Can we please

[Ephremjlm]

I like dogging on the game as much as the next guy, but this just ain't it.

If anything, the game is too friendly for people that take breaks.

As far as I am concerned if you take an extended break then you really should be expected to have some level of investment before being able to engage with the new stuff.

It really shouldn't be that you can take a break for 4-8 months and then come back and be immediately caught up.

I'm gonna dial back my tone with you because I don't think you aren't trolling or speaking in bad faith.

I generally would agree with you, but that is NOT how this game operates. You can basically play it solo, or in multiplayer content, play it "solo like" in that you don't have to talk to anyone, you just do the mechanics.

On top of that, I think for this game that opinion is wrong for these reasons.
1. Once you reach max level at the base of an expansion your rotation and way you play your job doesn't change at all for the rest of the patch cycle.
2. No one seems to have a problem buying the gear off the market board right? So whats the difference with being able to trade dungeon gear that most people don't use.
3. What arbitrary time investment are we talking? Do we need to do level 50 dailies with a lesser kit build? Do we need to run pelu pelu fetch quests?

Again as someone who's played MMO's that actually require players to do things I very much understand your sentiment, but the game is currently insanely easy, and I don't think trading dungeon gear so that some FC mates who had lesser gear could reach the arbitrary min ilvl matters when the skills to do their rotation hasn't changed for over a year. However if this was FFXI, Everquest, OSRS, or Classis WOW then I would agree. But the game currently works this way and from blowing a ton of gil we eventually did the run.

[Haru304]

2. Reduced grind //=// Zero grind. You have catch up mechanics to utilise that require extremely minimal time investment. It's not a lobby based game. It's an MMORPG. Minimised friction is a marketing strategy - not an absolute rule.

3. You can actually accomplish just that! Crafted Gear. Tomestone Gear. Duty Roulettes. Community support. All methods that require... arguably, less effort than farming dungeon loot to hand off to your friends who don't play actively. At least on an individual level. Acting like player retention isn't important in an MMORPG -regardless- of what the developer claims for marketing purposes, is... really silly. It's an ecosystem. It's not supposed to be 'one and done'. But if you want it to be that way, the forementioned systems... all facilitate that. QoL //=// Bypassing Progression.

You can quickly gear to minimum level.
You can play with your friends while doing it.
And you can take breaks, without any penalties whatsoever.

4. Dismissive rhetoric with ignorance for how it might impact the progression and engagement system as a whole.

Calling my views ‘weird’ doesn’t change the fact that I’m arguing based on how FFXIV’s systems are designed and function in practice. FFXIV strikes a deliberate balance between player engagement and accessibility — something classic FFXI and Everquest approached very differently. Both games that I've played at length, by the by. I engage with crafters and gatherers regularly, and friends who want to partake in gearing up via content. You have this twisted idea in your head that a marketing focus on QOL is the same thing as... removing all and any barriers to entry. In your mind, would we all just walk around in a lobby and insta-queue into every new piece of content, all at the same ilevel? These systems are designed promote engagement.

The only lee-way in this instance, is that, at the moment, prices on Crystal are skewed towards a full crafted set costing around.. if I had to estimate based on previous dealings, around four million? I don't really think that's a lot for an active player to jump back in and play, but you wouldn't even be paying that much if you had at least one friend or FC member that's invested into crafting - and the community is chockful of people who do -just- that. Who are happy to even toss shit away for free.

And replying to a few of the things you said to Kaurhz…

Your rotation has very little to do with your gear or stats, so that's irrelevant.
Crafted gear requires a lot of player investment and communication, along with economic growth - with entire systems surrounding it. Acting like player economic interaction in an MMORPG is some kind of irrelevant side thought is... weird.
Whatever arbitrary time investment we're talking is the bare minimum time investment it takes to grab some higher ilevel gear - in a game with plenty of catch up mechanics.

Glad to hear you spent some gil, validated other player's efforts and enjoyed your run!

[Auro_Seldaris]

snip

You can just edit your original post to get past the character limit, if you didnt know.

[AmiableApkallu]

Again as someone who's played MMO's that actually require players to do things I very much understand your sentiment, but the game is currently insanely easy, and I don't think trading dungeon gear so that some FC mates who had lesser gear could reach the arbitrary min ilvl matters when the skills to do their rotation hasn't changed for over a year.

