Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[Saccharin]

Why is this? Because of constant planned obsolescence.

Vertical progression is not necessary bad but it's the amount of content and the 3 month patch cycles.

Every 6 months we get a new 8 man raid that has to have the best gear
Every 6 months we get higher tier tome gear that have to be just slightly less good as the 8 man (savage) gear.
Every 6 months we get a new 24 man that has to have worse gear than the current 8 man (savage).
Every 3 months we get new 'experts' that has to have gear that's not as good as 8 man (savage).

Now we have the diadem that gives 210 gear with very little effort. This was acknowledged as a mistake though.

There's too many ways to gear with very little manoeuvrability with ilevels. Within 3 months the expert can eclipse the 24 man gear.

There needs to be a better plan with regard to gearing and the three month patch cycle.

[Dyvid]

Snip

This is basically what I mean when I make the statement that gear doesn't matter. Vertical progress is suppose to have a heavy impact on gear and actually needing gear to complete the latest and greatest yet in FFXIV it doesn't. Look at 3.1 and Void Ark. The minimum ilvl is 175 yet most people already had i190-i200 already. That begs the question as to why we should really spend weeks and months grinding to get armor that won't even been needed until the end of 3.XX life cycle? Even look at 2.5 and the required ilvl for WoD was i90 but the reality was everyone was 110-120. The reality is the game is too easy and people are getting bored with it because reward vs challenge just isn't on par.

Bottom line is gear needs weight and SE needs to give us a reason to gear up.

[Xellos2099]

This is basically what I mean when I make the statement that gear doesn't matter. Vertical progress is suppose to have a heavy impact on gear and actually needing gear to complete the latest and greatest yet in FFXIV it doesn't. Look at 3.1 and Void Ark. The minimum ilvl is 175 yet most people already had i190-i200 already. That begs the question as to why we should really spend weeks and months grinding to get armor that won't even been needed until the end of 3.XX life cycle? Even look at 2.5 and the required ilvl for WoD was i90 but the reality was everyone was 110-120. The reality is the game is too easy and people are getting bored with it because reward vs challenge just isn't on par.


Bottom line is gear needs weight and SE needs to give us a reason to gear up.

It would be hindsight 20/20. Peopel would then complain they need to farm gears to get gears

[AeraLure]

The problem for me is the overall design. Dungeons offer nothing of interest in terms of rewards. You're just there to collect tomes. It's pretty boring and repetitive and the tome gear itself isn't even varied, but it's all there is in game to get once you're done MSQs. The new dungeons that come out are already outdated when they do, and the tome collecting quickly feels like a chore rather than something fun to do (not a lot of fun to cheer having gotten 30 more of some intangible thing when you need hundreds per week and then months of doing it).

Mind you that's the design and its effect on gameplay I'm criticizing. I'd like to see horizontal progression, better vertical progression planning, better reasons to replay older content, more complicated and interesting stats. Lots of things. I almost quit and unsubbed for a while - what brings me back is not the gameplay as much as my friends and FC. They're the ones that make the game actually the most fun for me.

[Elim]

Yeah... gear progression in this game is messed up. IMO.

If gear had bonus'/set bonus', less gear would be obsolete when higher Ilvs are introduced. Not to mention gearing would be less bland. Every item could have it's own bonus(a piece could increase movement speed, for example), and if you wear three pieces from x set you'd receive another bonus(another example: increasing movement speed even more...). There could even be a full set bonus further making collecting gear more appealing. People would have to choose between stats, gear bonus' and (full) set bonus'.

I doubt this would ever be implemented, but damn it'd be amazing.

[OranKells]

Horizontal progression would be great if they could pull it off. Unfortunately what tends to happen is someone will crunch the numbers on all the gear and find one piece is objectively better than the rest. If SE would bother to give secondary stats some weight rework a abilities to have dmg modifiers based off secondary main stats and whatnot, we could have something here. or better yet give us gear with some more interesting bonuses. cure+10%, increased thundercloud proc, rage of halone combo +3 & riot blade -2. Something to actually think about?

Destiny has an interesting method with exotic gear. the item level is generally slightly lower than the best raid gear available, but it contains some powerful or unique stat bonuses you won't find any other gear and you're only allowed to equip one exotic item at a time. Something like that could be interesting here

Also It may help if they would slow down with how quickly old content is made obsolete. Maybe instead of throwing echo buffs around so hard we just let old content slowly become easier and easier through the power creep of people getting overgeared for it? At the very least it would keep newer players busy longer and maybe even keep up some of that sense of accomplishment that seems to be stomped on whenever they nerf stuff you worked so hard to beat into the ground.

[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.

[Xellos2099]

I have seen enough gears set swapping to know it is a bane of this galaxy. Do you remember the time where no one will invite you to exp pt unless you have so and so gear? I do.

[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).

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Horizontal progression isn't exactly good either unless it's implemented a certain way. Even so it can come off more as busy work to keep you away from what you're actually interested in doing, especially if said items/skills are considered mandatory for content.

"Oh. You don't have X item?"
"I don't. But I know what to do-"
"GTFO noob, we don't want your kind here."

Is very much a community killer.