More Horizontal Progression please

[Taei]

I know this topic has come up before but I really feel like SE needs to do this or die.

SE has a lot of previous content/bosses from 2.0, the only problem is that they're lvl 50 and the game is based on vertical progression.

Why is vertical progression so important? I really don't understand the argument, maybe someone can enlighten me.

Why not just use 2.0 bosses, upgrade them to 60 with a few new mechanics and have horizontal gear progression?
It would be great to fight bosses like Diabolos/Siren just to name a few.
Esoterics should really be easy mode i200 gear to get so keep it as is.
Make these new horizontal progression content also drop i200 gear but require a bit more grind obviously. (RNG drop rate and tomes)

All SE really has to do is tie some gear to these content and people will be busy again.

Right now I don't see the game lasting for more than 2 years if it stays on course.

[Nadirah]

Because you aren't getting western players to run the same bosses for 7 years.

When they add new stuff, many, if not most of us prefer to not run the two things we just spent months running and getting bored of.

Especially when there's only so much gear variation that can exist with the current system.

The only game that ran horizontal progression for more than a couple years was FFXI. EQ2 did it a couple times, not increasing level cap. We stayed at 70 for two, and 90 for 3. Level cap went to 92 in a raid patch. 95 in the next expansion. We still didn't run the old stuff often because we were sick of it by then.

Especially with the epic weapon quests and then Epic Repucussions quest to extract the clicky buff from it. Holy hell.

[Magis]

Because you aren't getting western players to run the same bosses for 7 years.

You do know that with FFXI they didn't just stop adding bosses right? Like, there were new mobs, zones, and bosses added after Vanilla/Zilart. It's just they kept the older stuff relevant and a reason to go to. So instead of wiping your pool of content every patch, it grew and grew until there was a whole pool of bosses/zones/activities to do every day.

[Zarzak]

Because you aren't getting western players to run the same bosses for 7 years.

You do know that with FFXI they didn't just stop adding bosses right? Like, there were new mobs, zones, and bosses added after Vanilla/Zilart. It's just they kept the older stuff relevant and a reason to go to. So instead of wiping your pool of content every patch, it grew and grew until there was a whole pool of bosses/zones/activities to do every day.

Doesn't even need to be horizontal... They just need to stop leapfrogging raid content with group content EVERY SINGLE DAMN RAID PATCH.

EQ was purely vertical (aside from clickies and such) but the content was still relevant for MULTIPLE EXPANSIONS.


To translate EQ into XIV's terms...

50 = ARR group 50 gear
60 = HW group 60 gear
70 = CT1
80 = CT2
90 = CT3
100 = Alex(N)
110 = Coil 1
120 = Coil 2
130 = Coil 3
140 = Alex(S) 1


Add on a couple more expansions depending on the era. Point is even with a new EXPANSION AND LEVEL CAP. The previous expansion's raids still provided superior gear to the new expansion's group gear. What did this mean?

It meant the casual/low tier raiders could raid content they were unable to beat at 50 at level 60 bringing the new spells/stats that come along with that and STILL GAIN MEANINGFUL PROGRESSION.

EQ's raid content was kept relevant for years through this and it's group content was kept relevant through the aug/aa system.

Modern MMOs they could literally delete Coil 1-3 and CT 1-3 tomorrow and no one would notice unless they wanted vanity items. There is 0 benefit for any player even the newest fresh 50 to step foot in either of these zone series because the content is designed to make them irrelivant as soon as something new is released.

If an effect or item has a huge advantage (over 30%) in a fight against every other item. Then it is no longer a choice, thus it immediately becomes vertical. Even if it started out horizontal. Vertical Progression means there is one best choice, and there are upgrades to that best choice.

Just because the top 1% have vertical progression (due to being on the bleeding edge and being able ot get the best of everything) doesn't mean the game has to be totally designed around the idea that no character wear anything but the best currently available.

The people new to raiding should be able to go to the Coil RAID, learn the fights, beat the fights, gain gear upgrades over what a faceroll GROUP dungeon provides. Keeping content relevant isn't a bad thing.

As the content is currently designed if you aren't clearing at least Alex savage 1/2 by now you may as well not even bother trying to start raiding. By the time you get a group together and start raiding they will drop group content that gives the same gear.

