What is horizontal scaling?

I am basing this thread and suggestion on Taugrim's idea and he explains the concept thouroughly in this video;

However, if you do not want to watch it, then I'll give you a quick explanation and a more lenghty one explaining why I think SWTOR has already gotten a good foundation for a system like this in the post below.

Currently, SWTOR is scaling vertically. What this means is that your character becomes stronger through progressing, be it through levelling or raiding/pvping at end game. It could be dumbed down this; when you get stronger gear you see bigger numbers.

Horizontal scaling is based around the idea that everyone is equally strong and that it is skill (and of course class balance) that decides whether player A kills player B or the other way around. That in itself means that there won't be any gear grinding in this game for any other purpose than customizing the way your character looks.

This also means that raiding will take a different turn. Rather than gearing up in order to beat a tier and progress into the next, old content will never be trivialized. In the long run, that means that there will be more than one active attraction in this themepark at a time. Incentive to raid could be items with bragging rights as well as a scoreboard on the fleet where players can see which guild has downed which encounter fastest. This would give raiding a more competitive scene that goes beyond "Server First".

I explain my thoughts about this much more thoroughly in the post below, but this is the basic idea of the system.

Obviously the levelling system cannot be removed, that would be a too big of a change. However, just because the levelling scales vertically that doesn't mean that the endgame has to. As Taugrim says, the vertical scaling has fundamental problems. The major problem, in my opinion, is that when new content is released, old content becomes trivial. That is a very bad game design, and it makes it harder for new players to adapt at end game. Another major problem is that it upsets pvp balance, which should be explained throughout this post.

Take world of warcraft as an example. If you play from the beginning of an expansion, you're golden. You don't have to grind instances because the segue from 5 man heroics into raids is relatively smooth. It's the same for pvp, the earlier you start gearing up in pvp the less painful your pvp experience will be. Because you'll be gearing up at the same time as others.

Now, if you start playing world of warcraft today and hit endgame, what do you have to do? You'll have to farm instances like crazy in order to buy "badge gear" (for those who did not play wow; whenever you defeated a boss in a heroic dungeon you received a currency that you could use to buy gear, and a new boosted set of gear would be available every time a new raid tier was released. The gear that dropped in the dungeons was utterly meaningless because it was only useful for the first raid in the expansion). I don't think anyone thinks that is a fun experience. It's grindy as heck and you'll be scolded at for having bad gear in the beginning, maybe even outright kicked from the group. As for pvp? Enjoy being utterly useless to your team for about a week or so until you gather enough pvp gear to survive for more than 5 seconds (forgive the exaggeration, but you get the point).

The reason I'm mentioning these things is because SWTOR is suffering from similiar problems. Not quite as bad yet, I might add, but the more content that is released the worse it will get. Horizontal scaling would fix all those problems. It would also give players at max level more variety in their activities and, the best part, no grinding for gear. I understand that some people like to see their characters become more powerful, as part of character progression but just consider this idea for a moment. No gear grind. That means, no farm raids. You know that fresh level 50 who joined your guild? No reason to drag him through old content so that he can play with you, because the moment he joins your guild he can play with you! That makes things easier for EVERYONE involved.

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Now to the second part of my thread; why I think that SWTOR has a good foundation for a system like this. As Taugrim says in his video, rather than getting gear upgrades you can get achievements, titles and vanity items such as pets and mounts. We do not have achievements in ToR, not yet, but it's something that Bioware is considering. However, we do have titles, pets and mounts. We even have ships that, perhaps someday in the future, can be pimped out. And best of all, SWTOR has got moddable gear.

SWTOR's moddable gear was a stroke of genius. In the scenario of having horizontal scaling, moddable gear could still serve as gear progression (of sorts). It could also help the player economy and I'll elaborate on that in a moment, since it's almost a topic in the topic. Anyway, different stats are good for different specs, and because of soft caps you can't just boost one stat because that would most likely result in a loss of dps. No doubt some mathematical wizard will find the best possible combination for each and every spec eventually, but that always happens.

Moddable items, even without stats, are still attractive to people. More often than not, it's not getting more stats that keeps people raiding. It's defeating difficult encounters and having something to show for it (of course this is not a fact but, considering myself and my friends, we're all pretty much in a consensus about this). When people enter a new instance it's the progression they look forward to, not the farm that it is eventually turned into due to powerful gear.

