Twinfinite Interview

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Speak for yourself. My sample size of my group pretty much despises this game's gear at this point. The reason they don't add effects - or any variation at all - is because the dev team is afraid of players feeling rejected because they don't have specific pieces of gear. This has been stated in the past.

The question to ask raiders isn't "would you like an interesting piece of gear or a good piece of gear," but "would you enjoy acquiring items more if they weren't so boring?" Getting cool stuff is exciting. Getting 2% more damage isn't, especially when you've been getting that same exact upgrade since 2014. Putting gear that's actually cool into the game might motivate people to go do the content where it drops and might actually help with player retention.

Also, making gear interesting doesn't necessarily mean giving it a unique effect. Something as simple as less MND than other pieces of its ilvl, but more VIT on a piece of healer gear is enough to make that item stand out from the endless march of Main Stat, VIT, one high substat, one low substat

And my sample size argues otherwise. I am in a lot of raid discord channels and the overwhelming consensus tends to favor BiS. The only time that healer piece with more VIT and less MND will even factor into the equation is during progression. And even then, only if you're attempting it at close to the minimal ilvl. For example, plenty of raiders meld VIT to their accessories during prog but immediately ditch it the moment they start jumping ahead of the ilvl. In essence, you've merely replaced melding with whatever method required to obtain this VIT focused set.

Putting three sets of ilvl 270 chestpieces behind A12S isn't going to make most raiders care to continuously run it unless they are already motivated to bump their numbers on FFlogs or do speed runs. Once they have the best of whichever three sets, the other two become irrelevant. Case in point, you can push 651 Skill Speed on Dragoon to more easily push for that one extra GCD-- somewhat useful in A12 to pull off two Geirskoguls-- yet the vast majority follow the standard 626 because Crit is higher, thus resulting in higher damage overall compared to a situational benefit. I am not saying they couldn't liven things up a little but adding a second gear set that favors VIT over STR/DEX/INT will be near virtually ignored for DPS jobs unless it's easier to get than the better damage stat equivalent.

Everyone copies everything, how many people can honestly say they figured coil and alex out for themselves with no use of guides?
Getting interesting gear is fun, it's still fun even if you're getting it to copy someone elses build rather than create one of your own.

That wasn't my point. Having to balance around multiple builds puts a massive strain on the developers since they now have to contend with however many builds are added. And to what end? For people to inevitably copy whatever raiders or popular youtubers do. They're already struggling to balance healers and tanks so people don't ignore one. Adding skill trees and what have you only increases their workload. I'd prefer they focus on actual content, personally.