Is this the road they will continue to take with items?

[Dark-Saviour]

While I hate vertical progression (especially since nothing is really changing with respect to your power from patch to patch), I don't think the type of horizontal progression that just adds crap like, "+1 yalm to Medica radius", "+5 Fire Damage" or "Chance to restore 20 TP per tick of Windbite" is much better.

Horizontal Progression was best handled with weapons in PSO. Add something like that and you'll get my attention. Otherwise, "meh".

[Dwill]

Like...how everyone in this game is aiming for det/crit save for a couple classes? How the only thing stopping people would be SE's RNG and locks and the player's ability to get them?

What a shocker, people use BiS gear!

It would be the same thing with a horizontal progression except the fact you'd keep the same set of gear for months/years. Not interested.

[SarcasmMisser]

I totally agree with this. Pity that there will be people who will dismiss this subset of players with the reasoning that it's okay for content to be obsolete, that they don't want to go back to older content but then proceed to defend SE when people complain about the quality and longevity of the content in the patches by saying that they come up with a patch every 3 months is already very fast. Doesn't occur to them that they have to come up with new patches at breakneck speed is exactly because every new content they make save for the weekly lock coil doesn't last long, I guess..

I like vertical progression models and the game is doing very well without the perma-bis nonsense that should stay dead and buried. Sorry this game moderates play and doesn't allow the people with no life who want to grind and camp 24/7 stay the kings of loot mountain forever.

[Xatsh]

I like vertical progression models and the game is doing very well without the perma-bis nonsense that should stay dead and buried. Sorry this game moderates play and doesn't allow the people with no life who want to grind and camp 24/7 stay the kings of loot mountain forever.

That would be fine but then SE would actually have to release adequate content every patch cycle.

2-3 coil level raids.

all of crystal towers at one time.

6-8 dungeons

Every 3-6months.


Currently there is a massive lack of content that is relevant. If SE continues this path they will bleed subs. The mentality of people can quit and come back every patch when they are out of content will not work long term.

Endgame is currently 1/10th as large as it should be... and they are not adding anymore endgame. Due to the constant negation.

[Gardes]

What a shocker, people use BiS gear!
It would be the same thing with a horizontal progression except the fact you'd keep the same set of gear for months/years. Not interested.

I like vertical progression models and the game is doing very well without the perma-bis nonsense that should stay dead and buried. Sorry this game moderates play and doesn't allow the people with no life who want to grind and camp 24/7 stay the kings of loot mountain forever.

The point of some horizontal progression is keeping older content relevant longer, not making player use the same gear for years. Gear issue can be easily fixed with allowing those old items upgrade into something else, allowing the unique stats on those 'old' gears to be transferrable, etc. Players playing for a long time who already has the base items can essentially just keep going and might come back to older content because the drops can be used to start another item progression for another slot/class (note: i do not advocate atma/animus/novus level of grind/rng progression) while new players wont get to miss out on older content that SE put hardwork into simply because it's not 'hot' anymore and nobody else does them. Right now has a hotfix for this by enticing older players to come back to older content that new players have to finish by offering them a currency that has no cap anymore but has devalued by shoving that currency into any content they come up with and putting exorbitant prices on it (animus books, novus alexandrites, mats for flashy glamours).

An example is coil1. By expansion, there will be new players who will never see turn 1-4 and clear t5 once and have no choice but to move on to the latest gear progression. Might happen to coil2 too, by expansion. Having more content be available for new players is better than cutting out content due to obsoleteness without the new player's choice, I think. You dont even have to force them do all those content if they really want to 'catch up' asap when there's the latest tome gears.

It's exactly because everybody knows that SE is killing themselves over trying to push fast food style content at turbo speed that I and others want SE to think a bit longer and try to build a wider base for gear progression and grow up slowly (but surely) instead of stacking jenga as fast as possible and see how high they can go. Doesn't have to pure horizontal or pure vertical.

[KingOfAbyss]

Just wait till expansion. It's gonna get worse. Experienced players will either trounce lvl 51-60 (if the new lvl cap is 60) mobs because they are over gearing the monsters by so much it's not even funny or they start handing out i110-130+ gear to new players as they level up through quests from 1 to 60 and you'll have new players reach lvl 60 and have i130 but barely know what they're doing.

^ This.

I really don't understand where Square Enix is going with that in mind.

I am expecting a lot from the Expansion, I hope it won't be as easy as it is right now. Luckily Ninja will sustain me a bit..

There is a limit to how much to cater to new players and thinking it's their first MMO.

First timers can research on this forum and even google for info about the game and gear and skill etc.. and if SE keep thing separated, they will get 2.x content, so they will be fine Yoshi. Trust me ^^

No point of making maps lvl 51-60 if we'll still obliterate them and not having a sense of danger from them.

Sigh.. Come on Devs, its a great game, now it's time to bring the polish and make it shine!

[Morningstar1337]

Gear issue can be easily fixed with allowing those old items upgrade into something else, allowing the unique stats on those 'old' gears to be transferrable, etc.

