An end to the gear treadmill

**Koros** · 08-01-2023 09:36 AM

Purpose of this post

What would a potential system look like if we were to update the current gear treadmill with something that incentivizes participation in forgotten cotent?

There are three main constraints with any new system that attempts to replace the gear treadmill:

(1) New players can easily catch up

(2) Veteran players do not have a significant gameplay advantage over new players, especially at the start of each raid tier.

(3) Casual players, in both time commitment and skill level, do not have a power level significantly below raiders, and have the same access to fun systems as raiders.

With these constraints in mind, here is my idea for a system that could be implemented in 7.0 (though I doubt SE would ever bother, so it's more of a fun thought experiment than actual feedback since they don't really listen to any these days).

The goal is to utilize existing content and promote participation in those content, while setting up midcore grinds that midcore players can easily achieve without it being too casual or too insane (like pteranodon), with tangible effects on power level and gameplay.

Semi-horizontal progression

Right now, a player's power level in the endgame only comes from two sources: gear and materia. Materia is basically an afterthought since it's incredibly easy to purchase the materias you need, so really there's only one source of power level that matters: your gear's ilvl.

The benefit of vertical progression the way FF14 implements it is that new players can easily catch up to be at the same power level as veterans. The downside of course is that it becomes, frankly, pretty boring.

At the same time, adding other forms of progression other than gearing will undoubtedly piss off raiders if not handled carefully, since the convenience of being able to jump into Savage by just making a crafted set and melding some materia is unparalleled.

My idea is to create four streams of power level that are balanced in a way so that one does not need to grind too much in order to participate in raiding content:

- Gear
- Materia
- Main Stat
- Lost Actions

I'll describe them individually next.

Gear

Currently, gear is used for two reasons: to meet the minimum item level of an encounter, and to deal more damage and increase the health pool so as to make encounters more forgiving. This shouldn't be tinkered with too much.

Every 2 patches, we have the same sets of gear used for various purposes:

Dungeon gear: practically irrelevant for most players who remain subbed.
Crafted gear: let's call this item level 0, as it serves as the base item level for the next 2 patches. These appear in even patches.
Augmented crafted gear: ilvl 10. These appear in odd patches.
Tomestone gear: ilvl 10. These appear in even patches.
Augmented tomestone gear: ilvl 20. These appear in even patches, but become accessible without Savage in odd patches.
Alliance raid gear: ilvl 10. These appear in odd patches.
Normal raid gear: ilvl 0. These appear in even patches.
Savage raid gear: ilvl 20. These appear in even patches.
Primal weapon: ilvl 5 during the even patch, and then ilvl 15 during the odd patch
Savage weapon: ilvl 25
Tome weapon: ilvl 10. ilvl 20 with Savage upgrade or odd patch.
Relic weapon: ilvl 5 during the even patch, and then ilvl 20 during the odd patch; ilvl 25 during the final tier.

As is clear, gearing in terms of ilvl is already very tightly tuned and balanced, and adjusting these values, adding, or subtracting components can cause the whole system to become imbalanced. So we would want to leave this mostly intact.

Materia

Materia, on the other hand, can be vastly expanded. Currently there are four main sources of acquisition (for Materia X):

- Hunts (nuts)
- Wolf marks (pvp)
- Marketboard
- Tokens (mostly from roulettes and hunts)

There are other sources of acquisition, but they're probably very unpopular (Orthos and Variant/Criterion). In most cases, hunt trains are the most efficient way of acquiring these materias, since it gives the tokens and the nuts at the same time. Otherwise, I suspect most players just naturally accumulate the tokens by doing roulettes normally.

The change I will propose is to add a second materia system to the game that functions in a similar manner. The second materia system would empower job skills directly. These would be white materia, black materia, and grey materia. We can call them monochrome materias. The player would only be able to equip monochrome materias on select gear. Unlike current vertical progression, however, these materias will remain useful for the rest of the expansion.

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Types

Let's use Bard as an example. White materia will boost a player's mitigation, utility, and healing. On a job like Bard, some white materias would look like:

- Second Wind Materia X: Cure potency increases from 500 to 750.
- Peloton Materia X: Peloton can be casted in combat, but at a reduced movement speed boost of 10% (vs 20% out of combat). Furthermore when casted in combat, Peloton goes on a 120s cooldown.
- Arm's Length Materia X: Duration increases from 6s to 7s.
- Nature's Minne Materia X: HP recovery increase goes from 15% to 20%.