As for pvp, I imagine there are some people who love to have better gear than others. I certainly don't (rank 87 operative here), I prefer balanced teams. It's not as much fun winning huttbal 6-0 as it is winning huttball 3-2. It's certainly not fun losing a game because my team had more fresh level 50s than the opponents. It isn't fun being a fresh level 50 either, even with a full set of recruit gear. Kudos to bioware for implementing it, but paying 350-400k in order to be suboptimal isn't very fun. It certainly doesn't promote the game either, making the endgame experience harder on new players simply because of gear. That is bad!

Horizontal scaling in a pvp environment would assure that it's only skill that separates good players from bad. It would probably be much easier for bioware to balance pvp as well, since they'll have more control over the damage and healing output. Stats like expertise was their solution to separate pve from pvp (which could be considered both good and bad). They shouldn't remove expertise as a stat, in my opinion. It's good to have a pvp stat to tweak in order to adjust balance.

Now, to elaborate on how mods could be beneficial for the player economy and community interaction. First of all, since the game would scale horizontally, craftable items wouldn't become outdated. That could have a positive effect on the economy. Also, consider this; if it is the players that creates the strongest mods in the game, then that promotes community interaction like nothing else. Why did Star Wars Galaxies have such a healthy player economy? Because players needed each others. I personally think that concept is much better than loot. I have some more thoughts on this matter that I may share later, should people support this thread.

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Endwords:

If you've read this far then I thank you for having taken your time. I love this game, but it's based on some very outdated and flawed mechanics that could be rectified. The raiding guild I was in recently fell apart due to people getting tired of the grind. We were open to new players but it became too much of a chore to do all those farm raids. We could blitz through both EV and KP in one night, but blitzing through content isn't fun. It's a chore, why couldn't we just take our new recruits into the newest instance from scratch?

There's also a risk with horizontal scaling, that could probably scare the developers. And that risk is that people will defeat the content and leave. Let's be honest, one of the things that takes up most time in this game is to gather gear, and I don't think there's a lot of people who enjoy that endeavour anymore. In the long run, having an end game with more than one active attraction at a time will be better for the playerbase. That's what I believe. Especially if they can throw in competition of sorts, have a databank on the fleet that players can access in order to see which guild have defeated which encounter fastest etc. Then progression is turned into progression, not farm!

Please post your thoughts to your heart's desire. Do you believe that horizontal scaling would be a worse concept that vertical scaling, and if so, why? Or do you believe that horizontal scaling would be an awesome concept for SWTOR? If so, please post your support to keep this thread going!

So basically you want to do away with gear progression? Instead of raiding for better gear, you'd raid for different kinds of gear to expand your library of playstyles?

That idea, if implemented, would bowb the game up beyond repair.

That idea, if implemented, would bowb the game up beyond repair.

Elaborate. Why do you think so? Is gear progression -that- important?

I've already covered a lot of cons with gear progression. Content is trivialized, pvp balance is upset, game is turned into farming. Those being the major issues in my opinion.

The pros with horizontal scaling, however, is the contrary. Content isn't trivialized. Just because Denova is released, that doesn't mean Eternity vault will become less difficult. You can still go back to eternity vault and polish your performance on certain boss fights in order to beat old records, or simply play through the instance for fun. Perhaps we have different opinions but raiding ceases to be fun when it's turned into farming.

Gearing up in pvp is never fun. If everyone had equal gear from scratch, we'd see much more balanced games that are reliant on skill.

Did you watch the video? If not, you really should. Taugrim explains the concept in great detail.

TL;DR: Good idea, but needs some work or it could have unwanted consequences.

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I like where you're going, but if you strip gear progression entirely then you need to have a strong and viable alternative. Achievements, etc. might do this - but what gear progression does give you is:

* A reason to run the content multiple times

and

* A regular sense of achievement as you earn the next piece of gear or whatever, combined with a change in performance

and

* A progression system aimed not at individuals, but at guilds.

These are strong motivators, and if you remove them entirely it is in danger of costing subscriptions from the late-game players.

That said... I still think the concept is a good one. It needs more thought to what can be done to ensure the points above are not lost.

For PvP in particular I am ALL OVER this. Like a rash. I hate gear progression in a PvP environment - in the past in WoW PvP was a great endgame option for people who didn't have time to grind: you could compete effectively in level 60 blues against someone in AQ20 gear. With the introduction of the PvP-specific gear and (worse) the PvP-skewing stats (resilience, etc). that destroyed that - and once again you needed to grind like crazy to play.

