When will SE realize this endless vertical progression is going nowhere?

[Zojha]

When will players tire of vertical progression?

At this point, you should rather ask:"When will players tire of progression?"

Horizontal progression runs into the same issue. An item(or skill/talent) is either better, worse or equal. If it's not better, no point in getting it and thus no point in running the respective content. It doesn't matter "why" it is better, whether it's better stats, a better active, passive, whether it's better for a certain dungeon, boss, skill, class or whatever other purpose you can think of. Progression is a one way street and players do not pursue regression, so people will not pursue items that are equal or worse for their intended purpose.

So the real complaint is: Gear does not have enough purposes. It's only there to make you stronger/better as a whole, rather than making you better at something specific.

[Dyvid]

This only worked in FFXI because you could swap gear and have a macro which had gear swaps for every ability. If you have choices between different pieces of gear that effect abilities by 5-10% you can't swap gear, 1 piece will be mathematically best easily. With math people would be like get this piece it has the highest dps increase the rest of the gear is trash. Since you can't swap out gear to use more then one piece in a slot.

Never mentioned FFXI but if you want to compare I would akin it more toward the Merit system since it's materia based and not gear based. Use ??? to purchase the job specific materia you want to attach it to whatever gear you want. And yes, there is always the best build but that isn't a reason to shy a way from something people would enjoy.

So the real complaint is: Gear does not have enough purposes. It's only there to make you stronger/better as a whole, rather than making you better at something specific.

To piggy back on this it's kind of pointless too. When new content comes out you rarely have to gear up to complete it so why both to actually gear up at all? If I can complete the new dungeons and new casual raids with law and Alex:N gear why should I waste time farming Eso?

[ChocoFeru]

The problem about horizontal progression is that the game will die faster.

Why? because new players would be screwed since they would never catch up the rest, therefore playing alone.

On FFXI, when the game was like 4-5 years old, it was almost impossible for a new player to catch up the endgame people, because everyone already did the old content, and because he had to re-do everything and get gear from everywhere because every piece was important.
The problem was that people who left, hardly came back again because they would have to invest a lot of time catching up the rest.


I lovd horizontal progression because I was in, but it's a pain for new players.

[Beckett]

Welcome to MMOs! You grind to get better gear, so you can grind to get better gear, so you can grind to get better gear... At least in FF MMOs, there is more of a point to the vertical progression, since you get to experience awesome story lines by getting stronger (although they kind of dropped the ball on Alexander Savage). The only reason I was able to stick through things like Omega in FFXI, or Binding Coil in this game, is because I was rewarded with amazing cutscenes that made all that work worth it.

[dinnertime]

The ship has sailed.

Why horizontal progression worked on FFXI was because it's a massive grind. It kept people leveling their jobs and getting geared up for endgame for months, or even years, but that gear will last you also for years because the iLvl doesn't increase like this game does.
The problem with that system however is that new players cannot easily catch up with veteran players.

Then Abyssea came along, which most people believe "ruined" the game. It was something for new players to catch up with veterans, but that also changed the game entirely as most people have said. Other than months or years, it takes about less than a month to max out a Job, that also resulted in new players to lack any experience on how to competently play their Job. It also pretty much made most of the fun and engaging content of FFXI irrelevant, thus things got stale. People got bored easily and that there was just nothing to strive for anymore when you cannot do much more other than the main scenario.

Comparing FFXIV to FFXI pre-Abyssea, It's on vertical progression (but a poorly executed one in my opinion).
In FFXIV, it takes literally a week (about 48 hours) to get your 2nd Class/Job to 60, and it's very easy to gear up and such, but it'll get stale. That's why every major patch/update they increase the item level and that way, players have something to strive for, to reach greater lengths, and that's what keeps people playing in vertical progression. This way, even new players can easily catch up with veterans without alienating the game entirely.

The problem with this game however, I believe the progression is just too rapid, and the developers have poor decisions and are not using their creativity. What's there to strive for exactly when it's so easy to get to BiS. There's no sense of fulfillment in that, really.
Yes, we have Alexander Savage. It's some of the hardest encounters the game has yet, but it's overtuned and it alienated the playerbase and raiders (who are mostly midcore than hardcore). Diadem (pre-patched) however made Alexander Savage so irrelevant, and Diadem is casual content unlike Alexander which was aimed for hardcore players.
Not only that, what we have seen recently is very uncreative. There's nothing really new about 3.0. It's recycled content we have seen before in 2.x.
They've made the relic quite the grindfest, but really it's not that worth getting when actually some of the Thordan weapons are much better.
I also have gripes that the gear is very bland. There's multiple iL210 gear right now, but they're all very boring.

Just my 2 gil