@as glorian said+ the efforts to put the game in a better shape have payed well, my feeling of the game is that is better balanced than it was on live.
You do not actually need a infinite vertical progression ....nor an indefinite horizontal progression. What make progression interesting is reach 1 point high enough where you feel powerfull enough, it's all about the feeling you have about your toons; in the case of a tank it could mean being enough tank but also relevant into a fight : be able to whistand tons of dmg but be able to influence the fight. Or could be, be tanky enough but trade support for dmg.
PPL wanna reach that point in vertical progression and then be able to handle it and personalize what thay are able to do ( and keep being relevant )--> this is why personalization as gw2 failed you felt not relevant at all in what you wanted to do.
War does not have this problem, war have a simple classes balance problem just like all other mmorpg have, just because war was never balanced you should not drop halfway.
Warhammer real problems is that what drive ppl to play is fun,
and the reason why i wrote this text wall. War is fun as base and luckluster later on (it was not meant to be super competitive tough it have some competitive elements). This is due balance in first place because being wrek by Op stuff is the first thing which make the game unfun (which is the problem you are so focus to solve first which is good) the second is the fun in stric sense. While i actually think that war combat is fun there are a series of problem which drop the ppl motivation. I hearded more than once player feel frustrated by the class they played or by some classes ability
-old chosen/kobs 9 sec stag are some clear exemple of feeling outplayed by a not conterable ability, also the feeling of being not be able to put up coutner measure because the game is actually based on DONT LET your enemy play. This is exatly the problem in the game which frustrate ppl the most and make them leave....;
i could also pass by other common warhammer problem
1) population in lower tier
-de-bolster is a great weapon for this , force ppl with a campaign system and you will have all tier full (actually do not hit heavy higer level you force them there so give them the same tols as other
2)lack of appereance stuff
-look only tzeench stuff in game .....yo noticed that all f2p game put SO many ( not joking) silly appereance costumes and such but p2p not? a lot could be done in this regard (dana started a thread about this which felt like a good way to handle this issue)
3)lack of incentive to guild
no real incetive to guild or be a guild which do x type of game you can take 24 random ppl; provide they good enough and have ts they will have the same results of 24 guildy; this is wrong, the effort to build a guild should be rewarded as it stand the chance to fail as guild and also being mistrust due being bad or not good enough or being a xrealmers etc
Also guild banner and other guild related advantage
4) monotony, nothing kill a game more than monotony
-vertical progression/and meta shift in class balances are the not so good working panacea which game dev over time used to refresh every ip.
Why instead i cannot have a skull system rewamped instead which bring out a greater deamon or a sun dragon? etc....introducing feature which kill the monotony are the better tools to actually keep ppl interested. If i can have 24 ppl all night logged and do great fights and have epic moment to remember, laught at etc then you can bet you're ass i will play it.
This is in fact quite simple, why do you think the pve lost over the years to the pvp-->monotony and same situation which repeat itself again again and again, pvp won over pve due to this. Vertical progression and meta shift are exatly the pve vs the pvp argument.
Pvp won in variety, but then what you do when a game pvp itself became monotony?
This totally exit from the concept of competitive game , because competitive play is 1 of things that can fit into the words great moments. Hence play the game yourself see what is not fun and try to solve that, introduces more element which make the game fun for more kind of ppl (as was done for pug queue). Nothing need to be earn easily but at least make it fun and things less monotony(pug queue made sc less monotony. You held from t1 some good events which should have show that ppl happily partecipate into events due their breaking of the monotony which : best spec, best class, x type of pvp dictate to them.
The focus of the problem so for me is wrong, to
"hold players" you need fun.......g
ear progression is 1 component/problem which influence the fun.
Aza words are a real shame
1) because we feel like the main lead is loosing the motivation to fix the game and
2)maybe because this is also due other reason like we are the cause and we should had been better in help devs (me, and every other one).
3)
this show a problem in dev-player and viceversa feedback instead.....why this point? me and other pointed out some alternative to both plain simple vertical and horizontal progression... we told you something on which you could work on instead keep repeat the error of the vertical progression , and as such i belive that as me other still dosen't understand, like this quote, some moves from the team; this is another factor which make ppl leave, and not the need of the vertical progressio to hold player (as such each new sets introduction bring new ppl then they leave after 2 month) . This make then also the dev team frustarted itself....it's k push your own change but maybe a 1 week note when changes as big as dok/wp are going to happen so that ppl can pre-point out if stuff that feel odd (with out actually force you to block the changes, just something that actually got missed). Maybe that would allow everyone to not feel disappointed with benefith for all. Some times it feel like there is no interest in get feedback like (that quote) because even due getting warning ppl like me talked about progression which aza then is refering now but then the anwser which aza came out with is disappoiting..... he need to stick to vertical progression ...(
why give use warning then in the first place if this was the argument and why seems all those warned post got ignored.....regard do not actually stick to vertical progression)
There are many problems in the game but for sure is not that ppl attention will drop if the game is not perfectly balanced and the vertical progression stop, the game died due the mentioned problems (with players unhearded feedback being one of those in fact and it seems with the great exeption of the balance forum seems it repeat a bit sometimes), but in reality those were not problem, they were the conseguences of the game being left alone with no real direction (which was the problem). The multiple problems we have in game need to be simply-> solved....... you can solve the problem by litteraly fix the issue you see, the less problem you have (which considering the alpha state are a lot we know) the more the game will be fun,
solution must be fun
The "problem" of the vertical progression and gear gap balance is not a real problem-->
is a choice....you can choice to allow an infinite vertical progression as you stated but again there is a feedback problem then, most of ppl said you that we are good with fix the progression till sov and finish it there, we need a bit of vertical progression because we feel is right but some also said that we dont want an infinite gear progression because it's " dumb"/ as much no one said he want totally horizontal progression like a moba...
Choice matter "right/ok" but is not the end of the world either choice you take; as long you KEEP give RoR attention and strife to make it better the game will not die and ppl will not loose interest.....(still feedback problem tough we said we dont want a a infinite vertical progression)
Also you (as dev team i mean now) would handicap yourself again with that choice for feedback reason just like the statement that there would had not been anymore 3 set choices after anni set tier(which ppl instead were happy about you know, we were happy for a stuff "you" as team pushed and we wanted more so why you actualyl handicap yourself like this?).
Also if the gear is not balanced you can then nerf the gear..... class balance as most of time @ten say should be not related to gear , if gear creae a power creep balance the gear itself; classes should be balanced x se as in fact we are doing in balance forum.