Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[Velhart]

I think part of why people don't follow a BiS formulae is because as soon as they get BiS it's replaced. so whats the point?

You honestly believe that people will follow a BiS formula for -certain situations-? The average player is not going to get multiple sets for one job to take on one specific task. Not even a lot of FFXI players did this. Again, it doesn't influence people to take on multiple jobs if they feel the need to constantly work on one job. Its a formula that doesn't work with this game and I don't recall people liking it in FFXI much either. Mages having to carry a HQ staff for each element, constantly switching between with macros. Its only needlessly complex. This game despite my complaints does accomplish making the system simple with a lot of depth. A horizontal system with multiple sets just makes it complex without much depth added, which makes it unappealing to the average customer.

[Dzian]

You honestly believe that people will follow a BiS formula for -certain situations-?

Honestly? Nope,

What I do believe though is that if gear was more meaningful and more worthwhile then more people would be more motivated to get it.
I also believe that the problem with savage isn't the difficulty, it's just that the rewards aren't worth it.
much the same with relic and the sheer volume of time it takes makes it not worth it.

seems most of the issues recently stem from people getting really fed up of the treadmill. It's hard to motivate people to go after "junk"

[Velhart]

What I do believe though is that if gear was more meaningful and more worthwhile then more people would be more motivated to get it.

How are people not motivated to get gear right now? If anything, a lot of players like getting gear on multiple jobs.

I also believe that the problem with savage isn't the difficulty, it's just that the rewards aren't worth it.

It has the best gear in the game, it is very much worth it. People wouldn't be going in there every week completing it even to this day if it wasn't.

seems most of the issues recently stem from people getting really fed up of the treadmill. It's hard to motivate people to go after "junk"

You look at it all wrong. The only real reason that people were not motivated for Savage was due to it's over the top difficulty level that the average casual/midcore group could not handle. You went from hold my hand Alexander to brutal over the top Alexander. There was no in between, a level that could be worked on to be properly ready for Savage.

It is the game's pacing and ill placement of content and gear distribution that has caused most of the mess. People don't mind treadmill style MMO's if the quality of the content is high. Right now SE is not meeting those quality standards is why you or someone may think the formula is getting stale. If you want horizontal so bad, you are going to just be facing the same issues and will be much harder to recover from.

I do wonder where people think systems like horizontal progression and multiple gear sets on one job does not come with it's horrendous need for constant balance. I won't say vertical is perfect and has it's own issues, but making things horizontal is just jumping over a pothole just to fall off a cliff.