Item level / vertical progression query

[Zumi]

Totally agree. SoA, which we paid money for, should not have made us feel like our lvl99 gear was being the victim of a Scorched Earth policy. SoA could have arrived, with new battlefields, exotic new areas, missions, quests, new mobs, all which could have been enjoyed with our favourite AF3+2, Relic+2[aug], Woepath empys, Magian99s, RMEs of any 80+ stage, VW / NNI gear etc.etc. SoA did not have to be a destroying-all-your-existing-gear expansion.
It could have been a great expansion. What it should certainly not have done, is make players with full sets of AF3+2 which they didn't get from login campaign but actually farmed in 2010 when it was still challenging to farm Aby, make those players feel that those high lvl armors with really useful jobspecific stats, and relic+2 sets[aug] also with useful stats, were totally totally useless now. The idea of new expansion, is to make players happy. I could list you just dozens of close personal friends who have quit FFXI since iLvl arrived, and since their Woepath empys were $hit on from a great height, quit the game after playing it for nine years through good days and bad days, but finally SoA made them feel actually hated on by SE to the extent they quit the game. And they aren't going to 14 either. I myself went 1/130~ on Spurrer Beret, camped it from 2009-2012. But I didn't complain, even if there had been forums to complain on. Me and most of my friends ingame would never complain about anything in FFXI regardless of how difficult it was to achieve/obtain. But this is different. This is a slap in our collective faces. It is insulting.
New expansions should bring new mobs, areas, missions/quests, and yes lots of new armor/weaps. New expansion should make the paying customer happy, not make them cry and quit the game in horror. New expansions should NOT destroy the existing lvl99 armor and weaps that people have worked so hard to build. Real life thousands of hours building stuff in FFXI, is not virtual time, it is your actual real life time. For SE to suddenly announce that all that work you did meant jack $hit to them, in an expansion you paid them money for, it is like you are paying them to destroy all the hard work you did, and the items you loved so much and were so proud of. And also when the level-cap rose from 95-99 there was SE interview saying "ever since 2002 we had planned to eventually raise the cap to 99 gradually, and for 99 to be the absolutely final cap." So we all thought our lvl 90-99 gear was always going to be useful, for that reason alone. And those items were lvl99 on a lvl99 char, so WHY would they be gimp, why should they be outdated and retroactively nerfed and entirely transformed without any good reason.

Look at it this way, they didn't want to make a new UI maybe PS2 limitations who knows but adding 3 digits for your level they didn't want to do. However now we progress our characters with gear more so now due to the fact they won't want to raise the actual level cap. When you have 119 gear you can think of your character as being level 119.

I see no problem at all with gear progression and have no problem replacing my old empyrean and vw, nni, salvage2, stuff with new gear. Its just gear in a video game it has no sentimental value to me. It served me well in the 99 era. However in this SoA era were mobs are higher levels way beyond 99, we need new gear to combat so getting new gear to beat the new content is naturally the next step.

I don't see why anyone would be mad at gear progression. You get to play the game more and get some new gear kill some new mobs. Getting new gear is the natural step in the game.

Did you really want to keep all your old gear like 99 stuff sit around in town and use the game for a chat room because there was really nothing new to get in SoA. I mean I sure didn't want that.

Let me tell you a story about the 75 ToAU-WotG era. . .

There was a time in the when WotG in 2007 came out it only really brought campaign to the game most of the top end stuff was still gotten in salvage ToAU content which came out in 2006 with its 1%~5% drop rates on 35 pieces. People did campaign for solo exp but for the most part WotG for the longest time was ignored because there wasn't any gear or anything you could get out of it except solo exp. Even with the horrible drop rates in Salvage lots of people finished the sets, I too finished almost every salvage piece. The only thing I had to do in FFXI Was long in the game stand around in whitegate because well I was done with salvage I got all the drops in there for just about every piece of armor. We had LS members just paying for the game to use it as a glorified chat room because basically that is all it was, we beat end game in about 2007 had all the drops nothing else left to do.

Since WotG offered almost no gear or endgame progression from 2006 to 2010 the game pretty much stagnated. After a year or so of salvage a lot of groups including mine were pretty much capped out on all the gear we wanted. Yes it took about a year we went every day just about. There were other ToAU events like Einherjar and ZNMs which helped fill out other gear but all this came from ToAU. Players would still ignore WotG except for that 1-2 hours of missions they got every other patch.

From about 2007 to 2010 the game was left in stagnation. Almost quit because there was just nothing to do. All you could do was log in to show off your salvage gear and stand around in whitegate there was really no challenge left in the game. 3 years of no new gear progression or meaningful endgame. Game became a chat room because pretty much most end game players conquered endgame.

That all changed when Abyssea came out in 2010 added some new life in the game finally would could progress our characters past 75, reach 99 and get new gear for them.

See I actually like playing the game getting new gear progressing my character. I don't like expansions like WotG where all the new zones basically get visited once for story missions then get ignored because there is no new gear or anything to get there.

Honestly I do not get the complaining about gear progression, because it gives you something new to work for.

Basically stop complaining about old gear get getting out dated and play the game and have fun. The idea of the item level going up and up is intriguing to me because it will keep me busy getting new gear sets and give me something to do which is play FFXI.

[Afania]

Its just gear in a video game it has no sentimental value to me.

I don't think we need to argue about gear progression anymore, this sentence is the core difference between us. Gears in FFXI have sentimental value to me, that's why I'm paying $12 a month to play the game. Remove that sentimental value then I have 0 interest to play anymore or else it'd be a waste of money. There's tons of free MMO out if I just want another MMORPG with no sentimental value, but I will pick old FFXI over any of other MMORPG(FFXI isn't the only MMORPG I've played, I played other titles too). I've played many MMORPG, FFXI is the only game I have emotional attachment on gears, every other MMO I got bored after 1 month including XIV due to lack of sentimental value, lol.