iLvl Inflation

[Mychael]

So... As of this patch, we will have iLvl 115 gear available to our lv50 characters. This is fine if the level cap is intended to remain 50 forever, but it'll make for a very odd situation in the long range.

Gear from 1 to 49 is ilvl'd so that the gear level is about the level at which it's the best-in-slot piece. It's occasionally 3-5 levels higher than the required level, but that normally signifies a powerful dungeon drop (green/blue).

At 50, though, each "tier" of content increases by 10 iLvl, with weapons having an extra 5. That's fine for now, but let's say SE releases levels 51-75 with a future expansion. I'm afraid of this:

1 -- 1
5 -- 5
10 -- 10-12
20 -- 20-25
30 -- 30-35
40 -- 40-45
50 -- 50-200
60 -- 210-???
70 - ???-???
75 - ???-???

At the current rate we'll probably make it easily to 200 before a level cap increase, so what will happen to ilvl after that? Will it magically go back to a 1:1 ratio, so that 51-74 gear uses (for example) 201-224? Will it try to increase so that each level past 50 gets 150 ilvls, putting level 75 being somewhere around 4000?

I'd rather level 50 gear have increased by one. ilvl 51 in place of 60, 52 in place of 70, 53 in place of 80, 54 in place of 90 and 95, and so on. It's still disproportionate, but not so much that level 55 gear would look out of place at ilvl 55-60.

[DarkJack]

yeah this worries me too.

In the expansion that will probably come in 2015 they'll raise the cap to 60, but how this will affect the gear, no idea. It would be amuzing if they would throw all of the lv50 ilvwhatever gear under the bus by making even the most basic lv60 gear beat it.

Personally though I'd rather see something like "combined level and ilv makes your gear strength". Ie: lv50 ilv90 gear would be equally as strong as lv60 ilv80 gear, etc. This would still give incentive to run lower level dungeons.

[Mcshiggs]

yeah this worries me too.

In the expansion that will probably come in 2015 they'll raise the cap to 60, but how this will affect the gear, no idea. It would be amuzing if they would throw all of the lv50 ilvwhatever gear under the bus by making even the most basic lv60 gear beat it.

This is what gear treadmill is all about, if you look at WoW, with an expansion and level cap raise, even the best raid gear is easily replaced within a couple levels of quest rewards.

[Pence]

Wow expansions normally have crazy gear jumps, to accommodate all players. Easily quested gear often out weighs the previous expansions raid gears.

If 2.2 was an expansion for example they could be accommodating to those at 90, and make content suitable for that ilevel and leave out lower ilevels. Or they could accommodate to ilower-levels, and make it faceroll for 90's. The best and fairest solution is a harsher than 2.1 > 2.2 gear reset.

I do agree that gear should have been lower in the ilvl jumps though, maybe in 2s or 3s. I think 3.0 may come at around i150-160. And hopefully they will learn from Wows upcoming # squish....

[Dotsusama]

I wish that there were more cases where items of equal or similar iLVL had other bonuses that would make them appealing to use even when newer gear was introduced. Some combination of bonus stats that affect abilities, or set bonuses. I miss both of these itemization rules from WoW and from FFXI, but other games have implemented these elements as well. The only times this would fall flat is when a piece of gear can be worn by multiple jobs, but only gives bonuses to what one job can use as a skill -- unless they take cross-class abilities into effect.

I can't think of many pieces of gear currently that I use as a tank that I would use from the iLVL 70 bracket of loot, when iLVL 90 became available to me, *except* certain pieces I keep around when I need an abundance of Accuracy, because that becomes a trade-off of threat generation versus survivability.

[Arklyte]

A simple solution to ilvl inflation is to force players to play through the current endgame dungeons to obtain gear that is less than 15% less in ilvl than what is considered to be the max ilvl before allowing to continue to expansion content. This way you can implement content that isn't to trivial to raiders and isn't impossible to non-raiders. You could then have the raiding gear on par or better to gear only within the first 15-25% of content.

[Zourin]

This is what you call 'power creep'.

As it stands, you can pretty much shortcut straight to iLvl 70 right now (within a couple months of 2.2, straight to ilvl 90) with crafted gear. Squeenix doesn't have many options available besides simply continuing to deprecate Ilvl 50-90 gear into oblivion. With uncapped CT, iLvl 80 becomes readily available for those of durable constitution in the meantime, given its relative ease with the sheer amount of overgeared people looking for an easy source of equipment for off-classes that may not be 50 yet.

[Mychael]

This is what you call 'power creep'.

As it stands, you can pretty much shortcut straight to iLvl 70 right now (within a couple months of 2.2, straight to ilvl 90) with crafted gear. Squeenix doesn't have many options available besides simply continuing to deprecate Ilvl 50-90 gear into oblivion. With uncapped CT, iLvl 80 becomes readily available for those of durable constitution in the meantime, given its relative ease with the sheer amount of overgeared people looking for an easy source of equipment for off-classes that may not be 50 yet.

And with myth uncapped, i90 is the same boat. The problem isn't so short-term (with the irrelevence of 50-90 gear) but more long-term, when they add levels 51-75 (or whatever) and we're already up to i250.

[rex1976]

you guys make some valid points. I didn't read all the posts so if someone already said this i apologize.

i see ilvl as just a way to filter out how well geared people are while using PF. just pretend it doesn't say what the ilvl is and all of the things you are worried about will disappear except for your ability to filter out poorly geared players in difficult dungeons using party finder.

[sanosuke001]

The only issue I see with scaling iLevels to a 1:1 ratio (the best option so iLvl 50 = best at level 50. ie allagan/AF2 right now with a re-scale once allagan2 comes out) is to display a tenth of an iLevel on your character sheet for the averages. It then allows you to "see" 10 levels of distinction while keeping iLevels at a 1:1 ratio.

This also requires that all gear be re-evaluated as new gear comes out (basically just the Level 50 gear) so it fits snugly in the i50 range. This might even require the highest iLevel be either 51 with 50.0, 50.1, ... 51.0 as the gear progression or something similar. Or, make the BiS i50 and current i70/80/90 be between 49.1 to 49.9.

This allows us to tell apart BiS without some spreadsheet junkie crunching the numbers for the most part while not making these values excessive for future level caps. It also gives us a valid comparison between future level increases while still being able to tell what piece is BiS for a specific level.