Gearing Systems need a revamp.

[dapperfaffer]

The difficulty with not time gating tomes is that there isn't enough content at the launch of the expac, or in between patches to justify the player having that much agency to gear up multiple characters quickly. Just as the difficulty with allowing the usage of the books has a similar effect.
At some point in time the ability to acquire gear outweighs the ability for the content to sustain playability. With gating effects they keep the limited content of the game relevant for just a little while longer.
WoW went through the same thing until they implemented the Mythic Plus system. Now gear is so available through regular content that it is easy to gear up, so they had to implement the time sinks in other systems which all in all made for a miserable player experience where you weren't "diligent" in your farming.
FFXIV isn't designed like that. It very much is a play for a month, every 6 months type of game design.

[Alaray]

I agree, basically. With the OP's assertion.

Getting raid gear itself can be a bit annoying, especially if you're PFing and lose every roll every week and are looking at 16 weeks of books to get where you want to be. And that's just for a primary job.

I don't really want the gear for the sake of having it, I mostly want it so I can more easily see problems in what I'm doing (right now, it's mostly going into XIVAnalysis and, when that doesn't point out anything helpful, using the compare tool on FFLogs to compare my uptime/casts/etc... to other players who performed better than I did within the same-ish kill time of the fight I'm looking at). That, and it's kind of fun once you feel smooth on things, to do fun runs, clear for 1's, try and see how well you can optimize what you're doing etc...

And, I won't lie, whenever Echo hits a tier I just lose complete interest past that point.

The other thing is, I do like playing different jobs. It gets monotonous and a bit boring playing 1 job for an entire tier, and feeling unable to branch into the other jobs since, after a point, it feels like you're weakening a party by being a full crafted BRD, instead of just a far better geared main job.

Tome gear takes forever, and I'd be for upping the cap or (I don't remember if it's in that video, or Xeno just said it on stream once): Being able to choose a fully upgraded tome item OR the raid item from the coffers you open.

And, in a game that advertises the "Every job on 1 character!" and "oh you don't need alts, so we won't think about alt support " I think it'd be pretty reasonable to be able to gear multiple jobs over the course of a raid tier rather than, like, 1 sub-role.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

Well, no system is perfect. If the system can be improved then why shouldn't it?

[Illmaeran]

I'm fine with the current time-limited tomestone system...the first time. However, once you get a full set of max ilvl gear, all tomestone limits should be shut off to allow players to gear up secondary jobs quickly.

[Bissonnettzi]

Savage drop feels awful especially when you pug. Making efforts to clears those fight only to be granted a weekly RNG chance at getting loot zzz. I doubt making the gear faster to obtain would even affect their sub that hard. The book at the end is neat and all but surely isn't enough.

[Kooper16]

Agree with that. I wouldn't even mind if gearing in general would take a few extra weeks (a month at most) to reach BiS for your first job but all alt jobs should gear up significantly faster. I really enjoy playing many of the jobs but I don't want to enter pf or other groups with my ilvl 580 jobs while everyone else is running around with 590 armor + and a 590/600/605 weapon. It feels like griefing at this point.

An idea I heard being thrown around by some people is unlocking all gear for 1 slot with weekly capped tomes. So after buying that token you can either get that piece (for exmaple boots) for all jobs for free like in the menu for your artifact gear or you could also require uncapped tomes to buy it. An example would be: I spend 495 of weekly capped tomes to buy the boots token. After redeeming the boots token, I'll be able to buy boots for all roles with uncapped tomes. With this system you would still need at least 3 months until you can buy all tome items but you can buy them for all jobs once you are done after these 3 months. At this point we'd be halfway into the tier and we can ensure that all our alt jobs have at least ilvl 590 even if we aren't raiding at all (or have terrible luck with loot rolls).

[Lunalepsy]

Totally agree. They need to revamp this system!

[Illmaeran]

An idea I heard being thrown around by some people is unlocking all gear for 1 slot with weekly capped tomes. So after buying that token you can either get that piece (for exmaple boots) for all jobs for free like in the menu for your artifact gear or you could also require uncapped tomes to buy it. An example would be: I spend 495 of weekly capped tomes to buy the boots token. After redeeming the boots token, I'll be able to buy boots for all roles with uncapped tomes. With this system you would still need at least 3 months until you can buy all tome items but you can buy them for all jobs once you are done after these 3 months. At this point we'd be halfway into the tier and we can ensure that all our alt jobs have at least ilvl 590 even if we aren't raiding at all (or have terrible luck with loot rolls).

That's a good idea; I can get behind that.

[Kuroka]

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. .

Ive always said, we should need the cap tome only to unlock the slow, like, ok, grab 900 tome, unlock chest slot, you can buy now all chest pieces with uncapped tome. (and for the point when you unlocked all slots let us exchange capped for uncapped for like 1:2 or 1:3)

It would still take the same time to get a full set, yet youre not limited on one job...

[Tracewood]

I agree, basically. With the OP's assertion.

Getting raid gear itself can be a bit annoying, especially if you're PFing and lose every roll every week and are looking at 16 weeks of books to get where you want to be. And that's just for a primary job.

I don't really want the gear for the sake of having it, I mostly want it so I can more easily see problems in what I'm doing (right now, it's mostly going into XIVAnalysis and, when that doesn't point out anything helpful, using the compare tool on FFLogs to compare my uptime/casts/etc... to other players who performed better than I did within the same-ish kill time of the fight I'm looking at). That, and it's kind of fun once you feel smooth on things, to do fun runs, clear for 1's, try and see how well you can optimize what you're doing etc...

And, I won't lie, whenever Echo hits a tier I just lose complete interest past that point.

The other thing is, I do like playing different jobs. It gets monotonous and a bit boring playing 1 job for an entire tier, and feeling unable to branch into the other jobs since, after a point, it feels like you're weakening a party by being a full crafted BRD, instead of just a far better geared main job.

Tome gear takes forever, and I'd be for upping the cap or (I don't remember if it's in that video, or Xeno just said it on stream once): Being able to choose a fully upgraded tome item OR the raid item from the coffers you open.

And, in a game that advertises the "Every job on 1 character!" and "oh you don't need alts, so we won't think about alt support " I think it'd be pretty reasonable to be able to gear multiple jobs over the course of a raid tier rather than, like, 1 sub-role.

This part in bold is a fantastic idea though I'd like to offer a twist and alteration. What made many other online games endearing for all crowds was horizontal gear progression. Was great in XI, and other games like Destiny and Fallout76 have taken this design to heart.

Maybe raid gear could have special stats that affect just the raid so the "savage only" players don't get too upset (like 5% chance of halving raid wide damage, healing potency, third materia slot, etc), where tome gear is same max item level as savage gear? You can still get a piece of tome gear if you wanted (a token maybe?). For crafted gear, maybe up the item level by five or ten.

Now someone will bring up "Well then the 24 man gear would be rendered useless" to that I say, not quite. 6.1 are catch up patches. With tome gear AND savage gear being gated weekly, 24 man raid would make perfect catch up until said player gets full tome/savage gear, and 24 man gear becomes glamour as the devs intended.

I've been asking for this in a different way for years, only to get shot down every time. This would give non savage players that want a decent challenge some sense of satisfaction and not left out of the gear treadmill.