Is anyone else worried or bugged by the Item Levels being so high already?

This is something that has been on my mind since I've seen weapons that go to 95 Item Level, and it gave me a thought.
There hasn't even been one level cap raise yet and the "true" game, so excluding the Betas and everything, isn't even half a year old yet, and we have equipment with item level 90 on it already?

Doesn't that seem a little high to be jumping up the gear with this game still being in it's Infant stage? Are they planning for those pieces of gear to last for a long time? Or is the item level just going to keep going higher and higher with it being in the 120s and such before the level cap goes to 60?

They seem to have had this in mind from the start. They display the iLvl as a 4 digit number and if the number keeps rising as it has since release, they should be good for ~50 more years.

http://i.imgur.com/nd38Puj.jpg

ilvl is simply some arbitrary constant chosen to give you an idea of what stands where. They could cut all of them in half and the only thing that would change is perception.

It's just a weird perception from item levels being exactly the same as level requirement to equip for NQ gear all the way through leveling up. Suddenly level requirements stop and item levels pick up the pace. I always thought it was weird that they stagger them in sections no smaller than 5 levels, but I suppose that's so the stats actually increase with every upgrade. By the level cap increase I figure we'll probably be at ilvl 135 (if they make a habit of having weapons drop from the final turn in a section of BCoB 5 levels ahead of other pieces). That's just a guess though.

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Originally Posted by Lyrinn

ilvl is simply some arbitrary constant chosen to give you an idea of what stands where. They could cut all of them in half and the only thing that would change is perception.

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This. They could have started ilevel at 1000000 and it wouldn't make any difference. It's just a value to get an idea of relative power. So long as they actually follow that and balance accordingly, it won't matter how high the number goes.

Item level and equipable level are different things.

Let's say the last level 50 raid dropped lv50 equipable ilvl 250 gear. Now the expansion comes out new level cap is 60, and the first pieces of lv 60 gear could be ilvl 300. It doesn't really matter how high ilvl get its just an arbitrary number that dictates the stat budget for items and relative power level. They have 4 digits already built into the UI so they they got a lot of room to grow.

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Originally Posted by Lyrinn

ilvl is simply some arbitrary constant chosen to give you an idea of what stands where. They could cut all of them in half and the only thing that would change is perception.

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I'll consider this my true answer to the question then.

I like the current damage and healing numbers. I think some people figured that the formual is more linear than parabolic. Meaning, 4-5 years down the line we won't have 1 million damage hits by dps like we do in WoW. It may be only 20k damage per hit. I don't like gigantic numbers like in WoW cause it really does break immersion and makes it feel way over the top.

Though ilvl may increase dramatically over the years, I don't think it will correspond to huge spikey numbers like in other games.... it will be a nice linear progression where your rising strength is more realistic and recognizable.

Eventually they'll probably do an item squish like WoW is going to do for Warlords, but that's years down the line.

I am very worried.

i am worried that i will never be ilvl9001

Yup if SE is not careful this is gonna be like Wow all over again where stats on gear are just arbitrary numbers that dun mean a damn thing. This and homogenization caused me to leave that game and I hope it won't happen here.

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Originally Posted by Musashidon

i am worried that i will never be ilvl9001

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It's over 9000!

What concerns me more is the severe ramp up in difficulty needed to get the top gear now, because SE are gating more and more content behind 'relics' which will mean more and more players will be locked out of future content. SO much of the new content now demands iLevels way beyond 'normal' leveling gear.

Apply this progress to FFXI, then when RoTZ came out you'd have needed a Relic +1 to even do the Zilart missions instead of the content being tuned for AF geared players, which would have been insane but seems to be where SE are going in FFXIV. I know Relics weren't in pre-RoTZ FFXI but the analogy still stands.

Gating story content, in an FF where the story is central to many players, behind the need for phat lewt is a sad move, pandering to the 'achievers' at thre expense of the less skilled or less inclinded to gear-grind. Sure, gate 'raids' if you want but when story content is iLevel gated that's just sad.

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Originally Posted by KraggyKor

What concerns me more is the severe ramp up in difficulty needed to get the top gear now, because SE are gating more and more content behind 'relics' which will mean more and more players will be locked out of future content. SO much of the new content now demands iLevels way beyond 'normal' leveling gear.

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Pretty sure its not the content putting up ilvl90 requirement for a Garuda X run in Party Finder.

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Originally Posted by KraggyKor

snip.

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don't worry you'll get the echo buff that lets you breeze through coil content so you can view the story.

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Originally Posted by Zell

I like the current damage and healing numbers. I think some people figured that the formual is more linear than parabolic. Meaning, 4-5 years down the line we won't have 1 million damage hits by dps like we do in WoW. It may be only 20k damage per hit. I don't like gigantic numbers like in WoW cause it really does break immersion and makes it feel way over the top.

Though ilvl may increase dramatically over the years, I don't think it will correspond to huge spikey numbers like in other games.... it will be a nice linear progression where your rising strength is more realistic and recognizable.

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Yea in wow ilvl and dps goes up like at an exponential rate. FFXIV is ilvl vs dps is linear and won't get out of control like other MMOs. Won't have to worry about people doing 1.5m dps and tanks with 1m+ HP, 5 years down the road in FFXIV.

Made a MS paint for people who like visual aids.

http://i.imgur.com/scH1B8Y.jpg