Poll: Gear progression, horizontal or vertical?

[Gralna]

Horizontal, i prefer my gear to last a long time, and to have a lot of options.

[NovaLevossida]

Horizontal or hybrid. There's really no thought involved in choosing gear in this game, and thanks to lack of swapping pieces in combat, you can't have situationally useful gear either like you could in FFXI.

[Aeyis]

Definately horizontal. It means you have more choices in building your character, and thats ultimately one of the core aspects of the rpg genre.

Unfortunately, you can too far in the opposite direction, as WoW showed us in the past.
Lots of occasions there where a set bonus on a lower tier of gear made the higher level gear worthless.

A nice balance could be struck, but getting that balance right is incredibly hard, as the theorycrafters will always math out which bonus is superior to ilvl gains and then that becomes the only piece of gear people want.

Prefered playstyle will always effect things tho. For example in wow you could see fire, frost and arcane mages at the same time, even tho perhaps one spec did way more damage then the other 2.

[Sylve]

Prefered playstyle will always effect things tho. For example in wow you could see fire, frost and arcane mages at the same time, even tho perhaps one spec did way more damage then the other 2.

Personal preference is irrelevant to the raiding communities.
Seen any MRDs taking DPS slots in Coil runs?

Also, for the longest time, the only viable raiding spec for Mages was Arcane. Frost was the only viable PvP spec and Fire Mages were laughed at and scorned in ALL content.
Hell, even back in Burning Crusade, you NEVER saw an Arms Warrior outside of PvP, it was Fury or Protection or you got kicked.

If you want to use a Tier 2 set because you 'like' the bonuses over a Tier 3 set with mathematically superior bonuses, you will never see endgame content in your hypothetical scenario. Barring of course your own personal static where everyone involved is more concerned with playing their own way than winning in the most efficient way, like PuGs tend to do.

[Dhex]

Personal preference is irrelevant to the raiding communities.
Seen any MRDs taking DPS slots in Coil runs?

https://youtu.be/LtE-jJDSG8E
Pesky MRDs.

[Sapphic]

https://youtu.be/LtE-jJDSG8E
Pesky MRDs.

Pretty safe Sylve meant cutting edge, not outdated echod content ^_^

[Renik]

Hybrid over horizontal, i really hate the vertical system, and player laziness should not be an excuse to have an oversimplified vertical system.

[Sapphic]

Id vote for Vertical progression on gear and horizontel progression on the character. Rather than Horizontel progression on the gear.

Unfortunately, you can too far in the opposite direction, as WoW showed us in the past.
Lots of occasions there where a set bonus on a lower tier of gear made the higher level gear worthless.

A nice balance could be struck, but getting that balance right is incredibly hard, as the theorycrafters will always math out which bonus is superior to ilvl gains and then that becomes the only piece of gear people want.

This, is exactly how it went in FFXI also, albeit you had to take a lesser piece due to terrible drop rates on some things. Aby helped with weaknesses which boosted possibility of getting your item.

Not to mention with a linear vertical progression it needs less content to hold the gear, whereas horizontel progression would require numerous places to place this content, FFXI did it by adding recoloured mobs, calling them NMs and putting a extremely low drop rate on them to prolong the validity of said content, or with currencies (OMG! the currencies! WAY too many XD) and putting them at a price that you had to repeat the one piece of content over and over and over. Not to mention these pieces of content where, in majority of the cases, much much smaller than the content we get every 3 months with FFXIV giving us new scenary every update to explore and pillage. Or they were the exact same maps with modified mobs in them.

[NadienKirisame]

Vertical progression is better... Though I love the argument that horizontal give you more choices. You mean the illusion of choice... because sure you may have 5 or 6 different chest pieces you could use but if you not using this one right here well your wrong!

Vertical sure there may not be many choices however you tend to not need to what to use because it is almost always the highest ilvl gear. I say almost because of how some games like WoW would put really good set bonuses on gear that even when they became outdated the set bonus still made it best to use for the most part.

Though you humans do love your illusions don't you...

The cat is bemused =-.-=

[Aeyis]

Vertical progression is better... Though I love the argument that horizontal give you more choices. You mean the illusion of choice... because sure you may have 5 or 6 different chest pieces you could use but if you not using this one right here well your wrong!

Vertical sure there may not be many choices however you tend to not need to what to use because it is almost always the highest ilvl gear. I say almost because of how some games like WoW would put really good set bonuses on gear that even when they became outdated the set bonus still made it best to use for the most part.

Though you humans do love your illusions don't you...

The cat is bemused =-.-=

Take Ragnarok online: You could use about a dozen ''best'' items for each slot (specifically cards), several different builds for each class (that could play radically different).

How is that a mere illusion of choice?

Incidentally, in true horizontal progression you can make up your own mind to follow the ''meta'', or popular opinion on whats best.

Personal preference is irrelevant to the raiding communities.

I mentioned that example as a raid example. I often used less then ''best dps'' specs in a raiding enviroment in wow, including the (then) current hardest content.
Typically speaking nearly all specs were ''viable'' (well, from tbc and onwards, anyway), meaning you could perform well enough to take down the encounter with any spec.

I dunno, perhaps its because I feel that how well you play is foremost down to you as a player, rather then your ''build's limitations.

Seen any MRDs taking DPS slots in Coil runs?

Also, for the longest time, the only viable raiding spec for Mages was Arcane. Frost was the only viable PvP spec and Fire Mages were laughed at and scorned in ALL content.

When was that exactly? Im not sure when you started playing WoW, but Arcane, Frost and Fire all had very long periods of being on top. Ive played frost and arcane when they were considered the underdog.
Noone laughed at my dps tho.

Hell, even back in Burning Crusade, you NEVER saw an Arms Warrior outside of PvP, it was Fury or Protection or you got kicked.

Ive played a 2H enhancement shaman in early tbc (ssc specifically) and made it work (ie: viable dps). The problem is not with the stats, its with peoples attitudes.

A good of example of that would be when I rolled dual enhancement and elemental at different periods in TBC, and people were horrified. That is, untill they saw that they actually dealt really good damage.

If you want to use a Tier 2 set because you 'like' the bonuses over a Tier 3 set with mathematically superior bonuses, you will never see endgame content in your hypothetical scenario. Barring of course your own personal static where everyone involved is more concerned with playing their own way than winning in the most efficient way, like PuGs tend to do.

If you need math to win encounters for you, instead of skill; then I will agree with you that going ''the best'' is the only real thing to do.


According to your logic, people must absolutely hate and avoid making mistakes in a raid, since being anything but the ''the best'' is such a big deal. In reality however, even the best players will rarely play perfectly. (but down encounters anyway)
Which I think shows that ''the best'' isnt such as must have as is often believed.