How long before long vertical gear progression stops?

Just small discussion to see how the player base feels about the insane current state of gear progression.

At what point should SE stop the vertical gear progression? Should gear feel more rewarding as oppose to being replaced by the next ilvl set of gear come a patch or two later? And last but not least, Should they implement horizontal gear progression? If so, how can they avoid the player base abusing such?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Evogolist

Just small discussion to see how the player base feels about the insane current state of gear progression.

At what point should SE stop the vertical gear progression? Should gear feel more rewarding as oppose to being replaced by the next ilvl set of gear come a patch or two later? And last but not least, Should they implement horizontal gear progression? If so, how can they avoid the player base abusing such?

---

Odds are they never will stop. They want you to keep subbing by forcing you to keep grinding because... yeah... people will always want shinier gear to progress with XD

I decided screw it, not doing alexander savage content.
I havn't capped esos in 6 weeks, I havn't done alexander normal in 2 weeks. I'm not sure I'm missing the grind. Cause realistically you only need top tier gear to clear top tier content. If you're fine with being a lowly casual, there's no need to do the mad scramble and I think I'm happier for it. All I'm doing is capping red crafting and gathering scrips.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Leknaat

Odds are they never will stop. They want you to keep subbing by forcing you to keep grinding because... yeah... people will always want shinier gear to progress with XD

I decided screw it, not doing alexander savage content.
I havn't capped esos in 6 weeks, I havn't done alexander normal in 2 weeks. I'm not sure I'm missing the grind. Cause realistically you only need top tier gear to clear top tier content. If you're fine with being a lowly casual, there's no need to do the mad scramble and I think I'm happier for it. All I'm doing is capping red crafting and gathering scrips.

---

Yup, that's pretty much how a theme park MMORPG like this works. A lot of folks come here expecting nothing but a focus on top tier endgame content that involves boss fights and all this combat stuff for every single patch update... then they're met with focuses on story, housing, crafting/gathering, Gold Saucer, etc. To be blunt about that, they're completely in wrong to accuse the game of being bad/boring for doing that. This game has never been advertised for the most hardcore of players and has always been advertised as something for everyone... that was the emphasis. Even if you think one should be totally prioritized every patch, alongside other content, you'd still be in the wrong. Of course, that's not to say there's an amount of content that should be available for one over another and ignored within reason, like how we currently are stuck in a rut is an example of not providing enough relevancy of one (combat), but rather that it's how things are with the devs aim. In time, this will likely change though, and we'll get to having too much to potentially do as a whole again, as it was towards the end of ARR. Ideally, when the Ark and FC airship traveling is released, there'll be a more fitting degree of a combat grind alongside the other meaningful non-combat content. That's sort of what happened when CT was introduced, afterall. It really did begin to change the lack of content feel... but who knows, given the fact it'd be a repeated form of content.

I liked ffxi gear progression, gear that lasted oh IDK 10 years

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Leknaat

Odds are they never will stop. They want you to keep subbing by forcing you to keep grinding because... yeah... people will always want shinier gear to progress with XD

I decided screw it, not doing alexander savage content.
I havn't capped esos in 6 weeks, I havn't done alexander normal in 2 weeks. I'm not sure I'm missing the grind. Cause realistically you only need top tier gear to clear top tier content. If you're fine with being a lowly casual, there's no need to do the mad scramble and I think I'm happier for it. All I'm doing is capping red crafting and gathering scrips.

---

Yep because horizontal progression never revolves around grinding....or mmorpgs in general
/sarcasm

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LathusWHM

I liked ffxi gear progression, gear that lasted oh IDK 10 years

---

Because you were lucky to get one item every other month.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Welsper59

Yup, that's pretty much how a theme park MMORPG like this works. A lot of folks come here expecting nothing but a focus on top tier endgame content that involves boss fights and all this combat stuff for every single patch update... then they're met with focuses on story, housing, crafting/gathering, Gold Saucer, etc. To be blunt about that, they're completely in wrong to accuse the game of being bad/boring for doing that. This game has never been advertised for the most hardcore of players and has always been advertised as something for everyone... that was the emphasis.

---

So wait... when Yoshi said end game is where THE game is at... he actually meant.. glamours, gold saucer, minions, housing, ponies? I thought he was selling us epic battles and adventures. All I see is people afking in Idyllshire. Also if this is really an ultra casual game...then why does gathering/crafting doesn't feel that way on its current state? Don't people who play casually only have some time to spare, whereas this requires a lot of time investment plus a lot of headaches with RNG? I mean from all the complaints from people it didn't seem like it's been easygoing and laid back. If this game is ultra casual... why do we have content like Alex Normal and Primals where people still fail at mechanics, let's not go so far, even in easy mode dungeons, people don't know how to play their job? I mean if that content is still too hard for players, then why release it as casual content? Are we sure this content is casual enough? Are we sure that's the people they are aiming at, at all? I think they give us 2 different messages and they should make up their minds already.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tyla_Esmeraude

Snip

---

End Game is ERP. That is why Yoshi's character is a Lalafell The lewdest race.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Joeking

End Game is ERP. That is why Yoshi's character is a Lalafell The lewdest race.

