Ditch the Tomes!! ~Just an Idea~

[Jijifli]

To ask for a system like Diablo III's Paragon system, you are also asking for issues it holds.

If you want a carbon copy, just instead of levels, it's gear, then the more you get, the longer the next takes. Eventually it'd take even more of a grind.

Assuming you'd want it to stay even, you run into a problem you even pointed out. Something will still be best and will be done, while others are just seen as the, "Slow way." This leads to a giant problem that's being missed here. People will be able to finish the content even FASTER than what's currently possible. That means people will quit sooner, which means less money to SE, which effects what they are able to do. Why would I play more than a week if I can already get the newest set by then? Once I've cleared the raid with it, I'm short on raid content because I already have such strong gear.

We don't need ways that speed up the speed we eat content. We'll always consume faster than they can serve, so we don't want to make that worse. It'd be better to get a less grind feeling way. People liked it more with 3 dungeons in a roulette. They should try to go back to that.

[Pintsized]

To Be honest, back in 2.0 I really drew this idea from the Merit System in FFXI, but I figured people had enough of "Make FFXIV like FFXI" so I looked to other games. Diablo 3 is but only one game that has a similar system and its modern enough for people to relate to....

I'm totally confused with what you're trying to get at here .. Merits buy you SKILLS, Tomes buy you GEAR, entirely different aspects of character development.

[Kuroka]

Most easy way would be if the rewards are adapted to our lv. Run level roulett as lv. 60 char? here are your X Lore. Oh wait you got someone new? take that X extra lore. He got an point, it sucks being forced to do stuff only to get tomes and not to do stuff we like...

[Reinha]

It would be great if a bigger variety of activities gave us meaningful amount of tomes, but I really like the tome system itself and don't want it ditched. On the other hand changes to how rewarding each piece of content is could have lasting effects on content consumption and player satisfaction. Who does fates now that PotD is more rewarding for levelers? How many people do expert roulette and then complain about every aspect of it? Players as a whole flock to what's most efficient whether it's actually fun to them or not.

Personally I'd love if hunts and clan marks were more rewarding but apparently that's wrong to think because when that happened at the start of the expansion people suggested The Hunt to be removed from game. People knew that was the most rewarding content at the time and felt the need to do it even though they didn't like it. The devs need to be careful about what kinds of content they want to keep relevant in end game and for what amount of time, and they are going the (maybe too) safe route by keeping expert roulette as the primary source of tomes.

[Xairos]

Great points in the thread so far.

After reading, I guess my main focus is content longevity. I would love to new players and old players to both get something meaningful from all the content that SE spent a ton of time developing. I mean I love Crystal Tower, but (as much as I hate myself for it) when a FC mate asks to see what that old raid was really like, my first thought is "I don't want to run that, it's pointless for me".

That's what spurred this whole idea tbh.

[Paladinleeds]

snip

It's a novel idea, so don't feel bad for how you got the inspiration for it. The problem comes down to if the old content becomes more rewarding for the same amount of effort, the new content gets done once then it is wasted. It's a cultural thing and I don't think there's any way SE can win here. Roulettes are great and all, but most people would rather just spend an extra day to only do Expert Roulette rather than trudge through the other roulettes to cap faster. And I don't think it's possible due to the nuances of the different pieces of content to perfectly balance it out so everything is equal reward for investment. Because if there's even a 1 tomestone per hour difference, people WILL notice it and it will affect what gets run. Yes, all over 1 tomestone per hour difference.

[loreleidiangelo]

Personally, I hate everything about the tome system. It does too much to turn the game into a job. If they are going to keep a weekly cap on the most relevant tomes, we should get them for pretty much everything we do. Then it no longer becomes a question of what can I do to get tomes quickly, but what do I actually want to do.

Tbh, I'd just prefer alternate gear acquisition methods overall. I don't like tomes, I don't like time-gated currency ESPECIALLY considering that players wanting to gear multiple jobs before the gear becomes devalued is a current trend in this game. Diadem tried this with random drops, but there were two snags I think: a.) Diadem itself was horribly boring and unfun to play, and b.) the ilevel range on the gear that dropped moved it from patently useless to BiS, and to me that's not a healthy gear distribution module. In fact, I often wonder how Diadem would have been received if gear drops were LESS frequent, but they were guaranteed to be useful if not for your main, then for an alt at least (ie ilevel 200-210, instead of this weird 150-210 range we got).

Either way, I think gear distribution in this game is kinda borked overall. It's a method that functionally makes very little sense. Log in and do your daily "chores" so you can buy gear (or log in weekly to hit your weekly raid slot machine roulette and hope for some usable gear), or just...not log in and wait until the inevitable catch-up method is added, because hey, it's not like you could have reasonably geared more than maybe 2 jobs in the time that you were away anyway!

It doesn't help that I personally find the "catch-up" method of acquiring gear FAR, FAR more interesting than the tomestone grind (do 24-man raid for gear 10 ilevel lower than top, get item to upgrade tome gear to max ilevel, also get tomes to BUY tome gear from 24-man raid, etc). I like the 24-man raids, for the most part. I wish they were introduced during the tomestone cycle, tbh. Do expert to get tomestone gear OR do 24-man to get gear slightly less good, OR do both so you can actually feasibly gear up more than one job at a time! (Pipe dream, I know.) Heck, add in some reasonably good but rare gear drops from Aquapolis too, and you have methods of letting players gear as many jobs as they're willing to commit time to the game.

[Ferth]

Tbh, I'd just prefer alternate gear acquisition methods overall. I don't like tomes, I don't like time-gated currency ESPECIALLY considering that players wanting to gear multiple jobs before the gear becomes devalued is a current trend in this game. Diadem tried this with random drops, but there were two snags I think: a.) Diadem itself was horribly boring and unfun to play, and b.) the ilevel range on the gear that dropped moved it from patently useless to BiS, and to me that's not a healthy gear distribution module. In fact, I often wonder how Diadem would have been received if gear drops were LESS frequent, but they were guaranteed to be useful if not for your main, then for an alt at least (ie ilevel 200-210, instead of this weird 150-210 range we got).

Either way, I think gear distribution in this game is kinda borked overall. It's a method that functionally makes very little sense. Log in and do your daily "chores" so you can buy gear (or log in weekly to hit your weekly raid slot machine roulette and hope for some usable gear), or just...not log in and wait until the inevitable catch-up method is added, because hey, it's not like you could have reasonably geared more than maybe 2 jobs in the time that you were away anyway!

It doesn't help that I personally find the "catch-up" method of acquiring gear FAR, FAR more interesting than the tomestone grind (do 24-man raid for gear 10 ilevel lower than top, get item to upgrade tome gear to max ilevel, also get tomes to BUY tome gear from 24-man raid, etc). I like the 24-man raids, for the most part. I wish they were introduced during the tomestone cycle, tbh. Do expert to get tomestone gear OR do 24-man to get gear slightly less good, OR do both so you can actually feasibly gear up more than one job at a time! (Pipe dream, I know.) Heck, add in some reasonably good but rare gear drops from Aquapolis too, and you have methods of letting players gear as many jobs as they're willing to commit time to the game.

You've captured the essence of my frustration with this game quite aptly.