When will SE realize this endless vertical progression is going nowhere?

In another order of ideas...

This endless vertical progression is a mistake!!!

It's always the same routine over and over again:

1.- Farm 2 dungeons in Expert Roulette while there's a fogotten roulette with 10+ dungeons
2.- Farm a new Trial for weapons (which will expire on next 2 months)
3.- Farm the 24 man raid for glamour gear or alts gear
4.- "This is Sparta" Hunting in order to improve current gear.

This happened when we improve i100-i110... i120-i130... i170-i180... i200-i210

5.-complete all set of current item level
6.- Next tomestones set, new gear, new seals, "new" all same things
7.- REPEAT


where are we going? i3000? What the hell?... This has no sense


SE should think about an horizontal progression endgame and spent their time and creativity on seasonal events and true endgame content ;)

http://www.troll.me/images/lazy-coll...ppen-thumb.jpg

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Originally Posted by valoiz2

When will SE realize this endless vertical progression is going nowhere?

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When will the players?

What is horizontal progression? This term is thrown around all the time like a cure all, with no details on what it would include.

Guild wars 2 is almost entirely horizontal and that game is affectionately known as grind wars.

what's the difference of grinding new ilvl and grinding new glamour's? if your gear never gets outdated what would you have in place of it?

This game has been widening its growth:raid eso void diadem primals and now relic offer gear. They cater to different play styles and carry slight variations in stats but all good enough to clear all current content. People hate every part of what I listed. I assume people like each part as well. Isn't that the point of horizontal to offer rewards to different play styles or does it not count because of ilvl or perceived difficulty or time spent.

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Originally Posted by Einheri

What is horizontal progression? This term is thrown around all the time like a cure all, with no details on what it would include.

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There's an alternative to horizontal too. Simply, add more content and focus on the content design.

Problem is, modern MMOs have trouble thinking outside of "raid" and with how raid design has been conceptualized, there's not really much that can be done except trying to find a yet undone twist to mechanics or combine them in some way.

I like vertical progression.

*dodges eggs*

Not sure when, but it would be best if they realized it now.

I think it works well vertical progression always give you something new to strive for. FFXI which released a ton of gear had so many events go unused because people would say well I already got something better which dropped from sky which released 5 years ago so I won't do new the new content. FFXI had so much of gear that was not better, or only really slightly better with a huge grind like salvage gear.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I think it works well vertical progression always give you something new to strive for. FFXI which released a ton of gear had so many events go unused because people would say well I already got something better which dropped from sky which released 5 years ago so I won't do new the new content. FFXI had so much of gear that was not better, or only really slightly better with a huge grind like salvage gear.

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I disagree. XI always had at least one piece of gear that was great for years from each end-game zone. Not to mention all of the great situational pieces.

Cant we have a diagonal progression, a mix of both ?
Instead of gear getting outdated every 3 months and only 2 to 3 ways to obtain them, cant we have more ways of obtaining smilar (stat wise) gear that could last 9 months?

Imagine a patch with new 230 gear, that could be obtained via:
-Absurdingly hard crafts on every steps ( unique mat gathering, submat, HQ only ) harder than every other hard crafts currently in game COMBINED and on lockout to make up to 1 piece per week for yourself only. Not tradeable and not meldable to match the other sets.
-Upgradable 220 eso gear witth eso / 24man item / hunt.
-Raid
-Diadem up to one 230 chest drop per week
-Diadem 198 tokens
-Extremly rare (1%) Expert dungeon drop
-GC seals 150k GC seals per piece
-Allied seals 10k seals per piece
-PVP
-1% chance from quick ventures if retainer is 60
-Beast tribe tokens like 30 per piece.

You get the idea, More options that will last longer before being obsolete
If i alone can come up with 11 ways imagine what a dev team can do.

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Originally Posted by Alipoprocks

I disagree. XI always had at least one piece of gear that was great for years from each end-game zone. Not to mention all of the great situational pieces.

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"Situational pieces" won't really work with the combat we have now, sadly. When everything is boils down to a "rotation" or "group composition" that produces the highest numbers there isn't really room for things like "Fire+10%, Ice-10%" or whatever.

