Quote Originally Posted by Lyrinn View Post
One other thing most "horizontal progression" advocates fail to consider is that in a numbers game, there will always be a best choice. Always. Period. You can have all the choices you want but one will always be mathematically proven to be superior (even if it's by a trivial amount) to the others, hence "cookie-cutter builds." The best you can hope for is to have different playstyles (e.g. crit vs. SS) reach that same maximum but there's only so far you can go with that.
BiS arguers also seem to forget that majority of players dont even have BiS right now and the PF is still running. It's something to work towards for most people and I have never seen any PF insisting everyone having a HA weapon to beat any trial/coil to join so yeah, that argument isn't gonna convince me. Sure, BiS will always exist and if that horizontal BiS is somehow hard to attain, there will be other builds to settle for while working towards that set, which is kinda the point (unless SE went full stupid yet again like with what they did for hunts). It can even still work if paired with vertical progression. Example: implement a good skill mod ring for blms on ifrit ex at i90, allow the ilvl to be upgraded with drops from harder ilvl fire element bosses up to a certain point until some other type of skill mod bis turns up. This way some players would want to go back to older content to get their starting desired gear.

Inventory wise, I'm a multi class player and all my combat class is i90+ and I don't care. I'll make it work (and SE should help too with armory expansion and categorization). Honestly I don't see how the "simply throw away old gear that you played hard for to make space for some tome gear with higher ilvl that just got introduced" is any better of a mindset.