Make gear less boring

[Raikai]

I would love more freedom to customize stats in gear, or even bonuses.

But if SE keeps the mindset they've been having so far, it's unlikely... Just like every job playing exactly the same. Otherwise they would have more work with balancing.

Which I'm all for it. Honestly, coming from WoW, I'd rather have a more layered and complex game that is harder to balance.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

Unless they change the entire system, Meta will always creep in, they could add 20 new substats and the community would say these 3 are better then the rest so 17 are trash. If you add gear bonuses they will soon become the new base level and everything non-optimal does not matter.

There are no "fun builds" theres no builds to begin with (yes there may be 2 optimal gear sets depending on your gcd preference) its usually calculated bis set per job.
So no matter what these gear set bonuses will be, they can either A not matter or B become the norm to the level their available to all

Its the same with off stats, in 7.0 we get a new materia and it will have a higher number ... will it be better then the current 10s? Nope ... it will be the same just the number going up. Everytime an expansion drops, the off stats devalue, you can check this by wearing a lv 50 armor set and throwing some speed on it. Now you enter a lv 50 synced area and your gcd could be 2.45, if you enter with the same gear in a higher level duty it will jank you to 2.5.

You can paint the base level what ever you want, it will never be exciting in a vertical gear game and yes of course you can full skill speed your mnk and click buttons and wear a blindfold, but that still does not make it a "build"

The best thing SE can do is give a crit chance buff to a gear set, and at that point they will rework the base crit value to keep in line with anything and the base will be the same.

[Xuke]

How about make it related to item level? Let's say at ilvl500 you get the first job bonus of whatever effect it is and at ilvl 550 you get the last bonus. So every ten ilvl above 500 of a cap of 550 you get a bonus trait/skill/ whatever. This way people who raid can get these bonuses and still be able to min/max gear while people who do weekly tome grinds can work towards it as well. The problem with this idea is that tome gear players will be stuck at 540 til the 24-man/hunts comes out with the upgrades. I guess what could balance this is the Relic weapon to bump up ilvl but it's still a wait. Another problem with this idea is do they remove the bonuses each tier or add more up to expansion's end? For this example let's say the cap is ilvl 650 for the whole expansion. That's about 5 traits/skills/bonuses ETC every raid tier. Balancing aside it gives something to look forward to but if they put something like, "Ilvl 550 Bonus for Black mage: Spells have a 5% chance to cost no mana", would be insane even if it doesn't happen often. So insane that some players who are Ilvl 540 might feel that their play feels off because they do not have this bonus. The answer would be just savage raid the first 2 floors for gear but for some that's a no go zone. Kind of late to mention this but what about power creep? Do they put these bonuses into the next expansion kit or remove them entirely? It's hard to say. The devs of the game I'll give them credit for trying to make somethings work however going the safe path has been something they've been know to do more ways than one. In the end you can't please everyone but not doing anything also doesn't please anyone. Very tough call to make.

EDIT: Also this is in the game. It's not really on topic about battle content but I see this as an attempt.

[dspguy]

Make the playerbase explode. Give a full set bonus to savage gear for mount-speed up - past what we get for riding maps.

[SieyaM]

No matter the set bonuses what will happen is one bonus will be however slightly more advantageous than the others, and that is the set that you will use. Even is the difference is as slight as 1% of damage, that is the set that you will use without deviation and so it turns out just like the system we have now except there will be some useless pieces in the mix.

[KitingGenbu]

No matter the set bonuses what will happen is one bonus will be however slightly more advantageous than the others, and that is the set that you will use. Even is the difference is as slight as 1% of damage, that is the set that you will use without deviation and so it turns out just like the system we have now except there will be some useless pieces in the mix.

Two problems with your logic: 1) There's still useless pieces now its just flat out boring. At least with a 2/4 set bonus, there will be something interesting to chase outside of just more raw secondaries. 2) There's always going to be a difference between those who prog and those who farm. Chances are when you have a farm group, you're either not using the same job for it or want to just change things up. This is why binary opinions make less sense because many people aren't static and those that are tend to think everyone either will be or should be. Just because someone was progging on sch doesn't mean they dont want to be smn or whatever on farm. Bonus point) Some people like to do things outside of savage or ultimate, so those bonuses might be nice to have for solo'ing certain content or whatever. Some people find more ways to play outside of raid-logging.

[Payadopa]

No matter the set bonuses what will happen is one bonus will be however slightly more advantageous than the others, and that is the set that you will use. Even is the difference is as slight as 1% of damage, that is the set that you will use without deviation and so it turns out just like the system we have now except there will be some useless pieces in the mix.

It is that mindset that makes games boring. All the more reason to not oblige it. But that's a few years too late for XIV at this point. heh

[Voidedge_Ragna]

I also love that there is usually 4 sets,

Full Crafted / upgraded later on
Full Tome
Full Savage
Full 24man raid

As only Crafted is available at the start of the tier, which ever set bonus is given to it will be already included into the dps etc calculation making it null

The 24man raid comes out when the Tier is done for those that cared, the full tome gear will take you so long to obtain you will have the raid tier finished, by the time you get the savage gear you are done with the patch.

The best you could hope for is for Tome and Savage gear to give you a buff to clown in extreme trials ... and at that point you will see "gear set only" if it matter, if it doesnt matter its all pointless to begin with and just another number to make you happy.

The only time you wear full sets is during savage weak 1 right now AND EVEN THEN you usually get 1-2 tome pieces before you enter savage. The entire balancing of this "set bonus" is going to be wonky at best