Variance in player skill is hurting FFXIV's itemization design.

[Talligan]

FFXI, it always seems to come back to that MMO, has a deeper, more meaningful, variety of items to use in unique and creative ways, which to me adds a certain level of customization which would be a BENEFIT to FFXIV.

Eh, I'd be cautious over that. Due to FFXI's itemization you had groups requiring leaping lizzie boots just for an xp party in Valkurm. All those 'interesting' and 'neat' gear pieces became required for even basic stuff and since it was made super rare, only the super rich or patient could get them, effectively locking most people out of content.

[KeluBehemoth]

Eh, I'd be cautious over that. Due to FFXI's itemization you had groups requiring leaping lizzie boots just for an xp party in Valkurm. All those 'interesting' and 'neat' gear pieces became required for even basic stuff and since it was made super rare, only the super rich or patient could get them, effectively locking most people out of content.

Never once saw or heard of anything as absurd as this. Finding an EXP party was hard enough (waiting hours upon hours); people werent blocked out like that.

[Ryel]

Eh, I'd be cautious over that. Due to FFXI's itemization you had groups requiring leaping lizzie boots just for an xp party in Valkurm. All those 'interesting' and 'neat' gear pieces became required for even basic stuff and since it was made super rare, only the super rich or patient could get them, effectively locking most people out of content.

This isn't even close to true.

[Nalien]

Eh, I'd be cautious over that. Due to FFXI's itemization you had groups requiring leaping lizzie boots just for an xp party in Valkurm. All those 'interesting' and 'neat' gear pieces became required for even basic stuff and since it was made super rare, only the super rich or patient could get them, effectively locking most people out of content.

Not once have I heard of anything remotely like this occurring... Quite the opposite, in fact, I remember getting to places like Crawlers Nest and people missing gear was "OK"... Plenty of times I saw people show up without various slots filled, and rather than "GTFO scrub", people just got on with grinding... Sometimes people would recommend filling those slots, heck some times people would quickly craft a piece for the player to equip... I'm not going to idolize XIs community further, it could be just as bad as XIVs, but I really cannot imagine something like that happening in XIV... The geared players would kick the newb, and the newb would throw a tantrum the moment advice is uttered...

The whole concept of "People will have to have X to do content!" is slightly flawed anyway... Perhaps for endgame raiding, but I doubt the Duty Finder will care... If you take such stats off gear in favour of a FFIX style system, it's not even something people can check particularly easily... It would be something for the hardcore raiders to care about, but they already "discriminate" based on gear and Jobs... The only change such a system would make is adding depth to content, suddenly you're not just doing dungeons for tomestones, you're after a piece of gear for a certain stat. Suddenly you perhaps have more reason to care about higher tier content, while one might not care about the item level boost from Alexander, they might care about a special stat from Alexander...

Depending how you balance it, it's ultimately no different than the current melding options we have... If we take IXs system and adapt it to XIV, then you have plenty of stats but are limited to picking a few... That would mean, setting stats from gear pretty much everyone gets anyway (like tomestone gear) could be inferior to setting stats from from raid gear, but... How is that any different than melding tIV over tV? tV melds are obviously better, but I've not seen a single person complain at people using tIV yet... There's also room for situational stats... IX had a lot of those, "Maneater" increased damage against humanoid enemies, for example... Could easily do the same thing here; Void Ark gear provides "Demon Killer" for increased damage against Voidsent enemies, Alexander could provide "Goblin Killer" and "Machina Killer". The reward for Alexander, then, wouldn't really benefit you for most for most of the game... There might be a Goblin themed dungeon later down the line, in which case such stats become more worthwhile, but again... Nobody knows what you set, and with enough options it's entirely possible that you could make up the difference with other stats...

With the healers it was less fussy, but if you had a RDM who had obtained the relic hat and Dalmatica vs a red mage who had not, and they were both applying for the HNM's open red mage slot, guess which one they'd pick?

This already happens here anyway... If two people apply to join my totally rad Alexander static, and one has i210 while the other has i230, guess which one I'm going to pick?

Treasure Hunter specifically was a really stupid stat in XI, no argument there... Thief was poorly handled for years... Generally though, gear was rare enough that people only really discriminated based on gear if the option of picking someone with better gear was there... If there wasn't? You'd make do with what you could get, perhaps even help gear up your new static member so they do have that gear...