Item level compression in Heavensward?

[Zohar_Lahar]

I remember when I first entered Mor Dhona (this was back in 2.2), the i90 vintage equipment was confusing to me because the level cap was nowhere near 90, and I couldn't comprehend why any L50 equipment would have an item level any higher than sixty.

So I've been wondering how this is going to be handled for leveling from 50 to 60, with hundreds of existing L50 gear all ranging from i50 to i135.

[raelgun]

The numbers are currently nothing lol, they can scale up the damage for another 4-5 or more expansions, back in MOP in WOW, my Chaos bolts were critting for over 2 million a hit, they have time to squish later on.

[Asael]

In my opinion Horizontal progression will never be able to work in this game the way people from say XI remember it working in that game.

Well no, of course not. I don't think anyone here is suggesting that. The point being made, as far as I'm interpreting it, is simply to add in horizontal elements and features. Not a full overhaul into being FFXI-2.

Trying to implement a full horizontal model at this point wouldn't mix well with what's already here. It would be like tossing a bucket full of spiders onto a person with arachnophobia. It wouldn't go over well.

In this game the stats are so streamlined with no way or need to change gear mid fight. What would they do to add horizontal progression that is meaningful?

Indeed, but it really wouldn't matter though. As a bit of preliminary planning before entering a fight could solve that issue. Although I would imagine there would be certain gear pieces at some point (that due to their aspects) would be considered "must haves" and would ultimately end up seeing a lot of use. Either way, the great thing about this is that it gives a whole new level of variety to the game. In that there could be multiple ways of going about tackling content versus just equipping BiS, and then following some youtube guide.

They can add some kind of ability enhancements or set bonuses to make you consider raw stats or bonus but that is about all I can see with such a stream lined system.
They can start to bloat the game with new stats like double attack but some how I think they want to avoid that.

To be honest that's all they would really need though. All they need to do is basically find a sweet spot for item levels, say 200-250 (just throwing a number range out there). Beyond that just add in ideas that you just mentioned.

The benefit to this is that whenever a new expansion hits we can always keep the starting item levels for those expansions at a roughly standardized number. After that people can just progress as normal to the item level sweet spot, and use unique ability enhancements or special set bonuses to give the gear relevance. In this way the "catch up curve" for new incoming players is virtually non existent. All they need to do is play the main story line quests from the first game, and then progress into whichever expansion they want. The benefit to the veteran players is obvious in that we don't have to play the eternal treadmill game for gear that only gives a bland and uncreative stat boost.

[Nutz]

I don't think it will be a problem for a while. Item level is just a number to quickly identify a piece of equipment's output. If they don't want the item level number to increase so much, they can simply reduce it without changing any stats. They could also make required level and item level work in tandem -- ie. required level 50/ item level 130 = a chest piece with 50 main stat, 59 VIT, etc. and required level 60/ item level 60 = a chest piece with 50 main stat, 59 VIT, etc. effectively resetting item levels.

I also would like some more horizontal progression. Currently, there is some, though it's overshadowed by how quickly the vertical progression marches on. The various ilvl 80, 90, 100, 110, and 130 sets (there's currently just 1 ilvl 120 set per job) are examples of horizontal progression with each other, but the vertical trend of 80>90>100... and the speed of the upgrades makes the horizontal progression boil down to finding BiS and working toward that again and again.

The biggest problem/ advantage to horizontal progression is that gear stays relevant for a long time. Keeping up on all the newest content provides marginal upgrades. Conversely, if you had all the newest gear and decided to take off for 6 months, your set would still be relevant when you returned (though not the best possible) and you could probably complete any of the new content.

FFXI took this idea and ran with it. If you had the best possible gear available from the first expansion then you could complete any of the content available through the middle of the fourth expansion when the started raising the level cap and adding much more powerful equipment. XI wasn't a theme park though, even leveling took a TON of time. The same mentality would definitely not work here, especially since a lot of what made it work was that it took forever to get new equipment. Never mind that people carried around 3-5 sets of gear per job (with lots of overlapping pieces) that they used in every fight.

