Poll: Gear progression, horizontal or vertical?

[Dhex]

I would prefer more meaningful growth.

What's the difference between i60 and i130?

Bigger numbers.

[Garlyle]

Horizontal sounds great, but aside from balancing concerns... It's also an inventory and farming nightmare in games with a single class; nevermind a game where we can be every single battle, crafting, and gathering class, and each can have their own relevant equipment.

[Vrankyl]

Vertical. Let's face it as others have said there is always a bis. Look at both SCH and SMN spell speed is trash for both right now and while spell speed will be a consideration for SMN in the future crit and det will remain king for SCH to get the big barriers there for it would rule out almost any piece that does not have it. No matter what system there will always be bis.

[Gralna]

Vertical. Let's face it as others have said there is always a bis. Look at both SCH and SMN spell speed is trash for both right now and while spell speed will be a consideration for SMN in the future crit and det will remain king for SCH to get the big barriers there for it would rule out almost any piece that does not have it. No matter what system there will always be bis.

As long as special effects to horizontal gear aren't op'd, you can avoid the whole BiS argument, DAoC did a great job of keeping gear balanced, even after 5 expansions. You basically had to use a template calculators for endgame builds (due to all the stat bonuses, stat caps, etc) which were usually around one or two pieces of gear that you really wanted to use. While people may have argued over semantics of some builds being better than others, general consensus was that as long as your build had max stat bonuses, the special effects of gear was basically superfluous and more down to player preference.

[Genz]

The question is wrong. It should be : stats on gear (horizontal progression implied) or no stats on gear at all?

[Caraway]

Horizontal with meaningful options.

I, for one, don't give two gil for what other players consider the best or flavour of the month. As long as I can complete content and have fun that's all that matters.

Edit: Adding this because I didn't see the posts above when I hit reply to this thread.

Jeez you people are silly. What's it matter if a spec is marginally better than another one when they both get the job done? Believe me, none of you arm-chair theorists are going to see any noticable difference between theoretical maximums (and neither am I). Who do you think you all are? Bluegartr?

I loathe this "illusion of choice/best or nothing at all" mentality. If it works, it works; stop belittling other people over how they decide to have fun playing the game.

[Garlyle]

Horizontal with meaningful options.

I, for one, don't give two gil for what other players consider the best or flavour of the month. As long as I can complete content and have fun that's all that matters.

That's kind of where it gets tricky. The more 'horizontal' choices there are, the wider the gap between "choosing right" and "choosing wrong" gets. Suppose based on what gear set you're wearing, build A's maximum potential is only half that of build B. When designing content, where do designers set the bar? Do they set it for the lowest denominator so everyone can clear? Because that's fantastic, except that people who went with B are basically not even having to try while A are having to work their ass off. To create a challenge relevant to those players' capabilities, those who went with A have to be excluded.

And when you're in a build that's going to struggle to clear something others can do effortlessly... you're not clearing content, and you're not going to be having fun doing it either, because playing with other people comes with the fact that your choice of inefficiency is weighing them down. The existance of that horizontal progression either hinders your personal enjoyment or the quality of the content (and, in turn, your personal enjoyment)

And while it's a pretty extreme sounding example, the reality is that the more options there are, the wider those gaps become. The more variables in practice, the worse that gap becomes. When you specify horizontal with meaningful options, these are the kinds of gaps in capability that have to be created for it to actually feel meaningful.

Sandbox is amazing in its own right. I've enjoyed it plenty. But I've also seen it really suck because I am one of those players who will do crazy off the wall builds. I've been there, I've done that. XIV already has sufficient meaningful choice to me in playstyle through the hard locks of the classes, which are freely available, I can work to gear up and progress all of them, I can get stuff that's relevant to them while in other 'styles', and it's a small enough set of variables that even when content has 'ideals', the remaining options are still able to be tightly tuned enough to be reasonable.

[Caraway]

Gods damnit... Lost my post when editing.

Anywho, gist of it was that the 'gap' between best and worst builds is a bit of a poor arguement. The Secret World is a good example of why that is, as even the 'worst' build is relevant in content that is still challenging for the best specs. It's a matter of how wide your endmarks are and any developer worth their salt is going to make sure the floor is not too low.

The only game I've played in recent memory where your build decisions can actually halt your progression has been Path of Exile and that's designed purpose built to be for a niche hardcore crowd. And even then, with enough patience and gear you can take something that shouldn't be viable and turn it into a map running success.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

I say vertical just because of what happened with Steps of Faith. If people dont get a reward they won't do the content more than once, or at all. The only way horizontal would work IMO is if the drop rates were drastically reduced like in pre-abyssea ffxi. And we all know that wouldn't fly here.

EDIT: also I'm against any big changes for ffxiv, maybe some small additions but the game works well the way it is. I think overhauling it would be a huge mistake.

[Kuurei]

TBH, this is why Yoshi has the wrong idea about crafting. We need MORE stuff like Wootz/Kirimu that reward the hard-working DoH as well as the DoW/DoM for their efforts. 3~5 materia slots allows for a lot more customization thus we can make gear how WE want it without interfering too much with the actual gear curve (Wasn't there someone around here who had a different Wootz set for every element?). Maybe even allow DoH a "commision" system of some sort where they ask DoW/DoM to get mats for them and receive a money/alt currency/exp reward from the adventurer's guild as compensation.