Lack of Gear progression

[Alahard]

Are you suggesting relic gear? The issue is that it would piss off raiders. I'm not totally against this, but on raid patch, it shouldnt be even as good as crafted gear because it will make the tier too easy for some. It could be updated later to be better, but still shouldn't surpass savage gear until the next patch. What you are suggesting is a casual but grindy approach to gear, so it wouldnt be for raiders. And before anyone goes off on the "catering to raiders" shtick, casual content in this game doesn't need gear. There would have to be a fundamental rework to the type of content that exists in this game for it to even matter. The closet thing currently is OC gear which is better than crafted, worse than tome, but gives an advantage in OC and takes a considerable grind.

The other issue though is that I don't know who it is for... the same type of people who like grinding relics perhaps? I think its a no from me because I'm just not sure this will fulfill any real niche in the game.

It wouldn't piss us off, especially if it takes a bit of time to kick it off.

If anything I welcome it, it gives me something to do outside of waiting around in pf.

Bonus I can actually raid on more jobs when needed on my one toon whenever someone in the static is missing.

Also I don't really care that the il is "savage level". If it really concerns the devs, make it tome level on the patch savage comes out and make it upgradable on the off patches. Not going to care at all.

[Valence]

I think they need to re-evaluate gear sources, namely dungeon loot and NM raid gear, as well as AR gear.

- Crafted gear should be the baseline ilvl0 for each tier for people to get started.
- Dungeon gear should be at least identical ilvl with additional perks (more on this below), but shouldn't out-compete crafted since it can be farmed without restrictions.
- NM raid gear should be ilvl+10, same as baseline tome gear. NM raid gear is capped per week much like tome gear and has no business being starting ilvl like crafted. NM raid gear should also drop weapons with time caveats, much like tome.
- AR gear should be ilvl+20, same as augmented tome gear. No reason not to, else it's useless in its current state and doesn't offer any alternatives to tome BiS. Odd patches are where savage tiers are already old and casuals start to compete with savage loot when they finally can augment their tome gear anyway, so what's AR gear more? More options = better

Making gear more than just +1 or +2 on the main numbers:

- Dungeon loot could have semi rng perks (bring back pink gear from Diadem!), and perhaps those could be upgraded with various casual tokens obtained over time so that it can keep up with NM and tome gear. Go wild, bring fun random perks players can be proud of beyond +10 to the main stat or whatever. This would be disabled in savage content for safety (or not idc).
- Savage loot could also have fixed, by design perks (not rng) that keep it better than even tome gear or anything casual, specifically in hard content where any wild perk is disabled.

But what do I know... I just think the only thing Diadem 1.0 did right was the gear, funnily enough. It was fun going in to get better and weirder gear in there.

[Altina_Orion]

Yet again the "It would piss raider off" thing, as i raider, no it wouldnt piss us off, most of us dont even do the raid content because of the "gear" we do it because of the challenge, if its on the same level as crafted gear and increases to the same ilvl like savage, it would be completly fine because after all BiS is always a mix between Tomestones/Savage and with the last Tier even Chaotic, so even if you add another layer of it, to get absolutly max dps and BiS you would anyway probably need savage gear

so its completly fine and actually i would like it, it would make the open world a bit meaningful

Thats the point rofl. Day one, its supposed to be hard because you don't have the gear. After a few weeks or months, this no longer matters.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

It likely won't piss off the raiders, and if it does...just let 'em get pissed? They won't quit; they'll whine for a little bit and then get over it. It's not like raid gear does much for you other than let you be slightly better at raiding. IMO more options for doing everything in this game is a good thing. All the gating and time-gating ultimately just serves to reduce my interest in playing. I'd be way more likely to level up and play alt jobs, fill roles in PF or other people's raid groups, etc., if it didn't take months to put a job in Tomestone gear. Instead I just literally play my one main raid job and log out the instant raid night is over.

[BigCheez]

Honestly, just remove gear and make weapons and armour purely aesthetic. It's completely meaningless in modern hamster wheel MMOs. All of your progress is deleted every 8 months. All your old gear goes in the trash, you buy another set of crafted gear, and do the same tome/savage grind for a few weeks to get back to the exact same place that you already were before.

Nothing has any unique effects. Nothing is worth keeping for more than a few months. Everyone who played FFXI still remembers the Krakken Club from 2004 but I doubt most people who play FFXIV could even name a single piece of gear that they currently have equipped.

[Alahard]

I think they need to re-evaluate gear sources, namely dungeon loot and NM raid gear, as well as AR gear.

