More Horizontal Progression please

[Iagainsti]

Loving the fact that I brought up Leaping Lizard Boots and this is the direction the thread has taken XD #loldrg

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Contested content provides the purest MMO experience. Allowing players to interact with others within the world created. Players coming together, surviving great tests, and forming bonds is what MMO's should be about. Constantly creating ways to overcome the career griefer within MMO's will only lead us to a game where all of the game is instanced and all players are segregated bar the few rare meeting areas ala Guild Wars. Social skills or the lack thereof should not drive the "innovation" of MMO's. More focus should be put into creating more contested content, more areas within the game where players can experience excitement thus spreading out the population of a game world. More exciting areas would do great wonders to alleviating congestion and griefing. If there are only one or two really "cool" dungeons’ or areas within a game, of course everyone is going to be there.

Guess what pretty much every game is now?

[Iagainsti]

It is a CHOICE if it is not REQUIRED. Leaping Lizard Boots were NEVER required to beat an event.

You crazy. Leaping boots were necessary for many classes, example THF SATA, only replaced by Hecatomb boots(good luck, we could start another thread about how hard it was to get these at 72). you mustve played when journals came out or something, because if you were a level 12 thf/rng/insert other class trying to get a lvling group in valkurm without proper gear in slots for WS's, #godspeed and hope some JP party takes pity on you for a carry through the grind.

[Ibi]

Did you guys somehow forget or decide to just conveniently omit the bcnm drops of the exact same boots with a different name (and other good items). You get the currencies to buy the orb to access a mini boss fight by the boat load and you can try it over and over until the loot you want drops. IIRC it was already there by the latter half of toau (when I came back after having to quit just before cop due to irl issues) and the drop rate wasn't even low.

Conveniently omit? No. As you noted, that was added later. Why? In response to the item being too difficult to obtain (partially due to them being very heavily camped by RMT).

I don't even get how horizontal progression == low random drop rate. Like vertical progression can't have that too?

You don't have to, but you run into problems if you don't.

Under vertical progression, the developer knows that the items a player is getting within any tier will be made obsolete in six months. As a result, they can set a drop rate such that a player will, on average, get all (or almost all) the gear they need within that six month period, because there will be something new coming in by the time they're done.

Under horizontal progression, the developer knows that the items a player is getting from any particular event could remain relevant for several years. If they set the drop rates the same as they were in the vertical example above, then their player base is done with that particular event in that same six month time frame. So far that's not, in and of itself, a problem.

In both cases, the developer is adding new content at around the six month mark. But where the vertical progression developer doesn't need to pay attention to the old rewards when creating their new event, the horizontal progression developer needs a way to add drops that serve some sort of purpose, while not making the old items obsolete.

If you make the items effectively equivalent, the players are effectively done with the reward from the new event before it even starts. If that's the case, the event needs to be entertaining enough to be worth doing despite the rewards, at which point the event would have worked equally well under a vertical progression system.

If you make the items better than the existing items in some situations, and worse in others, now the player needs to collect an entire second set of items and also hang on to all the old ones. In addition to now needing to carry around twice as much gear, the player isn't really getting any more powerful, they're just switching out one thing for another depending on the situation (and likely still not really having a choice in the matter).

The alternative to this is to make it take much longer to get all the items from any particular event, and then add parallel alternatives through which to (hopefully) obtain other items to fill in the gaps. Each event ends up with a much longer life span, but only because you need to run it more to get the same results.

[Kaurie]

You don't have to, but you run into problems if you don't.

Under vertical progression, the developer knows that the items a player is getting within any tier will be made obsolete in six months. As a result, they can set a drop rate such that a player will, on average, get all (or almost all) the gear they need within that six month period, because there will be something new coming in by the time they're done.

Under horizontal progression, the developer knows that the items a player is getting from any particular event could remain relevant for several years. If they set the drop rates the same as they were in the vertical example above, then their player base is done with that particular event in that same six month time frame. So far that's not, in and of itself, a problem.

In both cases, the developer is adding new content at around the six month mark. But where the vertical progression developer doesn't need to pay attention to the old rewards when creating their new event, the horizontal progression developer needs a way to add drops that serve some sort of purpose, while not making the old items obsolete.

Just to counter that, you can have a mix of both and have horizontal progression within each tier. The gear becomes obsolete in 6 months just like vertical, but within that 6 months you have horizontal progression to wiggle around in

[Welsper59]

You crazy. Leaping boots were necessary for many classes, example THF SATA, only replaced by Hecatomb boots(good luck, we could start another thread about how hard it was to get these at 72). you mustve played when journals came out or something, because if you were a level 12 thf/rng/insert other class trying to get a lvling group in valkurm without proper gear in slots for WS's, #godspeed and hope some JP party takes pity on you for a carry through the grind.

Actually, your gear really didn't matter when it came to Valkurm invites (or lack thereof). THF itself was a joke in early levels, even with SA and BiS gear. It didn't get any sort of attention from players until Viper Bite, and that was assuming you bothered leveling your dagger skills instead of sticking to the much more superior 1h swords until ~30, which is when dagger started to becoming a little better (mostly due to the type of mobs you fought for that level range).

[Zarzak]

Just to counter that, you can have a mix of both and have horizontal progression within each tier. The gear becomes obsolete in 6 months just like vertical, but within that 6 months you have horizontal progression to wiggle around in

That is what XIV does already... There are 2 different gear sets at max ilvl each cycle. Now if only the group gear didn't totally replace raid gear each content cycle we could actually GAIN content instead of replacing it.

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

because if you were a level 12 thf/rng/insert other class trying to get a lvling group in valkurm without proper gear in slots for WS's,

During my tenure at FFXI. . . I don't recall the grouping requirements being so tight for THE MOTHAFUCIN VALKURM DUNES LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.
I left around the start of WotG if you're wondering.

[Ibi]

Just to counter that, you can have a mix of both and have horizontal progression within each tier. The gear becomes obsolete in 6 months just like vertical, but within that 6 months you have horizontal progression to wiggle around in

You can, but in addition to having to either reuse art assets or invest more time developing new art assets (and you'll get people complaining with either choice) that means you're either:
- increasing the loot pools of existing events (which has its own issues), or
- adding more content from which to obtain items (and if they were capable of generating content faster, they already would be, and we probably wouldn't be having this conversation).

[FizzleofHyperion]

This formula of gaming has no longevity. Especially when you are copying everyone else and not presenting originality. I doubt SE will listen as long as people pay for a sub we are part of this problem btw cause we continue to pay. Action wont be taken until we stop subbing until Yoshi P and the Dev team starts listening to why players are complaining. Cause as long as people pay for this it will never give the impression that anything is wrong!