Black materias will simply boost the damage of actions, based on its damage contribution. On a job like Gunbreaker, some black materias would look like:

- Blasting Zone Materia X: Blasting Zone potency increases by 10%.
- Double Down Materia X: Double Down potency increases by 8.5%.
- Sonic Break Materia X: Sonic Break potency increases by 18%.
- Burst Strike Materia X: Burst Strike potency increases by 20%.

The potency increases will be balanced so that

(1) The expected DPS increase is 1% (meaning that Double Down, which usually contributes more to a GNB's DPS will have a lower potency increase than something like Burst Strike).
(2) Actions with a higher potency (such as Double Down, at 1200) will be further penalized. This is to lower the advantage of crit swings.

Grey materias affect a player's attributes beyond what is normally seen and confer small advantages. None of them boost a player's damage.

- Vitality Materia X: Increases HP by 1%.
- Defense Materia X: Take 2% less damage.
- Vulnerability Reduction Materia X: The effect of Vulnerability Up stacks is reduced by 10%.
- Damage Down Reduction Materia X: The effect of Damage Down is reduced by 25%.
- Weakness Reduction Materia X: Weakness and Brink of Death duration is reduced by 10%.
- Movement Speed Materia X: Default movement speed increases by 2.5%.
- Cast Time Reduction Materia X: All cast times (but not recast times) are reduced by 3%.

Finally, all monochrome materias are disabled in Savage content until the week 8 patch.

Acquisition

The acquisition of monochrome materias should be put in variant, criterion, and field content. Furthermore, I propose to make them untradeable, so that players have to engage in these content to acquire these materias. Let's take 6.x's variant/criterion and 5.x's Bozja as examples. In such a case, I would propose that:

A transmutation NPC (not just the one in Central Thanalan) in every city right beside the materia melder that can transmute monochrome IX to other monochrome IX's (5-to-1) and X to X (5-to-1). IX to X is impossible for this NPC.

Sil'dihn and Rokkon potsherds (from Variant) can be traded for white, black, and grey materia IX. IX materias are 20% less effective than X materias. This is 1 run for two materias.

Sil'dihn Silver and Rokkon coin (from Criterion) can be traded for white, black, and grey materia X. This should be around 2 runs for one materia.

Critical engagements drop a random monochrome materia IX. The Dalriada drops a random black materia X, CLL drops a random white materia X, while Delubrum Reginae drops a random grey materia X.

Field content coins (e.g. Bozjan coins) can also be traded for specific monochrome materias at a higher cost than Criterion. This should be something around 500 Bozjan coins for one materia X, and 30 for one materia IX.

Interaction with gear and release timeline

x.05:

Savage releases. NO gear can be melded with monochromes.

x.08:

An NPC appears that upgrades weapons with nuts and previous field content/variant/criterion currency, of the player's choice. Monochrome materias can only be melded on weapons initially in the x.08 patch, on the tome, augmented tome, relic, savage, and ultimate weapons. At the beginning, players can only meld one black, one grey, and one white materia on their weapon. Only materia VIII's will be released/continue from the previous expansions, in old field content/old Criterion/Variant. VIII will have the same stats as X, but will be 50% less effective above Lv90.

x.1:

The x.1 and all subsequent primals and unreal trials also drop accessory tokens that can be used to upgrade RIGHT SIDE augmented tome and Savage accessories, allowing them to be melded with a monochrome materia.

RINGS: Black Materia (damage)
WRIST: White Materia (heal/utility)
NECKLACE: White Materia (heal/utility)
EARRING: Grey Materia (utility)

x.2:

New crafted gear will be used for raiding and crafted gear CANNOT be melded with monochrome materias in order to ensure that everyone is on the same starting line.

x.25:

The first monochrome materia IX and Xs will be released in x.25, from the first field content zone and the first variant and criterion dungeons. Only weapons and accessories can be melded in this patch, with an NPC augmenting the gear for monochrome melding once again.

x.3:

A revamped deep dungeon content released in x.3 will allow players to augment augmented tome and Savage armor (LEFT SIDE). This augmentation does not change any stat, but allows for the melding of one monochrome materia.

HEAD: Black Materia
BODY: Black Materia
HANDS: Black Materia
PANTS: White Materia
FEET: Grey Materia

x.45:

More criterion and field content that drops monochrome materias. Augmented gear that allows for melding is released this patch.

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Main Stats

In addition to materia, players can also directly upgrade their main stats by engaging in various activities in FF14. The idea is to encourage players to try out a wide variety of content to boost their power. A careful balance is needed here: players should be expected to reach 90-95% of the maximum power boost from this system, equating to around a 2-3% DPS increase and 5% HP increase by casually engaging in a wide variety of content, with the last 5-10% of the boost coming from midcore grinds (something that takes around 20 hours of grinding altogether at most).

