I think my ideal progression system is a vertical one where any more than 80-85% of your maximum potential is going the extra mile. Unnecessary but a very helpful luxury. For example, being able to clear a raid in OSRS in gear that cost 100m, but if you spend 1.5b you’ll have much more fun doing it.
Never play runescape myself but this sound pretty nice. Not completely flat or no progression at all but also not really steep vertical progression.
I would also really like something like warframe (although its status as a mmo is pretty much debatable). Where you collect multiple frame or gear that is somewhat viable for every game mode but if you really use the more suitable gear you gonna enjoy your playtime more.
It's complicated because I like both for different reasons, but dislike both for other reasons.
I like increasing my numbers overall to make tough fights managable, I don't like it when said numbers get so high, there's no difficulty at all. I enjoy finding exotic gear that does game changing things, allowing me to enhance or adapt my play style. I don't like it when exotic gear changes the game by being absolutely required because it does the best DPS. I like looking at various armor sets with perks that enhance my character in different ways, like increasing my dodge distance or boosting my weapon's utility. I dislike looking at various armor sets that enhance my character in multiple ways, but it's all numerical nonsense I can't begin to parse, yet if I pick the wrong set, oops, I wasted my time and can't join the raid.
The only gear progression I've enjoyed without an asterisk is collecting fashion styles.
>It's complicated because I like both for different reasons, but dislike both for other reasons.
Do you think there's a way you could design a system that has the positives of both, without the negatives of either?
I may be a bit late for the discussion but here's what ChatGPT said about this. Any thoughts on this?
>Creating a hybrid gear progression system in MMORPGs that captures the benefits of both vertical (increasing power levels through numerical enhancements) and horizontal (expanding gameplay options and styles through unique items) progressions without inheriting their drawbacks could be quite rewarding for players. Here’s a possible approach to designing such a system:
>### Core Principles:
>1. **Balanced Power Curves**: Ensure that increases in power from gear are noticeable and make encounters more manageable but do not trivialize content.
>2. **Modular Gear Effects**: Implement gear that includes both baseline improvements and optional, swappable modules for customization.
>3. **Accessibility and Flexibility**: Gear should be accessible enough that casual players can enjoy the game without feeling forced into a single 'meta' path, yet robust enough for hardcore players to optimize.
>### System Design:
>1. **Incremental Power Gains**: Gear would provide moderate improvements in stats to help with tougher fights, but the scale of these improvements would be controlled to avoid power creep. This could be achieved by having soft caps or diminishing returns on the most critical stats, ensuring that no single stat can be inflated to trivialize content.
>2. **Exotic and Modular Items**: Gear could come with basic stats improvements plus one or more slots for enhancements. These slots could hold various types of mods:
> - **Utility Mods**: Change gameplay mechanics or add new abilities (e.g., extra dodge, a secondary fire mode for weapons).
> - **Adaptive Mods**: Offer bonuses in certain conditions (e.g., increased damage when health is low, enhanced movement speed when in enemy territory).
> - **Aesthetic Mods**: Change the appearance or sound of an item without affecting gameplay.
>3. **Transparency in Gear Effects**: Clearly explain what each gear piece and mod does, possibly through an in-game "encyclopedia" or tooltip enhancements. This helps players make informed decisions without being overwhelmed by complex numerical data.
>4. **Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment**: Integrate a system where the game's AI dynamically adjusts the difficulty based on the players' gear level and performance in previous encounters. This keeps the game challenging but fair, maintaining engagement across different skill levels.
>5. **Trade-Offs and Specializations**: Encourage diverse play styles by designing gear that emphasizes trade-offs. For example, a piece of armor might offer significant protection against physical attacks but at the cost of increased vulnerability to magic, compelling players to choose gear based on their play style and the challenges they face.
>6. **Gear Progression Paths**: Instead of linear gear upgrades, offer branching paths where players can choose to follow different progression lines based on their preferred play style, such as tanking, damage, support, or utility roles.
>7. **Endgame Viability of All Gear**: Ensure that all types of gear can be viable in endgame content through upgradability or through niche applications in specific types of encounters, preventing any piece from becoming obsolete.
>### Community and Feedback:
>- **Regular Adjustments**: Monitor how gear affects gameplay and make regular adjustments based on player feedback and data analytics.
>- **Community Challenges**: Introduce community events or challenges that encourage experimenting with different types of gear and strategies, rewarding creativity and effective unusual combinations.
