Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[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.

[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.

[Ransu]

Gear acquisition rate and the general design for getting gear in this game imo is perfectly fine. My only real complain is I wish there was a system in place that allowed me to progress earning gear on my other jobs as well. I'd play significantly more often if I could gear the other jobs I find fun instead of being shoehorned into only gearing up a single job every tier and everyone else is far behind until they "unlock" everything which is pointless because the tier resets like 3 weeks later.

I love not having to have multiple characters for other jobs, but at the same time, everything being on one character does have this one major flaw compared to other games where the lockout didn't mean as much cuz I could log into another character and gear them up as well.

[XaiQ]

Gear acquisition rate and the general design for getting gear in this game imo is perfectly fine. My only real complain is I wish there was a system in place that allowed me to progress earning gear on my other jobs as well. I'd play significantly more often if I could gear the other jobs I find fun instead of being shoehorned into only gearing up a single job every tier and everyone else is far behind until they "unlock" everything which is pointless because the tier resets like 3 weeks later.

this is quite literally, one of the major points of the post.

sfia's #1 point was:

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.

[Elizasylen]

I play Tank in a static. We gear our DPS first, as most statics do and should be. Increasing firepower gives the best improvement to the group. I do not contest this.
But it feels so bad to give up shine after brine after twine week after week. I'm half way done gearing my WHM alt already with pieces nobody wants and 3 of the DPS still need multiple upgrade materials.
There really need to be another system that allowed Tanks and Healers to catch up, Criterion was a great opportunity that was lost.
Honestly it's like week 10 already. Let me buy them with tomestones already, having to wait 4 weeks to upgrade a piece not even because of bad drop RNG but just a matter of fact that there is only 1 of each per week is awful.

[ElysiumDragon]

As someone currently progging P8S, I wouldn't mind seeing some changes to the loot system.

For example, the tome cap being increased from 450 to 500, to allow players to buy a non-leg/chest piece with their weekly tomes.

I also would like to see the augment materials more evenly spread out, as P5S often becomes irrelevant after players have their BiS accessories. If P5S dropped the accessory augment, P6S the gear augment, and P7S the weapon augment, doing the fights would probably be more fun.

I also believe augment materials themselves should be able to be earned through Criterion Savage, as they're often the hardest item to obtain in significant quantities (up to 30 for an 8 person static).

I'd also like to see Savage unlocked a lot earlier than it currently is, maybe the first major patch after a tier's released, so 6.3 in this tier's case.

[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.

[Elizasylen]

As someone currently progging P8S, I wouldn't mind seeing some changes to the loot system.

For example, the tome cap being increased from 450 to 500, to allow players to buy a non-leg/chest piece with their weekly tomes.

I also would like to see the augment materials more evenly spread out, as P5S often becomes irrelevant after players have their BiS accessories. If P5S dropped the accessory augment, P6S the gear augment, and P7S the weapon augment, doing the fights would probably be more fun.

I also believe augment materials themselves should be able to be earned through Criterion Savage, as they're often the hardest item to obtain in significant quantities (up to 30 for an 8 person static).

I'd also like to see Savage unlocked a lot earlier than it currently is, maybe the first major patch after a tier's released, so 6.3 in this tier's case.

Absolutely agree with the augmented. It honestly wouldn’t be so bad if not everyone needed almost the same things. Like the Tomestone chest and boots are basically bad across the board. However there’s like no jobs that desire the Abyssos legs. Almost everyone except i think Striking prefer Tomestone legs. In my static were literally got no one that has it for BiS but everyone and literally everyone wants augmentation.

As a tank I’m in line just waiting for the DPS to get all taken care of before i can even get considered for gear. It’s for the better good of the group but it feels pretty bad tbh

[Libby9]

This has been a problem for a decade now. You think they’re gonna change it now? Lol. This game is about designing with the least amount of effort at the lowest cost relative to most amount of subs they get for it.