2.1 Concerns, ilvl requirements for DF and materia

[Sotek]

I don't think you have to worry about this. The ilvl requirement is only likely to be set to what is a bare minimum needed for winning to be realistically possible (if everyone had that ilvl of gear)- that is, to prevent trolling by entering naked or people who really have no business being there (e.g. lv30 gear for endgame).

Actually, I imagine they'll be doing to to halt progression, not as a bare minimum to win (you can beat Titan in swimsuits for crying out loud)... Currently you can skip a lot of gear, case and point; Who has iLv80 gear for Coil? Nobody. When iLv requirements hit I imagine it'll go something like:

Castrum Meridianum/The Praetorium, average iLv45 required.
Wanderer's Palace/Amdapor Keep, average iLv50 required.
Ifrit, average iLv55 required.
Garuda, average iLv60 required.
Titan, average iLv65 required.
Crystal Tower, average iLv70 required.
Binding Coil, average iLv80 required.

As for Materia... Well, the only time Materia is going to be a factor is in making iLvX crafted gear equal to iLvX dungeon/etc. gear. I've not really seen a lot of gear in which a lower iLv piece with Materia is better... Astral Ring is probably the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and that's only because I'm a crit whore... Hopefully they don't work out the average by literally taking the level of all your gear and just dividing it by the total number of slots... For one anyone who isn't PLD (and occasionally BLM/WHM) have an unused slot, and secondly different pieces of gear are much more powerful than others, weapons being the obvious one there...