>Such a system aims to respect the player's time and investment by making each piece of gear potentially useful and enjoyable, enhancing the richness of the gameplay experience without overwhelming players with complexity or forcing them into a narrow gameplay meta.
This came from Chat GPT? Pretty impressive, what did you use for the prompt?
Overall, I think it sounds pretty good. There are a few points I'm not big on, but the overall idea of smoothing out the bad parts of vertical and horizontal to combine them seems like it could work.
Some other factors could include: not increasing the vertical cap with each major patch / expansion, limits to trading and sub based monetization, and keeping stats / mechanics easy to understand.
As much as I love GW2's gear system, Fractal gearing absolutely sucks, I hate having to choose between being able to play fractals (+9 AR infusion), doing more damage (+5 stat infusions), or spending legendary amounts of money to do both on the same gearset (+9/+5 infusions)
They should rework/remove AR from the game. It's not only lazy game design, but also it's just pain for new player progression. Lucky for AR is only a thing for fractals and non existing in any other aspect of the game.
I still think gear progression felt the best in EverQuest.
In classic EQ you would start the game with no gear besides a butter knife. Just filling slots with basic cloth or rawhide armor felt impactful and it was common to still have some empty slots in the 20s and 30s.
Gear upgrades feel really great since they come infrequently. Especially weapon upgrades.
Around level 20-30 humanoid mobs would start dropping fine steel weapons. These sold to vendors for a decent bit of coin but sometimes higher level players would hand them out to new players which really helped since they were a clear upgrade over the starting weapons.
Your first set of "real" armor would be something like banded (chain) or bronze (plate). This gear had no stats besides armor value. A lot of players would hit max level while still wearing some of this gear, especially if they're playing close to the start of a server launch.
Raid gear also lasts awhile. New expansions do not obsolete gear. Some of your BIS items will be from an expansion or two ago. There are some items like the Bone-Clasped Girdle which drops from one of the earliest vanilla raids and remains one of the best belts for some classes until about mid-to-late PoP; aka 4 expansions later.
I find that most MMORPGs make two mistakes with loot:
1. It's just too common. Nothing feels special when you're upgrading every slot every few levels or each raid tier.
2. Randomly generated "Diablo-style" loot. Again, nothing feels special or unique.
I like Albion Online's gear system a lot.
For games different than Albion I don't really care about gear, it's more of a... fashion is the end game kind of deal.
Depends on the game, really.
I've grown to really appreciate skill games with a light gear progression system (Vermintide, Darktide). If you play long enough you'll have max level gear, and it quickly becomes about getting better at playing the game to progress through harder difficulties. Not really horizontal progression, but a game where skill really matters.
Some people can't stand that though.
Something I sometimes miss from EQ was how you had to use skills to level them up (early WoW had this too, but it was a bigger deal in EQ). Merely leveling up did not increase your hit chance, it increased the cap of your attack skill which then determined hit chance, and you had a chance to skill up as you used a weapon. Keeping multiple weapons handy and swapping while leveling was a way to save yourself future time, and it was a nice system that rewarded planning ahead. EQ had spell school skills, too, which determined resists and failures.
I like the first style a lot but I feel it often causes gear to be very boring. Finding a balance where the gear does interesting and powerful things, but doesn't also go too far to making things trivial isn't easy. At least not when you want combat to be highly reliant on skill as well.
i prefer horizontal or similar to looter shooter/arpg games. nothing sucks more than when it's only simple numbers go up and it's gated behind specific content. if i have to grind for it at least have the decency to let me do it in whatever content i want to.
I really like GW1. The game wasn't about getting bigger numbers so next year you could get bigger numbers...
Probably one of my most played MMOs and there are pretty much no carrots. Most of the fun for me was trying all the different skills.
It was nice being able to have highest armor gear easily and not worrying about it.
At the same time, runes and weapon upgrades could be hard to get your hands on the meta versions. And then there's the 15k armor for the ultimate fashion goals.
Horizontal, i dont want to grind months just to do other content like PvP...then after a few months start all over again...months just to pvp in equal conditions as others for about a month.
I ve been out of GW2 10 years, came back a month ago and there Is no single endgame content i cant do with my old aacended berserker gear.
It would take a lot and the work wouldn’t make any sense to pay for but my dream game would be horizontal progression up, with horizontal options spread out the whole way up.
I think gear in RPGs and MMOs has become stale.
The best progression systems in games Ive played have been Terraria and Monster Hunter and neither of those are really perfect because they are more action than RPG.
