Gear and Content

[Urthdigger]

Most of us don't play RPGs to feel like a Dragonball Z character, yes there always need to be some vertical progression in an RPG but I think most of us who play FF endgame will agree it is usually horizontal gameplay requiring less brute force of level and more strategy around gear design and character type selections. Having played FF 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 I think its safe to they all hold this pattern of endgame.

Every single FF game, with the possible exception of FF11, had you getting better gear as you levelled up. You could generally assume that that armor you got in the last town is probably going to be better than that breastplate you picked up an entire disc ago.

There is also another problem I have with the mentality that gear should never be "invalidated", and that is what happens when new content gets added. I mean, I suppose they could never add any more HNM fights or dungeons and just have Darkhold be the only endgame forever and ever, but I doubt many people would want that. However, if the old gear isn't invalidated in some way, then you run into the little issue FFXI had. In order to be at least somewhat competent at endgame, you had to do EVERY endgame event ever released. You had one or two items you needed out of Sea, you had your relic armor from Dynamis, you had niche HNM drops, ZNM drops, and then once you had your items it was bad form to just leave the LS after, so you had to stay and help everyone else get their crap. So, because the items you need are spread out across multiple events, you wind up having to fill your whole entire life with endgame.

An obvious solution to this is if endgame drops aren't so soul-crushingly rare that people expect you to devote your life to them once you get what you need, a case where you can get your drop and move on. But then people whine and complain about how easy the game is, that getting the drops isn't a challenge at all.

So, really, what can you do?

[Reliquia]

...do you really want a level 50 dungeon dropping the best gear in the game, even after the level cap goes up? Do you really want gear to never become even a smidgen more powerful than what we have at the moment?

I think that end-game gear that is really hard to attain should be the best, and once the cap goes up there should be a way to upgrade it further through more really hard content. And it should be among the best all the way, I am not much for crafting gear being the best gear available. Where's the challenge and fun in that?

[azura84]

I think that end-game gear that is really hard to attain should be the best, and once the cap goes up there should be a way to upgrade it further through more really hard content. And it should be among the best all the way, I am not much for crafting gear being the best gear available. Where's the challenge and fun in that?

See that's how I feel. Except I dont think its logical to make all of it the best after a cap raised to 75 but some of that AR1 gear was useful all the way

Also, I don't see how you can be content with darkhold being obsolete already, hell the least they could do is make it a pre-requisite to Ifrit prime, at least then some of our power hungry players will get a taste of what kind of tactics and difficulty are to be expected because frankly the non-capped lower dungeons made me weep.

[azura84]

Now 1st you want to know why they create Grand company but do not develop faction. The Grand company are army for each nation; which is required for the up coming war so create them is a must. Factions effect the whole continent; they are just like those Guilds in FF14, it's weird to put them in front line for war; when 1 have issue with beastmen, 1 self proclaim protector of the weak, 1 is poet. Can you think of something to link this to the war ?

This is a good point and I'll be honest I didn't actually take the time to read in detail the 5 pages of backstory they had/have on lodestone. And I also got rushed through all my cutscenes for darkhold and ifrit (i actually didn't even get to see Ifrit Jr cause my buddy killed it before my CS ended, haha).
But this still doesn't explain how they are completely ignoring the Factions, Leves and the gear that came from them. Factions where a new idea, and the fact they had leves you had to do in a certain order to get to the best "special missions" (even though it was only 2, it was still a progression) gave incentive for players to party with others to keep getting more faction points as well as leveling new jobs. The point being they need to do these two things better, make old content still worth doing, and still worth helping, as well as making the gear useful.

2nd: vacant spot in the world is depend on players; why Gridania is so empty compare to Limsa Lominsa and Ul'dah ? people chose to for themself which one they like to fight; how can you ask them to force people in other place ? And i dont quite understand what do you mean by swap gear properly ? like you can change it during a battle ? Have you ever seen s.o able to change equipment during a battle ? You suppose to prepared before the battle.

This is probably your best point, it's true you wouldn't see warriors flipping out of their breeches in mid combat. And this i completely agree on, my point i was trying to make though is in XI you were given the chance to change gear but without delay and without any form of hesitation on your characters final movment. This wasn't really my biggest point I was trying to make, and even though I miss being able to change gear on the fly, I can understand why it should be done away with, people should be prepared before entering combat it just makes better sense. The point was without the ability to change gears midfight, it eliminates a small portion of why people would want multiple kinds of gear sets. Making horizontal development slightly more difficult to maintain.

