Thread: Gear Progression after 2.2

Originally Posted by Skyhound

I never understood this complaint. Aren't ALL RPGs built upon vertical progression?

Pre-Abyssea FFXI was a MMORPG with horizontal gear progression (in addition to vertical progression). New content added new gear which was wanted for alternative sets and to replace old pieces but new endgame didn't make old irrelevant: new content meant more things to do instead of ending doing content A and moving on to content B. The system worked mostly because 1. all important gear took ages to get and 2. all classes needed several gear sets because of gearswap system.

Originally Posted by Taika

Pre-Abyssea FFXI was a MMORPG with horizontal gear progression (in addition to vertical progression). New content added new gear which was wanted for alternative sets and to replace old pieces but new endgame didn't make old irrelevant: new content meant more things to do instead of ending doing content A and moving on to content B. The system worked mostly because 1. all important gear took ages to get and 2. all classes needed several gear sets because of gearswap system.

Horizontal progression was an unhappy accident of gear swapping.

You min/maxed and created a gear set for each and nearly every ability. The content lent itself to this style of play initially and eventually content development centered around it. If you had to wear a single set of gear for the duration of an engagement much of FFXI's "content" would have been nullified to "which build is best now?" - it contributed to several of the games more annoying and obvious issues. Primarily the lack of inventory space - especially as the player base established 8+ BiS sets for X actions on Y class, and there were 23 classes.

It was still a constant gear grind that never truly ended - just old things were kept unnecessarily relevant because of a developer oversight - haw. People just don't like the idea of throwing away old stuff in FFXIV - even though its a natural enough habit in human society; example -> Cellphones, Vehicles, Computers, Gaming Systems, and other technology. We upgrade - new stuff comes out, and we move on.

You rapidly couldn't play once you were established at endgame with multiple Jobs without spending a majority of your time muling, sorting, and shuffling gear around - unless you deigned to play only one or two Jobs.

Abyssea threw all of this out the window. After years of gather all that gear much of it was simply worthless. Which I think put the final nail in the coffin for a lot of players.

If the developers are smart they can have vertical gear progression without old content becoming irrelephant.

Future content just needs to be more like CoP/ToAU endgame gear; rather than doing content for a piece of gear, you do content to get several drops, to eventually get the gear. That is what I think the game needs more of... Limbus and Salvage were great. Arguably content is already like that, but it's far too simplified; For Limbus you did several zones to finally challenge a boss, for Coil you do Turns 1~4 to finally challenge Turn 5. For Salvage you did several zones for drops which you trade for armor, for Tomestones you do several dungeons for Tomestones to trade for gear. Difference is, Limbus let you challenge zones in pretty much any order, and the zones themselves were much better than Coil 1~4. For Salvage, you had to do this zone for this drop, then that zone, and so on, then you take all those drops to get the gear. For Philosophy/Mythology you just spam whichever zone is easiest to farm tomestones and trade them for gear.

Guess that goes against the theme park mentality though, who'd want to jump through engaging hoops when they can just wait in line? Sigh...

Main thing I think they should do with the upcoming Allagan Tomestones of Newness is have them turned in for an upgrade item (like the Relic Zenith item). Trade that to a NPC with a piece of Mythology gear gives you Newness gear, if they're really smart they throw a mini-quest ontop of that, rather than just "Trade to Furnace"... Either way, if provides a reason to obtain the old gear, even though new gear is available.

e-peen shrinks with age but fear not! there's a patch for it! in just a matter of weeks after using the patch, your e-peen will be back to the size you once enjoyed. [cue: lala spinning in circles in Old Gridinia's Amphitheater and female miqo running through the Costa De Sol tides]

DISCLAIMER: effects of patch are merely temporary and may cause qq-ing of community or once a week play. before playing post patch, please consult your perception of MMOs and games, generally. do not play post patch if you suffer from a financial condition and do not want to pay $15/month for "limited" content. talk to the DEV team for effects lasting more than 4 months.