Power creep?

[Nominous]

Please, enlighten me.

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.