Thread: Will there be progression in 2.0?

As it stands, there is a dire lack of progression in the current version of the game. Being able to do most of the content in AF, with only Garuda and Hardmode Darnus needing more than AF, it begs the question: "Why should I bother playing if there's so few obtainable goals?"

When most of the best gear is outdone by melded crafted gear, any sense of progression that might've been in the game is lost. Why do Hamlet for anything other than relic if you can simply triple meld crafted gear to beat out Militia gear? Why bother with grinding for GC seals when, once again, if you dump enough money into the wards you're able to come out even or slightly better? Darklight is the only gear in the game that avoids the "beaten by triple/quad meld crafted gear(which is crafted not from rare monsters, but from easily mined cobalt)" standard that most all gear does. BLM is especially guilty of this when their Darklight gear is so worthless.

Even then, any content you would "need" Darklight for, you can do with crafted gear or even AF. So what's the point in to it all? You may be doing more damage, you may take less damage, you may heal for more and be able to heal longer, but for what purpose?

An example of progression would be:
Hitting 50-->Buying Crafted Gear, which would be needed to survive/do enough dmage in-->Darkhold, which would provide gear that would be needed for-->Aurum Vale/Cutter's Cry/Ifrit/Moogle-->Which would provide gear needed for Garuda/Hardmode Darnus

As it is now, the "progression" is:
Hitting 50-->Level 50 job fight for body AF and/or farm until you have enough to throw money at wards until you have double/triple melded gear-->Any content in the game

I realize crafters need to have a purpose to drive the economy, so why not make all gear meldable? That way crafters are always in demand, as if they're not already to fix gear. Things relics needing double meld class weapon for relics also provides a demand for crafters, as well as any new content they're providing in 2.0. I would just like some feedback or a dev response on the issue, thank you for reading.

Basicly, every patch we should trash previous gear ? Hell, no

I's personally rather the progression come from XI's merit system, though I'm not against your proposed gear progression idea's.

There certainly needs to be stuff to do and reasons to just get out there.

No there will be no progression.

You just stand in one point and wait the whole time. It's super fun.

Originally Posted by yukikaze_yanagi

Basicly, every patch we should trash previous gear ? Hell, no

What I mean is everyone should have to work through this progression. It shouldn't be that someone who just hits 50 should be able to tackle the newest content. I'm saying everyone should have to go through all the content, like a ladder. It gives a sense of accomplishment and progression. I don't know about you, but I don't consider farming all day and then sitting in the wards, hoping I get triple melds exciting and involving endgame.

I'm not saying I agree with the RNG aspect of drops. It's my stance that drops should be guaranteed every run, at least one or two. The only reason XI worked so well with horizontal progression was because you were able to gear swap. RNG was sort of okay in this regard because each piece of gear you got had a place somewhere in your gearswaps, otherwise you wouldn't be bothering with it. This isn't the case in XIV however. There are many situations in this game where gear swapping would make tons more gear viable, such as mage darklight gear when casting enhancing magic. The XI model won't work without gear swapping, I feel a vanilla WoW approach would much better suit the game in terms of how endgame and the gear around it worked.

Crafting and the economy are significantly more important in Final Fantasy MMOs than most, and it would be a giant kick to the dangly parts if they were to nerf crafting into the ground and put it on par with crafting in most other games.

They've already talked about making more gear, less randomness to drops, etc. in the raid content in 2.0 But having crafted equivalents seems to be the route they're taking, which is fine. I'd also be fine with them implementing a system where certain rare gear requires crafting and raiding, if they don't want to allow purely crafted gear to hit 100% quality of bleeding edged raid gear.

Abjurations & Cursed gear come to mind, but there are other ways to implement the system as well. But it shouldn't be the primary end-game gear system, as many people will likely be annoyed with having to invest all of that gil into gear they feel they should just "get" for defeating a boss.

Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

One does not simply.... meld crafted gear. (insert meme photo)

Making crafting valuabe is one of the things this game has done right. There are some good drops in this game, such as darklight, But dungeons and boss fights are not the be-all-end-all of this game nor should it be.



and to answer this question: Some gamers take pride in personal progression and don't need a boss or a dungeon to motivate them do that. And we do finally have some geniunely hard content to test their mettle. Namely, Darnus Hard and (somewhat) Ifrit Extreme.

Agreed.
7 Magic and Warrior
3 Gathering
8 Crafting

You thought the game should turn over half its jobs in to junk nobody does because you can farm dungeons instead?