully geared and it becomes almost totally trivial? Yeah, gear matters.

They could do something like giving gear unique stats that change gameplay in some way, but that just creates an added balancing challenge. I'm not sure what you really want here.

[Bibine_Bine]

I like your idea a lot more than what we currently have, but a “problem” with the idea is that it’s better for queues if we do the normal raids multiple times per week, and that’s probably why the loot system potentially makes us need to redo them after losing the rolls for the totems if we want the gear. It might be nice to have your idea plus some other reason to redo the weekly raids, like maybe having them give bonus weekly tomes or some novaclusters or prismaclusters for the first two times per week we do them.

Except that's totally luck-based. I can and have had weeks where I just get every piece I want first try on each raid. If queues are an issue then it shouldn't rely on people getting bad RNG to bring down queue times. I agree that incentivizing reclears beyond just enjoying the fights would be a good idea though.

[Voryn]

Except that's totally luck-based. I can and have had weeks where I just get every piece I want first try on each raid. If queues are an issue then it shouldn't rely on people getting bad RNG to bring down queue times. I agree that incentivizing reclears beyond just enjoying the fights would be a good idea though.

While the luck-based system makes people redo the raids, I didn’t intend to make it sound like I think it’s a good reason. I agree that more consistent rewards would be better, and IMO since the devs want to encourage us to redo them I’d like extra rewards as the reason for redoing them instead of having bad luck be the reason.

[Gurgeh]

OP suggestions don't do it for me to be honest.
Don't use gear to stretch content out at all. Because it doesn't work. At least not until it's time for ultimate that has it's own shelf life.
You should be able to gear for the next difficulty tier of content... by playing the previous tier... As quickly as you like.

You want to keep people playing? give em a mount with a lower drop rate. Or a weekly capped cost.
Don't use gear for it.
So so dumb.
(What about crafting and gear? Don't care. Keep the very different types of content separate. Certainly don't tie the two together with something where market forces combine with willingness to break tos and use add-ons become a gross advantage. Crafted gear should be for week 1-2, then it becomes 100% redundant)

I spent last two weeks logging off instead of playing because only my tank is geared and no tank spots. No apologies can't be bothered to host PFs myself.
I'm now fed up with progging EX4, and my sub runs out today/tomorrow/day after.
Get 2 more weeks of forum access though!

Honestly all that time I was bored before 7.2 when you could have been making casuals still subbed feel good about being ready for 7.2.
But nope. Blue ball us with F all to do. Then give us the middle finger when Chaotic static farmers drive the Gil costs of everything including crafted gear up.
No I don't want to do crafting
I want to play rouls with sprouts and friends.
I don't want press X hunt farming or to 'schedule' the same map week after week.
My sub runs out again. Whatever whatever.
And I never bothered with new unreal because still trying to get past bloom4. Which gets harder with less groups every week. Last 2/3 pf collapsed without filling.
But keep up with the fantastic gear caps.
New normal raids 5- 8 were great for some. But I preferred M1-4. Which is the way it should be. Different styles for everyone. But as the rewards are so poor with gearing being irrelevant... meh. I won't miss em.

SQX you are constantly putting all your eggs in one basket. So when you fail to active the impossible and knock it out of the park 100% time. Your screwed. A bad MSQ shouldn't have been a problem. But your casual 'gameplay' ALSO kind of sucks.

[Bibine_Bine]

I spent last two weeks logging off instead of playing because only my tank is geared and no tank spots. No apologies can't be bothered to host PFs myself.

That is genuinely a you problem. You only do one type of content, on a singular job, and then can't be bothered to make PFs yourself when that role is apparently not in high demand. And then complain there's no content.

[ThaCa]

They could give 1 guaranteed piece to everyone per kill and all the drama about loot would probably die. Then again, people having their gear faster would make the raid tiers etc. die faster and have less people queueing for them, which might not be too bad since people always claim they are free once they get best in slot.