How would you *fix* gear progression.

[Kirutsuki]

Taking this away from the other topic of mine and that's gear progression, how would you approach fixing it?

I've done some savage tiers here and there and my general notion is that item level doesn't really matter unless it's a difference of like 20? (600-620) I could be incredibly wrong here, but as a semi-casual it just feels to me that even something like pentamelding is like 1-2% difference in overall. that's just a side note you can correct me on it if I'm incredibly wrong there.

Regardless gearing in 14 has gotten alot of critique for a long time in that it doesn't feel meaningful, then what could we do to make gearing feel meaningful.

I'm just going to borrow a system I know from a little game called Monster Hunter into 14 and make them fuse.

So here's my idea.

Let's not scrap the current gearing system, keep it as is, it's totally fine for people who want to squeeze just a little more out of their gears. But let's add a layer ontop of it.

First, let's seperate gearsets into 3 categories.

Overwrold Gear - Dungeon Gear - Raid Gear

This does NOT lock you from using Overworld gear in a dungeon or a raid, nor does it lock you from using raid gear in overworld.

But each category of gear will have a new "worldbonding" presentage that goes from 0 to 100% the more you do content with that gear in their corresponding content. It doesn't matter if it's FATE's, Hunts or farming mobs or World bosses, it all contributes to it.

Once it reaches 100% you can "extract" it. Yes very similarly to how spiritbonding works.

Now, each of these gear categories have a pool of skills they can get:

Overworld:
+5% running speed
Cast times halved
You can avoid a ground AoE with a jump every 1min30secs.
+100 critical hit in FATES or hunt targets
HASTE on O-GCD abilities in all overworld content.

Dungeon:
All party members have 5% shields at start.
+5% EXP for all party members
+20% extra gil on completion
Get 2 extra tomestones for completion OR get an egg.
30% faster Limit Gauge gain.

Raid:
1% increase on droprate for mount item.
1% potency increase on pots
1% potency increase on food
85% chance for extra 5 tomestones for completition
0.5% chance that getting hit does not give a Vulnerability Up or Damage Down
0.2% chance that dying does not give Weakness.

Just to name a few just randomly thought about, and using gear from the Raid category would not activate these skills in the Overworld.

There should be some determenistic way to approach these skills so that when they "worldbond" the gear it's not just an arbitruary % chance that you get the right one.

So in order to do this, you have to get the specific books from specific raids to increase the chance.
So let's say the Omega Savage raids books increase the chance of getting "1% potecy on food". then you would have to get a handful of those books, bring them to a melder with the extracted "worldbond" material. And it would have like a good 80% chance of giving you that skill instead. Or you can try your luck without the books.

And all this would work ontop of the current gear system.

the only thing that would change is that gear you get from dungeons are dungeon gear. Gear you get from raids are raid gear and gear you get from overworld stuff is overworld. You can still keep crafted gear as raid gear. But you could also add additional craftable dungeon and overworld gear.

[Kirutsuki]

And if overworld gear progression is bad from lvl1 to lvl100. The overworld "worldbonding" could be possible at lvl20 and above.
In order to target some lower level skills like let's say. "1% runspeed" you would have to give a merchant some grand company seals.
Or buy some grand company item with the seals that would target a specific skill to activate on your lvl20 overworld gear.

Probably something similar for dungeon gear, but you'd need a specific items from dungeons.

[BigCheez]

You can't really have interesting or unique effects on transient items that are designed to be thrown in the trash after a few months. This is just the nature of modern hamster wheel MMOs. Ideas like this don't work with the current formula and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Do you think anyone is going to waste their time building new sets of overworld, dungeon, and raid gear for minor bonuses every few months? Or do you think they're just going to build their BiS set and ignore the rest? They would need to completely rethink the game for something like this to work.

I'd rather they just completely removed stats on gear and made it cosmetic. Having to replace our gear to get back to the same power level that we were already at previously every few months is tiresome and serves no purpose.

[Kirutsuki]

But what is the point then if things are entirely cosmetic?
Fashion only carries the game so far. In DT alone there's only a handful of cosmetic items that looked interesting enough for me to get.

[Themarvin]

I am more into removing the ilevel entirely and make it level based only and skill based, if anything.

It for starters for any level content grants the full pool of players as long as have unlocked the instance and at a job that is at the required level or above.

It would be better in general, also would need less time to focus on adjusting damage up and down and resistances and more onto bosses as well giving the more development time adding massive amounts of content instead.

[BigCheez]

I am more into removing the ilevel entirely and make it level based only and skill based, if anything.

It for starters for any level content grants the full pool of players as long as have unlocked the instance and at a job that is at the required level or above.

It would be better in general, also would need less time to focus on adjusting damage up and down and resistances and more onto bosses as well giving the more development time adding massive amounts of content instead.

Yeah, if they were going to fix the problem (and they won't), they would need to do something like this to make gear less temporary so that it can be more interesting and meaningful.

