iLv needs to change

[Catsby]

It doesn't help that up to date weapons are far more difficult to obtain than any other piece of gear. If you aren't motivated enough to save up those 1300 credits and a tomestone you are probably just going to spend them as soon as you can on a new ring or gloves or whatever.

[Maero]

Many players seem to think ilv=skill which is so far from the truth.
So many pf groups ask for like ilv120 + for even easy instances
Also one has to consider that some players have crafted gear which is usually like ilv110 for example
And actually Radioactive_lego, light farming is not at all the most grind, the step afterwords is far far worst at least for myself and others it has been, and atmas Pre drop rate increase was just hell

[Niwashi]

I certainly agree with the OP that the average Item Level needs to be computed as a weighted average to better emphasize the gear that has the most effect.

Besides that, even in individual items, the Item Levels don't always compare correctly. In crafted gear, for instance, High Quality crafted gear is in most cases far better than its Normal Quality version (typically more on par with the next 5-level tier up, or in some cases better than that), but doesn't get any indication of that in its Item Level, which will be the same as if it were NQ.

[lyndwyrm]

I'm not ignorant, I understand there is a modest improvement in deeps when you upgrade weapon vs. gear. However, you are fighting the instinctual urge of people to double down on arms they've invested time (and subscription time = money) in.

This is true, if you've put time into something, then you don't want to replace it with something that makes the previous work moot. If you're already at animus+ on your relic, then sure, it's your prerogative to gear however you like.

The problem is that the feedback the player gets from the game is the same whether they upgrade 2 gear or accessory slots or their weapon. So the average item level display is a little misleading, if interpreted as a gearscore for the player as the community is like to do.

The implementation of a gearscore, strictly speaking, fulfilled the request of the playerbase for a numerical value to determine how well geared someone was. All the bells and whistles with it are nice, but the way the score is actually calculated is pretty half-assed. As some of the numbers presented before have displayed, there can be a 25+% change in available damage output between two identically scored gearsets, and that is the problem with the current weighting.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Besides that, even in individual items, the Item Levels don't always compare correctly. In crafted gear, for instance, High Quality crafted gear is in most cases far better than its Normal Quality version (typically more on par with the next 5-level tier up, or in some cases better than that), but doesn't get any indication of that in its Item Level, which will be the same as if it were NQ.

As a general rule of thumb:
NQ < HQ = Pink = Green = Blue = Purple when ilevel is equal

[UBERHAXED]

But it had the SCoB spear (115). My avg ilvl was 113. Right when I equipped the spear it jumped to i117. I believe I only have an upgraded poetic ring on him as any other i130, so I don't think that one upgrade would have made a 4 ilvl jump, even counting as double for a 2 handed weapon, if it had equal weighting. You don't normally see 2 110 -> 130 upgrades produce consecutive 2ilvl jumps until closer to end of the gearing cycle, especially considering my body piece is still i90.

I think the point the OP is trying to make, and rightly so, is that my damage ceiling actually skyrocketed by making that weapon upgrade. Much more so than 4 item levels would lead the normal player to believe. Which the "normal" player (who just plays for fun, doesn't care about examining team members etc etc.) is who I believe he is tailoring this argument towards.

Er... do you know how to average? If the denominator is always 13 (which is is) then every 13 point change will increase the average by 1. I didn't check whether the system used rounding or floors but given the system uses rounding (which it probably does) then from 110 to 130 twice (i.e. 20x2, increase of 40) is greater than 39, so it's possible to increase the average by 4. Even if it doesn't do rounding (also a reasonable choice) then if the average was 113.95 (which displays as 113 for floor function), then the 40 point increase will add 40/13=3.08 to bring it to 117.03. Either way the explanation holds. So rule of thumb, every increase of 13 increase average by 1; and for 2 handed weapons, every increase of 6.5 increases the average by 1.

In addition... weapons have a higher cap for secondary stats (of course if you didn't notice this then...). In fact the stat caps for the same item level works like this:]
Weapon (lets call this T1)>Body=Legs (T2) >Head=Hands=Feet (T3) >Belt=All accessories (T4).

