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

[Dwill]

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.

The same content doesn't have to be relevant for too long either since that content won't disappear, it's always going to be there for people to do for the experience. People will always aim for the best gear so you could put 5 source of gear at max level with the same iLvL, people would just go get the one that's the best and ignore the rest.

So in the end you either have less content with people who have the best gear for longer or more content with people having the best gear for a shorter amount of time.

[cryptic_angel]

The same content doesn't have to be relevant for too long either since that content won't disappear, it's always going to be there for people to do for the experience. People will always aim for the best gear so you could put 5 source of gear at max level with the same iLvL, people would just go get the one that's the best and ignore the rest.

So in the end you either have less content where everyone has the best gear for longer or more content with everyone having the best gear for a shorter amount of time.

Fixed that for you to reflect current end game.

[Dwill]

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.

Since you seem to know so much about MMO design, why don't you apply to take Yoshida's place ?

People will always do the fights that gets them the best gear and ignore the rest, whether it's horizontal or vertical progression.That's not so hard to get is it ? Making a horizontal progression somewhat works would require the gear to be difficult to obtain but you're against that according to your post.

Honestly, I'm sorry but with a post like this, I don't think you're in any position to criticize Square Enix.

Fixed that for you to reflect current end game.

I meant what I meant and if you think you fixed anything, you're even more out of it than I previously thought.

[ruskie]

I believe Yoshi did mention that the ilvls should stop at around 150 in one of the letters. What I would like to see is a novus style progression on a lot of the gear(maybe the next AF set)(with alternatives as well of course). Not grindy as such(novus to me was not grindy) but something like you buy the base item with whatever currency, then you work on getting specific drops - either from mysterious maps, a daily quest, hunts, trials etc... Each drop would allow you to upgrade one of your gears by one ilvl until the max ilvl for that gear piece is reached - but this really shouldn't involve materia(so let's say it would be 10 ilvls to reach that would be 120/130 drops to get). But you should be able to get atleast 2 drops per day with extras being possible by spending currency. I'd go for flat upgrades that scale the stats without customization(hence no materia).

[Gardes]

The same content doesn't have to be relevant for too long either since that content won't disappear, it's always going to be there for people to do for the experience. People will always aim for the best gear so you could put 5 source of gear at max level with the same iLvL, people would just go get the one that's the best and ignore the rest.

So in the end you either have less content with people who have the best gear for longer or more content with people having the best gear for a shorter amount of time.

Already untrue. The best weapons in the game right now come only from coil now and that is the only choice. One choice. One choice out of three top weapons. Yet people settle for soldiery weapon or novus. A lot of these people are not actively seeking out HA weapons either. Just go out and check random players running around. You will easily find players who are in full soldiery gear when it's known that mix and match are BiS. You'll find lots of players running around in a lot of soldiery gear but no sands upgrade too. Most likely because they do not enjoy hunts enough to participate in that content to get the items needed.

Providing more choices for the same level of weapon and gear with varying ways of acquisition, time spent requirement and skill check requirement will have players picking what fits their play style and cannot be a bad thing. Serious players will try to do everything and pick out the BiS while the less serious players will just pick what's reasonable to them, like what most are already doing. Fears about being ostracized for not having certain bis pieces also seems groundless. I have been in coil2 PFs with near i100+ requirement post 2.3 where getting an i110 weapon is incredibly easy and someone brings an atma weapon as a dps and nobody puts up a fuss. This isn't even about having some minor unique skill mod on your gear either, it's having way way less raw power than the player could have while still meeting the ilvl requirement set by the leader and the party didn't care.

[skaterger]

No thank you. I don't want to spend months farming something that takes no skill that is a component of my bis subjected to a low rng drop rate. That kind of mentality belongs in a f2p mmo where grinding is an artificial blocker to progression because they companies cannot produce content fast enough because they spend all their resources on the cash shop and less on game development.

This is no longer the era of grind farm parties with exp chains where you finally get an item after 200 hours of farming that can last you for 2 years. if you can't keep up with the item progression, that its nobody's fault but your own. This game already provides you with alternatives that gives you same ilvl of gear as raids. It just asks you to wait for a catch up patch. No need to make raiding more worthless than it is at the moment.

[cryptic_angel]

Since you seem to know so much about MMO design, why don't you apply to take Yoshida's place ?

