Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[XaiQ]

Criterion should have had 620-625 ilvl drops from normal and considering savage dungeon difficulty AND MISERABLE LOOT THAT MAKES IT DEAD ON ARRIVAL CONTENT LIKE DRS it should have been 630 or even 635 ilvl (armor/acc) weekly drops

(635 ilvl sync gives a useless mount/title, ultimate with similar sync gives BIS weapon ....)

But fixing loot system will not fix crucial problem ff14 has: there are barely any ways to use gear we aquire besides doing parse runs or ultimate. Criterion atleast added new activity but because of trash loot system majority of people right now are locked to 1-2 classes to play there.

I wouldn't call DRS dead on arrival - people run and do it still to this day if not solely for the glams and the mount. I believe the same appeal is still existing for Baldesion Arsenal. The difference is, DRS has replayability because you have to go back to finish everything (glams, in this case) whereas such incentive doesn't really apply for Criterion. If they had glams with the books, people would run it again. That being said, I liked Criterion. I wish it had more incentive, but this was more fun than any savage tier in the recent years (I've done every raid tier week1 since Promise fully blind), nearly comparing enjoyment to a Ultimate. I hope we get more of them.

Good catch. I did note in my original post that I think that the unlock needs to happen much sooner. Either way, it's a really long loot life-span and generally at some point in the back half we get to farm it. But THAT point does not come soon enough imo. So for the AVERAGE player, the loot lifespan is MASSIVE but for those of us who are ult gremlins, it generally feels extremely slow u no.

It's just a rough situation because changing it for ultimate raiders means changing it for everyone else and that has ripple effects that we need to consider.

I edited my original post to explain that even casuals suffer largely of this. Arguably, even more than we raiders do. I'll gladly go more into detail as to why, but largely it has to do with people wanting to be stronger and mor powerful, without locking themselves into just one or two jobs in a game that heavily emphasises (and community gladly boasts of) on doing everything on one character.

[Stasya]

I wouldn't call DRS dead on arrival - people run and do it still to this day if not solely for the glams and the mount. I believe the same appeal is still existing for Baldesion Arsenal. The difference is, DRS has replayability because you have to go back to finish everything (glams, in this case) whereas such incentive doesn't really apply for Criterion. If they had glams with the books, people would run it again. That being said, I liked Criterion. I wish it had more incentive, but this was more fun than any savage tier in the recent years (I've done every raid tier week1 since Promise fully blind), nearly comparing enjoyment to a Ultimate. I hope we get more of them.
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Savage dungeon will crash materia X prices, what devs were thinking....

[XaiQ]

Savage dungeon will crash materia X prices, what devs were thinking....

I just believe the rewards were added to pad the listings. Hunt Trains is and will be the most efficient materia farmer, and I don't think they want to create another Anemos situation what completely crashed materia market.

[TomsYoungerBro]

Gear progression is definitely a little slow and needs some definite improvements. I agree with most of what you said, aside from another gearing path. Casual catchup progression already comes in the patch after with alliance raid, however something like criterion half way through the patch would be a great alternate gearing method.

I think books need more value. Accessories need to drop to 2, Legs and Chest to 6, and Weapon needs to go down to 4. Not sure why SE thinks Chest and Weapon are equal. There are only 7 chests, yet 19 unique weapons. That is almost 3x as many weapons to chests. The additional random wep drop in 4th turn does not close that gap.

I feel they should also implement a system where if you dont receive any drop, your second "reward" from completing for the week is another book. This would work regardless if it was a 0, 1, or 2 chest. Books should also be tradeable down. Book 4 should be able to be turned in for a 3, 2, or 1 level book, etc.

Lastly, tome cap should start at 450 still, but eventually be increased on or before the next patch. Astronomy tomes stayed 450 cap all the way through 6.0 and 6.1 to 6.2. That is a little absurd. Maybe an increase to 900 at 6.3?

[Dzian]

Gear progression is definitely a little slow and needs some definite improvements.

Ironically many would say it's too fast.

it's a pretty common complaint you see quite a lot that players are fed up of the endless treadmill grind. and how short lived everything is.

for much of this games life a large portion of the player base never touched materia or melded gear for example. one commoon reason being that it felt worthless investing in materia when you knew you'd just throw the gear away because something better was always right around the corner.

it's why the devs caved allowed players to remove materia because then it would be seen as less of a loss, but even now you see a hell of a lot of players just slotting tier 8s because they have 100% chance to remove them. but only a 40% chance to remove a tier 10.

