Please remove iLevel

[Jocko]

It's nothing but a feature that railroads itemization into a very dull linear path, and breeds a very gear elitist community as a result. It's sad when people are looked at as nothing more than a number next to their gear

Horizontal progression is a far more interesting design style than vertical progression in my opinion. Leaves room to design sidegrade equipment for people to individualize their characters, as well as blurring the line between what gear is acceptable or not for pieces of content, allowing a player's own identity and skill to shine through

[Kyp]

GW2 is designed just for you, and the game is very well done for it

[Noahlimits]

It's nothing but a feature that railroads itemization into a very dull linear path, and breeds a very gear elitist community as a result. It's sad when people are looked at as nothing more than a number next to their gear

Horizontal progression is a far more interesting design style than vertical progression in my opinion. Leaves room to design sidegrade equipment for people to individualize their characters, as well as blurring the line between what gear is acceptable or not for pieces of content, allowing a player's own identity and skill to shine through

End game players will require certain gear based on stats regardless of ilevel. I hope you're aware of this.

[Jocko]

End game players will require certain gear based on stats regardless of ilevel. I hope you're aware of this.

Yeah, which is why we have this awesome system called 'Materia' to make gear with otherwise desirable traits but with less stats on par w- Oh wait.

[Thunderz]

No

/10char

[Jocko]

No

/10char

Why? At least have a discussion with me. I don't see much benefit to it other than to place artificial limits on players

[Thunderz]

Why? At least have a discussion with me. I don't see much benefit to it other than to place artificial limits on players

did you ever try to do "anything" on DF and you have someone join under-geared to the point its detrimental

when they introduce the Gear requirement on 2.1 update this will force people to gear up before undertaking a harder instance which helps everyone

[Jocko]

did you ever try to do "anything" on DF and you have someone join under-geared to the point its detrimental

when they introduce the Gear requirement on 2.1 update this will force people to gear up before undertaking a harder instance which helps everyone

I'm not worried about undergearing or whatever

My primary concern is that the very system itself pigeonholes gear progression into a very boring linear path

[Kincard]

My primary concern is that the very system itself pigeonholes gear progression into a very boring linear path

Your suggestion doesn't really make any sense. Removing that number on the top of the item description isn't going to do anything to solve that. The ilevel is there strictly for convenience except for those cases where they screwed up itemization and accidentally made something weaker (GC Bow VS Ifrit's Bow for instance). If they design things to be a linear climb the only different that ilevel number is going to do is make it so you don't have to go pull out a community site calculator to figure things out for you...then again, you'd probably figure just from that fact that a weapon with DEX+20 and Crit+12 is probably a higher ilevel than one with DEX+17 and Crit+10.

As much as I liked the horizontal progression system in XI it's obvious they're committed to the vertical progression system for XIV. You can lobby for them to change it but I doubt you'd be particularly successful.

[MadokaTomoyo]

did you ever try to do "anything" on DF and you have someone join under-geared to the point its detrimental

when they introduce the Gear requirement on 2.1 update this will force people to gear up before undertaking a harder instance which helps everyone

This is so false.

Once I pug'ed AK and got an under-geared tank. I rolled my eyes and sighed at first but decided to go through with it. In the end I was humbled; the Tank was good, despite having no gear.

Since then I've practiced being less judgmental of "low-geared" players. We could all learn a lesson or two, including Thunderz.

The OP has a valid argument and so far the only opposing arguments have been lacking substance. I rather liked the comparison to FFXI, it really did work well. Instead, with iLevels, the gear is black and white, you are either gimp or god; I don't like that mentality.

The only pro to iLevels would be using them to prevent things like Titan carries etc.