Horizontal progression? In MY theme park?!

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Originally Posted by Derio

If it went horizonatal. There would be only 1 relic weapon. And then again how would that work? Unlock more materia slots? The weapon wouldnt get stronger just different in how it looks?

Same goes with leveling? How would that work for each expansion?

There are some serious problems and if they were to ever go the horizontal route it would take 2 years or more of development time to develop and implement.

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Not that i think this will happen but they could use the +1-3 augment system where it get better over time with challanges quests. I don't think we ever will get horizontal as long they gonna cater casual before long term active players.

Maybe not so much horizontal, but maybe ways to grind to keep certain pieces of gear relevant like how some games let you "level up" gear pieces. Though it would almost eliminate the need for glamour would it?

I know FFXI let you do that for relic weapons and artifact gear. Thought they were on the right track when Eureka launched, but they hit the breaks on that idea.

I would love horizontal progression. Like a few posters have mentioned in previous posts, it would keep older gear relevant. I also would like SE to take this one step further, and keep older areas relevant. Having at least partial horizontal progression is great for longevity - expanding on what is available then incrementing upwards slowly. The current vertical method is not good for longevity and really not a good way to keep a quality game going for a long time. Hopefully some changes are made

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

TLDR: How could we have more gear variety in FFXIV

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I've probably written 2-3 design docs on this exact topic before.

Speaking strictly personally, I think this idea should be handled by the Materia system. It goes without saying though, that some pretty robust changes to the core combat system would likely need to occur (such as balancing secondaries to a more reasonable degree, as well as assigning attributes that synergize with those traits, i.e. crit -> procs, cd resets, or skill/spell speed -> stacking a buff, etc.).

Materia will have 2 major functions:

1) Improve existing abilities in some fashion.

2) Improve general stats.

Different gear sets would have differing numbers of sockets as well as colors. Colors would dictate which Materia you could slot into it. The idea here is that savage gear would be more powerful than tomestone gear, but not necessarily by raw stats. It might have 3 Red Materia slots total in the set (whereas Tomestone would have say 2). This would give the left side Savage gear the unique ability to have 3 ability enhancing Materia, whereas Tomestone would get 2, but some extra stat buffing Materia slots.

A player would acquire Materia in a sorts of manners. Boss fights, quests, dungeons, side content, etc.

Ideally my design philosophy here would be that Materia could help offset tools your job lacks or to improve specific abilities used more frequently for specific content forms. Collecting Materia would be its own system and new Materia would be added at a decent rate. These would be switchable outside of combat.

There would be 3 Materia colors. Red (improve Job skills, or passives), Yellow, usually a generic combat effect, and Blue (+ stats).

Some examples for Red Materia might include (for PLD):

• Avenger's Shield - Your Shield Lob now hits 2 additional targets. The first target hit takes 50% more damage
  
• Heavy Shield - If Shield Lob hits a target more than 15 yalms out, it allows you to cast Shield Swipe next for free and it deals 20% more damage
  
• Shield Draft - Increases your movement speed by 30% for 3s after casting Shield Lob. Your next weaponskill deals 20% more damage
  
• Vacuum Shield - Shield Lob no longer interrupts the current combo and enemies hit by Shield Lob are pulled towards you
  
• Shield Mastery - You are able to Block while casting. In addition, Blocks generate double Oath
  
• Flourish - Passive MP generation increased by 40%
  
• Fervor - During Requiescat your cast speed is reduced by 50%.

These are just a few examples. The core idea is that they all are improvements. You lose nothing by equipping them, and some are more powerful in some situations or by player skill. I.e. if you're bad at managing MP, increased regen (which would normally lead to more Holy Spirits) would be less valuable to you than to a different PLD.

Yellow Materia might be something like:

• Frenzy - after landing a crit, you gain 10% skill/spell speed for x seconds. Stacks up to 3 times then expires
  
• Swiftness - Upon completing a combo, you gain Swiftness for x seconds which reduces the CD of any ability used by the # of hits in the combo

Blue would be basic + stats like we currently have now.