The other issue from gear comes from power creep. and how large the gaps are getting. the difference between say a 610 monk and a 620 monk is quite substantial literally thousands of dps or a fairly substantial %age boost..

Id argue thats the bigger problem.. if the dispartiy between item levels was smaller, gearing off classes in 610 wouldnt be such a problem.

I personallly would like to see the gearing slow down but at teh same time make gear itself more interesting and feel more worth while... players would be more motivated to acquire stuff if it wasnt just something theyd throw away.

but the endless treadmill has been a growing complaint and many people are just gettign sick of it.. especially with the effects of power creep and how it often creates a scenario where ilevel > job knowledge or skill.

[XaiQ]

Ironically many would say it's too fast.
<snip 4 word counts>
I personallly would like to see the gearing slow down but at teh same time make gear itself more interesting and feel more worth while... players would be more motivated to acquire stuff if it wasnt just something theyd throw away.

The problem really is that the game truly emphasizes on your ability to play every job on one character, without the needs for alts. And that's great! But when it comes to endgame content, they aren't quite emphasizing on that quite the same way.

Every player plays differntly, and some may see this as more of an issue, and some less. But we have to remember that an RPG in essence is about making yourself stronger. But we're limiting how strong we are.

Let's look at it like this, I will use 6.0 -> 6.1 for when tome gear gets upgradeable weekly as an example. If you don't raid, your best option for gear is i590 gear which is the tomestone gear. To get a full set of tank gear, no weapon, you need 5010 tomestones to achieve that. And then, if you want to get weapons for all tanks(aka you don't do Extremes) you need another 2000 tomestones on top of that, putting youy at 7010 tomes to gear all 4 tank jobs. This puts you behind in gear on any other job archetype by then, and THEN you have the option in 6.1 to upgrade your Crafted gear AND Alliance gear. Now from 6.1 to 6.2, there's not that much time, and that's the point when you start getting weekly i590, and THEN it's very close to new patch and such "May feel you replaced your gear very fast."

To gear a single job archetype (all fending, all aiming, all healing, all casting, all striking, all maiming or all scouting) to all tome items, that will take you 16 weeks of tomestones. What if you want to achieve that on two jobs, that's 32 weeks. For two jobs.

You can argue "bla bla you don't need that gear anywhere" but it's an RPG, people want to grow stronger. I refuse to believe(but I'll gladly be corrected) that anyone enjoys to play the game for months and months without seeing any significant power increase. And this is speaking for casual players, it's not as bad as a raider but raiders actually need the gear for the content that's given to them (ie. in this case, Ultimate. It's not needed for Savage.) and this means you are very limited on which jobs you can play in a game that emphasizes you can play all on one job to clear the content while it still is relevant.

Now, if it takes me 16 weeks of tomestones to upgrade as a casual to ONE job in 10 ilvl behind raid gear, and then another 15 weeks after to augment them, that to me - is very slow progression. You can't reasonable as a casual gear yourself up for more than 1 job archetype (all tanks for instance) within a tier cycle (x.0 to x.2 or x.2 to x.4)

As for the "throw away" element, I kind of agree. I enjoyed in WoW the progress you did, and every tier your old gear didn't get neglected. It sadly doesn't work with the way XIV plays out and it would require an entire overhaul at how endgame raiding works in XIV, needing you to find a group to complete previous tiers and farm the bis there before you move on to the next.

[TomsYoungerBro]

Ironically many would say it's too fast.

it's a pretty common complaint you see quite a lot that players are fed up of the endless treadmill grind. and how short lived everything is.

Isn't that akin to the gear progression being too slow, and not too fast? Savage/Tome BiS is set for 2 major patches, so about 8 months. In a hypothetical extreme example, if everything could be farmed to the maximum day 1 and BiS could be acquired day 1, then that would be almost 8 months of no gear progression, meaning your BiS would be good for a full 2 major patches of content, and it wouldn't be an endless treadmill because you would complete said treadmill sooner. Now if gear progression slowed down, you would get BiS waaaay later, lets say on average 7 months into the tier as again a hypothetical extreme example. In this example, BiS would only be good for about a month before the next set comes out, putting you back on the treadmill.

(Disclaimer: i don't want completely farmable gear day 1, if you were thinking that XD)

In short, i'm not sure how your argument contends with increasing gear progression speed..

