Horizontal progression? In MY theme park?!

[Remedi]

Apologies for a kind of double post, but I thought this was an interesting enough idea that it was worth a thread of it's own rather than getting buried under another topic's rantings:

TLDR: How could we have more gear variety in FFXIV?

Rather than get blinded by how FFXI handled things, let's look a bit further back to the days of Everquest. The game was primarily horizontal progression with mild levels of verticality between expansions and tiers. The overall quality of gear was noticeably better in late tier raids such as Vex Thal when compared to old endgame content such as VP or recent but entry level content such as the first planes in PoP.

However, most endgame zones had a few pieces of 'Halo' gear, items that were unique enough or good enough to stand above other options even 4 or 5 expansions down the line. As a Shaman raiding up until the mid point of PoP, I was still utterly inseparable from my VP Robe and Snare spear and overall wore a variety of bits of gear from a content right across the game ( https://eq.magelo.com/profile/9093 ).

So, how can FFXIV pull this off? I'd go with a variant on Kisa's approach but roll it into a form of set bonuses. Let's say I have a full set of Sigma gear, consider having a set bonus that can be unlocked by wearing 2 pieces of gear depending on where the gear is from. PvP gear could unlock something like a cast time reduction on Stone. Crafted could unlock some extra VIT. Hunt gear could unlock a movement speed bonus. There's plenty of ways to add in flavour to this and it's simple enough to roll extra bonus stats in with the set bonus so that you're not destroying your main stats for the sake of these sorts of bonuses. When odd numbered patches come along with new gear, it's easy enough to bump up the bonuses slightly on the new stuff to give the raiders and min maxers a fresh carrot to chase.

Simple no?

*edit*

To clarify since the original post was a bit rushed and not as clear as it could have been.

My idea is to actually have the set bonus based off the main raiding sets aka Tome and Savage gear.

This would offer a set bonus when used in tandem with other sets within the same tier as well as offering a stat boost to bring the lower ilvl piece up to par with the main set.

So for example:

Lets take the Diamond set of healing.

It could have the following set bonus as a very rough example:

0.5 second cast time reduction on Stone IV when used with 2 pieces of PvP gear.
+100 VIT when used with 2 pieces of crafted gear.
+10% Movement speed when used with Hunt gear.

This could be further played along by adding a slightly juicier bonus with odd numbered patch content (Basically, extra crafted and 24 man stuff).

The idea isn't to make people not want to upgrade their gear, but rather reward players for earning a wider variety of equipment (and thus dabbling in more content that they otherwise might not. The crafted bonus will be king during progression, whereas it'd be easy enough to include interesting perks on other sets to take over as people get geared and don't need the VIT anymore.

Is it a perfect example of horizontal progression? No. But it spices up a recipe that's been getting awfully stale over the last few years.

Aside the obvious elephant in the room that is that we lack the inventory space to sustain an horizzontal progression, there's also the fact that SE said this is not their plan for this game and they won't do and if you like it FFXI is still there, I agrree with this reasoning since ffxi is still going and they are still adding content to it and since it's their game too they won't make a competition of the 2 games.

That said we also lack the content for a real horizzontal progression, Because it means you can safely calculate the dps of each piece and then find the most effective way to do your job since and since the content is mopstly dps centric you'll want to maximise dmg, also the substats are a bit meh atm since crit is soo strong that you want to stack it as such either the bonus sets overtakes the loss of crit or you might aswell just go with the crit pieces.

Imho we kinda have a sort of horizzontal progress with ultimate atm, since the materia synch makes so that if you want to do UCoB (and later UwU) you need pieces of gear that do not go beyond the ilvl synch, as such things like eureka, swallow compass, deltascape savage and tomestones are useful (kind of).

This is something they could do to make gear not be useless, since imho I don't think they'll cave to sets bonus since they've said many times they won't do it since this is not what they want for the game

[CreinCrein]

It doesn't just boil down to the endgame of "one set being the best"; it's about having options, sinking time into theory crafting, discovery, and all of the fun that goes along with that. Personally I'd have a lot of fun experimenting with different sets and playstyles, and I know a lot of people that would as well. Yes, there will be certain sets that are the result of 100th percentile number crunching but at the end of the day that level of optimization is not cared for by a majority of players while things like how a class plays and feels is. Giving players more choices to compliment their playstyle would be nice.

[mosaicex]

It doesn't just boil down to the endgame of "one set being the best"; it's about having options, sinking time into theory crafting, discovery, and all of the fun that goes along with that. Personally I'd have a lot of fun experimenting with different sets and playstyles, and I know a lot of people that would as well. Yes, there will be certain sets that are the result of 100th percentile number crunching but at the end of the day that level of optimization is not cared for by a majority of players while things like how a class plays and feels is. Giving players more choices to compliment their playstyle would be nice.

Yeah, options, like how we have 3 tank jobs, 3 healer jobs, 9 DPS jobs, yet the baseline parrots still couldn't keep their mouth shut about balance and just keep repeating whatever top 0.1% said like some sort of mantra. Demanding all jobs be completely equal despite the fact that XIV is probably the most balanced MMO right now at the cost of how similar each jobs operate.

Imagine adding another layer to that mess, instead of just NO SAM NO BLM NO NON-META JOBS(haven't experience any of these on JP servers, just go by what I see here) nonsense we will get NO SAM NO BLM, ONLY JOBS WITH META SETS ONLY.
No wonder SE doesn't want to give players options.

