Please remove iLevel

[Seig345]

Not sure how it was any better in FFXI... seemed like half the classes had to band together to form their own parties because nobody wanted them.

Every time I read about how horizontal progression works, it seems to come down to having 100 different ways to augment one class so there's no gear obsoletion and 100 special snowflake combinations. That's cute and all, but the playerbase will simply find the most optimized option and throw the remaining 99 ways in the garbage and refuse to play with you if you use any of the discarded combinations.

Even if they threw in being able to swap gear even in the middle of battle, then the playerbase would find the most optimized 4-5 of them, and throw the remainder by the way side. Everyone would simply look up the recipe for the best cookie cutter. Even if, on top of that, you threw in them rebalancing the game every month, aka flavor of the month, you're only making it harder for those who don't want to min/max and the elitists will only thrive all the more.

In the end you wind up back where we are now, only with a bunch of wasted development, and very likely a playerbase that has been refined down to the players willing to jump through the hoops to continue playing as they're playing right now.

[CianaIezuborn]

His anecdotal evidence is still more evidence then I ever hear from the other side of the argument. A valid counterpoint requires proof. He provides situational evidence, you provide a supposition that implies his evidence is in fact misinterpreted, yet provide no evidence of your own.

True I didn't repeat previous numbers for hits that are available on the tanking forums, at some point you get tired of repeating info available in Titan guides. The desire to have > 5200 hp unbuffed as a paladin tank is to have more hp base than the combination of a mountain buster + AA damage for the burst phases. It can be done with lower hp(up until the point where MB alone one shots you), which is obvious from his success, but this requires a higher level of gear and skill from your healers as well as 0 room for error during mountain busters. But by entering into Titan HM with that lower gearset he is knowingly shifting additional responsibility onto his healers in a fight that is already hugely taxing on the healers. Most healers would claim a tank that had 4900 hp unbuffed would be unhealable during 5th phase Titan, and it probably would be for the average healer. If you aren't geared enough that an average healer can keep you up, then you're being carried by an above average healer. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, especially if you're running with FC mates that are trying to get you geared up asap, I'm just saying recognize that your lesser gear is being covered by people in better gear.

The real gear requirement is alway going to be this: the minimum required for all party members to succeed at all within the time limits. Nothing else. If that is what you are implying here, then I agree, but otherwise.....

This is exactly what I mean, though I mean minimum average gear level. You can walk into a Titan HM with 7 over-geared players in your skivvies and drop dead in the first 5 seconds and still win, that doesn't mean naked is the minimum gear level. Titan requires a higher hp pool to survive phase transitions and tumults, higher dps for heart phase dps race, and both for the soft enrage during phase 5. During phase 5, Titan does more damage to the party each full rotation and you are capped at a certain kill time by the max hp of your party members.

There is a huge jump in minimum gear level needed from Garuda to Titan. Garuda doesn't hit the group with anything to hard, so there really isn't any real need for additional HP beyond what you get for dinging 50. There's a moderate soft dps check in being able to burn the adds down, but it's not bad. You could probably down Garuda in a group full of AF1 armor, level 30 accessories, and GC weapons pretty easily, and people do it all the time.

The problem is when those same people then move on to Titan in that gear, and then wonder why it's so hard to survive. I really blame this on the huge jump in gear requirements for Titan, but I don't have to much sympathy because of this:

Everything you need to gear up for Titan is purchasable with Philo tomes, except for maybe an Ifrit/Garuda weapon for dps. So there is little to no chance involved in drops to get geared for Titan, you just have to suck it up like everyone else did and get some darklight gear. You can minimize the amount of tomes you need by getting lucky with AK armor drops, but there's really no excuse for showing up for a Titan HM still wearing AF1 gear when upgraded gear is so readily available.

The issue I have is that every time someone says, "You don't need to be geared for Titan!" then someone else hears it and insists on wanting to go do Titan when they have 2900 HP and 5 slots that could be upgraded from AK runs. You don't need to be geared for Titan IF other people in the raid are carrying you, as evident by the amount of Titan clears are being sold.