3rd: seals, guild marks, rewards for factions; in 1 word you want easier to earn income and for what ?; it does not effect the game play, +3 HQ gear very effective specially for accessories, in all game a low level HQ item is alway useful; higher damage and def at low level allow you to try more difficult leves alone.

Hold it right there buster, I never said I wanted anything to be 'easier', in fact when I learned the lv 25 dungeons were uncapped, I was rather disappointed I was hoping they would have been tough similar to the Promies of CoP in FFXI, but not only were they uncapped, they weren't even required to enter the next dungeon. You could just skip them all together, and honestly who needs lv 25 gear when you're only at lv 25 - 35 for less than 2 hours. I literally only put on R40+ gear now while i'm am being power leveled. This causes two issues among players; first, players never learn the job or how it is properly used in a party, and second it completely makes using any gear not lv 40+ worthless. Which makes it extremely difficult for new players to get going. Also, who does leves anymore? The exp per hour is so low it's not even worth bothering, another thing that went to the waste side.

I have no idea what you were talking about with the seals and marks, but if you're saying all I want to do is make gil off them you couldn't be more wrong. I wouldn't pay seals to buy any of that gear they sell, the most valuable item sold via the Grand Companies are the manuals, which help with exp via DotH and DotL. Some of the gear can be materialized and a few of the food purchases aren't bad but I wouldn't use seals to sell gear.

As for the marks, I like the effort it took to obtain all of my different abilities, but sure enough I will have 30,000+ built up that I can't do anything with. At least with the crafting jobs you can exchange them for crystals but with how difficult it is to break crystals now it maybe easier to just go farm shards to craft with. (this is likely a temporary issue, i'm sure SE will make Fine Sand easier to obtain/make later on, or the moraines) But for my ARC and LNC jobs that have excessive marks, SE has plans to do away with them entirely, exchanging them for gil which will probably be unequivalent to time spent obtaining them. (Don't ask me why i have all these marks, I know they are useless now I just kept getting them instead of gil for rewards.)

Finally; tell me 1 thing, why do you need to open 2 account in a same PC ? I could only see 1 result; allow power level in this game or gold farming. Tell me, is there any other reason ? people could open another char with cheaper payment, and in this game you can freely changing class so there is no real reason people would need 2 account .

Do you have any family or friends you have shared accounts with? Have you never wanted to help a friend get something while they are away or visa versa? It's as simple as that, I have many friends with children who play and they support their kids characters using separate machines, which is fine to SE because it's not done on the same machine. But what is the big difference if one person is controlling two accounts with two terminals versus one person controlling two accounts with one terminal. If people want to dual-box they are going to do it anyways, there is no reason to inhibit this use.

[Ethir]

This is a good point and I'll be honest I didn't actually take the time to read in detail the 5 pages of backstory they had/have on lodestone. And I also got rushed through all my cutscenes for darkhold and ifrit (i actually didn't even get to see Ifrit Jr cause my buddy killed it before my CS ended, haha).
But this still doesn't explain how they are completely ignoring the Factions, Leves and the gear that came from them. Factions where a new idea, and the fact they had leves you had to do in a certain order to get to the best "special missions" (even though it was only 2, it was still a progression) gave incentive for players to party with others to keep getting more faction points as well as leveling new jobs. The point being they need to do these two things better, make old content still worth doing, and still worth helping, as well as making the gear useful.

So the point here is they could make it better; but it isnt bad at first; but you like it better ? right ? But as you said; you dont even pay attention to the main and grand quest; how can you pay attention to these quest even if they extent them ?

This is probably your best point, it's true you wouldn't see warriors flipping out of their breeches in mid combat. And this i completely agree on, my point i was trying to make though is in XI you were given the chance to change gear but without delay and without any form of hesitation on your characters final movment. This wasn't really my biggest point I was trying to make, and even though I miss being able to change gear on the fly, I can understand why it should be done away with, people should be prepared before entering combat it just makes better sense. The point was without the ability to change gears midfight, it eliminates a small portion of why people would want multiple kinds of gear sets. Making horizontal development slightly more difficult to maintain.

