spbrk: My big thing is that even if the sync is like... 95% as effective as BIS that's a huge improvement and honestly not a big deal outside of like ultimate compared to now where something is going to be maybe as much as 20 ilvls behind.

JesseJames-w1f: You can't just label it divisive because the 10 people you talk to about it are divided, man

IronMatty: I don’t feel like this is a divisive change? From everything I’ve seen everyone is pumped for this - havnt heard anyone say this is a bad thing. However it’s still a very interesting video discussing how this will all work in practice. Maybe just slightly misleading in the title. Great video tho

Darkorb44: One thing that has bothered me since I got into FFXIV is that when you get to max level you can start earning Tomestones that are unique to the current expansion, but you only earn those Tomestones when taking that already max level job through duty finder. So I really really hope this change makes it so, whatever the end game currency is, it is permanently unlocked for you to earn through duty finder on any job your are playing after having at least one job at max level.

shinywave: Gear is boring. Thrilled for this change. I always want to try other classes but dont have the time to gear them up fully for higher end content. Im fine with the grind for one class though.

ivanhellsing007: Divisive? Says who?

beambreaker300: There is not a singular downside anywhere, I am not sure why people are upset

AgentNoun: On a technical level, it seems like this is just the opposite of how the game already syncs your item level downward. My guess is if the substat spread isn't good for the up-synced gear, that might kinda be intentional--they did say they still want people to care about specific materia loadouts for specific jobs if they want to optimize.

I think the target for this feature is that people can play any leveled-up job on a casual/semicasual level, but for more serious play, a job you might flex to in savage for example, you'd want real gear with its own materia loadout. That's the kind of thing that would make it so for casual play, you can flex to any job you want, but for more serious play, you want to gear up the jobs you want to use.

When it comes to motivating casual players to still chase gear, glam is a big draw--for casual players, glam is already a bigger draw than stats, even. This has been working decently for Guild Wars 2 for quite a few years, and they have (sorry GW2) much less cool-looking gear to collect than FFXIV does. Plus, in FFXIV, we now have the removed glam restrictions, meaning even someone who never touches tank for example might still want some fending gear for the glam, giving them even more gear to chase.

chaoticangel97: As someone who doesn’t really engage in high end content, I see this idea as nothing but a win. I really only ever properly gear up my main DPS, Tank and Healer jobs and everything else that can’t just use the gear from the above is just kinda left alone with whatever I can buy on the Marketboard at the time I finish leveling it. So a system like this will really just make my life easier lol.

herebejamz: I mostly think it's gonna be for people like me who like to casually play every job while they're doing roulettes with their friends since they maxxed all the jobs, but I'm still gonna need equipment sets for the jobs I take seriously. How it does that I'm not too picky with.

Octodonorian: This is huge for casuals like me with only 10000 hours of play

mosley3485: Gear in FFXIV is so uninteresting that gearing just feels like an inconvenience. Honestly, I would be absolutely fine with gear stats being removed entirely and items just being purely aesthetic.

I say this as someone who plays 6 characters in FFXI because I love the process of chasing items.

The modern MMO item level hamster wheel is dead af.

nikidelvalle: What would be cool is if they made materia more important than item level, and then made a bunch of new materia that are more than just stat sticks.

DukeofSpook.: BiS only truly matters for ultimate, so i see this as a complete win. anyone who wants to do below ultimate can play any job, and those that want to min max for ultimate will still have that experience

axelmdraconi: My thoughts were pretty much your first idea. It's going to give us the MINIMUM baseline to be able to do a dungeon, or other content, but it will be FAR from optimal.

guffels: We already know that down-syncing disables materia. They will probably use the exact same logic when upsyncing.

The substats when it comes to relics and pink gear is the more interesting part imo.

Tks525: To clarify something that got lost in translation during Fanfest:

Yoshi-P did say that it's all in still development, but things such as materia AND substats will still remain as a motivation for gearing the individual jobs.

Koji slightly mistranslated that section as "statboosts awarded by materia", omitting the gear substat part.

