Almost no one fought the Gods, or did Dynamis. Most Monks could think of better uses for their time than sitting around and Boosting for 3 minutes to let out their one Chi Blast. Most players were more interested in trying the other jobs than doing the exact same thing on one the whole time.
If that's how you played FFXI, that's fine. But dismissing everything else as meaningless content is just plain absurd. Grinding up to 75, at least before they slashed the time it took to level, was months and months and MONTHS of work for people. Very, VERY few of them were doing that for any reason other than wanting to do it.
See, you're trying to make an argument against horizontal progression by holding up FFXI. The problem there is that your issues with FFXI aren't actually with horizontal progression - they're with the entire system. You considered the game to actually start at 65+, when the vast majority of players never even bothered with the content in that range. And there's just no way to control for that variable.
I liked horizontal progression. Do I think FFXI handled it well? No. It was poorly balanced and poorly implemented. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the concept, it just means that a game should probably have core gameplay that's less in shambles before you bother trying to launch an expansion, unless that expansion is specifically to target the problem that your core gameplay is in shambles.
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The biennial gear reset is important for WoW; otherwise, one of two things happens. Let's say that there was never a level cap increase, and we still had all the expansion content for BC, LK, Cata, and Mists. The people that were farming Naxx going into BC would find absolutely no challenge in content geared towards people that weren't raiding, and the people that weren't raiding would have no hope of completing content geared towards people that were clearing Naxx. There needs to be some form of character power progression in an RPG. It's pretty much a defining element of the genre, and it keeps people playing when they hit a wall. Can't beat boss X? Go out and gain a few levels/upgrade your gear, then come back to kick *** and chew bubblegum.
The problem with this arguments is that you are taking an aspect of vertical progression and then painting a horizontal picture that hasn't bothered to be adjusted for core design principles. It's a strawman argument, because no one in their right mind would expect you to be able to take WoW's current raid system, and just continue on with it horizontally.
Vertical character progression is fully possible in a horizontal system. One possible answer is to add, where wise, ways for your character to progress. Another is to allow for the creation of more diverse content, so the concept of progression isn't uniform. Right now (well, I assume this is still true), Blizzard made the absurd move to ensure that PvE and PvP progression follow roughly the same system, and they're both using an extremely uninteresting, unexciting ilvl system.
And it makes no sense. Instead of forcing every player to engage with every form of PVP, why not actually develop them into separate entities, so people can play what they want, progress in what they want, and specialize in what they want? If I want to focus on arenas, let me focus on arenas. You can structure progression so that it boosts my performance in BGs, sure. But being king of the arena shouldn't make me the best flag capper of all time.
How? Creating more interesting, more dynamic skill systems in conjunction with gear that is less basic and dumbed down would be part of it. In a PVP setting, skill tiers and a ladder would be another.
And the same thing goes for PVE content. Right now, dungeons are just mini-raids, and raids are the real content. How about they make dungeons one type of content (and see if you can return to the days where there are random aspects besides which boss you fight), make raids another, add a wave-based combat system (something like what you might see now in WvWvW combat in GW2, except with mobs), etc.
Then you have the "casual" content like crafting, home-building, etc. Don't have a pathetic "press okay until it's gray" system. Make it interesting. Yeah, raiders won't be interested in it overall. That's fine - you aren't making it to please the raiders.
Horizontal expansions in this aspect would focus on adding more ways to play for everyone. It would add or change up the existing content (which is how EVE generally handles it), and add more content. Some examples: In a dungeon system with random options, add more of them, add more ways to cross-skill, maybe add new settings that require different skills to succeed in, progress the story in an old one. Similar for raids, but on a more grandiose scale.
Oh, and the other thing, STOP TELLING THE STORY ENTIRELY THROUGH RAIDS.
Did the picture I just paint turn out perfect? Hell no. I'm trying not to stray too far from the system WoW has now, which is a decidedly vertical progression system. And that's hard. But I'm not saying WoW should implement one now. It's way too late for that. I'm just saying that they can be amazing if the designers actually create a game to support one.
Edited, May 14th 2013 10:06pm by idiggory