Power creep?

[StouterTaru]

Therefore my predictions of 3.2 (speculation of course)

Raid gear 220, raid weapon 220, materia slots
Alex normal gear 210
Entry tome gear 215 no upgrades, no entry weapon
Entry weapon 215 as primal weapon
Relics increase to 215, materia slots
Crafted entry gear at 210, obviously materia slots

My speculation is very different. Without a huge bump in ilvl, new raids will be beaten the first week. I expect more of the same from alex savage; impossible to beat more than the first 1-2 floors first week with old gear.

As far as crafted gear, I think 210 is correct, but it won't have materia slots. It will be actual catch-up gear, more or less on par with the BiS gear from before the patch. This guess comes from sky pirate gear not having materia slots.

[Lambdafish]

Didn't Yoshi P say in a live letter (or interview) that they were dropping the idea of Alex 2 NM due to complaints and to make better use of resources? If that's the case then it would make your idea of less ilvls easier. Personally this would be my ideal scenario so that midcore is a lot more fleshed out (your idea of the 215 gear) and there is less casual progression content in favor of actual progression.

[UBERHAXED]

My speculation is very different. Without a huge bump in ilvl, new raids will be beaten the first week. I expect more of the same from alex savage; impossible to beat more than the first 1-2 floors first week with old gear.

As far as crafted gear, I think 210 is correct, but it won't have materia slots. It will be actual catch-up gear, more or less on par with the BiS gear from before the patch. This guess comes from sky pirate gear not having materia slots.

Well they can avoid that by doing what they do now right? Have hard gear checks? Let's remind everyone that 2.5 had such a 20 iLVL jump but since the gear check was so pathetically low (and mechanically easy otherwise savage second coil would also be beaten quickly), that it happened anyway. Given that they will follow suit, I believe they will make this tier 5 fights, with the first being easily beatable in BiS from last tier. The second being easy with entry level gear, the third being challenging with entry level gear, and the last two being near impossible with weeks of drops from the raid. But people are for some reason against gear checks. The can also pull a second coil on use and make use navigate through 10 minutes of instant death, 3 mechanics at a time, like T7. But we as a player base need to know what we want. Either we want other gear to be relevant longer, or we want to be far stronger each set of patches. I guess choosing a middle ground, like above actually please no one but at the same time, we actually will need the increase to get players to challenge new content. There's already a bunch of posts about things being "Dead on Arrival" because apparently content isn't worth doing unless you get better gear. The other crowd (which I'm not sure they even know what they are arguing) complains that gear is not relevant long enough (e.g. relic). Although I think the first crowd (thankfully) is larger so we go with that.

Horizontal progression refers to games that have character/playstyle progression more than raw stat progression that is just building item levels and stats. There's clear benefit and detriment in either system, but FFXIV's content introduction rate is a bit too fast to have vertical feel worth it.

Patch intervals last 2-3 months, which is how long gear from new content lasts until it becomes invalidated or basically given away. Horizontal progression- things like having gear that has set effects that benefit your Job in particular- (like Jump strength +100% for DRG or Hollowed Ground duration +10 seconds for PLD) would last longer with this game. Obviously the detriment being that they wouldn't make it just drop from chests like normal. They'd probably make it have a far lower chance of dropping, or some counterbalance, so it's hard to say if it'd really be worth it for them to get in to.

Anyways, continuing on...this benefits content as well as gear variety. Let's say that Hallowed Ground gear comes from Coil T13, and only on synced difficulty. Boom. Now Coil content is alive for as long as that Hallowed Ground piece is good. With so many gear slots, and the possibility of set effects, they have FAR more potential they could tap into with this game, with far more reasons to run content than there is now, they just are afraid of imbalance.

