Matsui: "Don't Throw Away Your R/M/E Weapons Yet"

afterglow is disproportionately harder than 99"

Y'know... I'd completely forgotten about that. It's a perfectly valid point: the ULTIMATE weapons really should be the Afterglow weapons. Should give those weapons stats far superior to anything else, better than even than the proposed future NM drops. After all, they require the ultimate amount of effort to acquire, and thus should have the ultimate amount of reward.

That said... a lot of people seem to keep going on about iLvl without really understanding that FFXI item level requirements don't really correspond to iLvl at all.

For example: back in the 75 day? PCC. +10 Acc available at level 33. Does that make PCC effectively iLvl 33 gear? Hell no. It's high-level gear with an unusually low level requirement. Sniper rings, similar point: the actual stats on the gear are a lot higher than the level requirement. Heck, Hagun is level 72, yet was competitive with the 75 relic Amano.

Even today, you see people using the Twilight Mail/Helm set for the reraise, or Twilight Torque for the -DT - they might have level 90 requirements, but that doesn't mean they are iLvl 90 gear.

90 Masa is comparable to 95 Amano, and both are superior to the 99 WoE weapon. Another clear-cut example of proof that iLvl and level requirements are not the same.

Empys were introduced as the 'poor man's Relic'. They were introduced so that casuals CAN have a weapon that is at least comparable to the Relics and Mythics - and they served that goal admirably for many years. A non-99'd RME isn't an Ultimate weapon anymore - but has always been at least competitive, and it's not unreasonable for them to receive a modest boost to at least remain relevant. Note, I say relevant - not ultimate. Giving non-99'd RME less damage than the recent Delve weapons is totally reasonable, as long as the weapons ARE good enough for Adoulin content, such as Delve farming.

That said, I'm totally on board with SE adding more ways to get plates and cinders/dross, rather than reducing the requirements of the trials. Heck, make them drop in Skirmish and THAT might make that content relevant.

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Why the F*CK are people discussing item level in FFXI? That concept doesn't exist in this game, never has, never will as the game design and combat system simply doesn't support it. Delve is absolute not "item level 120" or any other bullsh!t people want to shovel. It's simply level 99 gear that has it's stats appropriate for level 99. Previously our level 90~99 progression has been terribly underpowered, mostly as a result of Takana getting pissed over the Abyssea release. Level 80~90 RME's are adequately powered for their level, level 95 are a bit of a wash and level 99 is definitely weaker then it should be. SE is now correcting that issue by making level 99 RME's be at the same baseline that other newly released level 99 gear is.

It's very simple.

Pre-SoA:
Level 85 weapon: Item Lvl 85
Level 90 weapon: Item Lvl 90
Level 95 weapon: Item Lvl 95
Level 99 Weapon: Item Lvl 99

But these item levels made little difference, upgrades were small in terms of overall DPS for most weapons (most every mythic and some relics being notable exceptions) and the item level of all equipment stopped at 99.



Post-SoA:
Level 99 weapon: Item Lvl 99
Skirmish weapon: Item Lvl 99~105
Delve weapon: Item Lvl 110~115
Delve Naakual weapons: Item Lvl 120+

Post-SoA content and equipment additions are shifting focus on increasing item levels in order to allow for an increase in content difficulty ("content levels"). It's an alternative method to simply increasing the level cap and dealing with all of the intricacies behind that. Players can now gain new equipment for their already level capped character to increase their relative power, relative level, to progress in higher content levels.

Therefor, you can see why increasing an item level 85 weapon up to, say, item level 110 or 120 does not fit with this model. It's all about progression. If you didn't bother progressing your lv 85/90/95 weapon to 99, then you can't expect to be allowed to skip several item and content levels just because you can't be bothered to finish your weapon first.

The cost to 99 an Empyrean isn't *that* different from the cost to 99 a Relic, either.

ost-SoA content and equip

And yet SE hasn't mentioned anything about any "item level 120" bullsh!t.

instead of considering these to be level 99 pieces of equipment, it would be better for you to think of their level in terms of the content level (for example, level 110 or level 120).

It does for weapons though.

Not really. Hagun, Ridill, Joyeuse are prime old school examples. More recent ones (until SoA) was Rag / Ukon vs Cada / Bravura. SoA didn't change anything in FFXI's item structure, SE just released extremely powerful equipment in their bid to redo the scaling of level 99. We are not level 105/110/120, there is no equipment with a required level of 105/110/120, there is no field in the item database that has an "iLevel" entry and there are no ways to add all those iLevel's together for some fake "gear level" value.

Don't know how else to put it, the concept of "Item Level" simply doesn't' exist in FFXI's framework. And be design it can't exist. We change gear for everything we do, that instantly makes everything situational which in turn makes single dimensional numerical values meaningless.

Your the id10ts talking about "item level" as though there is a vertical progression that's related to the actually number stamped onto the item.

id10ts

it's almost like they inflated armor stats and monster stats according to the appropriate content levels and then asked people to go grind for gear at lower content levels to progress to higher content levels

nothing vertical about that, nope

that aside you're just being anal about the terms the playerbase has decided to adopt

do you get this uppity when people say "raids" instead of "endgame"

Never seen someone get so upset about something so trivial...

The largest advantage of showing ilevel ingame is so that people who don't constantly F5 the Official FFXI Forums (Most players) have some concept of how they should progress in the endgame. If I was coming back from a break I wouldn't have any idea if I was supposed to do Skirmish, Voidwatch, or Delve first.

The largest advantage of showing ilevel ingame is so that people who don't constantly F5 the Official FFXI Forums (Most players) have some concept of how they should progress in the endgame. If I was coming back from a break I wouldn't have any idea if I was supposed to do Skirmish, Voidwatch, or Delve first.

Your the id10ts talking about "item level" as though there is a vertical progression that's related to the actually number stamped onto the item. "Item level" works in games where you can't rapidly switch out gear, it has no meaning the moment you can change 18 pieces with the press of a single button, then change those 18 pieces back again moments later.