Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[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..