Do You Prefer The Current Stat Values?

Do you like weapons and armor filled with many, high stat numbers, or do you prefer a time when everything was much smaller?

I like them big. The bigger the better.

Current is far better then in the past. Right now the game is more "balanced" then it has ever been, each job has it's own pros and cons and most everyone has some way of dealing damage. We have iLevel stats combined with WS updates to thank for this, otherwise only the "chosen few" who had access to some strong gear would be doing well.

In terms of balance and gameplay, it's a lot better.

The big downside is making comparisons is a lot more complicated. In the past, it was a lot easier to find substitutes if you couldn't afford the best in slot items. Nowadays, more casual or new players are reliant on guides more than ever. I could see that being a deterrent for some players.

I think the "stat-vomit" concept was introduced with Item Level content and armor to hide away the really stat that measures difficulty in Item Level content: Magic Evasion.

If you only look at a piece of armor's Item Level and Magic Evasion, those are really the only 2 stats that matter when Item Level was first introduced. (Of course, when every piece of armor became 119, then stat vomit was more important and became a greater differentiator).

I don't mind the stat vomit. Shoot, I wish we could tweak and tune the stat vomit on certain permissions of armor (similar to augments on armor).

For weapons, I wish that things like +269 Skill was better understood. Same thing for Magic Accuracy Skill too. (I suspect that they helps reduce the effect of the WS-wall or nuke wall, but I can't say for sure).

Larger numbers allow for more specificity when selecting gear choices. I'd feel differently if base nyame wasn't so good at covering gaps when you use older gear for buff enhancement like stoneskin sets.

This reflects my thoughts on the matter. I was always a big proponent of larger numbers than what we had in the Lv.75 days, since the difference even a single +1 could make could be enormous (especially in the case of something like Refresh on a Vermy Cloak) with no intermediate steps.

And yet now I find we're in the exact opposite situation. Numbers are so big that my eyes glaze over. Single pieces of gear are intimidating and it acts as yet another barrier for new players to try and enjoy the game. Every weapon skill or spell hitting for 5-digit numbers is now just unimpressive. My brain no longer registers if I had a good hit or a bad hit by numbers alone.

The game is more balanced now than it's ever been, but I'd be lying if I said the scale didn't bother me.

It's very messy and cluttered. But once you understand the important numbers its not that bad

Even after adjusting to it i much prefer the old system of only having a few stats on a piece, as of now only accessories really retained that since ilvl never applied to them. Up til id say ody you could still kinda filter the ilvl stats on gear based on armor type, still can really but i just dont care for a page length of stats, followed by another half a page of augments

Even when you understand it, it's irritating. Unnecessary clutter.

If they would make the UI uniform it wouldn't be so bad, but you got pieces missing vit or int and macc is on a different row and page two and it's just gross.

Gear should just be all stat+40, all stat+39, all stat+38, clean it up and make it user friendly. Who gives a ***if "legs dont get dex to balance" thats dumb as ***.

So just to clarify- in the same period where we're all bitching there's nothing to do, people want gearing to be simpler and less to do?

They just copy paste the gearswaps without even looking at them so nothing would change for the mass majority.

They'd just be more visually appealing.

I think I preferred when it as at least a little more obvious what pieces were for what. Now you need to balance every set with DT and HP in mind. It would be a lot easier to enjoy the stat vomit if inventory space wasn't a bigger concern to me than actual stats. constant internal struggles like:
"well i'd prefer the hybrid DT-Fast Cast on this piece to this pure fast cast piece, but i lose FC cap until i get this other piece augmented all the way. oh well, i don't have room for 2 fast cast capes, so I guess i'll just drop the interim one, even though currently it's BiS."

What is not understood about +269 skill?

There's a variety of problems with the item level system in FFXI. It was extremely, ridiculously, horrifically, catastrophically poorly implemented. The stat vomit shouldn't exist.

There are existing formulae for determining what your attributes and skills should be based on your level. And, obviously, they can calculate what your item level is based on your gear. It should have been ridiculously simple to plug that number in to the existing formulae to determine all those stats. Instead, they went with the stat vomit.

As already mentioned, stat vomit makes it more difficult to discern when one piece of gear is better than another.

Another factor to consider is that, if we simply generated the stats for a level 119 Dancer, a level 119 Corsair, and a level 119 Blue Mage, they would all have very different attributes. Stat vomit negates those innate differences between the classes.

It applies to combat skills, too. There are already formulae for determining what combat skills should be at a given level. There's no reason to have "combat skill +xxx" on a weapon. The item level of the player can be plugged into the existing formulae.

Combat skill also demonstrates another aspect of how poorly implemented the item level system is, and that's how the values vary on 119 gear. Certain gear, based on combat skill, should not be item level 119. If combat skill varies with level, and we've established (although they also have been inconsistent in this, for reasons) that +242 == 119, then, obviously, a value higher than that necessitates that the item level is higher than 119.

Yet they refuse to go past it. I'm guessing it's because of level correction in various calculations. And the complexity of implementing a proper item level system. And lack of manpower.

And then there's the fact that accessories don't have item level variants.

Edit: There's also the awkwardness of how they decided to split the stat vomit up between pieces of gear. IIRC, there's a propensity for specific slots to have/not have a specific attribute.

As someone who spends most of his playtime with new players? A lot.

One thing I have gotten asked time and time again is why some of my weapons have +269 when theirs have +242, despite the item level being the same. And that's just one aspect of the stat vomit that's confusing for people who haven't been playing this game for 10~20 years, and is still confusing, even to some of them.

If they had implemented the item level system in what I, the objectively perfect and supremely humble arbiter of all that is correct and true and good, feel they should have, you wouldn't have that number. There would still be the Combat Skills tab thingie, with its varying numbers, but "[job] is better with [weapon type] than [other job]" is something that people grasp more readily than having big stupid generic numbers dropped in their faces.

