Originally Posted by
Demon6324236
To give my example in your own film analogy, I feel like FFXI's leveling would be the same as having a long backstory take place for over half of my movie, just to get to the part of the movie which happens in present day, the part that should be the meat of my experience, after having explained how the character got to this point. If a game wants the XP portion to be a journey all on its own, it needs to break up that leveling experience with some challenge, and meaty part of its own, to give not only a climb of levels, but a challenge to push yourself and see what you have learned, improved, and how you have grown. The thing is, like I said, FFXI leveling has never felt anywhere close to that for me, even the limit breaks were not close, though that was mostly because they were not fun or entertaining, but rather they were an annoying obstacle in my path to me.