Required rank on all gear

[Stockapotapoulos]

Moving forward, all gear that is introduced will have requirements placed on them as we will be phasing out the "Optimal Rank" system. With new recipes being introduced in 1.19, the old recipes will be lost and it will not be possible to make that gear anymore going forward. So only the currently existing versions that exist prior to the change will feature "Optimal Rank" features.

My gut feeling tells me this will get ugly.

Note to self: Start hoarding optimal rank gear to sell for billions of gil in future years.

I knew it! Always trust your gut instinct!:P

[Arcell]

No, it says right in his post "the old recipes will be lost and it will not be possible to make that gear anymore going forward."

All gear that is just an optimal piece and craft seems to be getting phased out and only way to get them will be to buy from existing player who has them.

There will be new recipes for existing gear. It's not that hard to understand. The old versions with optimal will be lost with the old recipes. It seems like there will now be two versions of the same gear though. One with optimal, one with required.

[AlphaDragoon]

I figured it was just "optimal rank" versions that would eventually become unable to be made, and the new recipes would make "required rank" versions.

If they do just make "Required Rank" versions of the same exact armor...why not just make all the existing armor into Required Rank? Why do the extra work?

[Lienn]

Moving forward, all gear that is introduced will have requirements placed on them as we will be phasing out the "Optimal Rank" system. With new recipes being introduced in 1.19, the old recipes will be lost and it will not be possible to make that gear anymore going forward. So only the currently existing versions that exist prior to the change will feature "Optimal Rank" features.

That's some disappointing news IMO. Because while the rank restriction is common in many MMOs, the armory system isn't. Actually in most MMOs you don't even change classes...

With rank requeriment instead of carrying one set of armor for craft and one set for gathering you will have to carry multiple sets. This will pretty much break the armory system as a whole...some people might just say "But in FFXI you had level restriction and everything was fine"...but in FFXI you couldn't change class on-the-fly...you had to go to mog house, change class, withdraw most of the new cclass gear, deposit the other class ones...sometimes even having to mule back gear from your storage mule.

Here you need to be carrying with you every piece of armor if you want to effectively use the armory system...so the more generic they are the better.

Some examples of myself:

I use velveteen coatee set as gatherer...right now its OK. But with rank restriction i'd need to carry a velveteen AND a canvas coatee set because my BTN is 46 but my MIN and my FSH are 35ish.

Same goes for craft...i use velveteen coatee but my craft range goes from 42 to 33, with rank restriction also forcing me to carry 2 sets instead of one.

And this goes for battle classes too. Sometimes you just don't have the correct rank gear with you...maybe you're gathering with a r40 class and a friend pass by and invite you to grind with him...sometimes you deposited part of your gear to free space...but the armory system offers you the possibility of swaping class right away and start playing with him...but with rank restriction this won't be possible...even though you can change classes on -the-fly you cannot use it effectively right away...you will be required to go to city and withdraw the correct armor.

Too bad indeed, IMO. Its another great aspect of the game that will be discarded...maybe later on they also discard the favor option and add a nomad moogle at camps so players can change jobs there instead of on-the-fly.

[Oscillate_Wildly]

I'm in the same boat as Lienn. The Dev's response just has me sighing a great deal as this is rather disappointing news to say the least.
At least now I can opt out of carrying on nude while I rank up lower leveled classes, or opt to wear a new set of armour one rank ahead of time so I don't have to stop ranking, go back to town, buy it, then go back out again. Adjusting the repair system has done nothing for my inventory, and if anything, has made matters much worse.
I hate to think about going back to XI's way of doing things in terms of RESTRICTED ARMOUR. How very droll, heavily instanced content, a dying open world, and restrictions up the wazoo. Pretty sure if I'd known going into this game it'd turn out like this, I wouldn't have wasted the money.

For one, I can say, I did not see this coming. ): Perhaps for craftable gear to remain the way it is, and for future 'raid' gear to be restricted maybe I did, and would have welcomed it to be honest. But not this.

[Kiote]

This really would have been a fine change if they had already come up with a way to remove gear from our inventories. But they have openly admitted they have no idea how to do that and it is going to be a long while before it is implemented.

If this is the way they want to go they seriously need to consider pushing this change back until they figure out how to get gear out of our inventory.

[Reika]

That's some disappointing news IMO. Because while the rank restriction is common in many MMOs, the armory system isn't. Actually in most MMOs you don't even change classes...

With rank requeriment instead of carrying one set of armor for craft and one set for gathering you will have to carry multiple sets. This will pretty much break the armory system as a whole...some people might just say "But in FFXI you had level restriction and everything was fine"...but in FFXI you couldn't change class on-the-fly...you had to go to mog house, change class, withdraw most of the new cclass gear, deposit the other class ones...sometimes even having to mule back gear from your storage mule.

Here you need to be carrying with you every piece of armor if you want to effectively use the armory system...so the more generic they are the better.

