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Though, they could do Vertical progression better. The problem is, the VP that XIV uses is shoddy and sadly Yoshida said flatout recently that it won't change due to being too risky to change it. He's scared of xyz (usually player/job inclusion) but every content, casual or otherwise, is designed with exclusion in mind unless the content is handholdingly easy.

I agree. If it isn't something they can do well, they need to stop doing it. FFXI's job system blows it away, as does FFV's and FFT's. It's patently obvious that they either can't or don't want to fix the implementation of this system, so it really should go. It's holding them back at this point as far as developing new and interesting jobs goes.

Every physical dps needs to be able to cross class lancer for Invigorate....
Every healer has to be able to cross class conjurer for protect...
Every tank has to be able to cross class gladiator for provoke...

These are artificial limitations on the system that don't need to exist. Give the physical dps jobs unique methods for regaining TP... give the healers equivalent spells to protect... give the tanks their own versions of provoke. Permanently shackling all future jobs to this system is terrible and needs to stop.

Was anyone from XI's dev team brought over to the XIV team after the end of significant XI development?

They've all been on it except for the obvious few (Matsui in particular.) Since looking at credits, the few that still work on XI also work on XIV but given the contrast, I think it still comes down to them not really being "allowed" to do much more.

Honestly, they said they were giving Yoshi the freedom he needs (and he's even said it at one point during 2.0 interviews) so the suits definitely are to blame (president said for XIV to basically be the focus on making them money in simple terms on the last report) but yoshi has far more control than Tanaka or Matsui ever had.

Minimum raid size in WoW has been 10 players for about 10 years now. And actually 10-man raiding is one of the more difficult things you can attempt because of the limited resources you're able to bring to any given encounter. In general the more players you have, the easier the encounter gets because the margin of individual player error goes up the more of you there are.

Mythic raiding (the top-end hardcore version of raiding that eats your pets) is set at a hard 20 players.



Actually challenge modes cap your item level to about heroic 5-man levels. So no matter how decked out you are in unimaginable power, your item level is basically what a fresh max level character has after a couple days of dungeons. And then they give you a stopwatch and say go.

I think a good example of that would be that there is more room for new types of content to be developed in a game with horizontal progression. In a vertical system you have to replace everything every few months. XIV is a good example of that as they have these big patches that they put a lot of effort into, but for the most part it isn't actually new content, it is just a new skin on the same content. Two new dungeons and/or a remake of an old dungeon, all of which have the exact same straight layout with three bosses, a raid either 8-man or 24-man depending on which patch, a bit of story and a primal with a few different difficulties. Every now and then you get a new type of content, like Diadem or w/e, but that isn't actually content that stays relevant unless they keep updating it and since they can't update too many things all the time it is hard to make it have much use for more than a couple of weeks. Also on top of this, you do still have to do old content to get roulette done.

Comparing that to a horizontal system like XI you keep on building on everything which gives you a lot more freedom to build on and develop new types of content.

Like you said I have negatives for every positive you listed and more, but that is how everything is. We all like different things after all.

Anyway, Karlina mentioned that horizontal progression worked so well in XI because of gear swapping and I agree, but I do think there was one other thing that also played a large role. The very thing that Thayos mentioned earlier about content being a lot more flexible in how you could approach it. You could do Dynamis with ten people if you wanted to and it had its perks, but you could also go in with 64(?) people if you wanted to. The same thing applied to a lot of the content to an extent at least and for the most part there were pros and cons to each way like one being faster but you have to split the loot vs slower killing but less people to split loot with etc.

The reason this was so important in my opinion (in regards to horizontal progression) is that people often talk about how it is so much easier to come back and catch up in vertical progression games, but for me that has never been true in the sense that I don't "need" to catch up in a horizontal system. And that isn't because of how horizontal progression itself works, but how most horizontal games I've seen work. In XI I always have things to work for at my own pace when coming back, but I could always participate in endgame even when I didn't have the best gear available. Why? Because for the most part I was just an extra helping hand and not a liability that took someone elses spot for anything. I was just someone more to chat and have fun with. In games like XIV that isn't true and that is mostly why catching up even matters in the first place. Regardless of if a game is vertical or horizontal I think this is a much better way of making content.

Edited, Aug 2nd 2016 12:40pm by Belcrono

This is a great post and is exactly my feelings.

I agree to with sandpark though why cant there be compromise.

Look at the original relic in FFXIV it took time and offered a better piece of gear. It was not done right but it is just a example that it could be done.
Why can you not have some gear that takes work to get for those with the time to do it? Why not have both. This gives a path that is easy to catch up and those that put time in have something to be proud of. FFXI rarely had new people because of the issue of catching up.. They have changed that too in FFXI for those who want to come back with sparks gear. Sparks gear makes it easy to gear up.. They also have a easy way to upgrade all AF and relic gear in FFXI.
I just do not know why a hybrid system would not work.


For me I want some original content not just cookie cutter dungeons. It feels like they are throwing out content just to throw it out. there is not lack of content but lack of new original content. Game companies are starting to make me feel like I am stupid and gamers are stupid and the lack any imagination or skill anymore. No one wants challenge. If that is so why do I see so many people looking for challenge.

You are right they are just re skinning everything and adding a few moves different by renaming some abilities.

Pretty soon this game is going to be so big they are going to have to shut dungeons down or areas because once done they are useless.