Not sure I follow. Just like people do with secondaries, they will compare 100% jump potency to 10 strength (e.g.) and determine if it's an upgrade or a down grade. In the end, the DPS pieces will only be worth it if it ends up being a DPS increase overall. It doesn't help that we can't change gear in battle, so we will always work with absolutes. Now, since healers and tanks do not follow the same objectives, I can see this working for their skills. But in the end it since we can't swap gear in battle it will boil down to either "optional" or "not optional". If it's easy to get then if it's worth something, then they suddenly become not optional, since you can change strategies around changed skills (like HG) but not really around stats. Obviously a hyperbole but using the example you gave:

PF: LF 2 PLD, 6 DPS for AS7, USING CHEESE STRAT MUST HAVE HG GEAR

[Nominous]

Not sure I follow. Just like people do with secondaries, they will compare 100% jump potency to 10 strength (e.g.) and determine if it's an upgrade or a down grade. In the end, the DPS pieces will only be worth it if it ends up being a DPS increase overall. If it's easy to get then if it's worth something, then they suddenly become not optional, since you can change strategies around changed skills (like HG) but not really around stats.

PF: LF 2 PLD, 6 DPS for AS7, USING CHEESE STRAT MUST HAVE HG GEAR

There will always be meta, there will always be a strongest comp, and there will always be those who gravitate towards them. That's why the devs shouldn't hold balance so close to their chests, and why horizontal progression wouldn't exactly hurt. Even with the high amount of balance in the game now, there's still the same PF's up that typically rule AST out for example, or favor the stronger Jobs, even though stronger isn't an extreme statement in this game.

As for raw increases, and how people will treat them like secondaries (mathing it up and deciding what's BiS)? That's only true to a certain threshold. Like I said, there's those who will always follow the path of absolute best build available. However, let's say that up until now, every piece of raid gear had some special augment on it. Now let's say they treated the full sets, or possible combinations of all the pieces with the same amount of balance and care as the current raid gear. Now you've got a couple different sets, with various (viable) playstyles, all with similar DPS output.

Like if there was a Jump set for DRG that, when compiled, lead to 300% extra jump skill(s) damage. Then there was another set that decreased your GCD to 1.0, and high TP regen. These are obviously random numbers, but if they balanced everything like they do now, the biggest difference you'll see is playstyle. There's still the BiS, but depending on how well it's handled, that BiS would not be far off from the other sets. Each piece you get is exciting because they are actual tangible benefits, not just stacking 10 more of something you have like 700 of already. All of which passively effects your character, in some of the most unnoticeable ways possible, by the way. It's far better than the current situation, is all I'm saying.

[UBERHAXED]

There will always be meta, there will always be a strongest comp, and there will always be those who gravitate towards them. That's why the devs shouldn't hold balance so close to their chests, and why horizontal progression wouldn't exactly hurt. Even with the high amount of balance in the game now, there's still the same PF's up that typically rule AST out for example, or favor the stronger Jobs, even though stronger isn't an extreme statement in this game.

As for raw increases, and how people will treat them like secondaries (mathing it up and deciding what's BiS)? That's only true to a certain threshold. Like I said, there's those who will always follow the path of absolute best build available. However, let's say that up until now, every piece of raid gear had some special augment on it. Now let's say they treated the full sets, or possible combinations of all the pieces with the same amount of balance and care as the current raid gear. Now you've got a couple different sets, with various (viable) playstyles, all with similar DPS output.

Like if there was a Jump set for DRG that, when compiled, lead to 300% extra jump skill(s) damage. Then there was another set that decreased your GCD to 1.0, and high TP regen. These are obviously random numbers, but if they balanced everything like they do now, the biggest difference you'll see is playstyle. There's still the BiS, but depending on how well it's handled, that BiS would not be far off from the other sets. Each piece you get is exciting because they are actual tangible benefits, not just stacking 10 more of something you have like 700 of already. All of which passively effects your character, in some of the most unnoticeable ways possible, by the way. It's far better than the current situation, is all I'm saying.

But then people will get the (e.g.) low GCD set, then unsub for 12 months because all other gear is "dead on arrival" since they aren't strict upgrades until they release another broken set. Players of FFXIV make it very clear that content isn't worth doing if the rewards aren't good enough. With content releases so close to each other, vertical progression is the better scheme to have people play new contents and stay subbed throughout the content cycles. Your description of horizontal progression can only work in games with far longer update cycles and longer grind (e.g. FFXI). But (e.g.) our raiding scene is pretty small already with good rewards. If we had no "real" rewards (because some gear released last year is better) then no one would raid. I'm not against making gear relevant for longer, but what you are suggesting will potentially make future content DoA.