Predictions for OC/FT Live Letter

[Volgia]

No.
Again. This would just be a DIFFERENT option for casuals to gear up and give their content a longer shelf live.
As a bonus it would be good enough to allow them to jump into savage or criterion later if they actually want.
In a way, this gear would actually have MORE purpose then savage gear because you have more optional use for it.

More options are always an idea worth thinking about.

Sorry, but I honestly start to get tired of explaining the same thing here over and over again.
I really fail to see how raiders (which sometimes includes myself) could actually be against casuals getting their own farming option they then can use to casually gear up for the harder content and even if they don’t want to do harder content they would have dyeable glamour to farm for.

Ok, currently as a casual you can farm gear by:

Capping Mathematics Tomestone for 750 gear.
Farming OC Silver for 745 gear (Upgradeable to make FT easier as well)
Weekly Tokens on Normal Raids for 740 gear (if you don't wanna craft)
and Crafted for 740 gear.

Next Patch you will be able to:

Use weekly coins to upgrade the Tomestone Gear to 760.
Upgrade your Crafted gear to 750.
Get Weekly Alliance Raid gear that's 750, and go to your next step of the Relic which will make a 755 weapon (I think?)

As a hardcore raider you can:
Use glazes, twines and esters you get from savages to upgrade your stuff to 760 (RNG/Books).
Pray for getting a coffer a week that is BiS for your job a week, provided you cleared every encounter.

And that's it. As a hardcore raider you get nothing in uneven patches, unless you count the glam/extra materia slot of an Ultimate weapon.

So that's why I feel like I am confused as to why you would want more parallel character progression. At that point just offer glams for gear. If you made a parallel way to ilvl760 by it being casually farmable, you would just be breaking up savage. Players will just farm that and forget about the RNG coffers.

[Valence]

Ok, currently as a casual you can farm gear by:

Capping Mathematics Tomestone for 750 gear.
Farming OC Silver for 745 gear (Upgradeable to make FT easier as well)
Weekly Tokens on Normal Raids for 740 gear (if you don't wanna craft)
and Crafted for 740 gear.

Next Patch you will be able to:

Use weekly coins to upgrade the Tomestone Gear to 760.
Upgrade your Crafted gear to 750.
Get Weekly Alliance Raid gear that's 750, and go to your next step of the Relic which will make a 755 weapon (I think?)

As a hardcore raider you can:
Use glazes, twines and esters you get from savages to upgrade your stuff to 760 (RNG/Books).
Pray for getting a coffer a week that is BiS for your job a week, provided you cleared every encounter.

And that's it. As a hardcore raider you get nothing in uneven patches, unless you count the glam/extra materia slot of an Ultimate weapon.

So that's why I feel like I am confused as to why you would want more parallel character progression. At that point just offer glams for gear. If you made a parallel way to ilvl760 by it being casually farmable, you would just be breaking up savage. Players will just farm that and forget about the RNG coffers.

There is multiple problems with the casual gear treadmill.

- Casual "BiS" is tome gear, period. There is no other alternative to give you the best gear, it's always gonna be tome. Perhaps that's also why the devs opted out and eventually stopped putting much speed stats on tome gear precisely because if you get a set like the scaevan one we got in SB, you ended up with 2.33s recast on some roles, with no way to deal with it.
- There is only a false sense of options in casual beyond this, since everything that's not early tier release (like crafted/NM raid) is automatically worse, so doesn't become a goal to reach or play for, unlike tome. You could argue that one can use Bozja/OC gear, AR gear or whatever as an alternative for alt jobs since the main limit of tome gear is the weekly cap, but even then this falls flat on its ass because said gear comes in odd patches, where your main job is already full tome, and you're using tomes to gear up alt jobs. Also you can augment crafted gear in odd patches as well.
- Content shelf life: only tome content generates some shelf life, mostly to dailies and dungeons, because the rest you're essentially done very fast. NM raids? Only the last fight you'll probably keep farming one a week for the weapon token. Trials? No reason to go back to them after first clear. And that's the whole problem, where savage is built with a bit more replayability in mind. I may have my own issues in how vapid it can be for savage to reclear, but that's mostly tied to the gameplay itself rather than the requirement to replay through it.

[Gurgeh]

Ok, currently as a casual you can farm gear by:

Capping Mathematics Tomestone for 750 gear.

Useless, takes too long. I need two jobs fully geared after two weeks of the latest EX coming out. By start week 3. By that time if I'm still pronging EX, and I am, I need to be able to jump in the first PF I see. I need two jobs for that.

Farming OC Silver for 745 gear (Upgradeable to make FT easier as well)

Useless, OC needs to come out before the latest Ex in that case, so I can have be fully geared in 2 jobs for start week 3 Ex.
(remember if I'm not doing ex when it comes out, I'm left with 'nothing' do. I'm not doing normal, I already got my week's drops on Tuesday.)

Weekly Tokens on Normal Raids for 740 gear (if you don't wanna craft)
and Crafted for 740 gear.

Useless, if it cant get me geared in full 2 jobs in time for start week 3 of the Ex. NORMAL DROP GATING, IS THE GATE THAT REALLY MAKES NO SENSE IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO GO FROM NORMAL > EX > SAVAGE . Just give them a low drop rate totem mount, with the same gating, and they will... still... come

Next Patch you will be able to:

Use weekly coins to upgrade the Tomestone Gear to 760.
Upgrade your Crafted gear to 750.
Get Weekly Alliance Raid gear that's 750, and go to your next step of the Relic which will make a 755 weapon (I think?)

Too late. What is this useful for with regard to Ex4? Its irrelevant. I got bored of logging in an not finding a PF. end of Ex week 2. I got bored of putting up my own PFs back in Cloud of darkness, and with the last party that didn't like the way I tried to discuss and communicate when we kept wiping. It was again, only about minute 10. Ridiculous.

...

The rest I just straight up didn't understand.

I think CB3 does believe in "if you are bored, try harder content".
In which case just 'what' is the justification for gating anything until its time to go from Savage to Ultimate?!
Let people gear for min ilvl Ex as fast as they like, unlocked by clearing normal. (no crafting, no gil farming)
Let people gear for min ilvl Savage as fast as they like, unlocked by clearing Ex once. (no crafting, no gil farming)
You might actually get me materia farming if you added some penta to non crafted gear.
Have craffting to 'accelerate' 'upgrade' to Ex BiS, and 'accelerate' 'upgrade' to Savage BiS, for those Week1/0 savage racers.
Have crafting as an option for me to upgrade to Ex BiS, or Savage Bis.
But don't expect me to stay subbed without interruption doing nothing but roul content in order to be ready for patch release. I'm not.
Hey... give me latest tomes for 'progging' Ex without a clear. That might work.

But Why? why? why? why? gate gear at all, when thee is other content people can move onto 'if' "just do harder content" is the argument.
(I don't think that is the argument, and so the community especially needs to drop it too.)

[Volgia]

Snip

Sorry but why are you talking about Savage or Extremes? I was talking about gearing yourself as a casual who did no hard content at all. You can get all the gear you need to clear casual content by the methods I said.

If you wanna do EX4, you don't really need that much gear. You need the old tomestone gear and weapon to get to ilvl730. Getting a tome piece, some crafted gear, and some normal raid gear is enough to do EX4. You absolutely do not need 2 jobs all geared up to do an extreme.