Endgame Gear Progression is Broken

[Ladon]

I have been wanting to outline this issue for a while but also wanted to provide some thought-out proposals to resolve this issues as well. As a warning, this is going to be a long post. First off the problem:

Endgame gear progression is broken. There are two major problems currently present; risk versus rewards is way out of line for AF2 and Relic +1 weapons and there is too much gear redundancy. Additionally it raises concerns of the relevancy of new content added later on such as Crystal Tower.

Before I go into some solution proposals here are some assumptions I am making:

• There is a desire to have a balanced risk versus reward system in place at the endgame. This does seem to be the case by the game designers as a very balanced system is in place until you hit the endgame.
• The game designers realize that gear progression is the main drive for the endgame of a MMO. Against they seem to realize this as they have the tome system in place to perpetuate this goal for the players as well as and iLevel system in place that quantifies your character progression after hitting the level cap.
• AF2 and Relic +1 should to be the current best in slot in the game. I think the reason for this is unlike Allagan, AF2 and Relic are Job specific rather than role specific. Suiting out your character in a full set of AF2 generally would be favorable to most players since it better defines them from the other jobs in the game. Job specific armor being BiS also has another advantage which I will go into detail more in the below solutions.

The proposals to resolving the above are just that, proposals. I would ask that even if you don't agree with the proposed solutions, I would hope that you agree with the above problems. Additionally my solutions only really tackle the Darklight -> Allagan = AF2 as well as the Relic +1 issue. I know there is also an issue with Titan weapons and Relics but I'm not really sure how to resolve that myself. Additionally I think that is less of an issue, since while not ideal, a minor solution is that Titan weapons can be used on additional jobs the player has until they get the Relic for that job as well. I completely understand many people will not agree with the proposals as it involves changing gear that people have already worked hard in getting, however I hope after reading this you will understand why I am making the proposals and the health it will bring to the endgame and future content.

My proposal has two phases. Phase 1 involves stopping the bleeding while Phase 2 would look to clean up the problem.

Phase 1 would be to re-itemize and reclassify the current endgame gear while keeping future additional content in mind. Steps involved would be:

• Removing Artifact Armor 2 and the Relic + 1 upgrade item from the Mythology Tomestone vendors.
• Remove Allagan gear drops from Bahamut's Coil.
• Re-stat Allagan gear to be iLevel 80-85, including the weapons.
• Add the newly stat Allagan gear to the Mythology vendor to replace the AF2 gear, and the Allagan Weapon to replace the Relic + 1 upgrade item.
• Re-itemize Bahamut's Coil with AF2 drops as well as some kind of drop that can be used to temper Relic weapons to Relic + 1. The relic tempers could require more than just one in order to balance out risk vs reward.

This re-itemization would resolve many issues:

• Removes the current Allagan and AF2 redundancy allowing people to complete gear sets.
• Smooths out gear progression and risk vs reward. You can gain very good gear without ever setting foot in Bahamut's Coil, however it would also create a drive for players to want to tackle the Coil for the better gear that can be found there as well.
• Alleviates the high Mythology Tomestone cost to gear out multiple jobs since Allagan is role specific and can be shared similar to Darklight.

Additionally, this opens up a lot more options for future content. I don't know exactly what the team has planned for Crystal Tower, however the above solution also paves the way to be able to do some interesting things with the Tower and gear. First off, it can be itemized with iLevel 80-85 gear and it would make sense for all players to take on this content as the Mythology limit would still be slowing down gearing and no doubt people already taking on Bahamut's Coil will still be able to fill out gear slots with Crystal Tower Gear.

By moving AF2 to Coil only, another very interesting option opens up. They could add AF2 temper drops the Crystal Tower that could be applied to AF2 to provide additional effects that were lost from 1.0. This would provide motivation for ALL players to take on the Crystal Tower, even the ones that are completing Coil on a weekly basis.

With Phase 1 out of the way, the more difficult part Phase 2 the clean-up comes into play. One option would just be to leave items as they are and just implement the Phase 1 changes. This could cause problems though as people with Allagan gear will find themselves with lesser gear and people that are a few Tomes short of that Relic +1 will feel cheated if they just miss the cut-off. So to fairly clean-up the issue I would propose the following:

Implement a system that was similar to Dated gear in 1.0 to all current Allagan, AF2 and Relic +1 items in the game. This would mean drastically lower the stats of these items then implement a trade-in system for players which again is a system already in place today. Details would be:

• Dated Relic +1 can be traded in for a standard Relic plus the amount of Mythology Tomestones Allagan weapons would cost. The player then can use those Tomes to buy an Allagan weapon from the vendor or choose to spend them elsewhere.
• Dated AF2 can be traded in for the cost of Mythology Tomestones the amount the current slot would cost for the Allagan equivalent.
• Dated Allagan can be traded in for a AF2 item of the same gear slot.

Completely understand the above will be very controversial to a lot of people, but I think it is the fairest way to get the end-game gear progression on the track it needs to be both for the current endgame as well as any future content until the next major expansion is released.