More Horizontal Progression please

[Reih]

I would love more horizontal progression, specially since the stuff we can get is limited by an imposed cap rather than a "natural" progression (weekly cap). Giving players more to do than just the same stuff, like roulette or raid until you can't get a reward from it. You know you have to do 450 tomes of the top tier tomes + the current raids or primal. That's it.

FFXI has situational gear that can be swapped on the fly (i.e. gear to enhance an ability, PDT, Acc, TP, etc.). So horizontal stuff made sense. In FF14 that aspect is hardly touched. You have the latest raid gear, the average tomes gear, and the materia upgraded gear. This gear is getting pushed away by the next iLv increase. So you get a very repetitive task.

The challenge the dev team has with 14 and horizontal progression is to make new rewards attractive. It doesn't have to copy FF11 at all. It just has to make sense for a player to get that kind of reward so that it can be used across the game.

[Akiza]

WoW failed becasue of the raid or die and they litterly gave gear away just for logging in not level cap raises. Horizontal Progression main challenge is the gridiness of it and if you don't have a specific piece of gear gtfo.

[midnitdragoon]

Interesting to see all these points rise from previous games such as 11 and everquest.

In the past people were quick to say "Ohh rose tinted glasses" or "Nostalgia, watch out!".

To see these ideas resonate more and more these days tells you something not just about the gamer, but the game itself. This simply can't be ignored.

With ilvl going up and new gear with the new content it really pushes aside most of the earlier stuff. I feel like their pushing the ilvl way too quick here.

SE must be aware of the current situation and who knows... Maybe they already have something planned for the future to address these issues.. We just have to wait and see.

[CosmicKirby]

Snip

That fact that more people are becoming or still are nostalgic for old MMO mechanics doesn't really prove anything. Very, very rarely, does anyone that asks for a "return to form" for older MMOs, goes into great detail about it. It's normally a very highlight reel-esque view of the game that doesn't really show why the systems would be fun/rewarding, or have a very dismissive look at the flaws in those systems.
From personal experience, my enjoyment of MMOs has only gone up the longer I've played them in my 15 something years. There's certainly a magic feeling to the MMOs or yore, but looking back on the objective structure and design of their systems, I don't find anything that was substantially better than current options.

Rose-tinted Goggles. Your nostalgia is probably making the old systems seem better than they actually were.

[Iromi]

I really hope this thread gets a dev response, or at least acknowledged in some way or form. I remember reading in previous interviews and such how they were going to put horizontal progression into the game...hm so far it is still a copy/paste of 2.0.

[Hyrist]

Sorry, but this lip servicing towards Horizontal content is just that, lip servicing. It's not tenable for the majority of existing models.

Here's the problem. Vocal players say one thing, but the majority players trend towards another. The mouth does not know what the brain really wants or the body really needs. I'm all for more content options, but Horizontal progression does not keep well. FFXI had a very narrow interest base because of all the flaws that inherently come with horizontal progression. It hat a worse community because 'choice' was an illusion. Ignoring content could often leave you just as behind in the min-max game as Vertical progression, and force you to do the same content for much, much longer just try try to keep up with the inevitable power creep anyways.

So no, people can speak for themselves, but when they try to speak for the majority on this one, they're talking out their hind ends. Sorry, but the raw numbers win this one. This design was set in stone from the start.

[Reih]

...

Where are the numbers to show your point of view?

[Stormrider]

Oh god do people not remember wearing level 24 and level 7 gear at level 75 because institutionally best in slot. Let us not forget the Red Mage gear bloat you could almost have a different set of gear for every spell you cast. Three neck pieces, at least 4 rings, one staff for every element, gear with plus enhancing for every slot gear with plus healing for every slot gear for plus enfeebling for every slot. That doesn't even include gear for fooling around like extra vit and shields when you wanted to fake tank or another set of gear that buffs weaponskills.


You know where there is horizontal progression, level synced areas. If you look through the different sets you get, they generally will have a slightly different secondary stat. Since all pvp is level synced way below people take advantage of this to best in slot for there play style. You can get healers with every piece spell speed or crit. Same stuff with dps classes. Because they force us to play at a lower ilevel and so many gear sets above it allows some mix and matching. Still no gear change though so you don't have to build complete situational sets.

[Hyrist]

Keep in mind that the horizontal progression is also in expending your available jobs to complete the content in and gearing those to the same level as your main - though grindy it is quite involving and adds a different element of gameplay to each new iteration.

[Akiza]

Horizontal Progreesion would only work if they weren't going to rasie level cap for a while otherwise it'll be a massive waist of time.