Please give old content some love!

[Krishnaya]

I get what you're asking for Krish, but if we're getting 6k EXP/kill when chained (and chains frequently went to 3-6 unless you had to rest MP or someone died), you'd be out of the dunes in less than an hour, and the other places equally so.

You're telling me in the new area's it only takes an hour to level from level 10-20? Well can SE make it take like 4-8 hours (depending on PT skill) to get from lvl 10-20 with no trusts and greatly increase rewards such as beastman seals? Please see catmato's second post, Cat has great ideas. Urat also mentioned great ideas. There really is a good way to work this out I think.

But when there's only 99 level to grind through, why does it have to be as quick as 5 mobs per level? Only 250 mobs to get to level 50? Why? Should be 1000 or 2000. I wouldn't mind a slight (or large) nerf to this, but i'm trying to come up with ideas not including nerfing because I know that causes commotion in a gaming community. As i said cat and urat have great ideas too. I will try to wait til someone responds to their ideas before i post more of my own ideas.

There's really not much difference from a full Trust party and a full normal player party now when it comes to leveling, except for...

It's the skill players developed by playing against IT mobs in a 6 person party that's completely lacking. And the challenge of doing that most of all. Skill chains used to be required in any GOOD party. I'm trying to find/talk about a way to make 6 person parties rewarding again. If not by adjusting XP factors, what about things more along the line of what Cat said? I think there must be some way to adjust XP factors but there's a lot of possibilities. Why not something in the middle or rather a mix of all these ideas?

Really aside from the lack of conversations there's not a lot of difference, but that's what a linkshell is for, whether it's social or endgame or whatever.

I love my linkshell for the social and endgame, but if there were appealing rewards for leveling the old way then I could also ask my LS mates to PT with me, and a good LS has people with all dif job types and has a good enough relationship to usually not argue about things.

I'm starting to like Cats ideas a lot. What about taking away 50% of the XP reduction gotten by having multiple players AND adding some extra beast seals etc? I'm sure I could get full parties together regularly to level the old way and develop real skill (even with the new ways still being just as OP as they are now) if the xp was less nerfed with 6 people but was rewarding. Preferably a little bit slower still than the fastest newest ways of leveling.

But to me this was a lot better than the times of old party leveling, where you'd spend three hours waiting for someone who wanted to play PLD or NIN or RDM or BRD

I agree with you first of all! Keep the new leveling systems in tact so that's still possible, but give a reward for full 6 people parties. But I NEVER in my time had that problem because in my group of friends, mostly linkshell friends, we had a few tanks and healers. I had both and switched between the two as my friends needed.

Now you can literally just get up and go where you choose to. Does it have to be solo+trusts? No, bring a friend, or three! EXP, even with friends to "lower the EXP gain," is still faster than it used to be back then, and if you're arguing for old-school leveling and 10+ hours in the dunes, then nothing really needs to change.

Good points for sure. I thought it took longer than 10 hours, because, when I joined in 2003, it took a week to get through dunes. If u want me to say specific times I would argue for (though i'm trying to keep it simple and basic rather than specific) dunes to take like 5 hours lvl 10-20 and increase BST drops for no TRUSTS. Again, maybe Cat's ideas are best.

If it does take ten hours though maybe the XP factors don't need to be changed much at all (i still think some of the XP reduction should be removed from extra players at this point). The thing that would need to be changed is for there to be a reward that convinces people who don't remember the old ways of leveling to at least give it a try with any older players, or anyone wanting to test their skills.

But the way you make the argument sound is that you still want to race up to the 99 cap, rather than enjoying the old leveling process, if the "I want to hit up to 6k EXP like in Adoulin areas" argument is any indication. If you want to slow down and enjoy the moment of old-school leveling, then do so, and don't be in such a hurry to get to 99.

Awesome, you're bringing it home for me, making it personal. I can explain...

I absolutely am NOT in a rush to level to 99. I'd be ok with it taking just as long before, but I know most people are not ok with that. The worst part of the old leveling system is indeed solved by the trusts. The worst part was spending hours sometimes looking for a certain job. Now there's level sync although it's not used any more since the trusts. But still level sync is there and I know I could get groups of people together to sync if there was some kind of reward for that.

I just miss the challenge of the game and the skills players used to develop while leveling their jobs more than anything though. Add rewards for no trusts parties. Something to make it maybe not as fast as the new ways but rewarding somehow. Make people give it a try again is all.

Kensagaku has very intelligently pointed out that negating the XP reduction from PT members would make the old ways just as fast as the new! That would be sad actually, but the problem now is not so many people even wanna try. What about reducing the amount of XP loss from multiple players instead of negating it and adding other incentives?

