Level 110 gear on my level 50 character...

[BlueMage]

Welcome to vertical gear based MMOs.

How did everyone not know this was going to be the way of things when they said ARR would be a vertical gear based game like WoW?

[Akujin]

Was probably mentioned already, didn't read all the posts.

But one thing I could see them doing in the future, is instead of placing restrictions on how low your ilvl is for certain content, restricting how High it can be.

I imagine they would test it for a long time to ensure that certain very difficult content in this sense could be completed with gear that's say, ilvl 100, even though at the time you could possibly be equipped with ilvl130. Make people think about their strategy and gear set ups instead of optimizing for BiS in a broad sense, but being selective towards what may be BiS for other content as well.

'course it would have to be something pretty worthwhile to make people go through the hassle of keeping extra gear sets around just for that particular restriction.

Also, while it may simply be a default thing they used, in the party finder search menu, you can set the ilvl as high as 200. So, yeah, we gots a way to go.

[Craiger]

This is ridiculous....

Sure, adding levels would be better than just adding ilvl's, but there is no way they could add levels in a patch, let alone the second patch since release! That is impossible, or at least if you want the new abilities, areas, quests etc. to be more than just shite....

Why don't they just throw in a new class and job every patch when they're at it ?

Sorry for my tone, but isn't this kinda obvious?

[Duelle]

How did everyone not know this was going to be the way of things when they said ARR would be a vertical gear based game like WoW?

I think the point of the OP is that they're growing in scale too fast. I'm not quite sure whether it's because of XIV's stat weights vs WoW's, but comparing what we see here with what was seen in vanilla WoW:

Tier 1 sets were ilevel 66 (in a game where the level cap was lv60)
Tier 2 sets were ilevel 76
Tier 3 sets were ilevel 92
Non-tier pieces could range from item level 60-63 as far as dungeon drops went.

WoW jumped 32 item levels between the level cap and the top gear in the game at that point in time (even then, not many saw tier 3 gear because the expansion came out afterwards, and the gear from said expansion easily made tier 3 gear obsolete). By comparison FFXIV has jumped 40 item levels between launch and the first content patch. Second content patch is making that a 65 item level jump.

[Quiz]

I acquire higher level gear to fight a higher level monster to acquire higher level gear to fight a higher level monster...

Is this the only non-FPS game you've ever played or something?

[Gardes]

If it's up to me, if some sort of item level has to stay, I would just stick with level equip requirement plus grading it by 1s with high quality items going up 1 grade above the nq.

So gear with lvl 50 requirement will be 50.1, 50.2, 50.3..Then when the level cap to 60, it'll be 60.1, 60.2, 60.3, with maybe late 50 gear (rating 9 or above or something) easily trumping lvl 60 gear with rating 1-3 easily.

The content entry requirement would be based on adding them all up together as long as they're the same gear equip level. Someone with all lvl 50 grade 1 equipment would be somewhere around 12-13 points I think?

[Craiger]

If it's up to me, if some sort of item level has to stay, I would just stick with level equip requirement plus grading it by 1s with high quality items going up 1 grade above the nq.

So gear with lvl 50 requirement will be 50.1, 50.2, 50.3..Then when the level cap to 60, it'll be 60.1, 60.2, 60.3, with maybe late 50 gear (rating 9 or above or something) easily trumping lvl 60 gear with rating 1-3 easily.

The content entry requirement would be based on adding them all up together as long as they're the same gear equip level. Someone with all lvl 50 grade 1 equipment would be somewhere around 12-13 points I think?

So, you are okay with the exact same system we have now, only they change what the number says ? ilvl110 or 50.5 (or something)... Will that really affect you?

[Atreyu]

'course it would have to be something pretty worthwhile to make people go through the hassle of keeping extra gear sets around just for that particular restriction.

Or they could sync ilevels like they do levels.
Just a thought.

Also, I have a feeling that the gear levels will be similar to WoW, which means that we'll probably be seeing ilevels 100-200 for this expansion, 200-300 for the next one and so on, give or take.

EDIT:
To OP,
"I acquire higher level gear to fight a higher level monster to acquire higher level gear to fight a higher level monster..."
Yes. That's how MMORPG's tend to work.

[BlueMage]

I think the point of the OP is that they're growing in scale too fast. I'm not quite sure whether it's because of XIV's stat weights vs WoW's, but comparing what we see here with what was seen in vanilla WoW:

Tier 1 sets were ilevel 66 (in a game where the level cap was lv60)
Tier 2 sets were ilevel 76
Tier 3 sets were ilevel 92
Non-tier pieces could range from item level 60-63 as far as dungeon drops went.

WoW jumped 32 item levels between the level cap and the top gear in the game at that point in time (even then, not many saw tier 3 gear because the expansion came out afterwards, and the gear from said expansion easily made tier 3 gear obsolete). By comparison FFXIV has jumped 40 item levels between launch and the first content patch. Second content patch is making that a 65 item level jump.

So should gear only drop from 40 person raids too? I don't see why people like yourself are getting hysterical over semantics.

[Felis]

Not sure what Yoshi's plan is but over on FFXI they hit the brakes at 119 and have started moving horizontally again. I think it's likely that gear WILL see an ilevel reduction when the level cap hits that will keep max ilevel at a plateau for a little bit (ie. max ilevel before expansion = i120, max ilevel after expansion = still i120 but previous i120 gear is now i110 and the expansion gear is i120).

That would mean that the stats on the previous gear get nerfed and the expansion gear get the stats the previous gear had before. Because the ilevel determines the stat cap of the gear. Reducing the ilevel mean reducing the stat cap of the gear.