Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[Maeka]

They need to branch into horizontal gearing, where new content drops situationally-useful gear that doesn't flat-out overpower what came before it.

No, no, and HECK NO.

"Side-grade gear" that is situational would NOT work in this game.

1). You can't switch gear in combat.
2). Requiring "____ resistant" gear forces people to go farm it before they can even do the content (WoW tried this and quickly abandoned the idea for good reason).
3). People will still min/max and go whatever is best for all situations, and the side-grades will be looked at as useless.

It. Will. Not. Work. so please just give it a rest. This game was *NOT* built on Side-grades. This game is a vertical progression game and TBH I don't want to have to stop and grind an extra suit of gear that's the same I-level as what I'm already wearing because of some stupid gimmick in a dungeon/trial/whatever.

It was retarded in XI and it would be 1000% more retarded here in XIV to do such a thing. Side-grade gear in XI was stuff you only wore for 2 seconds at a time to boost your next WS/spell/whatever by 2% or what-not. It felt like a complete waste of time, it was a waste of inventory space, and there's a reason why the game struggled to maintain more than a hundred K subscribers at a time, while vertical progression games rake in millions of subs.

Vertical progression feels better when you get a new piece, it is substantially better, than this side-grade that is only better in one thing otherwise about as good as what you already had kinda deal that just ruins the joy of getting a new piece of gear.

There's nothing wrong with old gear being obsolete as new gear comes out. Not seeing what the problem is, when you have glamours and such.

[Remedi]

If they need to rebuild the game from the ground up to accomodate horizzontal progression they might aswell make a new game imho.
As of right now horizzontal progression is kinda meaningless, however I would admit that Ultimate challenges does kinda provide a sense of horizzontal progression if you think about it