Hmmm…
So one of the reasons we got rid of that “wear any gear but it scales down” thing was due to the confusion it caused. Another was we wanted to have the ability to give you gear slightly higher than your current level and give you something to look forward to equipping (which most MMOs do). The final reason was for the new “Plus Gear” system to work, e.g. “20+2” or “10+1” gear, obviously that system is incompatible with the old “hidden cap” system. Otherwise you would never get the plus values until you were e.g. using a 20+1 weapon at Level 21.
It is true that with the new system you will have to hang on to a few different sets of gear as you level multiple disciplines. I think it’s still slightly better than it was previously, since you can e.g. have a “around Level 5 set”, “around Level 10 set”, etc. that can be used multiple times for different classes, as opposed to needing a full different set for each class. Plus with the higher drop rate and much lower gear weight, it shouldn’t be super hard to keep a set of gear for different classes if you think about it in advance.
At the same time, I can see how it would be really nice to just have one set of gear of each gear type and just use it with any class, without needing to go through all that trouble, even if it is less trouble than it was before.
So I will consider if there is a way we can make both work somehow. Maybe the limitation of equipping a Level 4 piece is just you have to have “any class” higher than 4, and then you can equip it, so that on your first time through the leveling process you can get those “slightly higher, I should knock out a level now so I can wear it” experiences, but then when you are doing subsequent classes it is more optimized for “I’ve been here and done this and now I just want convenience.” Again, I’m not sure how that would work with the +Gear…probably we would do something where the plus gear bonus just doesn’t take effect until you are at that level…so for example if you get a Level 20+1 piece of armor, if you are Level 10 and equip it, you are capped at Level 10 armor, and then once you hit Level 20 you can get the +1 bonus. Another issue we ran into with the old system was it never really accounted for secondary stats properly…so the Int, Str, and other bonuses that will be in the higher level gear itemization really break it to where you can be way more powerful than intended. Maybe it’s a system where if you equip a Level 20 gear piece at Level 10, you only get the base armor, no secondary stats or bonuses. So it’s like, if you’re just leveling and just getting higher armor is basically “good enough” and you don’t want to mess with different sets for different classes, you can just do that. But then at the same time, if you do get a 10+1 drop at Level 10 with some secondary stats and a bonus, it’s worth equipping still because the Level 20 gear isn’t giving you anything but extra armor – so all the gear you acquire while leveling that class isn’t useless, either. I kind of like the idea of that.
Anyway, as I said I will spend some time thinking about this, but just to give you an idea of the thinking behind why it works the way it does right now.
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