Please remove the weekly lock out of stuff

[Chalbee]

Completely missing the point. What I'm saying is that even if you wanted to, with the lockout system, you can only gear up one job.

Depends on what you mean by "geared up" currently I think you could consider yourself "geared up" if you are at least 260 on your main job and 250 on off-jobs. I've been able to gear up 3 jobs to 250+ and one to 265 solely through scrub content (tomes, sophia drops, kinna weapons, Dun Scaith, Alex normal) I imagine people who are actually good at this game probably have more jobs geared.

[basketofseals]

Completely missing the point. What I'm saying is that even if you wanted to gear up multiple jobs to max, with the lockout system, you can only gear up one job. Doesn't matter how much you want to gear them all up. You get one max level piece of gear and you're done for the week. Or in the case of body/legs, one piece every other week. All your other jobs are left without.

The fatigue system, on the other hand, still let you play the other jobs once you reached the cap on one.

One system has a cap that affects all of your jobs at once, and the other system caps you on only one job at a time. The one that is only one job at a time is better.

I don't think I'm missing the point at all. Most players want to stick with one job. Even among those that do raid, very few have an interested in gearing up multiples. Weekly lockouts is an extreme minority problem. Fatigue was a majority problem.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Without weekly caps, people will inevitably obtain every piece of gear they want within the first month. I cap nearly capped the 450 limit in a single day. It also completely trivializes any other form of gear progression since why wouldn't you farm Scriptures for the best gear available?

At launch of the content?

Not at launch, but it's not entirely difficult. The only content in the game where ilvl 270 matters is Savage. Since you'll always have two coffers per fight, provided no one else has cleared, you can simply ask your static if you can roll on other job gear you want. I geared Ninja completely through extra drops and the Scripture I no longer needed for Dragoon. When I got it to 60, it jumped to like 261 instantly. If you aren't doing Savage, well, don't worry about ilvl.

[MomomiMomi]

I don't think I'm missing the point at all. Most players want to stick with one job. Even among those that do raid, very few have an interested in gearing up multiples. Weekly lockouts is an extreme minority problem. Fatigue was a majority problem.

I'm not seeing it. Gearing up is the "leveling" of post-max level, aka character progression. So both systems are essentially the same thing, a method to prevent you from progressing. One just happens sooner. It also stops affecting you once you've reached the cap.

Now, I can see if you're saying it's the reason for it having more complaints. If that's what you're arguing, then I'll give you that. But that does not mean it's a worse system than our current lockout system. One is temporary (fatigue) and one is permanent (lockout). I believe the system that eventually stops affecting you is better.

Having explained that both systems are progression prevention methods, let's translate fatigue into tome/loot lock. A system that allows for progressing multiple jobs, whether people want to progress multiple jobs or not, is better. You can still focus on only one job if you want to. But people also have the option to progress multiple.

An individual weekly cap for every job, or at least every role, would be a superior system to what we have now. It would be a fine compromise between what we have now and no lockout at all.

[Misutoraru]

I am probably the minority that welcome the weekly lock
so I dont have to play FFXIV like going to work, before everyone done the content in few weeks and gone
I found it quite suit my pace, new content have a weekly lock, and when those new content no longer new, the cap increase/leave the cap
i personally believe it do more good than harm

[Istaru]

I would be fine with a compromise system.

Keep the lockouts, but make them by role. You can gain the currently weekly amount (450 tomestones, weekly gear, whatever) each for tank, healer, melee DPS, ranged physical and ranged caster.

If you want to do more than you do now, you can, it just gets applied by the role you are playing. That allows people who want to gear multiple roles the ability to do so and feel that they are staying current.

It also safeguards the people who do not play as much. All progression is capped at 450 tomestones per week, one 8 man raid drop, one 24 man raid drop just like it is now. As long as the more casual player gets their drop for their job, they are still on a level playing field.

It would still take the same amount of time to fully gear a single role, so it should not lead to a mass exodus over nothing to do.

There are still caps, so the instantaneous burnout from grinding out all the things in a week would be avoided.

Having one cap makes sense in a game where your character will only ever be a single job/role. The caps and the character usage are in alignment. It is 1 cap to 1 role.

We have 13, soon to be 15, combat jobs and 5 roles. Being encouraged to level and play multiple types of jobs but only being allowed to gear one is not in balance. I think a balance of 5 separate caps for 5 separate roles would be a more balanced approach.

[Rufalus]

I think the problem is people not being aware of what content is available and thinking that tomestones are the only way to gear up.

Tomestones could be deleted and you'd still be able to gear up in high-level armor.
Crafted 250/255 (no weekly limit).
Diadem 265 (no weekly limit).
Alexander 270 (no weekly limit).

For weapons there is Kinna/PotD 255 > Zurvan 265 > Alex/Anima 275.

You'll get preferable stats by taking items from a variety of content instead of gearing yourself exclusively in scripture tomestone items.

[Kaethra]

The only reason to have lockouts is a lack of design initiative. That's it. The game has a monthly cost. They need to keep players subbed, which means spreading out the goal of that sub. In this case, its gearing through content.

This idea to prevent player burnout is false. Players will only ever play as much as they want to.

I've played MMOs that do not have daily, weekly, or monthly caps or lockouts on anything. When you max out one class, you merely start on another. New content is released around the time that the average player (if they start at day one) reaches most of their stuff capped, or even before.

The trick of course is to follow a very very simple design philosophy:

"When adding content or features to a game, would the players engage it without any reward?"

If the answer is yes, add the feature or content.
If the answer is no, redesign it.

If you're over 30, you'll likely remember when games did this. Many NES, SNES, Genesis (or earlier like Atari/Intellivision), and quarter sucking arcade games were like that. If you remember doing a play through of Super Mario Bros without using the warps in 1-2 and 4-2 to skip to 8-1 and instead played through Worlds 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. There was no reward for doing so, just the experience of it.

This isn't to say rewards are bad. They should be tools. Like gear. Getting gear should mean opening up new content. Not opening content gets you new gear. Its a bit backwards.

[Ririta]

snip

Since you used Sophia as example, I decided to watch a guide on it and, for comparison, its Levi-clone mechanic only starts in the last phase. Then coloured orbs, coloured auras, more stuff that you'll only be exposed to at the last phase. Added with some first phase mechanics, that's a lot of stuff to memorize.

Meanwhile compare the new things from ARR primal's last phases (or rotating phases) there's not nearly as many mechanics, all of them added one (or made a previous one the same but harder) but they were super punishing while the bottlenecks are often introduced in the first phase. Even my nemesis, Titan, was rather easy to manage since there was nothing to "understand", it was just dodging.

Personally I don't like the options to catch up right now, there's no reason to be so tight handed about things that are almost a year old and will be useless once Stormblood hits.

[Talraen]

The only reason to have lockouts is a lack of design initiative. That's it. The game has a monthly cost. They need to keep players subbed, which means spreading out the goal of that sub. In this case, its gearing through content.

This idea to prevent player burnout is false. Players will only ever play as much as they want to.

You're thinking about this entirely in the context of yourself. Even if burnout didn't exist, lockouts still have an important function: allowing people to keep up. If being able to play 8 hours a day makes you significantly better than being able to play 2 hours a day, you're going to create multiple classes of players. And the 2-hour-a-day players far outnumber the 8-hour-a-day players, so that would be very bad for business.