I'm pretty sure you've heard from influencers about how gearing is becoming a major pain point for the game right now due to how little gear we have between iLv to the point that end-game BiS is locked behind Savage alone(with no guarantees on getting a piece no less).
For casuals, this doesn't matter too much - they can go on about their merry day and play normally. For Raiders it's a different story. Raiders can't even swap jobs because of the very fact we have a systematic problem that is hindering job diversity into the next tier.
1) Tomestone Cap. The Cap is 450 per Week. This is too low considering we have 5 Roles and 21 Jobs(21 Weapons). 500 Tomestones per Weapon(PLUS THE WEAPON TOKEN) to even get that piece. It costs 825 for Body and Pants, and 475 for Head, Hands, and Feet. 325 for Accessories. That adds up in a role, because some equipment sets aren't for every job or just get skimmed over. Regardless, you essentially are waiting 2-3 Months to gear up an entire role with Tome Gear. While their main concern is people clearing the content too fast, go look at Hardcore, Developers. They clear that sh*t in literal DAYS. There is no reason to cap it at 450 and not uncap it by the X.X5 Patch.
2) Savage Loot. The Savage Loot System since Shadowbringers was revised to allow you to get a whole slew of equipment instead of having to fight over pieces that only drop in certain spots in Normal. In Savage, you are fighting over the BiS itself against 7 other players. The Books themselves are a PITY system. However, people can pity for different fights. If you can't reach M10 by Week 1, then you lose a page before you're able to get in there on Week 2 after your Week 1 M9 clear. This cascades based on your prog point throughout the raid tier until completion. The biggest problem is that the pity system does not address the gearing problem - it attributes to it.
How you ask? Same problem as say, the Tomestone issue. It's Weekly. One Clear. Let's say you get hardstuck on M11 because Split is impossible for PF to do for a while and you're still farming books weekly on M9 and M10 for BiS and not winning a roll. The gear progression is sluggish and feels really bad all because you don't win that piece of gear. Statics don't have to worry about this and it's why it's less problematic in those instances; but I'm talking about the average player going into PF here.
If anything, they should consider doing what Alliance Raid does: A Dual Lockout. One for one piece of Gear from that Savage Fight, the other for the Book. The Gear Lockout would also attribute to Glaze, Twine and Ester - this way people aren't losing out every damn week just because they get screwed over by RNG Rolls in PF while one guy takes everything. The books stay as an added tier of progression for that fight and can be used to make it easier to gear other jobs. It would definitely make finding statics easier if the player decides to play two or three different roles in a tier to make them more viable for a spot.
3) Lack of Gear Progression Outside Savage and Tomestones.
This one has been talked to death among influencers, and is harming content. Oh, what's that? You want a Twine or Glaze to come from content that's released mid-way before the next major patch? Too bad! Instead, enjoy a crapton of Fireworks, Materia, and some Glams! Also, we made a couple hard versions with no gear progression to be added whatsoever!
That is current Variant in a nutshell and people don't like it because of that. There is no carrot on that stick. There is only stick because once people have the glam and complete the content? They're gone. They're not coming back to it. It's been a problem with Variant since Endwalker and continues even now. Heck, an easy solution is simply just make people do Advanced for say, Ester, Twine, and Glaze on a Weekly Lockout if you really want to put it that way. It isn't rocket science to make gearing better the later you go into a raid tier - in fact, it actually makes people become more diverse when it comes to job gearing.
Did I also forget that Occult Crescent failed as well in this manner with the i745 gear sets with the upgrades not even helping push the iLv up to say, 755 or something during that time when we had Cruiserweight? It kinda becomes moot when you don't even allow that and makes gearing harder(because let's be honest, Relic Armor was kinda cool back in Eureka).
So, let's circle back around to another argument that has some relevance here: Rewards. Rewards aren't just glams, Materia, whatever - rewards also can come in the form of gear that is a straight upgrade for the character and can help them get into harder content with some more leeway than a person in full crafted so to speak if we're talking about current high-end. Every step of the way in Dawntrail they have failed to reward the players for their time. Cosmic Exploration may have been something, sure - but it still suffers the same "got mine, i'm done" behavior that players often do when they finish or obtain all the content has to offer; not to mention, the Dawntrail Patches haven't held up on their own pretty well as in-betweens.
Relic Weapon currently is a mess because of the reintroduction of Demi-Atmas that everyone hates, then getting Aether, THEN dealing with finding 1200 pieces of paste that I buried Gerolt in. As much as I understand it's longform, it's not long-standing - especially with the level of tedium they have gone to make sure that the content is stretched as thin as possible. What kind of reward is that for doing all these macguffins? Cool looking weapon, sure, but not a good balance compared to say Shadowbringers Relic Weapons.
Regardless, the argument is the same: Players aren't rewarded enough in content - especially High-end - to be able to have the ability to swap jobs if they so choose to do so mid-way through a tier for some reason or another. The Content in turn suffers for it, just as Variant is suffering heavily from lack of meaningful rewards. We should not have to beg or plead the dev team for this, but they need to get their act together after this fiasco if they want to stand up for another ten years.
