If there are any plans to raise Item level

[Pixela]

I kind of hope there are no plans to do this, because it goes against what FFXI is.

It would replay what happened with Abysssea, it would wipe out many years and great effort into gear in one patch. This is very often a point more casual people quit because you effectively pull the rug out from under them.

However, if there are any plans at all to do this please do it via a simple upgrade mechanic and do not make all past gear obsolete.

Add a new form of XP from Abyssea v2 (I know you're working on it!) and allow all 119 gear to be upgraded to 120 via an NPC, when you trade the gear to it and it then asks for set amount of new xp points to upgrade (the best gear can have more complex upgrade requirements), make a cap per day so people don't burn it out in a week. This allows everyone to get to 120 (if you intend to do this) and keep all their gear.

FFXI isn't like many other games, players put up with gear wipes in other games for many reasons and those reasons to do not apply to FFXI.

[Haldarn]

What if the next major content patch was only missions, quests, areas, many different enemies, battlefields and structured events, but the reward just wasn't gear.

Would people just not play it? Or would everyone still enjoy it with the gear we have? Would people be satisfied with top-tier content rewarding titles, exclusive mounts, furniture and cosmetic gear? And perhaps earlier progression through the storyline?

Can we be done with 'next tier' gear in FFXI altogether now?

[Tsukihika]

I hope as well that they don't end up going with the increase item level route. It would completely break old Vana'diel content and further trivialize the game to the point of everything being even easier.

There is far better alternative to that, which i really, really hope, they would go with. Namely turning the Voracious Resurgence quest line into a system where player "starts anew" from level 1 by entering a darkened Vana'diel and can only use gear and items from this world while in this world. Ideally this would be like "hard mode" ffxi experience from start with stronger recolored monsters and without trust characters. The term "Resurgence" literally means revival, so this would make very much sense to do. They could even touch up the jobs a little and give them unique "dark world" abilities and spells. This kind of content would certainly be extremely pleasant and interesting to experience.

If they actually went with this kind of idea, there would be considerable benefits to be gained over tweaking what already works, and possibly breaking god knows how many things in the process. We simply don't need even higher tier gear when it comes to old Vana'diel content. Everything can be steamrolled these days, more so with this new gear we can obtain from Odyssey. Also there would be no need to create whole new game assets for this option. They could simply recolor old zones, perhaps even use recolored wings of the goddess zones, like they have done with Odyssey bosses.

[Alhanelem]

Really, the item level has increased, just the number hasn't changed. The 119 gear available now is clearly stronger than the first 119 gear, for the most part. So the item level really isn't even accurate anymore IMO.

That said, the only thing that might result in a change in item level would be a new full expansion, which seems pretty improbable at this point.

[Teraniku]

The only thing that might be item level raising, is how they are going to handle Empyrean Armor upgrades, which might also bring another new ilevel plateau, but it might just be for getting Empyrean armor to current levels