Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[Shurrikhan]

I'd just like to see sensible improvements to alt-friendliness and reduced currency bloat. That comes down to primarily two things:

1. Allow anyone who's acquired a given slot piece of Savage / Week-stone gear to then buy that slot's Savage / WS gear with the uncapped tomestones on all other jobs.
   
2. Simplify raid currency into a single item per tier and instead restrict what's available to be purchased via the floors' clear achievements.

   First floor unlocks Accessories, Boots, and Coat. Second unlocks Gloves and Helm and Twine. Third unlocks Pants, Chestpiece, and Solvent. Fourth unlocks the Savage Weapon.
   If someone wants to save up all the currency they won from clearing 1-3 to buy the weapon on week 2 for 8 clears' worth of raid tokens, so be it.
   Loot can still drop directly as before; there's just no need for a ton of separate coffers or Pages 1-4 nonsense.

Complementary adjustments may include...

• Normal Raid and Alliance Raid can now also be upgraded. Moreover, you can directly upgrade via uncapped tomestones any piece of gear from the given tier (normal raid gear, weekly currency gear, or alliance raid gear) to the tier's max ilvl once you have completed the given Savage floor or acquired a tier-maximum-ilvl item by other means (using Hunts for Twine and then upgrading your chestpiece, etc.).

It is slightly cheaper to upgrade a WS or AR item than to buy a Savage piece directly, but considerably more expensive in total to buy the base WS item and then upgrade it than to buy the unlocked Savage piece. This works simply as a combination of bad luck protection and a way to more quickly reach BiS from mixed weekly/raid gearsets and to increase itemization choices.

[Kira_Yaeger]

SE killed this game for me when they took Kaiten away from SAM and never gave a good reason as to why. The classes are the biggest problem I have with this game, if the classes were more fun or weren't so homogenized then I would care more about the gearing system. Till they (copium) revert SAM, I could care less. The rewards from Criterion dungeons are straight up garbage though, what a pathetic launch for one of their probably reoccurring pieces of content. Yes SE, please take everything I said to heart. Your team is spending more time on FF16 than the game that made you who you are.

[Havenchild]

I think a tome cap per role makes the most sense. I also think they could take the concept of "Job in need" bonus that they have in Duty Finder and apply it to PF, which either provides and extra drop roll exclusively for the people who fill those roles or an extra book / currency they can use to also purchase savage loot.

Boom, literally fix the job shortage in PF and make gearing slightly faster in one go.

[DiscoPug]

I never understood the argument of having a slightly easier time of obtaining gear for alts is this evil thing that would drive players to get bored and unsub when this game already operates on the model that if you are bored and don't have stuff to do you should just go play other stuff until there's new stuff that you would be interested in at a later point.

[Dels]

If anything, it is the opposite - people will stay subbed longer if they can play alt jobs. It is week 9 right now, after playing my main role for 8 weeks I want to play other roles. But so many parties are locked to 615+ that I can't, so I'm just checking out instead.

Last tier, I kept playing but it was miserable, I had to play another 8 weeks before I had a weapon/chestpiece for one alt role I wanted to play, it was just really annoying how long it took, and even then I needed longer to get enough gear to have one tank/one healer/one DPS all fully geared. It wasn't fun, and by the time I had the BiS and could join BiS parties I didn't even wanna play anymore. That's why I told myself in the future to just give up on alt jobs and check out after week 8.

[Ayche]

Of course, the crux will always be that gear is not as much "time gated" as much as "scheduled".
You could count in weeks, but you could also count in ... months. 8 months, the figurative lifespan of any raid tier.
You have three groups of players, passive casuals, active casuals and active raiders. I think it is fairly easy to assume that players are .. 1-3 jobs they like enough to "main". Gearing is not about collecting one source set only but mix and match anything that you can. Passive casuals are wearing something to the mix of dungeon gear and outdated tomestones, active casuals are in crafted gear mixed with current tomestones and active raiders are dressed in mix of current tomestone and raid rewards. Currently the numbers are somewhat like -600, 610-620 and 620-630.

I am a producer. My team cannot make a new savage raid for each patch AND create enough non-savage raid content at the same time. I need to do this even and odd patch shifting.
I know some people are attracted by gear rewards. Thus I cannot de-value the coming up odd number patch by just fulfilling any leftover gearing desire, thus even number patches cannot have easy gearing.
And that is why you cannot gear faster.
I know this is preaching to the choir somewhat, but I wanted to rant it out anyway.
We live in capitalism.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

It has always been crappy feeling wanting to properly gear multiple jobs in a tier and knowing you simply cannot do so. For a game that encourages playing more than one job they do not allow you to do so at higher end and it sucks.

[Komaru_Tatoro]

if some mention about giving early tome upgrade items:
when it comes to gearing, the biggest gate is always the stupid weekly 450 cap.
even if you have other means to get the upgrade item, you still get hold hostage by the 450 gate.

now with patch cycle officially going on a 4month + holiday cycle, the way to get like 620 gears from 24man is much further away.
doing the first 2 floors on the min ilv 610 crafted or normal raid gears are fine but the 3rd and 4th is a step up on dps/heal checks. casual will have a hard time. folks thats wants to help and like fill the 3rd and 4th flr pf with unplay jobs(especially healer role) cant help much because they dont have better gears. ie, casual pug + vets with min ilv gear = hard to carry dps.

also coffers are still a rng luck to roll against other players in savage. and while you may be lucky to gear up a 2nd job, it will cuck others from gears as their main job. so my point is, the 620 tome is the one way to not cuck some1 to gear up. but that low 450 weekly cap...

there either needs to be a way to get like 615 gears or 620 and the 24man should bump to 625 ilv if thats the case etc.

or might as well, give players the upgrade item for the crafted gears if they clear the criterion dungeon. it still consider harder content even if its not the savage version. so like how the past crafted upgrade goes, you need 3 clears for acc, 5 for head, hands, foot and 7 or 8 for body, pants and weap.

[Avoidy]

I feel bad when I see detailed critiques written like this, on a forum where there hasn't been a devpost in like 6 years.
The first reply to it is a damn meme image from someone who was too lazy to even read a game related post on a game forum, and it's stayed up this entire time too. No moderation, no staff presence. Just shut this place down. What's the point. All we do is argue with each other while nothing changes. What a shame. What a waste.

OP, solid post. I have nothing to add to it. I hope someone relevant reads it.

[Deveryn]

I feel bad when I see detailed critiques written like this, on a forum where there hasn't been a devpost in like 6 years.
The first reply to it is a damn meme image from someone who was too lazy to even read a game related post on a game forum, and it's stayed up this entire time too. No moderation, no staff presence. Just shut this place down. What's the point. All we do is argue with each other while nothing changes. What a shame. What a waste.

OP, solid post. I have nothing to add to it. I hope someone relevant reads it.

This one actually looks promising with the fact that it's so well written and there's all the support showing up for it.