Why can't it always be like this?

[Kallera]

Snip.

I thought the problem people have was that players were not competent at their playstyle? If the caps were removed were to cause a lot more people to clear the raids, wouldn't that be a noticable improvement of the playerbase's skill? I know the raids are not the reason I'm staying, pretty much threw the towel at a11s and stayed out of Midas.

The socializing and more casual content gets me staying far more than the raid tier. If it wasn't for potd 3.5 would been torture.

[Shurrikhan]

This isn't about raider vs non-raider. This is about Square making another withdrawal of 15 dollars from your pocket.

The function of the gear is pointless, the rate of acquisition is what keeps you at your chair week-to-week, capping tomes, getting better for whatever reason you personally may have.

The point remains: if you accomplish all of those goals in 1 month, Square is likely to miss $75 over the next 5 when you cancel your sub because you've reached your goals and have nothing to do until next release.

This.

That said, they'd probably get a lot more milage out of alt-aholics if they simply made the weekly currency job-based, or something similar.

[Anzaman]

You only have 70 AST. Do your other 60 jobs and leveling them to 70 and gear those?

Already under work, PLD is 66.

I just grew up with game that had loads of daily quests, so having freedom of choice what to do is problematic for me.

[Niraves]

Personally I would love it if they removed the weekly caps. There are so many jobs I love to play, but I can only really work on one or two of them at a time with the gear caps.

Samurai, Ninja, Dragoon, White Mage, Paladin, Dark Knight... I would have all the jobs!

[Skivvy]

This isn't about raider vs non-raider. This is about Square making another withdrawal of 15 dollars from your pocket.

The function of the gear is pointless, the rate of acquisition is what keeps you at your chair week-to-week, capping tomes, getting better for whatever reason you personally may have.

The point remains: if you accomplish all of those goals in 1 month, Square is likely to miss $75 over the next 5 when you cancel your sub because you've reached your goals and have nothing to do until next release.

I can only speak for myself, but the caps have been a huge reason why I've lost interest in this game. Early on, I had WHM and BRD leveled - and I wanted to work on my BLM and DRG as well. I found that I would not be able to gear the jobs how I like, and so I dropped off BLM and DRG. Two jobs that I actually had interest in, booted - because gearing is insanely slow and dull. So then after the first couple of full Tomes changes, I found that I really hated having to even deal with BRD as a secondary job - so I then focused only on WHM. Discovered that it's quite boring only playing one job, and so I took my first long break (~8 months). At this point, I resub now and then if something shiny catches my eye, but it's always been short lived.

For what it's worth, I would consider myself a casual player. And before another person tells me "you don't need to have max ilvl gear" - that is completely irrelevant. We all have our own individual goals in game. If getting a max ilvl is what keeps my attention, then that is all that matters. It is not enjoyable for me to be slumming along with a low ilvl, even for basic content, and the tomes cap keeps me in that very place for far too long.

[Ayrie]

If item level is all you seek, simply acknowledge the schedule and apply efforts where they are best spent:

Month 1-3 on cycle, gear is a luxury, ilvl is guarded to make those dirty savage players work hard for those shinnies! You'll be gated in the gearing cycle by currency/raid caps. If you are not raiding, this would probably be a good time to level alt jobs and crafters/gatherers after you do the mandatory currency cap.

Month 4-6 is usually the "catch up" portion of the cycle in which the ilvl requirement is usually eased to catch people up to whatever the "cap" is for that cycle. This is usually when a new 24-man is released, giving more access to higher ilvl.

Month 7-9 is interesting, because it is essentially the same as 1-3 with one keen difference: usually there is an uncapping of the previous "luxury" currency, thus allowing you to blast up an alt class with ilvl.

Right now, we're in a weird place, because the devs want to have a certain ilvl expectation that is above what is dropped in the 70 instances. It is the same as the Darklight phase (though, I think Darklight was capped, but my memory is fuzzy). But really, it is just to give people every opportunity to get above the base ilvl of level 70 dungeon greens before the content starts expecting you to be in decent gear. It is also why a lot of gear towards the high end of the level cycle has a huge jump in defensive stats, it is simply ramping up towards getting the gear where the content expects it to be.

[KisaiTenshi]

Tome caps are meant to extend the life of content by placing real barriers in the way of progress. This means that to beat 8-man Savage X, players must have ilvl Y, and that will take them Z weeks to accomplish. Now couple that on top of getting 1 drop a week, possibly, it will take D weeks to truly get the "best gear" available in that content.

The reason they care at the speed of which you hit these caps is because: if you cap everything you need to do for the next 6 months in 3 weeks... they run the risk of losing 5 months of your subscription.

If they keep you around for 3-4 months, there is a very high chance that you'll stick around the full 6 because of "working towards" being ready for the next big dungeon.

That the answer you were looking for?

This is almost hitting the nail on the head.

The reason there is a cap is mainly to avoid two kinds of behavior:
- Automated behavior, eg powerleveling bots or players being paid to level.
- To extend the life of the content, otherwise people would just get all the gear they want and not bother trying the raid content which has slightly better gear as rewards.

This is why the relic/zodiac/anima weapon quests are such time sinks. It's actually quite a pity that they create these huge time sinks and then you throw that weapon away on the next expansion. SE should quit doing that.

Either:
a) Create an entire set of anima/spirit gear that has to all be at the same level to work, with each gear needing to acquire "light" from their specific dungeons, and thus you have to upgrade the entire set at once, not piecemeal. So you would only ever bother with this on your main job.
or
b) Create an entirely HQ crafting-related gear (no tome purchases, beast tribe, hunt seals, or grand company seal purchases) set of quests that require level 30 (ilevel 50), 50(ilevel 100), 60(ilevel 200) or 70(ilevel 300) crafting levels to progress. So once you farm whatever item from a dungeon, you can craft that stage of the gear. Yes there is a risk of destroying it if your crafting isn't up to spec, by which you start over. Basically you talk to the NPC who gives you an untradeable item you take into the dungeon, complete the dungeon, return it to the NPC and they give you the next ingredient to craft that is untradeable to upgrade the gear.

The obvious problem here is, well the current tomes gear is ilevel 310, yes but the HQ version of crafted gear can take melds and dyes. So it should be possible to re-make gear for each ilevel crafting starting with the ilevel 100, 200, or 300 gear and transfer socketed materia and dyes to the new gear.

[Ayrie]

Yeah, relic/anima weapons are a special flavor of "ugh". Usually because they double as the best you can get in and outside of a raiding environment. So from a raider's perspective, specifically one who cannot devote hardcore hours, they become a very frustrating tax on my time. So difficult to balance raiding times, weekly time obligations (currency capping), and then grinding FATEs for atma or whatever they conjure up!

That is really my only gripe about the artifact weapons, and how they relate to the gearing cycle. I don't even really mind the gearing cycles. They keep me entertained, as expected.

Edit: not to mention the tasks are usually full of "not fun"! Or... "was fun until I had to do it as a grind for this step...".

[Ageofwar]

the OP should wait for the ilvl 320 coming out in about 3 weeks time to be bough by the new weekly locked tomes

[Vaer]

ARR and HW both had uncapped tomes at launch (Philo/darklight and Law/doman), it's pretty much just baseline gear and rng protection for the dungeon drops. Since it's uncapped and also role shared gear it's easy to swap jobs if you end up with more jobs at 70 and like something else better and it doubles as something to do while waiting for omega and the actual locked tomes.

The weekly lock seems to work for them if they keep using it. They have the data that we don't.