Thread: Reset Item Levels in 4.0?

Originally Posted by Mithrahn

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And those links fail to address a significant Achilles' heel to horizontal progression: people min/max. Look no further then FFXI, where people who chose the incorrect sub-job basically had little chance to do endgame content. While you can have small bits of diversity, the moment one job/class/ability outpaces another by enough of a margin, it will be deemed useless. This is especially true amongst gamers today because of Youtube, Reddit and even this forum. People are either encouraged to look at guides or follow advice from veteran players. Yes, you do not need to optimize for anything outside raiding, however people are typically going to get advice from better players, who in turn, have no reason not to say such and such is better. At best, MMOs can have a form of diagonal progression. In fact, most do; borrowing elements wherever possible to shake things up without deviating from vertical progression. FFXIV gets its variance through allowing players to readily change their job on the fly.

None of this speaks to the sheer difficulty of balancing a game with numerous weaving paths. Dragoon currently has 27 ability you will actively use. If every skill offered just two additional options for us to choose, you've effectively tripled the developer workload because they now have to assume every possible combination, lest one setup becomes overpowered. STR tanks are an example of what happens there.