Horizontal progression? In MY theme park?!

[Zojha]

I don't think you understand horizontal progression.

Truth be told, most people don't seem to. Heck, I constantly see people confusing it with special effects.

Ultimately, all progression is progression. It's a one-way street on which you can only progress, stagnate, or regress in a single direction and only the first of those three is deemed motivating. In computer terms, progression typically means two things:
a) A checkmark is cleared (Raid, Story progression)
b) A number goes up (Combat stats, e.g. DPS).

So called "horizontal" progression doesn't get rid of that, because it wouldn't be progression at all otherwise. All it does is to take the generic "combat" progression line and feathers it into multiple sub-purposes that each progress "vertically" individually.
By nature, given equal gear acquisition rates, that's going to mean more grinding, because you no longer have one "best" set, but multiple, one for each purpose, which may or may not overlap. And it also relies on there actually being multiple relevant purposes in the combat system itself to work. Which... is probably the biggest issue when trying to expand it in FFXIV.

Special effects on gear are entirely separate from that and can be either "vertical", i.e. represent an upgrade in performance or "horizontal", i.e. represent a different purpose. "Randomly spawns 3 Voidlings to deal damage" is a different purpose than "Randomly erects a barrier that blocks 15% of your max HP", thus they are "horizontal". They are also "vertical", because it's a clear improvement of combat performance over "nothing at all" or a weaker version of the same effect (like 1 Voidling/5% max HP). Same goes for less fancy stats like +15 Survival Stat vs +15 Damage Stat, it's just less smoke and mirrors there.

Neither of the two has much to do with how long content remains relevant. Barring plain enjoyment, a piece of content is relevant for as long as it represents progression. For gear, that means the rewards need to be better than something you already have. And in the "horizontal" model, being better in general is simply replaced with being better at some (ideally relevant) purpose. Since "horizontal" progression ceteris paribus requires more grinding, it naturally boosts longevity of content as well. How much depends on the degree of difference between the different "best" sets.
However, ultimately longevity is mostly decided by the rate at which gear (or any other progression metric) is acquired. That's obvious: Since the relevancy of the content is tied to the progression it provides, the sooner you get that progression, the sooner it becomes irrelevant.

A good example here is leveling content: If you level multiple jobs, XP remains a relevant reward for longer than if you only level one. Thus, the content remains relevant longer, i.e. has a higher longevity. Since leveling multiple jobs is not mandatory however, this is entirely optional and that's a good thing. But it matters little if you can just boost yourself to max easily. Gear follows the same principle. You can have a million different gear purposes and item slots, if you can get all items for free at a vendor in the starting area, the longevity of that is as long as it takes to navigate the menus.

Personally? I'd loath to try and support more "horizontal" progression within the individual jobs while the overarching job progression is still such a PITA to participate in. Most of the time, you can barely gear up your basic trinity roles before the gear becomes obsolete due to caps and other pacing measures. Adding more progression on the job level would increase that issue exponentially.

[Maeka]

-snip-

That's because everybody cites FFXI Pre-Abyssea as the poster child of Horizontal Progression and that's what HP *was* in FFXI.

You'd reach Level 75 and there's a million activities all to grind on, and your reward was gear that you'd wear for 2 seconds at a time constantly swapping gear for every little action you take. Blue Mage was rather egregious so I'll use it as an example. You'd have 50+ pieces of equipment (even though you can only wear 16).

Meleeing/Building TP? Wear Accuracy gear.
Wanna do a WS? Swap to str+ gear, use WS, swap back to Accuracy.
Wanna cast a spell? Swap to the gear that buffs that specific spell. Swap back.

etc etc etc.

It's just so ludicrous and ridiculous.

OR, how WoW did "Horizontal" Progression back during Vanilla: Wanna do Naxxramas? I hope you went back and farmed Cold Resist gear or you'd get smeared by one of the bosses in there. You'd have a suit of armor you'd wear for normal bosses, but then you'd have this alternate Cold Resist gear that you'd swap in for THAT boss and ONLY that boss. Blizz promptly dumped this system in their very first expansion, because it was universally hated, nobody liked having to lug around a whole suit of gear for one boss.

Not sure how else you'd do Horizontal Progression unless you're suggesting we do a bunch of things like Eureka or PotD that have their alternate progression... but then, try asking most players what their opinions of PotD and Eureka is and I'm pretty sure most hate it. Only reason why most people do PotD these days is to level their classes up (this should point out a flaw in the leveling system TBH).

[Ilyrian]

OR, how WoW did "Horizontal" Progression back during Vanilla: Wanna do Naxxramas? I hope you went back and farmed Cold Resist gear or you'd get smeared by one of the bosses in there. You'd have a suit of armor you'd wear for normal bosses, but then you'd have this alternate Cold Resist gear that you'd swap in for THAT boss and ONLY that boss. Blizz promptly dumped this system in their very first expansion, because it was universally hated, nobody liked having to lug around a whole suit of gear for one boss.

Pretty sure there's a circle of hell where you have to play that way again - but as an adult with a full time job and family - for all eternity.

[KisaiTenshi]

Truth be told, most people don't seem to. Heck, I constantly see people confusing it with special effects.

That's because the carrot to doing this content is something that has persistence.

Glamour gets rid of any reason to even get gear for it's appearance. I'd love to keep using the Relic or Anima weapon if it just grew with the leveling, but when you can just throw away this hard-earned weapon with the next patch level's vendor trash gear, there is something wrong.

