DEVs Stop adding worthless pointless gear to dungeon chests.

[Molly_Millions]

Yeah I agree. Without gear swaps 99% of our current 'endgame' exclusive gear is trash. Regardless if someone's willing to pay 500k+ for the novelty of having certain peices the gear is effectively useless. XIV's current system forces you to find the "best-in-slot" for the whole encounter, which knocks practically anything unmaterialized out of the picture (even including some of those Darklight pieces.. in fact, not being a tank there's only one Darklight piece I'd really even care for..). I realize the content is easy and spammable, but shouldn't there be more motivation to do it than just getting the clear? Even the primal weapons get beat out by simple double melded weapons.. I got one Ifrit wep and one Moogle Wep just to say I got it.. and now only do that content to help other ppl. SE really needs to go ahead and put out some not so-easy and not so-spammable content so we can start actually caring about the loot that drops, when it drops..

Gear swaps are not the way to go. IMO what needs to happen is more gear should be meldable. Best in slot gear is fine because you SHOULD have to choose the best piece of gear for your playstyle prior to engaging in battle, not just the best piece of gear for a particular move. The end result of gear swapping is that regardless of playstyle, if you don't have x piece of gear for y action, you are not as good as the player who does. Ultimately it promotes gear elitism. No thanks!

[Murugan]

Gear swaps are not the way to go. IMO what needs to happen is more gear should be meldable. Best in slot gear is fine because you SHOULD have to choose the best piece of gear for your playstyle prior to engaging in battle, not just the best piece of gear for a particular move. The end result of gear swapping is that regardless of playstyle, if you don't have x piece of gear for y action, you are not as good as the player who does. Ultimately it promotes gear elitism. No thanks!

Right... explain how it promotes gear elitism more than advocating that rare/untradeable gear be meldable (forbidden meldable???). Your way is soooooo much more of a timesink talking about obtaining multiple darklights as some have with multiple sentry items and attempting to meld them until you get a triple + meld.

That is a type of unrealistic elitist standard that only a few people will obtain, and I don't imagine them having much fun doing it. Whereas gear swapping simply advocates that everyone regardless of when they play FFXIV has a reason to want to experience all endgame content available either as much, or at least partially as much as they would have had they been playing when it was first released.

That last part needs to happen, regardless of how they pull it off. Endgame itemization should be either horizontal, or tiered but never trivialized out of usefulness enough that people no longer have a reason to do the content. It is extremely wasteful, and places severe limits on the amount and diversity of endgame FFXIV could ever have available at any given time.

[Molly_Millions]

Right... explain how it promotes gear elitism more than advocating that rare/untradeable gear be meldable (forbidden meldable???). Your way is soooooo much more of a timesink talking about obtaining multiple darklights as some have with multiple sentry items and attempting to meld them until you get a triple + meld.

Increasing the repeatability of content is a + in my book, so I don't agree with this. Making U/U gear meldable, while retaining a reasonable droprate in comparison to the gear's stats adds repeatablity, but it's not forced like making a low drop rate is, it allows the player more choice which is never a bad thing,

That is a type of unrealistic elitist standard that only a few people will obtain, and I don't imagine them having much fun doing it. Whereas gear swapping simply advocates that everyone regardless of when they play FFXIV has a reason to want to experience all endgame content available either as much, or at least partially as much as they would have had they been playing when it was first released.

Maybe you weren't kicked from parties for not having the best gear in XI, but it happened to me all the time. It's not as unrealistic as you think.

That last part needs to happen, regardless of how they pull it off. Endgame itemization should be either horizontal, or tiered but never trivialized out of usefulness enough that people no longer have a reason to do the content. It is extremely wasteful, and places severe limits on the amount and diversity of endgame FFXIV could ever have available at any given time.

I think either way they do that, gear swaps, or making U/U stuff meldable, both achieve that goal. One of them just has more downsides.

[Murugan]

Increasing the repeatability of content is a + in my book, so I don't agree with this. Making U/U gear meldable, while retaining a reasonable droprate in comparison to the gear's stats adds repeatablity, but it's not forced like making a low drop rate is, it allows the player more choice which is never a bad thing,


Maybe you weren't kicked from parties for not having the best gear in XI, but it happened to me all the time. It's not as unrealistic as you think.


I think either way they do that, gear swaps, or making U/U stuff meldable, both achieve that goal. One of them just has more downsides.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that more people will complain about being expected to get double-triple or even quadruple melds on best in slot gear that are rare drops from dungeons, and which will be replaced every few patches.

Over the people who complain about gear swapping encouraging you to do all content the same amount, no matter when you start endgame.

Let's see one gets people to play content everytime someone new joins endgame, means that content only grows in abundance and never shrinks.

