servers way more empty now? Still doing the linear gear climb?

[Afania]

There was plenty of room to push horizontal progression while inching on the vertical progression through the continued improvement of the armor that was already commonplace pre-Seekers. As in all expansions Adoulin could have had its signature pieces that added to the armor glut but with regards to endgame it should have been about improving those pieces that people spent alot of time improving. You know, things like Mythics, Magians, pulse weapons, Salvage II loot etc etc.

Requiring people to go through the old base content, which you could make easier as part of the move away from stress would not only have kept the idea of needing pieces from old content to be the best but also have been used in conjunction with new pieces or items to improve your Nyzul II gear further or made those burning fists from Paramount Botulus that much stronger. Instead we get the worst kind of vertical progression where gear comes out nowhere to topple that which you spent years to obtain. It just leaves a bad taste in the mouth of players who have been sculpting a sand castle only for the game to suck it away with the tides.

It's ok though, you can get a sand castle+1 by running some lazy and mindless content like Reives though! Cmon...

All Seekers was tasked with doing was being an improved Campaign system and it fails miserably on that front. Reives are worse than WOTG's campaign battles, colonization is composed of boring ops that feel detatched from the game, wildskeepers are just glorified public arenas where people leech EXP for hours killing useless adds that idle in the arena if the col. rate isn't high enough. Then if that wasn't bad enough, Delve shit on everything lol.

And here I thought we'd be able to finally mega digivolve our Ridills into a glowing Ridill+2.

If they want to make XIV vertical progression they should have just leave XI the way it was like pre-SoA, and various new content to upgrade old gears, most of the old content can be solo or lowmanned, so its' good incentive to keep players around without big LS.

And whoever interested in doing primal fight 100 times for a weapon or farm 600k(that's a lot for a new ARR player with no craft/DoH leveled btw) for an ilv 70 weapon just to do one Titan fight can play XIV.

[Damane]

No it's not, name me any MMORPG that's not wow with vertical progression that has the staying power of pre-Abyssea FFXI.

Vertical progression limited the choice of content you can do in a game, I played 14 and endgame in 14 is horrible. Farming ifrit/garuda 100 times for a weapon never drop, or prae speed run 100 times JUST so that I can do titan(and those gears are pretty much useless after you reach coil) is terrible design. After I ding 75 in XI years ago, I did ein/dyna/limbus/Nyzul/sky/ToAU NMs, pretty much every endgame right after 75. It's not limited by what gear I have, simply because most gears are sidegrade and doesn't make or break you, and doesn't make X gear required to do Y content.

In XIV you can't do X if you don't have Y gears, and you pretty much toss that gear after you finish next content(i.e, toss your primal weapons after you beat titan and get relic). So I'm limited to only a few content I can do, and it got extremely boring after 3 days. Major gear difference= gear become a requirement to do said content, and limited the content you can do.


I want to be able to do 10 content at once in endgame, so I can do different thing everyday. I don't want to do only 2 content after I hit cap, spam same old content 100 times so I can do 2 more next tier content.
Vertical gear progression is boring and lacks staying power. Just because there's one title WoW being successful, doesn't mean it's good for every other game.

Don't have high hope for XIV endgame too, by the time they release crystal tower everyone would be rocking in ilv 90 gears 5/5 and laugh at lv 80 crystal tower, same shit dev been doing since SoA.
Completely agree with OP, XIV lacks staying power, unless dev change game direction, it's probably going to face same fate as SoA FFXI.

i think you misunerstood what I meant and frankyl I wasnt clear. What I meant by haveing "vertical gear progression every 8-10 months" was that they should have started with ilvl 105 gear. That way you woulnt have made everythign else/olde obsolote, now the following 8-10 months you push out events that are decent sidegrades, either by adding new stuff to old content or by new events. Then after 8-10 months of sidegrades you would have pushed for an update event that would have introduced vertical gear progress to ilvl 110 gear, either by introducing a new event or by makeing old gear event upgradeable. Now fill the following 8-10 months again with sidegrade upgrades on different fields that were left out.

Thats how I could see vertical gear progression work, however at the current rate we have of like outdateing everything every 1-2 months, everything is flushed down the toilet via a mindnumbing giant mega-depression.

What I meant by Horizontal gear progression wont work either is: fucking e.body staying on top in FFXI for 8 years+, like for real? shit like that should have had never happened and it should have gotten bombed when salvage was introduced (e.body is just an example, there are more such occasions)

[Anjou]

i think you misunerstood what I meant and frankyl I wasnt clear. What I meant by haveing "vertical gear progression every 8-10 months" was that they should have started with ilvl 105 gear. That way you woulnt have made everythign else/olde obsolote, now the following 8-10 months you push out events that are decent sidegrades, either by adding new stuff to old content or by new events. Then after 8-10 months of sidegrades you would have pushed for an update event that would have introduced vertical gear progress to ilvl 110 gear, either by introducing a new event or by makeing old gear event upgradeable. Now fill the following 8-10 months again with sidegrade upgrades on different fields that were left out.

Thats how I could see vertical gear progression work, however at the current rate we have of like outdateing everything every 1-2 months, everything is flushed down the toilet via a mindnumbing giant mega-depression.

What I meant by Horizontal gear progression wont work either is: fucking e.body staying on top in FFXI for 8 years+, like for real? shit like that should have had never happened and it should have gotten bombed when salvage was introduced (e.body is just an example, there are more such occasions)

E body was only considered top tier solely because of those augments you could put on it, that is what sustained it at the top. Mostly because it gave players an extension on their e-penis so they continue to flaunt that accursed thing, but not anymore...the Armadaburk has been reduced to nothing more than a vanity piece.

