How long before long vertical gear progression stops?

[Nghthawk]

There are so many ways to bring back the fun on this game that I really don't know why the devs pay so little attention to this matter and keep focusing on hardcore raids only some people do.

How many hardcore raids do we have at it current state or in the past? Only 2 that I would consider, Savage - (SCoB/Alexander). Non hardcore - (CT, WoD, Binding Coil of Bahamut F1-13, Alexander A1-A4). If you think any of the items I listed as Non hardcore raid you might want to re-think of what you think the definition of hardcore raid means.

This game is meant for Everyone even the small minorities that play this game (PvP, RP, Hardcore, World Progression) so we can actually enjoy the game as well. If you're not having fun in this game then you need to step away and go play something else for a while like Farmville or some other FB Game.

[TheUltimate3]

Vertical progression can go for as long as possible really, up until you reach a point where the base numbers themselves are so high that you can effectively gut everything and leave the relative power of characters the same. To use WoW for an example, I think it was in WoD that they did an Items Crunch to bring numbers back down to reason, so that by the end of WoD you didn't have a sword with +10000 Strength or something, you could drop it back down to like +100 and the damage output itself wasn't far off from what it was before.

Now because the true meaning of this post was gauge if SE should stop vertical progression and add in horizontal progression, it's not really that simple. A bunch of crap would have to change and it's much harder to turn a vertical progression game into a horizontal one than vice versa. Because the way a vertical game is structured, if one were to add something of a side upgrade for horizontal growth and that side upgrade is so good it'll be awesome for years to come, then congratulations you've succeeded in making any future content completely pointless. Make it something for glamour or something, and congratulations you've successfully made the horizontal path completely pointless because nobody (save glamour hunters) are going to spend x amount of months and years for an item that's sole purpose is to make something better look pretty.