Horizontal progression? In MY theme park?!

[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