[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.

[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.

[Keres]

Actually iLvL was invented by players. Blizzard simply added the feature because so many people used an add-on to display a numeral value based on gear

This is not true at all. Item level (as in, a coefficient that determines what sort of stat budget a particular item gets) has been in WoW since day one, and evaluating people based on their average item level has always been possible (though the "average item level" wasn't displayed in the UI until several years in). Even the weakest piece of gear in the game has an item level attached to it, and it simply determines how many stat points (and/or weapon damage) will be on that item. Vanilla WoW had a lot of instances where lower-ilvl gear was better than higher-ilvl gear, but that was mostly due to poor itemization (all 5 core stats on most pieces of Paladin gear!) rather than anything inherent to the game design itself.

What you're thinking of is "Gear Score," a player-made concept where a certain addon would take your item level, enchantments, gems, and other parameters into account and combine them all into one aggregate score.

[Rivienne]

......

I agree with a lot of what you are saying but the sticking point for me is this: "being carried".

So rant mode on:

I disagree with the idea of being carried if you are undergeared in this sense: if the team would fail without you, it doesn't matter that you required an above average healer to keep you up, you were still contributing. Not as much as perhaps is ideal, and yes the healer contributed more than usual, but nevertheless.

Carrying implies you might as well not be there: in my experience whenever this arguments comes up "oh you only did it because you were carried" the person in question still contributed to the fight. Just not as much as they could have.

I have seen the cases where a person was carried, I have been one of those people. And there is a huge difference between the time I was dead during every boss fight in cutter's cry (as healer), and the times where I could barely keep anyone alive because I wasn't geared enough but we won anyway.

As a healer (I don't know if I am "average" or not. I usually think I am fairly bad, but I am obviously my own worst critic) I have definitely seen both cases on the other side as well. Where I just left someone down because it would be a waste to res them, and I could ill afford the MP. That was carrying. We won without. Other cases I keep a person up with a lot more effort, but we couldn't have won if I hadn't. Because that person contributed.

The difference is this: one is being carried because you are literally useless, and not contributing anything, the other you are making things harder than they could be but still contributing to the overall success of the party. There is a difference, and people need to stop confusing the two because it just makes the whole argument worse.

As far as Titan: I agree first timers should probably try to get the best gear they can get. Once they get it down however the actual requirements drop. Not as much as most dungeons (because of HP), but a fair amount. Why? Because within the limits of what is possible, skill trumps the gear. Which is the whole argument people keep missing here.

And as someone else above mentioned, I have come across players who were amazing, more than holding their own, while being ridiculously under geared. Not to mention that this attitude of gear requirements and levels and "carrying" dismisses them sight unseen, and is part of what makes end-game so potentially toxic to new players, no matter the skill level.

Anyway end rant. (Also this whole argument completely misses the point of the OP, and is a bit of a distraction. So..)

[Norb]

I think the best way to do it by far is a mix of vertical and horizontal.

Giggity giggity goo!

[Kluya15]

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

NO SCORPION HARNESS? GET OUTTA MY PARTY

[Nadrojj]

The monk we pugged to fill a dps slot in our Garuda the other day agrees with op, cobalt weapon, lvl 38 belt, one of the lvl 30 rings and a crafting ring.

ilevel is needed, it doesn't have to be super difficult to hit hte level cap, but coming into the fight that severely gimped hurts the rest of the group.

[Zantetsuken]

You want an example of fantastic horizontal gear progression?

Monster Hunter

There was so much creativity and versatility in gear design. Players could endlessly mix-and-match to create the best setup for their own playing style or for whatever hunt they were on.

I had always hoped ARR would adopt something similar, but instead the devs went the opposite direction and used a blunt, vertical, biggest number = best-gear-for-job route. (which is clearly an appeal to the lowest common denominator among players). They even went so far as to remove elemental weaknesses, which is a baseline expectation for any fantasy rpg.


Let's hope they change course as the game begins to grow and expand -- there really is so much potential in this game.