i90 Does not make you a good player

[MurakumoMillennium]

in FFXI if you were good you could solo things naked.

Uhhh no you couldn't. Gear in FFXI meant just as much, if not more, than it does in this game.

People who use Ilevel as a basis for anything deserve to be shipped back to WoW.

I still can't believe they put that horrible thing in this game. Ilevel is the go to number for mindless Goombas.

I don't think you understand just how incredibly important gear is. Yeah yeah, skill > gear, but gear is very important. It doesn't matter how skilled you are if your ilvl is so low that you simply can't reach the required output for any given fight. When you know nothing about a person other than the gear they're wearing, the one with higher ilvl is always the safer bet. Always. Not sometimes. Not occasionally. Always.

[ApolloGenX]

[COLOR=blue]I don't think you understand just how incredibly important gear is. Yeah yeah, skill > gear, but gear is very important. It doesn't matter how skilled you are if your ilvl is so low that you simply can't reach the required output for any given fight. When you know nothing about a person other than the gear they're wearing, the one with higher ilvl is always the safer bet. Always. Not sometimes. Not occasionally. Always.

This is fine, if a fight has specific requirements. Say- you have to have 4000 hps to survive a mechanic. Getting kicked or excluded on this basis makes sense. It's not offensive, and is practical.

ILevel is a generic number that is a catch-all dumbed down evaluation point. It's a mindless 1:1 comparison for a one-size-fits-all intellectually lazy mentality.

No, it doesn't require you to actually look at gear to see that your healer is wearing int jewelry to cheat the score (I've seen that). No, it doesn't require that you make sure that your tank is wearing appropriate stats... it is just a go to number that a mindless person looks at and says X > Y? OK!

It's a complete and utter watering down of a gear system, distilling out any potential sophistication, thoughtfulness, or diversity into a single easy to consume number.

Yes, gear matters. I don't dispute that. What I dislike is a one-dimensional system that might as well be wearing stat tokens that each have a value. Why bother with multiple stats? Why not JUST have an Ilevel?