The gearing\stat system is good, we need to stop asking to make it more complicated

[Oizen]

I'd just make materia more interesting than melding Critical Hit and Critical Hit 2

[Raikai]

The stat system... it's just there - It works but that's about it. It feels uninspired and I hardly consider it a good standard for stat system in a game.

They're really only meaningful for high end players, the ones very likely to min/max that kind of thing, so why not give that some form of complexity?

Direct Hit is, like above poster said, just 'Critical Hit II'. That stat could just get the axe if they find something more interesting to add.

Tenacity is just a sprout trap. The description of the stat surely makes it desirable... until you discover (or someone yell at you) how bad it is compared to others. This also deserves a big overhaul.

Piety's binary aspect is fine in theory, but I'd rather add something else to it so it wouldn't be such a waste as you prog fights and need less GCD healing. The nature of this stat makes melding more expensive for healers than for everybody else.

SpS and SkS should just be merged into speed - there's no complexity reasons behind those being separate. Speed is the most interesting stat of them all because it's the only one who can actually change a job's gameplay. A shame that is a horrible meld for most of the jobs because of the 2min meta.

On the non-technical aspect of the matter, I wish the melding system had a better UI. From a sprout's perspective, knowing about what can be melded and the usability of the menus themselves could really have some attention. From a veteran's perspective it could just be QoL.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd be fine even with just 3 secondary stats (Critical Hit, Determination, Speed)... if they actually impacted gameplay and were pretty tightly balanced.

Critical Hit affects gameplay on at most one job, Monk. For all other jobs, the only gameplay-affecting stat is the Skill/Spell speed, but that stat is objectively the worst past a low threshold for achieving a more reliable rotational loop, with decently noticeable penalties outside of 2-4 jobs (MNK, BLM > SAM).

And because Critical Hit increases not just Critical Hit Chance but also Critical Hit Bonus, Determination feels utterly unnoticeable, all while Crit's would-be greater effects on gameplay (if we still had more crit procs) are siphoned off towards quadratic gains and towards confounding relative potencies.

And then there's a final, even more obvious issue: Even when focusing exclusively on a particular secondary stat, we can't manage more than a 10% impact (10% expected damage from crits, 10% more Haste, etc.).


Obvious satire OP aside...

• No, the stat system is not good. Fixing said stat system doesn't require it to be more complicated, but it does at least require it to have some actual choice and polish. There's little advantage to making players "think hard", since they'll just bypass such requirements to check a guide or calculator anyways, but it would be lucrative to give them some influence over their gameplay.
  
  
• The gearing system is likewise not great, not because it lacks grind potential, but because of whom/what it requires that grind of, often to the point of pretty directly contradicting the idea of the "all jobs on one character" selling point of XIV.
  
  OTPs, especially if a directly-contributing DD like SAM or BLM, get their BiS in a month or so and are done, with luck being the biggest variable (especially outside of Master Looter statics). And the only system in place to keep them around after that? Gearing up other jobs -- something wholly irrelevant to them.

[Supersnow845]

They need to redo piety, piety is a stat that punishes healers with lower damage for no real benefit since the healers are overflowing with MP these days

You know the stat is a mess when people will wear weaker ilvl gear to avoid having piety as a sub stat because it’s the only stat that does absolutely nothing for your damage

[Renathras]

...

Greetings, impersonator.

While I agree FFXIV's gear system has nice things about it, it's not at all perfect. It's pretty boring (which isn't terrible, but isn't great), the materia "crit meta" is awful and crowds out any actual choices like most speed builds, etc. Savage exclusive gear with no non-Savage equivalent is annoying. It's not at all fast, especially if you're trying to gear more than one role. For a casual player (aside: While we've had a detour here with the Hilde weapons, this isn't NORMALLY the case) does not have a way to get a high end weapon fast at all. It takes 7 weeks of running the latest normal 4th boss before you're even allowed to get it, or running Extremes, which are midcore or even (of late) hardcore content what with all the body checks, and they're lower ilevel anyway. Relic weapons are an option, but often don't start until an expansion is half-over, have an ilevel penalty vs tome/Savage weapons until the last patch of the expansion (when it effectively no longer matters to casual players who aren't using them for Ultimates), and aren't quick unless you nolife them (and I say this as someone who DOES nolife at least my first one of each expansion).

My rule is always options.

