What's up with the new gear?

[Onidemon]

Our characters definitely feel weaker then before and i keep seeing people say it is due to the fact that the new gear is more powerful and that i should turn my current one into materia.

Is there any truth to this and how do i differentiate old gear from the new one?

[Jennestia]

Old gear = titled "Dated" in short. There is truth to it as they redid the algorithms for stats so gear benefits are a lot more noticable and needed. There's a lot of uproar about it because for the past year we've been playing a broken game and they're finally getting the major adjustments out of the pipeline.

[Jinko]

Yes the new gear generally has much superior def stats, you should prob try and change as soon as possible.

That being said any armor mismatched by 5 levels above your current will have a massive penalty on def, check the (-negative) stat next to your def in the gear window for example.