Poll: Gear progression, horizontal or vertical?

I prefer a horizontal system, mainly for the myriad of combinations of stats and playstyles to mess around with. But I've accepted the vertical one since 2.0 started and don't see them changing it for quite a while. Would be nice if they cooled down on raising the ilvl every patch though. Let the newest gear last for more than a month. :P

I prefer vertical with faster catch up. Start late? Great, you don't need to spend 6 months doing old crap to get up to speed just in time for a new patch making you even further behind.

I don't like huge jumps though. Power creep is bad. It leads to people suddenly forgetting how hard stuff is when you don't out gear it.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

It worked so well that it didn't have to go free to play...... oh wait!

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The original ever quest is 17 bloody years old.

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Originally Posted by Xatsh

If you put it like that.

Or you can put it like this.
Would you want 1 thing to do every 6 months that progresses your character at top tier? Or 12 things to do that progress your character at the top tier?

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If you start from launch, you'll be finished with those 12 things in less time than it takes them to be developed. In addition i can't think of a single game that actually HAS "12 things." Even the infamous FFXI really only has 6 or so at a given time that are actually worth doing. And a lot of that design is so clearly for padding it's insane (such as requiring 30 items that drop from a single NM, meaning you have to kill that NM about 30 times)

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Would you want the option to do 1 of 20 pieces of content? Or have to choose between 2-3 peices of content every 6 months?

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We have over 20 pieces of content, they were just staggered. Thanks to the relic quests, MSQ, GCs, and various other objectives, they're all still relevant, just for different purposes. Also, releasing them all at once means we need to wait 6 months to a year for new content. People are slowly trickling away from the game with a THREE MONTH desert of content, can you imagine how many people would leave if it took 6 months between content updates?

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Would you prefer all your work to be negated every 6 months? Or would you prefer it to last 1-2yrs?

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Would i rather use the exact same equipment for 1-2 years rather than be able to get something new every 6 months? Even EverQuest realized this was a bad idea and had new paid expansions every 6 months until they overdid it. People want new shinies. You either stagger your content, make it ungodly hard/monotonous, or release it all at once and have people burn out after 3 months when they run out of things to do.

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DO you want 8hrs of relevant content per week or do you want 60hrs of relevant content per week to do?

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Um...we technically HAVE 60 hours of relevant content a week, but 60 is really overkill if you mean post-MSQ content like raids. This goes back to "encouraging people to No-Life the game." Which is bad and approaching illegal in some territories.

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FFXI you could do the same content many times, but they added new content it is not like horizontal = no new content. It is just more content added to the already existing content pool.

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Yyyyyyeah um hate to tell you but FFXI is a bad example. It doesn't really have horizontal progression, so much as just having more armor and weapon sets than XIV (due to being 5x older) that are just upgraded. It's vertical progression with a farm instead of a houseplant. But that farm started from a houseplant.
Also the way they're acquired and upgraded would make someone annoyed by the Zodiac quests in this game scream in agony just READING about it.

Do I want to keep running old stuff for the next couple years? Yes, actually. I would like content to be fun, engaging and compliment anything new that's added.

I don't understand why people think MMOs have to be self destructive in order to survive.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

The original ever quest is 17 bloody years old.

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He was talkiong about EQ2. Plus it has been free to play a few years now.

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Originally Posted by Catsby

Do I want to keep running old stuff for the next couple years? Yes, actually. I would like content to be fun, engaging and compliment anything new that's added.

I don't understand why people think MMOs have to be self destructive in order to survive.

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Because it would be extremely smart to change from a model that is working and much more succesful than they even hoped, to something else because....

MMO designer rule number 1: Don't piss of your core base making changes to try and get an imaginary new audience.
If you want to know how that goes when you ignore that, look back at SWG with New game experience.

Players like new things. Simple as. FFXI worked to a certain degree with a niche crowd of players, FFXIV appeals to more players, plus FFXI had less competition at the time. FFXI design is no longer viable in the present market. It's getting its last ever content updates this year, shutting down PS2 and xbone support (albeit I think the didn't have any choice in that matter, imo they should have dropped support for those consoles years ago, and took FFXI to the next level, improved UI, graphics etc).

So lets go with em changing to pure horizontel, you have your gear, then what? They release new content, you clear it once, what do you do for the rest of the time until the new content is released? As you have your set, theres no reason to run any new content more than once. Because if that new content drops better gear, even if it is at the same level, it is vertical progression. Something you said you do not want, as you stated you wanted horizontal progression over vertical.

So to extend content you would be happy with an extrememly low drop rate? So it is down to pure luck if/when you get the item. Or make it token based, few hundred runs maybe to get enough tokens for the gear? Make that for every drop? How long do you think the population would continue to exist after that? Still doesn't cover after you get the set, what then? Nothing could replace it, otherwise as I stated prior, vertical progression (vertical as you are increasing in power).

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Originally Posted by kyuven

Yyyyyyeah um hate to tell you but FFXI is a bad example. It doesn't really have horizontal progression, so much as just having more armor and weapon sets than XIV (due to being 5x older) that are just upgraded. It's vertical progression with a farm instead of a houseplant. But that farm started from a houseplant.
Also the way they're acquired and upgraded would make someone annoyed by the Zodiac quests in this game scream in agony just READING about it.

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Well it was the gearswapping that made it horizontal. As you built up different sets for pretty much every ability to maximise. As DNC, i'd have TP set with mucho double and triple attack, plus dual wield. Waltz potency set to macro waltz cures, step accuracy set, samba gear, Jig gear, mid and high accuracy gear, flourish gear plus WS gear. To maximise you had to have all these different sets of gear. Inventory management was a b*tch XD.

NBut yus, I don't want to be farming FFXIVs equivalent of Nyzul and Dyna 1 year+ from now either.

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Originally Posted by EdenArchangel

I prefer a horizontal system, mainly for the myriad of combinations of stats and playstyles to mess around with. But I've accepted the vertical one since 2.0 started and don't see them changing it for quite a while. Would be nice if they cooled down on raising the ilvl every patch though. Let the newest gear last for more than a month. :P

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AGREED...!!!

A problem with horizontal gear progression in FFXIV is that we ALREADY have severe trouble in terms of inventory management. Thanks to vertical progression, you can safely discard any gear you have replaced, unless you want to hold on to it for cosmetics.

With horizontal progression, you would need to keep multiple sets of gear to mix and match the secondary stats. For example, if they were to design gear to utilize elemental resistance for horizontal progression, you'd need at least 6 sets of gear on hand in order to fight the extreme primals in a row.

With vertical progression, you'll be using the same amount of storage space for your important gear in three years as you are using today. (Assuming classes continue falling in the general established categories.)

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

A problem with horizontal gear progression in FFXIV is that we ALREADY have severe trouble in terms of inventory management. Thanks to vertical progression, you can safely discard any gear you have replaced, unless you want to hold on to it for cosmetics.

With horizontal progression, you would need to keep multiple sets of gear to mix and match the secondary stats. For example, if they were to design gear to utilize elemental resistance for horizontal progression, you'd need at least 6 sets of gear on hand in order to fight the extreme primals in a row.

With vertical progression, you'll be using the same amount of storage space for your important gear in three years as you are using today. (Assuming classes continue falling in the general established categories.)

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I don't really get this "multiple sets" debate, few horizontal mmo's i played, had stat caps, so all you had to do was build a template that capped all the relevant stats you needed, even though it was very difficult sometimes to find out what pieces you needed, it was very feasible to max out all stat bonuses and resistances relevant to your class.