I'd prefer it to be just as slow as the old way, but I'd be ok with it being a bit faster and incentives being added. What ever gets more people to try. My LS mates talk about how they wish this as well.

I speak from this perspective as someone who just grinded Bst 1-99 with his GF, and we did it the semi oldschool way.

Did you fight VT-IT mobs? That's what it used to be all about. Actually my parties were usually more in the IT-IT++ range than the VT-IT, but even bad parties werent interested in anything less than VT back in the day.

[#1]Being in a party doesnt reduce exp. Instead, you get a 5% exp bonus for every party member you have that is a PC that is the same level as you or lower.

Done. 25% exp bonus if you have a full party, but leachers cannot get the exp bonus. This promotes level synch (which makes everyone the same level so you all get the 25% bonus) and makes leachers fall farther and farther behind
#2: Inflict a severe exp penalty on players in the following circumstances:

-Being below level 70 in Abyssea (-90% penalty)
-Being less than 10 levels below the level of the monster killed (-90% exp penalty)
-Being less than 10 levels below the recommend level of a Grounds of Valor or Fields of Valor quest (-95% penalty)
-Being less than level 75 and turning in an Adoulin Coalition Imprimatur (-90% penalty)

As it stands, extreme power levelling is infinitely faster than normal levelling of any kind and, most importantly, enables cheaters, botters, and the few RMT that exist, to grind themselves back up to level whatever in an hour.

Wow these are great ideas. Really.

Without a way to forcibly cap your level, old-school xp parties are dead and not coming back.

What do you mean forcibly cap your level? There's level sync, but I'm not sure what you mean.




Another idea:

Add an XP reduction for trusts. What kind of a reduction could be up for discussion. I could come up with 10 different ways to do that. Some would include only a certain amount to nerf trusts, and some would combine doing that with, at least to some degree, reducing the XP loss by having multiple people.

Maybe the best thing to do would to be make the XP reduction equal for trusts and players. I'd prefer to do this by fully implementing the same/current XP reduction gotten from player party members onto trusts. If that's displeasing to others though, there's lots of other possibilities. IE: Make trust XP loss and player XP loss equal but not as bad as the old way?

There's way to mix this with Urat's most recent (and really good) 2 suggestions, and Cat's ideas, and my ideas. There's ways to do it for sure that will benefit the longevity of FFXI and it's playerbase.

[RalphTheGalka]

Level sync doesn't help much because the person you're syncing to gains xp and goes up levels. If you can't force yourself to stay at level 10 or level 15 or some arbitrary number you'll outlevel the dunes before you even get there as I proved with my trip the other week. It wasn't an hour to get from 10 to 20, it wasn't even 15 minutes. A walk from Sandoria newbie zone towards Holla crag along the road. I was level 40 before I walked into Jeuno. It wasn't even an hour from Sandoria to Jeuno and I stopped to afk a while.

[Kensagaku]

I know that this has been acknowledged, but I would like to again state that removing the exp penalty for parties won't change anything. To serve as an example, I was leveling my mule's RNG in the dunes just today from level 12-25. It took me a grand total of about an hour with four trusts, and that was with me skilling up Marksmanship as I was going rather than engaging in melee range. No EXP ring used, just the double EXP campaign and killing VT/IT mobs. I was leveling roughly every five or so kills, if that, because I was getting more than 1k EXP per kill, and they didn't take long. That was with Trusts, and no EXP penalties. Remove party EXP penalties, and you're in the same boat; you spend next to no time in the dunes. So simply removing EXP penalties, as you've said, will not fix anything.

Don't get me wrong, there are days I miss leveling the old way. I liked the longevity because it let me meet people and make friends as I went. Sometimes it dragged, other times it went by like lightning. I have a lot of good memories of that time, and I can understand the desire to go back to it. But the game has changed drastically since then, and as a result, we have to adapt to the changes. With all of the EXP bonuses they give us now, the goal is to get to 99 ASAP so that we can participate in the active content with the other players. They have given us ways to do so to make up for the lower number of players that makes it difficult to make a traditional party by giving us Trusts. This is just something we have to adapt to; the game isn't going to magically rewind to those old days.

As an idea for an incentive, however, here's an idea: Add a custom RoE objective of "Party Kills," in which you must have a party of X players or more (I'd suggest around three, rather than a full six), that awards sparks and exp as normal. This would make EXPing a little faster even if the penalty isn't removed, but would also offer an incentive for people to party up, earning extra sparks for gear as they go, or even at 99 when doing CP parties they can earn extra sparks (not that they're hard to cap out...) to convert to gil or things like chapters or etched memories. I did not suggest an item or CP added because the former promotes the possibility of abuse with someone heavily multiboxing for multiplied rewards while the latter doesn't apply to lower-level players and doesn't really incentivize partying at those levels. Perhaps Party Kills I (repeatable) would be for leveling, and Party Kills II (repeatable) would include a level 99 minimum that awards CP too. Incentives to work together as a whole, perhaps? Just a thought on my end.

