Can we maybe slow the power creep down a bit

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The jumps between levels are getting bigger and bigger all the time. And it's going to make alt classes miles behind mains or such.

The difference between a 370 tome weapon and a 360 one is +2 damage. Instead of the usual +1.

And the stat jumps are slowly increasing as well. Getting to a point where a 360 alt job is going to be miles behind a 370 main one.

In terms of weapons damage the i370 weapons are effectively i390

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*chuckles* That is what you get when dealing with EXPONENTIAL stat growth.
Wait 2 more expansions and you will have people doing 2x the damage by having 1 tier higher gear.

I agree that they should slow it down while they still can.

I alway hated this vertical progression... Hopefully SE can go horizontal "someday" that would give the game some longevity. Agreed, new expandsion level goes up by 5 or nothing would be welcoming...

I hope we never go horizontal myself.

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Originally Posted by Cakekizyy

I hope we never go horizontal myself.

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No offense to you, I’m not directly responding to you per se. Only that I see the same sentiment often enough.

This is why we have the system that we have.

Welcome to What Gear is it Anyway, the game where everything's made up and the stats don't matter.

All people want is bigger numbers, nothing else matters. And the bigger they are the better, even if all of it is totally and absolutely meaningless.

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Originally Posted by Ghastly

I agree with all this, and it's not even about alts..it's about keeping content fun. If ilevels increase too much past content loses the little bit of challenge/fun it had too fast.

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Honestly I would like them to implement a different "system" for dungeons etc. Something along the lines of your stats at the dungeons Ilvl with "mild" boosts based on the extra ilvl you actually have over that dungeon's ilvl. For example ala migho would be 300 ilvl capped then you would get some boost for additional ilvl you actually have like maybe .5% more damage/hp/healing per 10 ilvls etc.

Honestly id even like this added to zones with lvl caps and the ilvl idea used also.

It is no different then HW....

other then expecting level entry to the new causal stuff to be 315 or 320, 325 seems a bit much. To me that puts the last current crafted gear too worthless and just makes people tome farm for 330 gear.

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Originally Posted by urban

I alway hated this vertical progression... Hopefully SE can go horizontal "someday" that would give the game some longevity. Agreed, new expandsion level goes up by 5 or nothing would be welcoming...

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I don't think people who have never experienced horizontal progression are ready for it. Horizontal progression in XI during its prime was brutal for example.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

I don't think people who have never experienced horizontal progression are ready for it. Horizontal progression in XI during its prime was brutal for example.

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By that notion, no developer ever should make any horizontal progression, since there's always going to be people that didn't experience it yet. You need to be exposed to it at some point in order to experience it, after all.

The arguments against horizontal progression given here are...well, weird. It's really not that hard to decide between this or that piece of gear after looking at what they offer. If gear is designed properly, you can just go with your gut feeling and it'll still be a fine choice. Horizontal progression is not about making multiple gears at the same "level" range where each one better than the next. It's about making few gears that are very similar in power, but spread out differently around.

As for the "get BiS and screw the rest" notion, that's what happens when developers oversimplify things. Since developers nearly completely removed any usefulness from many sub-stats other than critical and direct hit (secondarily spell/skill speed), it's obvious that going that path of only offering stats will end up "broken". That's why they need to make the sub-stats actually compete with each other and ideally, add special effects to gears. Not necessarily anything big, mind you. Boss have a lot of AoE that you need to get out of the way for?! Use the gear that boosts your movement speed to minimize the time spent on moving. Not a lot of dodging to do? Use the one that slightly decreases TP/MP cost of this or that skill, for example. Maybe the arena is large giving a lot of space?! You may consider the gear that increases range on all skills, maybe it'll let you avoid having to dodge some of them altogether. Such special skills are mostly situational and related to play-style. In some cases they can be added into "meta", but in other that's just impossible due to how they can go from useful to waste of space depending on the situation, thus a set or two to exchange it for would be useful.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

I don't think people who have never experienced horizontal progression are ready for it. Horizontal progression in XI during its prime was brutal for example.

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That depends a lot on the pace of progression.

Imagine the same progression model in XI except all items are easily attainable within a week, be it via guaranteed drops, cheap vendors, tokens or whatever. Would it still be remotely as brutal as it was?
Then imagine every single level and gear upgrade in FFXIV would require a full un-nerfed Anima grind to attain. Wouldn't that be fairly brutal?

Point being: The "progression model" and the pace of progression have little to do with each other.

However, the easier you make it to attain gear, the faster you need to make new gear for people to attain, or else the entire reward-baiting mechanism that drives the game falls apart, and that is a lot easier in the "vertical" model.