Really the kind of Horizontal progression I want already exists. Here's your job, if you want to play another job, you can farm the gear for it, or buy it, or whatever. You still have to level it. Other games don't offer this, and in games that have anything similar, you usually can't do everything without cash shop resets and grinding on a different skill tree.

Where I think other games make a mistake:

(Prefix) GEAR NAME of (Suffix) + (Bonus multiplier)
Rarity
GEAR NAME
Durability
Base damage/defense
Attributes (eg cold/poison/fire/thunder) resistance/buff
Modifications (eg materia)

So you're trying to use the same weapon, and apply 5 different modifiers, while risking destroying the gear or modifications. The most aggrivating version of this I saw in both Mabinogi and in Wizardy. Both games you can destroy the gear by applying the prefix/suffix blessings/curses, and you can destroy it by the incompentent repair guy with a 90% (more like 30%) repair rate, and you can destroy it by modifications. You have less than a 2% chance of getting all these things right. Then there's dying which is another RNG.

Like I enjoy the complexity to a point, but not when RNG is involved. FFXIV removes this complexity down to a single thing, the materia. For all intents a NQ is +0 and a HQ is +1 in terms of other games descriptions, and the blue/green/pink gear rarity is completely meaningless.

What I'd like is that gear meant for one objective (eg MSQ, PvP, Raiding) have it's own horizontal progression bonus that otherwise is not relevant to the other gear. So PvP and Raider gear is different, they're both ilevel 375, but the raider gear would be better for raiding, hence why it's rewarded from raiding, where as PvP gear is better for PvP and is rewarded from PvP. If you go back and play MSQ content with any of those gear's, it's still ilevel 375 gear, just it's bonus may not have any practical use in the MSQ content.

Let's say for example, that you can apply a PvP buff prefix, and a raider buff suffix to the gear, any gear. This buff is permanent much like materia, but it's only active in that content. That gives the player an incentive to play that content on their main to acquire the gear most relevant to playing that content, while not hobbling them in any other content. Especially since MSQ content is relatively easier from the overgeared ilevel alone.

The existing system actually can support this by having a "prefix" and "suffix" materia slot that applies a permanent buff or debuff. The buff's don't necessarily make the fight easier (the buff might just be cosmetic sparkles and rainbows) but you could have things like float permanently applied to nullify one mechanic that otherwise is a KO.

Switching gear between mechanics should expressly not be a thing.

[KaldeaSahaline]

At this point you could just create a rune system for skills like D3 instead of relying on materias. That said while I would agree that materias could be better, this doesn't really adds to gear variety. Unless we start making materias slots color based and more complex. More like FF7 perhaps at that point some pieces of gear could have some more interesting effects. Maybe like linked materias slots where by taking your examples you could link avenger's shield, heavy shield and shield lob together.

Why would I want to use a rune system like D3 when Materia is literally the same system within context of the source material and a prime candidate for rework.

It does add to gear variety (or at the very least a degree of horizontal progression). I did indicate that different pieces of gear would have differing number of sockets and colors, and while I didn't spell out the concept of linking, the idea was inferred from my concept. I.e. that you could socket x number of Red Materia that empower the same ability.

Regarding interesting effects on gear, my design doc posited a system much like D3's Kanai Cube in that you would convert gear as an alternative way into Materia to equip effects and you'd be limited to x number based on your equipped gear. I really liked the concept, but I wasn't able to identify an implementation I liked.

So called "horizontal" progression doesn't get rid of that, because it wouldn't be progression at all otherwise. All it does is to take the generic "combat" progression line and feathers it into multiple sub-purposes that each progress "vertically" individually.

Speaking strictly personally this is also how I define horizontal progression. Multiple systems of power accrual, rather than a singular.

Ideally I would have liked to have seen Materia as a robust progression system.

I would have also liked to have seen Chocobo's be another, but that ship has sailed.

Assuming that flying didn't exist, the idea was that as you level your Chocobo he gains new abilities (like now), but these abilities are actual useful things in the outside world. The ability for your Chocobo to sprint, glide, slide, climb, etc. These improvements would later allow you to explore areas in the maps you couldn't before (think like WoW treasure hunting). This would be in addition to the combat abilities your 'Bo would learn.

[Remedi]

Why would I want to use a rune system like D3 when Materia is literally the same system within context of the source material and a prime candidate for rework.

It does add to gear variety (or at the very least a degree of horizontal progression). I did indicate that different pieces of gear would have differing number of sockets and colors, and while I didn't spell out the concept of linking, the idea was inferred from my concept. I.e. that you could socket x number of Red Materia that empower the same ability.

Regarding interesting effects on gear, my design doc posited a system much like D3's Kanai Cube in that you would convert gear as an alternative way into Materia to equip effects and you'd be limited to x number based on your equipped gear. I really liked the concept, but I wasn't able to identify an implementation I liked.

I don't know why you would, but the idea is essentially that, tough I did admit you could go with a ff7 system


That said there still remains the elephant in the room of jobs beign so static that you need to remake them one way or another.

Frankly as said the problem with horizzontal progress doesn't lies only in the gear but in about everything in the game.
As such I think they might just need to remake the game so that horizzontal gearing works and MORE importantly they should change their vision of the game, like 24 man are essentially catch up, dungeons catch up and so on. Not to mention that gear is useless outside of raiding since there's plenty of zones in the game where your gear means nothing