Please remove iLevel

[StarMarmot]

On the flip side, the sense of actually fighting stronger bosses is diminished if you're going to fight them in the same gear you got to begin with. And no, "more gearing options" might seem interesting, but it won't matter a lot if you can tailor to get a bit more HP, make your weapon fiery, sprout rainbows from your butt or whatnot, in the end, with how the game runs, there's going to be an optimal set anyway and you'll just stick to that while you plow through fights in the same gear, with no sense of being rewarded at all. Of course, you could fundamentally re-design combat in the game and force people to have specific sets that are the best for each fight, but I don't really see what that would accomplish. It's not really any more interesting to have sets that are best for each boss, best for the day of the week or best for if it's raining outside or if it's sunny compared to just having one set that is best for combat over all. There's no thought or interesting customization there either, what's best is best. It would just be a different kind of grind.

I think requests of this kind are simply down to people that can't cope or keep up with change. They feel if they got something good, it should remain good for the rest of the game. A sort of expression for the feeling that they are every bit as great as the hardcore guys that always keep up to date with their gearing, just except for whatever reason they can't keep up to date with their gearing. In a genre whose PvE aspect is defined by gathering stronger gear to overcome stronger foes.

Requests to simply level the competition by removing any gearing progression is understandable from that standpoint.

[Ryios]

Atm, this game really doesn't have much itemization that makes it ok to wear an IL 55 piece instead of an IL 90 piece....

The only real decent example I can find is that I'm wearing the IL60 tank helm from AK because it has parry and acc on it and I have my AF2 chest so it's the best helm I can have until I get the allagan helm from BCB. But IL doesn't matter here. Anyone who knows anythign worthwhile about this game will know that and not judge me because I have an IL 60 helm. They might say "Get your AF2 Helm" and I'll say "It doesn't have parry/acc on it, this ones better, unless you want me to miss and not hold threat....

[Caraway]

They're probably going to do it in a similar style to other MMOs where the top-end blue/purple gear from the previous level cap will be comparable to the green gears you'll get by the next level cap, or something like that. Whatever the case its likely your best gear right now will be at best mid-tier when they raise the level cap.

Personally I wouldn't be too concerned with that though, the level cap's probably not going to rise until an expansion which probably won't be for another 9+ months, at least.

I can't help but be concerned; I really love digging into this sort of thing. And while we do have various coloured gear, it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of consistency with it regarding to how much more or less powerful it is compared to each other. I'd personally love to see the game's design documents.

So you don't want there to be multiple sets of gear like that guy was saying.....and yet you want gear to do different things so you still have to lug around a lot of different sets/weps? Ya no, you want Guild Wars go play GW, do not drag that into this. Making any gear situational where everything has the same stats but may or may not be better in certain situations requires everyone to lug everything around just to get the best increase for each fight.

Like it or not mmos have evolved past that, people like seeing an actual increase over their current gear when switching to something else. You say you do not see an increase in getting gear over what you have but I can guarantee you if you actually worked on it at all you'd see that increase. I guess however it's too hard to see it though when you already skipped over most of the content you'd need said gear for by being carried towards the biggest increase you can get(relic, because yes your gear/single max lvl says a lot on that).

My primary issue with the current itemization scheme is that, ultimately, it's kind of boring. Your next weapon will have more or less the same stats but just slightly more of them. There isn't any real choice as to what you're using, it's either definitively better or definitively not.

Now that said, this is really just "the beginning" of the game so maybe as Crystal Tower expansions and Coil expansions come out we'll start to see a more broad selection of gear.

Primarily, what I like to see from gear selection is gear that can adjust the way you play your game, letting your tailor your character a little different from the other one standing over there.

And what happens when you have multiple classes at max lvl? Now you need multiple sets for each class, again very few players like that when having a choice on how to gear. Having varying stats on gear takes some thought and theorycrafting on which is actually better. Having multiple sets that are entirely situational makes you go "I want this and this and this for each slot, I may not entirely know which is better in each situation but wtf the text says they do this and this in these situations", and that's when you find out after collecting all those different sets "hey this isn't a noticeable difference at all and there's really only a single set that is better than all the rest in every situation".

That's how Guild Wars does it and it's terrible design. They have 15 or so different stat combination on gear that gives you the impression that each is for various situations, until every single dps figured out "hey berserker gear is the only really good stat combination because I like to do higher numbers even though I may die fast aslong as I can kill the thing faster". There is no choice in gear, any solo or small group content in that game pigeonholds you into a single stat combination if you want to be successful, anything other than that and you are gimping your group and yourself.