This i agree; the delay kinda annoying; but it wont effect much. Could be because of the strong pc require than the bug in system itself

Hold it right there buster, I never said I wanted anything to be 'easier', in fact when I learned the lv 25 dungeons were uncapped, I was rather disappointed I was hoping they would have been tough similar to the Promies of CoP in FFXI, but not only were they uncapped, they weren't even required to enter the next dungeon. You could just skip them all together, and honestly who needs lv 25 gear when you're only at lv 25 - 35 for less than 2 hours. I literally only put on R40+ gear now while i'm am being power leveled. This causes two issues among players; first, players never learn the job or how it is properly used in a party, and second it completely makes using any gear not lv 40+ worthless. Which makes it extremely difficult for new players to get going. Also, who does leves anymore? The exp per hour is so low it's not even worth bothering, another thing that went to the waste side.

I have no idea what you were talking about with the seals and marks, but if you're saying all I want to do is make gil off them you couldn't be more wrong. I wouldn't pay seals to buy any of that gear they sell, the most valuable item sold via the Grand Companies are the manuals, which help with exp via DotH and DotL. Some of the gear can be materialized and a few of the food purchases aren't bad but I wouldn't use seals to sell gear.

As for the marks, I like the effort it took to obtain all of my different abilities, but sure enough I will have 30,000+ built up that I can't do anything with. At least with the crafting jobs you can exchange them for crystals but with how difficult it is to break crystals now it maybe easier to just go farm shards to craft with. (this is likely a temporary issue, i'm sure SE will make Fine Sand easier to obtain/make later on, or the moraines) But for my ARC and LNC jobs that have excessive marks, SE has plans to do away with them entirely, exchanging them for gil which will probably be unequivalent to time spent obtaining them. (Don't ask me why i have all these marks, I know they are useless now I just kept getting them instead of gil for rewards.)

That's depend; i also get a lot of leves for guild marks ; and I have to travel to different nation to get the quest reward with gil. But may be because i only reach pass level 20 at 3 class and at 2 different nations so i can still get gill. But I think they could make it like this; the guild will issue leves that reward with guild mark and those factions will reward with gil ; it's kinda weird when those faction reward guild mark - not really making sense.

Do you have any family or friends you have shared accounts with? Have you never wanted to help a friend get something while they are away or visa versa? It's as simple as that, I have many friends with children who play and they support their kids characters using separate machines, which is fine to SE because it's not done on the same machine. But what is the big difference if one person is controlling two accounts with two terminals versus one person controlling two accounts with one terminal. If people want to dual-box they are going to do it anyways, there is no reason to inhibit this use.

A big different. With the require for powerful pc like this; and the limit level in pt; not allowing many account in 1 pc will prevent powerlevel or goldfarmming. Just think those guy selling gold or powerleveling need to have at least many decent pcs to do this and it's not cheap also it's prevent them from open others online game too. In order word; they wont make much money in this game unless they get gold from those greedy DoHs. Now in a family; would it be fun if they can play at the same time ? yes. But 2 account in 1 pc ? how can they play at the same time ? what the fun in that ?

[azura84]

You're exadurating the NEED for all that gear in 11, you could absolutly do with base 75 crafted gear on any job. In fact most people with multiple jobs did, but what made all those extra gearsets useful was the ability to perform slightly better on different occasions, it was never a necessity unless you were apart of some elite-fat-head linkshell.

Also you obviously never attempted the weapons at the end of ffvii, the arena at the end of ffx, or the marks pyramid at the end of 13, you hit the level cap and your gear doesn't get any more significant unless you build it specifically to strategy, as well as your character selection. The endgame for a ff has never been the end of the main story otherwise you would have just quit after Shadowlord in xi. It's tactics and strategy that make a good horizontal Final fantasy endgame, always has.

[Urthdigger]

You're talking about the end, when you hit the cap. However, I'm pretty sure 50 will not be the cap for FFXIV in the long run. Believe it or not, 50 used to be the cap for FFXI. This is part of why I'm not too concerned about what's done to the current endgame, because it would need to be changed down the road when the level cap rises.

Right now, they're doing a lot of changes with the game. For all we know, they could drastically change DH itself and make it relevant again once all their changes are done. However, I don't feel that content being added to the game should be chained down and not made any better than what's come before it.

[Ethir]

Generally I like to think of myself as an optimist, but this games development is turning me into a troll. I do believe the devs are working hard, it is evident in there schedules.

What disturbs me most about this games progress though is it's continuous deletion or obseletion of content and gear. Instead of repairing or providing new content for existing factions such as Brotherhood and Aegis' they release the 'Grand Companies'... pardon me but, what the hell, why not make the current Factions an existing measure in the game instead of creating more 'grand' ones.

