Gear and Content

[Urthdigger]

...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?

[azura84]

...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?

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.

[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 ?