Horizontal Progression and Gold?

Bestinna

I've been reading about horizontal progression lately and I couldn't figure out... In a horizontal progression system where all players are practically equal considering there's no level gaps from vertical based progression... to an extent, all players have end game gear, so what purpose could currency (gold, silver, copper) possibly serve? 

I can't buy any means of character advancement i.e. an epic sword that does 50% more damage than what I have because that's vertical.

So what do I buy with all the gold i'm probably amassing? I don't really care about cosmetics so I might buy my favorite one if that's available but that's it.

Cleffy

Housing and other non-combat advantages. Also horizontal progression doesn't mean no progression. For instance you can pay a lot for plate armor which significantly increases physical defense at the expense of mobility and other defenses. The cost comes in specializing.

VengeSunsoar

Weapons could give different skills. E.g. a sword that freezes things or does a life tap. 

waynejr2

Cleffy said:

Housing and other non-combat advantages. Also horizontal progression doesn't mean no progression. For instance you can pay a lot for plate armor which significantly increases physical defense at the expense of mobility and other defenses. The cost comes in specializing.

Horizontal progression is no progression. haha.

Bestinna

Cleffy said:

Housing and other non-combat advantages. Also horizontal progression doesn't mean no progression. For instance you can pay a lot for plate armor which significantly increases physical defense at the expense of mobility and other defenses. The cost comes in specializing.

I see what you're saying and agree. However, the way I see it is that's not progression because you gain one thing and lose another so you're still on the same playing field as everyone else.

Also, I don't see myself spending all my gold in a game only for housing. Archeage for example; spending a week turning in packs for 1000g only to spend it on upkeeping the taxes on your land (edit:) so you can make more packs for gold so you can pay taxes on your land again.

What do you mean by non-combat advantages?

VengeSunsoar said:

Weapons could give different skills. E.g. a sword that freezes things or does a life tap. 

Good idea, so long as it's like Cleffy's Heavy Armor, and the sword loses some damage stat in return for that life tap, which in a sense gives that damage back in addition to healing you a bit.

SirAgravaine

I believe the term "horizontal progression" when speaking about character development in an RPG is more succinctly described as "diversity".

Currency is a representation of material wealth and not necessarily "ability". It is the developer's decision to separate those two systems. In many games the material wealth and character ability are linked by means of vertical progression systems that rely on equipment. A game that focuses on diversity of interaction, rather than upward progression, utilizes material wealth for vanity or additional diversity in gameplay.

Quizzical

It varies by game.  In some cases, it can be for cosmetic things.  In others, there are a bunch of things that are about as powerful but very different from each other, and they can be situational.  Horizontal progression can mean having a bunch of different options that are about as powerful on average instead of only one, and then you can equip the one best for your particular situation.  See skill acquisition in Guild Wars 1 for a good example of this.

Albatroes

Play FFXI and you'll easily see the importance in money.

But to answer more accurately, just because the potential is there, doesn't mean everyone can achieve it. The purpose of horizontal progression is to give length to actions and such. For example, camping an rare for hours for a belt when there may be only 1 or 2 belts with that particular stat or better. There's also the importance of being able to resell which a lot of games aren't really doing anymore. That mechanic is very important in horizontal progression.

Cleffy

What I mean by non-combat advantages are things like crafting, mini-games, and maintaining a corp.

ste2000

Bestinna said:

I've been reading about horizontal progression lately and I couldn't figure out... In a horizontal progression system where all players are practically equal considering there's no level gaps from vertical based progression... to an extent, all players have end game gear, so what purpose could currency (gold, silver, copper) possibly serve? 

I can't buy any means of character advancement i.e. an epic sword that does 50% more damage than what I have because that's vertical.

So what do I buy with all the gold i'm probably amassing? I don't really care about cosmetics so I might buy my favorite one if that's available but that's it.

Character progression might be horizontal, but item progression don't have to be.

Bestinna

Cleffy said:

What I mean by non-combat advantages are things like crafting, mini-games, and maintaining a corp.

Buying advantages in crafting to make gear equivalent to what everyone else has (horizontal), mini-game advantages (?), and maintaining a corporation advantages (to make more gold I assume?) aren't worth buying with gold considering I don't benefit from them because 1: gives me just more of the same armor 2: I don't want to play mini-games let alone need an advantage in a just-for-fun sort of thing 3: just gives me more gold I can't do anything with. 

ste2000 said:

Character progression might be horizontal, but item progression don't have to be.

So assuming everyone just started a level cap, then from there they grind their dungeons for uber-gear will result in the negatives of vertical progression.

Quizzical said:

Horizontal progression can mean having a bunch of different options that are about as powerful on average instead of only one, and then you can equip the one best for your particular situation.