This goes for dungeons as well, with the release of Ifrit, Ifrit Prime, and materia melding, Darkhold became almost entirely vacant. Without the ability to swap gear properly there isn't a reason to own multiple gear sets in this game. So my question is, why is FFXIV trying so hard to be unlike FFXI and more like WoW?

I quit XI because the level increase was going to destroy most of the old content, and so it did. The idea of the level increase may have been fine if all of the other content in the game was adjusted accordingly but it wasn't, and it made it more difficult for new players to enjoy when there wasn't any incentive for the veterans to help them.

The devs of XI made great efforts at giving players incentive to support new members, so why, instead of giving us seals for repeating dungeons, putting further use to guild marks, or offering balanced rewards for continuing factions, are you going in the complete opposite direction and making Bucc gear, Harli gear, Dungeon gear and most previously +3 HQ gear entirely worthless?

Also why is there such a resistance to dual-boxing, the FFEVO Windower program was a brilliant program that even seemed to stabilize your games engine. If people are willing to have multiple accounts and you're going to start charging them when your game isn't even 50% complete why should you give a whoot'n'nanny how they play accounts on your game?


Are there ANY plans to re-implement use of gear or content previously released?

Now 1st you want to know why they create Grand company but do not develop faction. The Grand company are army for each nation; which is required for the up coming war so create them is a must. Factions effect the whole continent; they are just like those Guilds in FF14, it's weird to put them in front line for war; when 1 have issue with beastmen, 1 self proclaim protector of the weak, 1 is poet. Can you think of something to link this to the war ?

2nd: vacant spot in the world is depend on players; why Gridania is so empty compare to Limsa Lominsa and Ul'dah ? people chose to for themself which one they like to fight; how can you ask them to force people in other place ? And i dont quite understand what do you mean by swap gear properly ? like you can change it during a battle ? Have you ever seen s.o able to change equipment during a battle ? You suppose to prepared before the battle.

3rd: seals, guild marks, rewards for factions; in 1 word you want easier to earn income and for what ?; it does not effect the game play, +3 HQ gear very effective specially for accessories, in all game a low level HQ item is alway useful; higher damage and def at low level allow you to try more difficult leves alone.

Finally; tell me 1 thing, why do you need to open 2 account in a same PC ? I could only see 1 result; allow power level in this game or gold farming. Tell me, is there any other reason ? people could open another char with cheaper payment, and in this game you can freely changing class so there is no real reason people would need 2 account .

[elreed]

Well i know how the Op. feels i think that having obsolete content every patch gets boring at the end because after all the hardship you had in the next patch all that will go right to the toilet, yeah theres gonna be titles and gear but gear will not be good enough for a long time.

My solution would be do the same stuff rise the level cap make endgame gear and after several patches or cap raise make that some gear that actually you got by doing really hard stuff be able to improve by doing other new chain of quest, NM's hunting that gives only mats for that piece and if you dont have that gear you wont find rewards that much useful, so newcomers will have an incentive to complete every content available to get whatever they want.

Like the scythe for DRK Apocalipse or something like that, gave you a unique weaponskill and great damage, i never got it but i saw a few people wearing that and i was always looking forward to get it, when they raised the level cap as i saw a few months ago they raised the level for that weapon so it wouldnt get outdated, i dont think they just magically upgraded the weapon they must have somthing difficult for those lucky owners to do in order to get the improved one, well just supossing there but you get my idea. Other good item that i never had was the maats cap with really good stats that lasted lots of years, thats what im talking about.

One thing that i found really good from XI was the Rajas ring that gave very good stats and was a growing gear, the higher your level the higher the stats you would get from it and it was a reward for completing a whole storyline chain of quest so that would be one good thing to be added, well i know its not a perfect idea but i think if they do something similar we will have a long lasting sense of achievement.

[Anty]

exactly what i am thinking. Good post. I really don't understand that direction. Ofc there will always be some gear pieces better then the other over time. But its goin way too fast and one could make gear that is more solo-friendly, the other is more for grouping etc. So every instance/content piece would have some meaning.

So far we have 2 "runthrough" dungeons that lost their meaning, 1 ifrit battle... one only... will be the same with moogle battle. And after 2.0 its all over again. New gear ,old gear is crap, i bet the balancing starts all over again....

Keeping that direction the game will by no means be able to offer more fun and challenges and quality then any other F2P mmo out there. in ffxi even after many years and most jobs at cap (before abyssea) there was so much to do, more then even hardcore gamers usually didn't manage to do. Now a casual gamer gets bored after 1 hr playing on weekends due to lack of content...