I think this solves the gear variety problem, adds some new collectible/horizontal progression, and also allows players to differentiate themselves.

At this point you could just create a rune system for skills like D3 instead of relying on materias.

That said while I would agree that materias could be better, this doesn't really adds to gear variety.
Unless we start making materias slots color based and more complex.
More like FF7 perhaps at that point some pieces of gear could have some more interesting effects.

Maybe like linked materias slots where by taking your examples you could link avenger's shield, heavy shield and shield lob together

However as some have said we lack the variety on job skills to make it really work

The funny thing is 1.23 actually had a good degree of horizontal progression even without endless gear swaps or macros.

The 1.23 whom for example had a multitude of options available. You could spec for mind and focus on your direct heals. Or you spec into vitality and have stronger enhancing magic. Stronger stoneskins and regen even stronger protect.

DPS as well where against some bosses they'd want to stack more attack potency to break through high defece. On others they could go full int raw damage.

And tanks. Could have low up high offence for some bosses. High hp for others. Or maximum enmity.

All of these things helped make gear feel valuable and important. A big difference to xiv where gear is worthless and trash

Serious Talk:

Fundamentally, I like the idea of somewhat horizontal progression. It makes the world feel a bit more fleshed out, if within reason. But let's not pretend that it doesn't have fundamental drawbacks.

I like that I could have some portion of the game I care about more than other portions, and most of my gearing will therefore be aimed at that, while I may fall behind on others, so long as the gap isn't so significant that I'm unable to progress seriously in a given sector of content . Or, alternatively, I kind of like that I may have to play different sorts of content in order to get the gear that most capitalizes upon my playstyle, so long as (1) my playstyle really is allowed for and (2) I still enjoy each of those pieces of content enough to be at least as happy for the variance as I would be if I were permitted to play only the content type I liked most, or there's still enough exchange between content types that I don't have to play the content types I don't care for.

But, that's essentially all horizontal progression is. It's exclusivity, by design. It might not be felt enough to generate divides in the playerbase in practice, but that really is what makes horizontal progression horizontal -- specialization. Vertical progression may end up devaluing the majority of its content because it has less impact on gearing, and thus contribution balance is essential in order not to waste resources, but so long as there's only one real progression series, at least it applies to everything, allowing you to swap between content types however you please. The pace at which one progresses is the only thing capable of splitting up a group of friends at all, not where they choose to spend that progress.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

it keeps old content relevant and that makes people feel like there's more to do. i don't particularly care for it but usually it does do that.

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It doesn't necessarily accomplish even that, though. The only way to make a given piece of content last longer is to make it particularly difficult or less rewarding, such as through drop rates. That piece of content won't face obsoletion until there's a better way to get the progress it provides, but people will still finish the content and never look back just as quickly. The largest bonus possible is that, say, more content will be available to someone upon reaching level-cap if they'd fallen behind previously or only just started the game with the latest expansion. But the amount of content simultaneously available probably won't much be affected if at all. Consider what a player could do to gear up if they hit their first 70 at level 4.35. They can do that new Aquapolis thing, the new Palace of the Dead, dungeons within their item level, 24-mans within their item level, normal mode raids, Frontlines, Feast, or technically even Savage Raids to gear up. That's your breadth of content, right there.

That they all form a pyramid leading to a single peak, whereupon one is "done" is not a unique issue: one could still finish and find there to be nothing left to do if there were six or more separate spires instead, one for each sector of content: they'd just feel less connected, such that if you prefer dungeons and your friend prefers Heaven's Tower you're forced to split up once the gearing disadvantage moving across from one to the other becomes too great.

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But, let's say XIV for whatever reason turned their philosophy about, 180-degrees, and decided that horizontal progression, as a buzz word, was just... the way to go.

