Yoshi-P on Character Growth

[Kaurie]

We have different ideas what constitutes horizontal progression. Simply having more options doesn't count as horizontal progression to me, it's just more options. When I think of Horizontal, I think of Monster Hunter, where any competent hunter has at least five different sets with varied elemental resistances and a handful of skills unlocked on each one.

I simply think of it as a way to progress your character without necessarily going upwards in absolute strength (i.e. ilvl)

To support your point, Someone mentioned Monster Hunter earlier in the thread. All those armour, skill and customisation options. and yet I can go online in Monster Hunter Generations right now and, outside of outliers, I will be in a group with only "Gaijin Hunter/insert other youtube personality approved" gear.

This is the Illusion of choice in action.

I really dislike that term. In actuality, everything in the game is an illusion of choice, and illusion of choice spreads into one's daily life. That is, there is almost always a best choice, but the great thing about living in free countries in today's society is that we get to make choices - whether they are the best ones or not.

In terms of the game, sometimes one may make a suboptimal choice in order to improve their enjoyment of the game. In WoW at the moment, I am running a sub-optimal talent on my mage, because the optimal one is incredibly frustrating to use and ruins my enjoyment of the class (it's basically ley lines in FFXIV). Choices like these are great, and no one in WoW has said anything to me about it and my DPS is still competitive with everyone I group with.

While the 'best' ones may be required by top tier groups, they are not required by the general playerbase. Having no choice puts major limitations on how one can enjoy the game.

[Clover_Blake]

There is a difference wanting the game to improve than being a hater.

Most of what I've seen is people complaining patch after patch about how nothing is ever enough, how they expect the game to fit their personal needs and even grant them fun for every single day of the year (which is simply not possible for any game to accomplish).
You say "improve". Granted, I obviously haven't read all the suggestions, but I happen to disagree with most of the ones I've seen here, and find many of them unfair and unreasonable. Your "improved", ideal version of the game doesn't need to be mine, or many other people's, and that's the point many ranters seem to be missing.

(Edit: Just for the record, I don't really know what your personal complaints are. I'm speaking in general.)

[Reynhart]

This is the Illusion of choice in action.

You can go around the illusion of choice.

In FFXI, if you really really wanted to be optimal in every content, for every action you use, you'd have to gather lots and lots of stuff. So much that few actually managed to gather the perfect sets.
What you can do in FFXIV is change some design so that one set cannot be the best for everything. Elemental resistance should be important when facing primals like Ifrit, Shiva or Garuda...you could have mobs with low evasion but really high defense, so that you could focus more on Crit or Det. You can design a lot of different mechanics so that you can't calculate one absolute BiS set.

Of course, "casual" people wouldn't bother to collect all those items, and just accept to being suboptimal...which they probably are anyway already.

Most of what I've seen is people complaining patch after patch about how nothing is ever enough

If you look at the Finaland interview, it's not that people want more, they want something different. We're fully aware that designing more content will take more time.

[Iromi]

This is exactly what I mean. Horizontal progression is not coming to this game. .

Yes it is, according to Yoshida:

Q. I'm sure there are players who think "I'm not enjoying this game if i'm not raiding"
Y. It might be because the Japanese MMO market hasn't had "high end raids" before and not being able to clear content even if you have the best gear is new for them. You have to have a certain player skill and spending time doesn't just reward you the victory and you need to put in all sorts of effort to achieve your goal. This can be tough at times, but you can get really excited when you clear it for the first time with 7 other people. This impact is what told the players "This is what FFXIV is like" and they have that image in their minds now, so the following problem we need to solve is, horizontal content.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...needs_to_ask/?


Although I do not believe it until I see it, he still is entertaining the idea, and there are plenty of more recent interviews of him expressing the understanding of the need for horizontal type progression. I am not going to search and list them all obviously, but yea.

[loreleidiangelo]

Yes it is, according to Yoshida:



Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...needs_to_ask/?


Although I do not believe it until I see it, he still is entertaining the idea, and there are plenty of more recent interviews of him expressing the understanding of the need for horizontal type progression. I am not going to search and list them all obviously, but yea.

Thanks for the link; was an interesting read. Still, looking at the context, I'm not really sure his idea of "horizontal content" is the same as what most people are thinking when they say "horizontal progression". Even looking at that statement vs the statements in the OP, he doesn't seem to want things like RNG procs or elemental stats on gear because casual players can't keep up with the supposed expectations to farm it for group content. Maybe he means more progression paths for ilevel sidegrades? That might work, if secondary stats are ever redesigned to be more than just "everyone, even tanks and healers, just stack crit lol".