Anything that lets people who are friends but have different play habits still play together is a Good Thing, so while I'm not giving this a '+1', I still think there is food for thought in here.

Just throwing this out there:

Because SWG had player housing there were alot of vanity items that people did "instances/heroics" to obtain to better their homes. So rather then offering gear as incentive giving vanity items and neat little things is often a great idea

First, it's not new, already been done.

2nd, BW already chose to do vertical scaling in TOR, not sure what's the point.

3rd, horizontal scaling has pros and cons and its own set of problems.

@Kid_Gloves

Heya, thanks. I realize that having a wall of text as your suggestion won't catch many eyes ^^ on the contrary, it drives them away.

And as you say, there needs to be some incentive. Time attacks with a scoreboard on the fleet would be a great thing to have for server competition. Maybe have a top 3 or even top 5 or top 10 list accessible for everyone to see. Special gear for beating the hardest challenges will serve as bragging rights and that alone is enough reason for most to go raid nightmare modes, I would imagine. And let's not forget that it's supposed to be fun to raid ;p that should be the biggest incentive.

In the end, it's up to bioware to implement these incentives for us. Kirorx hints at something that may be an incentive in the future and that is furniture. I doubt we'll see player housing anytime soon but.. I'm kinda hoping we'll be able to pimp out our ships! Both exterior and interior.

Also, I'm with you on the pvp part. Gear progression has nothing to do in a pvp environment, but it's a requirement in MMORPGs because of PvE. That's another flaw with vertical scaling! I want balanced teams.

@Nyla

Can you give us an example of an MMORPG that has done a game with horizontal scaling? I'm not that knowledgable about other MMORPGs, I spent most of my time in WoW and SWG prior to SWTOR, never bothering with any other games.

Also, does it matter if it has been done before? In theory it sounds like a great concept. Sure, bioware may have chosen to do vertical scaling... but they also chose to do a suggestions forum where nobodies like me can post their thoughts and ideas. I doubt I'll have any effect on anything but I can hope! Because I think that this concept is brilliant, and I actually took a lot of time and effort into making this thread (thus the wall of text that no one ended up reading ^^...)...

SWTOR is a themepark, and with this forumla it's only going to have one attraction up at a time. That's not a particularly fun themepark in the long run. How many enjoyed grinding ICC back in WLK? It was the only raid for more than half a year, at least... aah the memories... *ties a noose around the neck*

Speaking of grindy games...Age of Conan. But they did do something in their expansion that I thought was kind of interesting. The incentive to collect new gear from the new dungeons was to combat different sorts of enemies and also to add some variety to your statistical distribution, should that interest you.

So basically, most of the enemies in the expansion pack did the bulk of their damage with critical hits, so all of the new gear had some stat (I no longer remember what it was called) that mitigated damage from critical hits. So to put that in SWTOR terms, wearing a set of gear like that would probably be great when fighting a player who specced crit/surge but be weak against a player who specced power/accuracy.

Options. I always think those are better than a purely vertical progression. Of course, AoC made you grind to high heaven for that stuff and there were many, many other problems with the game, but that concept, at least, I did like. I do understand that horizontal progression comes with its own set of problems, but in the realm of PvP, at least, it's just plain stupid to have vertical gear progression for the reasons that have already been stated.

I fully support horizontal scaling and have done so ever since the forums opened. Sadly the devs chose the WoW route.

As another poster here in this thread suggested, I don't think it would be beneficial to retroactively remove the gear grind that is currently in the game since it would realy piss off the current player base who is in the majority enjoying this type of content. What could be done however is that going forward the gear progression as it stands gets piece by piece replaced with horizontal scaling rewards. This way, the existing gear and effort put in by the players would not be devalued. The best gear would remain the best gear, they simply should not add any more on top of that.

As far as reasons to engage in in content that is not tied to a gear grind there should be rare vanity items, rare crafting scematics, etc.. The focus here must be on rarity. In SWG for example, Mandalorian Armor wasn't a huge improvement in stats, but everybody that saw it knew that it took some huge effort to get and there weren't all that many people that actually had it. Braging rights are a massive factor in MMOs and I honestly believe it would actually lead to an increase in participation as compared to a gear grind.

Regarding PvP, the gear grind should be completely removed. Period. It was THE most stupid idea ever to even include it in the first place. PvP should always be about skill and not gear. PvPers are already a relatively small part of the player base so the focus should be in making it inviting for new players and vertical gear scaling is simply not helpful in that regard. Fact is that nobody enjoys content in which he/she get steam rolled without having a chance to compete. Instead there should be fun PvP activities offered like giving players ACTUAL things to fight over. Be it planetary control, access to a special flashpoint/operation, etc.. Something that motivates the community to colaboratively work towards a goal an not only for personal advancement.