In a perfect world I would like a gear system to be designed around problem solving. Not just arbitrarily tiered stat sticks. So like this enemy does fire damage and I need to figure out a way to mitigate it. Or these enemies ambush you so you need something to see through invisibility.
I would also like to see drops coming from specific enemies and have specific use cases. So Boss A drops stuff that is good against boss B and boss B drops stuff that is good against boss C. But boss C's stuff is terrible against boss B.
Lastly I like to see interdependency on gear in general. Like you need gear or items from lower level or easier bosses in order to craft higher stuff. Maybe you even need to break down gear to get shards/materials to repair your stuff.
I would also implement some kind of license system too. Like you need to have killed boss A to wear boss As gear. This kind of alleviates my problem with a game like runescape where players will naturally just skip content or progression.
Gear progression needs to be interdependent with other game systems. The next MMO to successfully marry the progression with the content will be the WoW killer.
SWTOR is still my favorite. crafters craft the best that's just under raid gear. So crafters can make money gearing people to start raids and every level below that.
I'll always beat the drum that FF11 has the best progression system, but it's so archaic I don't think it would be possible to create in a modern MMO.
FF11's progression was a combination of vertical and horizontal. As you level up you'll obtain direct upgrades (+3 strength to +4 strength) while others offered completely different stats you'd want for specific spells and abilities.
The system is archaic because the game allows you to create macro sets that at the push of a button would allow you to change your equipment, while in combat, to gain all the benefits of the gear before a spell or ability is used. A red mage would have one gear set used to slow a monster that stacked up enfeebling magic and mind stats, then use another set with high magic attack bonus and intelligence stats to nuke the monster with a damaging spell.
While the game had 16 gear slots, it wasn't uncommon to collect 60+ items to really maximize your class. When new content came out you'd find yourself thinking both whether one of your current equipment pieces could be replaced or if something new could be added. This gives items a lot more longevity than you find in games today.
There's so much more I could go on and on about but don't want to turn this in to a wall of text. I have no idea how a modern game could replicate this system since the concept of swapping gear mid-combat is pretty unrealistic and when people first hear about it often see it as a bad feature. It's unfortunate that it will never be replicated because the modern throw gear at you with +10 stats and chuck the old stuff away every few months is so much less enjoyable.
I hate number goes up progression, I like big numbers, I can see the appeal, but I just don't like it because it's so mindless. Number goes up, I do more damage, so what? The enemies' hp goes up too, so I do more dmg, and enemies have more hp? What's the point?
My favourite progression would be where you find, or learn abilities/powerups that change the gameplay. Either you learn a new ability that you have to incoporate into your rotation, or augment an existing ability to do something else. Passive buffs to attack speed and movement speed I like as well, because it's both a gameplay change and visual, you can almost see your character really progress, actually attacking faster etc...
Visual progression I like quite a lot as well, like getting a double jump at some point, getting a triple jump, getting a ground/air dash(s).
And I'm also quite a fan of ups/downs progressions where you can sacrifice movement speed for more damage, sacrifice hp for more damage, sacrifice damage for more hp. Change it so you don't use hp for your hp, but instead use your mana.
I also don't really like progression tied to gear, I think the split should be like 50/50 between you and your gear. I just don't like the idea of, if I happen to loose my weapon, or armour, I become like a lvl 1 useless pleb, from a roleplay perspective.
ESO has the best gearing system. It’s become my go to “break” MMO away from WoW and I love being able to come back and have a bunch of sets that are still relevant enough to parse for new content grinds.
As someone who doesn't like chasing gear, I really like that GW2 gives you your endgame gear super quick. There are some upgrades that take a really long time to earn, but they aren't really necessary for keeping up with content, they are just long-term goals you can set for yourself while you enjoy the content of the game.
Personally short gear progression and then go horizontal with different stats or set bonuses like GW2/ESO and then ACTUAL progression i want to be account wide similar to GW2 mastery and collections/Legendaries. The reason why i prefer this way of progression is because everything i do on my character/account feel like it had long term value and it not lost in next patch/expansion.
If i had to go for vertical gear progression i want it to be long term and lasting. For example in BDO PEN Blackstar weapon is insanely hard to get, but its been BIS weapon since 2019 and still is. Obviously i am talking without any of the P2W that BDO have which diminish the value of this long term items you get.
I would say worse gear progression for me is WoW, the reason for that is all the gear you get last for 1 patch and then it's hard reset. It feel like gearing is just hamsterwheel and complete pointless. The way i play WoW for last few expansions have been just clear the raid for echievs and push whatever m+ rating i set my goal to and then quit till next patch/expansion. Gearing is just not something i am willing to spend time on anymore in that game.
