"Revamped" Rewards System

[Almalexia]

So because the Primals aren't all released at the same time, that's your basis for not keeping them on equal footing with one another? That's a pretty weak argument.

Primals were an example, but it could be any piece of content. Compare DH and AV/CC: the rewards have strikingly different potency for content released over a year apart. For an average person subscribing to an MMO, a 1 year or 1.5 years seems to me a reasonable amount of time for "repeat content" to exist before something offers a greater challenge and a statistically superior reward.

Keep in mind I am talking about rewards, not reward structures. Grinding Dynamis for 3 years without a RDM hat has no effect on the properties of the hat.

I prefer to think of trading the drops in for seals as a way of giving people incentive to help others do the content, rather than just as a petty bonus for when you find something better to use. I'm a little surprised you wouldn't be more supportive, as someone who attained both Spharai and Glanzfaust (which I remember you were horribly disappointed with at the time).

That's my point. Glanzfaust underperformed because SE was afraid of making something that challenged 5 year-old content. The silly thing was how Glanzfaust gave the same statistical bonuses as Spharai--ATK/Counter--but connected them to your JAs instead of the weapon itself. It wasn't an alternative or a sidegrade; it was definitely worse.

Seals are just one way to repurpose content. Materia is another--primal weapons yield unique materia. There are surely a dozen ways to repurpose older content without holding back the advancement of new gear.

Sorry but I won't be convinced otherwise - newer doesn't have to automatically = better when the items in question are within the same level range. Tanaka had it right when they tried to keep everything comparably good, so that players who maybe wanted an item but didn't care for the content to get it, could do something else to obtain a similarly good item.

Newer doesn't necessarily have to mean better, but I think in the long term there will come a time when all of the alternatives and incremental sidegrides aren't cutting the mustard. There can be an equal measure of sidegrade to existing gear (Skirmish, for example) and more powerful gear, but the point I am driving is how there ought to be more powerful gear over time so that character growth isn't an imaginary or geologically slow progression like FFXI.

Aye, that's alot of the reason FFXI is in the crapper right now, because after they went above the 75 cap which had been in play for almost 8 years the power creep from stats/gear just went out of control in comparison to content.

Was it really lv.76+ gear that broke FFXI? I am pretty sure it was the damage calculations that depend so heavily on level difference.

Besides, FFXI's endgame foundation was sidegrades. Of course things got screwed up once they raised the bar after 8 years. FFXIV is starting fresh. FFXIV already has a primitive system of old gear = redemption items, new gear = more powerful at a one year turnover and I don't foresee any creeping at this rate.