Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[Socram]

I agree with everything you said, and I think there are multiple simple solutions that woudn't change the current core gameplay loop of the game:

1 - make tomestone gear be tradable with books as well. Currently as the tier progresses we start accumulating books

2 - make tomestone gear cost decrease everytime you buy a piece. Like for example, the second piece you buy is 50% off

3 - make augment items drop from criterion dungeons. There's no reason a difficult content like that shouldn't reward the player with meaningful stuff

4 - make so that you can exchange items from a role to another role so that changing role mid tier isn't as painful as it is now. Maybe add a extra cost like 250 tomestone or something, just to avoid people constantly changing roles and potentially griefing PF parties

[Jeff_Batis]

I hope SE reevaluate how gearing works right know, I think a simple solution could be make to weakly lockout per class tank/healer/dps, since the game encourages the player to play multiple jobs it should also make the gearing based of classes

[Derio]

Not everyone can clear P5-P8 week one. I am one of those. I didnt clear P7s until week 3 and gearing at this pace if I wanted to play melee dps or healer I would have to start from crafted gear which sucks considering criterion dungeons are out now and most people would run that on their most geared class.

When Yoshi says please go play healer its not so simple when you would be starting from 610 crafted gear that you would either have to purchase with gil or spend time getting the materials to make assuming you are a geared crafter.

[Absimiliard]

One of the major draws of gaming in general is the sense of progress you get as you continue to improve, whether it be gearing up or you as the player becoming more proficient at the game. The fact someone can clear in crafted gear is largely irrelevant to this fact. There's certainly a sense of accomplishment to be had from completing content, especially while not yet geared to the gills, but many people need more than just that.

While FFXIV's current gearing system does work, the reality is that an increasing number of people are dissatisfied with it in large part because it wasn't made with the current times in mind. Party Finder is how the bulk of players wishing to raid get their fix, but this unfortunately needlessly complicates the process of gearing up. Likewise, lack of content that falls somewhere between raiding and typical dungeons, such as WoW's M+, means those individuals that possess the necessary skill but lack the free time for the slog that is PF or connections necessary to form a static are just SOL. Criterion could have been that middle ground, but nope.

[Proxanna]

Endgame gearing is one of the worst aspects of FFXIV in my opinion. Substats are boring and almost always just come down to stacking as much crit as possible. There's nothing special or interesting about any piece of gear as it's just slightly higher numbers than what you already have. I understand it's easier to balance this way, and it's a lot harder to have job specific augmentations on gear with the job system, but having everything so homogenous is just so boring.

[French_Overlord]

As a casual and average player I share the same sentiment about gearing speed. EW was my first time jumping in savage and i dont understand why the weekly drop is stretch out like it is. Now this might be an extreme or some may savage take but i think after 1 month or even at the patch X.Y5 the lock on weekly(for gear and tome) should be remove because after 4 week/2 month most hardcore player would've cleared and just do the grind to gear class and the average player/casual could grind the few savage they cleared to properly gear their main or an alt if they need to flex during their ongoing prog.

But being new to savage raiding might be skewing my view as it's the only content that put restraint on my character growth with weekly reward and i understand that what i propose can be scary as it might reduce the number of PF grinding the fight for reclear but i do believe that in the end it would respect the player time a lot more than what it is now. As for the lack of content i dont really have any proposition as i'm just a casual and I can alway find something to do that can entertain me or I jsut play other game instead of continuing the grind.

[angienessyo]

I get that it should probably be relatively slow to gear the first job to BiS, but I wish there was a system to quickly catch up alt jobs once you've hit BiS on one. I'm doing the savage dungeon with people from my static and 2 of the people that I'm doing with are our tanks. So one tank switched to his next most geared job, reaper. I can play RDM at a pretty high level but we're stuck with 2 melee in the dungeon as I'm our group's NIN and am BiS on the job and have like, 1 piece of savage gear for RDM. I can buy a few pieces for RDM this week with books, but because it's one of the few jobs that needs 3 left side tome pieces, it's going to be a long journey to actually get the job geared.

Even just making it to where I could modify a stat on a piece of raid gear would be a huge help, because so much of the raid gear is awful for RDM. Why can't I just get my BiS gear you know, FROM THE RAID? haha Why isn't the best gear I can get for my job from the end game content I'm doing? This far into the tier my group has started having drops that go in the trash because very few jobs use certain pieces. (looking at you, gloves) I get that the other casters benefit from sps so that's why some gear has it, but why does some of the SCOUTING gear have sks on it when NIN doesn't want it at all? You know, scouting, the gear that only one job in this entire game uses has a stat that NIN just doesn't use on it? Even just being able to modify raid gear to have actual useful stats on it would speed gearing alt jobs significantly as you wouldn't be locked behind tomestones or battling people to the death for twines/glazes. It would also make it less soul crushing when you run into what my group did where you have 3 straight weeks of double glove drops and 0 boot drops when the bulk of jobs this tier need boots instead of gloves.

[Naeno]

Couldn't agree more.

[Zepherl]

Even just gearing your first main job is way too time consuming. If you have bad luck, just getting both a chest piece and a weapon from the last turn takes 16 weeks of books. That's just ridiculous.

[Rolder50]

It's particularly bothersome when Yoshi-P makes comments along the lines of asking people to try new roles such as healer, while disregarding the fact that gearing alt jobs is an absolute chore that no one wants to bother with.