Thread: Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

Originally Posted by Taika

remove the tomestone gear entirely.

This is the solution to many endgame woes (except for crafted/normal mode gear invalidating the previous raid - that just needs to stop entirely). Getting item drops feels good. Buying items and seeing trash drop (sup dungeons) feels like crap.

RNG was hellish in 1.x so a lot of people asked for a token system, but I think the devs misinterpreted what a token is supposed to do. I always expected something like how WoW used to do set pieces - a generic item would drop with three or four classes on it (Paladin/Mage/Priest for example) and those classes could roll for it and turn it in for a piece of armor. That, or how Gordias/Midas pages work (which is good).

Instead we got spamming Wanderer's Palace for raid-level gear.

Another solution is to keep tomestones, but only have them come from the 8 man savage raid. That way, you could still mitigate bad RNG but the actual drops from dungeons wouldn't be completely useless. They could set up a progression of something like

New Dungeon/Old 8 man savage raid < Ex Primals/24 man raid < 8 man savage raid

Originally Posted by Hayward

I know for a FACT you and others who think this way would put "[insert raid-level gear] or GTFO" in the PF comments if SE followed your selfish suggestions. What other reason would you have for removing Tomestone gear except for creating a chasm between filthy commoners and the noble raiders?

When was the last time you actually used an item that dropped from a dungeon on your main class? I know the last time I used an item from a dungeon was 3.0 launch, but I replaced all of it with uncapped tomestone gear (which was higher item level than the drops for some reason) almost immediately. If we don't count expansion launches, the last time I used an item that came from a dungeon was 1.x. That sucks and tomestones are basically just poison. Beyond invalidating all dungeon gear, though, they actually make the """"catchup"""" patch 24-man raid gear less exciting because, by the time the 24 man raid comes out, everyone already has at least one full set of same-ilvl gear.

Originally Posted by Hayward

I know for a FACT you and others who think this way would put

You should probably go take a break from this topic, the moment you start claiming crap like this is the moment you lose all credibility in a debate...

Most of my Party Finder comments haven't even directed people to various guides or included "Must know X Y and Z", all I've ever asked when starting a Party Finder group is that people be patient and not expect to be carried, that they communicate what they know and help the rest of the group clear... The only people I tell to GTFO are the kind that learn nothing despite repeated attempts, expecting to be carried, and point the finger of blame at everyone but themselves... Know why I don't even make Party Finder groups like that anymore? Because there is simply no point in doing so... Why would I put effort into forming a pickup group to clear stuff, when I know full well that all the content will be irrelevant in a few months? New tomestones will roll in and the item levels I'm working on get replaced by a stupidly simple roulette grind... I'll just save myself the bother and ignore item level progression completely...

Remove tomestones? Suddenly I don't find myself with i250 for next to no effort... Suddenly if I want to progress my item level, I need to do the content I'm currently ignoring, and I'm making Party Finder groups to tackle that content... But why am I even saying any of this... You've already made up your mind, after all you know for a FACT that we'd be saying "[insert raid-level gear] or GTFO"! Christ... So what? If you don't like my hypothetical Party Finder comment... Make your own damn Party Finder group... That is exactly what I started doing before progression in this game killed my motivation for such... I was (and still am) utterly sick of the "Watch a guide before joining!" mentality XIVs endgame is infested with, so I went out of my way to make "Blind run" Party Finder groups... I didn't demand SE take down such guides to suit my playstyle, because I'm not insanely entitled, I'm perfectly happy to let people play how they want so long as it doesn't impact me, and "watch a guide" and "[insert raid-level gear] or GTFO" don't actually impact me...

What does impact me is this games utterly terrible progression system, brought about by entitled people who seem to feel threatened by Party Finder comments...

Originally Posted by Vantol

So many threads, so many posts and I still don't understand why is it a bad thing?

Because feels? That's the best I've taken away from all this... Everyone needs to feel like a special snowflake, and thus nobody gets to...

I mean Christ... I very much doubt I'd get far with raiding, so if there was such a divide, I'd be on the bottom end of it as a filthy scrub still in i180 or some sh*t... I'd be perfectly fine with that though, because it gives me a sense of purpose and reason to log on, one that weekly tomestone caps utterly fail to provide... I'd want to climb that mountain, I've no idea how people can be content sitting on XIVs escalator... I want a game with a sense of progression, sometimes XIV almost feels like rolling in the dirt, then BAM! i240...

Originally Posted by Hayward

I know for a FACT you and others who think this way would put "[insert raid-level gear] or GTFO" in the PF comments if SE followed your selfish suggestions. What other reason would you have for removing Tomestone gear except for creating a chasm between filthy commoners and the noble raiders?

Good try but you missed your mark. The point of my suggestion was to encourage more players to do more varying content: raids and extremes instead of just running 2 dungeons over and over and over. Motivating more players to do more content means more people doing the content (for longer and even when it's made easier), which again means more possibilities for players to find people to do this content with. It would be good for everyone if more players would be able to enjoy this content and if the content would also be relevant for a bit longer.

You don't currently see ridiculously high item level requirements for stuff in party finder (at least I don't on my server) and even if this change would happen it wouldn't likely happen either, since the people who have the raid gear / certain item level are already likely to run with the group they've gotten that gear with instead of random party finder people.

Originally Posted by Hayward

Having played FFXI, I'd dare to say you have way more faith in MMO raiders than is justified.

I really don't see what that has to do with anything but I've played FFXI as well. And in fact back there we started a LS aimed for players as myself who had no endgame experience and didn't consider themselves as "raiders" (although that wasn't a word used there anyway) aimed for completing as much of the game content as possible without any background requirements whatsoever. In FFXIV too my aim in my FC has been to support everyone's possibilities to do as much endgame content as they want and are able to do.

Originally Posted by Hayward

Having played FFXI, I'd dare to say you have way more faith in MMO raiders than is justified.

I'm honestly not sure why you're making such comparisons to XI... XI and XIV are two very different breeds of MMO... One is an Everquest clone, the other is a Warcraft clone...

To a degree, elitism in XI was actually entirely justifiable... Content lockouts worked differently in that game, if you formed a PUG, got a complete joker who caused a wipe? Well, sucks to be you... You're locked out of that content for at least a day, if not three... XIV just doesn't have that problem, thus people don't need to be anywhere near as selective when forming groups... If we wipe Sophia (EX), for whatever reason, we can adjust and reenter... If you wipe Dynamis? Your next attempt isn't (well, wasn't) for three more days, and you'd blown a fairly large amount of Gil (which actually had value in XI) on the Lamp to enter... XIV has a much lower tolerance for error as a result, if they made it so you got one shot at Weeping City a week, and a wipe was a wipe, you all died and get kicked out instead of returning to the start? You'd see the exact same level of elitism in XIV, regardless of the progression system...

XIs elitism was a result of the content itself, the gear was just a method of being selective; If someone had a Hagun, they either bought it or earned it, and if they earned it chances were they weren't going to piss around. Gear itself did also play a factor, but again, that isn't something XIV is going to replicate... Gear in XI was a lot more powerful, XIV is never going to replicate the difference between a 6 hit and 5 hit build... Christ, XI was a game with such poor balancing that there were entire Jobs that were effectively worthless and out right rejected from content... When was the last time you got into Weeping City, only for the Dragoons to be kicked just for being Dragoons? Those pre-Angon days were rough man...