Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[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.

[Alahra]

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

Yes. I think before they do anything, they need to diversify the stats and gear enhancements within the parameters that are already established. For any sort of "horizontal progression" to work, we need more varied choices to begin with so that there are more potential combinations for people to work toward. As it is right now, we have just about all the horizontal aspects the game can handle, as the only stat that is useful in some content but not preferred in others is Accuracy.

True, FFXI style horizontal progression stretched out over long periods of time is never going to get here, but it's possible that we can see some horizontal aspects if they work on expanding the scope of gear itself with things like additional stats, set bonuses, and the like. From there, it might be possible to have slightly longer raid tiers (say, 9 months as opposed to 6 months) with more bosses per raid so that the content can last longer and allow for more gear sets each tier to be released.

I don't think any of that's particularly likely (or that it would necessarily be a good thing), but I think the possibility for something like it exists.

[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.

[Alahra]

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

Bloated is beyond kind. Back before they finally gave us expanded inventory options (FFXI now gives you the equivalent of like 5 armory chests >.>), I only had like 3 spaces in my inventory to actually receive drops because I carted around so much gear for NIN. Given that this game already has massive inventory problems, there's no way at present any sort of "gear for different situations" thing could really work. They'd likely have to at least triple the size of the armory chest just to start (if you assume like 3 sets of gear per job).

[Xtrasweettea]

[...]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. .

This part isn't necessarily 100% true. The only time I have seen the demand for "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was towards the end of the life cycle for Voidwatch and when people where shouting for farming groups in Seekers zones. This demand did not come in any other era of the game when I played (I stopped playing within the first few months of Seekers).

The "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was a way to filter out the hundreds of Damage Dealers out there. The "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was not applied to Support Jobs or Healers. It was hard enough to find a Bard or Corsair let alone one with a Relic, Mythic, or Empyrean. Only those career Bards had a relic horn and/or the empyrean harp. Half of the bards and healers in FFXI during end of the Voidwatch era were dual boxed by some Damage Dealer player since they couldn't find a bard or healer within their play time.

The "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was a result of the availability of the job market rather than Horizontal Progression. If there were an equal amount of Damage Dealers to Support Jobs, then "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" could applied to all jobs, but that wasn't the reality. The reality was that there was 30 Damage Dealers to 1 Bard, 1/4 Corsair, 1/4 Scholar, or 1/2 Red Mage (that knew how to play the job as Red Mage not as a "Pink Mage"). In order to get those rare support jobs, party leaders have to make it appealing to them. Since a party leader can't send a job application to each interested DD to see if they are skilled, using gear as the filtering mechanism was the best option. Support jobs had the luxury of being picky because of the demand versus availability. Again, this is not the fault of Horizontal progression, rather it was the result from the availability of the job market.