Poll: Gear progression, horizontal or vertical?

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Originally Posted by tymora

If they put in elemental, weapon resistances again, horizontal will be viable. But we players are apparently too dumb to handle that.

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I'd rather not have to farm sets of resist gear of every element/weapon just to be viable. Especially having to do it each time a new tier of content came out. (Unless those same element/weapon resist gear sets were relevant forever, in which case we would be left with utter stagnation of character growth.)

Biggest argument against horizontal:
We have limited inventory. Even with one set of armor per class, we will have precisely ONE extra slot in our armoury for extra gear.
"Horizontal" means you have choices that are more than the 4 we have now (which are Dreadwyrm, Crafted, Ironworks, and Demon. All of which have at least 1 piece that's considered best in slot for nearly every class)
XI didn't exactly have the same issue ideally, as leveling a job and gearing it fully was a process that took months and months of time, to the point they had to add extra storage NPCs that would make our armoire system blush. 160 inventory spaces was barely enough for a SINGLE job.
The current producers took one look at this mindbogglingly absurd level of item management and said "No...not anymore" and gave us the current system.
Here's the thing: If it requires you to use your inventory or retainers to store equipment sets (glamour is not included, they're a special case) because you ran out of room in your armoury, then that's bad design.
Unless they upgrade the armoury to have more slots (a TON more slots, we're talking 50 or more per equipment piece) then horizontal progression is not viable.

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

I'd rather not have to farm sets of resist gear of every element/weapon just to be viable. Especially having to do it each time a new tier of content came out. (Unless those same element/weapon resist gear sets were relevant forever, in which case we would be left with utter stagnation of character growth.)

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The same applies to other areas as well.
I already spend hours and hour farming Coil to get the drops I need to be "BiS." Having to do that to have different situational pieces of gear for every encounter would be ludicrous.
Imagine needing different gear sets for each Turn in coil. You would need twelve armor sets per class. We do not have that kind of space, and this is not that type of game.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

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Like i said in an earlier post, I'm not against the concept of upgrading a piece of gear with a stat combo we like.
What i am against is pigeonholing us into a singular set of gear that gains incremental boosts to its existing stats. At that point, we're just leveling up again.

Horizontal is not the best system on its own.
Vertical is not the best system on its own.

A healthy mix of both, that being multiple sets within any given tier with different stat combos that can be acquired via various non endgame content and then upgraded to top tier via endgame tokens(eg) if the stats on your preferred set is lower than that of the new set, within limits (no making i55 gear into i130).
Such a system would give us the illusion of choice that people seem to so desperately want without removing the verticality that keeps people raiding.

Also,

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It's conceptually different that you defeat a powerful enemy and your gear is empowered with that victory

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I've always seen it as you're taking a powerful artifact from the boss you just defeated and subverting its power for your own.
Hell, with the Allegan gear you literally are just taking armor and weapons from a more technologically advanced, albeit extinct, civilization and bearing those armaments for yourself.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

I already spend hours and hour farming Coil to get the drops I need to be "BiS." Having to do that to have different situational pieces of gear for every encounter would be ludicrous.
Imagine needing different gear sets for each Turn in coil. You would need twelve armor sets per class. We do not have that kind of space, and this is not that type of game.

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Really, the only reason XI got away with its system was being able to change armor during combat. If you couldn't do that then a lot of their horizontal progression is lost.

Vertical by far.

Having different "Resistances" and such is a rather dumb concept. That isn't Horizontal Progression though, that is still vertical. You just need to upgrade each tier of resistances, there is no choice, thus not horizontal. Horizontal gear means you have a choice to pick between to fight such bosses with.

I think what they should do is just not come out with any more tomestone gear. Let esoterics be the end all for tomestone gear so that way casuals can get that gear and never have to upgrade their gear until the next level cap raise. All of the casual content could be balanced to be beaten in tomestone of law gear.

Then the raid gear could go a little higher than that, and each time a harder tier of raids is released they could put in more gear to suit the level of difficulty of the raids. So then the raiders that want to continue to grow their characters could do that too.

BOOM win-win.... everyones happy. Casuals never have to upgrade their gear and raiders can continue to grow their characters through raids. Problem Solved.... Your welcome!

Vertical, unless they give us a heck of a lot more space in the Armory Chest.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

Horizontal gear means you have a choice to pick between to fight such bosses with.

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It would still be a royal pain/impracticality having to farm/carry different sets of gear to accommodate Boss A vs Boss B vs Boss C.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

BOOM win-win.... everyone's happy. Casuals never have to upgrade their gear and raiders can continue to grow their characters. Problem Solved.... Your welcome

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What issue exactly does this solve?

Your statement essentially breaks-down to "only raiders should have character growth, casuals be damned."

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

It would still be a royal pain/impracticality having to farm/carry different sets of gear to accommodate Boss A vs Boss B vs Boss C.



What issue exactly does this solve?

Your statement essentially breaks-down to "only raiders should have character growth, casuals be damned."

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No.. That is an entirely different thing. If you need different sets for "EACH" encounter then that ISN'T A CHOICE. That isn't horizontal progression. You should want to slot yourself with YOUR style of play. That is horizontal progression.

Gear designed that way, is horrible.

Gear Designed for Example like this:

20 Vitality
10 Parry
10 Block Chance

vs

20 Vitality
10 Strength
10 Critical Rate

THAT is a choice. You don't need multiple sets of that, because you can do it both ways. One increases defense more whilst the other increases offensive a bit more.

Or

% Chance on damage taken to deal X damage to target.

vs

% Chance on damage taken to heal yourself for X.

vs

% chance attacking to deal additional damage

vs

% chance attacking to heal yourself

vs

% chance attacking to heal yourself, and deal damage (less from both.)

Another choice. There can be hundreds of ways to make it the same but different choices. There should be no "BEST" choice. There should be "What do you think you can do?"

Materia Upgrades though is a very bad idea though, ew. Less they are very powerful like runes.

Think what horizontal people want is for SE to add new stats, cause there is horizontal gear in this game, just since we have only 2-3 stats per role, there is only 2-3 horizontal pieces of gear. Should just be fighting for them to introduce new stats instead of making threads like this.