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

[Gralna]

I liked the horizontal progression DAoC had, they never raised max lvl thus allowing max lvl gear to be relevant for years to come.

To get around the whole BiS nonsense they did a combination of stat caps, and putting so many stats that affected your characters performance it was nearly impossible to cap them all(each class had roughly 15 stats including elemental/physical resists that affected them) And after a few expansions there was so much gear that could fit together to give you stats you wanted that a few people just created calculators to assist with gear builds, instead of relying on BiS since there was no true BiS. Also crafted gear while not as good as most end game drops, was still relevant to most builds.

[Kydi]

Personally I'd like to see SE add set bonus to items which drop from raids. If you were wearing 2 or 4 items from the same set then it would give give a nice bonus. Make it so that the stat boost from going from (for example) 110 with 4 set bonus to 120 with no bonus wouldn't be worth it unless you sacrificed a 4 set 110 bonus for a 2 set 120 and a 2 set 110. That way the older content would still be run so that people could either get item number 4 for their bonus or go to the new content and try to get the new pieces.

What would also be nice would be a scaling mechanic whereby the damage dealt and healthier of enemies in the raid varies dependent on the average level of gear in the party. Obviously not at the same rate (20%>ilvl requirement would not be +20% damage etc) but it might add a bit of challenge to older content.

[Rhysati]

Vertical progression should have died when WoW showed that it falls apart later on. Horizontal progression is best progression.

Because that's working so well for Guild Wars 2...a game with no subscription that most people won't play because there is no way to advance your characters.

Vertical progression is great AND horizontal is great. You need both to make a really good system. Bland, direct upgrades that require no thought aren't very exciting...but when you have a multitude of options to pick from as you upgrade, now you add more depth and the ability to customize how you want to play. Right now, this game doesn't have any of that.

And, honestly, it has me bored out of my mind because of it. There is just simply no reason to actually work towards upgrading gear when I know in a couple months the gear will be handed to me anyway.

[Duelle]

Horizontal progression is stupidly difficult to balance

Fixed.

WoW's mistake was creating the massive jumps in item level between expansions to create a placebo effect to help the player feel powerful at higher levels. The main problem is that when you see the ilevel jump from vanilla to TBC, instead of making quest greens that trashed naxx gear stat-wise, it should have stayed within 3 levels over/under said gear. The massive jumps is what forced Blizzard to consider and then implement the stat crunch rather than vertical progression itself.

And in case you want to try to refute the quoted claim, FFXI's lv51 elemental staves that made close to all mage weapons introduced thereafter obsolete and irrelevant (before they were even obtained by the player!) say "hi".

It's far easier for Square to make content that they have high control of through scripted dungeons and rigged party roles.

Considering the potential for trouble in the alternative, that isn't a bad thing.

[Tupsi]

And in case you want to try to refute the quoted claim

You also forgot context. Not only did it not make other mage weapons obsolete, it was mostly used because it consolidated the need for carrying multiple weapons, in some cases multiple wands and shields - The main reason to use an Elemental/Prism Staff was the 10-15% bonus to x element, however a certain stick aside, your relic/mythic/empy weapon was far superior. You also forgot to mention it was created to meet the need of people stating there were no mid range options at the time because it went from typical weapons > nothing > end-game stuff. Horizontal progression isn't difficult to balance, vertical progression tend to be the hardest to balance because they have to obsolete everything usually by next update, which throws off the curve dramatically for newer players.

[melflomil]

So people want Grand Company type equipment? That if you wear a X ammount of gear you will gain a bonus? Get the class specific Ramuh weapon and ring to turn the weapon to ilvl120 and ring to ilvl130. This is just an example.

[Dark-Saviour]

As an example of PSO's gear:

Good regular attack power and had a special attack that was fairly inaccurate, but could cut an enemy's HP by 3/4.


For half the day, this gun's special would fire purple death lasers that could hit a number of enemies in the room (I wanna say either 12 or 14?).


Freezes things.


Reasonably good general attack power and useful for most classes, especially as a secondary weapon


Fires like a shotgun (so it has a 5 bullet spread), but at a much faster speed. Excellent for multi-enemy encounters or for enemies with multiple, targettable "parts".


High attack power.

Granted, everything wasn't completely balanced and some stuff did end up wrecking pretty hard... And you also had the much-more-common 'rare' items like the Varista et al. which were a definite step down, but at a certain point, you could be pretty well effective with any 'Rare' and it didn't feel like you were super-gimped or anything.
Plus, the way the system was designed, each weapon felt awesome and collectible; there was never a point where I wasn't thrilled to get a new rare I did not yet have.

THAT is what I want again. :-(

[Tupsi]

PSO/PSO2 honestly has no balance issues, it's more like there's a very noticable difference in someone who is new/low level and someone who is a vet and geared to the teeth. On hardest difficulty content things still wreck you even if you're "godly", as it should.

The simple fact of the matter is, Yoshida just wants everything universalized to try to prevent a problem that happens no matter what in an MMO. Just look at PF sometimes, take note of what DPS slots people tend to go with and tend to lock off, the problem he wanted to prevent already happened.

"But it doesn't happen with Duty Finder!"

Yeah, good luck clearing certain content there.

[Tiraelina]

Fixed.

WoW's mistake was creating the massive jumps in item level between expansions to create a placebo effect to help the player feel powerful at higher levels. The main problem is that when you see the ilevel jump from vanilla to TBC, instead of making quest greens that trashed naxx gear stat-wise, it should have stayed within 3 levels over/under said gear. The massive jumps is what forced Blizzard to consider and then implement the stat crunch rather than vertical progression itself.

And in case you want to try to refute the quoted claim, FFXI's lv51 elemental staves that made close to all mage weapons introduced thereafter obsolete and irrelevant (before they were even obtained by the player!) say "hi".Considering the potential for trouble in the alternative, that isn't a bad thing.

Those ilvl jumps in WoW were a gear reset, there wasn't anything placebo about them. They didn't want the game to be horribly trivialized by old gear in a new expansion and by extension not making it impossible for anyone new without that gear. They also wanted the next raid tier to be useful even to the high end. What made stat crunch ever get looked at was years of adjusting stat budgets every expansion to address PvP survivability over 4 (soon 5) expansions.

[Maero]

I hear what you are saying op. I am sure i am not the only one that remember first trying to gear up with myth, it had taken me weeks to get that i90 Gear.
Back then it felt like you really accomplished something for your efforts, now it really requires very little effort, example being hunts.
I guess SE wanted to fast forward it for new players to get the same gear as some veterans so that they may join end game content, dunno