Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[ReynTime]

10 pages in this was probably already suggested:

Don't increase tome caps. That would add more time required to gear up, which wouldn't make alt gearing that much better. Rather than increase the cap they should decrease the prices... The grind is the same as it is, but you would take half (?) the time to gear up your first choice of role before being able to work on a secondary.

[Deveryn]

10 pages in this was probably already suggested:

Don't increase tome caps. That would add more time required to gear up, which wouldn't make alt gearing that much better. Rather than increase the cap they should decrease the prices... The grind is the same as it is, but you would take half (?) the time to gear up your first choice of role before being able to work on a secondary.

They're not going to decrease prices either. They might consider providing a reward for putting in the work to gear up completely, which is what I'm proposing elsewhere.

[Blood_Blossoms]

Agree it's to slow in some way but can also be too fast. for me it lacks ways of getting gear just very stale for me at this point I kind of want more content with more ways to get same gear within sort same time frame.

[Anemoshi]

Gearing alone is truly such an investment of both time and effort. People who have that time and energy might not see the problem with that. Tomestone capping alone takes a long time.

Now, I'm a casual player, but I play consistently because I'm a completionist, I'm always grinding away at multiple features of the game. I don't have a true need to get BiS gear, and I'm usually more interested in getting gear for the purpose of glamour or just the satisfaction of having a high item level.

That being said, the sheer amount of grinding that goes into getting tomestone gear is legitimately a lot. I often end up waiting until the next round of tomestone gear is cycled in and the old tomestones become easier to obtain in larger amounts, and then there's no weekly cap at all.

I think that duties should award a bit more tomestones. At the very least, reaching the weekly cap should be a bit quicker if it's still necessary for some reason for tomestone gear to take a longer amount of time to obtain every piece.

[KiyoMizuhiku]

I fully agree with most of these points. Gearing is simply too restrictive for the patch timeframe.

Personally, I'm indifferent to the fact that there are only two sets of max iLvl gear, the issue to me is the amount that you can earn on a weekly basis. The price of tomestone gear should be cut slightly in addition to the weekly cap being doubled. There needs to be more sources of upgrade materials, period. The two you're guaranteed from floors 2-3 aren't enough. I'd heard someone once mention that the door boss for every final fight should drop a guaranteed right/left side upgrade material and I think this is a good solution. Floors 1-3 in any given tier should drop a random extra item every week, and the final floor should drop an extra random chest piece, like it already does a random weapon. Book exchanges should be decreased by 2 for every piece across the board (except for Helm/Hands/Feet) which feel ok at the current 4. This means that upgrade mats/accessories should be 2 books, and chest/weapon should be 6. I'm not saying we should be able to gear every job in a patch cycle, but the way I'm proposing it should net players a very respectable amount of gear.

Regardless of the player base's differences on the minor points regarding gear, I think it's safe to say that most of us feel that something, anything, should be done about this at least for the first tier of 7.0.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Normally this wouldn’t really affect me because I am in a static even if I want to switch to alt job(s)… until yesterday. I saw a DPS created a PF for Criterion at iLv623 or higher, something that’s beyond me as a healer main who casually raids savage tier with very limited raiding hours weekly. Mainly because it’s more beneficial for our DPSes to get the upgrades first before the support roles. They all get the good stuffs first, ours will come later.

Now I’m not saying we have to gear up faster on main jobs (I mean I frankly would welcome the ease but Idk how it’ll affect the game so fingers crossed!), but if I were to try out alt job(s) in iLv610 in just about most current tier savage in PF right now… I don’t think folks want to deal with that. There has to be additional way to gear up the alt job(s).

Lovely take from OP.

[Elizasylen]

Normally this wouldn’t really affect me because I am in a static even if I want to switch to alt job(s)… until yesterday. I saw a DPS created a PF for Criterion at iLv623 or higher, something that’s beyond me as a healer main who casually raids savage tier with very limited raiding hours weekly. Mainly because it’s more beneficial for our DPSes to get the upgrades first before the support roles. They all get the good stuffs first, ours will come later.

Now I’m not saying we have to gear up faster on main jobs (I mean I frankly would welcome the ease but Idk how it’ll affect the game so fingers crossed!), but if I were to try out alt job(s) in iLv610 in just about most current tier savage in PF right now… I don’t think folks want to deal with that. There has to be additional way to gear up the alt job(s).

Lovely take from OP.

Personal anedcedote: Personally observed the general P5S group requests for iLvls no lower than 615. I believe Criterion's arrival has in fact worsened Demand for unreasonable iLvls. In fact Criterion being a no lock out system was one place where players were likely to play their off jobs. Which further brings the issue to the forefront.

I hope they find a resolution soon.

[EryxGG]

Snip

As someone who's been playing the game for a far less amount of time, but began taking savage raiding far more seriously in 6.0 -- these are some of the same exact thoughts I've been having, but put to words far better than I ever could, which makes sense given Sfia's wealth of experience in this game, in all aspects not just at the very top levels of raiders. Sincerely hope this feedback is taken into consideration and some changes begin to get made.

[Welsper59]

Substats are a problem for balance and creativity.

This is a topic that I think a lot of people don't fully grasp unless you've played certain expansions of WoW or, FAR more relevant, FFXI. They can absolutely better adjust substats in this game currently to give it a kick to make it feel more impactful, but it'll ultimately result in similar complaints down the road. When we talk substats and wanting something truly noticeable and impacting, we're going to be discussing convoluted stats based on mathematical formulas and self adjustment (e.g. diminishing returns or even negative returns for overdoing a stat).

At some point, it'll be inevitable that we're going to be talking horizontal gear progression and possibly removing gear lock during combat, akin to how swapping gear works in FFXI. Those are two completely game altering functions tied to the purpose of stats for this game and I really doubt the XIV community is going to like what such drastic changes actually means. For example, I'd wager a ton of players will not like the fact that they won't find much reason to do Savage raids because the new gear lacks specific substats their BiS stat formulas require and they have to use gear from previous raids (e.g. current xpac or possibly even old ones). That is just how horizontal gear works.

[Midareyukki]

This is a topic that I think a lot of people don't fully grasp unless you've played certain expansions of WoW or, FAR more relevant, FFXI. They can absolutely better adjust substats in this game currently to give it a kick to make it feel more impactful, but it'll ultimately result in similar complaints down the road. When we talk substats and wanting something truly noticeable and impacting, we're going to be discussing convoluted stats based on mathematical formulas and self adjustment (e.g. diminishing returns or even negative returns for overdoing a stat).

At some point, it'll be inevitable that we're going to be talking horizontal gear progression and possibly removing gear lock during combat, akin to how swapping gear works in FFXI. Those are two completely game altering functions tied to the purpose of stats for this game and I really doubt the XIV community is going to like what such drastic changes actually means. For example, I'd wager a ton of players will not like the fact that they won't find much reason to do Savage raids because the new gear lacks specific substats their BiS stat formulas require and they have to use gear from previous raids (e.g. current xpac or possibly even old ones). That is just how horizontal gear works.

Yeah, especially since we're likely to hit a level cap at some point. Even 11 had a somewhat vertical progression while you levelled up, with the horizontal system being adopted for its endgames.