Gear and overall balance of the game broken?

[Lajunen]

my classes:
Disciples of War/Magic all level 50, gear ranging ilv75-90, 5 relic zeniths, 4 normal relics
Disciples of Land all level 50
Disciples of Hand level 30-36 (current project slowed by the new patch)

The gear balance has been totally out of balance since primal fights started to drop usable gear.

(to be continued in the comments due to 1000 character limitation)

[Lajunen]

Before any major patches

Lets for take a glimpse to weapons.

Relic: Kill chimera, Kill hydra, Clear Amdapor Keep, Kill 24 monsters with the unfinished relic, Kill Ifrit HM, Kill Garuda HM, Kill Titan HM, Grind 900 philosophy stones, Get nice ilv80 relic weapon!

Normal ilv80 weapon: Kill Titan HM, dice for the weapon (doesnt drop everytime, but is fixed later), can farm with fights lasting less than 10 minutes, no limitations.

Relic +1 (currently Zenith) was the only reason to make a relic weapon to start with as atleast in this form it topped the Titan weapon. Requires making a normal relic and then grinding extra 900 mythology tomestones (cap was at the time 300/week so 3 weeks if you spent all the tomes) and you got yourself a super nice ilv90 weapon!

Coil turn 5 weapons: ilv95 superior weapons gotten from the hardest place and could only get one change a week to get the right loot and then dice for it. Very good way of preventing top end gear from flooding the game.

[Lajunen]

Gears had a decent enough balance:

You would make exp to get to level 50, then start to grind philosophy tomes without cap and mythology tomes that had cap

There was the dungeon stuff from (end game dungeon wanderers palace and amdapor keep) ilv55-60

Then Crafted stuff (which i couldnt afford as I didnt find a decent enough method of gaining gil)

The dark light stuff ilv70 which was bought with philosophy tomes

Mythology tomestone bought items ilv90 and Allagan gear from coil ilv90... some bought were better than Allagan and some Allagan were better than some bought (very nice touch if you ask me) and Allagan items had quite drastic limitations too (one try to dice for 2 items per coil per week... did few weeks in a row without dicing anything myself and not because I happened to have items already but because the roll of dice just wasnt on my side)

[Lajunen]

So overall gear balance was in a good place, not too much high end stuff pouring in each day due to coil limitations and mythology tome cap limitations) so only thing not in healthy mode was the HM primal drop weapons that gave too powerful items for too little effort.


Then all hell broke loose with the next patch:

We get Extreme Primals which drop top end ilv90 gear without limitations. And like that wasnt bad enough if you get items from everyone you wont only get 3x top end accessories but you also get a ilv90 of your own choise each week?!?

After this primal farm parties devastated the gear balance by farming ilv90 accessories with fights lasting less than 10 minutes.

So we got from running coil turns 1-5 once a week and getting a change to roll a dice on 10 items (assuming you could beat every coil) to do a 10 minute run and roll a dice and repeat as many time as you want.

[Lajunen]

This really broke the game and it wasnt even the worst part. Killing all the primals give you a ilv90 weapon of your choise which is even better in some cases than Relic Zenith (atleast warrior primal weapon makes relic zenith trashbin stuff)

So instead of a minimum of 2 weeks (as the mythology tome cap got raised to 450/week) it takes to make a relic zenith you could kill all the primals in 30mins (counting 10mins each as people might have to go to bathroom in between) the party was able to make 3 ilv90 accessories and 8 ilv90 weapons of their choise (one each)

Then we got moogle king which drops ilv75 weapons, ultimate which drops ilv80 accessories. So basically the whole balance was made for fast advancement instead of earning the stuff.

[Lajunen]

At this time I prayed that this would be fixed

So along came the next patch with a lot of promises, even better stuff, relics can be upgraded and all the things that sound wonderful.

And this is how it is served:

We remove the philosophy tomes and put the stuff bought with those to 3 new dungeons.

Then we flood the game with ilv90 items by removing the cap from mythology tomes, raising the yield of mythology tomes, removing the limitations to coil turn 1-5 runs and yes we make them easier so everyone can get lots and lots of em.

We then give a new set of even higher level items to compensate it.

[Lajunen]

So a new coil turns 6+ is given with again weekly limitations to slow down the rate new high end equipment flows to game.

We can upgrade relics by revering back to lv10 and grinding fates for a time period that could be anything from 5 minutes to 5 hours depending on nothing but luck. Yeah that should keep us busy?

But just so that the people who really dont mind sitting at level 10 fates (again as most likely classes 2-8 were already exped through these mostly... if those were leveled in your case) wont get too big of advantage we make the relic weapon crap again.

Hello world we introduce you to a new quick way to farm ilv100 weapons, here comes a new primal. But wait thats not all, we also give you another primal that you can farm ilv100 accessories from so you wont have to run through coil.


So this time we didnt even wait for another patch to flood the game with high end gear but did it the same time?

---

[Lajunen]

I really dont even know if the game itself can be salvaged anymore but one way to try would be to trash every piece of equipment from the entire game. Removing all drops other than cosmetic gear from primals. If you want to make em drop something other than lipstick sure give a mount for killing all of em. But only once!

Give people the choise to choose one of the leveled classes they want to keep and reset others to level 1. Remove fates entirely (not just from the relic upgrade quest but from the entire game!) and let people level up the characters through roulette or what ever. Fates failed us the first time, get rid of the cancer as soon as it is noticed!

[Lajunen]

weapon levels (if you remove all the crap primals drop) are in some sort of order
-normal weapons / ilv80 relic weapon / ilv90 relic zenith / ilv95 coil turn 5 / ilv100? atma / ilv110 animus / ilv115 new coil weapon
If you must you can give weapons through dungeons up to ilv85 or so much like wanderers palace used to drop wait time weapons. So relic weapon as it should by the name, effort used in obtaining one and because it has always been so in FF is where it should, good choise of weapon!

Remove crystal tower or recode it. As now it is making a mockery of the tanks standing with the towers fiddling them! Make 3 ways which all end up to last boss and each party without the others must make its way through to last boss (if you cant figure out how to make use of all the members, dont try go around it) where would be 1 huge boss, 3 huge adds and 2 swarms of adds spawning every now and then so tanks can do something!

[Lajunen]

Put some limitations back to coil turns 1-5: perhaps like Crystal tower loot was. 1 loot per turn per week. So you can still farm the piece you want, but only 1 piece per turn each week.

Instead of making stuff easier make it harder! Idea is not for everyone to get the good stuff everytime! Put the random to where it belongs, making stuff more interesting.

Give gear random stats.
Dark light hat of randomness healing could have 4 boosts
Mind: 7 to 9
Piety: 10 to 12
Vitality: 5-7
and then either
Accuracy 4-6 or Determination 4-6

That way you have 3*3*3*6 items all in one... 162 different variations of the same item... add this to 6 armors and 4 accessories and main/off hand equipment and the variations massive. Might even make tome grinding a bit more fun as you can get minor improvements to your set sometimes.