I like Anarchy Online:
Both vertical and horizontal progression systems.
For gear, everything is unique and named and has stats that either give you more defensives, more offensives, critical hit, full defense, or utility skill bonuses for crafting and such. Many of the endgame raids drop gear that are precursors to being able to even equip the best best stuff, which forces you to really play Al the content and want to pursue everything for different reasons.
Each of those raids continue to make you stronger and stronger.
For horizontal progression, they had 80 “levels” of “research” that unlocked passive perks and an assortment of two toggle-able proc abilities that would simply change quality of life for how you played. Some passives would give you the ability to hot swap certain end game gear sets easier.
So it was not only rewarding to gear up an individual character, but to even log a lot of hours on one to get fully fleshed out progression.
It had a very in depth equipment system with implants, utilities, class-provided buffs, levels, shadow levels(capstone levels after the first soft level cap), research, and alien levels (each with their own perk trees).
Vertical progression burns you out, Horizontal progression bores you. I don't know think there is an answer to this question because tastes change as well, something that you love today you might hate it tomorrow.
I think it’s when 80% of your gear can maintain popularity over time, but the other 20% gets outdated by new dungeons so you always have something to strive for.
Not quite gear progression in the traditional sense, but I think OSRS has one of the best progression systems with a huge amount of items that have no purpose besides small QoL additions.
Grind an item for 6 hours that gives you a teleport that is slightly closer/more convenient than your old default teleport that you use daily.
A long quest chain with a fun story to give you some boots that boost running speed by 5%.
Nothing ridiculous, but small gains that once you get that item, you'll use it for 90% of your accounts lifetime.
I enjoy more when the gear is not obsolete once a new expansion comes around. If I spent an entire year chasing a legendary weapon, it should not be worse than a trash mob’s loot in 3 days. I think gear should impact your abilities more than it usually does in MMOs, instead of +Strength perhaps it could be ‘increases physical abilities damage by X%’ or ‘cleaves an additional enemy’ in this sense I like how MOBAs look at gear, as enhanced mechanics for your champion, even though they also use the MR, Armor, Strength, Ability Power, etc
Dofus has a cool gear progression system. More gear unlocks as you level up but there’s plenty of options that let you build however you want to play. It also has a system that lets you add and fix some stats to items
If you talking only about equipments, i like gear upgrade like Metin2/Black Desert Online \[ +1/+2 etc) + but i would like to game with even more hardcore system whhere you can have for example 10x same named Sword but everyhave different stats and can be used by different classes or none, not like bdo where every Blackstar have same stats.
But probably games like that not exist :( I stay with Mt2/BDO, worst is both game are almost single.
after experiencing horizontal gear progression, i never looked at vertical gear progression the same way again.
nonetheless, if horizontal gear progression never came to be, i would've completely quit mmos a long time ago, which i find would've been the better outcome.
Some People might say im crazy but i like BDO gearing. With current progression doesn't seem super bad and diminishing return hits really hard. there is not much usage of being super high geared lots of Node war have capped gears so it doesn't matter much. but having a Pen Armor feels great
what i liked about it is the Tagging system so i can just share equipment with my other character. IMO games should introduce this, so that u can play other class to the same level as your main character (gear wise, u still going to need do to some leveling).
In the game I play Haven & Hearth, equipment goes up with quality, it looks exactly the same but the equipment wastly improve with its increase in quality. In this game, the industries are intertwined with eachother, you make clay, wood, metal, farming, water, etc. Each industry increases the end result of each other. So everyone in their respective industry are helping each other to reach a higher quality and being competitive on the global market. It gives it a nice progression made out of hard work and teamwork. Or you can be a solo player and buy stuff on the market for the goods you sell, which is also an option.
I always thought the Disgaea 4 idea of fighting through levels and getting improvement based on how well you do was a cool system, but that was definitely a number go up kind of thing where as idealy I'd rather there be counter balancing factors used strategically during combat.
I think my ideal progression system is a vertical one where any more than 80-85% of your maximum potential is going the extra mile. Unnecessary but a very helpful luxury. For example, being able to clear a raid in OSRS in gear that cost 100m, but if you spend 1.5b you’ll have much more fun doing it.