What this game needs is simply variety in its itemization. They wanted it to be easy to comprehend...and well it's definitely that, but probably too much so. Adding a more varied stats might help to hide the vertical progression even if it's still there by making upgrades look and behave differently even if they perform uniformly better at every upgrade. For example, they could add:

proper haste stat (essentially SS that also affects auto-attack and either increases TP generation or lowers the interval between TP generation increments)

double/ triple attack

something specifically to generate TP/MP (like XI's 'store TP', but just increases the rate of generation)

critical hit power (increasing the modifier from +50% to a higher amount)

various 'job skill +' stats to modify certain skills (likely potency increases, recast reductions, additional effects, etc. but could be more interesting)

HP/MP regen +

enmity gain +/-

You get the idea. There are lots of things that they could do with gear while sticking with the ever increasing main stat numbers and more or less balance it out so upgrades are still upgrades, but they'd at least be interesting and potentially open up interesting gearing avenues.

[Alipoprocks]

In my opinion Horizontal progression will never be able to work in this game the way people from say XI remember it working in that game.

In XI it was all about min maxing specific stats for specific skills or actions and so gear swapping via macros (precast, midcast, endcast, TPing, WSing, so on) was a big deal. It made horizontal progression a big deal.

Not many people want to gear swap again. But they could add content that drops equal statwise gear with w/e endgame is current but add a nice little bonus stat, a fun unique stat, and make it very difficult to obtain. Like for example, say, 100% chance of crit if (some thing) happens. Or 100% chance of taking zero damage, or possibly getting 50% of mp back. So that the gear is desirable but not overpowering.

That would give people more things to do endgame wise.

And it would be nice if they had increased the ilevels in lower increments but, meh.

As someone already mentioned, the gear treadmill is very stale. It is getting harder and harder to keep/find a static for end game. Plus with there not being much end game, people are losing desire to play.

[Dhex]

In this game the stats are so streamlined with no way or need to change gear mid fight. What would they do to add horizontal progression that is meaningful?

I can't switch gear mid fight obviously - but as a tank when I am running a dungeon I use a VIT set for trash pulls, and STR set for boss fights. I wear different equipment sets in different Turns of Coil depending on how much HP I actually need and the composition of the party. Horizontal itemization is already in the game it's just extremely limited. If they focused on broadening the gear & stat selection at end game rather then just putting in bigger numbers new gear every patch the game might be a bit more interesting.

[Gardes]

Personally would rather they make item level increase on expansion basis. We have 3 seasons of raid for vanilla so maybe we'll have 3 seasons of Alexander for the next expansions again and I'd like all 3 seasons to have the same ilevel but different themes of power progression based around set gears from Alexander drops. An example I have in mind is Alex1 gear giving bonuses that modifies a certain job's skill when you wear enough of them and then when Alex2 releases, the new gear gives flat main stat bonus when you wear enough of them, and then when Alex 3 releases, the gear from there gives special effects that can only activates on certain conditions (low hp/mp/tp) or modifies certain skills some more. There will be bis, probably involving hitting as much bonus as you can but it'll change each season and as long as what I write below applies..

Then when the 2nd expansion releases, we jump in ilvls and eventually, along with the flat gear stat increase, gain new bonuses to make the older ones obsolete (hopefully this will appease the "i wore this pants for a century!1!" people). On the off chance the alex1/2/3 bonuses were still too good and players refuse to shed them, the devs will have enough time for the 2nd season of the 2nd expansion raid to 'fix' it.

[Osias_Qol]

To be honest that's all they would really need though. All they need to do is basically find a sweet spot for item levels, say 200-250 (just throwing a number range out there). Beyond that just add in ideas that you just mentioned.

If a new set bonus comes out that is better than the other it will still just replace all the gear as it does now. If a new 1 comes out and it sucks now you have nothing to look forward to or chase after. Maybe you end up with some choices but would it be any more than what we have now?

