Poll: Gear progression, horizontal or vertical?

[Sylkis]

Additionally, many people seem to be convinced that horizontal is an ideal that can't be achieved and will argue that there will always be BiS or whatever.

Relevant video about power creep

[Massterchef]

diagonal

/10

[Vrankyl]

Vertical. Let's face it as others have said there is always a bis. Look at both SCH and SMN spell speed is trash for both right now and while spell speed will be a consideration for SMN in the future crit and det will remain king for SCH to get the big barriers there for it would rule out almost any piece that does not have it. No matter what system there will always be bis.

[Aeyis]

Vertical progression is better... Though I love the argument that horizontal give you more choices. You mean the illusion of choice... because sure you may have 5 or 6 different chest pieces you could use but if you not using this one right here well your wrong!

Vertical sure there may not be many choices however you tend to not need to what to use because it is almost always the highest ilvl gear. I say almost because of how some games like WoW would put really good set bonuses on gear that even when they became outdated the set bonus still made it best to use for the most part.

Though you humans do love your illusions don't you...

The cat is bemused =-.-=

Take Ragnarok online: You could use about a dozen ''best'' items for each slot (specifically cards), several different builds for each class (that could play radically different).

How is that a mere illusion of choice?

Incidentally, in true horizontal progression you can make up your own mind to follow the ''meta'', or popular opinion on whats best.

Personal preference is irrelevant to the raiding communities.

I mentioned that example as a raid example. I often used less then ''best dps'' specs in a raiding enviroment in wow, including the (then) current hardest content.
Typically speaking nearly all specs were ''viable'' (well, from tbc and onwards, anyway), meaning you could perform well enough to take down the encounter with any spec.

I dunno, perhaps its because I feel that how well you play is foremost down to you as a player, rather then your ''build's limitations.

Seen any MRDs taking DPS slots in Coil runs?

Also, for the longest time, the only viable raiding spec for Mages was Arcane. Frost was the only viable PvP spec and Fire Mages were laughed at and scorned in ALL content.

When was that exactly? Im not sure when you started playing WoW, but Arcane, Frost and Fire all had very long periods of being on top. Ive played frost and arcane when they were considered the underdog.
Noone laughed at my dps tho.

Hell, even back in Burning Crusade, you NEVER saw an Arms Warrior outside of PvP, it was Fury or Protection or you got kicked.

Ive played a 2H enhancement shaman in early tbc (ssc specifically) and made it work (ie: viable dps). The problem is not with the stats, its with peoples attitudes.

A good of example of that would be when I rolled dual enhancement and elemental at different periods in TBC, and people were horrified. That is, untill they saw that they actually dealt really good damage.

If you want to use a Tier 2 set because you 'like' the bonuses over a Tier 3 set with mathematically superior bonuses, you will never see endgame content in your hypothetical scenario. Barring of course your own personal static where everyone involved is more concerned with playing their own way than winning in the most efficient way, like PuGs tend to do.

If you need math to win encounters for you, instead of skill; then I will agree with you that going ''the best'' is the only real thing to do.


According to your logic, people must absolutely hate and avoid making mistakes in a raid, since being anything but the ''the best'' is such a big deal. In reality however, even the best players will rarely play perfectly. (but down encounters anyway)
Which I think shows that ''the best'' isnt such as must have as is often believed.

[Gralna]

Vertical. Let's face it as others have said there is always a bis. Look at both SCH and SMN spell speed is trash for both right now and while spell speed will be a consideration for SMN in the future crit and det will remain king for SCH to get the big barriers there for it would rule out almost any piece that does not have it. No matter what system there will always be bis.

As long as special effects to horizontal gear aren't op'd, you can avoid the whole BiS argument, DAoC did a great job of keeping gear balanced, even after 5 expansions. You basically had to use a template calculators for endgame builds (due to all the stat bonuses, stat caps, etc) which were usually around one or two pieces of gear that you really wanted to use. While people may have argued over semantics of some builds being better than others, general consensus was that as long as your build had max stat bonuses, the special effects of gear was basically superfluous and more down to player preference.

[Garlyle]

Take Ragnarok online: You could use about a dozen ''best'' items for each slot (specifically cards), several different builds for each class (that could play radically different).

There were maybe a dozen slots and ways to build, yeah. And because of those there were also hundreds of things that you might look at, go "well that seems like a good idea", and end up with extremely subpar results.

That's the "illusion" - you have a lot of choice, but frankly, it's a lot of wrong choices. It matters a lot more in the modern style of MMORPG, which focuses on very strictly designed and tuned challenges as opposed to the sandbox nature of older MMORPGs.

[Genz]

The question is wrong. It should be : stats on gear (horizontal progression implied) or no stats on gear at all?

[NadienKirisame]

And you brought up RO...

Oh yeah there was so many bests in RO... Here let me toss some more clouds up on your head so you feel so much safer. Lets not even get into how long you had to grind away to even get some of those cards shall we. There also was a best set of cards to use when it came down to it and that is why everyone grinded away their lives to try and get those certain cards.

And yes you can follow the "meta" (not sure why I actually hate that word) or do your own thing as long and your own thing is over there... and away from this raid because they want you to have this because it is the best way to be set up for this... >.>

Really though both ways have issue and I'm not actually going to say vertical is all wonderful... But then I have played all those game and I have done all that stuff and you know vertical just feels better really and it is not so... illusiony (not even a word!) but you do have to worry about the power creep as someone else brought up.

The cat is bemused =-.-=

[Zaft]

There were maybe a dozen slots and ways to build, yeah. And because of those there were also hundreds of things that you might look at, go "well that seems like a good idea", and end up with extremely subpar results.

That's the "illusion" - you have a lot of choice, but frankly, it's a lot of wrong choices. It matters a lot more in the modern style of MMORPG, which focuses on very strictly designed and tuned challenges as opposed to the sandbox nature of older MMORPGs.

This. The idea of choice is an illusion, because in the end, there is one superior choice for every situation. Now, there may be multiple choices for multiple situations. An example is Mage in WoW, where Fire is better for fights requiring movement, and Arcane is better for fights that allow you to be stationary. Certain talents are better for certain situations: Living Bomb is great for fights where it can be spread, Blast Nova is better for single targets. But in the end, one is clearly superior to the other, even if it's only by a smidgen.

You can choose to do something different, something unique, something radically different...but you're choosing to be wrong.

[Caraway]

Horizontal with meaningful options.

I, for one, don't give two gil for what other players consider the best or flavour of the month. As long as I can complete content and have fun that's all that matters.

Edit: Adding this because I didn't see the posts above when I hit reply to this thread.

Jeez you people are silly. What's it matter if a spec is marginally better than another one when they both get the job done? Believe me, none of you arm-chair theorists are going to see any noticable difference between theoretical maximums (and neither am I). Who do you think you all are? Bluegartr?

I loathe this "illusion of choice/best or nothing at all" mentality. If it works, it works; stop belittling other people over how they decide to have fun playing the game.