Poll: Gear progression, horizontal or vertical?

[Nektulos-Tuor]

^ Which as will lead to swapping out in different situations.

Why? I can just play with a character for example who had full healing gear and I can stay in my tank dps gear and do the same fight fine. Or he can go half heal half damage for example and I can go full tank.

If you go too much in one, enrage timers will get you. If you do too much on the other you might not survive. You have to balance out what your play-styles are. There IS no best set.



Its all playstyles. Its all what and whom your playing with. Its all about the group.

If your group leans too much in one direction you will have a hard time. However your right, some times one direction for one character might be better, or it might be worse. Or it could be what "you think" is better and someone else might come along and prove another way is better.

[SDaemon]

Why? I can just play with a character for example who had full healing gear and I can stay in my tank dps gear and do the same fight fine. Or he can go half heal half damage for example and I can go full tank.

If you go too much in one, enrage timers will get you. If you do too much on the other you might not survive. You have to balance out what your play-styles are. There IS no best set.

But there will be best gear-sets for an encounter. You may choose not to wear it, but that doesn't mean it won't exist.

EDIT: I already responded to your diagram on the last page, you don't need to re-post it. -_____-

[Aeyis]

But saying it won't bloat inventories because people won't be carrying all the different pieces needs to counter an encounter is pretty much denial at its best.

Denial? How so? Your the only one presuming to speak for everyone here. Some people will carry a lot of equipment pieces thats true. But not everyone. Some but will switch equipment pieces around a lot, but not everyone.


The only time when inventory bloat is a given is when equipment is required. For example my main hand section of the armory is always bloated because its a hard requirement to have a main hand weapon/tool in order to activate a class.

What you are talking about would be having your inventory filled with for example 10 weapons of the same type, but with different stats. And that is not a requirement, but a choice.

[SDaemon]

Denial? How so? Your the only one presuming to speak for everyone here. Some people will carry a lot of equipment pieces thats true. But not everyone. Some but will switch equipment pieces around a lot, but not everyone.


The only time when inventory bloat is a given is when equipment is required. For example my main hand section of the armory is always bloated because its a hard requirement to have a main hand weapon/tool in order to activate a class.

What you are talking about would be having your inventory filled with for example 10 weapons of the same type, but with different stats. And that is not a requirement, but a choice.

I'm not speaking for everyone, but thanks for the insinuation Not everyone hordes gear for glamour, everyone likely won't for this. But to say that no-one will and that it won't bloat any inventories. That is denial.

Whether it is a choice or not (which is a separate debate), doesn't mean inventory bloat won't happen, because this gear progression will encourage it. Just as the glamour system has.

[Xatsh]

You need a mixed.

Horizontal focus with a very slow phase out of gear.

The problem is the core design of ffxiv forces you to only have a strait vertical progression.

At this point the problem is too far gone for SE to fix. They would have to revamp the whole battle system (stat wise) and redo almost all the gear in the game. We are destined to live with a pure vertical progression model. Where every peice of gear is 100% the same as the peice before it except for looks.

There is no difference between an Ilvl 200 and a Ilvl 70 peice in FFXIV. They just scale up how hard the boss hits and how much hp it has to make you have a higher Ilvl. But honestly every single peice of gear if the same. Welcome to Boring gear, welcome to vertical progression. XI had the best gear model in the genre by a large shot, yea classes were not balanced at all but that is a different issue. Even the gear even in FFXIV 1.0 was a hell of a lot better designed stat wise then it is now.

[Sylkis]

But there will be best gear-sets for an encounter. You may choose not to wear it, but that doesn't mean it won't exist

No, I agree that there isn't a best set because it depends on your skill, familiarity and style. If you are a DPS and all damage in the fight is avoidable, you would say BiS is full DPS but what if that meant one mistake and you're dead? e.g you can choose between having 1hp and 1000dps , 4000hp and 800dps or 7000hp and 500dps. BiS is 1hp 1000dps because you shouldn't get hit, does that mean you won't?

Same reason why DPS and healers (and even tanks before switching to str) can use VIT gear when starting off to allow for more mistakes

You should select the gear based on yourself as a player i.e. the gear caters to different playstyles which you find in a horizontal system

[Gilthas]

XI had the best gear model in the genre by a large shot, yea classes were not balanced at all but that is a different issue.

Only if you loved carrying a crap load of gear with you and getting upgrades once a year if you're lucky.

Whatever interesting stats the gear in FFXI had did not make up for all the problems that it caused.

No, I agree that there isn't a best set because it depends on your skill, familiarity and style.

That doesn't meant that there isn't a best set, it just means that you're not skilled enough to use the best set at its full potential.

[Sapphic]

In an ideal world, HORIZONTAL.

But given the WoW influence and compromises, I think HYBRID (some Horizontal Gear Sets (same iLevel) w/ Unique Stats spread across 2 patches), and then item Level Increase) is fine. Example of Hybrid:

Instead of the current:

* Patch 1: i90
* Patch 3: i110
* Patch 5: i130

Hybrid would be:

* Patch 1: i90 (2 Sets of Gear)
* Patch 3: i90 (Alternate Set of Gear w/ Unique Stats)
* Patch 5: i110 (2 Sets of Gear)
* Patch 7: i110 (Alternate Set of Gear w/ Unique Stats)


It at least slows down the Gear / Stat Inflation in this game, and gives SOME feeling of your gear meaning something for a period of time.

Patch 1. ilvl 90 Tomestone gear and Blinding coil.
Patch 3: Vertical progression otherwise there is no reason to do the content with the gear.

I'll stop there as 5 and 7 are just a repeat.

So Patch 1 we already had at launch and has been like that every other patch when we got new tomestones Second part, if the gear is needed to progress in the content it is put in, it's already Vertical progression as you are increasing effectiveness. If it's not needed, then whats the point of running the content more than once? If the unique stat gear is needed for the following content for progression, it is still vertical progression.

We update our gear once every 6 months. That is only twice a year. Which is exactly the same as the "idea" you put forward.

How long do you expect gear to last before replacing? 1 year, 2 years? 10 years? a 6 month turn around is perfectly acceptable.

[Instrumentality]

No, he's correct. If you ''need'' to swap equipment to fit the situation then its not longer horizontal since you dont actually have a choice in what to equip. Your example of elemental weapons is a good example of that.

There will always be one objectively correct set of items to wear for every single situation in a game whether or not it has vertical or horizontal progression.

So you could never have "real" horizontal progression or whatever the argument is.

[Garin]

There will always be one objectively correct set of items to wear for every single situation in a game whether or not it has vertical or horizontal progression.

So you could never have "real" horizontal progression or whatever the argument is.

Too many people are way too attached to an older game, stuck in a previous generation.