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

[Urthdigger]

My biggest fear about implementing more varied stats, as a veteran FFXI and 1.0 player, isn't necessarily the notion of "You must have this or be kicked" TBH I always saw more discrimination on job choice than gear. No, my issue is with making new gear relevant.

Varied stats worked in FFXI for two reasons: Gear swapping (which I don't wish to see come back for many reasons, mostly inventory bloat), and a lack of endgame options. At endgame in the CoP era you had HNMs, Dynamis, Sky, and Sea. Same goes for 1.0, you had a whopping 3 endgame dungeons (Cutter's Cry, Aurum Vale, and Darkhold), faction leves (Not even sure if this dropped anything useful), Ifrit, Garuda, and Hamlet. Compare those to FFXIV, which tosses out a couple of new dungeons and a raid every major patch.

The issue with varied stats is that gear tends to stick around a lot more. Leaping boots have been brought up earlier. O.kotes stuck around forever for my MNK. I was using a number of grand company pieces in my set in 1.0. Heck, one can also compare this to games like Diablo or Torchlight 2: How many times have you guys hung on to a low level piece of gear forever because the RNG never dropped another item in that slot with that all-important stat you needed?

The problem I foresee with more varied stats on gear is that new stuff comes out, and while it has more stats it doesn't have more of the RIGHT stats, and is regarded as useless. Never upgrading my body piece past my AF because healing potency +10% is just too good to pass up. New dungeons being run once for the story completion and then never again.

[Nalien]

The problem I foresee with more varied stats on gear is that new stuff comes out, and while it has more stats it doesn't have more of the RIGHT stats, and is regarded as useless. Never upgrading my body piece past my AF because healing potency +10% is just too good to pass up. New dungeons being run once for the story completion and then never again.

This is why I'm a big fan of the IX suggestion; Bard AF could have Enhanced Ballad, and if we were just doing as XI did, you'd either never upgrade beyond that, or be in the unwanted situation of having to lug it around forever because it's situational. If you can effectively learn the stats off gear, and then put points into setting those stats without the gear, this isn't an issue though... It strikes me as a very good middle ground to strike, we'd get much more interesting and varied stats, but we wouldn't be locked into using Thief's Knife until the end of time, we'd just use Thief's Knife, learn Treasure Hunter off it, then continue upgrading gear as we do and setting Treasure Hunter in a cross-class skill style menu.

It's actually a suggestion partly brought up because what you've described is kind of already the case... No where near as bad as XI was given how quickly we turn over gear, but it's still there... If you have i230 gear already, what is the new dungeon gear doing for you exactly? Mhach gear might hold some value, but it also might now... I'm working on a relic, why do I care about the new weapon introduced in a trial? I don't... If they implemented interesting stats in a method similar to IX, then I'd perhaps care about that dungeon gear as gear, I'd want a Nidhogg weapon alongside my relic weapon, the stats would entice me to do that content much more, while not locking me down to using the same piece of equipment for the next two years...

Arguably that forces people to do all content, but... That's not how IX worked, you had more stats that you could possibly set... All SE needs to do is balance it so you get fairly useful and generic skills off common gear that pretty much everyone gets, while rarer gear has more situational or impressive effects... If you really don't want to do Nidhogg, still don't, you'd still have stats off your current gear to set, and I can picture Nidhogg rewarding something extremely situational (Dragon Killer).

[Zojha]

I'm working on a relic, why do I care about the new weapon introduced in a trial?

Because you might have alt-classes for which it would be a substantial upgrade, seeing as lore "and" midan gears are still weekly locked?

No real defense for the dungeon gear, tho - You can just farm Midas normal for better uncapped gear on alt classes.