Revocation and replacement of item level system

[Rubeus]

... your atrophy/vivation ALREADY is 52 dex shy of what THF gets. Your argument doesn't make sense. And if the gear you were using did have any +DEX on it, you could make up that 52 dex without having to sacrifice a whole bunch of other stats that vitivation/atrophy gives. You can tapdance around it all you like, but if your RDM had the INT/MND/CHR that atrophy/vitivation gets without actually having to wear atrophy/vitivation+1 sets, you could feel free to wear +accuracy and +dex sets with a greater degree of freedom. You're still missing the forest for the trees. Again, I really do have the highest respect for your opinion, but if your argument has holes in it, people like me are going to hole-punch them. This is one such case.

Removing it now might do more harm in the short term, but you really feel that the long-term would suffer for it? How? If anything, we'd be stronger. Your gear choices rise exponentially with the removal of ilvl in favor of actual levels, in ANY form. merit levels, actual levels, I couldn't really care less. Anything would be better than this.

What about people who don't have BLM? What if you only have, say, Dancer. How does a person who only has DNC farm sparks effectively? You can't even break 500 damage except on weaponskills. That's fair? I have a Maat's Cap, so, I couldn't really care less personally. But if your job can't do it, then -you- can't do it without spending time getting a job that can. That amounts to time spent leveling some job you can't gear properly without a ton of effort that you don't really care about (spells aren't cheap, I'll remind you) in order to get the job you DO care about to top shape. Hardly fair.

edit: DNC is the go-to for Dynamis currency farming (for obvious reasons) so assuming your end-goal is to have a relic to get you into the invites to the top-tier events, DNC would be the job to do. Assuming you realize that before leveling anything else and therefore monopolize on your kill/time ratio, it behooves you to increase your survivability and DD performance. Doing so on just DNC is nigh impossible though. I have a THF mule, and in 24 hours of farming she -might- get 20k sparks. Maybe. Sometimes. That's with trying to stack RoE goals to everything possible in Ceizak (including drops) and killing the Mandragoras until they become an endangered species. Your argument is that I should spend 200k+ in gil and 3 days in Bostanieux Oubliette getting her to BLM 99 so I can swarm my way through Abyssea-Vunkerl's Helter-Skelter until I can farm 50k in 6 hours so I can do this 4 times to get a single piece of 109?

Sounds awesome. I'll get right on that.

[Demonjustin]

... your atrophy/vivation ALREADY is 52 dex shy of what THF gets. Your argument doesn't make sense. And if the gear you were using did have any +DEX on it, you could make up that 52 dex without having to sacrifice a whole bunch of other stats that vitivation/atrophy gives. You can tapdance around it all you like, but if your RDM had the INT/MND/CHR that atrophy/vitivation gets without actually having to wear atrophy/vitivation+1 sets, you could feel free to wear +accuracy and +dex sets with a greater degree of freedom. You're still missing the forest for the trees. Again, I really do have the highest respect for your opinion, but if your argument has holes in it, people like me are going to hole-punch them. This is one such case.

See this is why I think there's a miscommunication here. If you take off the extra stats from the gear you have to determine how much of it is from the stats itself and how much is from the assumed stats of the jobs at that level for the jobs that can use it. Comparing my current TP set(Lithelimb/Karmesin/Umuthi/Osmium/Battlecast) to what seems to be a RDM's 119 stats(Atrophy/Vitivation) base stats I'd lose roughly 22 DEX.

Looking at head pieces it seems like most have 20+ DEX on them in higher item levels when it comes to a job like THF, Lithelimb has 20 DEX, this means Lithelimb would probably end up without any DEX & RDM would lose 6 DEX as a result. This doesn't open up other options as this is the highest Accuracy head piece for RDM anyways and is our only 8% Haste piece for head besides Zelus. The point I'm trying to make is that it's not a matter of what our Atrophy/Vitivation is lacking, I know it's melee stats aren't high, that's why I wouldn't ever use it for meleeing. The point is that the light DD gear we have been getting has been giving us a lot of stats we'd otherwise not have because SE likely wouldn't balance it around RDM's stats and instead would base it off of a job like THF. As a result RDM would end up with the short end of the stick, losing stats from the light DD gear we've been getting that has made it so nice for the job.

I admit, maybe I'm just seeing things here where there are none, but to me it makes perfect sense. They'd likely look at the jobs on it, see it as a light DD piece, and then remove stats from it that the majority of light DDs already have whilst leaving little on it of the sort. This would result in jobs like RDM who are put on these pieces even though they don't necessarily fit the common paradigm of the other jobs listed on the piece without those same stats, as a result the stats of the job would go down.

Removing it now might do more harm in the short term, but you really feel that the long-term would suffer for it? How? If anything, we'd be stronger. Your gear choices rise exponentially with the removal of ilvl in favor of actual levels, in ANY form. merit levels, actual levels, I couldn't really care less. Anything would be better than this.

