Please remove iLevel

[NovaLevossida]

To be honest, I feel like the upgrades are extremely underwhelming. If I get a new piece of gear, I gain 2 or 3 defense when I have over 700 defense. The only real gains I see are in VIT which will boost my HP by at around 100 or more per gear upgrade. I certainly don't feel like I'm defending any better with tiny defense increases; I just get more HP to take the same amount of damage.

[Azaradi]

Never played XI, but I raided a lot of early EQ1. That game has since gone to an ilvl-like mess of simply playing for "+1gooder" gear. But early on, itemization was done by hand and was varied. So as a caster I would have to choose if I wanted the piece with balanced hp/mana to survive AE damage, or if I wanted to stack mana to extend my damage in a fight. Resists would be spread in chunks, so I'd have to remember to make sure I had at least one piece with each resist. Other gear would have "clicky" effects which you could use as duration buffs, burst buffs, group buffs, direct damage spells that were off the gcd/mana free, etc.

[Azaradi]

(cont)
Here, same-ilvl gear will always have the same vit + primary stats. Two-star ilvl 70 crafteds really can't compete with the extra vit/primary stats on ilvl 90 pieces (outside of stacking vit on dps accessories for high-threshold encounters) due to stat caps. Secondary stats will have a little variation within tiers, but it's mostly just picking which piece has the slightly better combination. It's understandable why games go this route- much easier to balance/itemize when the computer just spits out item stats based on a formula. But the only game that seems to have had success with this practice (WoW) releases entire new tiers of raiding every 4 months. That doesn't seem to be the plan here. And while I don't like the soft-gear resets making all previous progress useless, at least that game has a little flavor in itemization with trinket slots.

[blowfin]

HELL NO.

The last thing I want in this game is to have to carry around 40 situational sidegrade items like I did in XI.

BLm alone:
-Enfeebling set
-Nuking set
-Items for day of the week
-Items for weather
-Resting set
-Stoneskin set
-Stun set (fast cast)
-etc.

As it stands the game isn't designed this way either, and never will be, seeing as we can't swap gear mid combat.

I have a spiritbind set of gear on my main, and my highest tier gear, and that is plenty of gearsets for me TYVM.

[Jocko]

snip

You don't have to have gear swapping to make not boring gear

Alright, honestly it's not the ilvl thing that bothers me, it's just how boring gear is. I haven't played in a week just because DL and AF2 and Allagan stuff is just so boring, there's no thrill to collecting it. Even 1.0 had traits on gear. Ifirt's weapons proc'd fire damage and had high base power while Moogle's weapons proc'd HP/MP regen and had high +ACC

Now it's just 'Ifirt's weapon is ilvl 60, and Moogle's weapon is ilvl 70 lol'

[Pellegri]

You don't have to have gear swapping to make not boring gear

Alright, honestly it's not the ilvl thing that bothers me, it's just how boring gear is. I haven't played in a week just because DL and AF2 and Allagan stuff is just so boring, there's no thrill to collecting it. Even 1.0 had traits on gear. Ifirt's weapons proc'd fire damage and had high base power while Moogle's weapons proc'd HP/MP regen and had high +ACC

Now it's just 'Ifirt's weapon is ilvl 60, and Moogle's weapon is ilvl 70 lol'

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).

[Jocko]

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 back into this.

I had three gear sets for PLD in 1.0; An Enmity set, an HP set, and a high DEF set for beastmen camps. All were useful for different situations. That's what I want. Choice. Variety. Builds. Fun.

[Pellegri]

I had three gear sets for PLD in 1.0; An Enmity set, an HP set, and a high DEF set for beastmen camps. All were useful for different situations. That's what I want. Choice. Variety. Builds. Fun.

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.

[Kaizlu]

You don't have to have gear swapping to make not boring gear

Alright, honestly it's not the ilvl thing that bothers me, it's just how boring gear is. I haven't played in a week just because DL and AF2 and Allagan stuff is just so boring, there's no thrill to collecting it. Even 1.0 had traits on gear. Ifirt's weapons proc'd fire damage and had high base power while Moogle's weapons proc'd HP/MP regen and had high +ACC

Now it's just 'Ifirt's weapon is ilvl 60, and Moogle's weapon is ilvl 70 lol'

Kinda sad that such a simple thing like this was taken out.

[SoullessSvipdagr]

HELL NO.

The last thing I want in this game is to have to carry around 40 situational sidegrade items like I did in XI.

BLm alone:
-Enfeebling set
-Nuking set
-Items for day of the week
-Items for weather
-Resting set
-Stoneskin set
-Stun set (fast cast)
-etc.

As it stands the game isn't designed this way either, and never will be, seeing as we can't swap gear mid combat.

I have a spiritbind set of gear on my main, and my highest tier gear, and that is plenty of gearsets for me TYVM.

Haha I felt this same way when I read it...