On one last closing note, and I apologize for nitpicking, I want to argue one last point you made. "It's the skill players developed by playing against IT mobs in a 6 person party that's completely lacking. And the challenge of doing that most of all. Skill chains used to be required in any GOOD party." The thing is that you don't really develop a lot of skill just by fighting IT mobs. Back then, everything was very cut-and-dry on what you were expected to do. Early on you'd see a lot of tank + warrior so that the warrior could pull hate long enough for a thief to SATA Viper Bite and save up TP for the next mob. That was the general gist of it, and the rest was just people following the standard swing-and-kill method. There was no "skill" to be learned by grinding against ITs, because their difficulty was rather minor and generally static, with the only threat being the damage they did thanks to having higher stats. No, skill was picked up by studying the job, not just throwing it at mobs. As a common saying, a skilled player can burn a job and still learn to play it excellently, but a poor player can take the long road all day and still be bad at it.

[Krishnaya]

On one last closing note, and I apologize for nitpicking, I want to argue one last point you made... As a common saying, a skilled player can burn a job and still learn to play it excellently, but a poor player can take the long road all day and still be bad at it.

All good. Nitpicking isn't always a bad thing. Thanks really.

What about making the XP nerf apply to trusts as well? Trusts would still solve the problem of having to wait for a certain class. Could be equal for both player and trust at least. That plus a couple incentives could go along way toward bringing players together.

It's true a good player will develop his skill no matter what, but 0-99 is waaaaaaaaay easy now lol. And I do think it took more skill before though there were always noobs who u had to tell what to do, and create a <call><Weapon Skill.><Please.> to tell the noob RNG or something to WS in time for SC, and etc. but in general was more skilled. Also my parties used to fight IT-IT++ mobs, and I soloed/duoed VT-IT as bst. So ya, that really was more difficult. ijs.

I really like some of Urats ideas in his last post.

Level sync doesn't help much because the person you're syncing to gains xp and goes up levels. If you can't force yourself to stay at level 10 or level 15 or some arbitrary number you'll outlevel the dunes before you even get there as I proved with my trip the other week. It wasn't an hour to get from 10 to 20, it wasn't even 15 minutes. A walk from Sandoria newbie zone towards Holla crag along the road. I was level 40 before I walked into Jeuno. It wasn't even an hour from Sandoria to Jeuno and I stopped to afk a while.

Am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous?

I understand what Kensa said about the idea now being to lvl to 99 as fast as possible but it's a bit rediculous right now. Please add xp cut to trusts as well as players and make it even between the two (even if that means reducing the amount of XP lost by having PC/NPC pt members). Then, above that, add a BONUS for real players as Urat suggested.

Urats ideas in his OP shouldn't be completely left out either. I just think those aren't being discussed as much because they're easy to fix. Really. Gardening, Choco digging, and explorers footsteps... Why not make these worth it again? Black belt I don't know much about so no comment. Never played MNK past lvl 50 or something. All old content needs some love. The things mentioned in the OP as well as adding some love the leveling system... Dare we bring up CoP, Sky, etc.?

I do think SE could've brought in the new without throwing the old out so fast. It happened so fast lol.

[Olor]

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Back to the original topic before this got derailed by talking about exp

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An Explorer's Footsteps
This quest was once the way to get the map of crawler's nest. Now that it isn't, its not worth doing. Please add a nice fat reward for players who collect all 18 tablets, to give incentive to go explore the nooks and crannies of this world you made. Maybe something as simple as a special title, or a pile of gil.

I think giving a ring with a 1/1 warp to the mayor's house in Selbina would be a good reward. They could make sure that everyone who did it before got one by adding it to the ROE objectives.

It would not be terrifically useful, but it would be fun and symbolic.

PANKRATON
I would really like to see some rewards added to Pankraton. Basically if you get a 5 win streak, some kind of reward, a 10 win streak some kind of reward, etc. Or something. It's just sad that this content was never rewarding and still isn't. It's a pretty fun system but no one does it.

Some accessories of around 117 level would nice. (yes I know accessories don't have ilevel but I mean of that general power). How about adding a method of obtaining the trophies already created?

I also had the idea that you could have a pankraton pet turned into a trust (only 1 pet at a time). I still like that idea but I guess it would take too much coding.