Coil lock outs, myth tome caps, and the armory + job system.

[Shiyo]

Today I would like to talk about three things, Coil's weekly lock out timer, the mythology tome cap, and the armory/job system.

First I will start with coil lock outs. A raid you can only clear once per week, over the past decade this has become standard in numerous other MMO's, a challenging raid where you have 1 week to clear it all before your progress is reset to zero. This worked decently(though, I never liked it) in lots of other MMO's, because the raids were pretty long, with lots of bosses. You had could take a few nights just learning how to defeat one boss, and it could take a few months before you had the entire raid, besides the final boss, on farm. You were slowly progressing more and more each week, until you had the entire raid on farm except the final boss and had almost an entire week of attempts on him, and then, you would down the final boss and have the ENTIRE raid on farm. After a few months, you would start finishing the raid in a few nights, but until then, you had lots of content. It also worked nicely because you could only play 1 "job" or "class" per character in most other MMO's who adapted this raid model. Meaning you could do the raid on every class/job you had, as long as they had decent gear and were at the level cap. If you were committed, you could basically gear 2-5 classes/jobs at once with an equal chance at drops for every single job/class, because you could do the entire raid on each job/class once per week.

Now in FF14, this simply does not work. You can play multiple jobs/classes PER CHARACTER, meaning you can only do the weekly lock out raid, coil, once per week, on one character. You're getting the same amount of gear per week from clearing coil with one job/class, as you are on every job/class at 50, because you can only do it once per CHARACTER per week. One of the main defining features, and main selling features of this game that made it stand out from others was "play every job/class on a single character. no need for alts", however, that does not seem to be the case at the level cap. This is simply not right, and I feel it needs adjusted ASAP. I am actually encouraged to play a SINGLE CLASS per character, like numerous other MMO's, because gear drops and lock out timers are balanced around a single class at level cap, and not multiple.

This does not even factor in the fact that I am completely unable to even experience the content on more than one job per turn per week. What if I want to try out my monk in coil? I can't - I already cleared it on my SCH. What if I want to tank coil for fun, or try out my new relic I obtained for my warrior in coil? Again, I cannot, I am locked out of it because I cleared it on my SCH. There is also the problem if I am only capable of playing with the same other people per week, or else someone gets screwed out of loot by missing a turn(s), or having to skip turn(s) to be subbed in. I also cannot even help friends in coil who need my assistance, I have numerous friends who would love for me to help them, but since I have a static, and cleared it on my SCH for the week, I am completely incapable of assisting them at all. Sure, I could come monk and a DPS could come SCH in my static, but what if one of the DPS doesn't have SCH? What if their SCH is nowhere near as geared as mine, and my monk is nowhere near as geared as their dps because of myth token caps and lock out timers(explained later)? I'm pretty much gimping my raid by coming monk over my SCH, and I might even need to find a completely different group just to play my MONK or WAR. You could say "Well, you come monk/war then have the DPS or WAR sit for a healer", then the DPS or tank is screwed out of loot for those turn(s), and the person being subbed in is also screwed out of loot for turn(s) he missed. The only solution to this problem is to level up my jobs on multiple characters, and not a single one, playing the game like numerous other MMO's and completely ignoring the armory and job system.

Now let's talk about the mythology tome caps! In numerous other MMO's, there has been two forms of "tokens", one from normal 50 dungeons/heroic 50 dungeons and one from raids. You could get decent gear from the heroics/normal 50 dungeons tokens to gear up for the raid, then once you started doing the raid you could get much faster of the raid tier tokens. The raid tier tokens would have a cap, obviously, so you couldn't gear too fast. The cap was for each character though, so if you wanted to play a tank, a healer, a DPS, and maybe another DPS, you could cap out your Raid tier tokens on every single character, and progress all of them at essentially the same rate. This was a nice system for keeping people subbed and wanting to play more, while it's pretty much "free" gear, it helps if you're unlucky with drops. I personally love token systems, but I despise time-gated ones. Now in this game, your raid tier tokens, Mythology, are capped as normal. The problem is, the cap is pretty low, and gear is pretty expensive, as well as the cap is PER CHARACTER still, yet the armory system exists and you're essentially able to gear one job/class per 5 months. Unlike other MMO's, you cannot progress all your classes/jobs at the same rate by capping tokens for each job/class, unless you take the same route and level a new character for every single job you want to play, then and only then, can you progress all your jobs at the same rate. That's a huge problem, this is another thing that encourages you to ignore the armory/job system entirely. It simply does NOT work in FF14.


As more and more people get to the level cap, and start to experience coil, and myth tomes, and level multiple jobs, I'm sure they will come to these same conclusions. They'll wish they leveled their jobs on multiple characters and not a single one, because they're locked out of content.

My proposed solutions(just an opinion! I am no expert and just want to offer my suggestions to help the game become more fun and enjoyable for everyone) is this:

• Coil can be done as many times as you want per week, there is no longer a lock out timer, instead there is a LOOT lock out timer. You are only able to pass, greed, need, or not roll at all once per turn per week. If the loot window pops up, and you're able to roll, you have locked yourself out of ever getting the loot window again for that week for that turn. No way to bypass by not rolling or passing.
• Mythology tomes are completely redesigned. They are no longer called mythology tomes, and instead "Tomes of the<insert job here", for example, "Tomes of the monk". They are still acquired in the same ways as before, but you can acquire them up to the current cap(300 right now, higher after the hotfix patch soon) per JOB.
• The requirements to buy Allagan gear has changed completely, for example STR DPS earrings now require Tomes of the DRG or tomes of the monk, and you are capable of using BOTH tomes for a single item. So for example, you can cap your DRG's tomes, and your monks for the week, totaling 600 tomes for the week instead of 300, then can pick up an accessory. AF2 armor's would stay class tomes only, so can't get your AF2 super fast but would allow you to pick up lots of other gear much quicker. Relic +1 items could be bought with all tomes, so if you capped 3 jobs for the week you could +1 your relic in 1 week. The same would be for PLD/WAR, SCH/WHM, BLM/SMN, and bard. Bard is kinda screwed when it comes to this, but once another dex job is added it would be fine - or they could simply make bard gear cost 50% less than other classes, I'm not sure a perfect way to balance bard vs other classes though.

What would this do? It would allow me to play every job I want in coil, help friends, play as much as I want, but still be restricted for how fast I can gear up in coil gear. It would ENCOURAGE me to play multiple jobs because I would actually gear up faster playing both Paladin and warrior, BLM and SMN, SCH and WHM, etc, and could gear up multiple roles at the same pace. It would encourage use of the armory system, discourage multiple characters, and use this games fantastic armory/job system in a more fun and unique way never seen before in an MMO.

Please like this post so that they will answer this question in the upcoming live letter!
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1556982