Poll: Gear progression, horizontal or vertical?

[Reinha]

If they added horizontal progression to XIV I would rather have it entirely seperate from gear and make it into advanced skill trees where your choices and customization might actually matter.

I think a talent/attribute tree would be nice to have. This way raiding will stay just as accessible but you get extra customization. The talent tree should probably have no actual abilities to avoid getting too many of them, but instead bonus percentages to stats, procs, elemental attributes, regen and boosts to existing class abilities. The "tree" could be an extension of our current attribute point system: after spending some points during leveling on the low branches you could choose from new kind of bonuses at max level. The resetting of the tree could be done by a craftable item, for example a potion.

This kind of play style customization would probably please a lot more people than horizontal gear progression since no one has to start grinding extra gear sets.

[Aeyis]

This kind of play style customization would probably please a lot more people than horizontal gear progression since no one has to start grinding extra gear sets.

Extra gear sets has little to do with horizontal gear progression.

[Reinha]

Extra gear sets has little to do with horizontal gear progression.

Horizontal = multiple different kinds of gear sets with the same stat budget are available to player. They all have to have a use in some situation, otherwise you are not "progressing" your character when you gain those pieces and it simply becomes vertical progression (where everyone gets the most powerful set). The post following yours has a good example for tank sets, but I disagree with the conclusion that farming wouldn't be necessary (for non-casuals). 1st set can withstand the most damage so it's BiS on a boss that hits hard and drains healers, and 3rd can do the most damage so it's BiS on dps check bosses. You can't say they are equal in value in all content, when (for tank perspective) there is
1) speed running farm content
2) content that you can solo tank
3) hard hitting bosses that push you and healers to your limit
4) difficult dps checks that require maximum output from everyone.

People doing serious content are going to be so skilled that main difference between a wipe and a kill is not how they push their buttons. It's what they are wearing and the RNG in player and boss abilities. They are going to have to wear the best possible gear for each fight because the fights will be tuned with different sets in mind. If they weren't tuned that way, they would be too easy for people bringing the correct sets for each fight. And if the fight was equally difficult with any gear, the whole "horizontal progression" would be an illusion.

Gear doesn't change the core of our rotation so the "play-style" argument kind of baffles me. If you are going to hang on to the same gear set for play-style purposes, that's not progression either. It's just specializing your character to do one thing and progressing vertically when expansions hit. That's what classes are for tbh. Paladin for super tankyness, warrior for tanking with some dps, dragoon for dps and some emergency tanking and monk/ninja for pure dps.