Zolototo: I hope this change also leads to the consolidation of materia like what happened with the dye channels.

mitchellradspinner4491: This is a big win for most people and as someone who does gear all roles , it’s never been interesting or particularly fun. Putting effort into spending time earning other kinds of rewards is just flat better imo.

Sumire9287: The thing I liked the most of this keynote was this exact point. I don't care who says it diminishes loot, but right now the game literally forces you to have a main job and not deviate from leveling it until you get to max iLvl which takes a minimum of 8 weeks of uninterrupted play. FF14 does absolutely not value people's time by having such a strict leveling pace. If by chance I miss a week I'm already behind PF and if I perchance want to farm more a given week I'm capped on the weekly loot and have to wait for another week. I didn't expect them to share iLvl, but something had to be done. I'm also fine with locking max iLvl until several weeks into the patch, so that savage and vendors remain relevant for longer and players don't feel that they have to grind really hard just to keep up with PF. However, I want to be able to play whichever job I desire and the current system didn't allow us to.

WuWaBeliever: they said they will explain more at the next fan fest….

PieRatesP13: brother i spent the last two weeks grinding just to elevate my reaper ilvl by only FOUR item levels

FOUR

imo that ilvl system can go burn in a fire

rusampler1877: RIP MERC RUNS, one of the few things keeping me in the actual game loop with normal-hard content. Well...

SEX WITH CATGIRLS they can't take way

keiken96: ?????

I mean I haven't been subbed in like 2 years now but killing gearing? FF14 players will not farm gears? Like bruh glamour is one of the major reasons why a majority of player base collect gears. Before I simply used whatever gear I could fin before using the Tomestone gear and doing gear farm to collect them as glams.

This is like nothing to the casual playerbase who just chill in the game doing whatever they want. In fact it helps the players to branch out and try other jobs more.

As for the hardcore raiders, it will most likely be that item sync will be applicable to your main BiS gear. So, either the synced gear will have average stats and if you want to minmax a perfect stat for specific purposes like raiding then you might have to farm actual BiS sets for other jobs or they'd optimize the Materia system by making so synced up gears cannot have higher grade Materia so that players who want to raid will need to farm BiS gear to slot Materia.

nicholasa4737: Gearing in FFXIV has always been a gate keeper and after 13 years of playing, I think the system should be completely redone. ILVL should not be tied to gear. It should instead be tied to progression of content. You want to make other content relevant, attach ILVL increases to it. Criterion, Alliance, Exploration, the list goes on of content that has no relevance to endgame except mounts and glamour.

By tying ILVL to progression, you can increase your main stats (Everything in the Attributes section, Attack Power, Defense, Magic Defense, Attach Magic Potency, Healing Magic Potency) by doing the harder content and reserve the absolute max of ILVL to 4th fight Savage clears and Ultimate clears. The max ILVL stat increase of the season should be at the 3rd raid tier fight and that should align with the other forms of content (i.e. finishing Criterion, maxing Alliance runs, maxing Exploration, etc.) This reserves the sense of accomplishment for high end raiders while incentivizing others to pursue further gains by other means.

Gear instead should be used to express the BIS through Materia and that piece of gears inherit changeable stats (CH, DH, Piety, Tenacity, Skill Speed, Spell Speed, Determination). BIS gear is also spread through the multiple forms of content. This way people who min\max can get there kicks, but all content can be cleared based on ILVL and not gear.

You could also express BIS through Materia alone and reserve Gear for glamour purposes only. Just replace acquiring Gear through the content with Materia and gear is acquired purely for aesthetics. Everyone knows the true endgame is glamour anyways.

I'm certain there are details in the minutia that would need to be worked out, but this is the best I can give of an overview of how I think they should change ILVL moving forward.

sielklavar: As long as the new system means I can run Tank or healer in EX roulette while gearing my dps for raids, I'm content with it.

Biscoitero: Idk if they would do it but removing materia and substats entirely would fix the issue.. maybe putting stat points like a traditional mmo?

May 14 2026

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