Power creep?

[UBERHAXED]

SE obvious has a history of increasing the iLVL every couple of major patches (for good reason). But with secondary weights as they are at 60 I'm not so sure they will do the 20 iLVL jump this time. They will increase it clearly to give incentive for the new raids, but I don't think such a large increase is needed anymore:


1. The original jump in 2.2 was due to the max weapon increase in 2.1. In 2.0 the cap was 90 for everything. In 2.1 they changed it so that the weapon was capped at 95. When they released 2.2, they had 95 weapons, but realizes this was a bit close considering they also intended to add intermediate raid weapons (which is a bit different than tome weapons now).

2. Since they already had 95 from the previous patch and added entry weapons (95 weapons from levi), intermediate raid weapons (100 weapons from unidentified allagan tomestone), upgraded entry weapons (100 weapons from levi) they may have felt that the levels were too close to encourage the last tier of weapons and they had made the final weapons 115, since the upgraded intermediate raid weapons at 110, possibly to add a 105 weapon later (wonder why that didn't pan out...). It of course came to pass that in 2.3 they added more 95 weapons (crafted) and 100 weapons (ramuh) and didn't let any weapons catch up to the raid weapon. Of course I'm intentionally ignoring the relic here since those had no influence on the release of other weapons due to them always being behind the raid weapon. IIRC, 2.2 only had animus, which was 100 and 2.3 added Novus, which was still behind high allagan.

3. Since we don't have an influx of weapons from the previous patch, the weapon cap is at the gear cap, and the raid weapon is the only max level weapon at the gear cap (since they reversed how they handled tome weapons) there's no need for the jump. 20 iLVLs. Right now, they only way a person has a 210 weapon in their possession is the final raid (no one right now has a 210 anima in their possesion). Since we no longer needed a drop from the raid to get an intermediate weapon and they separated upgrade items from the main gear and weapons, there is no significant creep and the vast majority of people do not have a max level weapon. Note this time that we don't have a plethora of weapon choices any more for weapons and they no longer have the problems of splitting secondaries to make weapons diverse.

4. Raid gear progression is now fixed, rather than random. In the 3 sets of coil, you can get anything barring the weapon in rather inconsistent set of floors. Alex is fixed in the sense that they now control what contribution gear will have because all of the stronger pieces drop from the later floors. The inclusion of Alex normal has made this even more prudent, as now you can get an entire set of entry gear before you hit the real raid, so expected iLvl is more clear.

Therefore my predictions of 3.2 (speculation of course) based on SE being consistent with reasoning and SE actually doing what they mentioned in the previous live letters:

Raid gear 220, raid weapon 220, materia slots
Alex normal gear 210
Entry tome gear 215 no upgrades, no entry weapon
Entry weapon 215 as primal weapon
Relics increase to 215, materia slots
Crafted entry gear at 210, obviously materia slots

For 3.3:
Relic increase to 220
Crafted weapon at 215
24 man gear at 215

(Diadem intentionally omitted)
Now I know what you are thinking: "There's no upgrade item at all or tome weapon!!"
The upgrade items were only introduced because they needed a sense of weekly progression of gear to measure expected completion times. The tome weapons are actually a 1 patch thing only added for heavensward (all the other "tome" weapons required a raid drop"). With the levels being so close, the weekly tome gear is as progressive as it gets. Since they will probably have a new primal, the primal will drop the entry level weapon for the new raid. Unlike patch 2.2, we don't have the issue with only 1 weapon at 95, being an outlier. I'm actually sure they intended to have levi weapons at 90 if the kept allagan at 90 in 2.1.

Conversely, our highest tier of gear is equal to the gear cap and they may choose to have the primal drop at 210 weapon. But as this will get largely ignored by those already with 210 weapons (see Ramuh Ex in 2.3) they will make this a step above the previous gear cap. With no need to have a 95-100 upgrade this time to encourage people to complete it (like leviathan) they have no need to increase the level of the entry weapon from 215. Since the entry weapon is static and they also have a problem with itemization (accuracy is removed so only 3 unique weapon stat combos can exist, barring which stat is the high/low one) they can make at most 3 weapons. Since the relic and the raid weapon are guaranteed to exist, this leaves them with leeway for only one more weapon. Since they promised to make crafted relevant (but not to overshadow raid weapons to discourage relic or raid) this is the only choice they have left.