Some examples of myself:

I use velveteen coatee set as gatherer...right now its OK. But with rank restriction i'd need to carry a velveteen AND a canvas coatee set because my BTN is 46 but my MIN and my FSH are 35ish.

Same goes for craft...i use velveteen coatee but my craft range goes from 42 to 33, with rank restriction also forcing me to carry 2 sets instead of one.

And this goes for battle classes too. Sometimes you just don't have the correct rank gear with you...maybe you're gathering with a r40 class and a friend pass by and invite you to grind with him...sometimes you deposited part of your gear to free space...but the armory system offers you the possibility of swaping class right away and start playing with him...but with rank restriction this won't be possible...even though you can change classes on -the-fly you cannot use it effectively right away...you will be required to go to city and withdraw the correct armor.

Too bad indeed, IMO. Its another great aspect of the game that will be discarded...maybe later on they also discard the favor option and add a nomad moogle at camps so players can change jobs there instead of on-the-fly.

Totally agree.

I myself always felt they should have just made the penalty for wearing over-rank or wrong class items higher a long time ago. Unless they double/triple inventory space, making everything that is currently optimal rank into required level is going to to hurt everyone, and pretty much nullifying all past efforts at bettering players inventory space. 100 slots isn't enough right now, especially for the all-around type of player, it definitely wont be unless space is increased in conjunction with gear changes.

[Fensfield]

Moving forward, all gear that is introduced will have requirements placed on them as we will be phasing out the "Optimal Rank" system. With new recipes being introduced in 1.19, the old recipes will be lost and it will not be possible to make that gear anymore going forward. So only the currently existing versions that exist prior to the change will feature "Optimal Rank" features.

EDIT: The above quoted post is incorrect in a number of ways, please see Bayohne's post proper for the correct version. The content below was my original reply to the above .. and at the moment I don't know what is going anymore so I'm just going to go clear off and worry about my ailing dog instead.

----

So now begins the trying to stomach arbitrarily not being allowed to wear particular shirts. Great.

Of all the things I liked removed, this is the worst. I don't know if I'll quit over this or not, I suppose I'll just have to wait and see just how much this screws up having my characters look how I choose (it probably won't; I mostly take up class and rank appropriate stuff out of aesthetic preference anyway, but..) but that's not even starting on the damper it puts on the armoury system. I really expected all new items to be restricted, and the old to just be left alone.

As Oscillate_Wildly said.. I now, for the first time in all the trouble we've had, believe I would not have bought this game knowing what I now know, and regret having spent my money on it.

That's a really, really depressing thing to have to admit, and I hope I don't get completely driven out, especially not by the anxiety of waiting for the change to happen. 'Guess the deciding factor will be the effect this has on my friends, unless this makes things too completely horrible to bear with.

I feel kind of sick.

[Oscillate_Wildly]

Totally agree.

I myself always felt they should have just made the penalty for wearing over-rank or wrong class items higher a long time ago. Unless they double/triple inventory space, making everything that is currently optimal rank into required level is going to to hurt everyone, and pretty much nullifying all past efforts at bettering players inventory space. 100 slots isn't enough right now, especially for the all-around type of player, it definitely wont be unless space is increased in conjunction with gear changes.

I remember earlier even, not too long ago, but they even said themselves that it'd be impossible to raise our inventory cap much further, especially to the degree many people were requesting (unlimited for example) because of the difficulty it would bring to store the information in their servers.
And a raise on inventory would be brilliant to be honest, even still. Because as it is my inventory is mainly gear, I rarely have any more than 5 spaces (with a full bazaar) empty.

But then I'm curious, XI had this issue and so does XIV.
Why do the armour pieces we wear still count towards our Inventory? This isn't the case in some other non-mmo games, but is it really impossible to implement? I think this would really help people to free up space.
However the downside would be people complaining that they are unable to get undressed due to full inventories....

Though back on the topic of this required rank bullcrap, if they're ever seriously considering doing this I do hope they raise the inventory cap up rather than to leave it as it is.
I don't see why they're doing this in the first place to be honest. Only a handful of people, RPers or not, wear articles of armour that aren't fit for their class. And that's rarely in the battle field. It's a great system really, what we have going on now. The few people who weren't wearing pieces of armour that suited their rank, were doing it either because they didn't have an item or it was broken and up in their bazaar.

It is a system that does nothing to improve the game if removed, it is simply a needless restriction that drew many people to this game in the first place. I agree with the fact that harsher penalties to the armour should be in place, that grow weaker as you're within rank of the item, getting full benefit of the items once you've hit and are above the optimal rank.

[Cairdeas]

:/ Damn SE and I didn't think something about the changes to XIV would ever anger me more then the Classes Locked to Jobs crap.

I'm.. I'm

I really am not sure how I should respond to this. :/ I really loved this game when it first came out. And I really loved a lot of the systems and had awesome ideas on how to EXPAND the systems not restrict them.

But The last few recent changes all sound Restrictive not Progressive :/

I'm... I think I'm physically sick :/