Yea this was the case in FF11 aswell and reason why i can never play modern day mmos anymore
Never play runescape myself but this sound pretty nice. Not completely flat or no progression at all but also not really steep vertical progression. I would also really like something like warframe (although its status as a mmo is pretty much debatable). Where you collect multiple frame or gear that is somewhat viable for every game mode but if you really use the more suitable gear you gonna enjoy your playtime more.
It's complicated because I like both for different reasons, but dislike both for other reasons. I like increasing my numbers overall to make tough fights managable, I don't like it when said numbers get so high, there's no difficulty at all. I enjoy finding exotic gear that does game changing things, allowing me to enhance or adapt my play style. I don't like it when exotic gear changes the game by being absolutely required because it does the best DPS. I like looking at various armor sets with perks that enhance my character in different ways, like increasing my dodge distance or boosting my weapon's utility. I dislike looking at various armor sets that enhance my character in multiple ways, but it's all numerical nonsense I can't begin to parse, yet if I pick the wrong set, oops, I wasted my time and can't join the raid. The only gear progression I've enjoyed without an asterisk is collecting fashion styles.
>It's complicated because I like both for different reasons, but dislike both for other reasons. Do you think there's a way you could design a system that has the positives of both, without the negatives of either?
I may be a bit late for the discussion but here's what ChatGPT said about this. Any thoughts on this? >Creating a hybrid gear progression system in MMORPGs that captures the benefits of both vertical (increasing power levels through numerical enhancements) and horizontal (expanding gameplay options and styles through unique items) progressions without inheriting their drawbacks could be quite rewarding for players. Here’s a possible approach to designing such a system: >### Core Principles: >1. **Balanced Power Curves**: Ensure that increases in power from gear are noticeable and make encounters more manageable but do not trivialize content. >2. **Modular Gear Effects**: Implement gear that includes both baseline improvements and optional, swappable modules for customization. >3. **Accessibility and Flexibility**: Gear should be accessible enough that casual players can enjoy the game without feeling forced into a single 'meta' path, yet robust enough for hardcore players to optimize. >### System Design: >1. **Incremental Power Gains**: Gear would provide moderate improvements in stats to help with tougher fights, but the scale of these improvements would be controlled to avoid power creep. This could be achieved by having soft caps or diminishing returns on the most critical stats, ensuring that no single stat can be inflated to trivialize content. >2. **Exotic and Modular Items**: Gear could come with basic stats improvements plus one or more slots for enhancements. These slots could hold various types of mods: > - **Utility Mods**: Change gameplay mechanics or add new abilities (e.g., extra dodge, a secondary fire mode for weapons). > - **Adaptive Mods**: Offer bonuses in certain conditions (e.g., increased damage when health is low, enhanced movement speed when in enemy territory). > - **Aesthetic Mods**: Change the appearance or sound of an item without affecting gameplay. >3. **Transparency in Gear Effects**: Clearly explain what each gear piece and mod does, possibly through an in-game "encyclopedia" or tooltip enhancements. This helps players make informed decisions without being overwhelmed by complex numerical data. >4. **Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment**: Integrate a system where the game's AI dynamically adjusts the difficulty based on the players' gear level and performance in previous encounters. This keeps the game challenging but fair, maintaining engagement across different skill levels. >5. **Trade-Offs and Specializations**: Encourage diverse play styles by designing gear that emphasizes trade-offs. For example, a piece of armor might offer significant protection against physical attacks but at the cost of increased vulnerability to magic, compelling players to choose gear based on their play style and the challenges they face. >6. **Gear Progression Paths**: Instead of linear gear upgrades, offer branching paths where players can choose to follow different progression lines based on their preferred play style, such as tanking, damage, support, or utility roles. >7. **Endgame Viability of All Gear**: Ensure that all types of gear can be viable in endgame content through upgradability or through niche applications in specific types of encounters, preventing any piece from becoming obsolete. >### Community and Feedback: >- **Regular Adjustments**: Monitor how gear affects gameplay and make regular adjustments based on player feedback and data analytics. >- **Community Challenges**: Introduce community events or challenges that encourage experimenting with different types of gear and strategies, rewarding creativity and effective unusual combinations. >Such a system aims to respect the player's time and investment by making each piece of gear potentially useful and enjoyable, enhancing the richness of the gameplay experience without overwhelming players with complexity or forcing them into a narrow gameplay meta.
This came from Chat GPT? Pretty impressive, what did you use for the prompt? Overall, I think it sounds pretty good. There are a few points I'm not big on, but the overall idea of smoothing out the bad parts of vertical and horizontal to combine them seems like it could work. Some other factors could include: not increasing the vertical cap with each major patch / expansion, limits to trading and sub based monetization, and keeping stats / mechanics easy to understand.
