Required Rank vs Optimal Rank

[Ark_mage2]

Well I am for having required rank, or at least for the penalties of optimum rank being prohibitive of using it in combat when you are a less than optimal rank. It is not a question of not wanting to see lower rank people in high rank gear. For me it is a matter of having a goal to strive for in the low and mid levels. While I have not ranked any classes to 50 yet, doing the ranking I have it is a very weird feeling going into the market ward to see armor that I could get that is 10-20 levels above my current rank. With the surplus of gil, I can go and buy a bunch of high rank gear and wear it around. For me that takes away from the experience of ranking up. I don't want to rank up just to have better stats or spells, but I want to be able to earn the ability and the right to wear better gear as well. I think having rank required gear is a big part of the feel of game progression.

[Reika]

I always thought since the beginning optimal rank equipment should have had a much steeper penalty for equipping it on a class below the optimal rank. But it is probably easier for them to add the rank required equipment instead. I suspect all the equipment we will see added from here on out will have required ranks.

If they did this from the beginning however, there would have been no end to the inventory issues. Now that inventories are starting to get more space due to some of the changes, it might not be much of an issue. It will be even less of an issue for those that already have everything ranked up.

[Arcell]

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=214

I'm all for a larger penalty on wearing gear out of optimal rank. Honestly though I hope they continue to add both types of gear. Perhaps crafted gear could be optimal while unique/untradable dropped gear could be rank req. Just a thought, i'd like to see them continue implementing both while tweaking the optimal system.

[Sav]

I personally love required rank gear. It gives me clear gear goals, something that XIV was lacking. Yes, I could make myself wait until the optimal rank to equip a piece of desirable gear, but this goes back to the idea of "if I don't have to, I won't". It just adds something to look forward to.

[Arcell]

And what of untradable gear? Can't just go and buy that off the wards or hand it down. The systems can co-exist.

Just tweak the penalties and explain the system more thoroughly. Current gear deteriorates extremely quickly outside optimal rank, more so now with the death penalty.

[MattyWS]

Jesus people don't read. Look up, I suggested in my post that I don't want to abolish Optimal rank system, and that they can co-exist, but it needed tweaking!

[giftforce]

Jesus people don't read. Look up, I suggested in my post that I don't want to abolish Optimal rank system, and that they can co-exist, but it needed tweaking!

It cannot co-exist. Think it through for a moment and you realise it is basically a mutually exclusive concept.

Having the best of both worlds isn't possible when one impinges on the other.

[Zenaku]

All gear should be limit to what rank you are not just allow everyone to wear everything -.- when i see players at 20 wearing 50 gear it's like really? come on lol

[Arlekiel]

Personal opinion.... I really do like Optimal Rank, I come from an MMO that do not have "required rank" and to be honest I enjoyed it ... I have also played other games with "required rank" and for me it looks kinda "generic" and unreal... its like all the archers lvl 40 are wearing the SAME outfit, all the ranks 50 the same outfit and go on... With optimal rank, u can be a mage wearing armor, or cloth... its all about how u want ur character to be seen. At the end thats what matters...

If someone has issues to see a rank 1 wearing other stuff, then its just "his/hers" issue. After all what I like about FFXIV is this sense of "reality" or at least try to be realistic in some stuff (armory system for example) and I like the FREEDOM of the game. In the end required rank cuts out that freedom.


Still I think the optimal rank should be more "obvious".... but thats not just with optimal rank... thats with everything.. I remember someone said in this forum that to play FFXIV u need to have a friking PHD... or something like "FFXIV is only for smart people" and thats kinda true... 95% is not obvious or self explanatory.. u either need to have some sort of experience with ffxi or at least read ALOT from different sources (lodestone dosent has all the info).

In the end I think the problem wasnt "noobs wearing rank 50 stuff". It was "noobs not knowing that wearing rank 50 stuff was hurting their status instead of actually helping them building a better character". In the end thats because the game is not self explanatory at all... For example every item have this "optimal rank" but it dosent tell u the penalty of how many stats u are loosing for not equiping it when u are under-ranked. Also it would be nice some kind of effect, like showing the name of the item in red, when ur equiping something that its not for ur rank.

I think those two solutions would be a better alternative to just implementing a required rank and cutting a big aspect of FFXIV which is freedom. Freedom to choose ur job, Freedom to change it whenever you want, Freedom to do whatever and to be whatever you want. Freedom to equip whatever you want.
Unfortunatly this last one :P its already cutted down LOL...


Well not that it makes a HUGE difference... after all its just some "items" I just hope they dont start releasing every single item with a required rank system...

[Ferth]

This complaint could easily be leveled at the UI as well as "required" or "optimal" rank gear.

I know not everyone appreciates references to FFXI but as one of the few MMOs where one character can play multiple jobs it's, I think, an applicable reference. But in FFXI when you changed jobs, the game remembered what you had on and, provided it was still in your inventory, auto equipped everything.

I made a post on the forum awhile ago, and also a blog post about an inventory system that could allow the storage of sets of gear for different classes that could autoequip when changing to specific classes. Granted it wouldn't accomodate the "playing a job to just mess around" example. But I still think it would be a nice feature that would ease class transitions and help alleviate inventory woes.

I think there are aspects of optimal ranks that are nice... I have a tendency to walk around in a cowl no matter what class I am currently playing.

But at the same time having to hit a certain achievement in order to equip something has an allure as well. And yeah part of the achievement is just earning the gear... But it's nice to be able to look forward to being X rank to wear Y item.