Alienation of Dedicated and Skilled players

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I don't even... Alright. Sure. No one likes gear lasting longer. You clearly understand. Sorry. I shouldn't have argued.

Again, this can be flipped. Careful not to walk into your own trap. Of course the path of least resistance is going to be the majority. That's human nature. And there are people that sought out XI(former XI). I already mentioned that, but I guess you ignored that already, yeh?

But you're saying that the minority doesn't matter because we're a smaller voice? That's cool. And you're calling me arrogant.

Context. You completely ignored why I said what I did. It isn't "people don't like gear lasting longer," but what purpose does it serve? Those old relic weapons are only good if they immediately help clear new content upon its release. This can only be achieved in horizontal progression if ilvl remains static. This has the immediate drawback of restricting the difficulty of content because everyone will already be equipped to handle it. Say ilvl 240 remained our definitive gear level from 3.3 onward. Now no difficult can eclipse Brute Justice otherwise players won't have a means of upgrading. To the current raiding playerbase, this means the next stage of Savage would be significantly easier as they would only need to learn mechanics. Gear simply lasting longer doesn't accomplish anything. That's the point.

And? You keep saying it can be flipped, yet ignore the financial implications and any other compounding factors. SE didn't arbitrarily decide on the current system based on a whim. The MMO market shifted towards a more casual demographic due to demand of its audience. People simply aren't playing heavily grind oriented games like they did in the heydays of FFXI and Vanilla WoW.

Pragmatically speaking? Yes. That isn't arrogance, but the reality of business. When arguably 95% of your audience prefers a certain style of content, you would be foolish not catering towards them. I actually prefer games where I can die if I mess up, and would love to see harder dungeons. I'm the nut who wants to queue into content with a pre-made group of friends at the lowest ilvl we can get away with just for fun. It would be a blast if mobs hit hard enough that healers even thinking of DPSing results in a dead tank. I also know very few people feel the same way, thus why I don't expect SE to cater to that particular preference of mine. It doesn't make financial sense of them to do so. Which has been my point. People like the current game as is. You telling them "well, you'll adapt to what I like because it's better" is what I cited arrogant.

[Lorielle]

SNIP.

Well, you don't have a clear understanding of horizontal progression. Though I believe someone has already cleared it up already. So, do take a look at that then actually consider what I've been -trying- to say.

Why do you choose to throw the reality of the situation to me? Something that's clearly obvious to both parties? We know SE is catering to the 95%. That's why the game is on a decline. I don't know about you, but I feel like the posts regarding the state of the game is becoming a lot more frequent than it was in the past.

And there are people who don't like the game currently the way it is. If you don't voice your concern, then the game is going to continue in its stale state until people just get down right bored.

Edit:

Actually here it is -

The joy of a good horizontal system is that you wouldn't have just the one weapon to pick from, but perhaps dozens of different weapons that all played slightly different. One sword's auto attack might be a small AoE, another sword's attack might occasionally apply a dot to the enemy, another sword might funnel emnity from your party to yourself with each blow, another could have a small chance to summon a friendly Beastman to help you fight for 10 seconds every time you parry, etc. It wouldn't be one weapon that lasted, but a whole collection all with different strengths,