I don't think that word means what they think it means!
Please do not raise the minimum level to enter Abyssea.
I think it's great that new/returning players have a way to jump in and get their levels without taking forever to grind them out. I've seen a handful of new players over the past month or so and I think if they had to grind out the levels the old way, (like we've all done) it would be discouraging for them to continue playing. This way, they can get a job up and get to the fun stuff.
I've leeched 3 of my jobs in Abyssea - BRD and DNC from level 40ish, and SMN from level 57. While SMN and BRD were easy for me to "learn" since I've always had mage jobs, DNC was new to me. When I hit 60 I took DNC to Campaign and did quite a few battles to help me get familiar with my JA's, macros and the job itself. I had also read everything I could on proper gear sets and I asked ls members for advice. My dagger was already capped from my RDM, so I didn't have to worry about skill ups. Then, back to Abyssea for more exp. Ding, 90.
I'm lucky enough to be in a ls that will have one person invite people out to leech doing a few Dominion pages, or go as a small party when an AF item is needed from a chest. No one is judgmental about anyone leeching and we all have fun doing it.
I had only intended to level my DNC as a sub, because I was fond of saying that I only level jobs that keep me away from the mob. Now that I've leveled DNC, I find myself enjoying stabbing mobs up close and personal - and that will probably lead me to level another melee job. In my case, being able to leech opened up an entirely different direction with my character that I had intended.
I don't understand why some of you who want it increased are so rabid about it. How I get my exp doesn't affect you. You'll say it makes me a bad player, but in reality, there are bad players that leveled the "old way" as well. I take the time to research and gear my job. If by some slim-to-none chance we ever end up in a party together, and you don't want me there because I leeched my job, then that's your choice. People don't like being judged for what gear they do/don't wear, or if they don't gear swap or whatever. Those who have leeched shouldn't be judged either.
That is because mindlessly grinding is essentially wasting your lives.Quote:
It, in fact, made a very large percentage of players feel like they just wasted the last 5 or 7 years of their lives.
But we should re-enforce it just to cater to a small minority's nostalgia despite your acknowledgement that nobody likes it? I dunno about you, but putting a system in a game that nobody enjoys doesn't sound like a smart idea.Quote:
Any hint of "fun" that came with the old grinding style will be gone knowing theres an easier way now. Nobody liked the grinding
Earn your spot in endgame by not sucking and being good at playing rather than hitting a magical number and still being gimp as all hell (as a lot of people were).Quote:
But you earned your spot in end-game
Missions that often were extremely difficult if you didn't have specific setups (CoP) - I hope you're levelling the right kind of jobs. What quest rewards are useful? Crafting is (largely) level-independent also.Quote:
Missions had level caps that grew as you went deeper into the storyline. Tons of quests, whose rewards were not yet useless, were available. And don't forget crafting.
Most gear from 1-30 and 30-75 was always useless. Most NMs were always useless to kill and it was often silly to camp an NM for a low drop rate item that you can outlevel faster than you can camp it. Most areas were hardly ever visited. Crafting is not useless, just don't suck at it. Most quests have always been useless.Quote:
Most gear from 1-30 and next to all gear from 30-75 is useless. Thats hundreds, maybe thousands, of item dat files gone to waste. Hundreds of nms that are useless to kill, and even if nostalgia brings you to hunt one down, nobody cares but you. Area's that are hardly ever visited. Endless hours spent crafting which is now a useless trade. Countless quests nobody will ever do, because the rewards are useless.
Next to nobody was bothering to do those quests even before Abyssea.Quote:
A couple weeks ago I went online and read through all the stone monuments for the Crawler's Nest map, followed that sad and heartfelt storyline, and it almost brought a tear to my eye. I won't be too surprised if not many of you have ever heard of that quest, and impressed if you have. Is there any reason to go to Crawler's Nest anymore? Are there people that don't even know that it is an area you can go to?
The game you used to play never existed. You're looking at it through rose-tinted glasses.Quote:
We think it will change this game back to the game we used to play. Unfortunately, that game is long gone.
Gear (DD perspective just to give an example):
1-30: gear doesn't really matter except in extreme cases. Bone => Beetle etc if you really care.