For one, because you can simply add stats and don't need to think about balancing effects whose benefit is nigh impossible to quantify. Nothing beats getting an effectively i900 weapon when the standard is i200 because developers failed to balance the special effect. And that's a massive headache, because in order to compare the items, you first need to make them comparable again and thus convert the special effect back into a unified value like Attack Power, Main Stat or sth - Go ahead and try it for yourself, think of some random special effect, like 10% increased movement speed, and then try to quantify just how much main stat this item would have to have less to be balanced with (i.e. just as good as) an item of the same tier that only offers main stat and nothing else. Happy mathcrafting. And this is in a vacuum with only "one" stat and "one" special effect, things get exponentially more difficult when you add more because of synergy effects.

For another, because you don't need to think about desirability - More stats are always better. Situational effects however can be extremely useful or useless depending on the situations the game puts you in, so you as dev now need to consider that when making gear. If you make gear for a random off-shot situation, that might be dead on arrival until you design content to force it. That in turn promotes gear hoarding "just in case".


That said, FFXIV is aimed at casuals and thus pretty much throws gear at you. For tomes, you only need 20 minutes of expert 5 times a week, that's not even two full hours of gameplay a week. Raid gear goes extra if you feel so inclined. 3 months in, you get even more endgame gear thrown at you in the 24 man raid. Without the weekly caps, you could get BiS in a single week, even the throttled pace is fairly quick. It doesn't matter what sort of progression model you use there, balanced gear cannot last long under such circumstances.
The only way is to either make gear harder to attain, or screw gear balance and release items you'll wear for several tiers because they're just that good. And that's... controversial, I'd wager.

The problem with this though is that you have to keep five hundred sets of gear just to do anything. In FFXI, which had horizontal progression, you had to macro entire gearsets before single actions. My BST had to macro a charm set to boost charisma high enough to charm animals, which was as many pieces as i could get (12 i think, needed two macros) then switch back to a DPS set. Healers switched from a heal set to a rest set every time they took a knee. DPS had a haste build to build tp then a weaponskill build to maximize damage.

Having all this horizontal gear is only useful if you can switch it on demand, otherwise you end up getting bis anyways. While you had a lot of options, realistically you were limited to a BiS depending on your level of endgame involvement. It's not a panacea.

There's 2 types of Horizontal leveling btw.
The "build a character" type, which is what most MMO devs dont want. (and most horizontal fans do)
And then there's prety much what we already have, except no power creep.

Example:

Once you reach max level, lets say you have cheap starter gear Lv70, this can be bought/farmed.
Then you have semi customized class gear. Generally similar stats, but closer to "BiS", so the difference is minimal, and technically the same iLv.

This "part" needs to be repeated on every job you reach max level with.

Then you do the current endgame content to unlock gear for that content.
Example:
Deltascape gear adds "Does extra damage to all enemies within the deltascape"

Next patch, Sigmascape comes out, and all gear adds "Enemies within Sigmascape take more dmg."
But the base stats are identical otherwise.

You can use your deltascape gear to enter into omegascape, or you can use your job quest gear to enter (unless we flip it, and bought gear is the starter gear)

Omegascape gear offers... you guessed it "enemies within omegascape take more dmg"

you get the SAME result we currently have, but NO POWER CREEP!
(Its not the horizontal progression people want, but it DOES make all content equally challenging, and feel equally viable to everyone honestly.)

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Having all this horizontal gear is only useful if you can switch it on demand, otherwise you end up getting bis anyways. While you had a lot of options, realistically you were limited to a BiS depending on your level of endgame involvement. It's not a panacea.

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no, its not a panacea for sure. there just need to be maybe 3 options PER CLASS (not role), with a base option (default) for each role. Your AF gear, for example, should certainly augment your classes abilities at the cost of some lower stats. Do you want that extra 70 potency on soul eater from wearing 6 pieces of the abyssal set, or do you want the extra STR/VIT that comes with the lost allagan stuff? I dont see why the devs seam allergic to this stuff.

as a side not, i really hated that half the time i switched gear sets in FFXI my charachter would go blank for a sec, and when you do that 80 times per fight, its a little lame.

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Originally Posted by SpiritMuse

I really don't get this "obsolete" mentality. Like, just because something more powerful will eventually come along, any current gear is worthless? Even though it's currently the best available? Are you just going to run around in subpar gear forever then? Because there will always be more powerful gear. I really, honestly don't get this. I'm always happy when new gear comes out because it means I'll have something new to strive for. Which is fun. To me, anyway.

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I mean, I still do accumulate new gear, I just don't try very hard or do it very quickly because I know there's not much reward for the effort. Gear in this game is a treadmill, so I set it on low and walk.

