Lack of Gear progression

[BigCheez]

Honestly, just remove gear and make weapons and armour purely aesthetic. It's completely meaningless in modern hamster wheel MMOs. All of your progress is deleted every 8 months. All your old gear goes in the trash, you buy another set of crafted gear, and do the same tome/savage grind for a few weeks to get back to the exact same place that you already were before.

Nothing has any unique effects. Nothing is worth keeping for more than a few months. Everyone who played FFXI still remembers the Krakken Club from 2004 but I doubt most people who play FFXIV could even name a single piece of gear that they currently have equipped.

[Mawlzy]

Honestly, just remove gear and make weapons and armour purely aesthetic. It's completely meaningless in modern hamster wheel MMOs. All of your progress is deleted every 8 months. All your old gear goes in the trash, you buy another set of crafted gear, and do the same tome/savage grind for a few weeks to get back to the exact same place that you already were before.

Nothing has any unique effects. Nothing is worth keeping for more than a few months. Everyone who played FFXI still remembers the Krakken Club from 2004 but I doubt most people who play FFXIV could even name a single piece of gear that they currently have equipped.

Works great in PvP. In fact the only time I grind relics is if I think they'll look cool in Frontline.

[Nadda]

FF14 has issues more along the lines of being predictable and not parsing out content at a good cadence.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with additional forms of gear progression.

If anything it'd be nicer for people to be able to gear up faster as it stands right now with the lock outs not being able to help friends if you cleared before they did or vice versa really effects being able to join people for raids for the fun of it.
If I do a raid on Tuesday but my static raids on Wednesday I screw them over and that sucks or if I want to help a group that raids on Friday get their clear I can ... but then they get less loot.

So adding another form of progression on top of that would actually kinda be aids.

As it stands players who do come to FF14 (Yes we still do get new players from other games) specially those who are just raid orientated like being able to enter into raids with crafted penta meld greens and some tome stone blues and being able to raid.

So we got that going for us... We actually need to make gearing more open than closed off or limited to a grind.

...

Nooooow. if for example a certain Dev Team wanted to Iunno... make Raid equivalent catch up gear items as rewards in Variant/Criterion dungeons. Either separately doing Criterion or doing Variant dungeons once a week for a certain period for a piece of gear. (pity system)

That would at least give people both an alternative to raiding (If only half your group shows up for raid night you could do a Criterion), a place to use high ilvl gear, make joining groups and them losing a chest not as big a deal, gearing alt jobs faster....

That would be a good idea.

... For a 7.3 patch... With nothing really in it... that be cool if it had that ... @Yoshida. AHEM*

I'd advocate for more player choice and consistency over progression systems.

• Keeping FFXIV accessible to new players
  
• Giving veterans meaningful alt-content
  
• Making social raid systems more forgiving

I've been waiting for FF14 to take this leap and if I could take my beloved Yoshi-P by the collar and shout angrily at him for just 10 minutes, this be the core value I wish to express. More jump in points. More openness and more interconnectivity in the content.

[Valence]

I'd advocate for more player choice and consistency over progression systems.

We need both.

Alternatives are great for flexibility and gearing up horizontally especially when it comes to alt jobs, etc, but also to offer more options with gear stats and effects. Progression is mandatory in any MMO built around RPG gear systems because that's a core part of what drives players ahead as people naturally want to get stronger, find new exotic things and loot, and that's what gives the game its shelf life as well.

I do not like the idea of just getting one's gear for free with no playtime put behind because as Cheez said above, you could just remove all gear at this point, it would solve you the headache.

[Nadda]

We need both.

Alternatives are great for flexibility and gearing up horizontally especially when it comes to alt jobs, etc, but also to offer more options with gear stats and effects. Progression is mandatory in any MMO built around RPG gear systems because that's a core part of what drives players ahead as people naturally want to get stronger, find new exotic things and loot, and that's what gives the game its shelf life as well.

I do not like the idea of just getting one's gear for free with no playtime put behind because as Cheez said above, you could just remove all gear at this point, it would solve you the headache.

I don't know about removing gear progression.

Like I said I enjoy how gearing is in FF14 to get people into high end content.

I want that horizontal content both as catch-up but also to test the mettle for our Hardcore raiders who already got their savage gear. To me Criterion is good for this because of it's boss gauntlet style - I actually consider it to be almost pseudo ultimate.

Criterion - second source of raid equivalent Gear. (and maybe even a means to upgrade savage gear you get from the savage raid)
Variant - weekly casual pity system to get the same gear over a longer period.

You remove progression entirely it sort of makes doing difficult content just for the sake of it kinda pointless. I simply want other sources and other content for people to sink their teeth into. Variant especially for casuals because you can do it solo or with friends, and allows players of all ranges more options.

The way how FF14 gearing is to get people into the raid on our even number patches... I want to make it so that people can experience equal or slightly further progression on the odd patches, so there's always something.

Jump in when you want. That's FF14's strength. I want to multiply that feeling so that no matter when you are playing FF14 you can find ways of doing things for your character that are both easily accessible but can also test your mettle that expand the number of ways players can engage with content and progress alt jobs it creates more social cohesion and activity to have progression. Not because of a hamster wheel but more like different modes of completeness for your character. Give everyone a sense of accomplishment however they choose to do it. A multi-lane highway for player agency, without turning it into a forced treadmill

I know it's possible. And I wish I could get the devs ear for it.

[Raenra]

Getting (relevant) gear from boss-loot drops pretty much disappears once you hit lev50.
Don't know if I'd want drops from A or S ranks, or whatever, but dungeon drops could do with an extra ~10-ilevs added to them.

The token system is reliable, but also really... dull?

[MetaBoi]

Instead of AF gear (since it is per job basis) they could use the the gear you can buy with the non-capped tomestones (Neo-Kingdom for this expac) and upgrade through other content. Or even make it augmentable with the augmentation items.

And for making the dungeon gear the same ilvl as crafted gear but with random substats. I think that would piss off crafters more than raiding folks as any gear that doesn't have High Crit would be farmed from dungeon instead or to add something else to craft for gearing process. If I were to implement the random substats idea I would make the dungeon gear have their high stat to be fixed but their lower stat to be random + no materia could be affixed to it. If not, any gear that doesn't have crit as a sub-stat would get abondened. But I think the core idea is fine, should be fun to iterate it among ourselves!

[Ephremjlm]

As long as dailies are the most valid way of making the new player experience better, or leveling new jobs, then we will never get any kind of gear progression that feels good.

Dungeon gear will always be a waste of dev resources (for progression, some people like the glam), and it will always be a linear mess that for the most part unless you are parsing makes your character feel like its playing like its supposed to, as opposed to making your characters feel "more powerful". I mean FFS the skills we got in this expansion were almost nothing. The final Paladin rotation skill looks weaker than the Endwalker one lol.

That said if the devs said F it and wanted to make drastic changes, they could make it so tombs were used in something like artifact gear upgrades, and in between, different parts of content in dungeons, raids (yes including savage and ultimate), and the open world fates (normal and rare), had chances of dropping individual pieces of gear that were meaningful. This would give people a reason to WANT to do the different newer content. That said, they could go a step further and make certain harder to get pieces give really good stat boneses or skill bonuses but then they would have to actually try new things. But none of this will happen unless the incentive to MAKE old players do old content (which I might add is made to be obsolete the second you finish it) so new players think that the game is social and that old players necessarily want to be there while playing on classes above the content level with a lesser kit.