Please remove iLevel

I think the best way to do it by far is a mix of vertical and horizontal.

I personally don't care if gear is horizontal or vertical, I just want CHOICES to be made when gearing up. When 99% of the way I gear involves "This is higher ilvl than this, so I will equip it" with little to no choices, thinking, theorycrafting, or number crunching I find it incredibly boring to gear up a character Add into that the fact there's no vanity slots, and most gear looks god-awful, plus the fact I'm FORCED to wear gear that makes me look like a clown means the entire process of gearing is no fun all around.

I don't get to think about what gear I want, it's laid out in front of me with easy "ilvl" system to follow, I don't get to look awesome or look what I want to look like, or look different from anyone else in the game, no vanity system and the best gear for every class makes me look like clone #25050.


Something absolutely needs to be done about gearing, everything else in this game is fantastic and probably the best of any tab-target MMO on the market at the moment, but the gearing as a whole is severely lacking in choices, looks, and fun.

Interesting thread. I guess I am fine with ilvl - I don't really know if it's the "perfect" solution. However, it really does make me sad that ppl get to 50 and have their lovingly designed artifact armor eventually replaced so fast with darklight stuff or vanya robes. All of a sudden, you have all these unique looks blending into just a few looks - as everyone is running around in those darklight robes, etc. It's a blessing that the vanya robes can at least be dyed.. Just feels weird that everyone eventually starts looking the same. It feels very .. linear and unexciting or something. Sorry. :(

On the flip side, the sense of actually fighting stronger bosses is diminished if you're going to fight them in the same gear you got to begin with. And no, "more gearing options" might seem interesting, but it won't matter a lot if you can tailor to get a bit more HP, make your weapon fiery, sprout rainbows from your butt or whatnot, in the end, with how the game runs, there's going to be an optimal set anyway and you'll just stick to that while you plow through fights in the same gear, with no sense of being rewarded at all. Of course, you could fundamentally re-design combat in the game and force people to have specific sets that are the best for each fight, but I don't really see what that would accomplish. It's not really any more interesting to have sets that are best for each boss, best for the day of the week or best for if it's raining outside or if it's sunny compared to just having one set that is best for combat over all. There's no thought or interesting customization there either, what's best is best. It would just be a different kind of grind.

I think requests of this kind are simply down to people that can't cope or keep up with change. They feel if they got something good, it should remain good for the rest of the game. A sort of expression for the feeling that they are every bit as great as the hardcore guys that always keep up to date with their gearing, just except for whatever reason they can't keep up to date with their gearing. In a genre whose PvE aspect is defined by gathering stronger gear to overcome stronger foes.

Requests to simply level the competition by removing any gearing progression is understandable from that standpoint.

Atm, this game really doesn't have much itemization that makes it ok to wear an IL 55 piece instead of an IL 90 piece....

The only real decent example I can find is that I'm wearing the IL60 tank helm from AK because it has parry and acc on it and I have my AF2 chest so it's the best helm I can have until I get the allagan helm from BCB. But IL doesn't matter here. Anyone who knows anythign worthwhile about this game will know that and not judge me because I have an IL 60 helm. They might say "Get your AF2 Helm" and I'll say "It doesn't have parry/acc on it, this ones better, unless you want me to miss and not hold threat....

XIV's new battle system is fast paced, while XIs was more outlast. I doubt you will have to worry about gear sets in the future for XIV, atleast not as bad as it was in XI. That and since you can't change gear during combat.
I see nothing wrong with the Ilevel system, I just think they could've done it a bit better, instead of giving us Ilevel90 gear at level 50...

I'd also like to point out, that ILevel wasn't blizzards invention, it was actually D&D/Bioware's "invention"

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Originally Posted by Kincard

They're probably going to do it in a similar style to other MMOs where the top-end blue/purple gear from the previous level cap will be comparable to the green gears you'll get by the next level cap, or something like that. Whatever the case its likely your best gear right now will be at best mid-tier when they raise the level cap.

Personally I wouldn't be too concerned with that though, the level cap's probably not going to rise until an expansion which probably won't be for another 9+ months, at least.

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I can't help but be concerned; I really love digging into this sort of thing. And while we do have various coloured gear, it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of consistency with it regarding to how much more or less powerful it is compared to each other. I'd personally love to see the game's design documents.

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Originally Posted by Pellegri

So you don't want there to be multiple sets of gear like that guy was saying.....and yet you want gear to do different things so you still have to lug around a lot of different sets/weps? Ya no, you want Guild Wars go play GW, do not drag that into this. Making any gear situational where everything has the same stats but may or may not be better in certain situations requires everyone to lug everything around just to get the best increase for each fight.

