Alienation of Dedicated and Skilled players

[HeavenlyArmed]

Say if 4.0 has a boost to level 70 (mostly to reset ilevels to a base marker) but everything at level 70 was horizontal instead of vertical. Wouldn't that require most fights after the initial gearing up point (Like Law tomes or the old Philosophy tomes) to be the same relative difficulty patch by patch, because they gear isn't actually getting any stronger overall? Would that be an acceptable compromise?

Well, as someone who isn't as tired of the vertical progression model as OP, I'd prefer to continue on that path rather than go entirely horizontal. In terms of the arguments people make about rewards needing more longevity, I have solutions to that which I would prefer over removing vertical progression entirely in favor of pure horizontal progression, such as moving pre-upgrade tomestone gear down significantly in power so that raid gear from the previous tier remains relevant well into the next tier. But even that has drawbacks that I'm very aware of, and as such I personally prefer the idea of staying with our current system but making the stats within that system more interesting or adding things that can work within that system to make gear more interesting. Though this brings up another thing, horizontal progression and interesting stats aren't inherently the same thing. And there are also a number of different ways you can make horizontal progression work, from everything is entirely horizontal to more gear options in general to having a few ways to progress your character outside of raid that do make you more powerful but without increasing your item level. The last one is my preferred of those options, but there's definitely a debate that could be held on this whole topic, right back to adding gear longevity without any horizontal progression and actually making gear progression even more vertical.

SNIP

Right, but just being better than others isn't what most of us want. We want the game to be the best it can be, and will give feedback to help it in that direction. I don't think XIV is dying by any means, but I see that it has flaws and I see solutions for these flaws that would only serve to make the game better.