Hot Take: Modern AAA Games Have Terrible Gearing Systems – How They Can Do Better

I’m a huge fan of MMORPGs. I genuinely enjoy being inside a game that lets me do as I please and also giving me a world I want to live in and be a part of. Final Fantasy XIV is a great example because everything the game does from its music to the story is there to make me and others come back daily. Sprinkled on top of this rock solid foundation of world building are many other sub systems like crafting, gathering, fishing, dungeons, raids, armor for glamour and housing systems that are designed to keep players going back to the world of Eorzea.

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The Good

It starts like this, we need to be level 15 to do dungeons. Within those dungeons there’s a level requirement for the gear we find and then when we can wear that gear it then allows us to fight even more dungeons to get more gear. Then do more dungeons and become stronger. The idea is to string players along and waste their time. It sounds harsh, but essentially that’s what the gearing system in MMOs are for. Final Fantasy XIV does a great job of not making this be so blatant, they hide this with having a main story line you follow that will feed you gear and keep you appropriately leveled. The gearing and leveling is what props us up to face the dangers in the game.

I have over two thousand hours played in Final Fantasy XIV and I don’t think I have ever felt like the gear I am getting is useless, every time I get a token to exchange for the end game raid gear I FEEL like I need it because I do. The next raid tier is going to be even harder and I need the extra stat points to not instantly die from a raid wide attack, right? There isn’t any filler for these equipment pieces because they essentially are the pillars that make my character who they are within the fights. I can’t go into these encounters with a piece of gear I found at the start of the game. I can’t go in there with gear from my culinarian or my miner, either.

The Bad

The fact that many AAA games have taken the MMO gear mechanic and added it to their games to bloat play times is tragic. There are many games that take stats and put them onto a piece of gear that you equip and wear for twenty minutes before finding or crafting another one. As the story goes on, or you explore more of the world there’s a constant search for something new, but the returns aren’t worth it in the slightest, you get +5 attack against undead and +1 defense. Or even worse, you get a piece of gear that only effects enemies in that specific area of the game.

I don’t think I have ever played a modern video game besides the Souls series and Nioh that have made me ever consider what stats my character has. The Souls series does an amazing job of balancing their games so any additions or subtractions from the piece of gear matter, and throughout the leveling process your stats grow around the gear. That chest piece you found at the start of Elden Ring can carry you to the end of the game just due to your stats increasing from leveling up.

The Ugly

The Witcher 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Assassin’s Creed, God of War Ragnarök, Gotham Knights, Cyberpunk and many more all have these systems where you’re given loot and equipment constantly through your playtime. The loot is usually used in such a way to make you level up a weapon or craft something to affix to your weapon. On top of this, they all have leveling systems, but there’s no gain from it other than buying a perk or skill. Your character growth is stagnated due to this.

Game designers artificially make the player feel weak, so they seek out gear in their massive worlds to bloat the amount of time spent in them. All of these games have a carrot dangling in front pushing progression forward and that carrot is usually the story, people don’t play many of these games for the gameplay. The joy of exploration is there, I think, but there’s nothing pushing the leveling or new gear acquisition in a way that makes sense for these types of semi-open world story focused games.

It may seem like I’m explaining the MMORPG gearing system to you, and that’s partially true. But I want everyone to remember that those games are designed to suck time away from the player by keeping us subscribed to their services or purchasing expansions. There are many ways that developers have found to hide these angles as well, and honestly I think that gearing like this is fine when there’s an end goal in mind for why the gear is there. In FFXIV you get the gear to progress the story and to maybe to high-end raids. In World of Warcraft, the gearing is there to do a similar thing. But in God of War Ragnarök or Gotham Knights, what is there beyond the credits rolling? What is there to do after the game is “done”? Nothing.

In Conclusion

There won’t be any raids to come out or story expansions following a game completion. While there aren’t any systems outside the gear, equipment, story and skills to allow for a space for players to exist outside the main story of the game. Hopefully soon, game designers find other ways to fill out play time for their games. Something that is meaningful and cohesive to what a single player game is. Give us more experiences that make sense as a whole, like Elden Ring. Let players wear whatever they want because it looks cool. If you have a leveling system, let us choose what stats we grow! Give players less options that are more meaningful. Give players something that will make them want to come back to the game, like branching skill trees or alternative classes.

Invest the money into making those systems prevalent like they used to be before the PS3/360 era. Not every game needs these, either! We can just not have them in so many games and the experience would be greatly improved. Sooner or later the industry will realize that it needs to change and when the day comes where I don’t have to see +8% agility increases in my single player games I can die happy.

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