This will absolutely never happen in FFXIV but if I was going to make changes to improve progression in XIV:

• Freeze the level cap at 99. Player level no longer increases.
• Item level only increases on expansion launch and does not increase with subsequent patches until the next expansion releases.
• Remove time-gated tome and augmented tome gear.
• The currently useless Artifact armour that exists only for glamour can be upgraded to +1, +2 and +3 variants throughout an expansion. These have increasingly better stats and unique and interesting effects.
• Savage raids should offer a similar set of gear that can be upgraded with each savage tier. These should also have increasingly better stats and unique and interesting effects.
• Ultimate weapons should offer more than a materia slot. They should be objectively the strongest weapons in the game.
• Relic weapons should require more work to get, have interesting/unique effects and be better than other weapons before they're completed at the end of an expansion. They should be close to competing with ultimate weapons, maybe more useful in niche scenarios where you can make use of their special effects.
• Crafted gear should be catch-up gear. It should not be better than the gear from the previous raid tier. It should not make your previous progress irrelevant. If people are worried about crafters becoming irrelevant, add some powerful crafted accessories with excellent stats that are very hard expert crafts that require BiS crafter gear and rare non-tradeable mats that are hard to get.

Other sources of gear could also offer relevant gear and by the end of an expac your BiS set would be an Ultimate or Relic weapon with a mix of Artifact and Savage gear, with a couple of particularly nice pieces from other sources added in.

If we're going to have meaningful gear progression, gear needs to last a lot longer. The scope of gear would need to be an expansion, not a patch. You can't have meaningful progression when that progression only takes a few weeks and is completely deleted every few months.

Otherwise, gear is pointless and should just be removed because it adds zero value to the game IMO.

[Themarvin]

Yeah, if they were going to fix the problem (and they won't), they would need to do something like this to make gear less temporary so that it can be more interesting and meaningful.

This will absolutely never happen in FFXIV but if I was going to make changes to improve progression in XIV:

• Freeze the level cap at 99. Player level no longer increases.
• Item level only increases on expansion launch and does not increase with subsequent patches until the next expansion releases.
• Remove time-gated tome and augmented tome gear.
• The currently useless Artifact armour that exists only for glamour can be upgraded to +1, +2 and +3 variants throughout an expansion. These have increasingly better stats and unique and interesting effects.
• Savage raids should offer a similar set of gear that can be upgraded with each savage tier. These should also have increasingly better stats and unique and interesting effects.
• Ultimate weapons should offer more than a materia slot. They should be objectively the strongest weapons in the game.
• Relic weapons should require more work to get, have interesting/unique effects and be better than other weapons before they're completed at the end of an expansion. They should be close to competing with ultimate weapons, maybe more useful in niche scenarios where you can make use of their special effects.
• Crafted gear should be catch-up gear. It should not be better than the gear from the previous raid tier. It should not make your previous progress irrelevant. If people are worried about crafters becoming irrelevant, add some powerful crafted accessories with excellent stats that are very hard expert crafts that require BiS crafter gear and rare non-tradeable mats that are hard to get.

Other sources of gear could also offer relevant gear and by the end of an expac your BiS set would be an Ultimate or Relic weapon with a mix of Artifact and Savage gear, with a couple of particularly nice pieces from other sources added in.

If we're going to have meaningful gear progression, gear needs to last a lot longer. The scope of gear would need to be an expansion, not a patch. You can't have meaningful progression when that progression only takes a few weeks and is completely deleted every few months.

Otherwise, gear is pointless and should just be removed because it adds zero value to the game IMO.

Better just to leave it all the same cap level no matter if you are a casual or not, the difficulty of the content and to unlock the next step, solves the other problems... also...it would also mean... there is only that amount of speed you can do to finish a dungeon due to the limitations as it is meaning you would and they could make so you would need to deal with ALL mechanics in savage, Ultimates, dungeons, extremes, normal raids and so on and so forth meaning you get more game play as well.

And in that area you could reward the players better.

[Kirutsuki]

Yeah, if they were going to fix the problem (and they won't), they would need to do something like this

Well this on paper atleast sounds more simpler than what I suggested and probably fits better to the current structure the game already has.

[MetaBoi]

Yeah, if they were going to fix the problem (and they won't), they would need to do something like this to make gear less temporaryIMO.

An idea I have is to add a special stat to an expansion's max level gear. So for DT it would be LHW: +1, CW: +2, HW: +3
If the special stat is equal or higher than the content's special stat the item's stats stay as it is if it is lower ilvl is lowered to be equal to be min iLvl of the duty. Dungeon gear will always have +3 Special. Previous Armor/Accs etc's special stats can be upgraded by combining the previous and the current item together. And new armor/accs would have new stat distributions. At the end of the expansion, it would give both raiders and non-raiders multiple armor/accs to choose from. And would help with earlier content being too easy becuase of iLvl. And when we get to the next expansion, they can remove the special stat from everywhere.

And instead of adding raid bonuses/artifact bonuses etc they could add an off-hand slot items to all jobs that acts as runes. Lvl 1, iLvl 1 that gives bonuses. It could be grindy but then made easier after the expansion is over. I'm thinking something simple like AoE Thunder spells in BLM dealing equal damage to ST Thunder spells, Lowering the damage of Empyral Arrow but giving a second/third charge for BRD's etc.

[Brandr]

You can't really have interesting or unique effects on transient items that are designed to be thrown in the trash after a few months. This is just the nature of modern hamster wheel MMOs. Ideas like this don't work with the current formula and I don't see that changing any time soon.

(...)

I'd rather they just completely removed stats on gear and made it cosmetic. Having to replace our gear to get back to the same power level that we were already at previously every few months is tiresome and serves no purpose.

I like this idea!!

Remove all stats, and integrating with OPs idea, every gear we get could give us both glamour option and a permanent skill that could be as flat as

Dexterity+2

And as interesting as

(VPR) Ouroboros sequence is now 7yalms AoE.