The current formula of gear progression NEED CHANGE

[Dav2017]

After 3.5months, you know your Eureka weapon will be junk again, you can simply get a better weapon from market board.

Spent months just for a GLAMOUR? Why bother doing it then? What's the point of playing this game?
Pls give us a reason to do it!

Or give us a better glamour system:
You can not only change the appearance of a weapon, you can also add special effect to it,
for example :Add 5% Regen potency, or shorten 0.5sec Raise cast time, or heal 3000HP when casting Esuna, by using a old relic glamour

[Kaedan]

Yes, Eureka weapons are primarily for glamour. If you're going for stats, it's far easier to get token weapon, crafted or Savage/extreme.

And the "junk after 3.5 months" is true for pretty much everything. That's how MMOs work. Gear will become obsolete, and then you chase the next set of gear.

[Vanitas]

You'd be suprised what lengths people will go for JUST glamour

[Risu0042]

this complaint is just stage 1 in the cycle of a problem. Because oh, go 6 months between updates. plenty of time to grind the gear and get use out of it, but now we have content drouts. or they could release content with non upgrade rewards, but then where's the intensive to do it? this argument is a loose loose situation where there are going to be some people that are not happy and i think how they do it now is probably the least offensive of the three options.

[Baalfrog]

This is a themepark mmo, thats how themepark mmos operate, vertical progression, bigger ilevels, bigger HP pools, bigger everything. If you want something that has horizontal progression instead, you need to go and find another game.

[YukinoAmidala]

Welcome to vertical progression MMO's. This is nothing new to the genre.

[Bright-Flower]

How does a horizontal progression MMO works? I've heard people talk about it but nobody's spelled out exactly how that works beyond saying you sometimes get to keep the same item useful for longer.

[Raldo]

How does a horizontal progression MMO works? I've heard people talk about it but nobody's spelled out exactly how that works beyond saying you sometimes get to keep the same item useful for longer.

Rather than each patch adding new gear that is 100% superior to all your old gear, you have gear with specific niches. These shoes increase your movement speed. This ring has no stats but makes you take 5% less damage. These shoes make the "Jump" action always do critical damage. This weapon gives you access to a new skill that you can only use while that weapon is equipped. This headgear boosts a fair number of stats but has zero defense. This body armor increases your natural MP regen rate. These gloves double the TP cost of all your skills, but make everything you do hit harder. These pants give you 5% haste and a boosted crit rate, but don't actually increase your raw strength. Let your imagination run wild.


Pros:
- Gear is less boring.
- More sense of accomplishment tied to certain gear, rather than the current "meh, I'm not gonna do savage or extremes because I can get gear that's just as good in the next patch when they let me trade in these tokens for gear of an equal iLevel".

Cons:
- Difficult to make some of this gear quite as useful since you can't swap gear mid-fight.
- Some gear inevitably winds up being overpowered and you run into situations where "No, we don't want you in this content unless you have XYZ piece of gear."
- Can't necessarily say "This gear is better because it's iLv is higher" when the unique effects on the gear may make a lower iLv piece more powerful.
- WAY harder to balance the game

A little bit of pro and con at the same time:
- Pro: Actual reasons to do varied content (Con: Could you imagine the shitstorm if some overpowered piece of gear was locked behind Eureka or PvP?)
- Pro: Interesting and useful rewards tied to other types of content (Con: I feel useless unless I grind out this one piece of gear locked behind me getting a high rank in Mahjong)

(I'm sure there's more pros/cons)


My personal opinion: As much as I enjoyed the horizontal progression in FFXI and originally wished it was in FFXIV, I don't think changing directions ~5 years into the game is a wise idea from a business standpoint. You'll inevitably lose some players who don't like the change. You're not likely to pick up many new subscribers when you have to say "Yeah, you have to get through 2 expansions worth of content (or pay money to boost past it) before that actually takes effect." You're not likely to lose that many subs if you keep the current vertical progression, since anyone still around after this long is at least okay enough with the current system to still be subscribed. And of course, my biggest hangup with it is that FFXIV doesn't allow you to swap gear mid-fight (though admittedly they could change that if they really wanted to). In FFXI at least, that was a critical aspect.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Biggest con imo of horizontal progression is as people want gear to last year's, well, it'll take possibly years to obtain.

I've heard stories of people in xi going years without seeing the piece they need for their job.

People in xiv don't like rng, yet it seems to me that's the only way to make horizontal progression work, otherwise you could be gear for the next 6 expansions already.

If gear is going to last for ages, they need to make it equally time consuming to get, or again, you'd have no reason to do content. There's a post on here complaining about the small amount of rng we have in alliance and normal raids. A horizontal progression system would make that rng many times worse. People always seem to think you can have one without the other for some reason.

[Razard]

How does a horizontal progression MMO works? I've heard people talk about it but nobody's spelled out exactly how that works beyond saying you sometimes get to keep the same item useful for longer.

Ok, You know farming Blue Magic spells? Now imagine that for gear with a much, much lower drop rate.

And people wont let you into groups unless you have certain pieces.

Have fun.