What are the most efficient ways we could add to the (perceived) amount of content?

[Shurrikhan]

Let us presume for a moment that XIV will never receives any significantly larger amount of funding, staff, support, etc., and that the pace and path of new content pieces will remain mostly unchanged.

How might we at minimal cost increase the apparent abundance of content? (Focus is on battle content, but you needn't constrict yourself to just that.)

Have at it.


Feel free to tier your suggestions in order of increasing ambition / "if there were enough man-hours available" and extend to some more significant addition if necessary.

Better to bend these rules / the starter point than be held back by them.

[Shurrikhan]

(Reserved for suggestions highlights/shortlist)

[fulminating]

Add a second dungeon every other patch so expert is 1/3 rather than a coin toss. It’s not perfect, but is the least amount of effort for it.

Relic starts at the x.1 patch and has more structured requirements- for endwalker in particular it being a highlights reel of the previous expansions would have been fitting and 80blu/shb would have lined up nicely with that stage. I think it being a second tome weapon damages the perceived amount of stuff to do more than it should.

Some content that shakes up the combat - eureka, bozja and kind of variant have the action system. Expanding and iterating on that to keep both it and pve fresh wouldn’t hurt.

Something that puts a lot of people in the same place with rewards that aren’t handed out on a silver platter. A mount, a glamour, titles or whatever. Make the game feel like there’s other people around instead of as if it’s a single player game that others happen to also be able to wave at you from.

Big fate chains in zones that don’t have them - the fauth/deviljho/warg/treasure hunt ones in shb could sometimes draw a crowd, and occasionally still do.

A reason to do expert crafting. Kind of nebulous I admit. Hopefully the crafter relics will address this.

E: sensible grinds added periodically. The bicoloured dinosaur mount doesn’t fall under this category given it works out at 5700 fates or whatever the actual number was. I think they need to appreciate some people will just no life things and others won’t bother after a threshold.

[Ayche]

Time gates, RNG and energy.
Oh there are ways to drag out content if you really wish to, depends on how evil you wanna get.

[Tint]

Increase the item level gap between tomestone gear and savage raid gear.

Tomestone gear is a paricipation reward, there is no reason for it to be that strong. Reduce it to ilvl 610 and the upgraded gear to 620. Then casual players can mix their gear with normal mode raid gear and in the next patch with 24 man raid gear.

Increase the item level of savage raid gear to 640. This means raid gear will be more powerful and a better reward, but mostly you can grind out the gear from the current tier to then use it for progressing in the next tier. Savage raid gear of the current tier will be as strong as the tomestone / normal raid / crafted gear of the next tier. Well, crafted gear will still be a little better thanks to more materia slots.

This leaves room for grind heavy ilvl 630 relic gear and gear from criterion dungeons, which will be the new time sink content for midcore players.

[dspguy]

The fact that come patch day, my non-raiding character will be immediately better than raiding players makes no sense at all. I mean, I appreciate that crafting is worth something, but I'm always surprised when the iLvl of crafted gear is higher than the previous raid gear.

[Shurrikhan]

The fact that come patch day, my non-raiding character will be immediately better than raiding players makes no sense at all. I mean, I appreciate that crafting is worth something, but I'm always surprised when the iLvl of crafted gear is higher than the previous raid gear.

If I may ask, what change might address that?

For instance, would it be better if the new Crafted and Normal gear is simply equal to the Savage gear of the tier prior (existing only as catch-up)? If so, should Savage remain a 30 ilvl jump over the previous tier, or just 20? Etc., etc.?

Increase the item level gap between tomestone gear and savage raid gear.

Tomestone gear is a participation reward, there is no reason for it to be that strong. Reduce it to ilvl 610 and the upgraded gear to 620. Then casual players can mix their gear with normal mode raid gear and in the next patch with 24 man raid gear.

Is the goal here to simply make it so that raiders will always retain an ilvl advantage over non-raiders, rather than only for the first 10+ weeks? Would crafted gear likewise be nerfed, in your ideal here?


