Would Horizontal Progression Help this Game?

[Nalien]

The day this gets added is the day I stop building a 1:1 replica of Dalamud to crash into SEHQ... I mean what?! I'm not doing that! <goes back to playing Katamari Damacy.... to practice... <insert evil laugh>>

Honestly seems like the perfect Horizontal Progression-Lite! to either just extend the shelf life on gear/content, or bridge us over to something more substantial. Plus, you know, Final Fantasy IX is the best Final Fantasy...

[SchalaZeal]

Short answer, yes.
It has to be quite demotivating for devs to spend hours on creating a content knowing it will be obsolete in 3 months.

Actually lots of people play content 1 patch after its out. Even 2 or 3 patches after. But rarely 1 expansion after (and that's 2 years) if you had a level increase.

[File2ish]

It really depends. The downsides of horizontal progression are likely what keeps it out of XIV ARR/HW.

Those of us from FFXI should know the downsides of horizontal progression. Have you ever been kicked out of a party or denied entry into one solely because you didn't have a specific piece of gear? I have. It's not a good feeling especially when you weren't going for anything endgame at that point. And some of the gear they expected was a bloody pain to get (with the worst cases being you needed to kill an NM for the piece which only had a 1%-10% drop rate, and unless you were a RDM/NIN or something with super solo abilities you [PRE Abyssea, 99 lvl cap, ilvls above 120] needed to form or join a party to have a chance to kill it. On top of that you needed to possibly be "waiting in line" for the kill and the NM was on a 24 earth hour respawn timer).

FFXI's horizontal progression worked because of the pacing of the game and relied heavily on your luck with the RNG when something couldn't be bought or traded (you waited 5 hours for the pop and got the kill? So sorry, 5% drop rate and no drop). It was a completely different type of grind (but very much a grind). It was a time of patience, a trait which many players lack in XIV. XIV's systems guarantee a drop, even if it's not the piece you want. It's no longer "I have to wait X amount of time before it can pop again asdfwqertuyl;hln" and has become "REPEAT CONTENT 'TIL IT DROPS"

Of course this is never always the case, and the more casual population of XIV are much less likely to lock people out for not having BiS gear. But it still stands that it will happen, and the devs clearly don't want that to happen on a larger scale than it already does for some groups.

Horizontal progression would be very bad for ENDGAME gear. For crafted gear and dungeon gear, however, horizontal progression may not matter nearly as much. You'll still get BiSers telling you which materia you need in said equipment, but it's not raid tier gear, which means you probably won't be booted for having X piece over Y... I think. People will always surprise you lol.

[FoxyAreku]

Horizontal progression with only 4 secondary stats? Sound pretty pointless.

Now if they added more secondaries that'd be cool. I vote for "Mastery" from WoW, a stat that does something different for every job.

[Xellos2099]

It really depends. The downsides of horizontal progression are likely what keeps it out of XIV ARR/HW.

As someone in warehouse 13, there is always a downside. I don;t look forward to carry 8 different elemental staff to be effectuive as a blm.

[Cilia]

It doesn't matter if you require horizontal progression; with websites built exclusively to determine the fastest and most efficient path to completing the endgame, that's all people will follow anymore. The devs seem to be quite aware of this and, with development costs much higher than they were during, say, XI's heyday, they simply can't afford to put in things most people are going to ignore.

The story stuff is very fun and interesting to me, and I do earnestly wish there was more of it. But as for endgame progression, it's just simpler to reduce it to what people can easily understand instead of requiring arcane horizontal progression (that will be deciphered and pulled apart into the most efficient method of progression as soon as it's available to the public).

[Nalien]

The devs seem to be quite aware of this and, with development costs much higher than they were during, say, XI's heyday, they simply can't afford to put in things most people are going to ignore.

Funny, they've implemented quite a lot of stuff most people ignore... Gold Saucer, Crystal Tower, heck they have to build Relics entirely around the concept of getting people back into old content...

The thing with horizontal progression is, it doesn't matter that there is an "optimal" set. What matters is that people will want to obtain it. It gives content a longer shelf life as a result.

Doesn't even need to be about stats. The issue they have with horizontal progression is it "prevents" new players catching up. They're afraid new players will see horizontal progression and be turned off, because they can't get to that point within a week. That's why every other update wiped the slate clean. That's why they can't, for example, go "You want this antiquated Iga Ningi? That'll be 825 tomestones and a Fuma Koromo".

The reality is, we have a shallow game as a result. How can you create depth when the board is reset on every even digit update? You can't. Oddly enough, the only thing in this game that has come close is Relics, without a doubt the most popular quests, regardless of how much people complain about it (I guarantee more are interested in doing their Anima weapon than Alexander (Savage)). Progress on them is still seemingly reset with each expansion, but it is quite telling that, for a year or two, the most popular content is one in which a new player is at a fairly huge disadvantage at compared to existing ones... People obviously want this kind of content, yet this is the closest we get to it... The effort they put into Lords of Verminion, or Alexander, that's the kind of effort they should be putting into Relics, or failing that, Relics is the kind of equipment they should be putting into Alexander (though lord knows I don't want Gordian equipment sticking around to 3.5...).

[Tint]

Short answer, yes.
It has to be quite demotivating for devs to spend hours on creating a content knowing it will be obsolete in 3 months.

lol, half of the content is obsolete as soon they release them... bismarck ex, all the dungeons... 24 man raids are a bit in between... and then all the story "hard mode" primals you kill only one time and thats it...

[Sicno]

...So besides daily roulettes we also have daily threads for the same stuff. This must be like the 2389764823756487234th thread.