This statement is incorrect. 'Flex raid'(the official term for it if you want to search) was available even prior to the last expansion. It was built into the LFR with WoD expansion.

I say that 9-10 man was the sweetspot, but that's mostly due to people not wanting to search for more players than that for PUGs. Generally speaking though, the more people you threw at the content, the more it rewarded you and the easier it became to defeat.


Trinkets. Plain and simple.

While it's true that your item level was capped and also that you couldn't use set bonuses from raid gear, trinkets still granted much higher benefits than any other single slot item. There are programs and websites for WoW that you can use to calculate which items are upgrades and by how much. Trinkets were almost always at the top of the list in terms of how much benefit was gained from a single slot.


Edited, Aug 2nd 2016 4:29pm by FilthMcNasty

The flexible raid size was introduced in Siege of Orgrimmar, the final raid of the Mists of Pandaria expansion as a difficulty between LFR and Normal in which you could bring between 10 and 25 players and the raid would adjust its numbers accordingly.

Starting in Warlords of Draenor, the flexible raid difficulty as a name was removed and the functionality was added to the Normal and Heroic difficulties. The upper limit of players was also bumped up to 30 at this time. WoD LFR is built by a matchmaking system and will always fill to 25 people. While it can technically scale itself the same way as normal and heroic, the system will work to backfill until it's a 25 person raid. The only way to do LFR with more than 25 people is to build the raid yourself. Even then, the raid size is between 10 and 30 players.

No raid in World of Warcraft has ever been built for fewer than 10 people.

While you can technically enter a raid by yourself, the minimum scaling point for the numbers in the raid is for 10 players. At no point in World of Warcraft has it ever been advantageous to enter a raid with fewer than the minimum number of players (except for an achievement at the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King that asked you to do just that... but that was an achievement, not an advantage).

As for the sweet spot in PUGs it tends to fall somewhere between 15 and 20 players when using scalable raids, and before that it was always the maximum number of players possible (either 10 or 25 depending on the raid difficulty).

Cosmetic gear for getting gold times in all dungeons, a mount for getting silver times in all dungeons. In Legion however, the mythic+ dungeons will award raid level gear and can scale their difficulty up to however high you'd like to go.



Maybe if you weren't itemizing your character properly in the first place? Stat weights change a little as gear levels go up, but not a ton.

Maybe. I quite like the concept of the Mythic+ dungeons and XIV could benefit from having content like that.

I'll break it down here for people who might not be up to date on what's happening in a game they don't play..

Basically you purchase a keystone that's attuned to one dungeon. This keystone starts at level 1 and each time you clear the dungeon using the keystone, the keystone levels up. Every level the keystone goes up, the dungeon gets slightly harder. Every few levels the keystone gains a new affect like "all mobs enrage at 30%" or "threat generation is greatly reduced" that sort of thing. Each level the keystone goes up also increases the level of gear awarded at the end of the dungeon up to the current tier of raid gear. However, if you fail to clear the dungeon, your keystone is destroyed and you have to start again with a new one the following week (you get one per reset). Only the leader's keystone is used to make the dungeon.

It's small party content that awards high end gear if and only if you're good enough to get through the higher difficulties. It requires only a single party (no raid) and while the dungeon will probably take a little longer to complete, it's still just a dungeon and not a full blown raid.

I like the idea personally, but I still don't think it's going to be for players who don't raid. It's static fodder since most players won't have time to finish in a single sitting. If you're bad time out on floor 1 then it's about an hour of time lost, no sweat. If you're successful and keep climbing however... you're looking at having to split progress over more than one session. Already looking at way more time spent in a day than I'd ever throw at someone I called casual

Gave The Elder Scrolls Online a try since it was on sale. Looked fun and felt good at first. 5 levels later i quickly realised why the game was horrible, or any free to play game for that matter.

Lets start with, i noticed you could swim, but not dive. Not a big deal, easily added, though the ocean floors were all flat and empty, no seaweed or anything even. Minor point perhaps, but thats not where i'm going with this. It would have been easily added, but the game is free (and has been out for a while). The only way the devs are getting money is from making silly hats or mounts they can sell in the cashshop. Their time wouldnt be spend redecorating the ocean and adding underwater swimming since that would be a waste of time that they could have spend on making money.

Then i had a look at the map when i was finally out of the starting island. Everything is locked behind a paywall. Everything. Its a mostly empty world map, with some lands here and there. Center of the map Cyrodill? Money. Dungeons? Money. Lands around the edges? Yup, money, the only features and maps they are going to add are all going to have to be purchased. I dont mind purchasing an expansionpack, but i'm not handing over €15-20 so i can access one extra guild. Or €120 for all of them. Or €15 for each little piece of the map, which is still mostly empty. And the only way people are going to get more pieces is if the devs make them and put them on sale.

Which, ok, is their business model. I understand. But they're rushing, not putting in as much work as they should or could, since they have to move on to the next thing to make for cash. And that are just the extra features... The base game is never going to be adjusted since time is money, and it feels like we'll forever be stuck with an unfinished game with 4 classes, 7 diffirent weapons and every little piece that needs to be bought inside an infinitely incomplete and lacking world.

That said, it woke me up and got me back to XIV fully again.

Free-to-play will forever be the downfall of any game.

(Sorry, typed on phone on my way to work, some errors)

Edited, Aug 9th 2016 8:58am by KojiroSoma