I'm pro horizontal, very pro and I agree with OP.

Gear should compliment your character (builds), not the other way around. I want to be able to develop and form/build my character with attributes, skills, talents, feats, perks and other advances, have a sertain look to the character and then gear up to maximise my pros, support my weaknesses or a mix and match approach depening on what "I" as the player want to be able to do.

Passive abilities, talents, feats perks etc is the way to go imho- and a trimmed down ability bar like we'll see in GW2, TSW etc is the future. Wich also gives developers the tool to create more interactive combat dynamics.

As another poster here in this thread suggested, I don't think it would be beneficial to retroactively remove the gear grind that is currently in the game since it would realy piss off the current player base who is in the majority enjoying this type of content. What could be done however is that going forward the gear progression as it stands gets piece by piece replaced with horizontal scaling rewards. This way, the existing gear and effort put in by the players would not be devalued. The best gear would remain the best gear, they simply should not add any more on top of that.

Yeah, or perhaps add it in an expansion in the future or something. It kind of worries me that we're seeing a raised level cap announced already but , who knows, it could be a blessing in disguise and transition the game into horizontal scaling? One can always dream. ^^

Regarding PvP, the gear grind should be completely removed. Period. It was THE most stupid idea ever to even include it in the first place. PvP should always be about skill and not gear. PvPers are already a relatively small part of the player base so the focus should be in making it inviting for new players and vertical gear scaling is simply not helpful in that regard. Fact is that nobody enjoys content in which he/she get steam rolled without having a chance to compete. Instead there should be fun PvP activities offered like giving players ACTUAL things to fight over. Be it planetary control, access to a special flashpoint/operation, etc.. Something that motivates the community to colaboratively work towards a goal an not only for personal advancement.

I can only speak for myself but before 1.2 and even after 1.2 I haven't ever played pvp for the gear. I've picked it up, certainly, but it wasn't because of the farm that I played. It was because it was fun, and I still think that it is fun and that's why I'm playing. However, it's also the reason why I'm not very enthusiastic about rolling alts.

I may be alone in feeling like this but, let me know if you feel similarly. The reason I've always stuck to one character in games with vertical scaling is because of the inevitable gear grind. You invest a lot of time simply to be competitive and, while that itself may sound good, it really prevents me from levelling alts. SWTOR has got the story aspect at least so if I reach level 50 and end up not playing the alt in the future, then at least I've experienced the story. But it's kind of sad that I can't try a new class at end game without having to invest months into gear grind. I suppose you could argue that it's possible through 10 to 49, but I scoff at that statement. Explain that to a new player and expect him or her to be hyped about SWTOR's endgame.

There are other rewards to show for having invested time and effort into your character. The Rakghoul event for example. I only have the codex entries and the titles from that event on one character, making her feel more complete than my others. That doesn't affect the gameplay. Then there's statistics, such as valor ranks and MVPs received and warzones won etc.

Horizontal progression in not new its basically a sand box feature to make the crafting system, and drop items work together in a simulated reality. Sand boxes by default adapt a horizontal progression.

However, even in sand boxes there is a few rare items which slighty increase peoples advatages. So that has to exist as lure to get rare items.

The premise of horizontal scaling is 1. people are more on an eveining field. That foundation of logic is something I am very fond of, and therefore beleive something close to that should be in swtor. For example pvp gear is OP and varied from pve gear for lvl 50, to entry lvl pvp, to WH gear. Those are big differences. Also there are only a few tiers in between the long grind. And to emulate a horinzontal grind with pvp would mean at lvl 50 the gear does not vary too much and there are more tiers as well. That is something I would like to see in pvp.

For end game in general it would be nice to have more content that scales. If the content scales to our lvl and we can get rares which are beneficial for our lvl from any area, which are also unique to that area then it would be same benefit of horizontal progression. Thus at end game what ever the lvl cap is, is to introduce a system that brings all content to our lvl difficulty, and allows us to get special rewards which are unique... also in spirit of the horizontal progression all gear is close to the same capacity of effectivies for it designated class.

However, I beleive for such a system to be in place there needs to be more. Since it removes the carrot on the stick, or that grindish long term goal of themepark games by putting an over powered gear or weapon and making it a long time to attain... and replacing with close to everyone eles gear... then the alternative ius by going what is natural... and that is a sand box system of long term goals of housing/castles/seiging and conquering.

