Gearing Systems need a revamp.

[Anonicat]

To preface this post, I will agree FFXIV has a better gearing system than other MMO's. But that should not be the standard of FFXIV, we should expect our game to innovate, and make the game more enjoyable. Simply being better than "other MMO's" is a low bar, we should strive to be better than what we currently are. Just simply being better than other MMO's is simply a road to complacency and stagnation.

Xeno did a video on Gearing.
https://youtu.be/2bZcEzW5mTA

He makes great points in the video,one of which as i stated above, that the tome system is majorly outdated, and that we should give constructive criticism to better our game we all love.

It takes way to long to gear up in the game. It has quite frankly made the game feel like a chore too me. I log on tuesday morning, spend 2 hours, and reclear the savage tier, with nothing else to do, I am simply contemplating unsubbing from the game. I have no plans to do the ultimate.

I like to raid, I like to level alt jobs, i like to level alt characters sometimes. Above all i love pushing myself to be better at any job in savage raids. That is rewarding in itself. Gear itself isn't rewarding... nearly as much as watching yourself progress as a player.

But being a person who plays ALT jobs, who loves to learn the Savage fights from all roles to understand the fight better and too have fun, this game punishes us for that, makes gearing so abysmally slow, I don't even bother leveling alt jobs, cause I can't gear them all til ECHO and savage tier unlock. I can't raid as much as i'd like cause i've cleared, and all PF is right now is 2 Chest clears.. so the one thing i love to do, in this game is really only accessible too me in a limited capability.

Gearing problems:

It takes way too long to gear up. It should not take 8 weeks to gear up in BIS for one job. That is a huge turn off. It forces people into one job on a character, and it's simply not fun.

We have 19 jobs now, and 450 cap as the video stated, I can't gear anything with that amount of tomes. Books become worthless pretty fast. Make it so you can turn 2 P1S books in a P2S, IF YOU HAVE CLEARED P2S. Just as example or something make it so items for gear don't become so worthless so fast.

I have to simply ask "Why is gear timegated?" the tier is cleared in 2 days. It's not like its a long tier, or where people are having to reclear in world first to get gear to be able to achieve world first.

You timegate BIS gear, and by the time it unlocks it simply doesn't matter. The next tier is out, and your gear is completely invalidated by crafting gear. Which by the way is really terrible design. What's the point of even doing the previous tier when BIS means nothing? So you can have dyeable savage gear?

*Also side point aside from stats, and being BIS gear... you really should just make the normal gear dyeable. Some casual joe may like that gear, and want to dye it but can't cause they can't clear savage, and have to wait a long time to do so. You know what they turn too? 3rd party tools against your TOS to do so.

Solutions:
1. Increase the Tomestone cap to 900 or I'd argue 1350. What this achieves is actual choice for some people. If someone want's to blow all 1350 tomes on one job, and get gear to go ham in raiding, let them. If someone want's to allocate X amount of tomes for 1 job, and the other Y tomes for another job, let them. This allows them to be flexible in their jobs, and not shoehorned into one job. This would actually help the PF's fill faster. I can say as anecdotal evidence, due to me playing multiple jobs, I can always fill a role in PF, this leads to more PF's filling, more raiding going, and not so much sitting around waiting for a PF to fill.

2. Make it so books aren't worthless. Let me trade my books for other books. Example as follows. P1S books. 1 P2S book = 2 P1S Book. 1 P3S = 3 P1S Books, 1 P4S books = 4 P1S books. Given That you have cleared the fight!

3. Make our BIS worth getting. Our bis is simply invalidated the moment the next tier drops. This feels terrible, and imo a bad design decision.

Why not make crafting gear equivalent to BIS of the tier. Make the crafting gear for tiers 2 and 3 and overmeldable by 2 slots (12pt slots). For example make gear ilvl 600 next tier, and the weapons 605. So if I want to skip a tier. I can be caught right up as the next tier, but also not invalidate people who spent the time clearing the tier. All would be rewarded for their time.

4. Make Savage loot work like the normal raid loot. Keep the loot tables. But make savage loot work like normal raid loot.

There's no reason to Timegate gear like this. The fact as a raider.. the most fun time raiding a tier, is week 1. And Months later when you unlock the loot. Cause i can log into the game, raid and have fun, and have it not feel like a chore. That is a problem.

I love this game, and want to help improve it.

[kpxmanifesto]

I posted in a diff thread about this, and I have to say it probably comes down to SE wanting to make money. The longer players stay subscribed, the more money that SE makes through monthly subscriptions. If players were allowed to get all their gear quickly you can guarantee that a few of those players will unsub till the next content patch.

[Anonicat]

I posted in a diff thread about this, and I have to say it probably comes down to SE wanting to make money. The longer players stay subscribed, the more money that SE makes through monthly subscriptions. If players were allowed to get all their gear quickly you can guarantee that a few of those players will unsub till the next content patch.