Weapon damage is approximately a 1 to 8 translation with a primary stat (and about 1 to 30 for determination). Upgrading a weapon provides both a larger raw stat increase (due to higher cap) and effective stat increase (translating WD to a primary stat) than any other piece. For example, let's say from 110 to 115 (of course 115 non weapons are non existent but theoretical); For 1 handed weapons, (e.g for PLD) the sum of the weapon+shield is obviously exact the same stats as a 2 handed weapon:
T1 grants +5 to all primary stats (we are ignoring secondaries for a minute)
T2 grants +4 to all primary stats
T3 grants +3 to all primary stats
T2 grants +2 to all primary stats

In addition you receive 2 WD from the increase. Then the effective increase only including primaries is 8*2+5=21 for all T1 combined (i.e. if you have a shield then add it here), 8 for all T2 combined, 9 for all T3 combined, and 14 for the remaining 6 pieces combined (i.e. T4). This means that just upgrading the least costly pieces (T4 all of which is 375 tomes including belts) which is half the gear slots receive about half of just doing the weapon. Combining the 6*375 and the 2*825 gives you just 1 primary stat point more than just doing the weapon.

Now let's include secondary stats. Clearly not only are the caps less than primary stats, they are also not equal to each other (i.e. you can have more accuracy on a piece than determination). Of course when I say, "can have more", I'm clearly comparing 2 different pieces of gear because the way secondary stats are rigged (which is okay as long as we compare intra-tier, the primary reason for the segregation). Secondary stats are chosen at essentially random to be on a piece of gear, then a random again for which stat is the higher weight one (I call it the heavy stat) and which is the lower weight one (I call it the light stat). Later in the patches, healer gear has accuracy, but this always has the same weight (being less then the light stat at that) so we can ignore this. So every piece of gear gets a stats to call the heavy stat and the light stat. Without loss of generality we will compare accuracy to critical hit rate (since they have the same stat cap, rather than a lesser one like determination).

Let's say a 110 T4 gear has accuracy as the heavy stat and critical hit rate as the light stat: then you should see about (approximates due to clearly integer division used by the game) 7/10 critical hit rate on the gear (e.g. 13) than accuracy (e.g. 19). Since primary stats are capped by tier (and furthermore by level obviously) the developers chose secondary stat caps to also be segregated by tier. This means for T1 gear, you can have (using the same numbers) about 44 on the heavy stat and 31 or so on the light stat. This means that even if a stat, like critical hit rate is on 3 T4 gear, then it's still possibly less than the increase from just the weapon (randomness due to which stats were light and heavy).

That being said, You can only have 1 heavy stat on gear but you can add as many light stats as you want with materia (the cap will be the same). Furthermore... not all stats have the same cap for example determination has about .7 the stat cap as other secondaries (which piety is considered a secondary when on gear by the game), so when you have determination as a heavy stat, it's about equal (in the higher numbers it's about 1 stat point more since the ratio is slightly higher then the light/heavy ratio) to the light stat and like wise it's about half when it's the light stats (and similarly in the higher numbers it's about 1 stat point less).

Missing the point? When a T1 gear has heavy weighted determination, also account for this in the effective increase. It's possible that the gear goes from having no determination (for example) to heavy weighted determination, which is substantial in the higher levels (i.e. when they start to get above 8 determination per piece). Now when calculating what the increase should be for getting a single weapon upgrade or the awful choice of the artificial "upgrade" of gearing several lower tier pieces, you should take into account the secondary stats on the gear. Of course, even with heavy weighted determination on every single piece of T4 gear (which of course doesn't happen...) and no determination on the T1 gear, the increase still doesn't bridge upgrading just the weapon.

tl;dr:

An increase of 5 to a weapon is more then double the increase of the entire right side (all accessories) by the same amount. Item level is simple a number and the value only exist to determine the stat caps across tiers of gear and nothing more.

[Niwashi]

Er... do you know how to average? If the denominator is always 13 (which is is) ...

There are plenty of different ways to average, and it's not that people don't understand how it's currently being averaged. It's that we want it done better. The denominator is 13 because the only weighting being done to the average is for gear pieces that use multiple slots, with each piece's weight being simply the number of slots it takes up. With a more usefully weighted average, one that gives increased weight to the important pieces and less weight to the less important pieces, the denominator would be something else (what else being dependent on what weights are used).

[synesthetic]

And it does not really meant to be. ILVL is just an indicator. Simple indicator.
[...]
It's not super important. Your skill to put out reasonable dps/heal/agro/sustain damage/follow mechanics/etc or ability to clear FCOB is super important
[...]
Bad skill is what brew bad blood. Especially inability to follow mechanics.
And weapons are just a minor problem and you most likely than not will just receive advice how to improve your weapon and no offense if you play perfectly for your gear setup.

And as I've said before, that's fine if iLv is not a measure of strength or potential..
if they give something that is a worthwhile indicator. Whereas right now, iLv is mistaken as an indicator and is one of a few things that contributes to poor gameplay.

