Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[Lemuria]

Vertical progression is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot, but what does it actually mean? In short, it means a supply of ever-increasing gear with clear 'steps' to progress to the next best set. Final Fantasy XIV has a wealth of equipment in the game, and much of it will never see the light of day beyond glamours. Why is this? Because of constant planned obsolescence.

It's no secret that SE will eventually be removing law tomes, and relegating esoterics to the sidelines when they bring out their new tome. The current law gear will likely be reduced to armor drops in one of the dungeons, much like the relic and philosophy gear before it. The question is whether or not they've actually considered the wider impact of these changes. I don't believe so.

From the perspective of a new player, they jump from item level 50-ish to item level 120 in the blink of an eye. That's a whopping +70 levels worth of strength. There's no real stop-gaps for them. Sure they could spend the time and farm Philosophy or Relic gear, but why bother when the selfsame dungeons they drop in earn them poetics tomes to buy far superior equipment?

Every time the upper bar is raised, the lower levels are also raised. What this means is that while there is a glut of equipment spanning 210 levels, the gear which is used is actually a very narrow band. In turn, this makes lower level dungeons a cakewalk, and results in some growing discontent from higher level players who've been on this same treadmill for years.

Square-Enix has some truly talented people behind the scenes creating the content we all enjoy, so I can't believe this narrow-band progression was not intentional. However, it is also a danger in the long run. People need surprises and challenges to prompt them to come back. Spoon-feed them bananas for a year, and they're going to get rather sick of bananas, no matter how much they loved them to start with.

The vertical progression needs to change drastically, or be removed in its entirety. Square-Enix needs to get off this train before it becomes the express line to blandness.

So, agree? Disagree? Whatever your thoughts, keep it polite. Those who complain the loudest usually care the most. Those who accept all, usually don't care enough.

[Kumori_Kumo]

It's not that I disagree with the premise entirely... but rather I can't help but ask the obvious question that comes out of it.
"If not this, then what?"
What else is there? I'm no game designer, I dunno how this stuff works. What would be a better system, and can you point to some examples where it worked?

[Cilia]

While I don't like the blandness of doing 2 dungeons for months on end only to get gear that will become obsolete in ~3 months...

... as long as the game is built around the raiding scene, and raiders need an easy way to gear up replacements / substitutes, this is just the way things are going to be.

The oft-brought up "horizontal progression" simply provides an illusion of choice (since there is only one best path that will be enforced by the community) or more work to do (which will annoy raiders (see the MSQ requiring completion to unlock the endgame and new Dungeons / Trials not being tied to it any longer as a result) and frustrate / turn away casual players).

There is no perfect solution, and I agree, vertical progression gets dull. That said, have you an alternative to offer?

[CyrilLucifer]

The oft-brought up "horizontal progression" simply provides an illusion of choice (since there is only one best path that will be enforced by the community).

That's not what horizontal progression is at all. Horizontal progression as most of us want it would have gearsets that are variable based on the situation. The whole point of it is that there isn't one ideal BiS slot. What is BiS changes based upon the encounter or party makeup. People who want things like skill trees aren't really asking for horizontal progression, they're asking for more variability in ways to build their character.

As the game is now, though, fundamentally proper horizontal progression is impossible, so I believe that we need a balance. As I always do, I point to TERA for a vertical progression MMO that does a decent job of at least offering variable stats and equipment that change based off of the situation.

[Dzian]

Expert Dungeons should be a bit more difficult than they are now. They drop item level X armor and (weekly capped) dungeon tomestones that can be used to purchase item level X items. Tomestones are meant to mitigate bad RNG and you should be able to cap them after 3-4 runs.

This was a fairly common opinion back right back in beta and even 1.2. (except the cap after 3-4 runs part)

People fed up of doing cc/av thousands of times and getting nothing was a big problem.
What people wanted from the tomestones was simply a back up plan. similar to how garuda worked in 1.2. guaranteed a totem even if your weapon didn't drop, so you knew you would get the item you wanted eventually even if it took 40 wins to get the 40 totems. or 20 if you "won in short order". it was never meant to be the primary way of getting gear.

So yeah the experts should drop gear of the same level as the tomestones, and the tomestones should be a "back up plan". if you've ran that expert 100 times and still not got the damn shoes to complete your gear set. at least now you can finally get them with tomestones kinda thing.

That's not what horizontal progression is at all. Horizontal progression as most of us want it would have gearsets that are variable based on the situation. The whole point of it is that there isn't one ideal BiS slot. What is BiS changes based upon the encounter or party makeup..

This.