I think that to truly support horizontal progression the entire game's combat system would need an overhaul.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I think it works well vertical progression always give you something new to strive for. FFXI which released a ton of gear had so many events go unused because people would say well I already got something better which dropped from sky which released 5 years ago so I won't do new the new content. FFXI had so much of gear that was not better, or only really slightly better with a huge grind like salvage gear.

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To my recollection, the only content from pre-Abyssea (aka old FFXI) that was completely unattractive was Einherjar - nothing for MNK/SAM/NIN - unless you were doing Mythic.

There was always something you wanted from content X otherwise, even if it was gil--which could buy or craft something better. The likelihood of new content having nothing for your main job, nothing for your secondary job and nothing worth gil was so rare, I contest it ever happened.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

"Situational pieces" won't really work with the combat we have now, sadly. When everything is boils down to a "rotation" or "group composition" that produces the highest numbers there isn't really room for things like "Fire+10%, Ice-10%" or whatever.

I think that to truly support horizontal progression the entire game's combat system would need an overhaul.

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Yes, I know we cannot have situational pieces in this game. I was merely responding to Zumi's comment about XI.

I really do feel like the choice by SE to go extreme vertical, and short cycles, has shot themselves in the foot. They cannot maintain creation of new, different content at the rate they have chosen.

They won't because vertical progression games tend to be the most profitable and most successful MMOs. This game's population is larger than FFXI's (which I don't believe ever topped 1 million players even at its peak). Whether folks like it or not, WoW showed that there was a market for heavily vertical progression in MMOs, and until someone comes up with a model that is more successful than WoW's was, vertical progression is going to be the standard.

Personally horizontal progression is dumb to me. Why would I want to get a piece of gear that will last me for years? What's the of playing after that. I like getting new gear, and this game does a good job of making me feel more powerful with each piece of gear I get. That's great. So what that it only lasts 3-6 months. It's what keeps me playing. The only horizontal progression the could add that would work would be adding bonuses to gear. I.E. 5% chance tornado kick will give greased lighting 3, or 5% chance If resetting Jump's cooldown, etc. But this gear won't be better than the next set of gear.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

"Situational pieces" won't really work with the combat we have now, sadly. When everything is boils down to a "rotation" or "group composition" that produces the highest numbers there isn't really room for things like "Fire+10%, Ice-10%" or whatever.

I think that to truly support horizontal progression the entire game's combat system would need an overhaul.

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It can work if you think outside the box.

Horizontal Progression could work if they think of older content as content which can be used by FC or Party Finder aka Server only content where people can teamup and join together in challenging dungeons with imposed restrictions to them.


Like let's use Satasha for example, say for the Restrictions you could have Lv capped to 15, by capping your level to 15 a new item drops, an ring accessory that is specifically designed to make synced content against Levi easier, it could be a ring that prevent tank from being charmed or negates the reflective power of range/magic attacks allowing them to place DoT on both targets or something unique to add flavor to doing those trial again.

Then you have Levi Extreme, IL80=Normal Mode, IL70=Hard Mode, IL60=Extreme Mode(Maybe even impossible) but at least the option to impose that challenge would be there, and with specific accessories you could obtain by doing older content you could wear them to make the content easier.

As mentioned with the ring above it could have a "special effect when in Whorleater" that it granted the proper stats for your job at that IL. While yes these would end up eating a lot of inv, the idea behind these items is a means to give you an edge against certain content to ease the difficulty but also give the option to do it without those items to help.

The game does have challenge, but it is lost because of excessive IL from our gear, it's way to easy to pump it up and make it where it's a cake walk to complete any old content because you just have way to much power. The game design needs to take a step back to challenge players by forcing them to limit their IL even further HOWEVER also adding new rewards by imposing this challenge on yourself. It would honestly be a great way to add in new pieces of unique gear drops and revitalize older content without just making a new dungeon that will be forgotten once the new patch rolls around.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

WoW showed that there was a market for heavily vertical progression in MMOs, and until someone comes up with a model that is more successful than WoW's was, vertical progression is going to be the standard.

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Its true and the problem is that nobody has the balls to even try.
It could even be an immense success but we will never know...