[Dzian]

Isn't that akin to the gear progression being too slow, and not too fast? Savage/Tome BiS is set for 2 major patches, so about 8 months. In a hypothetical extreme example, if everything could be farmed to the maximum day 1 and BiS could be acquired day 1, then that would be almost 8 months of no gear progression, meaning your BiS would be good for a full 2 major patches of content, and it wouldn't be an endless treadmill because you would complete said treadmill sooner. Now if gear progression slowed down, you would get BiS waaaay later, lets say on average 7 months into the tier as again a hypothetical extreme example. In this example, BiS would only be good for about a month before the next set comes out, putting you back on the treadmill.

(Disclaimer: i don't want completely farmable gear day 1, if you were thinking that XD)

In short, i'm not sure how your argument contends with increasing gear progression speed..

There's loads of ways they could address the issue,
one would be diversifying encounters and monster arch types which could open the doors for multiple character builds and gear sets.. in a way 1.23 and a few other games did this.. certian monsters or bosses right require a build that focuses more on mobility or evasion, another boss might favor a built that trades mobility for pure defence, anthoer boss may favor raw attack power, another may favour armor penetration... there's loads of ways they could go.

could also help make content feel fresher and more engaging, gets quite stale and mundane when every encounter is basically the same. just a striking dummy with a different glamour.

another could simply be diversifying the sets a bit more rather than having one generic set for every tank / healer / caster. making more unique sets with more unique stats and attributes.. or make them more interesting. like old scholl whm in 1.2 for example had options. you could go mind for stronger healers / nukes with cleric, or you could build vit for stronger protects regens stoneskins etc..

both of these things could not only take longer to complete but give players more to work towards as a whole, and if done right could allow gear to both feel more powerfull and last longer. if a new piece of contert dropped and had a boss that dropped mobility focussed gear pieces then sure you may upgrade a few of those but the other stuff might still remain viable especialy for non mobiliy builds..

it would create an enviroment where you're tweakiing builds and gear at a rather steady pace but doesnt feel like your just out right replacing entire builds over and over and over again..

[Furicorvus]

I 100 percent support this. We need some sort of way to get gear for alt jobs. The fact that if I want to change jobs mid-tier and have to restart from scratch with crafted gear is so demoralizing. We need something besides the alliance raids and the weekly tomes to bridge the gap and I think criterion dungeons could do that. Balance the Criterion dungeon around having crafted gear, and have it drop gear that is comparable to savage. Make it like 5 item levels under the savage gear or something to appease the raiders that will eventually complain that they had to work harder to their gear if needed.

[Jeeqbit]

Feedback containing both positive and negative feedback is refreshing in this normally negative-centric forum.

1. The rate of gear acquisition from tomestones is too slow considering the game is heavily advertised and enjoyed as a "one character can play all jobs" system.

Perhaps the rate of gear acquisition from tomestones isn't too slow on a single job, but is when playing multiple jobs. To solve this, we could have buying gear for one job make it free for all other jobs as well. For example, if you buy a body for tanks then you can get the body for all other roles free.

The alternative of having a separate cap for each role would be a nightmare for completionists and that goes contrary to the idea of it being a casual game.

2. Substats are a problem for balance and creativity.

It's always been a problem too. When we had Parry it still wasn't desirable because you can't go into a raid and hope every tank buster parries and even then mitigation was enough. Part of that I think is the design of tank busters in general. If auto attacks just simply hurt like tank busters it might be a whole lot more desirable, like how in shiva unreal just keeping the tank alive to autos was half the battle. But fights are rarely designed like that anymore or we outgear the autos too fast. The dots on tankbusters are a step in the right direction but once it's mitigated or expired the autos are not yet forcing tanks to stack Tenacity. We might end up with healers just spamming cure constantly before tanks consider that as well.

Part of the problem is how there will always be a stat that is regarded as better. They balance stats relatively well with the average damage increase they bring, but in an MMO "relatively" is not enough and people will choose whatever their maths suggests is 1 damage point higher.

3. There is a lack of varied methods of acquiring max ILVL gear in the game.

Perhaps PvP and criterion normal could provide it. The problem is with so many methods to get one piece of gear a week, you could get it all for one job and gear it up in 620 gear in the first or second week and destroy a savage floor intended for 610, so there would have to be a restriction on 1 piece per job per week across all methods.