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having gear that's made for specific types of content would actually be very awesome...
To be clear, I have no problem with this, when it lines up well with the content in a way when it isn't the "bored man's" gear. I don't think "make this content I'm bored of go quicker" is a good use of actual development time at the gear level, because that's a band-aid. The fact that people are running content they are bored of is the problem.
The solution, of course, is to make sure that doesn't happen. Either make the content more interesting, with higher replay value, or stop making people run it. I don't think "well, we made it less painful" is a solution.
That said, if the gear itself was fun to use, that could be different. But it has to be fun in a way that actually creates tangible replay value, it can't just be a gimmick. For instance, "turns Fire into Firaga" would be a lot of fun the first 2-3 times you go through an old dungeon. It's going to stop being fun after that, which makes it a poor solution to the actual boredom problem.
On the other hand, they could implement a "legacy" dungeon mode, where all the mob packs became randomly placed, where they added patrols, where the difficulty scaled to the ilvl of the group, where enemies and attack patterns changed on party makeup, etc. And if they attached more tangible rewards to this (and added a large pool of random, rare drops), then that content becomes WAY more interesting.
That's a lot of design work, sure. But once you get the core mechanics down, you can build future dungeons with that in mind. If players are always going to be playing tactically, old content becomes new and interesting, because it's always new, always interesting, and (probably) always has the potential for a cool new goodie for both veteran and newbie players.
Maybe that's a unique mount skin, maybe it's a legacy bow where the ilvl matches the job level of the equipped player (so you never need to upgrade your weapon when leveling), maybe it's a unique and rare housing item (sold for a pretty penny or placed in your house), etc. Hell, they could even do things like drop custom tattoo options. That means you can help new players gear and it's no problem, because their lower gear level is causing the actual instance to scale down in difficulty, so everyone contributes equally, all things considered.
When we're talking specifically about gear with special effects, I think it can be interesting when content is built around those. I don't think "Makes Spirits Within cause X" is that interesting. But if you could earn a legacy "dungeon master" set, that let's you do something really fun or interesting within the context of dungeons, then maybe it could be.
I don't have an answer on how to make "bored man" gear work well as anything other than a bandaid. I bet there IS a way, but I don't know it. I think content would need to be designed around it's potential implementation, though, and that it would need effects more interesting than "Spirits Within causes X effect."
A Dungeon Master set that gave a special capability to a player, based on both their class and the dungeon? That could be fun. Like if having a Whm with the Dungeon Master set in a dungeon with poison moats gave them water walking, so they could run over the moats to hit a level that opened a shortcut. But if you had a Scholar in that dungeon, you'd only get a "charm monster" effect (replacing your fairy with a monster minion, which acted as both CC and a dps boon).
I really don't see FFXIV ever implementing something like that. I'm HOPING that we'll see MMOs with randomly generated dungeons in the next 5 years, but that might be too much of a dream.
Edited, Feb 22nd 2014 6:18pm by idiggory