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Originally Posted by Almalexia

To my recollection, the only content from pre-Abyssea (aka old FFXI) that was completely unattractive was Einherjar - nothing for MNK/SAM/NIN - unless you were doing Mythic.

There was always something you wanted from content X otherwise, even if it was gil--which could buy or craft something better. The likelihood of new content having nothing for your main job, nothing for your secondary job and nothing worth gil was so rare, I contest it ever happened.

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Here are a few examples but there were so many more.
CoP - most crafted gear at launch
ToAU - Original assault gear, Imperial Standing gear, all of orginal nyzul isle, except 1 body piece that had increased ws damage and 1 head piece, sky / other gear was already better, all of Orb BC seal fights in ToAU dropped trash gear
WotG - Campaign gear, Walk of echos gaer (this was sad nobody even did the event due to how worse the gear was compared to 5 year old stuff), for the most part the whole expansion was lackluster if you wanted new gear there were almost no upgrades in the entire expansion.
Most Sea Torques due to the fact Peacock Charm was already a better acc option, except the sam one


I very much disliked the gearing system in FFXI, how often would I hear in my LS well we not going to do X new event because the gear is worse then sky/camping hnms. It happened so very often especially when expansions came out that none of the gear in them was better then what you already had, mostly people I thought played the game for the story missions and that was about it.

I don't know what it was people like about the gearing system in FFXI, but it revolved around doing a lot of sky and dynamis and not much of anything else. SE was very unwilling to make any kind of gear that was better then sky gear for the longest time it was like Sky/king hnm gear was the pinnacle of all gear. It wasn't until salvage where we got gear that was maybe like 1-2% better then sky gear, which was gated behind 1% drop rates.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

Personally horizontal progression is dumb to me. Why would I want to get a piece of gear that will last me for years? What's the of playing after that.

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It worked well in XI because there was always a piece of amazing gear that was difficult to get if you had bad luck. But the piece was so good that it was worth going 1/24 to get it. And after you got it, you were stoked and felt fullfilled. People played many jobs in XI. It was rare to find someone that only played one job.

Also, it could take a year, maybe more, to complete your best sets of gear for just one job. And it was a satisfying accomplishment.

When it effects their bottom line.

Nothing is more important than profit, paychecks and bonuses.

You take away the money, they try to get it back.

That is when changes are made.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

There's an alternative to horizontal too. Simply, add more content and focus on the content design.

Problem is, modern MMOs have trouble thinking outside of "raid" and with how raid design has been conceptualized, there's not really much that can be done except trying to find a yet undone twist to mechanics or combine them in some way.

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So, add new content, but don't add any gear better than the old stuff? Wow, players will just be lining up to run that

Making an entire expansion with gear worse then your previous expansions just doesn't work see WoTG this was a period of time where a lot of people quit FFXI.

I am afraid we are talking to deaf ears. i mean developers direction for this game is very clear.

1. Graphics and music, art work and gear for glamour : i do like this, but alone is not enough.
2. 4 raid bosses for progression every 6 month if we are lucky.
3. Item level vertical progression
4. story line bosses
5. crafting, well it's mostly dead here it just mostly crafters making raid food or pots, and crafters selling to crafter or some glamour.

it seems if they want to add anything else, they have to hire talent and for this ffxiv progject i think the project is over, its mostly small additions to story here and there. no new ideas will come this is it, we have the game, and its not gona get better.

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Originally Posted by Einheri

What is horizontal progression? This term is thrown around all the time like a cure all, with no details on what it would include.

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I'll try and field this question with job specific materia idea. Obviously you grind to get them but instead of simply raising base stats from one ilvl to the next, you add augmented effects to abilities.

I'm a SMN so I'll use that as an example:
Miasma II Materia- extend duration of Miasma II by 10 secs.
Painflare Materia - 10% chance of increase Bio, Bio II, and Miasma duration by 5 seconds
Garuda Shockwave - Removes pushback effect of Shockwave and extends damage to all nearby enemies
Ifrit Flaming Crush - Add 5s damage over time effect, potency 15.
Tri-Disaster - 5% chance to add one Aetherflow after use.

