Suggestion: Rebalance of the Tomestone System

[KihraJhin]

I haven't seen a proper subforum for ingame suggestions, only website suggestions, so I'll just leave this here. This will a bit longer posts and while not completely fleshed out, I think it can prove to end up in a good discussion.

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First a bit about myself. I am part of a raid group that is currently progressing in Alexander Savage floor 3. Just this past week lost a member to the rl and now have to fill up that slot. Our previous composition was PLD/WAR/WHM/SCH/DRG/BRD/BLM/BLM. We were aware from the start, that this is not the optimal setup to progress remotely fast in Savage, but we went with it, because our group existed long before 3.0 and that was what everyone wanted to play for personal reasons. We went ahead with this, because first of all we value fun over hardcore progress an we were aware that we would potentially be slower than groups running the optimized setup.

Now after losing a BLM we thought, while being a little sad of losing one of our comrades to the real life, we now have a chance at getting a slightly better composition by taking in another melee, preferably a Ninja. I'm on Shiva and good players that can handle Alex Savage and are progressing in floor 3 are scarce, so it will take quite a while to find a suitable replacement. One thing that makes this even harder is, that neither of us are in a position to switch jobs ourselves without losing out on a lot of gear, first and foremost esoteric gear.

I as a bard could very well go ninja too, if it wasnt for the lack of esoteric gear on that job. While i share my accesories with the ninja, the entire left side is not. So if we would want another melee, be it ninja or monk, we would need to find a player that already mains this class.

Now for my suggestion about the tomestone system. This game promoted having all classes and jobs leveled on a single character. But if you spend your esoterics on one job, you cannot have that gear on a different job, making switching mains hard. On the other hand, a causal player not raiding savage doesnt even need that gear except for glamour purposes, since everything besides savage is so insanely easy, it can be done in full ilvl 170 law gear (at this stage of the expansion).

For raiders on the other hand, that gear is important to be able to clear the later floors, but it provides 0 flexibility once you've spend these stones. If you end up in a situation like ours you either take whoever you can get, or you look around for a long time until you find the perfect match for your team. Even if you find a nice player that fits into your group, it could still be that he cannot join because hes the wrong job. Or course we had two BLMs before, but thats an exception, because we were all friends that have known each other for over a year, now finding a new player would mean that we don't even know him. I wouldn't want a second BRD or MCN or a third heal or tank in our group, because I cannot judge a new player in my team in just one day and say "yeah i dont care if we go double BRD, because youre like the nicest guy ive ever met". I'm pretty sure that some of you will comment somthing like "so you don't wanna take that BRD just because you already have one but on the other hand had two BLMs". This is not a thread about my groups composition in the first place, but a thread about the suggestion to improve felixibily I will make down below.

So what if we had a different Tomestone system. There are two suggestions that came to my mind. Both of these change the spendable tomestones into a permanent currency to unlock equipment. While this may have an impact on materials purchased with the current tomestones, it would be easy to just have the current spendable tomestones for these kind of items while having a completely different value for these new systems I suggest now.

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First suggestion, this one came to my mind first and I'll post it here to complete this post, but it has less of an impact on flexibility then the second suggestion.

You can gain a maximum amount of currency, just like it is now. So for a better comparison, lets just say it's also 450 each week. The cost of each item is still the same, so 825 for a body piece, 990 for a weapon, etc.

So for example lets say youve farmed for a few weeks and currently hold 2800 of that currency. That means you could have a weapon, the body piece and the legs, which would all together costs 2640. So you go into your character screen, maybe a new tab, you can pick your job from a drop down list and then there are all esoteric items for that job listed. you tick off the weapon, body and legs and your currency would say 2640/2640 for that single job, leaving you with 160 currency left. So basically you spend 2640 currency on that job. So that job now has the weapon, body and leg piece you can wear. And when you get more currency, so you go from 160 to 375, you can then spend even more on that job and unlock the belt or an accessory. And here is the catch. While you did unlock these items for this job (basically the same as it is now), you CAN decide to "sell" your body piece for 825 points and get something else. so for that last example of 2640/2640 currency invested into that one job, you sell the body and will be at 1815/2640 currency now. So you cannot spend that currency on a differen job, but you can now buy the belt or the hands instead of the body piece. So lets say you get the hands, you will then be at 2310/2640, having the weapon, belt and pants.