Continue reading...
For casuals, this doesn't matter too much - they can go on about their merry day and play normally. For Raiders it's a different story. Raiders can't even swap jobs because of the very fact we have a systematic problem that is hindering job diversity into the next tier.
1) Tomestone Cap. The Cap is 450 per Week. This is too low considering we have 5 Roles and 21 Jobs(21 Weapons). 500 Tomestones per Weapon(PLUS THE WEAPON TOKEN) to even get that piece. It costs 825 for Body and Pants, and 475 for Head, Hands, and Feet. 325 for Accessories. That adds up in a role, because some equipment sets aren't for every job or just get skimmed over. Regardless, you essentially are waiting 2-3 Months to gear up an entire role with Tome Gear. While their main concern is people clearing the content too fast, go look at Hardcore, Developers. They clear that sh*t in literal DAYS. There is no reason to cap it at 450 and not uncap it by the X.X5 Patch.
2) Savage Loot. The Savage Loot System since Shadowbringers was revised to allow you to get a whole slew of equipment instead of having to fight over pieces that only drop in certain spots in Normal. In Savage, you are fighting over the BiS itself against 7 other players. The Books themselves are a PITY system. However, people can pity for different fights. If you can't reach M10 by Week 1, then you lose a page before you're able to get in there on Week 2 after your Week 1 M9 clear. This cascades based on your prog point throughout the raid tier until completion. The biggest problem is that the pity system does not address the gearing problem - it attributes to it.
How you ask? Same problem as say, the Tomestone issue. It's Weekly. One Clear. Let's say you get hardstuck on M11 because Split is impossible for PF to do for a while and you're still farming books weekly on M9 and M10 for BiS and not winning a roll. The gear progression is sluggish and feels really bad all because you don't win that piece of gear. Statics don't have to worry about this and it's why it's less problematic in those instances; but I'm talking about the average player going into PF here.
If anything, they should consider doing what Alliance Raid does: A Dual Lockout. One for one piece of Gear from that Savage Fight, the other for the Book. The Gear Lockout would also attribute to Glaze, Twine and Ester - this way people aren't losing out every damn week just because they get screwed over by RNG Rolls in PF while one guy takes everything. The books stay as an added tier of progression for that fight and can be used to make it easier to gear other jobs. It would definitely make finding statics easier if the player decides to play two or three different roles in a tier to make them more viable for a spot.
3) Lack of Gear Progression Outside Savage and Tomestones.
This one has been talked to death among influencers, and is harming content. Oh, what's that? You want a Twine or Glaze to come from content that's released mid-way before the next major patch? Too bad! Instead, enjoy a crapton of Fireworks, Materia, and some Glams! Also, we made a couple hard versions with no gear progression to be added whatsoever!
That is current Variant in a nutshell and people don't like it because of that. There is no carrot on that stick. There is only stick because once people have the glam and complete the content? They're gone. They're not coming back to it. It's been a problem with Variant since Endwalker and continues even now. Heck, an easy solution is simply just make people do Advanced for say, Ester, Twine, and Glaze on a Weekly Lockout if you really want to put it that way. It isn't rocket science to make gearing better the later you go into a raid tier - in fact, it actually makes people become more diverse when it comes to job gearing.
Did I also forget that Occult Crescent failed as well in this manner with the i745 gear sets with the upgrades not even helping push the iLv up to say, 755 or something during that time when we had Cruiserweight? It kinda becomes moot when you don't even allow that and makes gearing harder(because let's be honest, Relic Armor was kinda cool back in Eureka).
So, let's circle back around to another argument that has some relevance here: Rewards. Rewards aren't just glams, Materia, whatever - rewards also can come in the form of gear that is a straight upgrade for the character and can help them get into harder content with some more leeway than a person in full crafted so to speak if we're talking about current high-end. Every step of the way in Dawntrail they have failed to reward the players for their time. Cosmic Exploration may have been something, sure - but it still suffers the same "got mine, i'm done" behavior that players often do when they finish or obtain all the content has to offer; not to mention, the Dawntrail Patches haven't held up on their own pretty well as in-betweens.
Relic Weapon currently is a mess because of the reintroduction of Demi-Atmas that everyone hates, then getting Aether, THEN dealing with finding 1200 pieces of paste that I buried Gerolt in. As much as I understand it's longform, it's not long-standing - especially with the level of tedium they have gone to make sure that the content is stretched as thin as possible. What kind of reward is that for doing all these macguffins? Cool looking weapon, sure, but not a good balance compared to say Shadowbringers Relic Weapons.
Regardless, the argument is the same: Players aren't rewarded enough in content - especially High-end - to be able to have the ability to swap jobs if they so choose to do so mid-way through a tier for some reason or another. The Content in turn suffers for it, just as Variant is suffering heavily from lack of meaningful rewards. We should not have to beg or plead the dev team for this, but they need to get their act together after this fiasco if they want to stand up for another ten years.
Continue reading...