Like it or not mmos have evolved past that, people like seeing an actual increase over their current gear when switching to something else. You say you do not see an increase in getting gear over what you have but I can guarantee you if you actually worked on it at all you'd see that increase. I guess however it's too hard to see it though when you already skipped over most of the content you'd need said gear for by being carried towards the biggest increase you can get(relic, because yes your gear/single max lvl says a lot on that).

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My primary issue with the current itemization scheme is that, ultimately, it's kind of boring. Your next weapon will have more or less the same stats but just slightly more of them. There isn't any real choice as to what you're using, it's either definitively better or definitively not.

Now that said, this is really just "the beginning" of the game so maybe as Crystal Tower expansions and Coil expansions come out we'll start to see a more broad selection of gear.

Primarily, what I like to see from gear selection is gear that can adjust the way you play your game, letting your tailor your character a little different from the other one standing over there.

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Originally Posted by Pellegri

And what happens when you have multiple classes at max lvl? Now you need multiple sets for each class, again very few players like that when having a choice on how to gear. Having varying stats on gear takes some thought and theorycrafting on which is actually better. Having multiple sets that are entirely situational makes you go "I want this and this and this for each slot, I may not entirely know which is better in each situation but wtf the text says they do this and this in these situations", and that's when you find out after collecting all those different sets "hey this isn't a noticeable difference at all and there's really only a single set that is better than all the rest in every situation".

That's how Guild Wars does it and it's terrible design. They have 15 or so different stat combination on gear that gives you the impression that each is for various situations, until every single dps figured out "hey berserker gear is the only really good stat combination because I like to do higher numbers even though I may die fast aslong as I can kill the thing faster". There is no choice in gear, any solo or small group content in that game pigeonholds you into a single stat combination if you want to be successful, anything other than that and you are gimping your group and yourself.

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Just because a theorycrafter says "This is optimal" doesn't mean everything else isn't good though and should be ignored. For example, when I played GW2 my partner played a Necromancer with a heavier leaning towards healing and it ended up working out spectacularly. She didn't hit as hard as other necros could but she made it a heck of a lot easier for everyone on the team to stay alive. And she didn't use Berserker gear to do it.

It isn't "the impression" of choice, there is choice and if you know how to work with it can use it to play your character differently from the 12390857346 other players while still being effective.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

what we need is more pieces with Enhanced : X skill , that what makes items worth it, gaining 2 stats here 3 there and 1 over there is meh....

why relics+1 dont enhance 1 of the JOB skills?

enhance Flare: flare now make your next spell 100% crit....

Enhance : River of blood , 50% chance of letting Bard cast misery end w/o health restriction

enhance Cure : chance on heal to proc a instant cast stoneskin

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And this! This is the kind of stuff I personally love. I love gear that tweaks your skills, moves you in a slightly different path, or heck gives you entirely new abilities!

I'm honestly not one for mid-battle gear swaps (excepting weapons) because it doesn't make sense to me to pull off your plate chest piece and then pop another one on mid-battle without any negative impact on you.

But I am one for tangible choice. I like gear to augment how I play and make my character play differently than another character of the same class.

MMORPGs are supposed to be about making your character yours. At least they used to be.

You are comparing GW2, where you are stuck with a single job, to XIV where you have multiple jobs.
If you want an healer you get an healer, not a BLM with an healing ability that put all its stats to MND.

You have already 9 different ways of customizing your char unless you can't get bothered to level each job.

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Originally Posted by Dreamer

iLevels are symptomatic of a larger problem with the game - gear treadmills are tedious and boring at best. I really hope they either give us some form of horizontal progression or open up the materia system to allow for better (or as would be the current case, ANY) customization.

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Or bring endgame recipes with the same ilevel as the endgame raid equip, not 20 ilevel lower.
And new materias with stats that are not on normal equips, like "+5% DoT damage"

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

what we need is more pieces with Enhanced : X skill , that what makes items worth it, gaining 2 stats here 3 there and 1 over there is meh....

why relics+1 dont enhance 1 of the JOB skills?

enhance Flare: flare now make your next spell 100% crit....

Enhance : River of blood , 50% chance of letting Bard cast misery end w/o health restriction

enhance Cure : chance on heal to proc a instant cast stoneskin

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^^ This

The ilvl gear system in this game right now is very boring and SE needs to address it.