Reset Item Levels in 4.0?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

-snip-

And those links fail to address a significant Achilles' heel to horizontal progression: people min/max. Look no further then FFXI, where people who chose the incorrect sub-job basically had little chance to do endgame content. While you can have small bits of diversity, the moment one job/class/ability outpaces another by enough of a margin, it will be deemed useless. This is especially true amongst gamers today because of Youtube, Reddit and even this forum. People are either encouraged to look at guides or follow advice from veteran players. Yes, you do not need to optimize for anything outside raiding, however people are typically going to get advice from better players, who in turn, have no reason not to say such and such is better. At best, MMOs can have a form of diagonal progression. In fact, most do; borrowing elements wherever possible to shake things up without deviating from vertical progression. FFXIV gets its variance through allowing players to readily change their job on the fly.

None of this speaks to the sheer difficulty of balancing a game with numerous weaving paths. Dragoon currently has 27 ability you will actively use. If every skill offered just two additional options for us to choose, you've effectively tripled the developer workload because they now have to assume every possible combination, lest one setup becomes overpowered. STR tanks are an example of what happens there.

[alimdia]

Item levels will keep growing and growing, because that's how this game was designed to be, item level was never meant to match character level, and you can see that even in low level gear



In a few years we will be past ilvl 600, and there will be nothing wrong with it, other than people who still don't understand that ilvl is just meant to point out there's a stat increase and has nothing to do with character level.

[Khalithar]

In a few years we will be past ilvl 600, and there will be nothing wrong with it

Well there is the issue of stat inflation. Sooner or later they will have to do something about that as the numbers will get pretty crazy. Just as an example, in WoW, when the Cataclysm expansion came out they did a hard gear reset and my endgame geared tank in Wrath of the Lich King (the expansion prior to Cataclysm) went from around 22k-23k HP to nearly 200k+ in raid gear in Cataclysm. While I don't think SE will do that drastic of a stat increase, there's going to be a point sooner or later where they will need to do a serious ability prune/stat squish to get things to a more reasonable level.

[Xlantaa]

I don't see the problem. Is just a number. If the ywant reset tiem level ok. But et the stats as they are. The probem is, the stats are calculated on base item level, so, that means reformulate the entire stats grow. I prefer let is as is now.

About the horizontal progression, will have more inconvenientas than advntages. Let's say you stop play at ilevel 300, then log in again after 2 years, and you find the current item level is still 300. For you is great, your item level is still revelant, whicis good. But, what if you're one of those who played those 2 years? You will play 2 years with the same item level? For me of course not. I want a increase. It is better a hybrid system. Item level increase with echa patch, but isntead of have only 2 sets of a item level tiers (for example, now is 2 set of 250, 1 setof 260, 2 for 270), we can have more sets in each tier. But, without stop increasing item level.

[alimdia]

Well there is the issue of stat inflation. Sooner or later they will have to do something about that as the numbers will get pretty crazy. Just as an example, in WoW, when the Cataclysm expansion came out they did a hard gear reset and my endgame geared tank in Wrath of the Lich King (the expansion prior to Cataclysm) went from around 22k-23k HP to nearly 200k+ in raid gear in Cataclysm. While I don't think SE will do that drastic of a stat increase, there's going to be a point sooner or later where they will need to do a serious ability prune/stat squish to get things to a more reasonable level.

I don't understand the anecdote, if you went from 22k HP to 200k HP then they did the opposite of what you say they did, they inflated stats.

[Khalithar]

I don't understand the anecdote, if you went from 22k HP to 200k HP then they did the opposite of what you say they did, they inflated stats.

It was just an example of numbers getting out of hand and it was reaching the point where numbers that big can actually cause technical issues within the game itself (yes that is actually a thing). So while our stats are going to grow, there is going to be a point (sooner or later) where SE will have to go back and lower everything (damage/healing/hp) to prevent those issues from happening.

[Lulu89]

it wont work.. to much work is need to redo all the gear and re set all the stats for old gear.. and + i like it just the way it is.

[alimdia]

It was just an example of numbers getting out of hand and it was reaching the point where numbers that big can actually cause technical issues within the game itself (yes that is actually a thing). So while our stats are going to grow, there is going to be a point (sooner or later) where SE will have to go back and lower everything (damage/healing/hp) to prevent those issues from happening.

As long as SE keeps a natural growth of stats we'll probably be fine, some people will panic but a high ilvl number doesn't really mean anything if they keep stat growth in check, and I'm sure they will.

[ChocoFeru]

It's just a number, there's no real need to change it!

About horizontal progression... it's interesting, yet it's bad for new players because they would have to catch up and it would take months, or even ages like FFXI.

[Ash_]

If the actual number for ilvl didn't serve any purpose other than to act as a gate on content, it would probably be better to do away with it completely (not affecting current or future stats on gear of course). But that would probably cause huge problems.. especially for the NA servers .-.