Is anyone else worried SE has backed themselves into a corner?

[Sebazy]

I fail to see the problem, the content difficulty will still be tuned in exactly the same manner, just the numbers will be larger and obsolete content will be easier on those turning up late to the party. Power creep is not all bad, you only have to look back at the fun newer players had trying to break into the raiding scene in FFXI during ToAU, you needed Sea access for the majority of active end game shells, but getting the missions done without an active shell to get you through was the stuff of nightmares. Keeping difficulty as is and not inflating player stats would see the same thing happening with T5/Twintania. That's just not the way to run a popular and accessible console mmo anymore.

[Dedayius]

The problem is the exponential power/ilvl growth. If they had been smart, each new set would only be 5ish or less ilvl apart. Now that we've already gotten to ilvl 90 and they have an established growth rate, stats will quickly get out of control and so will ilvl requiring higher and higher levels just like WoW did. People value any increase in stats they can get, so even if that item had only +1 STR to it it would be something people grind to obtain.

[Cabalabob]

The problem is the exponential power/ilvl growth. If they had been smart, each new set would only be 5ish or less ilvl apart. Now that we've already gotten to ilvl 90 and they have an established growth rate.

This is touching on what I'm worried about, it's more that the item level is too high too soon, they really shouldn't have gone beyond ilvl 60. Cause now all gear from now on is going to have to be ilvl90 or be useless, when 60 cap hits there's gonna be a ton of level 51-60 gear on market boards, will any of it get touched? No, cause we already have gear that is better than that by 20-30 levels. Gear level 60 equipment should be better than gear level 50 equipment we have now, or at least only slightly worse in the case of top end worked hard for allagan etc. but the only way that's gonna happen now is if the gear is already ilvl 100+ and the ilvl is still gonna go up before the first expansion.

[Imapooonu]

Sort of, but not like a scared gazelle backed up against a cliff watching the wolves eyeball them as their meal for the day...

It's more like someone who offered to babysit for a friend only to realize what a rotten brat their friend's kid is.

[Zfz]

Stat inflation is not a problem at all until the numbers are so big it's hard to grasp or simply too much trouble to display/relate to, e.g. I have 103,632 VIT and my HP is at 535,246,258 and boss hits me for 14,353,000 per hit.

IIRC Yoshi-P had stated long time ago that FFXIV follows the clean-slate methodology. This will be achieved by a jump in item level each time a new expansion comes out, so every single piece of old gear becomes irrelevant at the new level cap. This allows new players to quickly catch up to current content, instead of having to grind. So yes, if 2.2 iLv is 120 and 2.4 iLv is 150, then it's entirely possible that at 3.0 the expansion, the first end-game dungeons for your daily grind will give items at iLv200.

I think the OP is confused with the item level and required level. It's entirely possible to have a item level 200 item that can be equipped by a level 1 character, if devs put it in, it will be there. The whole reason item level is displayed separate to the level required to equip the item, is so that they can develop independent of each other. Of course, for ease of management and design, devs standardize the iLvs for each tier of content.

[Billie21]

I thought this game was built around the concept of power creep?

[Avenol]

Since the different between 70->80 and 80->90 gear is so minor, as long as it continues the trend, I have no fear in power creep. As long as there are no HUGE jumps, like 85->90 gear in WoW. I think they'll do this just fine.

[synaesthetic]

Item level was an intrinsic part of the itemization design in this game. It's an internal statistic that determines how much of a primary attribute an item can have as well as the maximum grade of materia that can be attached to it. Materia attribute caps are also determined by item level. An item level 90 body and leg slot item cannot have more than 29 of its primary attribute, and this determines the caps for secondary attributes (accuracy, crit, etc) as well as things like weapon rating for weapons.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Technically, SE COULD just change the numbers from increments of 5, to increments of 1.
(Such as i55 becomes i51, i60>i52, i70>i53, i75>i54, i80>i55 etc. Even 0.5 increments work too. i55 could be i50.5 i75 could be i52.5)

This of course doesnt stop them from making numbers get too high in other stats.
Which I hope they lower the drastic changes, but by doing so, hinders their ability to lock people out of content based on numbers. (which we know they want to do.)

[BrandoH]

It's called vertical progression, OP. Not much of a corner, since they intended to go the vertical progression route. When they raise the cap, they keep raising gear level just as they've been doing.