People will always do the fights that gets them the best gear and ignore the rest, whether it's horizontal or vertical progression.That's not so hard to get is it ? Making a horizontal progression somewhat works would require the gear to be difficult to obtain but you're against that according to your post.

Honestly, I'm sorry but with a post like this, I don't think you're in any position to criticize Square Enix.

You spelled out my point in your own retort. Simple to understand and yet look at Ramuh EX. SE making rookie mistakes.... blah blah blah go see my previous post.

I meant what I meant and if you think you fixed anything, you're even more out of it than I previously thought.

My point

"wooosh"

your head

The post had nothing to really do with your PoV in a negative way..... but go ahead I enjoy some late night chuckles.

[Ooshima]

Snip

Already untrue, because relics are upgrade-able and 2.38 may see it upgraded to same IL as HA weapons. Previous LL said that the final form of the relic weapon will be the most powerful weapon too, but that would likely be in 2.5's time frame.

All the crying about HA being the best weapon is all moot. Because at a point or another, HA weapons will be the best. It has to be, because coil drops are rewards for beating coil. HA weapon is the sole reward for beating the toughest boss of the patch. How do you not expect it to be the "best" at certain points of the game?

If you want HA weap, beat coil. It is a weapon that befits the top players. Else you could settle for relic. It isn't that bad, in fact looking long term I'd prefer relic, because it is always upgradable. Unlike HA it is not a weapon you'd throw away when a new patch with new weapon makes it outdated - relic stays with you and keeps being relevant.

[Dwill]

You spelled out my point in your own retort. Simple to understand and yet look at Ramuh EX. SE making rookie mistakes.... blah blah blah go see my previous post.



My point

"wooosh"

your head

The post had nothing to really do with your PoV in a negative way..... but go ahead I enjoy some late night chuckles.

I got your point, it's still a worthless one and you really don't seem to get it but hey, they do say ignorance is bliss so be my guest.

Already untrue. The best weapons in the game right now come only from coil now and that is the only choice. One choice. One choice out of three top weapons. Yet people settle for soldiery weapon or novus. A lot of these people are not actively seeking out HA weapons either. Just go out and check random players running around. You will easily find players who are in full soldiery gear when it's known that mix and match are BiS. You'll find lots of players running around in a lot of soldiery gear but no sands upgrade too. Most likely because they do not enjoy hunts enough to participate in that content to get the items needed.

Providing more choices for the same level of weapon and gear with varying ways of acquisition, time spent requirement and skill check requirement will have players picking what fits their play style and cannot be a bad thing. Serious players will try to do everything and pick out the BiS while the less serious players will just pick what's reasonable to them, like what most are already doing. Fears about being ostracized for not having certain bis pieces also seems groundless. I have been in coil2 PFs with near i100+ requirement post 2.3 where getting an i110 weapon is incredibly easy and someone brings an atma weapon as a dps and nobody puts up a fuss. This isn't even about having some minor unique skill mod on your gear either, it's having way way less raw power than the player could have while still meeting the ilvl requirement set by the leader and the party didn't care.

You make it sound like people who settle for Novus and Soldiery also have the choice of getting the High Allagan weapons but choose to just forego the weapon because they can, which is entirely untrue. People settle for the Novus and Soldiery weapons and the soldiery armor principally because most of them can't even get past T5 which makes it unable for them to even get access to High Allagan pieces of armor and the i115 weapon.

People will pick what's best for their job, no whatever playstyle random person A decides. People will optimize their job as best they can with what you give them so if you give them the choice between two pieces of gear, they will pick the one that's the best, guaranteed. Because, honestly, who would pick something that's inferior if they have the choice ? By the way, do you know why no one is making a fuss about bad DPS in game ? Because even stating someone is doing terrible DPS will be a first class ticket to a GM report with the possibility of the ban hammer coming straight for your face.

[ispano]

People will pick what's best for their job, no whatever playstyle random person A decides. People will optimize their job as best they can with what you give them so if you give them the choice between two pieces of gear, they will pick the one that's the best, guaranteed. Because, honestly, who would pick something that's inferior if they have the choice ? By the way, do you know why no one is making a fuss about bad DPS in game ? Because even stating someone is doing terrible DPS will be a first class ticket to a GM report with the possibility of the ban hammer coming straight for your face.

Bolded is false btw. If you mention actual DPS numbers from a parser, or just mentioning the parser while doing so, then perhaps. But just saying someone is doing poor DPS? Nothing wrong there. Know why? Because saying someone is doing poor DPS isn't breaking any rules.