Gear Truncation Needs to be Fixed

I'm sure many of you already know what gear truncation is and how it works, but for those who don't, when your gear is above the maximum item level for a duty and gets synced, the game removes any benefits you get from materia and instead allows each piece of gear's substats (crit, direct hit, determination, etc.) to be capped at that piece's maximum. For example, if gear can have one substat at 100 and another at 75, and you have the next level up that has 110/80, the game reduces the 110 to 100 but allows you to keep the 80 you got from the new better gear. This continues until the seconds substat also reaches 100, at which point you have reached full truncation of 100/100.

There are two impacts this has on the game. The first is that once your gear over-levels the content by enough, that truncated gear allows you to get more substats than the materia would have given, making old content easier than it ever could have been when it was current. While I don't mind that too much, it is one of the factors that undermines sufficiently old content we all have to play in roulettes, making it all feel samey.

The second impact is that if your gear only barely over-levels the content, the truncated gear gives you way less substats than the materia would have given, making content between patches that go up by only 30 item levels harder than when it was current (assuming you had good gear).

This encourages players who want to do an expansion's previous content to save their old melded gear for that content because it will be better than higher level truncated gear from the same expansion, wasting armory space, forcing multiple gear sets, and overall complicating the game for no real benefit.

Interesting to point out but I doubt it would do any significant impact on the game besides ult raiders having it easier to get bis. Roulettes would still be piss easy regardless.

I think they need to fix scaling overall in old content to preserve the difficulty to what it was closer to release.

I disagree though that they should encourage saving old melded gear for old content though. We don't have the inventory space for that for one thing, and two that would get pretty cumbersome.

Couldn't they just change the way this works so that the materia scales as well?

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Originally Posted by Minarisweet

Interesting to point out but I doubt it would do any significant impact on the game besides ult raiders having it easier to get bis. Roulettes would still be piss easy regardless.

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There is a lot of truth to that. The current BiS for DSR is some hideous amalgamation of truncated current gear and level appropriate gear with melds, and that Bis will continue to change every patch we get new gear, which is obnoxious. Additionally, I am not looking forward to having to hang on to 730 and 760 gear sets for the next two years just to do this expansion's ultimate raids.

That said, this is also going to affect the new chaotic raids. I know they're not as difficult, but doing 5% less damage or whatever it is you lose when you get new gear next patch is not going to be doing anyone any favors.

I'd say the biggest thing that keeps me from going further into doing ultis is I dont want to deal with putting together their frankenstien bis in my limited inventory

There's also the fact that disabling materia as soon as you get ilvl synced messes with any job that needs a certain GCD to properly function if you unfortunately had to meld skill/spell speed to achieve it.

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Originally Posted by Wasselin

I think they need to fix scaling overall in old content to preserve the difficulty to what it was closer to release.

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They've pruned or fundamentally altered so much of the low level kits that getting anywhere close to the on-content experience would be borderline impossible. That plays a much bigger role than how bad the downscaling is.

Gearing is perfect. They can so no wrong. Literally best devs in the world.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

They've pruned or fundamentally altered so much of the low level kits that getting anywhere close to the on-content experience would be borderline impossible. That plays a much bigger role than how bad the downscaling is.

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Would it really be impossible?

I understand it might require some effort, but if the developers analyzed the DPS output of each role at every level—regardless of individual job kits—and normalized it, wouldn’t that make a significant difference?

I know that job kits matter a lot. For example, as a White Mage, I recently gained access to a dash ability that’s incredibly helpful and fun, even in older content. But I think if the damage output across roles were reasonably close, it would at least make roulettes and synced content feel more balanced and enjoyable.

Not possible, they have already talked about it at least once: the whole math formula behind level progression and character stats was made by a single guy, and him and only him holds the keys to the vault.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I'd say the biggest thing that keeps me from going further into doing ultis is I dont want to deal with putting together their frankenstien bis in my limited inventory

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Synced gear is fine unless you're parsing.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

Synced gear is fine unless you're parsing.

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Or if it's in the same expansion. Running FRU with 760 gear is not going to be a good time.

While I appreciate the OP's point, I'd rather it stay the way it is.

I've played games where you had to keep level cap gear for all sorts of scenarios. The gear management was more involved than the game itself. No thanks to that. As for the corner case where gear is capped within this expansion - I've been playing this game since release. If that has ever been a problem, I've never noticed. It doesn't mean it isn't a problem, but I guess it just was never significant enough for me to ever think about it. As a tank, I never felt like I was made of paper when doing earlier dungeons in the current expansion. And as a DPS, I never felt I was hitting enemies with a wet noodle in that same scenario.

I'm not overly concerned about older content. The way I see it, we are the Warrior of Light that vanquishes dragons, saves nations and worlds, and is a kingmaker. I'd like to think I have a leg up on level 16 enemies in Sastasha by now.

Biggest issue is the fact that they followed the old MMO trap of raising the god damn level cap every freaking expansion.

It's not interesting.
It causes nonsensical situations where a peasant in the new area might punch a hole in your armor.
It causes inevitable breakage of past content and it's scaling since the stat weights might change greatly in each level range.
And it invalidates the effort gone into past content, the designs of the fights and whatnot is thrown out the window thanks to the ease of just level unsyncing stuff.

If the so absolutely need that 10 level grind and gear grind every expansion, then set a max level and downlevel all our stuff if we are inside that max level range, or some other kind of reset and not by just blindly raising the roof.