XIV's loot system is so alt-unfriendly it's absurd.

[SargeTheSeagull]

XIV is known as the MMO where you can play all jobs on the same character. And though that is technically true, at endgame, you certainly can't gear all jobs at the same time. Say you want to. Well currently the only real way is to make another character, go through the MSQ, level a given job to max, unlock everything, and gear enough so that you can now do savage on that other character. All that sorta kills the point of being able to play multiple jobs on one character, at least for a lot of people.

Only being able to get as many tomestones a week as it takes to buy one single non-chest or leg piece is just needless timegating. Taking two weeks to get chest/legs is even weirder. Why do those pieces of gear need to cost that many tomestones? It's not like they make an outsized impact in your item level, it's not like they have more materia slots or bonus effects. While we're on the topic of tomestone gear, frankly they should just cut the cost of all tomes gear down to about a third of what it is currently. That way you wouldn't have to play the game 3X as much as you do now, you'd just be able to actually gear multiple roles at the same time.

As for savage. I almost couldn't come up with a more restrictive loot system. Why can i only get one clear per week total? Why not one clear per role? Or why not let me get one actual piece of loot per week per role? And why not let those lockouts stack? So if you don't get a piece of loot from Archadion 2 as a melee for the first three weeks of a tier, you can swap to melee and clear Archadion 2 three times as a reaper and bam, you're geared.
Imagine if loot system changes looked something like this in 7.0

EX Trials: Unchanged.
Tomestones: All armor costs dropped to 150 per piece. Accessories dropped to 75 per piece. Weapons can now just be bought for 300.
Savage: You may obtain one piece of loot per fight, per role, per week. Any pieces of loot you didn't obtain in previous weeks now stockpile. So if you're in the fourth week of a tier and you've not done Archadion 3 as a tank, you can now do Arch3 as a tank four times in a row and get one piece per clear.

Imagine how much more you'd play if you could actually gear your warrior, sage, dragoon, bard, and red mage all at the same time all on the same character. Not only that, imagine you were a tank in your static. For one reason or another, one of your melees left the static and you have a friend who only plays tanks and wants to join. Now you can gear up your reaper super fast, swap roles, and invite your tank friend to fill.

14's loot system is almost so bad by modern standards that any idea you come up with to change it would be an improvement. What, if any, changes to 14's loot system would you like to see done in Dawntrail?

[TheMightyMollusk]

And then people can rush through gearing everything and spend even more time complaining that they have nothing to do and the game is too casual.

[ty_taurus]

I think players should have a way to pursue having BiS on each job if they really want to pursue that end goal. Having a system where gear is shared between roles make that somewhat easier as there's a total amount of max ilevel gear that can exist at any point in game, but it's physically impossible with the tomestone limit and weekly raid gear lockouts to obtain every piece. No, no one needs BiS on every single job, but some people are completionists that simply like seeing everything maxed out as much as possible. That said, you also don't want to just hand out max ilevel gear like its halloween candy. There is a point to having a sort of climb to reaching BiS, but once you finish obtaining BiS on your first job, it should become faster and easier to continue pursuing BiS. You've already proven that you can take on the challenge of fully gearing a job to begin with.

A really simple example of what I mean... As far as raid books are concerned, let's say each piece you purchase cuts the amount of required books in half for the next piece. So your first weapon costs 8 books, but then costs 4, then 2, then 1 book per weapon after each purchase. Systems that make each subsequent gear piece faster and easier to get compliments this game's job system far better. You've already shown you can do the work to get a job maxed at the current pace. What point is there to bottlenecking the progress for other jobs?

[strawberrycake]

And then people can rush through gearing everything and spend even more time complaining that they have nothing to do and the game is too casual.

Yeah, that shows the games core is the problem and not the alt unfriendlyness lol. XIV at it's core is just not maintained well.

[Astrus]

To be fair, the whole game is pretty alt-unfriendly.
From basic things like everything being gated by the MSQ and not being able to send your alt mail because you can't friendlist them, over all the Cash Shop purchases that are single-character, to the event rewards of the past you get to repurchase for money if you didn't also do the event on your alt when it was running there's really not a lot that encourages you to really actively play more than one character. Except for the cost of Fantasias and time-gated loot progression for those concerned about changing their race (every so) often or progressing multiple Jobs at the same time.

As for why the time-gating exists: it's the same reason time-gating exists in other games - getting you to play, and in the case of XIV subscribe, for a longer period of time.
Especially the crowd that only subscribes for the short periods where content relevant to their interests is released and "current" like a new raid tier.
If they loosened the time-gating it would take people less time to get BiS once their static has the content on farm and they might unsubscribe faster. So, someone in charge figured that would get them less money, hence the time-gating to pad the time those people need to stay subscribed to the game.

[MistakeNot]

XIV is known as the MMO where you can play all jobs on the same character. And though that is technically true, at endgame, you certainly can't gear all jobs at the same time.

You certainly CAN gear all jobs at the same time. As long as you don't insist on getting Best-in-Slot gear for all jobs anyway, but since nobody actually needs BiS gear, this is not a major restriction.

[Kuroka]

Ive always said, only use the capped tome to unlock a slot and let us grind the gear with the uncapped ones. And once you reached the weekly cap, let the overflow convert to the uncapped tome.

In the end many just grab crafted and call it a day till the next patch - or grind their one and only job and then quit till later. IMO it makes very little difference...

[Avoidy]

I like how in just one page, we've run through all the typical responses to the request of "let me get my alt jobs BiS in peace." We've heard "you don't need bis." We've heard "people will burn through the content if they are allowed to farm it." We've heard "it's just how the sub model is."
I ask then: If bis doesn't matter as some have claimed, then there should be no harm in letting someone farm it at their own pace. After all, by their own admission, it matters not.
"But people will quit if they get the things they want." The lead developer Yoshida himself would argue that this is a good thing. He's famously said in the past that it's perfectly fine to play the game for what you want, at your own pace, and then leave once you're bored. If the lead developer sees no problem with this concept, why do any of you? Furthermore, people quit the game out of boredom under the current system. I don't know a single person who's sticking with this game right now because they feel timegated by shiny weapons that they "don't need" anyway. If anything, they're staying because they don't wanna lose their house. Seriously, looking at old FCs that used to be bustling, and friends lists, all I see is emptiness now. It's almost like timegating inconsequential bis gear doesn't actually hook most people in the first place.

[SargeTheSeagull]

Furthermore, people quit the game out of boredom under the current system. I don't know a single person who's sticking with this game right now because they feel timegated by shiny weapons that they "don't need" anyway

Exactly why I made this post. I used to raid savage all the time. I got so bored of only being able to play content I enjoy once a week I decided it just wasn't worth my sub money. That also ties into the devs' mentality of shifting complexity/fun out of jobs and into individual fights and how that makes most non-ex/savage content too easy/dull but that's a different topic. I only resubbed to stay caught up to MSQ.

[ty_taurus]

"But people will quit if they get the things they want." The lead developer Yoshida himself would argue that this is a good thing. He's famously said in the past that it's perfectly fine to play the game for what you want, at your own pace, and then leave once you're bored.

I love how when the discussion is about making something easier or more realistic to grind out if someone wants to, the response is "but then people will leave because they'll get all their stuff and stop playing!" And somehow, at the same time, when the conversation is about returning a longer grind for something like the relic weapon, then the response suddenly changes to "but then no one will do it because no one wants to grind it!"

Make it make sense, people.