Informed, experienced, skilled, etc. .. -good- players know how gear up, how to play their job effectively and efficiently, know the flow of fights and can respond accordingly, are observant and adaptable, keep team dynamics in mind, and generally are fun to be around.
And they probably read a lot outside of the game, or were given a lot of advice and feedback from other friends, have had a lot of fights hammered into them, know what to look for, care about their performance, etc.

Skill is a vague term that encompasses a lot of traits that make a player "good". And knowledge of various things about the game is part of that.

I am criticizing the game for its lack of conveyance on various things that it pressures players to know more about, and then tries to foster a "casual" atmosphere that's so casual that people know it's okay to not try because you'll still clear and progress.
People on NA servers know and recognize that DF is a cesspool of "bad" players. Some of them have really bad attitudes, but my impression (hope?) is that most of them are just either inexperienced or uninformed. I can still have fun playing with some of the latter, but the game would be overall more fun if this group of players had more experience and information to work with, instead of the game relying on other players to teach them everything. I'll teach when I see someone receptive to advice, but I do still get tired of teaching.

I would love for there to be a -lot- of changes made to the game to teach people more about how to play, like job-related solo challenges that really push you to learn what skills to be using in practical scenarios, or something that divulges how enmity and initial aggro work in the game, or the amazingly-usefulness of Focus Target, and other stuff that good players already know because they stumbled across it or were taught about it (or were unfortunately yelled at to learn).
But right now, I'm just asking for this one improvement.

[Felessan]

if they give something that is a worthwhile indicator. Whereas right now, iLv is mistaken as an indicator and is one of a few things that contributes to poor gameplay.

My point is - it's much better to fuel this efforts into actual education about "how to play" via tutorials and stuff instead of creating more sophisticated ILVL calculation, that still will be pretty much useless.

I am criticizing the game for its lack of conveyance on various things that it pressures players to know more about, and then tries to foster a "casual" atmosphere that's so casual that people know it's okay to not try because you'll still clear and progress.

Most people are casuals and you can do nothing about it.
This game would have 1/10th of population if it would not cater to casual population. They are invisible and silent, but there really are a lot of them.

People on NA servers know and recognize that DF is a cesspool of "bad" players. Some of them have really bad attitudes, but my impression (hope?) is that most of them are just either inexperienced or uninformed.

First - DF is a pool of "normal" players and knowing what to expect and not having way too high expectation from general crowd helps a lot with gaming experience.
Second - most of DF players are just outright ignorant. They do not play this game to achieve something or to be a "good player", they just having fun in a way they think is most appropriate for them. It's clearly visible if you try to educate people in non-offensive way - you point out mistakes, you tell what should be done, tell about obvious improvements, ones that require minimum efforts to up performance significantly. People listen to you and then revert to pretty much what they were doing before.

I would love for there to be a -lot- of changes made to the game to teach people more about how to play, like job-related solo challenges that really push you to learn what skills to be using in practical scenarios, or something that divulges how enmity and initial aggro work in the game, or the amazingly-usefulness of Focus Target, and other stuff that good players already know because they stumbled across it or were taught about it (or were unfortunately yelled at to learn).

The problem with educating is that it requires desire to learn and commitment. And most does not have them. And for them changes in ILVL calculation will do nothing. And those who are committed - they do just fine even with current way of ILVL calculation.

[synesthetic]

I disagree with the tutorial idea in most cases. If information can be disseminated discreetly, like in this case, then that is infinitely preferable over having an in-your-face tutorial because they generally pull you out of the game. Not in a literal sense, but in the sense that tutorials are usually so on-rails/scripted/hand-holdy that you're not even playing the game anymore, and instead you're reading an animated manual.

The statement you quoted was not a jab at "casuals", a noun referring to players who don't commit a very high amount of time and energy towards the game. Rather, it was an adjective, and I was pointing at how the game both pushes people to understand the game at a certain level, yet also has so much content where people know they can clear by just autoattacking and going afk--the bare minimum to avoid being noticed and kicked for being afk. There's a lot people can be carried through, and a lot of people who don't know they're being carried; and when it matters, it often means the party suffers for it and doesn't have fun.

I'm quite aware most players are casual (in any sense of the term), and I'm not trying to change that. "Casual" does not automatically mean "bad". I just want the overall playerbase to improve.
People are capable of learning a lot without it being presented as a lesson. People who are more observant and inquisitive can pick up on a lot about the game on their own more easily than those who are relatively uninterested, but that doesn't mean those who lack drive can't or won't learn.