Item level compression in Heavensward?

[Waliel]

I just want to avoid being ilvl 200 by this time next year. Whatever they can do to alleviate that, like adding in horizontal item progress, would be very nice.

Seeing this, I remembered once asking what exactly is horizontal progress in similiar thread, but forgot about it. So I went through my history and saw I actually got an answer to it and I'll just adress it here. This is what I asked and got:

Sooo one set that you never replace? Random pieces that are good for only spesific fights? There's something about horizontal progression that I just can't wrap my head around. How does it even work?

These threads make me think that maybe Squenix should've just kept the ilvl hidden and a lot more people would be happier, I think.

It seems that FFXIV is your first mmo then, all fine friend I'm going to explain it a bit deeper then . There is an incredible amount of possibilities to make the gears armory working into an horizontal progression design like :

- adding partial and full set bonus on "named-gears" with skills/stats/jobs stats/etc,
- being able to improve your best equipements with specific enhancements (in this case it could be materia but why not something else too !),
- re-using your previous piece of gear into a specific craft as a base material to make it stronger or more specific (stats wise) into something you are aiming for,
- storyline achievement gears that are just "too good" to replace, like a ring or an earring (is Rajas Ring ring like a bell for everyone? xD),
- legendary weapons questline, no, I'm not talking about our current relic weapons , they actually missed the opportunity by making them a "catch-up weapon" before getting the last "top tier endgame weapon", it's lame, very bad design to me x.x, last coil shouldn't drop them directly, it could be mandatory to "beat the hardest boss" to improve them but nothing related to the system we have now.
- mixing endgame crafting material drops with non-tradable items in order to craft powerful equipements,
- funny armory with weird, bizzare, odd, untypical stats like enhancing your chocobo exp gain rate or your "skills" while watering your personal garden plants xD

To be honest, this is just a couple of exemples of what we could get, there is no limits to a game designer / developer creativity.
That's why the current gear treadmill is looking a bit pathetic to say the least :x, new major update : player n°9255478 will replace his full armory ilevel 110 for ilevel 130, the differences? more base stats number and that's it, see you in 3-4 months to do it again.

My first MMO was actually Earth & Beyond. I do say, however, that I never played XI.

From what I gather from that list, horizontal progression is either over powered gear or exactly the same as vertical, but crafted items instead. Is the point that most upgrades should come by somehow using old gear as base, applying some magic on it, and getting a shiny new piece of gear? How is that not vertical and making old gear obsolete when you finally get your new piece? I don't see how set bonuses or enchants have anything to do with either, as you can just apply them to both, and upgreadable Legendary weapon just screams vertical to me. Or am I just thinking too literally about the words?

Anyway, I wouldn't mind seeing crafting materials dropping from raids, though, and I don't have a problem random gear that helps with Chocobo xp and the like.

Help a cat out here, will you?