i have a few questions from a new beginner to final fantasy and this MMO

[Sinistar]

what's up, just started doing the occasional live stream thing, and been having a good time playing FFXIV online.

i'm on Tonberry data center, australian and kind of sad there's no official australian server yet. will they ever release an official data center?

anyways, i am playing as black mage and have years of hardcore raiding from a bunch of other games as a collective. eso / wildstar / wow / rift / guild wars even some everquest and ultima online but i don't really count them anymore.

i was on exodus and met some awesome people but the lag was horrendous, the free company i joined up there said this game can be considered very casual when it comes to raids/endgame in this game.

i also hear there's no unique properties on gear, and that the gear itself will be handed out from just playing the game casually. so if gear isn't the main focus on this games reward system, what is the real focus for people when getting to endgame? as a hardcore raider that's done it all in previous big mmorpgs, what will cater to me? i'm new to final fantasy games and this mmorpg i picked up 2 weeks ago.

// twitch.tv/sinistarplays as a shameless plug cause meh

[Seraphor]

There's been requests for an oceanic data center for a while, but I believe there just aren't the numbers for it. Also when polled, most aussies and kiwis said they wouldn't leave their current servers for an oceanic one. So go figure.

Endgame is a vertical gear grind. You simply want the highest level gear possible and there are various waus of getting there, with the hardest content offering the best gear.
Outside of that, gear is only good for glamour (transmog).

[Sinistar]

i understand that raids require vertical ilvl requirements, it's interesting they didn't design any flavour/unique effects on particular items or created set gear. wouldnt it feel like gear is worthless, like what would drive somebody to go and get gear if all they see is 20+ more intellect on an item with no special horizontal properties? is this because they're emphasising that 'abilities/rotation' as the primary focus when it comes to compeleting hardest content? sorry about the newbie questions!

[Mhaeric]

End game for hardcore players is the Savage/Ultimate tier of fights. Gear is mostly about ilevel and every time new Savage content comes out the gear level cap rises. What this means is that hardcore players have access to gear that is 10 ilevels higher on average than casual players. E.g. with the patch previous to the current one anyone could by i490 gear using tomestones obtained by completing any level 80 content. Time was the only real barrier here. Only those who can complete the current Savage tier of content however had access to i500 gear. Skill was the barrier here. There is a bit of sideways progression on gear since there's usually two options available with differing secondary stats to choose from. E.g. one item might have capped crit hit and another one capped spell speed. But the main stat, vitality, base damage, and defense are always the same for a given ilevel.

That said, FFXIV savage fights are not the hardest thing on the planet. Midcore players can access and complete them with effort. That's not to say they're easy fights, but they're not so hard that they're only viable content to the top 5% of players. The difficulty comes from a combination of increased DPS and healing checks as well as heavily scripted telegraphs and party placement that often needs to be executed near perfectly.

[EaMett]

To elaborate a little more on what has already been said.

There are two max cap sets (currently ilvl 500). Raid gear and what we refer to as tomestone gear. The difference between the two sets are substats. Depending on your class, and your build you might use a different combination of these two sets.
ilvl 500 gear is locked behind savage raiding (both sets) for a certain amount of time. After a while they open up ilvl 500 tomestone gear to everyone (that happened in 5.3 for the current tier). You're still limited in that you can only get a certain amount of gear per week though. Savage 500 gear is only ever available from clearing the fights.

The gear progression is linear, ilvl 500 just has better stats than ilvl 490. No set bonuses or anything. It just makes fights a little easier, increases your survivability etc. etc. Every other savage tier there's an ultimate fight that will require of you to be Best in Slot, so that's an incentive. The other incentive is for parsing, a lot of raiders like to optimize their play and get higher and higher scores on a website called fflogs. Other than that, it can help a bit when the next tier releases and there's always glam as an incentive as well.

[Roda]

i understand that raids require vertical ilvl requirements, it's interesting they didn't design any flavour/unique effects on particular items or created set gear. wouldnt it feel like gear is worthless, like what would drive somebody to go and get gear if all they see is 20+ more intellect on an item with no special horizontal properties? is this because they're emphasising that 'abilities/rotation' as the primary focus when it comes to compeleting hardest content? sorry about the newbie questions!

Unfortunately those types of systems can result in things like the Eldan gauntlets in wildstar, where an item you get from a dungeon with WILDLY beneficial special effects is the only thing you'll need for that slot for 5 years, and that's not quite healthy for a sub based game that hopes to keep you on a gear treadmill. OOOr you get to the point where WoW is where you work really hard for a piece of gear that makes your rotation really fun and interesting, and then next expansion it is replaced or outright deactivated and you feel way less powerful starting off than when you finished the last expansion.

[Gothicshark]

i understand that raids require vertical ilvl requirements, it's interesting they didn't design any flavour/unique effects on particular items or created set gear. wouldnt it feel like gear is worthless, like what would drive somebody to go and get gear if all they see is 20+ more intellect on an item with no special horizontal properties? is this because they're emphasising that 'abilities/rotation' as the primary focus when it comes to compeleting hardest content? sorry about the newbie questions!

The stats do go up, with each harder raid, but the real reason people do the raids is the gear itself.



Basically, Glamour (transmog) is the true endgame, which is why many older raids are still farmed even if the gear stats no longer matter.

ie Aphascape caster gear last expansion:

[Urthdigger]

Another reason for the endgame is honestly the fights themselves. The fights at endgame are often quite mechanics-heavy in a way that can feel very satisfying to get through, and you get to see cool and exciting new things from the boss that you'll never see in the normal mode. Plus there's the bragging rights for being able to do them.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I'll echo the "glamour (transmog for wow players) is the true endgame" comments. It really is. And some of the flashiest and most noticeable glams are the glowing weapons from Ultimates. Those are your "reach for the stars" items to chase after if you want both a challenge and a way to show off how elite you are. It won't make you more uber in combat but anyone who sees you with it will know you took part in some of the hardest content in the game and succeeded. That's not to say there aren't some fantastic glamour options from other content, but the weapons from Ultimate and the gear from the raids are some of the harder to get and more unique looking appearance one can get so they aren't common to see. If the goal is to be a truly unique snowflake among the commoner masses, the Ultimate and raid glams are the way to stand out I think.

[Sinistar]

interesting points all and thanks for the great information!

i understand transmog runs and appearance are definitely something that matters to me as well, i did that for a while in WoW for example, but only as a secondary with primary doing relevent endgame raids for gear/bragging rights. difference is i guess in other traditional mmorpgs with the way gear functions opposed to looks for weapons/gear that's unique to that specific loot table.

i am not sure how i feel with the focus on appearance opposed to functionality when it comes to gear itself, that might take some additional time to really understand personally. its very interesting to see people would prefer aesthetic brags then better unique gear that might enhance your rotation/abilities themselves.