[Ibi]

EQ was purely vertical (aside from clickies and such) but the content was still relevant for MULTIPLE EXPANSIONS.

50 = ARR group 50 gear
60 = HW group 60 gear
70 = CT1
80 = CT2
90 = CT3
100 = Alex(N)
110 = Coil 1
120 = Coil 2
130 = Coil 3
140 = Alex(S) 1

Add on a couple more expansions depending on the era. Point is even with a new EXPANSION AND LEVEL CAP. The previous expansion's raids still provided superior gear to the new expansion's group gear. What did this mean?

It meant the casual/low tier raiders could raid content they were unable to beat at 50 at level 60 bringing the new spells/stats that come along with that and STILL GAIN MEANINGFUL PROGRESSION.

Okay, this is much more interesting than arguing arbitrary definitions.

You said EQ was vertical progression still. Based on your chart above, does that mean that for someone who'd been raiding the 130 content before the expansion, some of the expansion content (the 60 and 100 content listed above) would be irrelevant for them even when the expansion first launched?

[Zarzak]

Okay, this is much more interesting than arguing arbitrary definitions.

You said EQ was vertical progression still. Based on your chart above, does that mean that for someone who'd been raiding the 130 content before the expansion, some of the expansion content (the 60 and 100 content listed above) would be irrelevant for them even when the expansion first launched?

As one of those people for years this is basically what expansions meant to us..

Most of the group gear was as you assume worthless to us. That does not mean that the content itself wasn't relevant to us. We spent a HUGE amount of time in the group content of a new expansion..

-Augs (materia) were almost exclusively group content. We would quickly learn the best camps for the new named that dropped the augs we wanted and seek those camps out. Any gear that dropped we would just /shout it to anyone in the zone (also guild chat for alts/friends/family) or in the case of rarer items to the general chat channel as well.

-clickies. Some items would have unique clickable spells (usually buffs) and you would farm the items just for the clicky. Keep it in your bag. (one I used for YEARS, as in it was from 7+ expansions ago, was a clicky that provided the equivalent of a weakened protect for when you didn't have a "white mage" in the group)

-AA (alternate advancement points) Each expansion EQ would add to this system (originally introduced in the 4th expansion). It was a HUGE list abilities (most passive but each expansion we would usually gain a couple new abilities). There were "general" aa (everyone got them.. run speed, food duration, passive resistances to charm, stun, etc), archetype aa (healers got passive heal bonuses, faster rez cast, stronger esuna, etc), and class aa (lower benediction cooldown for a passive example or a group benediction on a 10 minute cooldown as a active example)


So was the GEAR relevant to us? No not really. Even the 1st tier or raid gear usually only equaled the previous expansion's top tier (so the Coil 3 gear would be = to the ALex(S) 1 gear. Mostly to fill in slots you didn't manage to get or for new apps) but there was still PLENTY of reason to spend far more time there than we do on any content XIV has released.

This is a cool model. I've never played any of the EQ games so I was unaware of their progression. The only thing that scares me is that it would breed a big separation of endgame raiders and more casual players, which I think SE is trying to avoid.

Eh depends how you mean. In raid content surely. Though my point would be why does it matter if the top raiders are in ilvl 150 gear and you are still in ilvl 90 gear if you are progressing and the gear is sufficient to do anything besides the raids past the ones immediately ahead of you.

That being said it was common practice among the top guilds (usually the #1 on each server) to host open raids. We would get our content on farm quickly and be down to like 2 raid nights a week. So we would take a random day (my guild did saturday) and host an open raid for the server. We would usually play alts (or play mains to help but "roll" for our alts) and take anyone who wanted to come through the easier raids of the current expansion.

Last expansion I participated in these in there were 4 tiers of raids (standard in EQ expansion) and we would run every raid in the 1st 2 + 1 of the tier 3 raids. The only thing that was reserved for the guild (well 1st dibs if anyone wanted) was the spell stones (EQ spells later on had 3 ranks.. merchant bought, group dropped, raid dropped) we had 1st dibs on the spells if we needed them as they directly helped our raids. Any loot was open roll for anyone present and you could only win 1 piece of loot a week.


To be clear we could play mains or alts because as a guild we no longer cleared anything but the top tier when we started open raids (usually a couple months into the expansion). Most of us played alts for the fun of it. We could still carry people pretty well. Few would play mains if we wiped due to too many inexperienced/undergeared players. We never let an event go unkilled during the open raids though.

