Gear item levels and a level cap raise.

[Odd]

While reading another thread, something came to mind. Do you think when they raise the level cap, they might change certain gear to only be equippable when your level is the same/near to the ilvl?


The reason I ask, is because currently on the road to 50, all gear you can wear is within 3 item levels of your current level. For example an ilvl 43 book can be used at level 40. But as far as I know, 3 is the maximum gap between ilvl and character level. Okay AF gear is 5 levels higher, but that's the only exception I'm aware of.

I'm thinking ahead here, but when the level cap goes up, surely there will be some new level appropriate zones and mobs. So as it stands now, you could go to said new zone at level 49 to take on some level 50+ mobs. Let's say level 60 mobs, at 49, you will struggle. Or wait till 50, and go faceroll all the new stuff with your ilvl 100+ gear. I know what I would do. I could see this being a real issue for new players, or anyone not at cap when it's raised.

This is the first game I've played that has item levels, so I'm not sure how other games handled this. To me, with general ignorance as an excuse, the only viable solution is to not being able to wear lvl70 gear until your char is at least level 65 (setting the level cap at 70 for argument's sake). And then when you reach cap, the sky's the limit, like it is now. But again, I see issues with this as well. I'll be pissed if I'm suddenly locked out of all my gear until I reach the cap again.

Any thoughts on how they might handle this?

[iggi]

ilvl and gear lvl are not the same, they can raise the cap and change nothing to the gear. all gear is capped at 50, so when our level cap is raised to 60, nothing changes

[Orophin]

Well if this were WoW, after the expansion hits you'll do your first set of quests in the new area and replace all your shiny stuff from BCoB with clown gear that's ugly but statistically better.

I'm curious to see what happens here. I think in WoW if you had the cutting edge stuff (best drops from the last raid) it'd get you at least halfway to the new level cap before stuff started becoming marginally better. If you're a more casual player and don't have the best of the best you'll probably be swapping out armor a lot sooner.

[Cons]

ilvl and gear lvl are not the same, they can raise the cap and change nothing to the gear. all gear is capped at 50, so when our level cap is raised to 60, nothing changes

But then you will be level 60 with perhaps ilvl100/110 gears, so perhaps everything changes, when it comes to stats anyway

[iggi]

lvl50 gear will still be level 50, any new gear added with the level cap will be higher, There would be zero reason for them to adjust the level you can equip your current lvl50 gear if they raise the level cap and thus you wont be locked out of wearing your current gear or whatever.

[Ptolemy]

While reading another thread, something came to mind. Do you think when they raise the level cap, they might change certain gear to only be equippable when your level is the same/near to the ilvl?


The reason I ask, is because currently on the road to 50, all gear you can wear is within 3 item levels of your current level. For example an ilvl 43 book can be used at level 40. But as far as I know, 3 is the maximum gap between ilvl and character level. Okay AF gear is 5 levels higher, but that's the only exception I'm aware of.

I'm thinking ahead here, but when the level cap goes up, surely there will be some new level appropriate zones and mobs. So as it stands now, you could go to said new zone at level 49 to take on some level 50+ mobs. Let's say level 60 mobs, at 49, you will struggle. Or wait till 50, and go faceroll all the new stuff with your ilvl 100+ gear. I know what I would do. I could see this being a real issue for new players, or anyone not at cap when it's raised.

This is the first game I've played that has item levels, so I'm not sure how other games handled this. To me, with general ignorance as an excuse, the only viable solution is to not being able to wear lvl70 gear until your char is at least level 65 (setting the level cap at 70 for argument's sake). And then when you reach cap, the sky's the limit, like it is now. But again, I see issues with this as well. I'll be pissed if I'm suddenly locked out of all my gear until I reach the cap again.

Any thoughts on how they might handle this?

everything you have is going to be obsolete when a level cap increase comes, the new "leveling area" will bring in new gear for that level range (1-50, 50-59, 59 - 69 etc.) (With the large jumps in ilv that are in game and the jump thats coming in 2.2, it's clear this is the route it's going to go) everything you do right now & in the future is pretty much disposable, & content is forgotten after 2 patches (Hardcore moves onto new, "casuals" move onto old "new content", past content that came before the "old new" turned into transmog bait while being forgotten, this cycle repeats itself (with Coil 1-5 going into the duty finder with the lockout gone (in 2.2), it's highly likely they won't force "new" players to do old content to get into new (in the future, after 2.2)

only reason to keep going after "old cap" gear is for transmog (i.e glamours)

[Tarukun]

only reason to keep going after "old cap" gear is for transmog (i.e glamours)

Just to be clear, you're describing WoW. This is how they did it, but we don't know how FFXIV will proceed with gear levels. The new level cap starter gear (like DL) could be I90 or 95, with other tiers at I100 and 110. Our HP, MP and DPS don't need to double every time a level cap is raised, like in WoW.

At least I hope their plan isn't similar to WoW, where old content becomes worthless. But, you're probably right, as they seem to have already adopted WoW's gear rush mentality...

Edit: To the OP, the relationship between ilevel and class level should be considered coincidental. Later down the road, we could see level 75 characters with avg. ilevel of 500. Just an example, but that's the gist.

[Kikosho]

I'm of the assumption that with a level cap raise to say level 70, gear levels won't immediately be eclipsed by leveling gear. For instance, if max gear level at lvl 50 cap is 110, then that should be good enough to last you till 70 where ilvl 110 is either starter gear or slightly better for that lvl cap. This was at least how it was done in TERA when they raised the lvl cap from 50 to 58.

[Lithera]

A cap of 58? What kind of random number choice was that? lol On topic though, that's probably how they'll do it. TERA style.

[Moheeheeko]

Just to be clear, you're describing WoW.

Thats actually pretty much how every mmo handles it.