(emphasis mine)

This is why I said earlier that "if you don't like FFXIV's gear treadmill, fair enough." Because that's exactly the problem you're describing. Some people stepped off the treadmill for a bit, and now, in the current state of the game, they have to spend some effort or gil to catch up. (Why do we need to increase our ilvl? Because SE said so. It otherwise generally makes no difference to one's experience unless you're running older content unsynced.)

So, that said, why make only dungeon gear tradable? Why not also tomestone gear? Normal raid gear? Savage raid gear? You had extra dungeon gear on hand. I've had extra normal raid tokens and tomestones on hand. Where would you draw the line that says this gear must needs be acquired through one's own blood, sweat, and tears?

[Boblawblah]

(emphasis mine)

This is why I said earlier that "if you don't like FFXIV's gear treadmill, fair enough." Because that's exactly the problem you're describing. Some people stepped off the treadmill for a bit, and now, in the current state of the game, they have to spend some effort or gil to catch up. (Why do we need to increase our ilvl? Because SE said so. It otherwise generally makes no difference to one's experience unless you're running older content unsynced.)

So, that said, why make only dungeon gear tradable? Why not also tomestone gear? Normal raid gear? Savage raid gear? You had extra dungeon gear on hand. I've had extra normal raid tokens and tomestones on hand. Where would you draw the line that says this gear must needs be acquired through one's own blood, sweat, and tears?

Id be fine if SE just gave me new gear (cosmetics) every 'x' level and that was it. I have no desire to go on the gear treadmill. I feel no arpg 'WOOOO' when I get something good.

[Ephremjlm]

checked your tomestone. you don't actually play. gg.

It's pretty obvious. No one playing since Stormblood would complain about a 1.5M earring listing 4 months after release. It sells for cheaper than that, as early as day 1. Cheapest right now is 80k. Also called you "miserable" while asking for empathy multiple times in this thread. Clear ragebait.

I just think it's funny that you people think you're defending something, but you are the shining example of toxicity that pushes people away from this community. You don't want the game to be better, and you don't actually want the game to be more popular, you just want your little echo chamber and safe space that makes you feel like you're some kind of "god gamer" in arguably the most casual game out because that's how you have determined your worth. GG's mates. There are no arguments to be had with people of this much bad faith.

[Ephremjlm]

(emphasis mine)

This is why I said earlier that "if you don't like FFXIV's gear treadmill, fair enough." Because that's exactly the problem you're describing. Some people stepped off the treadmill for a bit, and now, in the current state of the game, they have to spend some effort or gil to catch up. (Why do we need to increase our ilvl? Because SE said so. It otherwise generally makes no difference to one's experience unless you're running older content unsynced.)

So, that said, why make only dungeon gear tradable? Why not also tomestone gear? Normal raid gear? Savage raid gear? You had extra dungeon gear on hand. I've had extra normal raid tokens and tomestones on hand. Where would you draw the line that says this gear must needs be acquired through one's own blood, sweat, and tears?

So I know I’ve had to fight off the hoard in this thread but I just want to clarify that that is not my tone with you since I don’t think you’re coming off the same way.

That said, first and foremost my ONLY point is that we should be able to trade dungeon gear. I NEVER made any argument about the gearing treadmill, I only used it as a SUPPORTING point. Not a critique on the gearing treadmill itself. Anything done to dungeon gear doesn’t by itself solve that issue, at all, if it is an issue for you.

Second, I’ve mentioned it previously to others, but I’m not oblivious to how this game operates currently, and I think that the buck probably should stop with only letting dungeon gear be tradeable. The reason is that it is significantly worse than all of the others you have mentioned, and being able to trade the gear doesn’t break the game, if anything it makes something that was otherwise useless and annoying to have to sift through another worthwhile dot on the line of FFXIV’s current vertical gear progression. It would encourage more player interaction, and it would give current AT LEVEL dungeons more replayability. It doesn’t really compete with crafted gear either, because it’s still a lot worse.

Third, if anything, it seems that in it’s current state its an old broken system that wastes resources. I mean I haven’t seen anyone try to argue this yet, but I could see someone try to assign value to the gear for glam reasons, but if that’s the case, then why not just make the gear tombstone gear but another variant that we can pick from. It just feels like another MMORPG system that is in the game because we’re supposed to have it, when in reality we all know this game plays more like a solo multiplayer game these days. I’m just simply advocating to make the items useful again, and because I was in a situation where they would have been useful but there was an arbitrary barrier to making them useful I wrote about it and threw it in the hat of suggestions. We still accomplished our task, and as much as people complain about what they think our investment should be, we played the game as designed and did the content in that play session with some people not having been around for quite a while.