Lack of content on patch release

[Vhailor]

The trouble with PvE content is that it can't survive gear creep. There is absolutely no way to make any content that will not be a faceroll with the highest tier gear. If the players want the content to have any longevity, then the developers have to release story content on separate patches from side content knowing that players will spoil it immediately if too much content is released at once.

Of course it can; FFXI - built by this same company - did this flawlessly for years. FFXIV could, too, even within its current model - just set iLevel caps lower. There's no reason, for instance, why Ala Mihgo should have an iLevel cap of i310. It was designed for an average of i280, meaning i290 makes it fairly easy, i300 makes it very easy, and i310 renders it almost completely trivial. So why cap the stats lower? The MSQ would benefit tremendously from this, too; even with the forced cutscenes in place on dungeons like Castrum or Praetorium, the content is completely trivialized. New players don't even see half the mechanics, nor is there any sense of epic when final bosses get shredded. It contributes to me not running the content as a veteran, too, because it's just boring now.

The reason PvE content is trivialized by gear creep is because SE is lazy and spineless. They don't want to put effort into truly horizontal progression a la FFXI. It requires creativity to do this well, which clearly the dev team lacks in many respects. Much easier to just scale the iLevel, keep sub-stats boring and predictable, and churn shit out in a monotonous fashion. They permit the abilities of the lowest common denominator to guide virtually every piece of content outside EX / Savage / Ultimate, which is why they allow all content outside of these three to become trivialized within 3-6 months of release via iLevel scaling and overly-generous iLevel caps. Heaven forbid they think up other methods to help people improve, rather than lowering the bar so that almost anyone can clear it after awhile.

But let's never forget that there absolutely are options. SE is making a choice not to pursue them. Everyone's got a right to their own opinion of this, whether they approve, disapprove, don't particularly care - whatever it may be. But it is absolutely incorrect to state that PvE content simply can't survive gear creep. There are at least two fundamental ways SE could permanently solve this issue, one of which is utterly trivial to implement no less. They're choosing not to.

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I will point out, though, that surviving gear creep and having longevity are two entirely separate things. SE needs to be more creative and move toward a deeper, horizontal itemization structure if they want PvE content to stay relevant. Again, they've got a blueprint: FFXIV's predecessor. FFXIV, with its modern combat engine and faster gameplay, could do far more than FFXI could in this respect, if SE had but the will to try. It is eminently doable, though.

[KisaiTenshi]

Of course it can; FFXI - built by this same company - did this flawlessly for years.

The only way you survive gear creep is by making the gear completely useless. Thus it ends up being competition for glamour, which would not be the worst thing in the world, but it's also has no sense of progress.

Like, this is how I'd change gear, and this is flat out admitting that I don't think this is really better:

Remove gear levels
Remove gear ilevels (retain value for desynth calculation)
Remove gear bonus stats
Remove existing gear materia slots and materia.
Remove glamour entirely (as in, there is no difference between level 1 gear and level 70 dungeon gear drops)

Now, you're left with gear that, itself, is the glamour. All dungeons will be based against this "zero" baseline where gear is cosmetic and irrelevant, and the job level sets all the basic combat stats. Now...

Add 8 materia slots to each gear slot itself. 4 of these replace the "bonus stats", and 4 of these are the elemental affinity. These can always be removed at no cost, and not destroyed. Now assuming you have 8 * 12 (96) Materia. Each dungeon with no materia attached, would be equal to "minimum ilevel", and having 4 correct materia in each slot would be like having 40 ilevels above minimum ilevel (thus always capped.) Then you have the elemental affinity which adds fixed 25% attack power or damage reduction of that element for that slot. So if you are going into a dungeon that the monsters have ice affinity, then having 100% ice materia will absorb 100% of ice-based attacks, but also make all your attacks have be 100% ice attacks, so you do 1's. So if you go into a Ice dungeon, you have your tank and healer wear the ice materia on their gear, while the DPS wear fire materia, but they will also be super squishy to AOE's. Or you can omit the elemental affinity and play it like you do now, with those slots empty or neutral. Monsters will not always do only elemental damage, and likewise certain attacks that players have will have unaspected or aspected attributes.

That solves gear creep itself by making it impossible to "overgear" a dungeon, this would have to go hand in hand with:
Changing the market system so Materia can not be bought or sold by players or NPC's. All combat Materia must be created or acquired though dungeon play (not tomes, cracked clusters, etc.) All DoH/DoL Materia must be created or acquired through crafting activity.
Removing "tomes" based gear progression.
Creating a "materia bag" that stores 600 materia that can be switched while out of combat+cooldown.

So you might ask, well what's the point of playing content if not for gear? And the answer to that is, glamour, which is what people do currently when they've out-leveled it. You still get those gear, just now it doesn't have any combat stats. Playing high end content will give you materia that matches the affinity of the dungeon, so if you play the same dungeon ... 48 times, you'd have a full set. Playing non-high end content will only hand out one that must be rolled on.

So you'd have something like this (round slots = bonus stats, diamond slots = elemental):
Main hand weapon (HEALER):
( o ) ( p ) ( q ) ( c ) < x >< t >< l >< f >

o +25% determination
p + 25% spell speed
q + 25% piety
c + 25% critical hit
x +25% wind
t + 25% water
l + 25% earth
f + 25% fire

You could have all gear have the same configuration for an end result of 25% bonus to those, or you could toss things randomly on, which the game will go +0% if the stat has no meaning for that role.

Materia itself has no actual "value" to it, so you're not adding 40 points of determination, you're adding a flat 25% of the maximum the dungeon will allow so it remains capped. If it would break the content, then the developers can make 100% bonus in one dungeon be like doubling the stat, where in another dungeon it would be near zero. Thus every dungeon can have optimal configurations, not a one-size-fits-everything.

Now as I said above I don't really think this is any better, as it's just pushing the gear creep from being something that we buy with tomes, to the materia system. Even if materia was left with adding points (and thus stat capped instead of ilevel synced), it would just create incentive for players to run content until they've pokemon'd the materia they want and then there's no longer any value in playing the content once they got their glamour, if they even want it at all.