More Horizontal Progression please

[Gilthas]

Horizontal gear progression isn't some perfect system. It brings along its own set of problems, that in my opinion, are much worse than the problems with vertical gear progression.

Lets not forget how in FFXI:
- Real item upgrades were very rarely added to the game. It wasn't uncommon that new patches added nothing for your job.
- To keep players from getting their gear and being done with the game, FFXI had a mix of bad drop rates and lockouts that ensured that you rarely were able to get gear.
- Since we didn't get any real upgrades and items were so rare, we had to rerun the same stuff for years.

[Ibi]

Horizontal gear progression isn't some perfect system. It brings along its own set of problems, that in my opinion, are much worse than the problems with vertical gear progression.

Lets not forget how in FFXI:
- Real item upgrades were very rarely added to the game. It wasn't uncommon that new patches added nothing for your job.
- To keep players from getting their gear and being done with the game, FFXI had a mix of bad drop rates and lockouts that ensured that you rarely were able to get gear.
- Since we didn't get any real upgrades and items were so rare, we had to rerun the same stuff for years.

This post really nails the main issue with horizontal progression.

Many events in FFXI had abysmal drop rates.

I have the data from my old Dynamis LS that shows that we averaged about one piece of armor per hour in Dynamis - Xarcabard, and even when our attendance was trailing off toward the end, we were probably still taking 15-20 people there. There were also multiple 3.5 hour runs where we saw no armor at all.

We ran Salvage a few times a week, and I found an old post from the forums BG showing that we completed our 33rd piece of gear in July of 2008. That's nineteen months after the event was added to the game, so ~1.75 pieces a month.

There were countless NMs, ranging from Jailers to Kirin to KS99s to stuff out in the world, who "rewarded" us from time to time with loot pools completely devoid of any gear.

Horizontal progression necessitates low drop rates because that's the only way (or at least the only way developers seem to have found) to keep the events relevant for such extended periods of time.