Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[Revenant9]

It's a sadly very bland mindless progression, to put it bluntly what we have is thousands of cookie cutter job toons running around or standing around, all mindlessly grinding their dailies to hit 210 left and right side, for the casuals they will most likely do VA and perhaps slowly upgrade their eso, by the time the next gear comes out they will have enough 210 eso upgrades and probably no weekly cap so will just end up with it anyway. It's sorta like hey lets all race for the newest gear this -i5-i10 gear is junk now or glamour, repeat every 6 months or year.

What I truly miss about xi was you never knew what variation or armor kit someone had when joining an xp party or doing sky or sea, yep typically people had their scorp harness or hauberk but that was needed, however there was room for macro gear for ws and so on, plus alternate builds that made tons of outdated gear totally viable at 75.

[Xellos2099]

It's a sadly very bland mindless progression, to put it bluntly what we have is thousands of cookie cutter job toons running around or standing around, all mindlessly grinding their dailies to hit 210 left and right side, for the casuals they will most likely do VA and perhaps slowly upgrade their eso, by the time the next gear comes out they will have enough 210 eso upgrades and probably no weekly cap so will just end up with it anyway. It's sorta like hey lets all race for the newest gear this -i5-i10 gear is junk now or glamour, repeat every 6 months or year.

What I truly miss about xi was you never knew what variation or armor kit someone had when joining an xp party or doing sky or sea, yep typically people had their scorp harness or hauberk but that was needed, however there was room for macro gear for ws and so on, plus alternate builds that made tons of outdated gear totally viable at 75.

Who really care what gear other people have as long as it does the job effectively? Actually i take that back. When I was hostign thordan ex pt last month i often check if they have all eso or pink gear. If all they have are those then I tend to get a bit worry.

[Ibi]

@Ibi then you plug away? Whats wrong with spending time on content when there is nothing else to do? What are people in such a rush for?

As I said in the post directly preceding yours: "No one's suggesting that every time someone enters a piece of content they should walk away with one of the available rewards."

The content you get isn't even required to do anything in the game anyway. So why does it matter if it takes you a week or a month? At least you have something to do that you want.

The issue is not when it takes weeks to get a reward. It's when it takes person A one or two days to get the reward and person B two or three weeks to get the reward.

Having the connection between effort invested and rewards obtained being completely random is a really effective way to increase player frustration and drive them away from the game.

And if that isn't appealing to you, then you will tend more towards games that are action and achivement based rather then MMOs that are Time Applied = Reward Appreciation. You appreciate more what you put more time in.

Even if that weren't completely subjective, it's only true up to a certain extent.

Most people have thresholds beyond which the time applied ceases to worth the reward, and they stop putting the time in altogether or beyond which the continued time investment becomes so burdensome that even when they get the reward it no longer feels like a reward; they're simply glad that the grind is over.

[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.

[Kindread]

Yes, because if something doesn't drop for me after a while, I'll just leave it behind and do something else. I dunno about you, but I don't like wasting time in something that yielded nothing in return after so many times.

Than what's wrong with simply not getting the item? Maybe someone else did and you didn't, good on them for sticking to it, or getting lucky, but asking for a hand out just because you ran it as many times as you were willing too is just ignorant.

[Kindread]

I think the practice of having to "run it enough times" is pretty much the antithesis of "immediate gratification".

How is it the opposite? I've been in groups with people that were on the 50th or so attempt to get an item, and when it finally dropped for them it made the game. They will remember that moment for years, but having a token type system in place is catering to those that need that immediate gratification.

There is NOTHING wrong with simply not getting the item. This game does updates enough that it will not break your characters if those leggings or whatever, never drop for you, and it still puts the pressure on you to log in everyday, which is what the system is based on.

You are correct though, this is getting off topic, a token system (for good or bad) could be related to both progression systems.

[Velhart]

How is it the opposite? I've been in groups with people that were on the 50th or so attempt to get an item, and when it finally dropped for them it made the game. They will remember that moment for years, but having a token type system in place is catering to those that need that immediate gratification.

There is NOTHING wrong with simply not getting the item. This game does updates enough that it will not break your characters if those leggings or whatever, never drop for you, and it still puts the pressure on you to log in everyday, which is what the system is based on.

You are correct though, this is getting off topic, a token system (for good or bad) could be related to both progression systems.

So by your logic, its fair that someone gets a really nice item the first week, but I am on my 50th run and it still has not dropped for myself or someone else? This is a terrible RNG system we need to work away from, not embrace it.

[Ibi]

How is it the opposite?

"run it enough times": This would involve completing the content some fixed number of times. Take Savage, for example, where you need to clear a floor between four and eight times, at a rate of once per week, in order to have sufficient tokens to buy a single piece of gear. Best case scenario, you're talking four weeks.

"immediate gratification": Synonyms for immediate include instant, instantaneous, swift, prompt, fast, speedy, rapid, brisk, quick, expeditious. I don't think even the best case scenario of four weeks is described by any of those words.

I've been in groups with people that were on the 50th or so attempt to get an item, and when it finally dropped for them it made the game. They will remember that moment for years, but having a token type system in place is catering to those that need that immediate gratification.

I've been in groups with people that were on the 50th or so attempt to get an item, and when it finally dropped for them they were so sick of running the content (which had become trivial and uninteresting at that point because of how many times they'd seen it) that they never wanted to run it ever again, and it sucked all the joy out of what should have been an awesome moment.

So... your mileage may vary?

[Seryl199]

This is purely anecdotal, but in my experience, ever since I fell out of raiding, there has been no pressure to keep my gear ahead of the curve. The predictability of progression reduces my motivation for getting upgrades in the first place, knowing that a superior version can be obtained for less effort in a future patch. This essentially put me in a backslide to the lower end of the gear spectrum where I benefit more from the numerous catch up options that are available.

Once I unlock the current tier of EX dungeons (I know, I'm pretty far behind), I'd have 4 sources to easily upgrade my 3.0 gear, with a very straightforward, intuitive sense of progression: new dungeon drops (185), Alex NM (190), Eso's (200), and Void ark (200-210). This is in pretty stark contrast to players that have kept up with the curve, who have played out Alex NM for 190 drops and geared out in Eso's by the time 3.1 landed. Their gear has already obsolesced the i185 dungeon drops and most of Void Ark. It confuses me that there is a nice, clean ladder of progression, but it's only there every other patch, and it's possible to outgear that progression before it even hits.