Also as I mentioned above group content is MUCH more relevant to the "hugely segregated raiders of EQ" than it is to raiders in FFXIV who are only 1 step above the groupers... I personally haven't stepped foot in group content with those "more casual players" in what 2 months? Because it provides 0 benefit to me.

[karateorangutang]

Doesn't even need to be horizontal... They just need to stop leapfrogging raid content with group content EVERY SINGLE DAMN RAID PATCH.

EQ was purely vertical (aside from clickies and such) but the content was still relevant for MULTIPLE EXPANSIONS.


To translate EQ into XIV's terms...

50 = ARR group 50 gear
60 = HW group 60 gear
70 = CT1
80 = CT2
90 = CT3
100 = Alex(N)
110 = Coil 1
120 = Coil 2
130 = Coil 3
140 = Alex(S) 1


Add on a couple more expansions depending on the era. Point is even with a new EXPANSION AND LEVEL CAP. The previous expansion's raids still provided superior gear to the new expansion's group gear. What did this mean?

It meant the casual/low tier raiders could raid content they were unable to beat at 50 at level 60 bringing the new spells/stats that come along with that and STILL GAIN MEANINGFUL PROGRESSION.

EQ's raid content was kept relevant for years through this and it's group content was kept relevant through the aug/aa system.

Modern MMOs they could literally delete Coil 1-3 and CT 1-3 tomorrow and no one would notice unless they wanted vanity items. There is 0 benefit for any player even the newest fresh 50 to step foot in either of these zone series because the content is designed to make them irrelivant as soon as something new is released.



Just because the top 1% have vertical progression (due to being on the bleeding edge and being able ot get the best of everything) doesn't mean the game has to be totally designed around the idea that no character wear anything but the best currently available.

The people new to raiding should be able to go to the Coil RAID, learn the fights, beat the fights, gain gear upgrades over what a faceroll GROUP dungeon provides. Keeping content relevant isn't a bad thing.

As the content is currently designed if you aren't clearing at least Alex savage 1/2 by now you may as well not even bother trying to start raiding. By the time you get a group together and start raiding they will drop group content that gives the same gear.

This is a cool model. I've never played any of the EQ games so I was unaware of their progression. The only thing that scares me is that it would breed a big separation of endgame raiders and more casual players, which I think SE is trying to avoid.

[Windklinge]

The only game that ran horizontal progression for more than a couple years was FFXI.

plain false. dark age of camelot says hi. was there long before xi got released XD please get your facts right before posting nonsense. they didnt raise thier cap ever till today. it also had massive horizontal progression via pvp/realmranks/masterlevelraids which added new skills.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Because you aren't getting western players to run the same bosses for 7 years.

When they add new stuff, many, if not most of us prefer to not run the two things we just spent months running and getting bored of.

Especially when there's only so much gear variation that can exist with the current system.

The only game that ran horizontal progression for more than a couple years was FFXI. EQ2 did it a couple times, not increasing level cap. We stayed at 70 for two, and 90 for 3. Level cap went to 92 in a raid patch. 95 in the next expansion. We still didn't run the old stuff often because we were sick of it by then.

Especially with the epic weapon quests and then Epic Repucussions quest to extract the clicky buff from it. Holy hell.

Everquest 2 had buffs/procs that made people want to go back to old zones and a mentor system that is much funner then the mentor system here.

After awhile though they kind of gave up. They don't nore did they ever had a very big team and with 80% of it layed off or fired.. yeah.

[Aeyis]

Because you aren't getting western players to run the same bosses for 7 years.

Last I checked I was a western player.
Also, aren't these western players you are talking about running the same 2 dungeons for months now?

And FFXIclopedia indicates that the Leaping (now Bounding) Boots are a <7% drop rate.

People lament the pain of RNG in instances that guarantee 2 or 4 drops every time they're killed. What do you think their reaction to drop rates like that would be?

Do you know why drop % worked years ago? Because they werent RNG dependant, they were random drops. Random back then actually followed a set average, so you would approach the average (and actual drop chance) if you killed said mob often enough.

What we have these days is a horrid system because average no longer applies to it. You could kill a mob a thousand times and never approach the average on its common drops. That is why people complain about RNG.