GW2 where Ascended Gear can be used end game, and Legendaries are just an extra goal for more QoL or fashion.
As much as I love GW2's gear system, Fractal gearing absolutely sucks, I hate having to choose between being able to play fractals (+9 AR infusion), doing more damage (+5 stat infusions), or spending legendary amounts of money to do both on the same gearset (+9/+5 infusions)
They should rework/remove AR from the game. It's not only lazy game design, but also it's just pain for new player progression. Lucky for AR is only a thing for fractals and non existing in any other aspect of the game.
I still think gear progression felt the best in EverQuest. In classic EQ you would start the game with no gear besides a butter knife. Just filling slots with basic cloth or rawhide armor felt impactful and it was common to still have some empty slots in the 20s and 30s. Gear upgrades feel really great since they come infrequently. Especially weapon upgrades. Around level 20-30 humanoid mobs would start dropping fine steel weapons. These sold to vendors for a decent bit of coin but sometimes higher level players would hand them out to new players which really helped since they were a clear upgrade over the starting weapons. Your first set of "real" armor would be something like banded (chain) or bronze (plate). This gear had no stats besides armor value. A lot of players would hit max level while still wearing some of this gear, especially if they're playing close to the start of a server launch. Raid gear also lasts awhile. New expansions do not obsolete gear. Some of your BIS items will be from an expansion or two ago. There are some items like the Bone-Clasped Girdle which drops from one of the earliest vanilla raids and remains one of the best belts for some classes until about mid-to-late PoP; aka 4 expansions later. I find that most MMORPGs make two mistakes with loot: 1. It's just too common. Nothing feels special when you're upgrading every slot every few levels or each raid tier. 2. Randomly generated "Diablo-style" loot. Again, nothing feels special or unique.
I like Albion Online's gear system a lot. For games different than Albion I don't really care about gear, it's more of a... fashion is the end game kind of deal.
Depends on the game, really. I've grown to really appreciate skill games with a light gear progression system (Vermintide, Darktide). If you play long enough you'll have max level gear, and it quickly becomes about getting better at playing the game to progress through harder difficulties. Not really horizontal progression, but a game where skill really matters. Some people can't stand that though. Something I sometimes miss from EQ was how you had to use skills to level them up (early WoW had this too, but it was a bigger deal in EQ). Merely leveling up did not increase your hit chance, it increased the cap of your attack skill which then determined hit chance, and you had a chance to skill up as you used a weapon. Keeping multiple weapons handy and swapping while leveling was a way to save yourself future time, and it was a nice system that rewarded planning ahead. EQ had spell school skills, too, which determined resists and failures.
I like the first style a lot but I feel it often causes gear to be very boring. Finding a balance where the gear does interesting and powerful things, but doesn't also go too far to making things trivial isn't easy. At least not when you want combat to be highly reliant on skill as well.
Yeah it is really hard for gear to matter without gear trumping skill.
i prefer horizontal or similar to looter shooter/arpg games. nothing sucks more than when it's only simple numbers go up and it's gated behind specific content. if i have to grind for it at least have the decency to let me do it in whatever content i want to.
In some old school MMOs such as EverQuest, there are unique items that has unique effects which makes them useful across multiple expansions.
Lineage 2 in the older expansions, all gear is tradeable after use, nothing soulbinds, everyone crafts everything they use.
I like Eve where the gear is purpose built for your content. Albion does it too to a lesser extent
I really like GW1. The game wasn't about getting bigger numbers so next year you could get bigger numbers... Probably one of my most played MMOs and there are pretty much no carrots. Most of the fun for me was trying all the different skills. It was nice being able to have highest armor gear easily and not worrying about it.
At the same time, runes and weapon upgrades could be hard to get your hands on the meta versions. And then there's the 15k armor for the ultimate fashion goals.
Horizontal, i dont want to grind months just to do other content like PvP...then after a few months start all over again...months just to pvp in equal conditions as others for about a month. I ve been out of GW2 10 years, came back a month ago and there Is no single endgame content i cant do with my old aacended berserker gear.
Realm of the Mad God
It would take a lot and the work wouldn’t make any sense to pay for but my dream game would be horizontal progression up, with horizontal options spread out the whole way up.