To put it simply: I'd be opposed to anything that significantly breaks apart various content types. I'd be opposed to arbitrary by-gimmick gating like Elemental Resistance stats. And, honestly, I don't want to farm a given piece of content for an interesting piece of gear -- e.g. something that would augment an ability in a way that could actually affect my rotation, such as allowing a chance for Firestarter off of Fire4 and giving Fire3 an additional 40 potency. I'd much, much rather that seemingly be a part of a universal character customization system, to which a certain content type or encounter might better contribute, or might uniquely provide some small part, towards X customization/post-progression option. I'd rather a Relic or Regalia (think: some item set that allows for a unique playstyle) mostly be something you progress towards granularly (outside of a few burstier events to spice things up), not just bang your head against for 4 months and then suddenly acquire.

To put it even more simply: Reiterability of content >>> "Length" of content. Breadth of content simultaneously available >>> Breadth of content paths.

I insist we need the inventory issue fixed first before we can have serious talks about horizzontal progression

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but why the need for it? Unless they fundamentally change how they make the high-end content there is nothing in this game that relies on being geared to the max.
The UwU bleeding edge didn't have to farm split runs for a couple of lockouts (as the Mythic raiders do WoW) to kill it within the first few days. Gear is used to balance the player base skill level over time, not to soft-lock bosses with DPS checks.
So unless the raid philosophy changes and starts emulating the WoW model with hard gear checks, DPS checks, set-bonuses etc - why create a division of the player base unnecessarily?
I believe one of the strengths of this game is the egalitarian approach to gear - nobody is left out because it really doesn't have too much of an effect on the content.
That said, having more stuff to do is never a bad thing - and I do love a gear grind.

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Originally Posted by Ilyrian

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but why the need for it? Unless they fundamentally change how they make the high-end content there is nothing in this game that relies on being geared to the max.

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That's part of the problem though. As It only serves to make gear feel even more worthless and even less rewarding.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

it keeps old content relevant and that makes people feel like there's more to do. i don't particularly care for it but usually it does do that.

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The content is grindy enough, why do you want to keep it relevant for longer? lol

People already complain about having to run older dungeons for roulette... do you think people still want to be raiding Bahamut's Coil for gear that is still relevant today? Some people raid it for S&G or roulette bonuses, but not for the drops. Do you think it's healthy to force people to continue raiding it for the rest of the game's lifespan?

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Originally Posted by Maeka

The content is grindy enough, why do you want to keep it relevant for longer? lol

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Because there are new players joining all the time. The idea of unsynced content, grind nerfs and other methods of making old content completely faceroll (to the point where some bosses can be killed before their first mechanic) is unpleasant if you are just reaching those pieces of content for the first time. Grinds I understand to a certain extent, but unsync is a really bad system that has unfortunately become baseline in the game. There needs to be some sort of control over it so that the content is at least still content rather than a few hits and instant rewards.

The same can be said about poor level sync (particularly on content early into an expansion cycle), but thats a whole other issue.

But yet some newbies might not want to run old raids.

I mean if you're a newbie, the MSQ will already take you 100-200 hours of play, at least. But not only that, but you also want to dump the old raids on them too and make them required as well, to add another who knows how many hours onto that?

The newbies want to get to Max Level and participate in all this new content that's out, they don't want to be forced to slough through old stuff. Now, some newbies may CHOOSE to go through old raids out of curiosity of the sights and sounds, but I doubt very many of them want to have to grind that stuff for gear.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

The content is grindy enough, why do you want to keep it relevant for longer? lol

People already complain about having to run older dungeons for roulette... do you think people still want to be raiding Bahamut's Coil for gear that is still relevant today? Some people raid it for S&G or roulette bonuses, but not for the drops. Do you think it's healthy to force people to continue raiding it for the rest of the game's lifespan?

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The biggest reason people complain about running old content is the games design means there's always so little content to actually do...

There is so little content that's relevant at any given time. That players literally have very few things to do.
Presently for example outside of roulette. The only content worth doing (casually at least) is the lighthouse 24 man raid and maybe the tsuyo ex. As a result they're the only 2 things players have to do. So it's no wonder they run them to death... there is nothing else to do..

