Item Level? I'm not clear

[WindyGamer]

RANT ON

I'm not clear why we can't have a simple rule.

"Larger Item Level Means Better Gear."

Why is this not the case?
Why is it not the case that the "Recommended Gear" button on the Character panel should just be able to choose the gear with the higher item level.

So, apparently, now White gear can have a higher item level, but lower stats and therefore not be as useful as "yellow" [is that what it is? Higher Quality? From quests?] gear. So item level 285 White gear from a vendor is CRAP compared to IL 279 gear from quests that has a yellow shading across the top. I don't mind that the 279 gear is better, only that it has a lower Item Level. Shouldn't it be IL 290? Why is it not IL 290?

Let's just have a future patch where we fix this so that higher item level means "Better" and the "Recommended" button agrees. How about we do that?

1. Is there some other religion around "Item Level" that I am not aware of that prevents this?
   
2. Is there some dependency around Item Level that would prevent this change from occurring?

RANT OFF

[Felis]

Vendor gear is NQ and Quest gear is HQ
On HQ gear the stats on it are at the max cap of the ilevel, while on NQ gear you have to put in materias to bring the stats to the cap.

[Nezerius]

So, apparently, now White gear can have a higher item level, but lower stats and therefore not be as useful as "yellow" [is that what it is? Higher Quality? From quests?] gear. So item level 285 White gear from a vendor is CRAP compared to IL 279 gear from quests that has a yellow shading across the top. I don't mind that the 279 gear is better, only that it has a lower Item Level. Shouldn't it be IL 290? Why is it not IL 290?

Now? That's how white gear, which is nearly always crafted gear, has always worked. The shiny/gleaming thing in the item icon indicates that a piece of gear is High Quality. Crafters are able to HQ the gear that they craft, allowing players to get the most out of a piece of gear, stats-wise.
It doesn't change iLvl, because an iLvl increase would also increase the materia melding cap to be higher than intended.
Quests, as of Heavensward, have technically been rewarding players with HQ crafted gear.

Let's just have a future patch where we fix this so that higher item level means "Better" and the "Recommended" button agrees. How about we do that?

1. Is there some other religion around "Item Level" that I am not aware of that prevents this?
   
2. Is there some dependency around Item Level that would prevent this change from occurring?

RANT OFF

1. There isn't. Any crafted gear (which can be white, green or blue) simply has normal and high quality version. High quality has more stats.
2. Yes. The entire crafting system is built around getting enough quality to turn an item into its HQ version.

[WindyGamer]

ooooooooooooooookkkkkkkkaaaaaayyyyyyyyy

But none of that appears to answer the question. If you add stuff to the item, or craft a better item, why doesn't the item level just change to reflect the new stats?
If I understand what you've said, the item level is set before we set the stats. Which does not make any sense to me. If you craft HQ gear, or meld something in, then why not just change the item level to match the new stats. But it sounds like we have a "forced error" regarding lack of Elasticity regarding "Melding". So if we make HQ gear, and increase the IL to match, then we can't meld? Well that's easy. "Make it so" Change the item level, but allow enough elasticity in the Melding rules to allow the melding. Geee Are these levels really that close so that the jump to HQ would break melding? And we still want to meld low quality items to that new HQ gear item? I'm surprised that these limits are really so close that moving to HQ prevents a meld you want.

Surely, the devs have a Polynomial [been wanting to use that word all day long, I admit.] relating stats to DPS [Damage Potency] and Healing Potency and therefore to Item Level. AAAAANNNNDDDD I am suggesting that this polynomial which obviously is related to stats, [and quality] and we could easily add melds, should be a monotonic [Another cool word] function related to Item Level. The example above indicates a glitch in that curve relating the two. Let's remove these glitches, shall we?

Right?

[ColdGuy]

ILvl = Maximum statistics capacity (Max stat cap).

Nothing else, nothing more. You're over-complicating for no reason.

[Nezerius]

But none of that appears to answer the question. If you add stuff to the item, or craft a better item, why doesn't the item level just change to reflect the new stats?

Because it would increase the stat caps past the amount that the devs intended for that item.

The item level determines the stat caps on an item. For example, an iLvl 380 crafted healer robe would have a stat cap of 301 crit. The NQ starting at 190 crit, while the HQ version starts at 211 crit.
Increasing the iLvl would also increase the stat cap. The devs intend for a piece of gear to have a specific stat cap.

It's also possible that:
Their system simply isn't able to have two of the same items with the same name, but different iLvls
-and/or-
Their crafting system can't give out one of two different iLvl version during a craft (for example, i380 NQ/i390 HQ from a craft).

[SpiritMuse]

In the current system, ilevel is a fixed property of an item, and it determines the maximum to which you can adjust its stats. What you're asking for is for the game to calculate the ilevel according to the item's current stats. That's a very different system, and I doubt it would be easy to change it.

That said I do agree the Recommended button sometimes has some strange ideas on what gear is best. Like it keeps wanting to put the aetheryte earrings on my level 1 characters when the Ala Mhigan earrings have far better stats (as the aetheryte earring syncs to level 1 stats while the Ala Mhigan earrings are fixed at +5 everything).

[Zohar_Lahar]

In the current system, ilevel is a fixed property of an item, and it determines the maximum to which you can adjust its stats. What you're asking for is for the game to calculate the ilevel according to the item's current stats. That's a very different system, and I doubt it would be easy to change it.

It does however make the way crafted equipment work really silly and dumb, as the topic creator laments.

[Rivxkobe]

HQ has always been vastly superior to NQ gears. Look at lower level gear and compare them, there are many MANY times that when you are leveling at a low level and you have a HQ piece equipped you aren't going to need a new piece for a while because a HQ piece is usually better than the NQ of the next level piece.

[Kaethra]

Here's how it works. And its not how anyone has described in this thread or by how the devs have said it is. You can see it yourselves ingame when comparing items.

item level determines stats on an item, but color quality enhances that. The colors rank from lowest to highest:

White
Pink
Green
Blue
Purple

Then you have normal quality and high quality. And from my experience this can be on white or blue (usually crafted in my experience). This enhances the stats further. Sometimes better than same item level but higher color, sometimes not. Its not very consistent.

The other tricky part is how item level is mostly level based. So there's level 71+ greens with same stats than level 70 blues. But they have a higher item level. Simply because the required level is higher. I think some may even have less stats.

To put it shortly, item level isn't very consistent. I believe it should be. But I don't key in the attributes. Thankfully the inconsistencies will have zero impact on gameplay as they only happen during the beginning of expansions and don't involve gear that would be low enough to bar entry into dungeons (despite possibly having the stats to be alright). But I do think they should consider a more consistent system so that there isn't any confusion.