---

:o The more you know. Well crap I've been playing the wrong game all this time! Who ERPs in this game anyways, there's lots more games specifically for that! ;p

If you're going to suggest horizontal progression, show that you understand the flaws that it will bring and how you suggest it should be handled.
And of course, how to make it not a grind without it being handouts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ibi

Because you were lucky to get one item every other month.

---

Because RNG totally doesn't exist now.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...51-Good-ol-RNG

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aurace1095

Because RNG totally doesn't exist now.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...51-Good-ol-RNG

---

If you go into Alexander with a fixed group, you are 100% guaranteed to get whatever item you're looking for in a maximum of 8 runs.

You're also guaranteed every single BiS item in the game if you beat the associated content enough times.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ibi

If you go into Alexander with a fixed group, you are 100% guaranteed to get whatever item you're looking for in a maximum of 8 runs.

You're also guaranteed every single BiS item in the game if you beat the content enough times.

---

In eight months? unless you are talking about Normal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Evtrai

In eight months? unless you are talking about Normal.

---

The post I was quoting linked to a thread about rolling on springs in A3, so yes, normal.

That said, in order to get all the gear for your class from Alex Savage, assuming you never see a single drop you can use, you'd only need to do a maximum of 16 clears (8 pages for the weapon, 8 pages for the body, with all the lower floors being finished in fewer runs).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ibi

If you go into Alexander with a fixed group, you are 100% guaranteed to get whatever item you're looking for in a maximum of 8 runs.

You're also guaranteed every single BiS item in the game if you beat the associated content enough times.

---

That's true, in terms of Alexander they did fix a lot of the drop issues. My group had 5 axe drops in a row back in T9. There's still plenty of RNG in the game, though, outside of Alex, that's mentioned in that thread.


Though, RNG works well when it's not also coupled with weekly lockouts. That was what made the 5 axes in a row so excrutiating - we literally couldn't even try for another for another week.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nekodar

If you're going to suggest horizontal progression, show that you understand the flaws that it will bring and how you suggest it should be handled.
And of course, how to make it not a grind without it being handouts.

---

Was this in response to the OP, because I wasn't suggesting anything. If you read the OP you would see that I was merely asking the player base for their opinions on the subject of gear progression, not suggesting that gear be one way as oppose to the other. Not sure where your statement came from, because the only mention of horizontal progression was in the form of question. The question was basically "Should they implement horizontal progression? If so, how can they avoid the player base abusing it."

Horizontal Progression could exist if it just focused on accessories. Keep Armor and weapons as vertical and just implement a variety of rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces that can augment your class either through traits or effecting certain abilities.

I think that's the best middle ground one could ask for in terms of horizontal progression because if horizontal was for everything it be harder to implement but if they just do it for accessories then it would be easier to implement a system where you could either find rare accessories with interesting augments on them or just stick with the traditional accessories.

I don't care about vertical progression as long as they do something to keep the older content alive. And I don't mean creating another roulette to enrage even more the players that are already tired of them or grinding on quests. I want something to make people have fun.

If they did an undersized party option without level sync, I'm SURE the devs are capable of creating a level/rewards scaling system, so we could queue for any high level dungeon we like and have a new experience depending on the level you're on.

There are so many ways to bring back the fun on this game that I really don't know why the devs pay so little attention to this matter and keep focusing on hardcore raids only some people do.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tyla_Esmeraude

So wait... when Yoshi said end game is where THE game is at...

---

I'm sure he said end level
the game start where the end level is

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fevelle

There are so many ways to bring back the fun on this game that I really don't know why the devs pay so little attention to this matter and keep focusing on hardcore raids only some people do.

---

How many hardcore raids do we have at it current state or in the past? Only 2 that I would consider, Savage - (SCoB/Alexander). Non hardcore - (CT, WoD, Binding Coil of Bahamut F1-13, Alexander A1-A4). If you think any of the items I listed as Non hardcore raid you might want to re-think of what you think the definition of hardcore raid means.

This game is meant for Everyone even the small minorities that play this game (PvP, RP, Hardcore, World Progression) so we can actually enjoy the game as well. If you're not having fun in this game then you need to step away and go play something else for a while like Farmville or some other FB Game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aurace1095

That's true, in terms of Alexander they did fix a lot of the drop issues. My group had 5 axe drops in a row back in T9. There's still plenty of RNG in the game, though, outside of Alex, that's mentioned in that thread.

---

Healer cane, tank chest, 9 times in a row. Feels so sad to throw them away

Vertical progression can go for as long as possible really, up until you reach a point where the base numbers themselves are so high that you can effectively gut everything and leave the relative power of characters the same. To use WoW for an example, I think it was in WoD that they did an Items Crunch to bring numbers back down to reason, so that by the end of WoD you didn't have a sword with +10000 Strength or something, you could drop it back down to like +100 and the damage output itself wasn't far off from what it was before.

Now because the true meaning of this post was gauge if SE should stop vertical progression and add in horizontal progression, it's not really that simple. A bunch of crap would have to change and it's much harder to turn a vertical progression game into a horizontal one than vice versa. Because the way a vertical game is structured, if one were to add something of a side upgrade for horizontal growth and that side upgrade is so good it'll be awesome for years to come, then congratulations you've succeeded in making any future content completely pointless. Make it something for glamour or something, and congratulations you've successfully made the horizontal path completely pointless because nobody (save glamour hunters) are going to spend x amount of months and years for an item that's sole purpose is to make something better look pretty.