changes to the game that would go hard

[Collin_Sky]

I think having tome/savage gear be the only BiS gear is an intentional decision to avoid players having a laundry list of hoops to jump through to get their gear. IDK what the best solution is but gearing in FFXIV is so boring that removing stats from gear entirely would be preferable over the current system.

Pretty sure it's to deliberately slow gear progression and optimise subscription retention for as long as possible.

[BigCheez]

Pretty sure it's to deliberately slow gear progression and optimise subscription retention for as long as possible.

IDK, do you think gear progression is slow? I think it's fast compared to other MMOs that I've played.

It's also largely irrelevant. The crafted gear that you can buy within 10 minutes of a raid patch going live is enough to clear the hardest content that the majority of the playerbase even play. You don't even need tome/savage gear unless you're logging or running ultimate on release, which the majority aren't.

I think what makes gear progression feel the most hollow and pointless to me is the fact that the only real progression is savage > ultimate, with there being no real reward in terms of power progression for clearing ultimate. Maybe it would feel better if we needed gear from extreme to clear savage and then took our savage/tome gear to ultimate, for example?

I think I would prefer if crafted gear was the same ilvl as the previous BiS set, so it could be used to catch up when a new patch released if someone had taken a break and needed to get up to speed, then you had to farm extreme for a few pieces to be ready for savage, then you farm savage/tomes to gear up for ultimate. Some unique effects like WoW's tier bonuses would also make things a bit more interesting.

[Collin_Sky]

IDK, do you think gear progression is slow? I think it's fast compared to other MMOs that I've played.

It's incredibly slow if you play more than one role and don't week 1 clear, yes.
Even more so if you PF and have to rely on book pity timers.

Tome gear in particular is the worst. It's pretty much impossible for a static to get all the upgrade mats for a single job in a reasonable time without spending books, and if you do that, you sacrifice being able to buy actual savage gear. It's a really dumb system.

It's also largely irrelevant. The crafted gear that you can buy within 10 minutes of a raid patch going live is enough to clear the hardest content that the majority of the playerbase even play. You don't even need tome/savage gear unless you're logging or running ultimate on release, which the majority aren't.

Not irrelevant. Why should I grief a group by using a 710 job when I could use a 730 instead? Why settle for lower performance if my goal is to enjoy playing at my peak? I want to push myself, and restrictive gear prevents me from doing that.

[BigCheez]

It's incredibly slow if you play more than one role and don't week 1 clear, yes.
Even more so if you PF and have to rely on book pity timers.

Tome gear in particular is the worst. It's pretty much impossible for a static to get all the upgrade mats for a single job in a reasonable time without spending books, and if you do that, you sacrifice being able to buy actual savage gear. It's a really dumb system.

I feel like needing BiS for multiple roles is a fairly minor complaint? A set of crafted gear would surely suffice, no? There's enough time to gear 3-4 roles between savage and ultimate release. Surely anyone who feels that they need multiple roles geared immediately is playing with multiple groups and already needs an alt to circumvent lockouts anyway.

I agree that the distribution of loot is a mess though. Due to so much of the gear and also tome mats dropping from the 2nd fights, you need to reclear it so much more than the others to get your loot.

[Collin_Sky]

I feel like needing BiS for multiple roles is a fairly minor complaint? A set of crafted gear would surely suffice, no? There's enough time to gear 3-4 roles between savage and ultimate release. Surely anyone who feels that they need multiple roles geared immediately is playing with multiple groups and already needs an alt to circumvent lockouts anyway.

I agree that the distribution of loot is a mess though. Due to so much of the gear and also tome mats dropping from the 2nd fights, you need to reclear it so much more than the others to get your loot.

With this logic, why bother gearing at all?
Why should anyone care about gearing up? It's pointless to do so.
It's a terrible reply to this discussion. The entire point of the endgame loop is to gear up your jobs.

[BigCheez]

With this logic, why bother gearing at all?
Why should anyone care about gearing up? It's pointless to do so.
It's a terrible reply to this discussion. The entire point of the endgame loop is to gear up your jobs.

Literally my point. Gearing in FFXIV is pointless and boring and I would rather it was removed than endure the current state of it.