More Horizontal Progression please

[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.

[Arabian_Wolf]

Patching 3-4 months to just switch of the scenery you are doing, it's pretty much stated that that you'll be running two new dungeons so basically just 2 different things to cap from, but doesn't change the essence that there's nothing else to cap from or to do, it's 3.0 again with a new coat of paint, you will do absolutely nothing different in that patch, other means of capping perhaps a broken PvP, which myself I actually do while I read a book or do something else, since the queue times are abysmal.

Quantity=/=Quality

Not really,

Patch 2.1: player housing

Patch 2.5: golden saucer

Thats just few of what I can remember now.

[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.

[Evtrai]

Not really,

Patch 2.1: player housing

Patch 2.5: golden saucer

Thats just few of what I can remember now.

I'll be interested to see in your server how the golden saucer was crawling with people past the first month. I'm from Balmung, one of the top populated servers in NA, and even here, dead. Speaking of that, all the people have housing, because there's obviously no problem with that.

[StouterTaru]

Is horizontal gearing really just the same gear with slightly different attributes?

You're describing the current system more than FFXI system. In FFXI the gear had actual choices with different boosts.

Here it's the same bland crap with just a slight change in the secondary stats, increasing with item level.

[jomoru]

You can choose to wear glamour gear or old gear that's horizontal progression right? But you say "those are clearly suboptimal choices." Well that's the problem with supposed Horizontal Progression, there will always be optimal choices and suboptimal choices. THere's no such thing as Horizonal Progression just Vertical Progression with the illusion of choice and more effort put in by the Developers to lie to you.

I prefer transparency as a rule and not people tricking me.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

The other issue is horizontal progression could lead to gear bloat and with the armory system being a total joke, I don't see it working here.

[Arabian_Wolf]

I'll be interested to see in your server how the golden saucer was crawling with people past the first month. I'm from Balmung, one of the top populated servers in NA, and even here, dead. Speaking of that, all the people have housing, because there's obviously no problem with that.

Golden saucer is medium populated on most times but that's irrelevant to our subject here which is about variety of things to do, you can't force people to do stuff if they don't want to but it should be there if they wanted to do it.


And that's what I call variety which this game is the most mmo that has it, a thing for everyone be it hardcore or casual.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

The other issue is horizontal progression could lead to gear bloat and with the armory system being a total joke, I don't see it working here.

You could also have multiple characters and not have any problems with gear. Even on mine I have no problem. All my inventory slots are full and I have plenty of space.

People are just horrible at managing their inventories.

[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.