iLv needs to change

[synesthetic]

I think people misconstrue what iLevel is actually supposed to convey.
It's not a measure of your power, it's a measure of your dedication and resources.
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iLevel is your "entry fee" to content. Just like entering any kind of tournament or competition, though, just because you meet the entry requirements doesn't mean you're actually qualified to be there.
[...]
It's up to you, the player, to take a look and see if the people you're with are geared correctly for what they're doing.

Point taken.

But then a problem still stands about what to do about this suddenly-common occurrence of big-armor, little-weapon players?

You can't do much to change who DF matches you with, and I don't think it's really fair to just exclude people like the ones I saw in Expert Roulette with Ifrit weapons (i60) but decent armor. Because they're technically still capable of completing the dungeon, albeit at a much slower pace. And if they can't enter bigger dungeons, unlock roulettes, it'd be more difficult for them to get tomes to upgrade their gear, and instead they'd have to rely on dungeon gear drops more.

I'm more concerned with the probably-returning players I see with, as I described earlier, full Augmented Ironworks but i90 or worse weapon. (And then new players who would have the same mindset.) I accept the possibility that they could've spent all of their poetics on armor before quitting, and then never got an Encrypted Tomestone from FCoB before they quit. From there, it would take them a max of three weeks to get a Tome from WoD and 1.3k poetics to make an Ironworks weapon. But in the meantime, couldn't they at least make an i100/i110 soldiery weapon instead of fulltiming a Zenith (or worse)?
I can only guess that these people either don't care or, more likely, don't know how much a weapon matters.

I -could- try to inform them all about it and some options available to them, but there's also been a marked increase in players who take any question, comment, or genuinely constructive advice as a hostile attack on their person, and I really don't want to waste my playtime getting kicked and needing to requeue again, because I'm not a tank. Plus, it doesn't feel good when someone's mad at me, or punishes me, for no good reason.


If not through Item Level, then something should still convey how much more important keeping weapons up-to-date over armor is, without needing another player to come out and say it.

I have the most fun when I get to play with friends, or nice people, who are skilled and decently geared. I think everyone can agree with this.

Lately, it's common for DF to match me with one or two people with Zenith weapons (but soldiery/poetic armor), or maybe Atma weapons (even in non-book dungeons) and I can tell when they're not bringing out their job's potential. To make it worse, they often ignore dungeon mechanics, like in all of Halatali-HM's boss fights, and ignore explanations or offers to help.
And.. it's not fun. I think a lot of people can agree with me on this, too.

Since you can't filter players by skill level and personality here, I would have more fun if DF only matched me with people whose weapons are within 10-15 iLvs of my own, but I don't think that'd be fair.
So I think, as a small bandaid to a bigger unsolvable problem, implementing more means to gently inform players how to play the game is the only option.

For this particular case of weapon-ignorance, if not by Item Level, then maybe how?
I welcome more discussion.