Since they have no reason to have the difference that high anymore, they will probably not have a tome weapon anymore, nor upgrade items. But now I know what you are thinking: "So all BiS comes from raid????". Well there's still diadem in the background. I can't make a logical prediction on the gear level since everything SE did with diadem is illogical in itself but I'd put my money on 215 at 3.2 and 220 at 3.3. Alex normal however is the odd ball here, since that in itself is new to 3.0. But as it is, the tome gear eclipses the alex normal gear. They probably want to encourage entry barring ~600 runs of it for a relic step (which will not immediately have much participation in the next step due to the sheer amount of time to do the current ones) of Alex by making it supplement the tome gear for progression. It being 210 is only due to the fact that there can be a way to gear alternate classes in progression without grinding the previous tier. I think the biggest problem with alex normal gear was that it was too far from the tome gear to supplement progression. Keeping the pace that they have now, I'm expecting that they intend for the first full clear to be a bit after a month of release, while the rest trickle in, in the following month.

That said, SE can also do the illogical which is:
Raid stuff 230
Tome stuff 220, upgrade to 230
Alex normal stuff 210
Crafted stuff 200
Relic 215

Which is what they have now. But there's no longer a reason for the power creep and there is going to be a way to supplement gear with materia. Also the lower level will make the current gear a bit more relevant (e.g. relics at 210).

[CyrilLucifer]

Everyone has easy access to 210 gear now with Farthings, not just Diadem, so you're saying that those who don't raid should be stuck in the same gear tier for another 3-4 months? Because having a more casual player capped around the same iLevel for 6 months worked amazingly well from 3.0 to 3.1.

At least make Alex normal 215 give so that non-raiders a sense of progression as well.

[UBERHAXED]

Tome gear will have 215 and it will be only 5 levels from the raid gear.

[CyrilLucifer]

At 210 Alex normal will be dead on arrival and will only be for gearing alts. Alts that, if you stayed subbed for 3.1, will already be partially geared in 210 because the game gives you a Farthing a week.

I'm not sure if you're quite seeing the problem here. You're making Alex normal completely irrelevant, gating new gear for non-raiders behind the tome, which was exactly the problem with six months in 3.0.

If you want another Heavensward example, you can look no farther than Bismarck. He was only ever run because he was a wall for Ravana. Dead on arrival because he was irrelevant, iLevel-wise. You just went and got a 180 Law weapon instead. Even non-raiders need a non-tome reward for progression to keep their interest.

That being said - the easiest way to fix this power creep would be horizontal progression, which, unfortunately, Yoshi seems to have no interest in. And before someone calls me out on it, no, horizontal progression is not having 3 ways of getting the same iLevel of gear with different stats. At all.

[UBERHAXED]

At 210 Alex normal will be dead on arrival and will only be for gearing alts. Alts that, if you stayed subbed for 3.1, will already be partially geared in 210 because the game gives you a Farthing a week.


I'm not sure if you're quite seeing the problem here. You're making Alex normal completely irrelevant, gating new gear for non-raiders behind the tome, which was exactly the problem with six months in 3.0.

If you want another Heavensward example, you can look no farther than Bismarck. He was only ever run because he was a wall for Ravana. Dead on arrival because he was irrelevant, iLevel-wise. You just went and got a 180 Law weapon instead. Even non-raiders need a non-tome reward for progression to keep their interest.

That being said - the easiest way to fix this power creep would be horizontal progression, which, unfortunately, Yoshi seems to have no interest in. And before someone calls me out on it, no, horizontal progression is not having 3 ways of getting the same iLevel of gear with different stats. At all.

That's the point SE is doing o.o.
You don't need higher level gear unless you intend to use it in content that requires it.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

no, horizontal progression is not having 3 ways of getting the same iLevel of gear with different stats. At all.

Then please enlighten us as to what you mean by "horizontal progression".



Vertical progression is where gear gets more powerful. It may (but does not have to) include higher equipping requirements. Consider the vertical progression your gear made as you leveled in ARR from 1 to 50. Then the vertical progression continued at 50, working up the ilevels instead of just the character levels. Then, in HW, the grind from 50 to 60 added more vertical progression, which continues from the leveling gear to the i160, i170, i180, i190, i200 gear you can get (through various means) all more powerful than the previous.

If vertical progression is gear power going up, then horizontal gear progression must be gear power staying flat. Is that not exactly what "3 ways of getting the same iLevel of gear with different stats" is? Different looks, different stats, but no power increase over the other items at that same ilevel?

Please, enlighten me.

[Nominous]

Please, enlighten me.

Horizontal progression refers to games that have character/playstyle progression more than raw stat progression that is just building item levels and stats. There's clear benefit and detriment in either system, but FFXIV's content introduction rate is a bit too fast to have vertical feel worth it.