I propose a few new casual-friendly content types to go with this new system:

(1) Open-seas sailing system, where players can sail the Indigo Deep. Players can visit various islands to participate in casual, bite-sized content, and engage in cooperative sailing missions. This would be perfect for 7.0 (but obviously would be a pipe dream currently).

---> A ship progression system will be added, where players can upgrade their ships to sail faster and to perform better at cooperative sailing missions.
---> Cooperative sailing missions would include missions like chasing down a rogue pirate, defeating a berserked Kraken, friendly on-sea races, or diving for treasures.
---> Islands will present a variety of bite-sized content, like a notorious monster, or a small daily quest trying to nurse a sick child back to health, etc. These should take no longer than 5 minutes each per day.

(2) Open-world chocobo racing, where players can compete with each other in the open world along a prespecified race-track, and massively expand the chocobo racing and breeding system.

(3) Massively expanded Island Sanctuary systems to integrate with crafting/gathering much more.

These new and old systems will then provide the player with 4 or 5 collectible currencies, with a reward structure that very frequently provides the players with a boost. Furthermore, a new UI should be added to display the player's collectibles that can be accessed at any time so that they can visually track their progress easily. I'll just touch on 3 examples: Indigo Deep Shanties, Chocobo racing, and Akasa Crystals, though there should be slightly more than that in the actual implementation of course.

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Indigo Deep Shanties

Sea shanties collected from the sailors of the Indigo Deep. An NPC in Tural, a retired pirate and now ethnographer, wishes to collect these shanties and will reward you with various rewards along the way:

[Sea Shanty #1] - Defeat the Indigo Kraken
[Sea Shanty #2] - Finish first in friendly on-sea races 5 times
[Sea Shanty #3] - Fully upgrade your ship to Lv10
[Sea Shanty #4] - Assist Lucia to help the sick child recover on Indigo Island
[Sea Shanty #5] - Successfully solve the murder mystery of the Ghost Pirate

etc.

Reward Structure:

3 Sea Shanties - 450 tomestones of Comedy
6 Sea Shanties - 1,000,000 gil
9 Sea Shanties - /yarrr emote
12 Sea Shanties - Indigo Pirate Glamour Outfit
15 Sea Shanties - 2000 tomestones of Poetics
18 Sea Shanties - Potion of Major Vitality (+1% Vitality) <-- around 1 hour of playing this content, most of which is naturally completed by the MSQ.
21 Sea Shanties - Legendary Rosewood Lumber (for upgrading the ship to Lv10)
24 Sea Shanties - Pirate Ship Outdoor Furnishing
...
60 Sea Shanties - Potion of Minor Strength (+0.5% Strength, Intelligence, Mind, Dexterity) [LAST power boost in the reward structure] <-- around 15 hours of playing this content
...
87 Sea Shanties - /gunduel emote
90 Sea Shanties - Kraken Indoor Furnishing
93 Sea Shanties - <Indigo Wayfarer> Title <-- around 200 hours of playing this content

Crucially, 80% of the rewards should be cosmetics and glamour. 20% will be direct power boosts. Of those 20%, most of them should be frontloaded so that players can casually participate in them to get those power boosts, while keeping one or two at the end to require some midcore grinding. The tail end of the reward structure should be trophies or titles to show that the player has grinded out all of these sea shanties.

Most of these grinds will be one-time. In order to help new players also participate in these content, especially ones that require co-op, all of these activities also award a new currency which we can call Tural Coins, which will allow players to trade for glamours, materias, crafting materials, mounts, and minions, with it getting new items every patch.

These systems need to be carefully balanced so that we don't have currency bloat, however.

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Chocobo Racing

Let's use another example now. This time, chocobo racing will put the players on a LONG quest to compete with NPCs from around the star in a chocobo race, from Gridania to Elpis. Almost every zone (where it makes sense) will have an NPC competing with you, along with 6 other random NPCs from that region. The quest will contain story, cutscenes, and will be regularly updated every patch. Every once in a while, chocobo breeding will also get updates, such as releasing pedigree 10, new race abilities, and such.

The quest will be linear, but along the way you get little rewards and bonuses, with a quest completion tracker available under the new collectibles UI:

Reward Structure:

Ul'dah Questline Completion: Chocobo Boots, 6 Sil'dihn Potsherds
Gridania Questline Completion: 1500 Tomestones of Causality
Limsa Lominsa Questline Completion: /chocobowhistle emote

etc.

Because this quest is long and requires engaging with chocobo breeding (since later NPCs will become increasingly more difficult), there should not be many, if at all, power boosts associated with this sort of content. However, participation can still be encouraged by giving weekly rewards of tomestones, nuts, materias, etc.