So this first suggestion introduces a system, where you would spend you permanent currency to unlock items for a certain job, but you are not limited to that item you just bought, you can switch around your currency on that job to fill in spots you want atm.

(I'll talk about balancing at the end of this post)

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Second suggestion, this one addresses the flexibilty in the raid environment.

The idea is the same as for above, but instead of unlocking item slots for a single job which you can swap around, you unlock a single fixed slot for all your jobs (battle jobs).

Example: You farmed for weeks and you have now 2800 currency. You get the weapon, body and legs slot. You now have these 3 ilvl 200 pieces on all your lvl 60 jobs available.
This will enable you to switch to a different job without losing all those stones youve farmed these last weeks. So in my case I could go ninja without losing my body, legs and weapon and it enables us to look for a bard too, instead of just another melee (for a better raid setup). So after buying these three slots i end up having only 160 currency left, no way to get it back, but i permanently unlocked the ilvl 200 gear for these 3 slots on all jobs.

The reason why I suggest this is: it doesnt really matter for the broad masses. I say let them have all that gear on all jobs, they play one causally, they play the others casually, and its decent enough to clear alexander normal. Savage isnt for the braod masses and those that raid there should be able to have a bit more flexibility in their raid composition. For example that PLD bashing in the last weeks. Most progress groups take a DRK/WAR combo, simply because in terms of dps while still having mitigation, the PLD is worse than the other two tanks. Having this system of unlocking would enable every PLD to go DRK if they chose to do so.

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Now about balancing. My first suggestion definitely is pretty unbalanced, and i also only mentioned it here for good measure, its stil something to discuss, although i don't find it that good either, but it gives a good impression on how an unlock system would work.

Having items "unlocked" means that with the current raid of tomestone gain and item cost, one would unlock everything in a short time. I think we need 6000 stones for all slots, so around 14 weeks. Whats important to take into account is:

1. the next gear is 6 months away
2. getting to many pieces fast would make savage easier too fast

So to balance this unlocking system in my second suggestion, the maximum amount of currency earned to unlock slots would need to be reduced. If we get 300 each week it would take us 4 weeks to get a weapon, 3 weeks for a big piece, 2 weeks for any other pieces (not counting the left over currency now) and all in all 20 weeks for all slots. 20 weeks are 5 months, so one month before the next patch you would have all slots for all battle classes unlocked, but only ilvl 200. I think that is still a good time table in terms of ilvl gain for the raid and item gain over the cource of one gear cycle.

Now the gear can be upgraded again and for this I didnt think of a suitable system yet. But loot from alex savage is still ilvl 210 and if you get a drop, then its still the same as it is now, for a single job (or more, depending on the class and item), but no unlock for an ilvl 210 slot. That means that if you unlock the ilvl 200 currency belt and the ilvl 210 drops, you can wear the 210 for the increase of stats but you will not get any other benefit from having that currency slot unlocked. So just like now, if you have the belt and get a drop, you put the belt away until you can upgrade it to 210 and the stats are better again. So this unlock system works just fine with the current loot system in savage. As for upgrading the unlocked slots:

1. You upgrade a slot, getting 210 for all jobs
2. You upgrade a slot for a single job, giving more balance.

But I havent out more thought into this at the moment.
So with the lowered currency gain, the raid should still take quite a while to be cleared, so I dont think the balancing of that is affected too much. The basis of this concept is flexibility in chosing your party setup in the middle of a gear cycle. Youre not forced to be playing a single job, if you have mastered more than one then feel free to swap around without losing out on weeks of gear (except drops from savage maybe or upgraded items, but a baseline of ilvl 200 is still better than 190).

This concludes my suggestion about a different tomestone system. While I am but a single person, theres no way I can think of all possible ways how this could be abused or is imbalanced, so feel free to leave your comments. I hope I didn't forget to mention something.

[Amberyl]

Esoteric will be the next Law in no time at all, and you don't need to clear Savage now, this instant, just because it's there. The current tome system ensures the top end and the bottom end of the endgame player base don't drift too far apart, and throttles progression to a rate that almost fits overall progression.

Changing it so everyone can do everything, optimally, instantly, will just lead to a loss of subscription fees, and a negative long-term prognosis for the game.