The other makes the grind for gear near unbearable and entirely up to the RNG of melding (completely to chance, nothing the player can do to help his/her odds) in addition to drops (something groups can help mitigate the pain of through distribution).

Oh and in your way the content still becomes useless. Only instead of being pissed off that your awesome darklight gear is now obsolete, you have to try and replace a multi-melded rare item with another multi-melded rare item so that maybe you can use that one for the week or two it remains best in slot.

[Molly_Millions]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that more people will complain about being expected to get double-triple or even quadruple melds on best in slot gear that are rare drops from dungeons, and which will be replaced every few patches.

Over the people who complain about gear swapping encouraging you to do all content the same amount, no matter when you start endgame.

Let's see one gets people to play content everytime someone new joins endgame, means that content only grows in abundance and never shrinks.

The other makes the grind for gear near unbearable and entirely up to the RNG of melding (completely to chance, nothing the player can do to help his/her odds) in addition to drops (something groups can help mitigate the pain of through distribution).

Oh and in your way the content still becomes useless. Only instead of being pissed off that your awesome darklight gear is now obsolete, you have to try and replace a multi-melded rare item with another multi-melded rare item so that maybe you can use that one for the week or two it remains best in slot.

My double melded sentinel's sabatons have been the best in slot for more than a few weeks, and they were fun as hell to get. Due to the drop rate, IMO, the darklight stuff can be left out of the conversation. Because unless they are sadistic and have endless amounts of time to farm the stuff, who would really try to double meld it? Let be realistic in this discussion though and leave out those folks who have that kind of time because they are in the extreme. If the game is to succeed, it needs to appeal to those folks who play just a few hours a day. By making gear more action specific, the end result is that not only would somebody have to have one good piece of gear to be at thier best, now they have to have 5 (per slot). With my way, the player with less time can search out a single piece of gear (per slot) to try to be thier best. Nevermind that gear swapping reduces gear variety because now everybody wants the same 5 pieces for a particular class to max thier DPS instead of having a variety of gear that could do the same thing with different materia attached. We also get player customization, which we don't have with action specific, unmeldable, gear.

[Exni]

My double melded sentinel's sabatons have been the best in slot for more than a few weeks, and they were fun as hell to get. Due to the drop rate, IMO, the darklight stuff can be left out of the conversation. Because unless they are sadistic and have endless amounts of time to farm the stuff, who would really try to double meld it? Let be realistic in this discussion though and leave out those folks who have that kind of time because they are in the extreme. If the game is to succeed, it needs to appeal to those folks who play just a few hours a day. By making gear more action specific, the end result is that not only would somebody have to have one good piece of gear to be at thier best, now they have to have 5 (per slot). With my way, the player with less time can search out a single piece of gear (per slot) to try to be thier best. Nevermind that gear swapping reduces gear variety because now everybody wants the same 5 pieces for a particular class to max thier DPS instead of having a variety of gear that could do the same thing with different materia attached. We also get player customization, which we don't have with action specific, unmeldable, gear.

Again, gear swapping doesn't "reduce gear variety" at all. It in fact, does the EXACT opposite.

For the bolded part, I didn't understand what you were trying to say. It sounds like you say with 'your' way a player has to look for 5 pieces, and with 'our' way a player has to look for 5 pieces. I'm not seeing the difference you were trying to make there. What I think it SHOULD say is with 'your' way (no gear swaps) a player would have to spend forever trying to find and grind the one worthwhile armor set (ex: Darklight), while with our way (gear swaps) a player would be free to use many more pieces of gear to further customize their role without sacrificing viablility..

[Exni]

Gear swaps are not the way to go. IMO what needs to happen is more gear should be meldable. Best in slot gear is fine because you SHOULD have to choose the best piece of gear for your playstyle prior to engaging in battle, not just the best piece of gear for a particular move. The end result of gear swapping is that regardless of playstyle, if you don't have x piece of gear for y action, you are not as good as the player who does. Ultimately it promotes gear elitism. No thanks!

Gear swapping doesn't promote elitism. If anything the current system promotes it WAY more. Without gear swapping, there is very VERY few choices for best-in-slot pieces. Making only a tiny pool of gear actually worthwhile can foster elitism. Gear swapping allowed ALOT more gear to be worthwhile, because the not-so-hot pieces can be used for a specific purpose, then swapped back out. You won't "need" to have that one rare elite set of gear. You can produce the same results by mixing different sets and using them at the right times to maximize your role.

Also, you will always have to choose the best pieces of gear prior to engaging the battle. Gear swaps don't change that. You will start the fight with whatever is appropriate for what you will be doing at the commencement of the fight. Mages mite want to make -enmity set to start out with, melee may want to make a TP build set to start with. You'll start with whatever fits your playstyle and the conditions of what starts that encounter. The point is you should't be locked into that one set of gear due to.. system limitations.