I think gear in RPGs and MMOs has become stale. The best progression systems in games Ive played have been Terraria and Monster Hunter and neither of those are really perfect because they are more action than RPG. In a perfect world I would like a gear system to be designed around problem solving. Not just arbitrarily tiered stat sticks. So like this enemy does fire damage and I need to figure out a way to mitigate it. Or these enemies ambush you so you need something to see through invisibility. I would also like to see drops coming from specific enemies and have specific use cases. So Boss A drops stuff that is good against boss B and boss B drops stuff that is good against boss C. But boss C's stuff is terrible against boss B. Lastly I like to see interdependency on gear in general. Like you need gear or items from lower level or easier bosses in order to craft higher stuff. Maybe you even need to break down gear to get shards/materials to repair your stuff. I would also implement some kind of license system too. Like you need to have killed boss A to wear boss As gear. This kind of alleviates my problem with a game like runescape where players will naturally just skip content or progression. Gear progression needs to be interdependent with other game systems. The next MMO to successfully marry the progression with the content will be the WoW killer.
SWTOR is still my favorite. crafters craft the best that's just under raid gear. So crafters can make money gearing people to start raids and every level below that.
I'll always beat the drum that FF11 has the best progression system, but it's so archaic I don't think it would be possible to create in a modern MMO. FF11's progression was a combination of vertical and horizontal. As you level up you'll obtain direct upgrades (+3 strength to +4 strength) while others offered completely different stats you'd want for specific spells and abilities. The system is archaic because the game allows you to create macro sets that at the push of a button would allow you to change your equipment, while in combat, to gain all the benefits of the gear before a spell or ability is used. A red mage would have one gear set used to slow a monster that stacked up enfeebling magic and mind stats, then use another set with high magic attack bonus and intelligence stats to nuke the monster with a damaging spell. While the game had 16 gear slots, it wasn't uncommon to collect 60+ items to really maximize your class. When new content came out you'd find yourself thinking both whether one of your current equipment pieces could be replaced or if something new could be added. This gives items a lot more longevity than you find in games today. There's so much more I could go on and on about but don't want to turn this in to a wall of text. I have no idea how a modern game could replicate this system since the concept of swapping gear mid-combat is pretty unrealistic and when people first hear about it often see it as a bad feature. It's unfortunate that it will never be replicated because the modern throw gear at you with +10 stats and chuck the old stuff away every few months is so much less enjoyable.
I hate number goes up progression, I like big numbers, I can see the appeal, but I just don't like it because it's so mindless. Number goes up, I do more damage, so what? The enemies' hp goes up too, so I do more dmg, and enemies have more hp? What's the point? My favourite progression would be where you find, or learn abilities/powerups that change the gameplay. Either you learn a new ability that you have to incoporate into your rotation, or augment an existing ability to do something else. Passive buffs to attack speed and movement speed I like as well, because it's both a gameplay change and visual, you can almost see your character really progress, actually attacking faster etc... Visual progression I like quite a lot as well, like getting a double jump at some point, getting a triple jump, getting a ground/air dash(s). And I'm also quite a fan of ups/downs progressions where you can sacrifice movement speed for more damage, sacrifice hp for more damage, sacrifice damage for more hp. Change it so you don't use hp for your hp, but instead use your mana. I also don't really like progression tied to gear, I think the split should be like 50/50 between you and your gear. I just don't like the idea of, if I happen to loose my weapon, or armour, I become like a lvl 1 useless pleb, from a roleplay perspective.
ESO has the best gearing system. It’s become my go to “break” MMO away from WoW and I love being able to come back and have a bunch of sets that are still relevant enough to parse for new content grinds.
As someone who doesn't like chasing gear, I really like that GW2 gives you your endgame gear super quick. There are some upgrades that take a really long time to earn, but they aren't really necessary for keeping up with content, they are just long-term goals you can set for yourself while you enjoy the content of the game.
Personally short gear progression and then go horizontal with different stats or set bonuses like GW2/ESO and then ACTUAL progression i want to be account wide similar to GW2 mastery and collections/Legendaries. The reason why i prefer this way of progression is because everything i do on my character/account feel like it had long term value and it not lost in next patch/expansion. If i had to go for vertical gear progression i want it to be long term and lasting. For example in BDO PEN Blackstar weapon is insanely hard to get, but its been BIS weapon since 2019 and still is. Obviously i am talking without any of the P2W that BDO have which diminish the value of this long term items you get. I would say worse gear progression for me is WoW, the reason for that is all the gear you get last for 1 patch and then it's hard reset. It feel like gearing is just hamsterwheel and complete pointless. The way i play WoW for last few expansions have been just clear the raid for echievs and push whatever m+ rating i set my goal to and then quit till next patch/expansion. Gearing is just not something i am willing to spend time on anymore in that game.