There should be a grindy option, there should be a difficult content option, and there should be a catch-all option for anyone else. Right now, we lack the latter, or its gated heavily behind tome limits. Savage is really the only somewhat reliable way to gear quickly at all, and the lockout process makes it very multi-Job/role unfriendly. That is, you'd be better having a separate character to run a different role because it wouldn't be limited by the lockouts. So it's not even great to Savage raiders even.

And the problem with the grindy options - love Eureka and Bozja gear - is that that gear, too, until they very last stage (maybe?) has an ilevel penalty as well. It's only "best" when specifically in those zones, when, imo, it should be comparable to raid gear. You're trading effort for time, so the end result should be similar.

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No, gearing in FFXIV is not the best thing right now, and it is not perfect, and it should be more complicated.

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EDIT:

Interesting.

Both my post and someone else's post asking someone to put on the record that they aren't me were deleted.

It's almost like someone able to delete posts wants people to think that someone else seemingly impersonating me is me and doesn't want people to see the posts where I've said it isn't. Every post I've said it isn't me, to date, has been deleted.

I have no idea who's deleting them, and I'm not naming any names in this post nor violating any forum rules. I'm just going on the record, so no one in the future can say I never did, that it isn't me, it's someone else.

[Shurrikhan]

There should be a grindy option, there should be a difficult content option, and there should be a catch-all option for anyone else. Right now, we lack the latter, or its gated heavily behind tome limits. Savage is really the only somewhat reliable way to gear quickly at all, and the lockout process makes it very multi-Job/role unfriendly. That is, you'd be better having a separate character to run a different role because it wouldn't be limited by the lockouts. So it's not even great to Savage raiders even.

And the problem with the grindy options - love Eureka and Bozja gear - is that that gear, too, until they very last stage (maybe?) has an ilevel penalty as well. It's only "best" when specifically in those zones, when, imo, it should be comparable to raid gear. You're trading effort for time, so the end result should be similar.

I think I agree with this on the whole.

On a related note, though, I'm also curious about your take on how you'd like these different content forms to interact.


First, a... tangential question, though:

At present, we're forced to progress the gear of only a single gear class (Fending, Healing, Maiming, Scouting, etc.) at a time to be fully competitive on the job(s) therein. If I want to main NIN and aim for its gear, for instance, rising ilvl expectations per week mean I get increasingly stuck on/with just NIN until I reach BiS or so outstrip the expectations of the parties I'm joining anyways.

Let us say for a moment we like the time it takes for an individual job to reach BiS, but don't really like that players are forced to focus on a single gear class regardless of how much time they have and would be willing to spend gearing other jobs.

In that case, we'd essentially need a way for content to have a repeatable/grindable aspect by which to duplicate gains to one's max-ilvl (at/per-week-since-tier-release) onto other jobs.

For instance, we might allow pieces for a given slot (chest, gloves, boots, etc.) that one has purchased with <Weekly-Capped Endgame Tomestones> to then be purchasable with <Uncapped Endgame Tomestones> thereafter, while Savage could drop items (apart/independent from the chest limit) that could be used to make any piece you desire for a slot you've already acquired a piece for from that Savage tier (akin, say, to Extreme Totems, with challenges awarding a bonus one, at maybe 8 for a chest/legs, 10 for a weapon, 4 for gloves/helm/boots, 2 for an accessory, etc.).

Would something like that goal and that approach seem reasonable to you?

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If so (or if something similar in goal or procedure would do)... a follow-up question:

Should Exploratory Missions (and/or some category into which EMs would fall among other content) be a third means (content "pillar") by which to increase one's maximum item level for a given week since each tier/"season" drops, such that even raiders would be expected to do it?

Or, should it only be a means of catching up? Of gearing alts after having already acquired max ilvl increases for a given main through Savage and Weekly Tomes?

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Or, heck, should every means of maximum-(per-week-into-the-season-)item-level increase compete, as to maximally "respect" players' time?

In that case... Raiders wouldn't have to farm tomes except to gear alts. Those who dislike raids wouldn't feel enticed to do them. Exploratory Mission grinders could just do their own thing entirely and still cross back over to raids and Criterion Dungeons, etc., as they like since they're gear would be equally rewarding... but without needing to do any of that other content for maximum advantage in their content of choice.

Would such be better for the game? For the average player's enjoyment of it? Neither?