I understand this angle in this. But I'd be willing to say the amount of money loss, wouldn't be as big as one might think. I'd be willing to bet the Pareto principle applies to Square Enix's profits from FFXIV. Approx. 80% of Square Enix's profits come from 20% of the playerbase approximately. Those player's simply going to quit. But i'd be their sub numbers would go up if they entice players to keep a sub running in between tiers.

[Liam_Harper]

I posted in a diff thread about this, and I have to say it probably comes down to SE wanting to make money. The longer players stay subscribed, the more money that SE makes through monthly subscriptions. If players were allowed to get all their gear quickly you can guarantee that a few of those players will unsub till the next content patch.

I'd argue more players would be motivated to try alt classes in raids and stay subbed even longer having fun with all the different classes than the tiny handful who would unsub because they have BiS.

Getting BiS isn't really an end goal, because if your only use for BiS is to unsub as soon as you have it then why even bother? BiS is merely a small bonus for clearing the tier. What keeps players subbed is re-clearing for fun, trying to improve on their personal best, seeing if they can do better in a fight than they did the week before or just enjoying social team activities with friends and static.

The problem is you can get bored of just playing your main. But switching to a 580 alt for farm and reclears just isn't as appealing when you know it'll be worse than your 600 main and you'll be behind others. Nor is the prospect of 2 months timegate for that alt to be on par with others gear-wise. The tier will be over before you get more than a few characters done. That's what leads to players thinking "eh, this isn't worth it" and unsubbing.

There are also issues with gearing for healers. They're the lowest loot priority in many statics for good reason. Piety is also a thing and renders most of the tome set useless for a player who has cleared the fights and doesn't the extra mana, making it essentially a large chunk of 0 substat. Tanks have a similar issue with Tenacity which also needs looking at, but gearing as a healer is particularly unsatisfying.

[Veranolth]

The way I see it, you're not supposed to get Astronomy gear too quick, and you say we have 19 jobs but that's 4 roles (EDIT: and 7 gear sets, point still stands). Could they up the amount of tomes we can carry? Sure, honestly I wouldn't be against it, but gearing up isn't that tedious unless you feel you need Astronomy gear for everything.

[Anonicat]

The way I see it, you're not supposed to get Astronomy gear too quick, and you say we have 19 jobs but that's 4 roles, so 4 gear sets. At least you don't need a set of gear PER job, only per role which makes gearing easier. Could they up the amount of tomes we can carry? Sure, honestly I wouldn't be against it, but gearing up isn't that tedious unless you feel you need Astronomy gear for everything.

Fending, Maiming, Scouting, Striking, Casting, Healing, Aiming. That's 7. And jobs like Warrior use a melds, and gear from the other tanks. But do have some overlap.

[Veranolth]

Fending, Maiming, Scouting, Striking, Casting, Healing, Aiming. That's 7. And jobs like Warrior use a melds, and gear from the other tanks. But do have some overlap.

I stand corrected, but still if you really feel like you have to gear up everything, that's not the game's fault.

As for melds you can just change melds if you really are dedicated to main the other jobs in that role.

[Anonicat]

I stand corrected, but still if you really feel like you have to gear up everything, that's not the game's fault.

Part of the fun for me and many others, is pushing numbers to the absolute max. Can't do that when you have crafted gear. It's not so much as i feel i have too, but more or less.. That its how i enjoy the game. Playing different jobs, keeps the game feeling fresh.

[Kolsykol]

So you basically have no solution to make crafted gear not be completely pointless for most players.
I agree that something should be done about making BiS gear meaningful, but all of your solutions range from "Pointless" to "Might work with some adjustments".

Crafted gear wouldn't be useless even if you geared faster.
It's still pre-Savage BiS.
I don't really think there's necessarily '' alts '', one of the core features of this game is supposed to be that you can play all Jobs on one character and the way gearing works does contradict that.

U don't need to be fully gear do anything in this game so no they don't need to make it easier for u gear up

Trying to make it about '' oh well you don't NEED the gear to do the content '' is a bit silly too imo, very few things enter the territory of '' NEED ''.
You don't NEED food buffs either but most people still expect you to have it because whether something is '' NEEDED '' isn't how we actually judge these things in reality.

Edit: Also no one is really asking for it to be easier what people are asking for is for it to be less tedious and to be able to gear up and play different Jobs.
You still have to clear the content so how exactly is it easier?
If you've cleared all four floors then you've cleared them and you still need to clear them for the gear.
Something being tedious doesn't mean it's difficult.

[Nezerius]

Crafted gear wouldn't be useless even if you geared faster.
It's still pre-Savage BiS.
I don't really think there's necessarily '' alts '', one of the core features of this game is supposed to be that you can play all Jobs on one character and the way gearing works does contradict that.

Except OP wants crafted gear to be the same iLvl as the previous tier's BiS. That would also make it the same iLvl as gear bought with Astronomy tomestones (uncapped with the new tier). Like I had already explained, people pushing for week 1/2 clears wouldn't bother with crafted gear, while people not doing savage would just get the Astronomy gear.