Agree with this as others have suggested good ideas; Sword that lifetaps, sword that has a chance to freeze, etc endless possibilities. 
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My question was mostly, as someone who plays competitively in PvP and doesn't care about cosmetics/housing/castles/crafting/guilds/stuff like that, I will probably end up with more gold than I know what to do with if there's nothing for me to buy. In vertical progression, there's always the need for gold to buy weapon/armor upgrade scrolls, gems to slot, generally better equipment, potion/scroll/food buffs that last 30m, things that make me more powerful in a vertical direction. 

As far as the answers we've received, we can assume that if there were going to be a 100% horizontal progression game, with your extra gold, you'd be buying:

-Armor pieces with the set bonuses you want, not their improved stats. 
-Abilities (I personally wouldn't like to purchase my skills from other players, and if they were from npcs they would be pretty cheap... I'd want to earn them)

Other possibilities? (Not listing roleplayer stuff like cosmetics because those needs are generally easy to please and are already horizontal while combat isn't.) 

Cleffy

If you are playing it for competitive PVP, then just think of it like Counter-strike. You can pick the AWP or AK47. Or get both and pick the one you want to use. Yup you will probably pile up gold if you are not buying stuff to make your weapon Pink.

Bestinna

Cleffy said:

If you are playing it for competitive PVP, then just think of it like Counter-strike. You can pick the AWP or AK47. Or get both and pick the one you want to use. Yup you will probably pile up gold if you are not buying stuff to make your weapon Pink.

Yes I understand tnow. I was just interested in knowing if anyone might've have anymore creative ideas.

Personally, not having anything meaningful to spend gold on is a huge negative for me. I would prefer horizontal over vertical leveling but this one problem bugs me for some reason.

Loke666

There is a difference between horizontal progression and zero progression. Guildwars had horizontal progression and there were still some uses for gold.

There most of my gold was spent on our guildhall, stuff with cool armor skins and a couple of green weapons I needed for PvP (the greens were just slightly better then gold weapons but even a slight advantages is good).

There are other uses for gold as well. But even many standard MMOs have limited use for gold one you leveled and gear up, the upgrades you need are often BoP then so basically you pay for goldsinks, skins, mounts that look different and other junk you collect.

MMOs economy mechanics is at best below satisfying.  Even systems that are considered the best like SWG were rather messy. But to be honest can't I say I have any great solutions myself either. You will always get hyper inflations in MMOs since the resources comes out of nowhere and considering how good many players are at figuring out ways to max out how much gold you can get each hour played.

It would be interesting to have someone with knowledge of modern and historical economics make a more realistic system, hopefully with help from someone who know what is fun and whats not (yeah, maybe would giving a accountant too much free hands not be such a great idea).

Cleffy

Most mmos have 2 of the 3 basic building blocks of an economy. Resource scarcity, production and trade. They even realistically mimic other economies by printing money and sending their economy into hyper inflation.
Now if the only thing generated by the game was resources and the player was responsible for production, we would most likely see massive deflation over time.

Vermillion_Raventhal

Money sinks are easy to implement really.  I am still curious to see how a finite currency economy would work in a MMO.

Archlyte

I don't like zero progression because that is just as unrealistic as multiplied power scale you see in leveling games. I do like the idea of the mightiest character being able to be killed by a dagger to the heart, or being thrown off a cliff. When the character goes from mote to god in a week it's dumb to me. If you are expected to be a mote in a world of gods I don't play. I think that you could have a progression system that has unseen xp totals, and that does not hugely improve your defense and durability but has some decent gains in lethality. 

For Pen & Paper I play a game called Mythras (formerly RuneQuest 6) by the Design mechanism. In that game you don't get extra hit points as your career lengthens, but your utility and offensive characteristics can improve quite a bit. There are some defensive buffs but they are not crazy, and if you want to avoid taking damage you have to wear prohibitively expensive, and pain in the ass, Plate Armor.

Considering that most MMOs just have you respawn anyway it would seem like horizontal progression would be  good choice for keeping your population close in scale and making dying something that you have to worry about at all levels.  

the other thing is 

DECAY

Having to make new stuff to equip characters is the best use of money in my opinion. It keeps crafters going and makes them want to make the best stuff they can. 

REAL ESTATE

If you can buy land and structures money has great usefulness. EVE is always brought up as a paragon of trade because you can essentially by better bodies (ships) for your characters, but the real estate in EVE is just PvP areas that get denied by presence of players. EVE is basically the same thing as Archeage you carry money on your back through PvP land. If a game comes out that has actual real estate that will be one of the most important uses of money. I don't think it makes sense to just have highway robbers and not conquering armies who take the land.