Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[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.