The only problem with implementing horinzaontal progression is that you remove the long term plan of themeparks, and there is not other long term plan in swtor to fill up that void. Which is unfortunate since themepark long term goals of getting the best gear is a boring grind, and not the same as the more rewarding goals of a sand box game with more realiztic and better simulated goals of a virtual reality with a complex crafting system, rare resources in dangerous areas, and guild cities, and expensive castles and areas that can be conquered for riches.

The premise of horizontal scaling is 1. people are more on an eveining field. That foundation of logic is something I am very fond of, and therefore beleive something close to that should be in swtor. For example pvp gear is OP and varied from pve gear for lvl 50, to entry lvl pvp, to WH gear. Those are big differences. Also there are only a few tiers in between the long grind. And to emulate a horinzontal grind with pvp would mean at lvl 50 the gear does not vary too much and there are more tiers as well. That is something I would like to see in pvp.

Indeed. I think Bioware has done a great job with the recruit gear, but again it isn't fun to pay just to be suboptimial. And again, this makes it even harder on new players. Most players should be able to afford the pvp gear when they reach level 50 but I can understand that a large amount won't be able to. Perhaps they'll prioritize speeders or mats for crafting or [insert reason here] which means they won't be able to buy the recruit gear. Then they enter a warzone and immediately people will look down on them and tell them to get the recruit set first before entering a WZ, and more often than not they do so in a very rude manner.

I cannot stress this enough, if there's anything that scares away new players it's vertical scaling. It makes end game seem complex and the only way to catch up to the current tiers, in case of pve, is to grind flashpoints. Again it's the same damn problem we had in world of warcraft where the drops in instances were only useful for the fires tier of raiding.

Like you said, they could scale the content. That way the entire game progresses, but I think that's harder to achieve than just having a basic horizontal scaling where the reward is cosmetic items, titles and other bragging rights.

However, Taugrim touches this briefly in the video in my main post; one thing that could still serve as progression is set bonuses. Set bonuses doesn't have to be major or game breaking. Set bonuses that I really like are those that alters our abilities slightly. For example, on my operative I have a set bonus that gives my orbital strike one extra tick. So it strikes 4 times instead of 3 times. I have a set bonus that increases the range of my interrupt by 5 meters. I have a set bonus that increases my energy by 5. I have a set bonus that increases the duration of evasion by 1 second (from 3 up to 4). Then I can remember some set bonuses from other classes that I like; Sith warriors have a set bonus that removes the minimum range for saber throw. They have a set bonus that heals them for 8% of their total health when they intercede ETC. Have to stop myself ;P

If those things could only be achieved through pvp/pve then that could serve as progression. As long as the set bonus doesn't make too big a difference.

Also, here is another downside with Vertical Scaling:

Currently I have three level 50s. An operative, a jedi shadow and a sith warrior. My operative is my main and I consider my jedi shadow my alt. I don't have time for my sith warrior, unfortunately. It's not that I don't want to play him, it's just I can't put time and effort into three characters. Had this game had horizontal scaling, I would be able to play him as well, but alas... vertical scaling ftl.

For what it's worth, I 100% agree with Taugrim.

Being mainly into PvP myself, I think he often has good things to say and definitely knows what he's talking about.

Speaking of PvP, currently in SWTOR it's all about the gear grind and very little about actual skill. In other words, it doesn't really matter how skilled you are, if you don't have good enough gear you're basically screwed in post 50 PvP...which is also one of the main reasons why I don't find PvP as enjoyable anymore.

I think the current system (or the vertical scaling if you will) can pretty much be summed up in one word: Frustration.

Not being able to take down an opponent simply because he/she has better gear than you just makes it frustrating and annoying. It also makes the playing field uneven as participants aren't competing on an equal basis, since the one with the best gear will most likely win regardless of skill.

IMO this is a flawed system at its core. Proper competition should be based on your skill, not simply having the best stuff as it is now. The time you put into the game should be used to improve your actual hands-on skills with the game, not to grind the gear you need just to have even the slimmest chance of even surviving in PvP.

Thankfully it seems some developers are catching on to a more "horizontal" approach. For example, a lot of the interviews with the Planetside 2 devs seem to suggest that they are going for a progression system which at least sounds very similar to what Taugrim describes.