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Originally Posted by Chalbee

I mean, I still do accumulate new gear, I just don't try very hard or do it very quickly because I know there's not much reward for the effort. Gear in this game is a treadmill, so I set it on low and walk.

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This is pretty much me as well and then go play something else after the burnt out sets in.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Having all this horizontal gear is only useful if you can switch it on demand, otherwise you end up getting bis anyways. While you had a lot of options, realistically you were limited to a BiS depending on your level of endgame involvement. It's not a panacea.

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What is the point of various gear pieces if you can switch it in an instance at any point?! None, zero, null, nada. That's the exact example of when having all that horizontal gear is NOT useful, since it basically invalidates the notion of choice. You're always going to be needing only one specific gear set anyway, except it will change every second of a battle rather than no more often than every fight. If you CANNOT change it at will, but only between fights, you will have to stick with that one set of gear.

And no, there should be no such thing as "BIS". That's because humans are different, even if mathematics are not. Player A may make better use of option A than the mathematically superior option B, because that's better suited to his play style. Unless the difference will be in pure stats which have absolutely no difference between varied play styles, hence they remove the human aspect, that is.

Even on that note, there is going to be variety if done properly. I will give you an example of a "good" and "bad" horizontal progression based purely on stats, both from the very same game in early and late stages of it.

Using something that works pretty much like materia, people could "Lapis" into their gears slots. However, there was a catch. One could only put one lapis of the same name into the same piece. There originally were lapis from 1 to 5 for every stat, with gears having up to six slots. You wanted to focus on one stat, you got diminishing returns. The total amount of stats you got was lower, since you had to put weaker and weaker lapis for every further slot. If you went for too many of the "strong" lapis from various stats, you would, on the other hand, be behind in all of them. As a result, there were many builts that combined the stat distribution and lapis sockets best suited for the player, and though there WERE "standards", like have at least this and this of that stat and this and that of that stat...great players that had their build noticeably modified were common. It was not "BIS" build, but the "safe standard" build.

However, the game progressed and new lapis came in...since it was a business and slotting better lapis successfully did cost a LOT of real life money. However, what matters here, is that there were many new options that basically bypassed the limitation of "one of a kind". Lapis with two stats, three stats, ones with superior special additions and so on. As a result, no matter the play style, there was a build "superior", since doing it any other way would actually leave all of your stats behind.

Now, that shows how much difference there is between a "good" development and "bad" development. And remember, all of it was in the same game with the same mechanics throughout its life. The changes to the underlying systems there over few years of me playing were smaller than an in-between patch can bring in Final Fantasy XIV, and stats and their effects were both linear and well-known. So, there you have it.


All in all, "BIS" is different from player to player. Even if every player will use only one set from every tier, various players will use different sets, and that is the point of that progression. If I don't like a set with, say, piety, then I could pick and stick with a set that have determination, for example. Another person would have picked spell speed instead. That's the point. Different players could pick their own "BIS".

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Originally Posted by SpiritMuse

I really don't get this "obsolete" mentality. Like, just because something more powerful will eventually come along, any current gear is worthless? Even though it's currently the best available? Are you just going to run around in subpar gear forever then? Because there will always be more powerful gear. I really, honestly don't get this. I'm always happy when new gear comes out because it means I'll have something new to strive for. Which is fun. To me, anyway.

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Generally casual players will always have sub par gear anyway by the very nature of the gear design.
My samurai was i330 when 4.2 landed for example and my pld main was 334. nothing close to 340. So always going to be in "sub par gear" because half the time I don't even bother capping tomes,

The point though is that everything is so temporary you never really achieve anything. To spin it slightly. Gear is basically like a band aid on a gaping wound. It's not a fix, it's not a reward it's not satisfying to get. It's just a band aid to tide you over temporarily till you get the augment or the next piece or something.

I think it's a big part of why the game has so many player retention problems and stuff because it's just not rewarding. Everything is so temporary and cheap.

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Originally Posted by Chalbee

I mean, I still do accumulate new gear, I just don't try very hard or do it very quickly because I know there's not much reward for the effort. Gear in this game is a treadmill, so I set it on low and walk.

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kinda like this myself. don't even cap tomes most weeks there's just no point.

I know its also why many people I know have stopped playing. because its just not rewarding to play

I mean if being at max ilvl does nothing for you, that's really your problem. I love being able to ease up farms and push the jobs I play to their limits. Can't do that in sub par gear. On top of that, it does make the PFs groups a bit more tolerable knowing I can pull a lot more weight with the padded stats. Also we sorta needed 340 to even try Ultimate (or BiS at any rate, looking at you pentamelded accessories).