Please remove iLevel

[Alpheus]

You are going to have vertical progression in any game with a level system, that's a fact and will never change (level systems by design are broken with current MMO design methodologies but that's a whole different discussion). So I personally don't see anything 'wrong' with scaling rewards along a progressive path in the format it's done in this game.

What I am a little interested in though is how SE plans on growing the game once a level cap hits. Will iLVL just keep scaling as it is now? We're only level 50 but we have what would effectively be a level 90's gear (assuming the scaling is linear). So what are we going to be using when we're actually 90?

Did FFXI do it this way with iLVL gear? Personally, I've felt that rarity tiers were a better way of dividing gear amongst a similar level, where each rarity/level combination only has so many stat points available for allocation meaning that the highest rarity for a level is the highest amount of stats someone in that level can attain. If more power is needed in such a system then either AAs (alternative advancement, a la EQ, EQ2 for example) or a level increase is required.

Personally I'm more a fan of the level increase method because then you're actually getting something for your work (in the form of new abilities and potentially new ways to play your character) as opposed to a comparatively boring statistical increase (a +5% DPS gain with the same skills is less fun to me than a +2% gain because you gained a new ability).

FFXI had mostly Horizontal progression for most of its life, it gelled really well with the decade worth of content that it had and diff BiS gear from diff sources so you never really felt like grinding away at only one thing. A lot of people enjoyed this because you never really felt you were on a hamster wheel grinding to gear cap and waiting for the next update to invalidate your earnings. On top of this the battle system in XI was designed with gear swaps mid battle so while a piece of Gear was BiS for a Weaponskill it wasnt BiS for a spell's Pre-cast set or Mid-Cast set or a Damage Reduction Set or a Idle Set. I personally enjoyed it (as I saw someone describe it) since "each piece of gear felt like a card in a Deck" and you had all these events to get the best gear for a specific purpose so it kept the gear grind rather fun especially knowing that what you earned wasn't gonna get blown out of the water completely, maybe by a few stat points here and there.

Then Seekers of Adoulin came out and they put one of the Battle Leads in charge of FFXIV 2.0 in charge of XI and we now have Ilvls up to 118 to circumvent breaking the 99 cap so now we have gear with paragraph long stat descriptions and monsters essentially sniping players mid gear swap since when you swap out of ilvl gear you effectively are at a lower lvl.

That's a oversimplification I'll admit but it's my take on XI's handling of Gear past and present.

[Jocko]

snip

This. Every single word of it

[Laryndra]

FFXI had mostly Horizontal progression for most of its life, it gelled really well with the decade worth of content that it had and diff BiS gear from diff sources so you never really felt like grinding away at only one thing. A lot of people enjoyed this because you never really felt you were on a hamster wheel grinding to gear cap and waiting for the next update to invalidate your earnings. On top of this the battle system in XI was designed with gear swaps mid battle so while a piece of Gear was BiS for a Weaponskill it wasnt BiS for a spell's Pre-cast set or Mid-Cast set or a Damage Reduction Set or a Idle Set. I personally enjoyed it (as I saw someone describe it) since "each piece of gear felt like a card in a Deck" and you had all these events to get the best gear for a specific purpose so it kept the gear grind rather fun especially knowing that what you earned wasn't gonna get blown out of the water completely, maybe by a few stat points here and there.

Then Seekers of Adoulin came out and they put one of the Battle Leads in charge of FFXIV 2.0 in charge of XI and we now have Ilvls up to 118 to circumvent breaking the 99 cap so now we have gear with paragraph long stat descriptions and monsters essentially sniping players mid gear swap since when you swap out of ilvl gear you effectively are at a lower lvl.

That's a oversimplification I'll admit but it's my take on XI's handling of Gear past and present.

If you're still gearswapping when you have skirmish/delve gear you're doing it wrong. The gear was designed to eliminate that need.

[Alpheus]

If you're still gearswapping when you have skirmish/delve gear you're doing it wrong. The gear was designed to eliminate that need.

Yes you're right all that fast cast on all the Plasm/Skirmish armor to cap casting reduction for spells along with all the cure potency and MAB and Magic Damage on all the same pieces as that fast cast and add to that SMN BloodPact delay and Avatar perpetuation and Avatar Magic Atk Bonus and all that Double Triple and Quad Attack. Don't be obtuse. I'll agree it's the closest to obsoleting needing to gearswap more than any other item set introduced, but to say gearswapping is doing it wrong for FFXI? You're crazy. It doesn't fulfill every need at every given moment even with it's paragraph long descriptions it's function is to simulate post lvl 99 play without the FFXI Dev Team being bothered to actually break the cap.

Many abilities and spell effects enhanced by pieces of gear still require non item level variants because FFXI's Dev Team was winging it on ilvl implementation and AF upgrades to ilvl territory aren't gonna be a thing until November and even then it's gonna be weaker than Plasm/Skirmish armor so it'll still require gearswapping for those specific effects, it just wont be as suicidal.