Thread: Patch 3.1 and the Problems with a Two Tier Model of Content

Originally Posted by ZanzhizExaverion

Horizontal progression implies you can progress in more ways than one from one starting point. We have Progression Patches and Catch-Up patches as it stands. "Branched" progression if you want to make it more accurate. Releasing content with higher ilvl later is nor horizontal, it's down the line. Think like a tree. The trunk is always the FIRST form of that progression in FFXIV.

Like I said though, that's exactly what we have, especially now that Diadem is a thing. Two different content, Diadem and AS, both offering the same ilvl of reward. If we want more branches to the tree, however, that's where my mention of the gear comes in. It makes the rewards almost pointless with what we have now, unless people are okay with the same stats being a thing for each form of content. I somehow doubt that though with all the "Savage is pointless with Diadem" stupidity going around. As is, they're already sorta pushing it with 3 forms of i210 gear being a thing lol. Thinking more on it, I suppose it isn't that big of a deal though to repeat the same gear over and over again with multiple branches in the same raid tier... though it'd get old rather quick I would assume lol. We generally will shift towards the lazier approach and look at our own actions as something bad that the devs are "making" us do simply because they're not forcing us to do the harder content. Funny how many of us find that one form of "force" is approved of over another when it comes to choice. I'm just going on a tangent with that one though and doesn't refer to any one person in particular, pay no mind to it.

Edit: Just saw your edit. Then it comes down to whether or not everyone would be okay with the 6 month or longer drought. Given what happened with the 5 month one, and how quickly people become bored with content, even with some leeway, it doesn't amount to more than a few months before, at best, people start to look at there being a drought of content. This also means, however, that some other content will likely have alterations to expected time for completion. Example would be the beast tribe quests. If there's a drought period of no additional content to stimulate us, expect the length of time to complete the reputation grind to be doubled, even tripled the time, simply because it needs to tide folks over until any form of new content is meaningfully released.