That's is what many consider Horizontal Progress. An expansion of the job across current equipment ilvl rather than replacing it with higher ilvl gear. Ilvl and new item are good every once and a while but to be bombarded with it every patch is tiring many people out.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

I'll try and field this question with job specific materia idea. Obviously you grind to get them but instead of simply raising base stats from one ilvl to the next, you add augmented effects to abilities.

I'm a SMN so I'll use that as an example:
Miasma II Materia- extend duration of Miasma II by 10 secs.
Painflare Materia - 10% chance of increase Bio, Bio II, and Miasma duration by 5 seconds
Garuda Shockwave - Removes pushback effect of Shockwave and extends damage to all nearby enemies
Ifrit Flaming Crush - Add 5s damage over time effect, potency 15.
Tri-Disaster - 5% chance to add one Aetherflow after use.

That's is what many consider Horizontal Progress. An expansion of the job across current equipment ilvl rather than replacing it with higher ilvl gear. Ilvl and new item are good every once and a while but to be bombarded with it every patch is tiring many people out.

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This only worked in FFXI because you could swap gear and have a macro which had gear swaps for every ability. If you have choices between different pieces of gear that effect abilities by 5-10% you can't swap gear, 1 piece will be mathematically best easily. With math people would be like get this piece it has the highest dps increase the rest of the gear is trash. Since you can't swap out gear to use more then one piece in a slot.

"I'm one of those suckers who basically plays just his MMO... and this often feels like a bad relationship I just can't leave" :(

They have been using the same forumla for 2 years now, with hardly any attempt at branching out into something new.

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Originally Posted by Alipoprocks

It worked well in XI because there was always a piece of amazing gear that was difficult to get if you had bad luck. But the piece was so good that it was worth going 1/24 to get it. And after you got it, you were stoked and felt fullfilled. People played many jobs in XI. It was rare to find someone that only played one job.

Also, it could take a year, maybe more, to complete your best sets of gear for just one job. And it was a satisfying accomplishment.

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I think you touched on something with that - my biggest accomplishment was Gjallarhorn, of course, but I also played another 5-6 jobs pretty regularly. My second favorite acquisition in XI was a fairly rare off hand dagger that had "additional effect:blink." Damage-wise, it was bad, but that's why it was the off hand. Combine it with a much better main hand, go as THF/DNC, and the thief job became a one Taru solo machine. But when I wasn't soloing? Useless. Swap that back out for +1 Treasure Hunter instead.

"Best in slot" didn't exist in XI except for some incredibly rare, incredibly valuable pieces. Everything was "best in slot for X." Best in slot for resting, best in slot for weapon skill, best in slot for an enfeeble, best in slot for building TP, best in slot for turtle tanking, best in slot for running away from something eating your face, and so on. The horizontal grind worked in XI because you needed 3-4 different gear pieces for each slot.

It's the same in XIV, except replace "X" with "a short period of time." Anything in XIV is "best in slot for six months" at most.

Vertical progression isn't inherently bad, but the design FF14 follows is just completely wrong.

FF14 uses multiple path vertical progession which simply does not work and is becoming very apparent as we get deeper into the lifecycle of the game.

Good vertical progession requires that all players are put on the same path but FF doesn't do this. So what we have a game full of redundant and pointless content and gear and when it comes time to move the vertical bar up, it invalidates all previous paths. Basically they are killing content at a much higher rate than they are able to make it now.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

So, add new content, but don't add any gear better than the old stuff? Wow, players will just be lining up to run that

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And thus we circle back to my first post.

When will players tire of vertical progression?

The game's current structure is the result these people's support for vertical progression. All you have to do is ask them if they think this game is currently in a great state and trending up. If they answer yes, then you move on. Not only are they not worth convincing, they probably can't be.

Of course, that's just the players. The one that matters whether you have their ear or not is SE. For my money's worth, SE is not going to change this so either you get comfortable with the ride or get off.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

When will players tire of vertical progression?

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At this point, you should rather ask:"When will players tire of progression?"

Horizontal progression runs into the same issue. An item(or skill/talent) is either better, worse or equal. If it's not better, no point in getting it and thus no point in running the respective content. It doesn't matter "why" it is better, whether it's better stats, a better active, passive, whether it's better for a certain dungeon, boss, skill, class or whatever other purpose you can think of. Progression is a one way street and players do not pursue regression, so people will not pursue items that are equal or worse for their intended purpose.