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Akasa Crystals

Nidhana wishes to study akasa further, now that the Final Days are over, and wants you to bring her akasa crystals to study. This would involve a long quest of discovering the properties of dynamis/akasa, but unlike the two types of content mentioned above, this would mostly involve playing through content that already exists now.

[Akasa Crystal #1] - Complete 20 unique battle levequests
[Akasa Crystal #2] - Collect 50 Triple Triad Cards
[Akasa Crystal #3] - Lead your frontline team to victory 3 times
[Akasa Crystal #4] - Complete a Lv80 role quest
[Akasa Crystal #5] - Kill 5 A-rank hunts
...
[Akasa Crystal #35] - Complete 40 unique battle levequests
[Akasa Crystal #49] - Collect 100 Triple Triad Cards
[Akasa Crystal #51] - Lead your frontline team to victory 15 times
[Akasa Crystal #53] - Complete a Lv90 role quest
[Akasa Crystal #55] - Kill 100 A-rank hunts
...
[Akasa Crystal #120] - Complete 80 unique battle levequests
[Akasa Crystal #144] - Defeat 100 NPCs at Triple Triad
[Akasa Crystal #152] - Kill 300 A-rank hunts
[Akasa Crystal #189] - Lead your frontline team to victory 45 times
[Akasa Crystal #190] - Win 20 Open Triple Triad tournaments
[Akasa Crystal #193] - Collect 100,000 Skyward points across any crafter/gatherer
[Akasa Crystal #205] - Defeat Nerva

Most of these grinds should stop at around 5%-50% of the associated achievement grind. For example, the current battle levequest grind is at 150, but we want to stop at 80. The current maximum grind for A-rank hunts is 10,000, but we probably want to stop at 500. The point of this system is not to force everyone into an achievement hunter (because that's fairly insane), but to provide a light version of that that encourages players to have a long-term grind that mixes and matches all kinds of content instead of making you do the same type of content ad infinitum.

Reward Structure:

5 Akasa Crystals - 500,000 gil
10 Akasa Crystals - 2000 nuts
15 Akasa Crystals - Potion of Minor Vitality (+0.5% Vitality)
20 Akasa Crystals - Potion of Minor Strength (+0.5% Strength, Intelligence, Mind, Dexterity)
25 Akasa Crystals - New Akasa quest from Nidhana
30 Akasa Crystals - 1000 Tomestones of Poetics
35 Akasa Crystals - Wind-up Nidhana Minion
40 Akasa Crystals - 1,000,000 gil
45 Akasa Crystals - Potion of Minor Strength (+0.5% Strength, Intelligence, Mind, Dexterity)
50 Akasa Crystals - New Akasa quest from Nidhana
60 Akasa Crystals - Potion of Minor Vitality (+0.5% Vitality)
70 Akasa Crystals - /thavnairianeureka emote
80 Akasa Crystals - New Akasa quest from Nidhana

etc.

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Other side content progression

Two other ideas I have, which I don't want to detail to stop this post from bloating even more, are:

- Ironworks Manufactory
A progression system for DoH/DoL, with a long questline aimed at building a new manufactory for Ironworks, with crafting and gathering challenges and midcore grinds that unlock new power levels for DoH/DoL (such as boosts on Excellent rate, unique new specialist actions etc.)

- Cartographer Guild
A progression system mostly revolving around exploration, that rewards the completion of sightseeing logs, engaging in FATEs, and exploratory content such as Eureka. A new system is introduced that lets the players take pictures and send it back to the Cartographer Guild where they will display the picture showing notable landmarks. This system rewards players with a few power boost potions and various emotes, mounts, minions, and furniture.

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Lost Actions

The final source of power progression I think should be tied to a system like Lost Actions. This could be something that is entirely field content-based, or something else. Personally, I think it might be cool to incorporate it into a modernized deep dungeon system.

Deep Dungeon 2.0:

Instead of 200 or 100 floors, a deep dungeon run will now consist of only 44 floors total. However, each floor is significantly more sophisticated and labyrinthe, with several design differences:

(1) Deep dungeon will still be pseudo-randomly generated, but this time incorporating significant verticality within each floor. Each floor should feel like a maze, but a maze that has purpose.