Again, I fully agree with Taugrim and would welcome this in SWTOR. However, I fear that it may not be possible to implement, mainly because everything in the game is so focused on the gear grind and it is such an important and intricate part of the overall system.

Bottom line: SWTOR = Gear > Skill.

And nothing I've seen so far seems to suggest this is going to change.

SE

Mythic told us that Master Levels were horizontal advancement in DAoC. Strangely, it wasn't as horizontal as the already implemented Realm Rank system, but I digress.

I like the idea of horizontal advancement, but it isn't any less cookie cutter than vertical and means that people only do what they have to for the cookie cutter spec and don't touch the other stuff for the variety of gear/abilities - thus a lot of content is not experienced by these people.

I think the nearest thing we have to horizontal advancement is the amazing-looking, but awful spreadsheet gankfest: Eve Online.

If players need and have different roles within a team, then horizontal advancement can work, otherwise I think you will see the same old cookie cutter nonsense but also a lot more skipped content.

Yes. Yes times a million.

The best example of horizontal progression itemization is TF2.

There are the basic items everyone has, and then sidegrades of all sorts of variations that can be unlocked/crafted/etc

Imagine every sniper had a basic snipe shot that dealt 1000 dmg. You could unlock incendiary rounds that deal 800dmg and then 350dmg over 12 seconds, freezing rounds that deal 700dmg and apply a slow, explosive rounds that deal 500 aoe damage, etc

These numbers are obviously just made up on the spot but you get the idea... There is no clear best ability. They are sidegrades and let you fill whatever roll you want to fill in a team and let you gear your playstyle to your own liking.

This type of progression is far more fun to "grind" through because you don't feel you NEED to do it to be competitive. You do it because you want to try it out and flesh out your character to your liking.

Grinding towards something fun and cool is way more rewarding to grinding so you aren't terrible.

The other advantage is flashpoint/operation/whatnot balancing.

They can set up normal/hard/nightmare difficulties knowing how strong all characters will be. Its no longer a gear grind to be able to advance.

Nightmare is for hardcores willing to put in the time to practice and perfect execution of an encounter.

Having unique looking gear or crafting schematics drop from these harder instances gives players status as the elite (aka baller status) that truly sets them apart and that will never be cheapened.

(By cheapened I mean this: in wow we were alliance first to kill Illidan. We had status because our gear and people stopped to look at you because you had gear they could look up online.

Fast forward a few months and everyone had cleared BT and pugs were doing it weekly.

Our once amazing gear was now commonplace.

It severely cheapened the experience for me and is the reason I left wow. What we poured hours and hours into every night was all for a few weeks of being unique. )

People will often bring up that there is no reason to play a game when you aren't grinding gear.

I can tell you that this is false. I have 2000+ hours on TF2 because it is fun to play and learn all the difficult playstyles possibly with the different items.

Playing against other people on a level playing field is exhilarating and rewarding.

The progression you see will be your own abilities getting honed instead of your gear getting a stat boost.

When you beat that player 1v1 after weeks of him mopping the floor with you... you know its because you as a player got better. Not that his gear fell behind.

I've been saying for years that horizontal scaling is the breath of fresh air that MMOs need in this era of WoW clones. Idk who this Tagrim is but he's absolutely right!

People will often bring up that there is no reason to play a game when you aren't grinding gear.

Bingo! This is the one massive argument I've had for years that MMOs don't need to offer incentives to do everything. You don't have to be forever grinding points of some kind.

I totally approve this message.

This idea that theme park MMOs have to be vertical scaled in order to survive is erroneous. In fact an argument to the contrary could easily be made.

There are plenty of other ways to string the carrot to the stick with out having to resort to gear grinding. Dozens of suggestions have already been made here.

Same goes with adding new content. Get creative and don't rely on a tired, antiquated technique.

What this game should have been from the get go was: 1-49: vertical co-op. 50: Horizontal sandbox.

People have been saying it since early in beta. The story mode offers an excellent leveling experience. Now it's time to fix it so endgame offers an unique experience of its own. Implement the new plant and regress Illum into true sandbox planets. And for God's sake, get rid of expertise.

I like the idea of 1-49 vertical scaling but I think it should be more story driven and revolve less around random filler quests.

at 50 there should be a level 50 class story chapter that slowly gives you your level 50 gear as you progress. once you're done that you are equally well geared as any other level 50 and now you can start making your character your own by fine tuning your look, feel, abilities, etc.

/signed

Gear grind is bad design, boring, and unfulfilling. I don't like beating up on people weaker. Even ground is skill game.