It's a simple question, with answers than range from simple to complicated. The value on the weapons is more than just a gauge of how much more accuracy/attack/how much better one weapon is than another (theoretically). Especially when it comes to Magic Accuracy Skill.

The item level system was just poorly implemented in general, and there are plenty of 'veteran' players I've spoken with who have trouble parsing and dealing with stat vomit, let alone the new players.

Consider the 119 I version of, say, Terpsichore, and compare it to the 119 III. Now get rid of the Item Level stat vomit on them, because we can calculate those values based on item level. How do they differ now? One has higher damage than the other, and it also has Afterglow, being the Afterglow version of the weapon. One of them should be a higher item level than the other.

I'm starting to lose focus, so I will attempt to stop here.

iLvl is improperly/incompletely applied in XI because when SE started to make the move, we lost our ***because iLvl *** our RMEAs. It really is as simple as that- we old stodgy XI players didn't appreciate SE trying to end our shinies.

So they essentially just stopped at 119 for this game in terms of labeled iLvl, and kept growing beyond that and still calling it 119.

When they did that vote to stay at 99 but iGarbage vs actually increasing levels, they did not disclose the particulars. (and they only let jp vote...)

Had they said only one I increase, you're forever at 119 despite really being 129 139 149 etc OR, actually be level whatever, that would've changed.

When the voters assumed "item level" they assumed it would work like literally every other game that has it. Hoodwinked and bamboozled.

I'm skeptical. Every customer vote or interaction seems like SE already had predetermined the outcome. Just like choosing Left or Right in Nyzule Isle, the same packet sent regardless of what you chose.

They polled it more likely than putting it up to a vote.

It's often to gauge interest rather than committing to the objectively bad method called democratic design.

I remember farming silk threads and saruta cotton for 5-6 full months just to afford a scorpion harness for my monk and dragoon. Then again for Haubergeon. Just to be useful in a group. It was absolutely brutal. The game is so much easier to fit in now.

I remember whiffing every single hit for five minutes (with no attack speed, lol blitz ring) straight vs beetles in Crawlers Nest, because there was literally no (affordable) accuracy gear available for swapping into.

Then you could finally hit things and hit them hard, but there wasn't any gear to swap into where you could take a few hits when you took hate, so you got rocked almost instantly.

Then you finally could become a little tanky, but every single status ailment landed on you. So you just stood there half as effective

Now, people can accidentally be defensive, both magically and physically, offensive, accurate, and less of a liability to a group in general even without fully understanding what the stats do. some of the gear is effectively free too, so unnecessary time isn't spent farming just to be useful. The gear is far better than it was previously imo

Numbers scare me...

OK so I think the conversation is going sideways but here's the way I see it:
Base game -> 99: very few stats on gear, just need to decide if you want pdt, accuracy, or evasion on your gloves, or whatever.
ilvl introduced: SE decides that job levels going over 99 is impossible, so instead of giving you +10 levels to 109, you get 30 acc and 30 atk on your gear instead, plus 20 to all stats or whatever. This creates "stat vomit"
ilvl gets out of control: They need to continue increasing the difficulty of the game as new content comes out, so "119" items scale up. Presumably they decided that making ilvl150 gear would break too many systems because ilvl is the controller of too many calculations, so they instead opt for adding more stats to new "119" gear.

At the end of the day, I think if you just ignore the 119 thing and compare the stats on gear, it's not that difficult. Swapping from empy body+3 to Hjjarandi Breastplate gives -7 STP, +3 DT, -30 meva, +20 acc/atk. Is that good? IDK, it's only like...5 stats. You don't need to freak out about whether one has 3 more DEX than the other, or how much CHR you're losing.

For a newer player I get that comparing two pieces of gear could get confusing, but I think a diversity of stats and options only improves the experience. Having 1 option for gloves at level 75 with any relevant DPS stats is boring as hell, and literally everyone (with access to all gear) wore the exact same thing.

It may be a little bit confusing to people who don't understand mechanics, but the wiki has tons of information on it, there are guides, threads with discussion, and helpful players to ask. It's fine.

RE: +269 skill: it's 269 acc, 269 atk. Applies only to that weapon (if dual-wielding). That's it. It's really not complicated. If you're comparing to a weapon with 242 skill, it gives 27 more acc and 27 more atk. Are there really questions about this still?

75 > 99 was like "Yay, you outgrew your training wheels, you get a big boy bike!"
Then the jump to ilvl was like "Ok, so from your bike, here's a rocket ship. Have fun out there."

Pretty accurate to my memory as well. Things aren't perfect, but there was definitely periods when this game was just straight balls. And thankfully everything else out at the time was worse.

I think the current options and gearing complexity is a welcome change for anyone who knew any of the problems Buukki is describing.

FFXI has the best gear system, including ilvl, of any MMO ever made. I respect that for a newer player it can be confusing, but no other game that i'm aware of has created a system that has so much depth.

The unique combiniations of stats allows for sets tailored to so many scenarios to the point gear you worked hard for 10+ years ago is still relevant today. I think this is probably the biggest thing that keeps people playing quite honestly. There is almost always room for optimization, and there is a deep satisfaction in your efforts not going to waste. D ring came out like 16 years ago and is still in many of my sets. TP bonus and kclub are non ilvl but can be bis with the right set up etc etc, so many other examples.

On FFXIV you can go on vacation for two weeks and you might as well throw away every piece of gear you have ever recieved because there is better options on AH for cheap by the time you get back.

Is it explained somewhere? Maybe I'm mistaken and haven't read the latest information. What is the benefit in going from say +242 Sword Skill to +269 or +277?

Extra accuracy and attack