@Tint, DSPguy: Is there anything that you think might make a positive difference outside of slowing power acquisition or widening the gap between those who do all content and those who do not?

[Tint]

Is the goal here to simply make it so that raiders will always retain an ilvl advantage over non-raiders, rather than only for the first 10+ weeks? Would crafted gear likewise be nerfed, in your ideal here?

@Tint, DSPguy: Is there anything that you think might make a positive difference outside of slowing power acquisition or widening the gap between those who do all content and those who do not?

The idea is to give non raiders a goal they can reach. Instead of adding savage raid gear and then just gift gear of the same strenght to everyone else a few months later - in this idea midocre players can actually do content and aquire stronger gear.

Right now there is the savage raid for hardcore players. And everyone else just gets tomestone gear. And because tomestone gear is so strong there is no room for any content between savage raids and expert roulette.
Why should anyone bother with the weapon from Eureka Orthos for example? The tomestone weapon will have your back. Or actually this joke of a relic quest this time around... But why bother grinding a relic weapon when there is a just as strong tomestone weapon available anyway?

The whole gear progression is catered towards savage raids. You get the entry gear basically for free and when you came late there is the catch up patch and now you can enter savage faster.

But a lot of people don't want to do savage. They will never enter it, regardless of "catch up" mechanics. But these players need a goal too. Content with a worthwile reward.

To increase the perceived amount of content people need reasons to do more than just expert roulette five times a week and 24 man raid once a week.

But of course when the easier midcore content provides gear as strong as savage raids then savage will die out. Some people will still do it of course, like some people are getting the weapon from Eureka Orthos, but thats not sustainable for the raid scene. So the savage raid gear has to be stronger. And the tomestone gear has to be weaker. Otherwise there is no room for midcore content with gear as a reward. And content without gear? Well we are back to tomestone gear, expert roulette and the failure which Criterion was.

[Icecylee]

Making tomestone gear weaker, full stop, isn't going to motivate the sorts of players not doing savage to do higher end content. They won't care that much, because they aren't doing the sorts of content that needs better gear. All it would really do is make running any kind of roulette for current tier tomestones a complete waste of time for the people that *do* do savage, and make them stop running it entirely.

[ForsakenRoe]

If I may ask, what change might address that?

For instance, would it be better if the new Crafted and Normal gear is simply equal to the Savage gear of the tier prior (existing only as catch-up)? If so, should Savage remain a 30 ilvl jump over the previous tier, or just 20? Etc., etc.?

I think Savage BIS should be equal to the incoming crafted gear. It'd make it more desireable for longer (you can immediately challenge new savage with old savage's gear), it'd reduce the ilvl jumps per expansion (currently we go through 130ish item levels per expansion, this would reduce it to 100). On the flipside, while crafted would be 'less impactful' and that's kinda not great, it's still got it's place as both 'gear to get you onto the treadmill', ie if someone's taken a break for a few patches, they can get full crafted and jump back in. Also, sometimes you just get got by SE for gear. For example, you're a DPS of some sort. Your ring options are Crit/SS from raid, and DET/DH from tome. Okay, so the skillspeed sucks, but you've got no alternative. Then the crafted gear comes out and bam, it's Crit/Det. It's now an alternative to the sucky stats you had from your BIS. Also, Crafted would still be 'an upgrade' because it can be pentamelded. And while the gap between current BIS and crafted would go from 10 ilvls and 3 overmleds to 'just 3 overmelds' in this pitch, there's plenty of people who would go for those 3 overmelds anyway because it's more stats, gil be damned.

If the acquisition method was reworked to make it more deterministic, I'd also say the 24man gear should be bumped up to be equal to Savage gear, so there's another option for BIS. It's terribly bland having our BIS be limited to two sources. The fact 24man gear is 10 ilvls behind relegates it to glamour fodder and alt gear, I think it should be useable on mains too