An issue I think people don't notice

[Kogekigami]

Recently I got my friend to level 60 we managed to avoid burning him out on story and levelling thanks to main story exp boost. But once we hit 60 we almost lost him to item level raising blocking him from progressing story. The biggest issue being getting him a decent weapon. We are a small fc (around 5 members of close friends) with two of us having most of our crafter at a decent level and I have connections through my boyfriend to people with all the crafters at 60 so we were able to get him some equipment. but we really struggled and with some content blocked by story and item level restrictions it makes it impossible for him to get into Expert and 60 roulette.

I have already asked for live letter but I'm sure this question won't get picked.

What do the community think is a good way around the sudden item level block. It was easy for us who started heavensward before its first patch. We had Lore gear. Which was cheap and easy to level up with two low level 60 dungeons that could be entered with level 59 gear in expert roulette to farm that gear. but now there blocked from 60 roulette unless all the dungeons are unlocked and most of those are locked behind story or item level.

My fc had two ideas.

idea one: Treat level 60 roulette like levelling roulette. As soon as you have two dungeons you unlock it just have a smaller choice of dungeons therefore could have longer wait times. lower level in dungeons rewards....much neverreap

idea two: poetics can buy Law items. Boost item level faster through saving while level 50 to 60 and can do alexander void arc same as the rest of us from heavensward.

I know people hated the idea of jump potions but we know yoshida is aware and trying to fix burnout for new players yet this item level block is a big problem for new players working hard to catch up. In the end I caved and brought my friend a 250 weapon from market board and now were getting him through slowly. But what if there a solo player or just don't have the funds? New players shouldn't have to use gil to progress the game or be force to run hundreds of fractal to catch up. We didn't have to why should they?

[Karathix]

i200 is now easy to get from a few hunts, including weapon which gets a decent way. Doing dungeons for the first time also give a decent amount of bonus lore to replace pieces with 230. Additionally you could go for PotD which gets a 235 weapon pretty fast. PotD also gives lore and scripture to lv 60 characters, speeding up some ilvl gain more as well.

I totally agree that 60 rou should be structured the same as levelling roulette where you just only get x dungeons til you unlock more.

[Zojha]

i200 is now easy to get from a few hunts, including weapon which gets a decent way. Doing dungeons for the first time also give a decent amount of bonus lore to replace pieces with 230. Additionally you could go for PotD which gets a 235 weapon pretty fast. PotD also gives lore and scripture to lv 60 characters, speeding up some ilvl gain more as well.

Mhm...doing dungeons for the first time unfortunately does not yield a great amount of lore. You get a bonus of around 50 - on top of the like 20 you get doing them normally. It's less than a regular expert without roulette bonus gives and quite a bit less than just spamming aetherochemical research facility, which is 150 tomes every time (more than 50s, Expert or leveling roulette).

PotD ideally is employed during the leveling process, because it means you can get the i235 weapon waiting for you well in advance to actually reaching 60. That also helps with the sudden iLvL requirement of aetherochemical research facility, which I personally have not met once so far with just dungeon/quest equip.

Once Stormblood comes around, they'll probably simply put the needed gear into the MSQ. Until then it's a bit of a grind.

[Kogekigami]

yeah those are options but hard to do if people aren't around. Im also considering those from a solo perceptive too. Just thinking of ways of making it easier for people to get from thordan's trail to the point the rest of us are at. To get the lore weapon (unless its changed and several of us didn't notice) is 10 gears from midas and 1000 tomes.

[Dzian]

It doesn't honestly take too long to catch up. one of my old friends from arr came back recently and in a little over 2 weeks of play has managed to get there main job up to i246 and got through the main story.

crafted one or two items to help boost his score a bit. weapon and couple of 250 pieces. but I think you're a little mistaken when you say you shouldn't have to buy crafted gear to catch up. while it's true you don't have to. the whole purpose of crafted gear is "catching up" it exists so new players can catch up and get into raiding / endgame easily. that is it's purpose.

outside of that there are ways of catching up. doing you're daily /weekly hunt marks will give a player pretty quick access to the esoetics gear i200. which is higher than the law gear you mentioned. and just doing the daily marks you can get 110 hunt seals a day from the forgotten knights hunt board.another hundred for the weekly, plus any a ranks you happen to find. this is basically what my friend was doing in between catching up on the msq pair that with void ark and then weeping city and it becomes pretty quick to catch up. even if you didn't use crafted gear it wouldn't take to long to get to 230. which will get you into all current content bar ex primals and savage.

as for we didn't have to run hundreds of fractals? that depends on whether you played back then. if you did then you probably did have to run hundreds of fractals..... just as you had to run hundreds of sohm als or xelphatols or baelsers walls etc etc....

[RukiaFae]

I ran into that issue while leveling my alt. My server is really small and buying gear from the mb is hard because it's so expensive. I would agree potd is the best for the weapon. Use lore to get a few accessories and then do Alexander. I agree with level 60 roulette I haven't unlocked all of dungeons yet on my alt. There is weird gear gap if you didn't level up before patch releases.

[Pence]

The thing is....you either get good, or have time restraints. So if your friend group isn't good enough to tackle a primal (and I understand you only have 5) the next option is the event PVP, which may take a few days.

[Atoli]

The biggest issue being getting him a decent weapon. We are a small fc (around 5 members of close friends) with two of us having most of our crafter at a decent level and I have connections through my boyfriend to people with all the crafters at 60 so we were able to get him some equipment.

If you had crafters, I fail to see the problem. Craft him the ilvl 250 weapon (and other gear) and he will be fine for literally every single content currently in the game, even Zurvan Ex.

As for gearing up without crafters: every few patches, some friends come back. What took us many months to do takes 1-2 weeks for them to catch up, so I really don't see how that will "burn people out".
PotD has no ilvl requirement, gives absolute TONS of tomes (meaning you can just buy 230 gear en masse. Even if the weapon is still low, that should be enough to get your ilvl to 200+ so you can enter Alex Midas (run A8 4 times) and buy the 230 weapon. Alternatively, just continue PotD and get a ilvl 255 weapon right away. Throw a handful of Weeping City into the mix and you can upgrade that 230 gear to 240 and/or mix it up with pieces you get from there if you are lucky on rolls.
At that point (255 weapon, 240 gear) you are exactly where everyone else was at the start of the patch and you'll just have to bear with being slightly behind on weekly caps for 260 tome gear and Dun Scaith loot.

All of that only takes a few days, if you have crafters around OR a lot of gil you can skip it all and just instantly jump to 250 without bothering with the 230 step in between.
Playing through the story below 60 takes a few days too, so I fail to see how it is a problem to spend a few days to play through the story after hitting 60.

[LaylaTsarra]

You can get i235 weapons pretty easily by earning Wolf Mark in Frontline Roulette daily and just running Frontline Seize or Shatter.

[Kogekigami]

if you look at my character you will see some of my crafters are 60. and only 2 have the heavensward crafting books. (I am slowly correcting that but around my work life) then theres the cost/gathering of gear. I fail to see how you should have to either pay up the gil or depend on crafters to do basic story content. Yoshida is concerned of story and levelling burn out so why is it such a bad idea to either adjust 60 roulette to work like levelling roulette or put lore gear on poetics. People are put off by the idea of the humongous effort it is for people to enjoy the story. yes it shouldn't be easy to get high end raid gear or be on the same level as those playing hard core since day one. But it shouldn't mean we cripple those who want to catch up to casual content. not everyone has time to do daily hunts run aethercemical hundreds of times and enjoy the game. at what point should we block basic content behind a wall of work?