Not everyone, and in fact almost no one, started at the bottom.
i made this character this season. what’s the excuse again?
For XIV specifically, even if you have never been told how to do it by a player, the game does point you at NPCs that sell gear.
If you are two patches behind and for some reason did not have yourself capped on catch-up currencies, your daily roulettes will net you a minimum of 600 of the legacy currency, and that’s if you somehow zone into all of your roulettes while the party is fighting the final boss so that all you get is the daily bonus.
You will also, if you’re playing a level-capped class, earn at least 720 of the uncapped currency that’s used to purchase level-capped catch-up gear, and 220 of the capped currency for the “progression” gear for the patch, up to the weekly maximum of 450 (which is usually doubled in the last patch).
Gear costs different amounts for different slots, 500 for the weapon, 410 for the chest and pants, 245 for each of the left side slots remaining, and 180 per each of the 5 right side slots for the uncapped currency, and 500/825/495/375 for the capped currency.
When a new tier of gear is released, the game rotates the currencies so your formerly capped currency becomes uncapped, a new capped currency is released, and you exchange the old uncapped currency for Poetics, the legacy currency.
In addition to the roulette bonuses, each boss you kill on a class that is max level drops some of each currency regardless of the dungeon in which you kill them, and some other activities can give bonus currencies. One is like a bingo book you can complete once a week.
The first completed run of each tier of the current 24 man raid drops a token to upgrade the gear, and you can also win one piece of gear per week if the 24 man was released this patch (the once per week restriction goes away if not).
Oh, and if you notice that I’ve been saying ‘tier’? That’s because of the way FFXIV handles patches. One patch will have the 24 man alliance raid, the next will have the 8 man raids that include Savage. Gear you get from the 8 mans is token based, one per fight per week, four fights per tier, with each piece costing 1, 2, or 4 tokens. If the patch released an 8 man raid, that gear has the highest ilvl, if not, the augmented tomestone gear does. A ‘tier’ of gear is both sets.
All of that together means you can gear up fairly quickly to hit minimum item levels to queue for anything you want to queue for, and to get into Savage raids without spending a bunch of gil is probably a week of work. Because that’s also ignoring the fact that crafters can create BoE-equivalent gear that’s considered perfectly acceptable to get into Savage content, even if people generally prefer you to have upgraded tomestone gear or gear from the normal mode of the 8 man raid.
The big difference though, is that you will have been exposed to all of those gearing systems except the crafted gear throughout your leveling experience, and even if the names of the tomestone and the location of the vendors have changed, the overall system won’t have, and the game will have pointed you to the tomestone vendors at least twice. Even if you somehow miss that, you would have been in the Novice Network from until your first level 80 combat class (and probably a bit after) unless you were intentionally ignoring every opportunity possible to ask for help in a party, alliance, or city channel, and a simple “/n I keep getting told I can’t carry any more tomestones of poetics, where can I use those?” will get you players pointing you to those systems, at least one of whom will probably also explain what you’re going to want to do with them. And you WILL cap out on Poetics, probably at least a day before you leave ARR. If you did ignore every chance possible to get into the novice network, you can substitute /sh if you’re in an area that other people are in and get pretty much the same answer.
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Unrealistic expectations net zero gain.
Do what the rest of us scrubs not pushing cutting edge are doing, work your way up the ladder. The top dogs are already farming valor, post a 5 key and get some gear. Then do it again, and again.
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Grab your own key +2 or whatever and post it. See if you can snag some valor farmers. Do however many you need to get some Vault loot plus whatever dungeon drops you get and work on gear.
Reading all of this old currency new currency capped currency legacy currency talk made my eyes cross, ngl. Whatever WoW devs do to improve our situation, I hope they never inflict this kind of system on us.
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It’s a lot less eye-crossing in practice. Run dungeons, get currency, buy gear. You will get currency for any dungeons/raids/daily roulette you do on a max level class. If you run raids, you get to roll on gear until you win one piece for week, but even if you somehow fail to win any of the 8 pieces your 8-man party is able to roll on and elect not to just run a second time, you’ll still earn currency to spend on gear.
Every other patch, new gear releases and your currencies get shifted down a rank to compensate. If you were spending Tomestone A on ilvl 560 gear, you’ll still spend Tomestone A on 560 gear, but Tomestone B will have released with 590 gear to buy with it, and you’ll be able to earn as much of Tomestone A as you can stomach.
Next time, A will be converted into legacy, B will still be spent on 590 gear, and Tomestone C will release and can be used on 620 gear. Once that happens, you can grind as much Tomestone B as you want.
The only reason it rotates is so that you can’t just cap out on Tomestone B right before a new set of gear drops and start with a boost.
And that’s as opposed to needing Garrison resources, Apexis Shards, Order Hall Resources, Legionfall Resources, Artifact Power, War Resources, Azerite, Redeemed Souls, Anima, Soul Ash, Soul Embers, Soul Cinders, Cosmic Flux…
But you literally never needed all of those things at the same time.
I’m not reading all that other stuff, no offense. I tried out FFXIV a while back and it wasn’t the game for me. I’m over 30 and my brain has limited space these days; I can’t cram it full of all of that information on systems I’ll never engage with.
yeah there’s no real difference between me farming a +2 workshop over and over for a overclocking bit band and farming valor or whatever currency to buy one.
The game is designed by elitists for elitists. Casuals need not apply.
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where tho? where in the game is this elitist ville, i must be missing something
this season is like a casuals dream, it’s so easy to get gear right now for minimal effort
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yeah but like where in the game, idc about ion’s guild name lmao
What a coincidence.
Ion is the Game Director, prior to that he was the Guild Leader for a guild called Elitist Jerks. It tells you all you need to know. He caters to the 1%.
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I feel like somehow the words “cater to elitists” has become a buzzword and people don’t even know why or how in game this exists lmao
where azarak. where do you see a problem with the game catering to elitists.
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NGL, you had me in the first half, then I recognized the avatar, read the name, and realized what this was.
Almost got me.
As a fresh undergeared player wouldn’t you be trying to group with other new fresh and undergeared players to progress with rather than trying to jump straight into a +15, heroic raid, or someone’s 1800 rated PvP team?
That does sound like a problem. Junkyard needs buffed to be better aligned 
You’re saying it should be comparable in difficulty to your preferred form of content (the first 3 bosses of normal)? You do sure have a lot of keystone masters.
I’m agreeing with the poster that JY and Lower Kara have a large gap in difficulty that should be corrected.