- Dungeon loot could have semi rng perks (bring back pink gear from Diadem!), and perhaps those could be upgraded with various casual tokens obtained over time so that it can keep up with NM and tome gear. Go wild, bring fun random perks players can be proud of beyond +10 to the main stat or whatever. This would be disabled in savage content for safety (or not idc).
- Savage loot could also have fixed, by design perks (not rng) that keep it better than even tome gear or anything casual, specifically in hard content where any wild perk is disabled.

But what do I know... I just think the only thing Diadem 1.0 did right was the gear, funnily enough. It was fun going in to get better and weirder gear in there.

That was the worst part of Diadem. Doing all that work for the bis weapon only for it to roll only accuracy and nothing else.
No, random substats belong in the trash.

- NM raid gear should be ilvl+10, same as baseline tome gear. NM raid gear is capped per week much like tome gear and has no business being starting ilvl like crafted. NM raid gear

That's probably the only thing in there that I agree with.

The bigger issue is horizontal gearing on one toon is just a pain in the arse. I have all these classes leveled, why is it difficult to get them geared after 2+ months?

[BigCheez]

That was the worst part of Diadem. Doing all that work for the bis weapon only for it to roll only accuracy and nothing else.
No, random substats belong in the trash.


That's probably the only thing in there that I agree with.

The bigger issue is horizontal gearing on one toon is just a pain in the arse. I have all these classes leveled, why is it difficult to get them geared after 2+ months?

Is 2 months really a long time in the context of a game that's designed to be played for years, or does it just feel like a long time because it's a pointless grind that doesn't take you anywhere other than back to the same relative power level that you were at last patch?

In FFXI, you'd still be working on getting your jobs geared after 2 years. ...And that isn't a bad thing. The endgame is tiered, so you have a bunch of different content to work through for different rewards, and a lot of gear has unique effects that makes it situationally useful long after you get it. The level cap has been 99 for a decade and there are still lvl 75 pieces that are useful.

I don't think the problem is that it takes too long to get geared, because it simply doesn't. It's actually insanely fast. The problem is that gearing is so meaningless that it only serves as an inconvenience.

[Nadda]

FF14 has issues more along the lines of being predictable and not parsing out content at a good cadence.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with additional forms of gear progression.

If anything it'd be nicer for people to be able to gear up faster as it stands right now with the lock outs not being able to help friends if you cleared before they did or vice versa really effects being able to join people for raids for the fun of it.
If I do a raid on Tuesday but my static raids on Wednesday I screw them over and that sucks or if I want to help a group that raids on Friday get their clear I can ... but then they get less loot.

So adding another form of progression on top of that would actually kinda be aids.

As it stands players who do come to FF14 (Yes we still do get new players from other games) specially those who are just raid orientated like being able to enter into raids with crafted penta meld greens and some tome stone blues and being able to raid.

So we got that going for us... We actually need to make gearing more open than closed off or limited to a grind.

...

Nooooow. if for example a certain Dev Team wanted to Iunno... make Raid equivalent catch up gear items as rewards in Variant/Criterion dungeons. Either separately doing Criterion or doing Variant dungeons once a week for a certain period for a piece of gear. (pity system)

That would at least give people both an alternative to raiding (If only half your group shows up for raid night you could do a Criterion), a place to use high ilvl gear, make joining groups and them losing a chest not as big a deal, gearing alt jobs faster....

That would be a good idea.

... For a 7.3 patch... With nothing really in it... that be cool if it had that ... @Yoshida. AHEM*

I'd advocate for more player choice and consistency over progression systems.

• Keeping FFXIV accessible to new players
  
• Giving veterans meaningful alt-content
  
• Making social raid systems more forgiving

I've been waiting for FF14 to take this leap and if I could take my beloved Yoshi-P by the collar and shout angrily at him for just 10 minutes, this be the core value I wish to express. More jump in points. More openness and more interconnectivity in the content.

[Mawlzy]

Honestly, just remove gear and make weapons and armour purely aesthetic. It's completely meaningless in modern hamster wheel MMOs. All of your progress is deleted every 8 months. All your old gear goes in the trash, you buy another set of crafted gear, and do the same tome/savage grind for a few weeks to get back to the exact same place that you already were before.

Nothing has any unique effects. Nothing is worth keeping for more than a few months. Everyone who played FFXI still remembers the Krakken Club from 2004 but I doubt most people who play FFXIV could even name a single piece of gear that they currently have equipped.

Works great in PvP. In fact the only time I grind relics is if I think they'll look cool in Frontline.

[Raenra]

Getting (relevant) gear from boss-loot drops pretty much disappears once you hit lev50.
Don't know if I'd want drops from A or S ranks, or whatever, but dungeon drops could do with an extra ~10-ilevs added to them.

The token system is reliable, but also really... dull?