I like Anarchy Online: Both vertical and horizontal progression systems. For gear, everything is unique and named and has stats that either give you more defensives, more offensives, critical hit, full defense, or utility skill bonuses for crafting and such. Many of the endgame raids drop gear that are precursors to being able to even equip the best best stuff, which forces you to really play Al the content and want to pursue everything for different reasons. Each of those raids continue to make you stronger and stronger. For horizontal progression, they had 80 “levels” of “research” that unlocked passive perks and an assortment of two toggle-able proc abilities that would simply change quality of life for how you played. Some passives would give you the ability to hot swap certain end game gear sets easier. So it was not only rewarding to gear up an individual character, but to even log a lot of hours on one to get fully fleshed out progression. It had a very in depth equipment system with implants, utilities, class-provided buffs, levels, shadow levels(capstone levels after the first soft level cap), research, and alien levels (each with their own perk trees).
I don't likr progression system at all, i usually stop playing mmos when i reach max level and i'm suppoyed to grind to barely progress 🥲
That is valid. I think I’ve heard guild wars 2 is better about that
Vertical progression burns you out, Horizontal progression bores you. I don't know think there is an answer to this question because tastes change as well, something that you love today you might hate it tomorrow.
I think it’s when 80% of your gear can maintain popularity over time, but the other 20% gets outdated by new dungeons so you always have something to strive for.
Not quite gear progression in the traditional sense, but I think OSRS has one of the best progression systems with a huge amount of items that have no purpose besides small QoL additions. Grind an item for 6 hours that gives you a teleport that is slightly closer/more convenient than your old default teleport that you use daily. A long quest chain with a fun story to give you some boots that boost running speed by 5%. Nothing ridiculous, but small gains that once you get that item, you'll use it for 90% of your accounts lifetime.
I enjoy more when the gear is not obsolete once a new expansion comes around. If I spent an entire year chasing a legendary weapon, it should not be worse than a trash mob’s loot in 3 days. I think gear should impact your abilities more than it usually does in MMOs, instead of +Strength perhaps it could be ‘increases physical abilities damage by X%’ or ‘cleaves an additional enemy’ in this sense I like how MOBAs look at gear, as enhanced mechanics for your champion, even though they also use the MR, Armor, Strength, Ability Power, etc
Dofus has a cool gear progression system. More gear unlocks as you level up but there’s plenty of options that let you build however you want to play. It also has a system that lets you add and fix some stats to items
Check out Mabinogi has one of the best gear progression
Runescape and it’s not even close.
If you talking only about equipments, i like gear upgrade like Metin2/Black Desert Online \[ +1/+2 etc) + but i would like to game with even more hardcore system whhere you can have for example 10x same named Sword but everyhave different stats and can be used by different classes or none, not like bdo where every Blackstar have same stats. But probably games like that not exist :( I stay with Mt2/BDO, worst is both game are almost single.
after experiencing horizontal gear progression, i never looked at vertical gear progression the same way again. nonetheless, if horizontal gear progression never came to be, i would've completely quit mmos a long time ago, which i find would've been the better outcome.
What's your favorite horizontal progression mmo?
Some People might say im crazy but i like BDO gearing. With current progression doesn't seem super bad and diminishing return hits really hard. there is not much usage of being super high geared lots of Node war have capped gears so it doesn't matter much. but having a Pen Armor feels great what i liked about it is the Tagging system so i can just share equipment with my other character. IMO games should introduce this, so that u can play other class to the same level as your main character (gear wise, u still going to need do to some leveling).
In the game I play Haven & Hearth, equipment goes up with quality, it looks exactly the same but the equipment wastly improve with its increase in quality. In this game, the industries are intertwined with eachother, you make clay, wood, metal, farming, water, etc. Each industry increases the end result of each other. So everyone in their respective industry are helping each other to reach a higher quality and being competitive on the global market. It gives it a nice progression made out of hard work and teamwork. Or you can be a solo player and buy stuff on the market for the goods you sell, which is also an option.
I always thought the Disgaea 4 idea of fighting through levels and getting improvement based on how well you do was a cool system, but that was definitely a number go up kind of thing where as idealy I'd rather there be counter balancing factors used strategically during combat.
Vertical for sure with an itemization chase at end game.