Gear Score, in my ARR?

[Saieno]

No thanks, because I dont care about gears, I care about stats.

Darklight Helm, Cuirass, Gauntlets and Sollerets... good stuff, right? Maybe we'll reach over 9000 gear score with this, but there is not a single bit of accuracy on it.

Understandable, though here's my take on it. People who are running high-level instances and events will already have an elitist attitude towards gear, and will usually have the knowledge and experience to know what is needed for each class. Gear Score was implemented initially to give those passionate players who want to run high-level instances, but do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of every class and armor configuration. It basically lets more people make better grouping decisions by simply looking at a number, and I think it's good for the most part.

When it starts to get overly abused however is when I start to get frustrated with it. World of Warcraft was the worst offender mainly because of the size of the population, but when every guild adopts a gear score limit there's basically a barrier of progress and entry for anyone making their way up the levels and progressing through the end content. I'm making my way through FFXIV now, and many LinkShells have level requirements of 50 which is understandable. If they limited application to even stricter limits then I don't see how I would get there with PUGs. Regardless I think its good information to have right in the game, however all information can be abused one way or another.