The Community Teams interview Yoshida in Japan!

[Perrin_Aybarra]

Wouldn't it be a novel idea if we could be rewarded by more then just gear. I mean really if it takes 6 months to produce something for a content rewards, to me it just seems like content wouldn't be coming out fast enough to ever make this game subscription base.

Yoshida if you're reading this instead of focusing on always rewarding people with gear there are other ways to reward people. You can unlock new areas to explore, reward them with abilities such as unique for certain classes, traits and other enhancements. Make use of the fact that we work on an ability point system instead of focusing purely on gear. While sure it's nice to have pretty looking gear but at the pace it's coming out now you'll never truly have unique looking characters because people will always be wearing the top tier gear.

Just take a step back and contemplate a reward system that will reward people with a wide variety of things then just gear. To me I think most MMO's fall flat cause the majority of rewards are always gear. Heck I"m not saying be like XI but not all of XI's rewards have always been gear.

In XI there were quest to obtain new weaponskills, quest to unlock jobs, missions to unlock new areas and content. Even abyssea we were rewarded with abyssite(enhancements taking effect in abyssea zones) and atmas(attirbute augments use in unison with Lunar abyssites) from defeating mobs or completing certain quest. XIV's main content of reward is gear. Honestly all you need are two members brainstorming how they can evolve classes with skill and tweaks that can be added to their class to allow customization through play style rather then how they look.

The best example I can give is creating a wide series of trait that enhance specific abilities such as a series of traits for Iron Tempest:
-You can make one that enhances it's wind damage
-Another can increase it's radius
-Decrease recast
-Increase recast with improved damage
-cut recast in half but reduce damage
-Turn it into a single target with improve damage
-A trait that allows you to attach Tornado to the ability but requires a casting period to be harnessed properly

But ya like with dungeon rewards you can create it where the player obtains a shard of the beast KI once defeated and you can exchange it to an NPC along with Guild Marks to obtain new traits and abilities for your class.

You can give the traits a main effect and a sub class effect where the effect are slightly lowered when attached to another class as the main.

Just think about it if you map out this idea you'll save yourselves a lot of headache with always thinking that you HAVE to produce gear to compliment the release of a new dungeon or game concept.

I like these ideas but the sad thing with uncapped (being able to defeat a level 30 dungeon on a level 50 class/job)dungeons is that you pretty much can only reward with gears. Unless you cannot obtain shards when you are 10 levels above the dungeon level and then you got to get your shards from another dungeon in your level range.

If you don't then people can just farm their shards in lower level dungeons and then buy their abilites/spells enhancing effects without so much a sweat.