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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Alberel]

Considering the iLvl stat on the character sheet has 4 digits SE appears to have already planned for our iLvls to soar into the thousands...

[Deathscythe343]

Seems unlikely that they will do this given that this is their first expansion. They have enough other things to worry about at the moment. This really isn't a huge problem right now.

[Malevicton]

Trying to give a satisfying amount of horizontal progression to the players obsessed with it is like trying to give a satisfying amount of crack to an addict.

[Lemuel81]

Their not going to compress stats on the first expansion. And honestly the thought of seeing that happen again in an MMO just makes me want to cringe. Have you seen the chaos it caused WoW who just recently did this? was a nightmare.

[Fawkes]

It might be confusing for new players leveling to 60 and having item levels go from being roughly in sync with player level the whole time and knowing something ilvl 35 is good to wear in the level 35 dungeon, to doing level 55 content and wondering if your i120 is good enough or not.