Required rank on all gear

[MeowyWowie]

With how fast you can rank and with how many classes there are. Changing it to restricted rank only is going to hinder people more. Because they'll have to stop, go buy new gear when they hit a new rank, or keep tons of gear on them. Its just... This is a horrible idea.

If this is the way the games moving, I wouldn't be surprised if they drop the "Change your class anywhere" feature next.

That's what makes this a conundrum lol. They're making leveling faster, but making it harder to stay up to date on gear, why? lol

I'd prefer to keep the "required" rank on gear, slow down the leveling curve (it's far too fast already) and focus on the journey instead of the destination of capped rank.

[Anonymoose]

I really thought they'd stick by the two main core concepts of the armory system - but I guess we're only ending up with half of one. I rather enjoyed the Optimal Rank system, and will be bummed to see it phased out ENTIRELY as opposed to just not being put on Rare/Ex pieces of gear.

Usually, I agree with XIV's direction of progress, but I don't agree with this decision at all - I don't care what the QQers who rage every time they see a low level sacrificing their effectiveness by wearing high level shit say in defense of it.

When it all comes down to it, this is one of those changes that, yes, I will adapt to just fine over time and in the end it won't matter all that much -- but I thought this wasn't supposed to be FFXI-2 -- and if we're changing that position, how about we take the f***ing gear damage away?

[Val_Rhys]

I am personally very happy to see this change. But I have a serious question for people opposed to it though it may sound facetious.

Is there a reason players are opposed to going back to their retainers to acquire gear when they switch a class? With new travel implementations and static home point, I don't see it being so bad. Even having to carry a set of gear for each of the classes you play, you should be able to fully equip at least 4-5 with our current inventory situation even if the classes overlap very little in gear. I'm genuinely curious about this though, not trying to rub it in people's faces that the system they like is going away.

At the very least, I would think players in favour of the current optimal rank system can understand why some players were so against it (or at least it required a major overhaul in implementation). Character progression via gear acquisition and ranking up felt practically non-existent in the current optimal rank implementation.

[Stockapotapoulos]

You people that are getting "physically sick" over this, you have problems.

It is a god damn game. It's not going to please everyone. Get over it.

I don't they think they're seriously getting sick. They're just really, really upset over losing a feature that they really like. It could be a gamebreaker for them. When something is added (or taken away) that is possibly is going to make a player that is very attached to this game not want to play anymore, well... naturally...

...They are going to be bummed out.

Please show some compassion, Your Majesty.

[akisato]

cool im out, hopefully ill still sub when they're done with this game.

[Viridiana]

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.

I'm not gonna say I disagree with the decision, but I do ask one thing. While you're tweaking recipes and gear, can you maybe introduce more pieces of intermediate gear, then? For example, from ranks 22 to 32, there's a 10-rank gap of MH tools for certain DoH classes. By rank 30, the rank 32 tool is better than the rank 22 tool. I'd ask that, if we're no longer to be allowed to equip the better gear for our rank, we could instead have, say, a rank 27 tool so we're not forced to piddle along with rank 22 stats until we finally get to rank 32.

Oh, and I just remembered this post over in the GLA forums. If you're going to do this, you need to make a rank 1 shield. . .

[PrettyPrincess]

I don't they think they're seriously getting sick. They're just really, really upset over losing a feature that they really like. It could be a gamebreaker for them. When something is added (or taken away) that is possibly is going to make a player that is very attached to this game not want to play anymore, well... naturally...

...They are going to be bummed out.

Please show some compassion, Your Majesty.

Princess knows not of this "compassion"

This is a stupid thing to ragequit over. You probably shouldn't play other games that have level locked gear in them then.

[Leeloo]

I am personally very happy to see this change. But I have a serious question for people opposed to it though it may sound facetious.

Is there a reason players are opposed to going back to their retainers to acquire gear when they switch a class? With new travel implementations and static home point, I don't see it being so bad. Even having to carry a set of gear for each of the classes you play, you should be able to fully equip at least 4-5 with our current inventory situation even if the classes overlap very little in gear. I'm genuinely curious about this though, not trying to rub it in people's faces that the system they like is going away.

At the very least, I would think players in favour of the current optimal rank system can understand why some players were so against it (or at least it required a major overhaul in implementation). Character progression via gear acquisition and ranking up felt practically non-existent in the current optimal rank implementation.

It's restricting gear freedom with very little gain in my opinion. I don't think the economic reasons people keep bringing up(crafters making more low-mid rank gear) is valid because I think that's more about the over-complicated recipes which they're already working on.

I also think you can still have stuff to look forward to with the optimal system if you just hold back from wearing stuff until you're @ or close to optimal. So if the reason to change it is simply because people can't control themselves and need to feel special about reaching a new rank for that new piece of gear(or because it kills them to see a r1 noob wearing the same thing as them) I can't agree that it's worth the change.

[Viridiana]

With how fast you can rank and with how many classes there are. Changing it to restricted rank only is going to hinder people more. Because they'll have to stop, go buy new gear when they hit a new rank, or keep tons of gear on them. Its just... This is a horrible idea.

If this is the way the games moving, I wouldn't be surprised if they drop the "Change your class anywhere" feature next.

I think it's more likely we'll see people running around in weathered gear into their 20's, then keeping that gear until nearly 40, and maybe buying a final set after that.

[Val_Rhys]

It's restricting gear freedom with very little gain in my opinion. I don't think the economic reasons people keep bringing up(crafters making more low-mid rank gear) is valid because I think that's more about the over-complicated recipes which they're already working on.

I also think you can still have stuff to look forward to with the optimal system if you just hold back from wearing stuff until you're @ or close to optimal. So if the reason to change it is simply because people can't control themselves and need to feel special about reaching a new rank for that new piece of gear(or because it kills them to see a r1 noob wearing the same thing as them) I can't agree that it's worth the change.

I completely agree with your crafting comment. As an r50 crafter, I seriously don't care at all about that and I'm not even sure it's something that would happen in any meaningful way to improve the economy.

I personally could live with the optimal rank system IF they had made much more significant penalties on wearing gearing under rank. A lot of misinformation is spreading in this thread where people have said that low rank players are gimping themselves by using gear far above their rank. That's simply not true. I've said this before, but the Dodore Doublet provides the best stats in the game for favoured classes at r30. 18 ranks below optimal rank. I personally felt like the optimal rank system was meaningless with its current implementation. So, at the very least, I would think players (regardless of being for or against) could agree that significant overhaul was needed either way.