Just because a theorycrafter says "This is optimal" doesn't mean everything else isn't good though and should be ignored. For example, when I played GW2 my partner played a Necromancer with a heavier leaning towards healing and it ended up working out spectacularly. She didn't hit as hard as other necros could but she made it a heck of a lot easier for everyone on the team to stay alive. And she didn't use Berserker gear to do it.

It isn't "the impression" of choice, there is choice and if you know how to work with it can use it to play your character differently from the 12390857346 other players while still being effective.

what we need is more pieces with Enhanced : X skill , that what makes items worth it, gaining 2 stats here 3 there and 1 over there is meh....

why relics+1 dont enhance 1 of the JOB skills?

enhance Flare: flare now make your next spell 100% crit....

Enhance : River of blood , 50% chance of letting Bard cast misery end w/o health restriction

enhance Cure : chance on heal to proc a instant cast stoneskin

And this! This is the kind of stuff I personally love. I love gear that tweaks your skills, moves you in a slightly different path, or heck gives you entirely new abilities!

I'm honestly not one for mid-battle gear swaps (excepting weapons) because it doesn't make sense to me to pull off your plate chest piece and then pop another one on mid-battle without any negative impact on you.

But I am one for tangible choice. I like gear to augment how I play and make my character play differently than another character of the same class.

MMORPGs are supposed to be about making your character yours. At least they used to be.

[Koga_Edge]

XIV's new battle system is fast paced, while XIs was more outlast. I doubt you will have to worry about gear sets in the future for XIV, atleast not as bad as it was in XI. That and since you can't change gear during combat.
I see nothing wrong with the Ilevel system, I just think they could've done it a bit better, instead of giving us Ilevel90 gear at level 50...

I'd also like to point out, that ILevel wasn't blizzards invention, it was actually D&D/Bioware's "invention"

[ZohnoReecho]

You are comparing GW2, where you are stuck with a single job, to XIV where you have multiple jobs.
If you want an healer you get an healer, not a BLM with an healing ability that put all its stats to MND.

You have already 9 different ways of customizing your char unless you can't get bothered to level each job.

[SolviteSekai]

in FF11 you had to sit in a giant blob of people waiting for a rare mob to spawn so you could tag it to get good gear.

It was pure idiocy, and its only saving grace was that the person who got the drop could brag about it.

[viion]

Probably been said

But FFXI does have item level, it did before it was just hidden, but now its visible for items level 100+.

[Furio]

Hippies. Hippies everywhere!

iLevel is here to stay and it will affect access to instances in 2.1.

Thank goodness.

[Lexxuk]

Hippies. Hippies everywhere!

iLevel is here to stay and it will affect access to instances in 2.1.

Thank goodness.

Why thank goodness? I was doing Titan with GC Sword and Kite Shield, I offered to tank and was told "HAHA U KANT TANK HAWHAW" etc, as well as "under geared pally" etc. I main tanked Titan and am now using my Relic Sword and Shield+1. All the restriction will do is show the bad players who believe gear > skill that they truly and utterly suck, whilst keeping out the good players who know that skill > gear. I'd rather play with people with average gear who know their jobs and don't require an average iLevel of 34987 for an easy fight like Titan than be in a dungeon with people who think just cause they have better gear they are gaming gods. All the iLvl restriction will do is show up the bad players, wait, I can't wait for it to appear now, except I'm stuck playing with them >.>

[CianaIezuborn]

Why thank goodness? I was doing Titan with GC Sword and Kite Shield, I offered to tank and was told "HAHA U KANT TANK HAWHAW" etc, as well as "under geared pally" etc. I main tanked Titan and am now using my Relic Sword and Shield+1. All the restriction will do is show the bad players who believe gear > skill that they truly and utterly suck, whilst keeping out the good players who know that skill > gear. I'd rather play with people with average gear who know their jobs and don't require an average iLevel of 34987 for an easy fight like Titan than be in a dungeon with people who think just cause they have better gear they are gaming gods. All the iLvl restriction will do is show up the bad players, wait, I can't wait for it to appear now, except I'm stuck playing with them >.>

Go go anecdotal evidence!

Glancing at your HP total, your lesser gear was countered by a more skilled/better geared healer. I'm not saying you're bad, in fact quite the opposite you're probably pretty skilled to if you picked up the fight and pulled a good cooldown rotation on your first run through. You need to recognize though that as a lesser geared tank on a fight that's basically tank and spank your gear deficiency was covered by a better than usual skilled/geared healer.

Of course iLevel restrictions aren't likely to affect Titan Hard mode at all, as they will most likely AND should be bypassed by queueing as a full party just like the role restrictions. More likely it will only really effect entry hard modes and AK where people can duty queue solo and have an expectation of completion.

Minimum gear level > Skill > BiS gear level