The day majority of playerbase stop pretending to care about 1% performance disparity (that only happens at the summit, which ironically don't apply to them anyway) is the day we MIGHT get something resemblance of options in this game.

[Dzian]

While there is something to be said about the static dungeon design they've been following I really disagree with the idea that there's nothing to do in this game. There is a lot of stuff to do. Just because it doesn't interest you doesn't mean it isn't there.

Wellllll. I can't deny there's a lot of content from a technical standpoint..

But only the smallest fraction of it is even remotely relevant and worthwhile.

So in terms of character progression currnetly there is almost nothing do do.
Run lighthouse for weekly drop and coin.
Cap mendacity from a few roulettes

That's it.

I could add savage here I suppose. But ifvyouve been doing that then you typically don't need to do lighthouse for anything so there's still very little to do.

99% of the content is obsolete

[Derio]

If it went horizonatal. There would be only 1 relic weapon. And then again how would that work? Unlock more materia slots? The weapon wouldnt get stronger just different in how it looks?

Same goes with leveling? How would that work for each expansion?

There are some serious problems and if they were to ever go the horizontal route it would take 2 years or more of development time to develop and implement.

[Sotaris]

If it went horizonatal. There would be only 1 relic weapon. And then again how would that work? Unlock more materia slots? The weapon wouldnt get stronger just different in how it looks?

Same goes with leveling? How would that work for each expansion?

There are some serious problems and if they were to ever go the horizontal route it would take 2 years or more of development time to develop and implement.

Not that i think this will happen but they could use the +1-3 augment system where it get better over time with challanges quests. I don't think we ever will get horizontal as long they gonna cater casual before long term active players.

[Linx0r]

I would love horizontal progression. Like a few posters have mentioned in previous posts, it would keep older gear relevant. I also would like SE to take this one step further, and keep older areas relevant. Having at least partial horizontal progression is great for longevity - expanding on what is available then incrementing upwards slowly. The current vertical method is not good for longevity and really not a good way to keep a quality game going for a long time. Hopefully some changes are made

[Tristann]

Well, take a look at GW2, how they handle post-80 leveling with their mastery system and how they implement horizontal gear. But I doubt, the horizontal approach would work here, because there is no variation in a job itself.

[Tracewood]

Maybe not so much horizontal, but maybe ways to grind to keep certain pieces of gear relevant like how some games let you "level up" gear pieces. Though it would almost eliminate the need for glamour would it?

I know FFXI let you do that for relic weapons and artifact gear. Thought they were on the right track when Eureka launched, but they hit the breaks on that idea.

[KaldeaSahaline]

TLDR: How could we have more gear variety in FFXIV

I've probably written 2-3 design docs on this exact topic before.

Speaking strictly personally, I think this idea should be handled by the Materia system. It goes without saying though, that some pretty robust changes to the core combat system would likely need to occur (such as balancing secondaries to a more reasonable degree, as well as assigning attributes that synergize with those traits, i.e. crit -> procs, cd resets, or skill/spell speed -> stacking a buff, etc.).

Materia will have 2 major functions:

1) Improve existing abilities in some fashion.

2) Improve general stats.

Different gear sets would have differing numbers of sockets as well as colors. Colors would dictate which Materia you could slot into it. The idea here is that savage gear would be more powerful than tomestone gear, but not necessarily by raw stats. It might have 3 Red Materia slots total in the set (whereas Tomestone would have say 2). This would give the left side Savage gear the unique ability to have 3 ability enhancing Materia, whereas Tomestone would get 2, but some extra stat buffing Materia slots.

A player would acquire Materia in a sorts of manners. Boss fights, quests, dungeons, side content, etc.

Ideally my design philosophy here would be that Materia could help offset tools your job lacks or to improve specific abilities used more frequently for specific content forms. Collecting Materia would be its own system and new Materia would be added at a decent rate. These would be switchable outside of combat.

There would be 3 Materia colors. Red (improve Job skills, or passives), Yellow, usually a generic combat effect, and Blue (+ stats).

Some examples for Red Materia might include (for PLD):

• Avenger's Shield - Your Shield Lob now hits 2 additional targets. The first target hit takes 50% more damage
  
• Heavy Shield - If Shield Lob hits a target more than 15 yalms out, it allows you to cast Shield Swipe next for free and it deals 20% more damage
  
• Shield Draft - Increases your movement speed by 30% for 3s after casting Shield Lob. Your next weaponskill deals 20% more damage
  
• Vacuum Shield - Shield Lob no longer interrupts the current combo and enemies hit by Shield Lob are pulled towards you
  
• Shield Mastery - You are able to Block while casting. In addition, Blocks generate double Oath
  
• Flourish - Passive MP generation increased by 40%
  
• Fervor - During Requiescat your cast speed is reduced by 50%.

These are just a few examples. The core idea is that they all are improvements. You lose nothing by equipping them, and some are more powerful in some situations or by player skill. I.e. if you're bad at managing MP, increased regen (which would normally lead to more Holy Spirits) would be less valuable to you than to a different PLD.

Yellow Materia might be something like:

• Frenzy - after landing a crit, you gain 10% skill/spell speed for x seconds. Stacks up to 3 times then expires
  
• Swiftness - Upon completing a combo, you gain Swiftness for x seconds which reduces the CD of any ability used by the # of hits in the combo

Blue would be basic + stats like we currently have now.

I think this solves the gear variety problem, adds some new collectible/horizontal progression, and also allows players to differentiate themselves.