Quote Originally Posted by Sindele View Post
XIV just hands out tomestones directly instead. Parceling things out that way could push some content diversity... but then, this game's population has historically been hilariously over-the-top hostile to feeling "forced" into forms of content they don't want to do, even if it's just alternate pathing and people freaking out over their optimal substats being stuck somewhere they don't want to go get it.

The improved horizontal stuff is certainly the more interesting bit... though if I might indulge a bit of heresy (and arguably ruin one of my own points from an earlier post): I honestly don't think the game benefits from keeping substats around in the first place. I know, throwing all the stats in the bin would be truly heretical, and without gallons of numbers everywhere how can we call it an RPG - but it all just feels like a meaningless charade these days, doesn't it? Just about the only stat that has any claim to validity here is SkS which might be the last remaining form of "skill expression" in gearing... though that claim is only valid for the, like, twenty people who actually run the data themselves rather than getting their breakpoints from the Balance. Everything else tends to be a solved problem before it even really starts. Do the intangibles of optimizing substats and tiny-number-go-up still bring enough people satisfaction in XIV compared to the problems they bring? I wonder sometimes.
I agree 100% about substats being pretty boring in the game and I think that they need a major overhaul for sure. I like how FF11 handles substats with things like "Triple Attack+" "Double Attack+" "Crit Rate+" "Haste+" etc etc as well as how WoW creates their tier sets that have the bonuses to your abilities based on the number of pieces that you have from the set. In WoW's case getting the tier sets can change up how you play your job as well which can add an interesting way of changing playstyles up for each raid tier (obviously it's not always a good thing). I think I would be a fan if SE added interesting interactions to your kit with gear to shake up combat a bit instead of having the same static rotation for 2 years with a few exceptions for random reworks.