Many players will probably have done that lighthouse raid hundreds of times by the time 4.4 comes out... Because that's why they get sick of old content..

If you had a larger variety of relevant content it would generally all feel fresher for much longer because each individual one wouldn't be done as often...

When there's only 1 or 2 things to do. They both get run to death very quickly. Especially if someone has to run lighthouse a dozen times each week to get there drop...

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Originally Posted by Maeka

The newbies want to get to Max Level and participate in all this new content that's out, they don't want to be forced to slough through old stuff. Now, some newbies may CHOOSE to go through old raids out of curiosity of the sights and sounds, but I doubt very many of them want to have to grind that stuff for gear.

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I don't think you understand horizontal progression. Nobody is being forced, but in the current state of the game, you barely get a choice because content is being made intentionally worthless.

The content is grindy enough?.....For real?

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

I don't think you understand horizontal progression.

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Truth be told, most people don't seem to. Heck, I constantly see people confusing it with special effects.

Ultimately, all progression is progression. It's a one-way street on which you can only progress, stagnate, or regress in a single direction and only the first of those three is deemed motivating. In computer terms, progression typically means two things:
a) A checkmark is cleared (Raid, Story progression)
b) A number goes up (Combat stats, e.g. DPS).

So called "horizontal" progression doesn't get rid of that, because it wouldn't be progression at all otherwise. All it does is to take the generic "combat" progression line and feathers it into multiple sub-purposes that each progress "vertically" individually.
By nature, given equal gear acquisition rates, that's going to mean more grinding, because you no longer have one "best" set, but multiple, one for each purpose, which may or may not overlap. And it also relies on there actually being multiple relevant purposes in the combat system itself to work. Which... is probably the biggest issue when trying to expand it in FFXIV.

Special effects on gear are entirely separate from that and can be either "vertical", i.e. represent an upgrade in performance or "horizontal", i.e. represent a different purpose. "Randomly spawns 3 Voidlings to deal damage" is a different purpose than "Randomly erects a barrier that blocks 15% of your max HP", thus they are "horizontal". They are also "vertical", because it's a clear improvement of combat performance over "nothing at all" or a weaker version of the same effect (like 1 Voidling/5% max HP). Same goes for less fancy stats like +15 Survival Stat vs +15 Damage Stat, it's just less smoke and mirrors there.

Neither of the two has much to do with how long content remains relevant. Barring plain enjoyment, a piece of content is relevant for as long as it represents progression. For gear, that means the rewards need to be better than something you already have. And in the "horizontal" model, being better in general is simply replaced with being better at some (ideally relevant) purpose. Since "horizontal" progression ceteris paribus requires more grinding, it naturally boosts longevity of content as well. How much depends on the degree of difference between the different "best" sets.
However, ultimately longevity is mostly decided by the rate at which gear (or any other progression metric) is acquired. That's obvious: Since the relevancy of the content is tied to the progression it provides, the sooner you get that progression, the sooner it becomes irrelevant.

A good example here is leveling content: If you level multiple jobs, XP remains a relevant reward for longer than if you only level one. Thus, the content remains relevant longer, i.e. has a higher longevity. Since leveling multiple jobs is not mandatory however, this is entirely optional and that's a good thing. But it matters little if you can just boost yourself to max easily. Gear follows the same principle. You can have a million different gear purposes and item slots, if you can get all items for free at a vendor in the starting area, the longevity of that is as long as it takes to navigate the menus.

Personally? I'd loath to try and support more "horizontal" progression within the individual jobs while the overarching job progression is still such a PITA to participate in. Most of the time, you can barely gear up your basic trinity roles before the gear becomes obsolete due to caps and other pacing measures. Adding more progression on the job level would increase that issue exponentially.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

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That's because everybody cites FFXI Pre-Abyssea as the poster child of Horizontal Progression and that's what HP *was* in FFXI.