I actually agree with Kaurie about WoW's talent system, though. There's a site called Icy Veins that tells everyone what they SHOULD be using (pretty much for the hardest raid content and that's it), but because playstyles and content difficulty/length vary drastically in that game people actually find better talent combos than the IV builds sometimes, based on individual needs. I think XIV could adopt some MINOR horizontal aspects like that, but I'm not sure having 25 gearsets to do all endgame content will ever be a thing in this game.

[Reynhart]

I think XIV could adopt some MINOR horizontal aspects like that, but I'm not sure having 25 gearsets to do all endgame content will ever be a thing in this game.

Raid tends to have big single target most of the time. You could chose a single target build for one of your job, and an AoE build for another with the purpose to go faster in dungeons.

Depending of party composition, some builds might also differ in effectiveness, so a "static" job will chose different traits than a job meant to run with random people...

[Sandpark]

I believe he is speaking about Horizontal Content for endgame.
Current raids and dungeons are norm,hard,extreme,savage or up,up,up.

He is thinking of new types of content with different mechanics.
Palace of The Dead
Diadem
New exploration type
Public Content

Just as XI had:
Assault
Limbus
Dynamis
Nyzule Isle
Sea
Sky

[HungryHippo]

They need sky and sea in this game, would be soo awesome.

[Sandpark]

They need sky and sea in this game, would be soo awesome.

[Nalien]

They're going to kinda have to work on horizontal progression for horizontal content, though... Otherwise their just isn't going to be much point to the additional content... Final Fantasy XI had a plethora of varied content, and all of it was relevant... This game cannot achieve that, because the extreme vertical progression is just going to render the rewards pointless... They pretty much have to work on some form of horizontal progression for this kind of content... That's not to say we should be doing Palace of the Dead for special stats though... PvP is a good example, I think... Feast offered players nothing in terms of item level progression, it was all about pretty much showing off... People wanted that Wolf Coat because it became a status symbol, not because of it's stats... They need to apply that kind of reward structure to PvE content, I think... Perhaps they intended to, Palace of the Dead is getting a leaderboard after all... If they can give us a compelling reason to care about that, then that can work as a solid justification for participating, because item level who cares rewards will not retain interest long term...

A better way to keep it relevant is through something like the Relic quests... Lord knows the Anima weapons are just a dull chore at this point though... Final Fantasy XI - Treasure of Aht Urhgan was often described as the golden age of the game, and all the content in that expansion served a purpose for its Mythic weapons... You needed to do Nyzul Isle, you needed to do Assaults, you needed to farm Salvage and Einherjar, you needed drops from ZNMs... This is why I'm always saying I prefer the Zodiac weapons to Anima ones... 2.# didn't have a great variety of content, but the Zodiac weapons at least used it... You have to specifically go into Snowcloack for a drop and so on... Anima weapons gave us a lot of freedom in picking how we obtain items, but the result is just a weapon that you can get done without trying... I would have preferred to have had a situation in which Unidentified items only drop in Diadem... I'd have preferred to need to trade in an Aetherpool weapon with my Anima weapon for an upgrade stage... That gives Diadem and Palace of the Dead a solid purpose in the Anima upgrade process...

A lot of the additional content they make just kinda isn't great, too... Hunts, Diadem, and Palace of the Dead are all pretty bad IMO... Palace of the Dead is OK, but when I compare it to other games with procedurally generated levels? It sucks... There are no special rooms that make the procedural generation interesting... There are no different ways in which you power up, that can make one run different to another... You just open silver chests and get +1 to your aetherpool stuff... There are no interesting power ups that have a lasting impact to make a run different from another... Just temporary OP items... Diadem is just instances Hunts, when it could have been closer to Abyssea or something... Hunts are just lazy and pathetic IMO, could have been like ZNMs, perhaps endgame Levequests, so you spawn your own Alteci and Kreutzet, get a drop off both of them, trade them in for a Levequest that'll get you to Mirka, and so on... Instead SE just plops NMs in a zone randomly and I'm meant to enjoy aimlessly wandering around looking for them? F*ck off... At the very least I'm interested to see what the Accursed Hoard adds to Palace of the Dead, could give me Limbus vibes with Ancient Beastcoin farming verses clearing the instance to get towards Proto-Omega/Ultima... That's something I think Deep Dungeons could really benefit from going forward... Give every 50 floor boss a special drop, which when combined grants access to a special encounter, or since we're getting Deep Dungeons II, you could keep Palace of the Dead relevant by making it drop such an item to combine with Deep Dungeon IIs drop for such an encounter... Diadem changes just have me disappointed though, could have worked gathering into it well but instead they're removing it completely... Doesn't fill me with hope for 3.5...