So the real complaint is: Gear does not have enough purposes. It's only there to make you stronger/better as a whole, rather than making you better at something specific.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

This only worked in FFXI because you could swap gear and have a macro which had gear swaps for every ability. If you have choices between different pieces of gear that effect abilities by 5-10% you can't swap gear, 1 piece will be mathematically best easily. With math people would be like get this piece it has the highest dps increase the rest of the gear is trash. Since you can't swap out gear to use more then one piece in a slot.

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Never mentioned FFXI but if you want to compare I would akin it more toward the Merit system since it's materia based and not gear based. Use ??? to purchase the job specific materia you want to attach it to whatever gear you want. And yes, there is always the best build but that isn't a reason to shy a way from something people would enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

So the real complaint is: Gear does not have enough purposes. It's only there to make you stronger/better as a whole, rather than making you better at something specific.

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To piggy back on this it's kind of pointless too. When new content comes out you rarely have to gear up to complete it so why both to actually gear up at all? If I can complete the new dungeons and new casual raids with law and Alex:N gear why should I waste time farming Eso?

The problem about horizontal progression is that the game will die faster.

Why? because new players would be screwed since they would never catch up the rest, therefore playing alone.

On FFXI, when the game was like 4-5 years old, it was almost impossible for a new player to catch up the endgame people, because everyone already did the old content, and because he had to re-do everything and get gear from everywhere because every piece was important.
The problem was that people who left, hardly came back again because they would have to invest a lot of time catching up the rest.


I lovd horizontal progression because I was in, but it's a pain for new players.

Welcome to MMOs! You grind to get better gear, so you can grind to get better gear, so you can grind to get better gear... At least in FF MMOs, there is more of a point to the vertical progression, since you get to experience awesome story lines by getting stronger (although they kind of dropped the ball on Alexander Savage). The only reason I was able to stick through things like Omega in FFXI, or Binding Coil in this game, is because I was rewarded with amazing cutscenes that made all that work worth it.

The ship has sailed.

Why horizontal progression worked on FFXI was because it's a massive grind. It kept people leveling their jobs and getting geared up for endgame for months, or even years, but that gear will last you also for years because the iLvl doesn't increase like this game does.
The problem with that system however is that new players cannot easily catch up with veteran players.

Then Abyssea came along, which most people believe "ruined" the game. It was something for new players to catch up with veterans, but that also changed the game entirely as most people have said. Other than months or years, it takes about less than a month to max out a Job, that also resulted in new players to lack any experience on how to competently play their Job. It also pretty much made most of the fun and engaging content of FFXI irrelevant, thus things got stale. People got bored easily and that there was just nothing to strive for anymore when you cannot do much more other than the main scenario.

Comparing FFXIV to FFXI pre-Abyssea, It's on vertical progression (but a poorly executed one in my opinion).
In FFXIV, it takes literally a week (about 48 hours) to get your 2nd Class/Job to 60, and it's very easy to gear up and such, but it'll get stale. That's why every major patch/update they increase the item level and that way, players have something to strive for, to reach greater lengths, and that's what keeps people playing in vertical progression. This way, even new players can easily catch up with veterans without alienating the game entirely.

The problem with this game however, I believe the progression is just too rapid, and the developers have poor decisions and are not using their creativity. What's there to strive for exactly when it's so easy to get to BiS. There's no sense of fulfillment in that, really.
Yes, we have Alexander Savage. It's some of the hardest encounters the game has yet, but it's overtuned and it alienated the playerbase and raiders (who are mostly midcore than hardcore). Diadem (pre-patched) however made Alexander Savage so irrelevant, and Diadem is casual content unlike Alexander which was aimed for hardcore players.
Not only that, what we have seen recently is very uncreative. There's nothing really new about 3.0. It's recycled content we have seen before in 2.x.
They've made the relic quite the grindfest, but really it's not that worth getting when actually some of the Thordan weapons are much better.
I also have gripes that the gear is very bland. There's multiple iL210 gear right now, but they're all very boring.

Just my 2 gil :rolleyes: