More Horizontal Progression please

[midnitdragoon]

Yet most people only completed CoP after the rings were added to the game.

Hell, many people only completed RotZ after the earrings were added!

Too many people can't take off their rose-tinted glasses when they look back at FFXI. Good luck getting any quest that required a group done in FFXI if it didn't have a reward.

Not everything has to do with nostalgia, the idea might actually work if it was properly executed.

[Gilthas]

Not everything has to do with nostalgia, the idea might actually work if it was properly executed.

Yet it didn't work that way in FFXI.

The objective to do things in FFXI was getting better gear too. How many players only did RotZ until they got sky access? How many only completed RotZ and CoP after rewards were added? How many quests in FFXI were simply ignored if they didn't have a reward? More so if it required a group?

[Lemuria]

Yet it didn't work that way in FFXI.

The objective to do things in FFXI was getting better gear too. How many players only did RotZ until they got sky access? How many only completed RotZ and CoP after rewards were added? How many quests in FFXI were simply ignored if they didn't have a reward? More so if it required a group?

Errm... plenty? The CoP ring reward was still one of the best in the game, even after ToAU and WotG were released.

People who claim FFXI's horizontal progression failed obviously have no true recollection of actually playing the game. There were dozens of examples of great items which stood the test of time, and plenty more which people kept for macros to swap items in and out. Granted, we can't do the latter here in Heavensward, but I think there's still a lot of room to work with some decent optional sidegrades which aren't mind-crushingly dull or simple secondary-stat swaps.

[Ibi]

People who claim FFXI's horizontal progression failed obviously have no true recollection of actually playing the game.

That depends on why they think it failed, if failed is even the correct word to use.

There were dozens of examples of great items which stood the test of time, and plenty more which people kept for macros to swap items in and out.

I don't think anyone who played FFXI (or didn't play but has done their research) would argue this. It's a factual statement.

The thing that turned people off (and I'd say that's a more accurate portrayal than failure) was that most of these items required luck, massive time investments, or more commonly some combination of the two, in order to obtain them.

Take the events that rewarded long-lasting gear during FFXI's 75-cap era:

Kings (or world HNMs in general): Very long respawn timers with extremely high levels of competition (and frequently botted). Randomly generated loot pools, with the better drops (Defending Ring, for example) being quite rare. Some jobs had very little in the way of usable loot here, especially those added in ToAU and WotG.

Dynamis: Very low drop rates, combined with large loot pools, meaning you could frequently go months without even seeing a specific drop. Competition over zones, since only a single instance of each zone existed.

Sky: Reasonably competitive, particularly against RMT for long stretches of the game's existence. Random loot pools and drop rates, meaning it was possible for the culmination of your work (Kirin) to drop nothing but a wind crystal. Several hour respawns on the pop item NMs. Lots of travel time necessary to get to some of the pop item NMs.

Sea (Jailers): Abysmal drop rates from NMs, with some of the NMs (Jailer of Temperance in particular) being time consuming to even reach.

Limbus: One of the rare events that actually hit loot distribution pretty well, though the boss fight chips limited the frequency with which you could attempt to get the better loot.

Salvage: Even worse drop rates. Frequently possible to do multiple runs in a week and see no drops.

Nyzul Isle: Lots of RNG in terms of what you'd be up against. Smaller loot pools, but most of the drops weren't that good compared to other options.

Einherjar: RNG again. Getting to the Odin fight, where most of the worthwhile drops were, took a minimum of two weeks per attempt, if you had enough mules to quickly farm the feathers from the earlier chambers. If not, it was one attempt per five weeks, assuming you beat every chamber every time. Some jobs had no worthwhile loot here.

ZNMs: Loot was good, but drop rates weren't particularly good, and farming up pop items for higher tiers was extremely time consuming.

I've probably left some events out here, but the general themes should be pretty clear.

[Evtrai]

That depends on why they think it failed, if failed is even the correct word to use.

That's a good write up, sure, I'll admit, FFXI had a lot of range, FFXIV had a LOT of range, I was so incredibly unlucky with drops that I cleared two coils cycles, and while we farmed the subsequent weeks, I NEVER got to see what I wanted, I never got the Monk weapons EVER before the next raid dropped, Heavensward did improve on something, adding these tokens from Alex Savage, and actual good improvements, very good for them.

But you automatically dismiss all those events you listed in a sense that FFXIV should regress and not improve over those examples you listed, sure Kings where the true hardcore content as only super dedicated players did it, it doesn't mean that if they go back to Dynamis, they are gonna have the same Range, range is range, you could get all the drops you wanted on one night in dynamis, or you wouldn't at all, that's luck, but it absolutely doesn't mean the content was bad or was boring.

[Ibi]

it absolutely doesn't mean the content was bad or was boring.

Agreed, most of it wasn't bad or boring, especially at first. Though I don't think I could have done two years of Dynamis twice a week if I hadn't had the responsibility of pulling to keep me engaged.

The issue is that for something to stay relevant for a long time, it has to remain rewarding for a long time, and the way SE generally did that in FFXI was to have very low drop rates. There also wasn't all that much variability to the events. Dynamis - Xarcabard the first time was exciting and tense and dangerous. Dynamis - Xarcabard the twentieth time was exactly the same, minus all the excitement, tension, and danger, because you know exactly what to expect from every pull.

It was something they got better with over time, certainly. Each Salvage area had multiple different routes you could take, to engage different enemies and try for different rewards. Nyzul Isle was semi-randomly generated, and no two runs went quite the same.

I'm all for horizontal progression in theory, but:

1. The content needs to be repeatable, without being overly repetitive.
2. The content needs to remain rewarding, without the rewards being too infrequent.
3. The rewards need to be compelling but, because this is horizontal progression, not too significant.

The last point is particularly difficult, especially in an environment like FFXIV's where you can only use a single piece of gear in a particular slot for a particular encounter. How do you ensure that the idea that's better for one encounter isn't universally the best, without getting into uninteresting stats like elemental damage/resists?

[Sandpark]

There is room for decent optional horizontal upgrades. The CoP ring was a good example of horizontal done right because the ring scaled vertically as you gained higher levels. Gear made in this nature also helps item bloat lower tremendously. For a horizontal method to work in 14 it would have to do three things.
1.Stat attributes would scale by level Lvl30=Str+X,Lvl40=Str+X,Lvl50=Str+X,Lvl60=Str+X.
2.Ilvl upgrades would be unlocked by special spiritbonding in specific ilvl content. To upgrade ringX=Spiritbond in dungeonX/specific ilvl combat.
3.More content to flesh out pacing at lvl 50,60,70,etc.

This would also give people another reason to want to run older content for more than xp/achievements or tomes helping newer people advance through the dungeon treadmill. They would want to upgrade their items before proceeding to the next wave of ilvls.

[Iagainsti]

Errm... plenty? The CoP ring reward was still one of the best in the game, even after ToAU and WotG were released.

People who claim FFXI's horizontal progression failed obviously have no true recollection of actually playing the game. There were dozens of examples of great items which stood the test of time, and plenty more which people kept for macros to swap items in and out. Granted, we can't do the latter here in Heavensward, but I think there's still a lot of room to work with some decent optional sidegrades which aren't mind-crushingly dull or simple secondary-stat swaps.

Leaping Lizard Boots- on my Nin & Thf from lvl 7-75; still used in macros fro WS from 75-99.

[Ibi]

Leaping Lizard Boots- on my Nin & Thf from lvl 7-75; still used in macros fro WS from 75-99.

And FFXIclopedia indicates that the Leaping (now Bounding) Boots are a <7% drop rate.

People lament the pain of RNG in instances that guarantee 2 or 4 drops every time they're killed. What do you think their reaction to drop rates like that would be?

[Kaurie]

And FFXIclopedia indicates that the Leaping (now Bounding) Boots are a <7% drop rate.

People lament the pain of RNG in instances that guarantee 2 or 4 drops every time they're killed. What do you think their reaction to drop rates like that would be?

I would rather kill something (on average) 14 times, than do the current method of Alex NM drops.