In the case of some jobs yes, I admit this would be true, for instance Thaumas Coat would become much more viable again as a result of such a change. For RDM, I can't really remember anything I used to use I'd want to use again. The only item that might stand out really is Kudzu Aketon, it's the only piece I'd remain in long enough for it to matter to me what it's level was. I use some old 99 pieces for things like Fast Cast or Enhancing but nothing long enough it truly would benefit me one way or the other if this change happened.

The main reason I don't even like item levels is the fact that it makes the Trust system suck in a lot of ways for me since I have to melee to use them at level 119. This is really part of why I'd be mixed either way though. If it's left as it is I still see some issues popping up with item level that wouldn't have happened if it were never even done and I do think it was always an issue to begin with. That said I also have changed how I play the game quite a bit, I've dropped some old gear, I've come to realise the benefits of it such as light DD gear benefiting my job more, and the fact that in a way item levels really don't impact the overall game that much for me anymore, at least not in a negative way that's nearly as noteable as before.

I won't lie and say my want for it to stay isn't entirely selfish, it is. My entire basis for why I'd want it to stay is because it does actually benefit RDM from my point of view and thus the removal of it would actually damage my job. At this point however I really don't feel like I'm even arguing for keeping or removing it so much as trying to explain my point of view on how I think it hurts RDM so that unless I'm seeing things it's clear that while it'll help some jobs, it's possible some jobs will also be hurt.

What about people who don't have BLM? What if you only have, say, Dancer. How does a person who only has DNC farm sparks effectively? You can't even break 500 damage except on weaponskills. That's fair? I have a Maat's Cap, so, I couldn't really care less personally. But if your job can't do it, then -you- can't do it without spending time getting a job that can. That amounts to time spent leveling some job you can't gear properly without a ton of effort that you don't really care about (spells aren't cheap, I'll remind you) in order to get the job you DO care about to top shape. Hardly fair.

edit: DNC is the go-to for Dynamis currency farming (for obvious reasons) so assuming your end-goal is to have a relic to get you into the invites to the top-tier events, DNC would be the job to do. Assuming you realize that before leveling anything else and therefore monopolize on your kill/time ratio, it behooves you to increase your survivability and DD performance. Doing so on just DNC is nigh impossible though. I have a THF mule, and in 24 hours of farming she -might- get 20k sparks. Maybe. Sometimes. That's with trying to stack RoE goals to everything possible in Ceizak (including drops) and killing the Mandragoras until they become an endangered species. Your argument is that I should spend 200k+ in gil and 3 days in Bostanieux Oubliette getting her to BLM 99 so I can swarm my way through Abyssea-Vunkerl's Helter-Skelter until I can farm 50k in 6 hours so I can do this 4 times to get a single piece of 109?

Well no. I admit I didn't really address that outside of a very anecdotal answer consisting between the 'mule' this account uses and the way I farmed sparks for my GF's chapters.

My real answer in all honesty would be to pick up some of the Bayld/Sparks 117 gear and trade in seals for SKCs, do them on Very Easy or Easy solo and farm them that way. Between the Login Campaign points and general farming done whilst leveling & so on you can easily amass enough points to get them. I won't say soloing AAs is exactly the easiest thing in the game but it's also doable if you try on some jobs.

In the end I'll say it does suck having to upgrade these to get to 119 gear but I'm also somewhat amiss at your point in it all. The 119 gear for each job would likely be scaled down to 99 gear with similar stats but without the stat spam all the same and would become just as valuable to the job. You could say this is a way of leveling them up to 119 in a sense but then it's really just another form of grinding with you already said shouldn't be as much an issue to get rid of item levels in the first place when you addressed the whole idea of pros/cons on the system and one of the pros being you don't have to grind levels again.

Really though the last 2 parts of this post are more or less just answering because I didn't want to feel like I wasn't replying to all of your post. The original bit about RDM was really the only thing I intended to reply to so if you want to ignore this bit then please do as it's not something I really feel to strongly about.

[Rubeus]

I could not explain it any more thoroughly than I already have. I haven't heard 1 good argument supporting it, and Camate has already said they don't have plans to change it, which is a nice way of saying "get over it." So that said, I believe I'm done beating this dead horse -- we already have enough Animal Glue here to make an alchemist rich. Maybe if I unsubscribe for a few months, they'll put a few more band-aids on our decapitation and this'll be within tolerable limits again.

Jerbob, I wish you the very best of luck fighting the uphill struggle that is "their vision" of FFXI versus what the players have asked for since the crystal war and beyond. At this point, I'm convinced the developers use keyboards made of traverser stones -- for how else do you explain the Atomos-like vacuum of our pleas for a better game, other than the Avatar of Time himself replacing all our cries for fairness with .gifs of cats chasing laser pointers?