Patch intervals last 2-3 months, which is how long gear from new content lasts until it becomes invalidated or basically given away. Horizontal progression- things like having gear that has set effects that benefit your Job in particular- (like Jump strength +100% for DRG or Hollowed Ground duration +10 seconds for PLD) would last longer with this game. Obviously the detriment being that they wouldn't make it just drop from chests like normal. They'd probably make it have a far lower chance of dropping, or some counterbalance, so it's hard to say if it'd really be worth it for them to get in to.

Anyways, continuing on...this benefits content as well as gear variety. Let's say that Hallowed Ground gear comes from Coil T13, and only on synced difficulty. Boom. Now Coil content is alive for as long as that Hallowed Ground piece is good. With so many gear slots, and the possibility of set effects, they have FAR more potential they could tap into with this game, with far more reasons to run content than there is now, they just are afraid of imbalance.

[Aethaeryn]

To be fair, you don't really need the stuff from the last raid floor to beat the last raid floor either, so that's not really a good argument. Part of the fun in playing MMOs is feeling stronger with equipment upgrades. Take that away and people will just move on to the next big thing on the market.

However, if they wanted to start adding horizontal progression and/or gear with more interesting stats and bonuses, I'd be fine with that. It's probably never going to happen, though.

[Brannigan]

A lot of problems with current weapon progression come from the tomestone weapon not requiring a raid drop. If we had

Law 170 / upgrade 180
Bismark 180 / upgrade 190 (Ravana Drop)
Ravana 190
Badrelic 200 (3.1)
Tome 200 (requires Alex Savage floor 2 drop) / Upgrade 210 (Alex 4S drop)
Thordan 205 (3.1)
Gordian 210
Goodrelic 210 (3.1)

We'd have a much smoother progression. As it is, because the tomestone weapon requires no raid drop, everyone just skips over the first 3 steps and Ravana hasn't been relevant since 3 weeks after Tomestones released. Diadem obviously destroys armor progression and hopefully they don't mess it up so bad next go-around. For 3.2, I'd like to see something like

Dungeon armor: 205
Primal weapon: 215
Relic weapon: 215
Alex Normal: 220 (1/week like Void Ark)
Tomestone armor: 220 / upgrade 230 with raid drops
Tomestone weapon: 220 (requires raid drop) / upgrade 230 with last boss drop
Alex Hard: 230

I think that would keep Alex Normal relevant for longer and kind of restore a sense of progression for weapons. After that, if they were to allow the next set of gear from the 24 man raid to be upgraded with 8 man raid drops you'd have a much wider pool of gear to choose from.

[UBERHAXED]

A lot of problems with current weapon progression come from the tomestone weapon not requiring a raid drop. If we had

Law 170 / upgrade 180
Bismark 180 / upgrade 190 (Ravana Drop)
Ravana 190
Badrelic 200 (3.1)
Tome 200 (requires Alex Savage floor 2 drop) / Upgrade 210 (Alex 4S drop)
Thordan 205 (3.1)
Gordian 210
Goodrelic 210 (3.1)

We'd have a much smoother progression. As it is, because the tomestone weapon requires no raid drop, everyone just skips over the first 3 steps and Ravana hasn't been relevant since 3 weeks after Tomestones released. Diadem obviously destroys armor progression and hopefully they don't mess it up so bad next go-around. For 3.2, I'd like to see something like

Dungeon armor: 205
Primal weapon: 215
Relic weapon: 215
Alex Normal: 220 (1/week like Void Ark)
Tomestone armor: 220 / upgrade 230 with raid drops
Tomestone weapon: 220 (requires raid drop) / upgrade 230 with last boss drop
Alex Hard: 230

I think that would keep Alex Normal relevant for longer and kind of restore a sense of progression for weapons. After that, if they were to allow the next set of gear from the 24 man raid to be upgraded with 8 man raid drops you'd have a much wider pool of gear to choose from.

Ah but this still does the power creep. The point I was trying to get across was that there's no longer a need for 20 iLVL jump between caps and we can make other gear relevant by keeping the levels close. I do however see them either dropping tome weapon entirely (I think it was just an experiment but they seemed to have messed with other content, like primals by doing so) or following suit with 2.3 and 2.5 by adding an unidentified tomestone equivalent. I do not think Alex normal is meant for progression. It is meant for people who want to see the story behind the raid, but lack the ability to do the raid. If we make really significant armor from there, then we will have a repeat of 3.0, where people complained that they had to grind out normal to prepare for savage. I hardly think that SE intended for alex normal to be something "relevant" in terms of raid progression, and instead in alternative with rewards for it's difficulty. Because of their target demographic with normal (people who lack the ability to complete raids) they can't make it difficult and so the rewards shouldn't be massively great. Of course, they can also make people run new alex normal with a relic step but I digress.