(2) NPCs who are deeply tied to the deep dungeon's story will appear throughout the DD for run-wide quests. Let's take Orthos for an example, and let's just set up an example:

--- From Floor 3, you will encounter Artorius, an unknown NPC who joins you in a boss fight. You talk to Artorias, and his motives are unknown.
--- On Floor 5, you encounter Artorius again, this time he mentions something about purging Orthos of its sins, but he needs your help, and you can either give him pomanders of strength or refuse.
--- On Floor 10, he appears again struggling against a boss. You can either leave him alone or help him. If you help him, he will gift you with a random permanent buff for the rest of the DD.
--- On Floor 20, depending on your numerous choices involving Artorius, you'll either face Excalibur alone, or with Artorius helping you. When you see Excalibur, you see the same face as Artorius, and it is then that you realize that you've been talking to a demi-clone of Artorius this whole time.

(3) Integrated Lost Action-like system. Throughout the DD, by doing minor quests or opening coffers, you sometimes get random Lost Actions that you can use, such as Lost Regen, or the more powerful ones like Lost Blood Rage, all with limited charges.

(4) Floors are now divided into different sections as follows:
F1-5 (4-man midcore storyline), F6-10 (midcore storyline), F11-15 (midcore storyline), F16-20 (midcore storyline).
F21-23 (large scale raid)
F24-28 (4-man hardcore)
F29-33 (hardcore)
F34-38 (hardcore)
F39-44 (hardcore)

Completion of F1-20 completes the story, and doing F16-20 gives EXP. These floors allow you to grind for aetherpool and level up alt jobs.
F21-23 is a large scale raid, with 24-man or 48-man, like Delubrum, but with significantly more randomness, traps, and the necessity of coordinating. Vertical design would be extremely cool in these floors, as alliances need to split up, and you see the other alliances battling below you while you're battling above them, making it feel like a truly massive-scale encounter. These floors serve as the primary way of grinding for potsherds.
F24-44 is the hardcore mode, and solo achievements start here instead of F1. These would be hard from the get-go and require careful time management and Lost Action/pomander management. The hardcore floors reward potsherds as well, but will be mostly for glamour, titles, and mounts/minions.

Reward structure

Potsherds can be traded for a new type of power system: Lost Actions. Furthermore, accursed hoards also have a chance to drop these lost actions. These Lost Actions can be used as many times as you wish outside of Deep Dungeon, but are typically much more neutered than what they are within the deep dungeon. They can also be directly put on the hotbar. Examples include:

- Lost Regen. Heals you for 100 potency per tick for 18 seconds, with a cooldown of 120s. (Slightly more than Second Wind)
- Banner of Honored Sacrifice. Increases damage by 3% while draining your HP. Duration: 15s. Cooldown: 90s
- Lost Font of Power. Increases damage dealt by 2% and critical hit rate by 3%. Duration: 30s. Cooldown: 180s
- Lost Chainspell. Temporarily eliminates cast time for all spells. Duration: 15s
Additional Effect: Magic Burst
Magic Burst Effect: Increases spell damage by 5% while increasing MP cost by 200%.
Duration: 15s
- Lost Blood Rage. Reduces damage taken by 3% per stack. Stacks increase with each use of a dash attack while effect is active, to a maximum of 4. Duration: 18s
Maximum stacks grant the effect of Blood Rush. Blood Rush Effect: Shortens recast times by 75%, and gradually restores HP and MP. Recast time reduction does not apply to charged actions. Duration: 30s Can only be executed while in combat. Cooldown: 600s

Actions like Lost Arise would not be available because they would be overpowered. Furthermore, the more powerful Lost actions and essences will be more expensive. For example, Lost Regen would cost 5 potsherds, but Lost Blood Rage might cost 200, which might take 2-3 weeks of grinding. Similarly, while bronze sacks from accursed hoards might drop Lost Regen, something like Lost Blood Rage would only drop from gold sacks.

Essences can also be acquired, but these would only last for 24 hours each use. You would need to do the deep dungeon raid once or twice a week to keep these essences stocked. These can be purchased on the market board. Examples include:

- Deep Essence of the Irregular. Increases damage dealt by 4.8% and damage taken by 100% while reducing maximum HP by 30%. (Tank)
- Deep Essence of the Aetherweaver. Increases damage dealt by 2%. (Healer)

Restrictions

- Multiple essences can be used at any time, and their effects can be toggled off or on without losing that essence. However, you can only select the effects of one essence to be active at any one time. An essence lasts for 24 hours.
- Lost Actions and essences cannot be used in Savage in the initial patch (first 8 weeks of Savage), nor can they be used in Ultimate in the first patch (on-patch clears).
- Otherwise, lost actions and essences can be used anywhere.
- You can only choose two lost actions to use at any given point.

**AwesomeJr44** · 08-01-2023 09:53 AM

If anyone calls this a troll post then this is the most high-effort troll post of all time, because Koros has not only written us a novel, he's written an entire book series.