[fatbob]

SE probably trying to get everyone up to the top so they can end game and transition all ffxi players to 14.

[leorez]

SE probably trying to get everyone up to the top so they can end game and transition all ffxi players to 14.

played it, dont wanna play another WoW clone. If they had kept the core of what 1.23 ended on the old 14, it would have been amazing and i would have never looked back, but instead they threw it all out to "meet the standard" which they even said they got by talking to blizz devs, so its no surprise its like EVERYTHING else out there.

[Damane]

E body was only considered top tier solely because of those augments you could put on it, that is what sustained it at the top. Mostly because it gave players an extension on their e-penis so they continue to flaunt that accursed thing, but not anymore...the Armadaburk has been reduced to nothing more than a vanity piece.

it was top tier for 7 years or more... really shit like that should never be the case with ANY item. (not to mention thats why kings also remained a shit fest for 7 years). hence why I side this horizontal gear scaling isnt good either.

[Afania]

i think you misunerstood what I meant and frankyl I wasnt clear. What I meant by haveing "vertical gear progression every 8-10 months" was that they should have started with ilvl 105 gear. That way you woulnt have made everythign else/olde obsolote, now the following 8-10 months you push out events that are decent sidegrades, either by adding new stuff to old content or by new events. Then after 8-10 months of sidegrades you would have pushed for an update event that would have introduced vertical gear progress to ilvl 110 gear, either by introducing a new event or by makeing old gear event upgradeable. Now fill the following 8-10 months again with sidegrade upgrades on different fields that were left out.

Thats how I could see vertical gear progression work, however at the current rate we have of like outdateing everything every 1-2 months, everything is flushed down the toilet via a mindnumbing giant mega-depression.

What I meant by Horizontal gear progression wont work either is: fucking e.body staying on top in FFXI for 8 years+, like for real? shit like that should have had never happened and it should have gotten bombed when salvage was introduced (e.body is just an example, there are more such occasions)

What you said wasn't too different from FFXI pre-SoA though. Before SoA gear hiearchy did change all the time, just slowly, only a few piece, like ebody and tiger pants stay relevant for very long time. Majority of the AF2/sky/limbus gears or even some of the salvage gears were already dead before Abyssea release.

There are so many gear/gear sets in FFXI before SoA, ebody and tiger pants are like 1 gear out of a hundred. Also, FFXI has gear swap as core game mechanic, so you need more than just 15 pieces of gear to play a job, more like 50~70 gears per job, that's also one reason why a piece of gear can stay relevant for such a long time.

Honestly I think 75 era model works just fine, you have maybe 1~2 piece of gear stay on top for 5 years, maybe 20 pieces stay on top for 3 years, you can maybe have rest of the gear outdate every year or something, and legendary weapon that's supposed to be on top. That way it always feel like an accomplishment to complete your long term goal, and still have short term goal to satisfy you before finishing your long term goal, and your short term goal changes after every new content so you always have something new to do. I think gears that's associate to JA should stay relevant for very long time for even forever, that makes getting them worth the effort. Gears with DD stat can change hierarchy every 8~10 months or so.


But even then, 75 era FFXI wasn't real vertical gear progression, unless I understand vertical gear progression wrong, even if gear outdate slowly, gear doesn't block your content progress in 75 era. My understand toward vertical gear progression is, if you don't have A gear you can't do B event unless you're a leech. One example is Titan HM in FFXIV, you need 3.3k~3.5k HP on DPS/healer or else you will die. To get that much HP you must have item lv 70 armors. The content automatically filter out anyone not having ilv 70 armors, and force players to farm them.

it was top tier for 7 years or more... really shit like that should never be the case with ANY item. (not to mention thats why kings also remained a shit fest for 7 years). hence why I side this horizontal gear scaling isnt good either.

I think ideally you'd want maybe 5% of item stay relevant, long lasting accomplishment is No.1 incentive to keep players around, if you get an item that's relevant for long time, it's an accomplishment that stays, like your titles.

Rest 95% outdate on different pace, it's easily doable with gear swap system. Gears in FFXI kinda have different value from other MMO. In many other MMO gears are just tools to do X and Y content, in FFXI it replaces achievement system and tell other players what they've accomplished.

[Afania]

E body was only considered top tier solely because of those augments you could put on it, that is what sustained it at the top. Mostly because it gave players an extension on their e-penis so they continue to flaunt that accursed thing, but not anymore...the Armadaburk has been reduced to nothing more than a vanity piece.

All MMO is about your accomplishment, you've done this, I've done that. Ebody or legendary weapons are the same as achievement system, it's 1 important aspect of the game, don't need to look at it in such negative way.

[Demon6324236]

2 of my friends that cam back, they are nowhere near that stuff, ones starting fresh because he hasnt played for ages, the other stopped at ToAU...i have no idea how me and a couple LS mates are gonna handle bringing them up to speed.

If you can get them out to Skirmish, get them the Skirmish Armor & some +1 weapons, it will be more than enough to get them caught up gear wise, LBs are easy too, past that its learning how the game/jobs have changed.

[leorez]

If you can get them out to Skirmish, get them the Skirmish Armor & some +1 weapons, it will be more than enough to get them caught up gear wise, LBs are easy too, past that its learning how the game/jobs have changed.

so im guessing the plasm weapns are now outdated (of course they were always weaker than the MB ones, but they were above pretty much everything else). Jeez, how quickly do they make more content irrelevant?