Required rank on all gear

[Aeyis]

Don't forget the 2 biggest reasons I and any new players can't make a lot of gear: The recipes take waaaay too long to make and a large majority of low level items will need high level parts. Shouting for a crafter doesn't work all the time. It took me about 30 minutes to make a hempen acton someone had asked me to make for their newbie friend.

Also since it seems not many people caught it:

The "all crafted gear will become required-rank" was a miscommunication on the devs' part. They meant that all crafted gear that involves materials that drop from a NM will become required-rank gear (ie: Dodore Doublet, Silver Tricorne, etc)

Lets be honest to yourself. It took you 30 minutes to make because quite frankly you didnt have a single piece of grass or hempen yarn on you (what decently ranked weaver does?).
I had to go through the same because of that very reason, not because the subitems took long to ''make''.
Rather because the lowest grade of cloth i had stored was canvas~

Only reason why there arent many low ranked items on the wards is because due to retainer bazaar limits.
They simply wont sell for ''enough'' compared to other items, most of the time, and as such are not worth making.

Also, in my experience its not really strange being unable to make something when your low level at your craft. :P
People seem to forget that apart from being able to craft higher level items when your rank is higher, you also gain a much greater availability of materials~

More on topic: (and a general response, not person specific~)

Optimal rank is awesome for anyone with multiple classes and/or a crafter.

You want a sense of achievement getting that to ''that rank'' so that you can use your awesome equipment?
Guess what, most people already feel that sense of achievement just by obtaining said equipment.
Why wait to be able to equipment just to have another, but more fake sense of achievement?

I've done many dungeons/instances/tough stuff in the past in mmos, and gained a higher level item as a reward.
Frankly all it did was annoy me that i couldnt use it, rather then feeling any sense of achievement when i finally could.
Clearing that dungeon, killing that boss, doing that tough party/solo quest/encounter is what gives you a great sense of achievement, the equipment being its memento.


To give an example, in WoW, when tbc was new i was leveling up my druid first.
At level 68 i managed to tank the botany (sp?), before they took out crushes and all.
It was pretty rough altho fun, and gave me a great sense of achievement.
I believe it was the demon that dropped a staff that my druid could use for tanking, which would have been a nice memento for being able to manage that run at 68.
Except ofc i couldnt use it because it had a level requirement of 70~
When i gained 70 i must say i didnt feel much of anything being able to equip it then, after all the dungeon run that gave me said item was a bit in the past and the novelty of it wasnt quite the same~


The solo purpose of rank requirements is to prevent lower level characters from using items vastly more powerful from anything they could use at their current rank.
Given that currently items are already nerfed under optimal rank (albeit with them being % based its really no big deal for access/crafting equipment) that solo purpose doesnt exist here.

[Estellios]

Actually, I have a ton of hempen yarn that I use to make arrows, so that was not the issue.

If low level crafters could actually make low level gear, they could make stuff for themselves and stuff to sell, it's not rocket science. Once the crafting recipe changes take place that will be possible. As it is now you will usually need high levels for random pieces of parts and other misc stuff and it takes forever if you don't have parts like sleeves/etc already made.

It's one thing to be unable to make high level gear, but when you need this many materials and these many shards to make a piece of rank 1 gear, you can see how new players can get locked out.

[Aeyis]

What and it still took you 30 minutes? xd
Due to the leatherworking component?

You know they arent removing other class requirements tho~

[BlackRoach]

BOOOO!!!!! NOOOOO. Im way against your idea. This game needs to stay different. Dont try and blend it into all the others. If your thinking into the past and see the real problems you need to just stop, and take a closer look. If that any rank any class gear gets nerfed I will be very unhappy. I think its cool. If people dont know that you need to wear appropriat lvl gear, or if rank 48 gear on a rank 20 really does give the guy more defense, then they just need to make the rank differential penalty is more harsh because it shouldnt do that, not get rid of the whole dam thing! And MORE GEAR!!!!!! All they got is a light selection of crap to choose from, nothing really stands out once your past rank 10. Add so much gear that people start bitchin about that is my solution, crafting would be a hell of a lot more entertaining if i could make something that caught my eye instead of crap lol.