If all you want is gear to stay relevant longer well there is still Glamour which is a huge hit and drives tons of people to go after armor sets that otherwise are dead on arrive.

Catching up isn’t all that hard to be honest. I stopped playing for months. I came back and in a week I had the item level high enough to do relevant content with no problems. Sure as a fresh player you may have to spend more time in some older content to get some gear going before you start working on more relevant gear but do you really want a fresh 50 jumping into final coil where they will just outright fail? It is an extreme example but the point is having new people go through easier content allows them to get a little more accustom to what level 50 is before they start going nuts.

They could add content that drops equal statwise gear with w/e endgame is current but add a nice little bonus stat, a fun unique stat, and make it very difficult to obtain.

So just adding even more RNG onto the already super angering RNG to get the new BIS that is basically game changing once you have it. Now I may sound like I am ripping on your idea and I don’t mean to if I do. It makes me think of the second coil DRG head that I basically spammed the fight for for days and days.. I still don’t have it and it isn’t even a harder to get version. I gave up on it, it wasn’t worth me hating the world.

I guess what I am saying is this kind of idea would cause more fragmentation than we already have in my opinion.
Would it make farming content last longer? O I am sure it could do that. Would it make things better? Somehow I just don’t see it that way.

As a tank when I use different gear pending on what I am doing.

First off good on you for trying to maximize yourself as a tank. Sadly this kind of thing doesn’t translate very well to other rolls.

A Bard is not going to start bringing a STR set with them because they need to be in melee range in this fight so they better make there melee better.
A DRG isn’t going to start bringing a DEX set around with them because they disconnect a lot on this fight so they better buff up Piercing Talon.
I think healers are better off using cleric stance than bringing an INT set.
I usually have 3 sets, set up for my main. Hi ACC, Low ACC, Mix. With these 3 sets the less ACC the more of my DPS stats take its place. That is about the best most classes can do.

Adding more stats into the game allows for more gear choices. This thread has 2 topics going on in it. 1 is should I level be squished which is pointless. The other is should they change the way they are doing things.
So it is silly for me to sit here and say I don’t think they want to add more stats into the game because well that isn’t what is being discussed.

To that end sure adding more stats into the game adds more gear choice which adds more horizontal itemization. It still will just be like WoW in that there will always be a best stat combo. You will still have the stat priority that dominates what people go after. It will just make picking between lesser items take a little more thinking.

I am putting a spin on the answers I am giving. I am not trying to be a jerk or anything. I just feel like these kinds of things are easier said than done. I also just do not think this game can get off the vertical treadmill it is on without some huge sweeping changes.

[Dhex]

I just feel like these kinds of things are easier said than done. I also just do not think this game can get off the vertical treadmill it is on without some huge sweeping changes.

See the thing is they did it in reverse - before in v.1.22 there was no item level and no huge exponential vertical growth - you had special Job AF bonuses and ability modification, GC gear had stacking set bonuses, and Materia melds were to push certain aspect of a class to the absolute maximum. Then they gutted the stat system and removed specialty bonuses - stopped adding new set bonuses to gear - and made Materia melded gear negligible entry gear/expensive for A Realm Reborn. So why not bring some of these concepts back with more polish and vision? I don't think it's as difficult as you seem to think it is...

[Airget]

I"m very wait and see on this topic, cause it is possible they may be more adventurous with gear in the upcoming expansion.

When you think about what they have set out to do, they are making a normal mode, and hard mode for the raid which in a way allows them to release gear that may effect abilities but these pieces of gear would mainly be used to gain an edge in hard mode content while making normal mode that much easier.

Basically what I"m getting at is with the current gear design that system would work fine with normal mode raids but for the hard mode raids you might need that piece of gear that enhances certain abilities or traits for your job to make the experience easier or to get through certain aspects of the content quicker or more efficiently.

Time will tell though but I do think that if they do wish to add another depth of strategy for the "hardcore" then adding gear that effects abilities is a good way to go while also increasing the challenge of said content.