servers way more empty now? Still doing the linear gear climb?

[Demon6324236]

No, if you're unhappy where you are nothing's stopping you moving, I'm happy where I am thanks.

I don't want to leave my friends on Phoenix, I don't want to be on a server with few people on every day, tell me, how does one solve this? Only way I know of is merging.

[saevel]

Umm this game's always been vertical, all MMO's are. At level 75 you were not using a Bee Spatha. At level 90 you were not using a level 75 weapon. Level 90~99 things leveled out a bit as Tanaka tried to reverse the gear progression from Abyssea but there was still progression from voidwatch, magian and legion. Now we are level 119 (effective) and are using level 103~119 gear.

The only issue is that SE released level 119 gear too fast, they did 20 levels of gear progression in a matter of months. They should of been much slower about it, 103 then 105, 107, 110, 113, 115, 117 and eventually 119 sometime next year. I wouldn't expect a level 119 person to wield a level 99 weapon for the same reason I wouldn't expect a level 99 person to wield a level 75 weapon.

[Demon6324236]

Except for many years 75 was the cap, through RotZ, CoP, ToAU, and WotG, a long period of horizontal progression, then they released Abyssea, we went to level 99, and during that time it was vertical for a short time, with only Abyssea/VW/WoE for gear till 99 really, then it went back to horizontal. Really, if you look at the history of the game, the game has been horizontal far more often than it has ever been vertical.

Saying that we didn't use underleveled gear doesn't say much, once you leveled to 75 the gear was horizontal for a long time, same with 99, as I said, short bursts of vertical, but when we hit 99 we had a large selection of gear to pick from, some better than others, yes, but not so much better that only it matters. At the point the game is getting to now, 1 weapon is vastly better than everything else with no real comparison between the two in damage, for instance, Oats and Rigors have an extremely large gap, far larger than, say, Relic H2H & Brawny. That kind of imbalance is new, and bad for the game.

[leorez]

Umm this game's always been vertical, all MMO's are. At level 75 you were not using a Bee Spatha. At level 90 you were not using a level 75 weapon. Level 90~99 things leveled out a bit as Tanaka tried to reverse the gear progression from Abyssea but there was still progression from voidwatch, magian and legion. Now we are level 119 (effective) and are using level 103~119 gear.

The only issue is that SE released level 119 gear too fast, they did 20 levels of gear progression in a matter of months. They should of been much slower about it, 103 then 105, 107, 110, 113, 115, 117 and eventually 119 sometime next year. I wouldn't expect a level 119 person to wield a level 99 weapon for the same reason I wouldn't expect a level 99 person to wield a level 75 weapon.

like demon said below me, it spent more time horizontal content wise than ever vertical, now even at 99 cap they are continuing the stupid vertical climb with this dumb ilevel crap. Not only is it keeping going instead of going back to how it was at 75 cap where it goes back to horizontal, its doing the fastest vertical its ever done, within a month or 2 when everything you got was suddenly crap, especially with weapons.

People dont want this vertical climb anymore and want it to go back to how 75 cap was. Lots of endgame to be viable and not just turn it into this climb to do a single event. Ilevel was basically garbage they pulled over from FFXIV and if we wanted to do that junk, we could play XIV and not this.

[predatory]

like demon said below me, it spent more time horizontal content wise than ever vertical, now even at 99 cap they are continuing the stupid vertical climb with this dumb ilevel crap. Not only is it keeping going instead of going back to how it was at 75 cap where it goes back to horizontal, its doing the fastest vertical its ever done, within a month or 2 when everything you got was suddenly crap, especially with weapons.

People dont want this vertical climb anymore and want it to go back to how 75 cap was. Lots of endgame to be viable and not just turn it into this climb to do a single event. Ilevel was basically garbage they pulled over from FFXIV and if we wanted to do that junk, we could play XIV and not this.

IMO if they want to keep this ilevel crap, fine, just side grade every other part of the game, so it all becomes relevant again

[Draylo]

Funny, just a year or so ago people were super tired of "side grades". You can't please anyone lmao.

[predatory]

I don't remember saying anything on the forums a year ago, but I do remember bitching ingame about the same things I am whining about in the forums now, and it fundamentally comes down to a lack of rewarding content at endgame, and or content that has been brushed aside for new endgame content rather than being brought up to date.

There would be so much stuff to do in Vanadiel that getting all of it done would be a daunting task to even the most diehard of us, if they would just go ahead and make it all relevant again, and let's face it, the real reason everyone hates the ilevel system is it was a blatant statement "This game is nothing but a time sink, and your goals and efforts to attain them, mean nothing"

[detlef]

Funny, just a year or so ago people were super tired of "side grades". You can't please anyone lmao.

I know I use the term sidegrade a bit too liberally but I don't really mean it literally. It's mostly used to contrast against ilvl gear and wholesale replacement and obsoletion. I think most people who continue to play enjoy situationally good gear with occasional best-in-slot pieces introduced every so often.

[leorez]

I know I use the term sidegrade a bit too liberally but I don't really mean it literally. It's mostly used to contrast against ilvl gear and wholesale replacement and obsoletion. I think most people who continue to play enjoy situationally good gear with occasional best-in-slot pieces introduced every so often.

There has always been some slightly better pieces introduced, the thing is, they were never such a giant leap that it made anything but that one thing pretty much irrelevant or if you didnt have it, your exceedingly weaker than the other person. I never liked salvage and it took forever to complete a single piece, so i pretty much ignored it, and honestly that was just fine because it wasnt such a step up that i was utterly useless without it.

The other obvious thing was that these slight upgrades came every so often and not every couple of months. They also normally didnt replace entire sets of stuff, they would do a piece here and there. These updates basically take (for example) a DDs TP and Haste set and completely replaces all of it at once. This was never the norm, nor should it be.

That style is how games Post WoW work it seems...and they haven't exactly fared well. Right as this game decided to pull this crap me, a bunch of my friends all got fed up and left, and when we came back its now a ghost town...i wonder why? I don't wanna play a dumb 1 game event ladder climb, nor can i see most of the FFXI players wanting that either, if they did there are choices out the bum to do that exact thing, including the overly praised FFXIV.

[Camiie]

I'm going to go with saevel on this. They basically implemented Mount Everest when all they needed was a mild incline. All the new gear needed were slight stat boosts compared to what we already had and some unique bonuses. Old content would still be relevant and people would have had plenty of incentive to chase the new shinies.