I said in another thread that way back in beta Yoship said gear wasn't valuable or an item to cherish / hold on to as it would all be obselte. the rewards from contents are gears, but the gears aren't valuable. so where the incentive...

it's no wonder people aren't bothering with savage. when the reward is going to be "junk"

[Alahra]

So yeah the experts should drop gear of the same level as the tomestones, and the tomestones should be a "back up plan". if you've ran that expert 100 times and still not got the damn shoes to complete your gear set. at least now you can finally get them with tomestones kinda thing.

While I'm not opposed to this in theory, it would have a lot of ripple effects throughout endgame progression. Right now, the development team strictly tracks available item levels when balancing the raid tiers, so they can gauge roughly how long it should take a player to reach the item level needed to clear the content. If you could instead farm dungeons and get entry-level raid gear, they'd most likely introduce some other form of lockout with it (like weekly lockouts on loot reminiscent of the 24-man raids).

Considering the "get currency, get loot every week" model has been pretty well established since 2005 or so (I can't remember when WoW first added it) I can't see them making major changes in this regard. The model's proven fairly successful at maintaining player subscriptions (even if it kind of results in a "revolving door" model).

Personally, I don't mind the lockouts but I wouldn't be sad to see them go, either, or at least relaxed in some way (I'd like the ability to choose three jobs that I could max out tomestones on each week or something, for instance, so that I could gear alt jobs a bit faster).

[FoxyAreku]

Make this game have more than three semi-boring secondary stats per role then maybe I'll care about a chance at horizontal progression.

[Cilia]

That's not what horizontal progression is at all. Horizontal progression as most of us want it would have gearsets that are variable based on the situation. The whole point of it is that there isn't one ideal BiS slot. What is BiS changes based upon the encounter or party makeup.

That proposition adds a whole slew of new problems, though. With gear being limited based on class, having different optimal pieces depending on the encounter or party makeup is just going to clog up inventories.

Let's take a look at Shiva, for example. She probably deals a lot of ice damage (is there a way to see what type of damage you're taking?). Now, they could make a lot of ice-resist gear necessary to defeat her - but how to go about obtaining it? Well, they would make it drop from Snowcloak, or buyable with [X] tomestones, or craftable. If you make it limited to Snowcloak, it's going to be up to chance whether you get [X] piece you need for your class that will let you take on Shiva. This can be mitigated by making equal or superior items obtainable through tomestones, but it'll still take grinding to progress. Making them craftable shafts people who haven't done crafting and/or aren't in a nice Free Company, since they'll have to wait longer and/or pay exorbitant amounts of money to do the fight, and more likely than not you'll need new materials released in the same patch that have to be farmed to craft the pieces anyway. It's also going to further clog up inventory space; for instance, needing 6 sets of gear to take on all the 2.x primals (one set to resist each of their elements), on one job, will mean you need 6x the inventory space and I'm already clogged up with just a few redundant pieces I carry for glamour.

... of course, they could always limit this horizontal progression to the EX Primal / Raiding scene, but said raiders would likely have similar complaints - they can't gear up replacements because it takes forever and if someone drops out of their static group they have to wait forever before they can even try to progress again.

[Alahra]

... of course, they could always limit this horizontal progression to the EX Primal / Raiding scene, but said raiders would likely have similar complaints - they can't gear up replacements because it takes forever and if someone drops out of their static group they have to wait forever before they can even try to progress again.

WoW was like this originally and it caused a slew of issues. Given how much FFXIV seems to be designed around avoiding a lot of early WoW's issues, I think they likely agree with you (and so do I really).

[Zumi]

That's not what horizontal progression is at all. Horizontal progression as most of us want it would have gearsets that are variable based on the situation. The whole point of it is that there isn't one ideal BiS slot. What is BiS changes based upon the encounter or party makeup. People who want things like skill trees aren't really asking for horizontal progression, they're asking for more variability in ways to build their character.

If you look at FFXI there was a BiS tp set, a BiS WS set, a BiS damage reduction set, BiS Fast Cast spell set, plus you had to swap in all the pieces of AF1/AF2/AF3 gear that had ability enhancing gear when you used your job abilities. Macros were just used to swap between all these gear sets people would use up their whole inventory with gear swaps for 1 job. Also in FFXI people were very picky about joining parties if you didn't have a reilc/mythic/empyrean weapon you would not be allowed to join the group.

Having all these gearsets just lead to a bloated inventory and way more items that you needed to be good at the game.

For example in FFXI here is a pretty updated list of the BiS sets http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/46...f-defense-v20/
If you actually went out and got all that gear inventory issues and the amount of gear you need to carry around seems a bit excessive.