In that case Desynth needs more than just Primal weapons if we are to have anything resembling Horizantal progression...

We should also make CT, ST and Coil gear Desynthabale too. and make like the Augmented ones (but with stats on par with the current high level gear)

[GalkaBikini]

It's to have something to reach for that doesn't negate the previous thing.

Uh.... Welcome to 30+ years of RPGs?

[Gardes]

In that case Desynth needs more than just Primal weapons if we are to have anything resembling Horizantal progression...

We should also make CT, ST and Coil gear Desynthabale too. and make like the Augmented ones (but with stats on par with the current high level gear)

Doesn't have to be desynth. It's tied to crafting and yoship is against tying crafting too tightly to combat content and I'm not against that view. It can be simply having a quest where you need to get an ifrit bangle and take it to an npc to be converted into an ifrit core and you pile it with other fire related material to make a new ifrit body armor that is an alternate to the latest coil/tome gear.

But with how current ilvl progression is stacked so high and dps potential from coil1 gear to coil2 gear is something like 30%+ and the likelyhood of dps being able to hit 600+ dps with coil3 gear and and the existence of 25%+ echo, it won't work. New players would never get to see the fights properly, not just the dungeon run and cutscenes itself when they reach lvl 50. I'm already consistently seeing garuda HM dying right after the first set of chirada and suparna. I wouldn't be surprised if she dies right after reckoning in 2.4.

[cryptic_angel]

The point of some horizontal progression is keeping older content relevant longer, not making player use the same gear for years. Gear issue can be easily fixed with allowing those old items upgrade into something else, allowing the unique stats on those 'old' gears to be transferrable, etc. Players playing for a long time who already has the base items can essentially just keep going and might come back to older content because the drops can be used to start another item progression for another slot/class (note: i do not advocate atma/animus/novus level of grind/rng progression) while new players wont get to miss out on older content that SE put hardwork into simply because it's not 'hot' anymore and nobody else does them. Right now has a hotfix for this by enticing older players to come back to older content that new players have to finish by offering them a currency that has no cap anymore but has devalued by shoving that currency into any content they come up with and putting exorbitant prices on it (animus books, novus alexandrites, mats for flashy glamours).

An example is coil1. By expansion, there will be new players who will never see turn 1-4 and clear t5 once and have no choice but to move on to the latest gear progression. Might happen to coil2 too, by expansion. Having more content be available for new players is better than cutting out content due to obsoleteness without the new player's choice, I think. You dont even have to force them do all those content if they really want to 'catch up' asap when there's the latest tome gears.

It's exactly because everybody knows that SE is killing themselves over trying to push fast food style content at turbo speed that I and others want SE to think a bit longer and try to build a wider base for gear progression and grow up slowly (but surely) instead of stacking jenga as fast as possible and see how high they can go. Doesn't have to pure horizontal or pure vertical.

Wish this could be translated and sent to Yoshida by hitting the like button so many times it breaks.

All the content of each patch feels like the same cheap grind masked by some sort of vanity reward. Then, SE exacerbates the situation by burning people out by adding grind after grind. To boot, these long gear/progression grinds are being invalidated so quickly.

It sucks when you have to grind for gear non-stop. At least with other vertical progression games you can anticipate long content cycles with gigantic patches that reset all your work. This game is resetting the gear grinds and neck-breaking speeds. The pace of new content is nice, but does SE really need to invalidate raid content three months before your new raid patch?

It's like SE messed up 1.0's launch and hit the jackpot with an MMO reboot. Now that they have the successful Reboot, SE seems to be making rookie game design mistakes. Just look at Ramuh EX in contrast to Levi EX. No one care about Ramuh EX because the rewards suck. When Levi EX was relevant for 12 weeks or so, you could see dozens of pug groups in pf. How many Ramuh EX pugs do you see in pf? I have never seen a company trash it's own content as such fast speeds. It's like SE only wants content to be popular for two months or so.

SE spends months designing a fights that people will only care about for 10 or so weeks. Seems like they don't really know what they are doing.

I really don't understand where Square Enix is going with that in mind.

I am expecting a lot from the Expansion, I hope it won't be as easy as it is right now. Luckily Ninja will sustain me a bit..

There is a limit to how much to cater to new players and thinking it's their first MMO.

First timers can research on this forum and even google for info about the game and gear and skill etc.. and if SE keep thing separated, they will get 2.x content, so they will be fine Yoshi. Trust me ^^

No point of making maps lvl 51-60 if we'll still obliterate them and not having a sense of danger from them.

Sigh.. Come on Devs, its a great game, now it's time to bring the polish and make it shine!

I would not hold your breath. I am holding out for the expansion too but I am afraid this game will continue to hold the hand of every new player and dump max ilvl gear upon them.

This game has no sense of progress, power, danger, or lasting difficulty. Even with brutal coil, the biggest challenge is finding 7 raiders who want to relearn four fights for "bragging" rights.