You'd reach Level 75 and there's a million activities all to grind on, and your reward was gear that you'd wear for 2 seconds at a time constantly swapping gear for every little action you take. Blue Mage was rather egregious so I'll use it as an example. You'd have 50+ pieces of equipment (even though you can only wear 16).

Meleeing/Building TP? Wear Accuracy gear.
Wanna do a WS? Swap to str+ gear, use WS, swap back to Accuracy.
Wanna cast a spell? Swap to the gear that buffs that specific spell. Swap back.

etc etc etc.

It's just so ludicrous and ridiculous.

OR, how WoW did "Horizontal" Progression back during Vanilla: Wanna do Naxxramas? I hope you went back and farmed Cold Resist gear or you'd get smeared by one of the bosses in there. You'd have a suit of armor you'd wear for normal bosses, but then you'd have this alternate Cold Resist gear that you'd swap in for THAT boss and ONLY that boss. Blizz promptly dumped this system in their very first expansion, because it was universally hated, nobody liked having to lug around a whole suit of gear for one boss.

Not sure how else you'd do Horizontal Progression unless you're suggesting we do a bunch of things like Eureka or PotD that have their alternate progression... but then, try asking most players what their opinions of PotD and Eureka is and I'm pretty sure most hate it. Only reason why most people do PotD these days is to level their classes up (this should point out a flaw in the leveling system TBH).

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Originally Posted by Maeka

OR, how WoW did "Horizontal" Progression back during Vanilla: Wanna do Naxxramas? I hope you went back and farmed Cold Resist gear or you'd get smeared by one of the bosses in there. You'd have a suit of armor you'd wear for normal bosses, but then you'd have this alternate Cold Resist gear that you'd swap in for THAT boss and ONLY that boss. Blizz promptly dumped this system in their very first expansion, because it was universally hated, nobody liked having to lug around a whole suit of gear for one boss.

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Pretty sure there's a circle of hell where you have to play that way again - but as an adult with a full time job and family - for all eternity.

This thread again.

*sigh*

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...098c61273c.png

Again, there is not enough statistical complexity to this game to allow for any horizontal progression. To do so would require a complete redo of the system, which would mean every fight and every enemy would have to be rebalanced to accommodate the new system. The odds of this happening are pretty near nil.

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Originally Posted by RaideDuku

This thread again.

*sigh*

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...098c61273c.png

Again, there is not enough statistical complexity to this game to allow for any horizontal progression. To do so would require a complete redo of the system, which would mean every fight and every enemy would have to be rebalanced to accommodate the new system. The odds of this happening are pretty near nil.

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Thank you. You said it way more concisely than I could.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Truth be told, most people don't seem to. Heck, I constantly see people confusing it with special effects.

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That's because the carrot to doing this content is something that has persistence.

Glamour gets rid of any reason to even get gear for it's appearance. I'd love to keep using the Relic or Anima weapon if it just grew with the leveling, but when you can just throw away this hard-earned weapon with the next patch level's vendor trash gear, there is something wrong.

Really the kind of Horizontal progression I want already exists. Here's your job, if you want to play another job, you can farm the gear for it, or buy it, or whatever. You still have to level it. Other games don't offer this, and in games that have anything similar, you usually can't do everything without cash shop resets and grinding on a different skill tree.

Where I think other games make a mistake:

(Prefix) GEAR NAME of (Suffix) + (Bonus multiplier)
Rarity
GEAR NAME
Durability
Base damage/defense
Attributes (eg cold/poison/fire/thunder) resistance/buff
Modifications (eg materia)

So you're trying to use the same weapon, and apply 5 different modifiers, while risking destroying the gear or modifications. The most aggrivating version of this I saw in both Mabinogi and in Wizardy. Both games you can destroy the gear by applying the prefix/suffix blessings/curses, and you can destroy it by the incompentent repair guy with a 90% (more like 30%) repair rate, and you can destroy it by modifications. You have less than a 2% chance of getting all these things right. Then there's dying which is another RNG.

Like I enjoy the complexity to a point, but not when RNG is involved. FFXIV removes this complexity down to a single thing, the materia. For all intents a NQ is +0 and a HQ is +1 in terms of other games descriptions, and the blue/green/pink gear rarity is completely meaningless.

What I'd like is that gear meant for one objective (eg MSQ, PvP, Raiding) have it's own horizontal progression bonus that otherwise is not relevant to the other gear. So PvP and Raider gear is different, they're both ilevel 375, but the raider gear would be better for raiding, hence why it's rewarded from raiding, where as PvP gear is better for PvP and is rewarded from PvP. If you go back and play MSQ content with any of those gear's, it's still ilevel 375 gear, just it's bonus may not have any practical use in the MSQ content.

Let's say for example, that you can apply a PvP buff prefix, and a raider buff suffix to the gear, any gear. This buff is permanent much like materia, but it's only active in that content. That gives the player an incentive to play that content on their main to acquire the gear most relevant to playing that content, while not hobbling them in any other content. Especially since MSQ content is relatively easier from the overgeared ilevel alone.

The existing system actually can support this by having a "prefix" and "suffix" materia slot that applies a permanent buff or debuff. The buff's don't necessarily make the fight easier (the buff might just be cosmetic sparkles and rainbows) but you could have things like float permanently applied to nullify one mechanic that otherwise is a KO.

Switching gear between mechanics should expressly not be a thing.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

At this point you could just create a rune system for skills like D3 instead of relying on materias. That said while I would agree that materias could be better, this doesn't really adds to gear variety. Unless we start making materias slots color based and more complex. More like FF7 perhaps at that point some pieces of gear could have some more interesting effects. Maybe like linked materias slots where by taking your examples you could link avenger's shield, heavy shield and shield lob together.

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Why would I want to use a rune system like D3 when Materia is literally the same system within context of the source material and a prime candidate for rework.

It does add to gear variety (or at the very least a degree of horizontal progression). I did indicate that different pieces of gear would have differing number of sockets and colors, and while I didn't spell out the concept of linking, the idea was inferred from my concept. I.e. that you could socket x number of Red Materia that empower the same ability.

Regarding interesting effects on gear, my design doc posited a system much like D3's Kanai Cube in that you would convert gear as an alternative way into Materia to equip effects and you'd be limited to x number based on your equipped gear. I really liked the concept, but I wasn't able to identify an implementation I liked.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

So called "horizontal" progression doesn't get rid of that, because it wouldn't be progression at all otherwise. All it does is to take the generic "combat" progression line and feathers it into multiple sub-purposes that each progress "vertically" individually.

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Speaking strictly personally this is also how I define horizontal progression. Multiple systems of power accrual, rather than a singular.

Ideally I would have liked to have seen Materia as a robust progression system.

I would have also liked to have seen Chocobo's be another, but that ship has sailed.

Assuming that flying didn't exist, the idea was that as you level your Chocobo he gains new abilities (like now), but these abilities are actual useful things in the outside world. The ability for your Chocobo to sprint, glide, slide, climb, etc. These improvements would later allow you to explore areas in the maps you couldn't before (think like WoW treasure hunting). This would be in addition to the combat abilities your 'Bo would learn.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

The content is grindy enough, why do you want to keep it relevant for longer? lol

People already complain about having to run older dungeons for roulette... do you think people still want to be raiding Bahamut's Coil for gear that is still relevant today? Some people raid it for S&G or roulette bonuses, but not for the drops. Do you think it's healthy to force people to continue raiding it for the rest of the game's lifespan?

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do you even read what you quote?

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Why would I want to use a rune system like D3 when Materia is literally the same system within context of the source material and a prime candidate for rework.

It does add to gear variety (or at the very least a degree of horizontal progression). I did indicate that different pieces of gear would have differing number of sockets and colors, and while I didn't spell out the concept of linking, the idea was inferred from my concept. I.e. that you could socket x number of Red Materia that empower the same ability.

