I had three gear sets for PLD in 1.0; An Enmity set, an HP set, and a high DEF set for beastmen camps. All were useful for different situations. That's what I want. Choice. Variety. Builds. Fun.
And what happens when you have multiple classes at max lvl? Now you need multiple sets for each class, again very few players like that when having a choice on how to gear. Having varying stats on gear takes some thought and theorycrafting on which is actually better. Having multiple sets that are entirely situational makes you go "I want this and this and this for each slot, I may not entirely know which is better in each situation but wtf the text says they do this and this in these situations", and that's when you find out after collecting all those different sets "hey this isn't a noticeable difference at all and there's really only a single set that is better than all the rest in every situation".
That's how Guild Wars does it and it's terrible design. They have 15 or so different stat combination on gear that gives you the impression that each is for various situations, until every single dps figured out "hey berserker gear is the only really good stat combination because I like to do higher numbers even though I may die fast aslong as I can kill the thing faster". There is no choice in gear, any solo or small group content in that game pigeonholds you into a single stat combination if you want to be successful, anything other than that and you are gimping your group and yourself.
Last edited by Pellegri; 10-14-2013 at 01:13 PM.
I'd rather have a WoW gear system (ilvl gearing) than what FFXI had. I couldn't stand people talking **** cause you aren't using certain gear or changing gears when I played FFXI.
Agree with the op, gear chasing gets tiring fast, and is inane.. but hey WoW did it so its great right.....nope Guildwars 1 had the the best setup, no mmo has beaten it not even Guildwars 2..
Sadly these treadmill games aren't worth bothering with these days i guess.
Item level flat out destroyed FFXI, removing any reason to do years of old content. The game's a ghost town now. I hope it's handled better here -- can't really tell at this point, since they haven't released a new tier of equipment yet.
Ilvl has nothing to do with horizontal progression, for it or against it, the type of game SE is making actually requires it. Horizontal progression only worked in 11 because you had gear swaps and literally hundreds of BIS (best in slot) gear for each job depending on mob/weapon type/mob type/ws/weather, this game has none of that and none of the options, the pool of BIS gear is literally only as large as the number of items you can equip at once currently, horizontal progression only works if they can spread BIS gear between lots of events and considering you can only equip 11-13 pieces of gear at a time, they can only have so much, "current", actual relevant content will always be limited to basically what it is now, new will obviously come out, but the endgame will stay this size. Hence... Linear progression will have to stay. People literally asked for this.It's nothing but a feature that railroads itemization into a very dull linear path, and breeds a very gear elitist community as a result. It's sad when people are looked at as nothing more than a number next to their gear
Horizontal progression is a far more interesting design style than vertical progression in my opinion. Leaves room to design sidegrade equipment for people to individualize their characters, as well as blurring the line between what gear is acceptable or not for pieces of content, allowing a player's own identity and skill to shine through
Should have tried FF11, and I mean actually tried it, most think they played 11... yet didn't really touch it.And what happens when you have multiple classes at max lvl? Now you need multiple sets for each class, again very few players like that when having a choice on how to gear. Having varying stats on gear takes some thought and theorycrafting on which is actually better. Having multiple sets that are entirely situational makes you go "I want this and this and this for each slot, I may not entirely know which is better in each situation but wtf the text says they do this and this in these situations", and that's when you find out after collecting all those different sets "hey this isn't a noticeable difference at all and there's really only a single set that is better than all the rest in every situation".
That's how Guild Wars does it and it's terrible design. They have 15 or so different stat combination on gear that gives you the impression that each is for various situations, until every single dps figured out "hey berserker gear is the only really good stat combination because I like to do higher numbers even though I may die fast aslong as I can kill the thing faster". There is no choice in gear, any solo or small group content in that game pigeonholds you into a single stat combination if you want to be successful, anything other than that and you are gimping your group and yourself.
Edit: I'm referring to pre-abyssea, not now.
Having an extra set of numbers on a piece of gear didn't destroy the game. They started to push more towards a vertical gear progression, sure. And that would have worked out great for what they wanted, if they had done it a few years back. But the game is old, and the playerbase has shrunk significantly over the years. This would have happened regardless of what they chose to do or when they chose to do it.
FF11 at its peak had 680k players, when abyssea released it was still around 490k, on average only lost 3% a year. After abyssea the game started losing 20% a year, the people who played 11 knew what they liked, if they wanted WoW, they would have been playing it.Having an extra set of numbers on a piece of gear didn't destroy the game. They started to push more towards a vertical gear progression, sure. And that would have worked out great for what they wanted, if they had done it a few years back. But the game is old, and the playerbase has shrunk significantly over the years. This would have happened regardless of what they chose to do or when they chose to do it.
Source? Sorry when you start using specific numbers I start wanting to see specific evidence.
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