Gear Lockouts - Why are these still a thing?

[Vespar]

So recently I've been feeling less and less like logging into XIV and it stems from a pretty crucial factor. It takes way too long to gear up more than one job to i200.

The biggest reason why I find it so difficult to get multiple jobs geared up to i200 is all of the content lockouts. and honestly why do we need these lock outs anyways? Don't we want players playing the game and not just sitting around bored and then unsubbing because they cant do the content they want to do.. I mean really, FFXIV was built on the ability to play multiple jobs and freely switch between them with ease, but then the game immediately restricts the player from gearing up more than one job effectively. The only other way to farm i200 gear during the week and not having to worry about lockouts is Diadem. Which I must say, is a boring zerg fest for equipment that may or may not have good stats for your job. But its currently the only UNRESTRICTED option for i200 items right now. Yet, there are many ways to get i200~ weapons (Thordan EX, Anima weapons, Savage, ESO) and yet farming those weapons is not nearly as restrictive as farming equipment/accessories. I feel like either esoterics or Void Ark should be uncapped now as it makes little sense to push all of your players into the Diadem just to be able to gear up other classes to i200 effectively.

There is all this content now that I would love to do to gear up another job... but Im constantly locked out of it. It's just getting to the point that once reset rolls by and I cap my eso and do my void ark, Im just sitting around with my thumb up my butt so to speak waiting for the next reset. Anywho, this is just my own personal feedback and I understand if some folks dont share my view. Try to keep it polite if you reply.

Happy Holidays

[Amiaze]

To be fair, if there was no lockout, players would get all the high-end tome gear in a day or two and immediately set to burning through the rest of the content as quickly as possible. Then the complaints about not having things to run would come in far sooner and players would actually unsub. The idea behind the lockouts is to keep you coming back over the course of a long period of time, not necessarily to keep you logging in every day.

And from my understanding, most MMOs use some sort of lockout system not too dissimilar from FFXIV's.

[BreathlessTao]

To be fair, if there was no lockout, players would get all the high-end tome gear in a day or two and immediately set to burning through the rest of the content as quickly as possible.

I see a lot of people claiming this, and I have to point out: this is incorrect. Some players would probably do that, but those would be the same players who complain about having "nothing to do" - exactly because they are the type who can and do burn through everything. That's just how they play, that's their style. I've heard it numerous times from the few such people I know, getting frustrated and downright angry exactly because of this issue. (One of them even has his sub suspended for now, this having been one of the deciding factors of his decision.)

There are several other types of players though. Start with the fact that a lot (an incredible lot) don't even have all the jobs at 60, so they're already out of this question. Then let's see... There's one group who simply don't have the time to even consider that. Another group who don't even care about certain classes so they never even unlock them. Yet another group has several alts and instead of focusing on one character, they instead slowly bring them all up to current endgame levels on one job each - or don't even do that, because they enjoy the more social aspects of the game and progression is completely on the backburner for them. These are just three major groups I can distinguish and safely say exist, I'm quite sure there are some others as well as combinations of these.

So, no, dropping the lockouts and limits would not make us see everyone and their grandmothers run around in all i200(+) gear on all their jobs in a week. It would, however, serve those who simply want to do that. (And with SE catering for the top 1-2% of bleeding edge endgame raiders as well as the handful of top specialist crafters COUGHrelicCOUGH, I don't see why this potentially larger group should not be given the same level and amount of catering.)
And yes, while lockout systems have been known to be parts of MMOs... Much with RNG in other aspects of FFXIV, there is just too much of it in here - the existence of it is not the issue, the amount of it is. Also let me refer to that GDC keynote of Yoshi's about what they learned from 1.0... Similarities and differences between games are both double-edged swords. Just because one game does something a certain way, it's not necessarily a good way, it's not necessarily the good way, it's not necessarily a way for others to follow. Taking this specific issue itself: yes, other MMOs have lockout systems too, but at the same time do those other MMOs allow you to have every job unlocked and leveled to max on one character, like FFXIV does? That's already a core difference that should be considered more carefully when deciding about other core aspects like the lockouts. What it boils down to is that the way the lockouts are implemented and their amount simply do not make sense in here, not as much as and not the way they do elsewhere.

[Vespar]

I'm not entirely against lockouts in the beginning of a patch or expansion. But we've had 3.0 for several months now and in the past they've eased up on previous content much sooner than this to allow us to gear up other jobs. But its been quite some time now and I feel like my other jobs are still stagnating and not getting anywhere.

My husband made an interesting idea. If we are to have lockouts, Why not have lockouts per class per week. For example: If you lot and receive a piece of gear for WHM in Void Ark you are now locked from lotting another piece for WHM in Void Ark for that week. So you could run the content again on say Ninja and lot another piece for Ninja for that week. That way you still get items for each job and you can run the content more but you'd be locked from lotting another piece of that job's gear for the week.

[Moqi]

To be fair, if there was no lockout, players would get all the high-end tome gear in a day or two and immediately set to burning through the rest of the content as quickly as possible. Then the complaints about not having things to run would come in far sooner and players would actually unsub.

Most people have a life outside the game.

[Gunspec]

Gear lock out is so that the crazy people who complain about farming 800 Alexander normal runs for a relic weapon don't also complain about farming 2000 neverreap runs, or whatever the amount would be, to cap all their gear on classes in under a week. Giving people the option to run content until they bleed for some reason makes people think that they need to do just that.

Most people have a life outside the game.

The devs assume otherwise. Do you have any idea how many people are currently grinding a quest mockingly called "soul without life" for 12 hours or more a day? hehe.

[Moqi]

I mean we have a uncapped currency already. Do people gear all their classes with that in a couple of days? Because I've never done that.

[Waliel]

I mean we have a uncapped currency already. Do people gear all their classes with that in a couple of days? Because I've never done that.

People have also been saying that Law gear is useless for the past 3-4 months, so I guess there's that.

[Vagdal]

I dont see why Esoterics/raids shouldnt be capped per job weekly.
If you could do roulettes once youd still have to grind out the rest but at least this would be an option and lets be real here who would go through all the jobs to get capped weekly.

Im sure there would be this one guy out there to grind it out but in the grand scheme of things this wouldnt break the game apart but at least would make this whole job system just more flexible especially with raids involved.

Its not that bad to have that option in place instead capping tomes/scrips and clearing raid for a week and logging off until reset.
Funny that over 2 years later SE still hasnt realized this perhaps with all these complaints left and right theyll come to their senses and cement this job system with that change.

[RyuRoots]

People have also been saying that Law gear is useless for the past 3-4 months, so I guess there's that.

People are also stupid. I've been using Asuran gear on classes I can't use eso gear, VA drops, or current EX drops (due to bad rng) and they function just fine for my purposes.