Regarding interesting effects on gear, my design doc posited a system much like D3's Kanai Cube in that you would convert gear as an alternative way into Materia to equip effects and you'd be limited to x number based on your equipped gear. I really liked the concept, but I wasn't able to identify an implementation I liked.

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I don't know why you would, but the idea is essentially that, tough I did admit you could go with a ff7 system


That said there still remains the elephant in the room of jobs beign so static that you need to remake them one way or another.

Frankly as said the problem with horizzontal progress doesn't lies only in the gear but in about everything in the game.
As such I think they might just need to remake the game so that horizzontal gearing works and MORE importantly they should change their vision of the game, like 24 man are essentially catch up, dungeons catch up and so on. Not to mention that gear is useless outside of raiding since there's plenty of zones in the game where your gear means nothing

I would like some horizontal progression, but it won't work in this game for 2 reasons:
1. can't change gear in combat
2. there's only 1 tactic for every fight, DPS

Because of enrage timers, every fight is a dps race. So every gear build comes down to what gives you max dps. Kiting, enfeebling, and other tactics that worked in ffxi don't work in this game. With that in mind, I'd like more options for obtaining gear. Right now you can raid or you can tome grind.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

I don't want gear that will last me for years. Then I'd have nothing to work toward, no goal. I don't want a static character that can't grow anymore. I'd have no reason to play the game.

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I mean.... I have nothing to work toward as it is currently anyway.

I would personally like to see a talent tree system specific to FFXIV. This way you could have a ninja for example that can sepcialize in Ninjutsu's for added effects (DPS oriented). Or they can specialize in stealth talents that would make Hide more useful than it currently is (Stealth oriented). Or as a third option they can specialize in finding more weakness in enemies to use more trick attack like de-buffs and other de-buffs (support oriented).

This suggestion would require a rework to the current combat system, so it most likely will not be very well liked. However, it would allow more variety in play styles and allow people to try out different builds to help with burn out and stagnation.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

I insist we need the inventory issue fixed first before we can have serious talks about horizontal progression

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That depends on how it's handled. In 1.x, for instance, all classes used -- to some extent -- every primary stat, and gear was locked only based on armor class, with all armor classes beneath one's own class's also available to your class. (Thaumaturge and Conjurers (who were both healers and casters back then, and the entirety of either "role") got cloth; Pugilists/Archers got cloth and leather; Lancers - cloth, leather, and mail; Marauders and Gladiators - all.)

If we were to go with a flexibly-allocated primary stat system, we could essentially collapse the number of sets needed to level everything to roughly half its current amount even while offering far more options to each job. And with certain sets being useful to multiple jobs each -- a piece's Dexterity+Intelligence being usable for either Direct Hit or Spell Speed, for instance, depending on the player-chosen direction of combination -- you could support more niche special stats without bloating inventory space beyond what we currently face.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

PvP gear, would offer a different set bonus tuned to the content they're for. So skill/spell speed reduction for PvP skills for a PvP set,

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Gosh please no. I hope they never do it in this game. The only reason I tolerate PvP enough to occasionally queue into it to buy something from the PvP vendors is because it's *convenient*. I don't have to lug around a separate set (or several) of PvP gear or do any other kind of extraneous prep. I can jump into it in the middle of doing PvE stuff and then pick up right where I left off after the match.

Gear or anything else being irrelevant to PvP also puts everyone on an even playing field. When a team gets trounced, they don't get to make the "bawww, the other team had better gear!" excuse because it's purely a matter of composition and tactics, both of which can be adjusted on the fly (not that anyone does but the option is there).

PvP-specific gear that grants objective, mechanical advantages over people who don't have it has no place in the game and would ensure that I would never ever queue into a match again. Probably not a good thing given that PvP is uninviting and unattractive to new players in the first place and the queues already take forever because very few people stick around once they've gotten everything they wanted out of the vendors.