Please remove iLevel

[Zumi]

XI didn't have iLvl. It also maintained it's level cap over a looooooong period of time. Gear in that game was often situational, some pieces doing elemental damage, different attack damage types (slashing, blunt etc), had innate skills on it for different situations (Carbuncle Mitts, a piece of gear that made summoning Carbuncle have 0 upkeep cost or Kraken's Club, something that had the chance to proc several hits per attack), and there were pieces you could get as low as level 7 that could remain in slot up at cap. It made collecting gear actually -feel- meaningful

it was far more interesting than the linear scaling we have now. That's what I want to see in XIV

FFXI does have ilvl gear now, its just how games work now. ilvl was actually created by WoW and everyone copied it because it worked so well. No more guessing at what piece of gear was better.

[SoullessSvipdagr]

I think ilvl is fine. But I am also used to this simple style. I enjoy that there are few options for gear. Walking into rev toll with allagan and myth, well it's just cool.

[Jocko]

No more guessing at what piece of gear was better.

The simple fact that there's even an innately -best piece- (Or in XIV's case, that there's not even a potential argument) is the very problem. It's boring. I have no desire to farm for more DL or AF2 because it doesn't feel like I'm gaining anything substantial. It's the exact same as the gear I had before. It's nothing but a a hurdle to be passed with nothing interesting beyond. My character isn't gaining more versatility, utility, or potential build styles. Just higher stats

[Rivienne]

As a player I agree I would love a more horizontal design. It also allows for a lot more variety in fights, because you have to potentially have a different gear and strategy for each fight, whereas right now it can very much be "use same party, memorize pattern, wear universal best gear". Horizontal opens a whole world of possible content, each with its own unique challenge. (Though note I never played XI, or any other MMO before this one so I am speaking hypothetically and from experience with offline games only.)

And in developer mindset with no deadline I say "that is an interesting problem to solve". In fact a modular more horizontal design is by far the most fun type of project to work on, because it is both concrete in logic like the more vertical approach, and yet far more open ended. It also is the kind of project that works as a basis for either a vertical or more horizontal approach. It is also a great brain teaser because it is going to be so hard to get right, and I love a good puzzle.

But... But... It isn't a no deadline project. It is always on a deadline in fact. And with deadlines and with testing, I shudder in horror at the scope of problems that would be introduced if it wasn't there from the start. Of course the self-centered player in me still wants to say "not my problem give me what I want!" but I can't really separate my own experience here and I am going to be far too sympathetic to the developer team to demand it, even though I think it would be a lot more fun, while also removing the "gear check" attitude nonsense.

Side note: I have started queuing for dungeons partially under geared(I blame Livilda), and only putting on my best gear when I have to. Because it is more fun. It makes things more challenging, and it helps weed out most of the attitudes (but not all). I actually ran the smoothest run of Brayflox yet today, while wearing a mix of level 10 and level 20 gear, right up until the last boss when i switched. (Incidentally this also dramatically cut down on my repair costs.)

[Thunderz]

Either way this is the direction the dev's have decided to take the game its not really something they just up and toss to the curve because the forum folks do not agree

its a pointless thread

[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.

[Alpheus]

It was an interesting system for sure, but also a very bad one. You can't just pump more and more sidegrades into the system and expect good things to happen from it. All it lead to was people needing to use 3rd party tools to make macros to utilize it all, and created an absolute inventory nightmare that is still there to this day.

Vertical gear progression and ilvl is a good thing, and one that I'm hoping they stick with. As was already said, you don't need ilvl for people to judge you by your gear. They will already do that. Bad gear will be bad and good gear will be good regardless of what number SE puts next to it.

That's a very good point and it's well made personally I think FFXI hit a sweet spot with the Abyssean Af3/VW era/Trials of the Magians/Sky Abjuration/Einherjar Abj gear since it made relevant older gear people may have already had while allowing newer gear to also be obtained, then the momentum was killed because of a drought of content and the 1st glaring instance of having a MMO being upkept by a skeleton crew and a vastly reduced budget. Many of the need to use Spellcast in FFXI coulda been circumvented if SE was willing to put forth the effort to really give the code they had working with, a look over. A lot of the time the then current and now current Dev Team scuttle away ideas at potential fixes simply because it would take too much effort and it was quite appalling to see unfold and even more appalling to hear what could be construed as echoes of that same "We could but it would take too much effort" from the ARR Dev team

[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.

[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.

[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.