[KihraJhin]

Changing it so everyone can do everything, optimally, instantly,

It nowhere says instantly. its still limited by time, it just gives the option to switch around. and as you said once the eso cap is gone you can have every single piece on every job and by then theres the new raid with higher gear requirement. it doesnt affect casuals in any way and once the new tomestones are out no ones cares about esos anymore. and like i said you dont even need eso gear for the current content except savage which will be obsolete once esos are uncapped. I can do alex normal with any class in the min ilvl required and all it takes are a few dungeon runs to get a complete set of law gear. right now im at 2k law, having 4 classes fully geared and dont know what to do with law anymore. I can freely go into normal mode with whatever class i want as long as i have ilvl 170, but getting a few ilvl 200 pieces to progress in a alex savage is impossible wihtout weeks of farming. so having the option to switch classe swould be a huge QoL improvement.

[Amberyl]

its still limited by time, it just gives the option to switch around.

Not by enough, no. One group hits the world first with optimal make-up, everyone else can immediately replicate, if they've put the time in to level their alt classes. Savage should not be on farm before the next chunk of content is out.

Sorry, it's a patience thing. There's no requirement for you to have finished it yet. There's a desire, sure, but there's no need, and no pressure, other than that you and your group put on yourselves.

[KihraJhin]

Not by enough, no. One group hits the world first with optimal make-up, everyone else can immediately replicate, if they've put the time in to level their alt classes. Savage should not be on farm before the next chunk of content is out.

You fail to understand the situation in which this would be used. Just because on makeup is the best doesnt mean that its easy finding players that can play their class good. the best setup was known even before savage was cleared and even having the best setup does not guarantee a kill at this point. but if you have one slot open and want to fill it but cannot find a player, why not give the option to have one switch in the team so you can take the player to fill your spot.

edit: so lets say you have a melee spot open, so you can look for 2 jobs. What if your whm can play a really good ninja. If he could swap to ninja without losing out on tomestone gear, you could then go look for a melee or a whm (or ast if the partner is e.g. sch). He would lose his ilvl 210 savage pieces but still have a baseline of ilvl 200 gear which he had on his heal. its still a dps loss in terms of gear but its not so huge as it is now, since in savage you need every piece you can get. but that would still be better taking another heal instead of looking for a melee for 3 weeks.

ff14 promoted having all jobs on one char, but every job except one is useless in endgame because of the gear restriction. the only time you can freely use them all in the latest endgame is when that endgame isnt endgame anymore.

[Amberyl]

You fail to understand the situation in which this would be used.

No, I don't think I do. You open your post with dismay that you've lost a player due to having a non-optimal group, and struggling to progress because of that. You then suggest a system which would have avoided that.

While you have my sympathies for the trouble within your social group, that's no reason to realign the premium tomes before their capped era is up.

[Renault]

Savage should not be on farm before the next chunk of content is out.

Uh...Yes, yes it should.

[NovaLevossida]

This is why I don't have any interest in leveling a second job. I have Summoner geared, I'm still gearing it, and I'm not splitting my esos to another job. I could level MCH or MNK, but lack of top gear going to those jobs instantly talks me out of it. I don't see the point of having a second DPS job leveled if I'm never going to bring it to anything because it's going to do less DPS than my geared DPS job. And God knows the party finder groups for something like Bismarck Extreme need all the DPS they can get, so I don't really feel like bringing anything but my best into content.

[Moonleg]

On the other hand, a causal player not raiding savage doesnt even need that gear except for glamour purposes, since everything besides savage is so insanely easy, it can be done in full ilvl 170 law gear (at this stage of the expansion).

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

[KihraJhin]

I can't tell you how much I despise this attitude towards the players that don't push the hardest of hard content. Why should 'casuals' be forced to run stuff in gear that can, but just barely, get through their content, rather than getting stronger and stronger until they just laugh off most of the enemies they fight?

i never said that causlas shouldnt get higher ilvl gear, just that current causal content (everything besides savage) is already laughable easy, unless you dont bring the skill. and even then with enough time passed the gear will outbalance the missing skill making it easy even for those. the only place you need gear and skill even when youre fully 210 is savage. thats a fact no one can deny. ive seen ppl wipe to alex 1 nomal with ilvl 200 weapons, which is almost impossible if you remotely play your class well, the thing is 80% of the player cant do that, thats why at some point they get the ilvl 210 stuff without raiding. and im totally fine with that and nothing i said or suggested int he first post says otherwise. causals can be casual but that doesnt mean we couldnt get a bit of flexibility when raiding savage.