SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[BlaiseArath]

Honestly, I don't agree with this type of idea at all. Whenever I hear the phrase "Horizontal Progression" I hear "Gear Swapping". I hear people bragging about have gear for every little situation that makes them parse .0001% higher. There's no way that should ever find its way into XIV.

Well you need to clean your ears then. (joke obv)

But in all seriousness, FFXIV has improved its "More stuff to do" problem considerably. You can now do Hunts for Soldiery/Marks, you can do CT for Oils/Sands, you can do Dungeons primarily for tokens (why is dungeon armor so worthless?), you can craft for 110 gear, or you can do Coil. However, I think the problem people are having is that theres only 1 method to obtain the highest available armor... Coil. So while you have all this variety, the gear it offers is sub par. Now I do agree the hardest content should give the best gear, but perhaps then we need more "Hardest" content. Some examples:

"Extreme" mode dungeons - Think Coil "Savage", harder forms of Dungeons we know and "love". Theres 3 Different dungeons selected as "Extreme" mode, one dungeon drops Weapons, Off hands, and Head gear. The second dungeon drops Body, Rings, Earrings, and Neck armor. The last dungeon drops Legs, Hands, Feet, and Wrist armor. You now have 3 dungeons each with different items to obtain and aim for. Each dungeon still rewarding you with appropriate tomes. My problem with dungeons is that they're just a means to obtain tomes for better gear. Dungeons should reward you with good gear, I.lv appropriate gear, the tome should be a bonus for slots you didnt get lucky with the drops on. So add more difficult dungeons, with better drops. And for those who wonder "Then why not do coil". Dungeons are longer, and have more chests... Coil is short, and 1/2 chest... they are different in that way. In a dungeon you have a chance for ~4/5 pieces of armor, Coil is just 2, and dungeons are 4 man, coil 8. They are different enough that Extreme dungeons with good drops can work.

"Crafter" Dungeons - Dungeons whos primary drops are hard to obtain or exotic crafting materials, not just outdated sh*t they couldn't figure out what to do with after they removed tomes. Normal dungeony things, maybe instead of side chests here giving alchemy things, they could include less rare but still needed synth materials. This gives people who enjoy crafting a means in which to obtain more expensive material and still be able to gear up their jobs through their crafting.

Improved Treasure maps - Add higher level I.lv treasure maps. These maps will be harder to come by, but can reward players with valuable and useable gear for the current I.lv, however the enemies attracted by these maps traps will be considerably more difficult than the ones we currently face. This will be our first look at open world content granting end game armor. Making these difficult to obtain and difficult to complete should be balanced to not make Coil-like and Dungeons seem irrelevant. Perhaps keeping the "Random" factor of drops, but not to such open extremes. Make these maps designed with the idea you will have a focused party of 8 people who are of a certain Item Level.

Improved Hunts - Add drops to hunts (like Blood-Logs, except actual direct armor drops), everyone who participates and receives credit has a chance to obtain a piece of this armor or weaponry, higher the participation reward, the better chance. Allow Hunt Marks to be used to purchase this armor. Each NM could have a drop that reflects the NM killed, which makes it useful for both wearing and vanity if you're into that. This armor however, I don't believe should be of Coil-equivalent I.Lv unless hunts are considerably reworked. But it would be a nice touch.

Now i don't think all of these ideas should be added, because if all of these things dropped Coil-level gear, you'd easily cap out on "Max I.lv" because theres so many choices. At the same time, I think there should be more than just 1 outlet for Max I.lv gear...

[Duelle]

But in all seriousness, FFXIV has improved its "More stuff to do" problem considerably. You can now do Hunts for Soldiery/Marks, you can do CT for Oils/Sands, you can do Dungeons primarily for tokens (why is dungeon armor so worthless?), you can craft for 110 gear, or you can do Coil.

This isn't working as flawlessly as some think. Hunts were the only way to improve gear while creating a worse grind than anything seen in 2.0-2.2 (really, the only woprse grinds than hunts was Atma), and I fear we'll see more of this come 2.5 when World of Darkness is introduced and the upgrade mats for Ironworks gear are added to hunts rewards (which means we'll go back to spamming hunts and not doing dungeons again).

Crafted gear is stupidly difficult and expensive to create. What should ideally be stepping stones instead aren't realistic alternatives (of course, on the flipside they allow stat allocations not seen in any other gear in the game, hence why fully-melded i90 accessories are still BiS for certain jobs, so in that way they at least justify the cost to craft them).

However, I think the problem people are having is that theres only 1 method to obtain the highest available armor... Coil. So while you have all this variety, the gear it offers is sub par.

......

Now I do agree the hardest content should give the best gear, but perhaps then we need more "Hardest" content.

What we need is bigger loot tables and progression within raiding tiers. Instead of one breastplate from Coil there should be 3 or 4 breastplates, including the Dreadwyrm breastplate being the best of the best. Of course, current raid content doesn't have enough bosses nor scale to actually allow for that sort of thing.

[Ryel]

Crafted gear is stupidly difficult and expensive to create. What should ideally be stepping stones instead aren't realistic alternatives (of course, on the flipside they allow stat allocations not seen in any other gear in the game, hence why fully-melded i90 accessories are still BiS for certain jobs, so in that way they at least justify the cost to craft them).

What we need is bigger loot tables and progression within raiding tiers. Instead of one breastplate from Coil there should be 3 or 4 breastplates, including the Dreadwyrm breastplate being the best of the best. Of course, current raid content doesn't have enough bosses nor scale to actually allow for that sort of thing.

I feel like crafted gear could fill the void of end game gear if they allowed it to, personally i would love to see a set of THREE endgame raids that come out at the same time.

One raid that follows the trend that coil does currently, a second raid that gives gear sets with stats that are an alternative to those offered by the first raid, and a third raid that offers Abjurations that can be used on crafted sets to fill out a third set of gear.

This of course in addition to the standard gear bought with Allagan Tomestones of Tradology, that we can upgrade via the new ST / drops from the current top 3 raids.