Really starting to get discouraged from playing.

[TheUltimate3]

SNIP

Better of two evils if the choice was between a good Materia System or dropping somewhere. And as Materia isn't actually that hard to gain access to (Spiritbonding groups existed in 2.0 I believe, or at least that would explain why I kept seeing lvl 50s running around in N Than) a market can be formed but it (logically) shouldn't be so soul crushing for the poor that it would count as a negative. Plus since Materia can be replaced, it's not like one would be punished for using whatever Materia they have at the time. Except for those resistant materia. Those should be replaced.

Also I think if they are going to continue with the ilevel crap it should at least cap out for an entire expansion. Raise it with a new expansion and higher job levels, is fine. Not every 3 months I have to rebuild my entire character

And really my only real issue with this that (as far as I can gather) iLvl by itself is just the budget an item has on stats. iLvl on it's own could probably just straight up be done away with but people need convenient gauge of where their characters are in terms of strength.

If iLvl was hidden and set at such a high level this budget wouldn't matter, then fantastic, so long as getting that gear remains somewhat the same as it is now. I see a lot of people stating they want gear to matter but don't want to keep running the same content, when I for the life of me can't think of any way to make gear hard to get without running the same content. Unless you add like a weekly lookout to it or whatever drops it. (Like Gauntlet of Halone's Judgement that comes a +10 Trait dropped from a mob that only spawns once every week)