Im bummed so many of you put like on this guys thread, WTH, now there going to ruin a perfectly good system for ignorance.

[Estellios]

What and it still took you 30 minutes? xd
Due to the leatherworking component?

You know they arent removing other class requirements tho~

lol hey even if the materials are on sale it takes a long time to gather them up and synthing parts does take time.

They might not be removing the class requirements for the other materials BUT they will be common stuff that is more readily available and being able to do a synth in 1 step will be a huge improvement.

[Abriael]

Sorry guys, it seems there was some miscommunication earlier on this, and it took awhile to clarify the situation. I've updated my original post in the thread and will copy it here for viability. This was speaking specifically to NM and other content-related gear, and not a blanket removal of the Optimal Rank system. I really apologize for the confusion my post caused!

I also added in details about the recipe changes, too (which can be seen in the dev1016 thread).

Reasonable solution is win. Freedom > All.

[Aeyis]

lol hey even if the materials are on sale it takes a long time to gather them up and synthing parts does take time.

They might not be removing the class requirements for the other materials BUT they will be common stuff that is more readily available and being able to do a synth in 1 step will be a huge improvement.

Hah it just changes the focus of your time spend from what i can tell.

After all those materials will be expensive since everyone of that rank will need them for crafting~

Kind of like WoW with its 30g for a stack of copper ore, lol. (which incidentally was a great way to get a looot of gold on servers you were rerolling on)

So youd just need to spend that time farming gil instead. xd

I do agree with your point about component/material availibility, but imo changing the market ward system would help a lot.
(as well as removing stuff like the obscene requirements for rat fur, heh)

[Holland]

Haha, I had not seen this thread up until now even with it having three Com rep responses ^^;

Thanks Bayohne for the hard work. We are only human, completely understandable that after what? almost six months after the launch of the forums the number of times this has happened is what? twice? thrice? We forgive you.

Now, I agree the optimal level approach to gear should stay and just like XI, gear for several classes and gear for class specific only is necessary along with gear too powerful that needs to be level/class/job restricted.

But after reading all the comments why this should stay and why this should go away, with the crowd that indicated specific reasons why it needs to stay like being able to carry less gear and switch on the fly and remain clothed, etc. I need to ask, with the upcoming changes to stats and the information that stats will have less of an impact as we reach cap and gear will detemine most of the boost from there on out and everything else we know about it:

Will you really equip gear not at optimal level thinking the repercutions of doing so will be greater then?

I mean, stats making a difference (the ones we gain and the ones we equip through gear), a gear at optimal level, even if its a few levels lower will probably benefit you more then a gear equiped several levels before, without even taking into account the extra gear damage for equiping it early.

If this is the case and we're noticeably hindered by stats on gear now (in battle, crafting and gathering), even if its not as restricted as level required gear, we will preffer to carry gear that we are within optimal level either way, no? Efectively making it almost as if we had level required gear only either way.

All this is speculation of course as I have no idea the extent or impact of the upcoming stat changes.

[Reinheart]

mmm JP Reps post today looks like it will be applied to crafted gears as well, will have some that has no restrictions but for battle or instance raid type situations will be more equipments with rank requirements rather than optimal rank...

[Jynx]

The thing that bugs me most about this is no one is willing to discuss what could be done with the optimized rank system to make it shine.

The thing is plenty of people have brought up these points but they generally are getting glossed over in favor of people who fear things changing in anyway. People are afraid they might add some more restrictions if they do anything to the system at all it appears.

While I would welcome more restrictions in any/way/shape/form. I'm willing to accept the developers don't share my viewpoint. I've brought up my points earlier in the thread many of them echo your points.

I just personally find it odd that the devlopers are pretty much encouraging people to wear the wrong gear with this system as it stands. Now I'm all for there being variaty in what gear we should wear in situational moments but just plastering the abillity to wear anything/everything really kills another avenue of class uniquness that the devs are trying so hard to make.