Required rank on all gear

[Cairdeas]

I think your comprehension might be a little off now. I didn't say YOU said killing, but from your argument it SOUNDS like you're saying that with Optimal Ranked Equipment we are neglecting the Crafters by making them obsolete. That couldn't ALSO be because NM's drop mid-ranked gear could it? Free gear > crafted gear, hey hey hey.

We'd probably need a survey or data for it regardless. There's lots of other reasons for a dead market, which replacing optimal rank with restricted rank won't fix.
You forget that it's so easy to rank up 1-30 that it'd be ridiculous to even stop to purchase new gear. With this in place, I'd still go naked or wear old low level equipment until I reached a certain check point in my progression.

The two reasons Crafted gear is sparse between 1-30 is because of the XP Curve and Required mats, Not because people wear level 50 stuff at level 1, The few people who do, do so because they already have rank 50 classes and didn't feel like changing to go do something on their level 1 class.

[Oscillate_Wildly]

The two reasons Crafted gear is sparse between 1-30 is because of the XP Curve and Required mats, Not because people wear level 50 stuff at level 1, The few people who do, do so because they already have rank 50 classes and didn't feel like changing to go do something on their level 1 class.

Exactly, that and the amount of gear GOOD OR BAD that is dropped from both Toto-rak and mid leveled NM's. You can't deny that one zoro Mask is pretty good for what it is.

And that r50 gear at r1 is similar to something we must all do when we stop to change classes to repair something. Eh?

Even with an update to stats, what will the point be? You're right, we've both said it. The curve isn't steep enough like in XI to warrant purchasing and burning through set after set of gear. This change wouldn't be counter productive, but it would be pretty useless.
I think I'm more upset about the finality of this change. It does not say "we thought about this long and hard and did it for Progress!" it says "We have too much to worry about now with all these adjustments, it would be easier just to rank/class lock them instead of do more adjustments."

But no, I don't see this new required rank system fixing anything. An entirely different system, such as recipes, might get new players out of their weathered gear faster but as that has nothing to do with THIS system it shouldn't even be considered.

To make this worth while they would need to adjust the leveling curve which they're doing aren't they? But they're going in the opposite direction? They would need to make it steeper. Otherwise if they keep making it easier to level up this system will become even more pointless.

See it makes sense for gear like JSE or the newer gear as it drops after certain circumstances, but for craft-able gear it's very...Well, it doesn't make much sense really. :/