[Rubeus]

Sorry, I forgot only you can attack other posters. As you have shown to do with Olor as well. Clearly the other people in this thread are just egregories of myself, so I'm sure you're right. I'm the only one affected by ilvl, so they'll change it just for me.

Do you always pick and choose which pieces of an argument to respond to and then act pompous or am I just your favorite? Last time I checked, I had the math to back up what I'd like to see changed and presented it in a cohesive way. Camate already said it isn't going to change, so at this point our options boil down to pedantic, coffeehouse radical conjecture, or, bandying enough support so that they DO change it. You know, like what happened with relic weapons, or any other number of features people have bandied support for. On a forum. For a game. Dedicated to those things.

[Damane]

Sorry, I forgot only you can attack other posters. As you have shown to do with Olor as well. Clearly the other people in this thread are just egregories of myself, so I'm sure you're right. I'm the only one affected by ilvl, so they'll change it just for me.

Do you always pick and choose which pieces of an argument to respond to and then act pompous or am I just your favorite? Last time I checked, I had the math to back up what I'd like to see changed and presented it in a cohesive way. Camate already said it isn't going to change, so at this point our options boil down to pedantic, coffeehouse radical conjecture, or, bandying enough support so that they DO change it. You know, like what happened with relic weapons, or any other number of features people have bandied support for. On a forum. For a game. Dedicated to those things.

you are playing the wrong type of game/genre, if gear progression is something that makes you rage.

Yes i love my d.ring, yes I felt rare with it, do i mind that SE gives out KB pops like candy so everyone and their grandmother gets one, at first it singed a bit, but hey lets move on. Gear gets obsolete, move on and do the new content for fun while gearing up with it!!

[Raydeus]

you are playing the wrong type of game/genre, if gear progression is something that makes you rage.

Yes i love my d.ring, yes I felt rare with it, do i mind that SE gives out KB pops like candy so everyone and their grandmother gets one, at first it singed a bit, but hey lets move on. Gear gets obsolete, move on and do the new content for fun while gearing up with it!!

It isn't that simple.

Yes, gear can become obsolete when new gear is added into most games, but XI is based in the much better concept of horizontal progression. Now, that is completely different from making older content more accessible as time passes and new content is added. Which is a no brainer if you want to give players an incentive to finish content they didn't finish before AND have the new content waiting for them when they are done which means more time playing, which means more time paying your sub.

The advantages that both Horizontal progression and an increase in accessibility as time passes have over the vertical progression system far outweight their cons if you are aiming for a long term commitment from players.

Long story short if you fall in the Vertical progression trap (like XIV did) in reality you will always only have whatever new content you released in the last updates since the new iLVL cap. That is because iLVL requirements mean that except for the hardcore that finishes the content as soon as it is released most people will actively skip as much content as they can in order to obtain the newest gear as soon as possible, because older gear and content are pointless by that point. If you have a lvl cap of 50 (XIV) but your current iLVL cap is 90+, and all new content is aimed at ilvl 90 there simply is no reason for anyone to spend time doing all the ilvl content in between.

Then if you want to find out about the story and whatever you can just got back with your high lvl gear, do the battle once to see the cutscenes and forget about all those zones, mechanics and items that the dev team spent so much time creating. Simply because your current gear is far better.

We saw something like that in XI with Scenario gear ( <---Shameless plug.) That gear is great at lvl 75 but there is no reason to bother with it if you can just get a few more levels and get Aby cruor sets for close to nothing. Effectively negating the appeal of doing those scenarios for anyone that didn't finished them at the time unless they are actually interested in the story. And that's a lot of content rendered useless simply because of an increase in lvl cap, and ilvl power creep effects are far worse than that.

That is what Vertical progression means, disposable content no one will ever want to spend more time than necessary doing. Which coupled with a loss of value of past accomplishments (oh hai Relics) means players wont be as attached to their characters or their time spent playing anymore simply because all content and achievements become disposable every time the new ilvl hits you in the face.

Etc. etc.

/over9000chars

[Elemmire]

I hate ilevel :\ it's part of what has ruined WoW and FFXIV for me. Too many elitists who go 'you have to have this gear to do this' when it's content that doesn't even need that high level gear to do it. It's derp.

[Rubeus]

Seriously, SE? now we can't even do the AA fights to get rem's tales 6-10?

It's bad enough the only way to get them is to grind endlessly or spend merits. Now we have to grind endlessly to get them and spend merits to do even harder fights?

CHANGE IT BACK! That is a COMPLETELY unnecessary adjustment!

[detlef]

Seriously, SE? now we can't even do the AA fights to get rem's tales 6-10?

Ark Angels aren't being changed at all. The randomization of Rem's Tales from non-AA fights (outside of DM) is being removed.