30-55: Acc rings, STR rings depending, some jobs get the odd nice piece (notably MNK/SAM/NIN) otherwise...
55-71: Haubergeon and Jaridah gear with the odd other piece here and there.
72-75: Dusk and endgame gear.
Even if you flesh out your job with loads of different sets early on, 95% of gear is absolutely useless. Always has been.
What NMs were useful to camp? LL, VE, Mee Deggi, Fuma Kyahan guy, Mysticmaker Profblix and maybe a couple of others? Most NMs have always been pretty much useless.
I'm not sure how to phrase this without coming across as pompous, but I've been on the sidelines of this conversation for a while and I'm finally succumbing to the urge to address or point out some things.
Before Abyssea content got released, I was running out of things to do. I was in a Dynamis shell, did some endgamey things not counting HNM, and basically my time was spent either logging on for an event or logging out and doing something else. I didn't so much "play" the game as I spent time there then left due to obligations. I had something like... six? Seven? Seventy-five jobs. They were all for the most part decently geared, though my ninja was probably lacking quite a bit. Regardless.
Level cap to ninety-nine got announced and I was simultaneously excited and worried. Grinding jobs to cap was a tedious process, and while they were all done the "hard" way (which is slang for "Get into a colibri party" with friends or level sync to colibri parties in Ronfaure or merit on colibri) I wasn't looking forward to those hours being sloughed through in order to bring my jobs back to usability.
Being allowed to quickly bring my jobs up from underleveled was a pleasant distraction before the real meat of the Abyssea expansion: Acquiring gear. Leveling became a formality before the actual lure. I think that's where we are disconnecting.
People who oppose leeching, to generalize and use a stereotype, so forgive me, are the sorts who end up in pick-up or shout parties, belonging to a social shell or a shell without a very dedicated core of work. Leveling a job for prestige now is a dead concept; it has been a dead concept for years now. Maat's Cap is no longer a status icon. Penalizing people who are trying to quickly get subjobs leveled, or hell, even take their ninety Red Mage and turn it into a ninety White Mage isn't a bad thing. People quickly bringing up Monk or Ninja to be able to tank/survive/experiment isn't a bad thing.
As long as people have their job skills (I mean this literally, referring to the numbers on their Status button) leveled there's no harm or no foul. People complaining about leeching are perhaps upset they're doing all the "work" in a party, then? I can understand that to a degree, but if those people don't like it, they are plenty capable of shouting for a party and not inviting a key mule.
I'm losing track of my points here because I've been sitting on this stuff for what feels like years now.
Removing the ability to enter Abyssea before level seventy won't fix anything. As I'm sure has been mentioned previously, taking the experience points and zones away will only lead back to what was the dilemma before: Sync to colibri at Ronfaure, in Wajoam, or in Bhaf. Those camps cannot support large numbers of people; Abyssea can. Those camps don't even prove anything as far as being "gimp" goes; I know plenty of people who got their Maat's Caps when seventy-five was the cap by syncing to Ronfaure. Gimped skills are gimped even if there's only ten levels of difference. To top this off, those camps don't bring in even a fifth of the experience an Abyssea party can rake in. Being supported by a single healer and puller, I was able to bring in something like ninety-two-thousand experience an hour while my shell, who had recently helped me complete my level eighty-five Ukonvasara relaxed on vent. They did me a kindness, I did them one. There's nothing wrong with give and take.
The level thirty cap works. People who want job levels with always take the path of least resistance, don't misjudge the proposed cap as anything other than a problem that will lead us back to overcrowded camps that are the most popular.
I'll try to think of anything I missed because I know I undoubtedly did. Also, Unaisis, while writing this, your banner kept unnerving me because of the horrific curve of the face. I lol'd all the same, though.
For the sake of civil discourse, let anyone commenting do so amicably.
Edit: I apologize for the walls of text.
Although, after I get a few more jobs to abyssea that I would like to try, I intend to; while I'm out skilling them and gearing them up properly, killing older NMs with friends. Just for fun.
This is possibly because getting the jobs I want/need are a week to two week adventure instead of two years. <.<
Wow, I left earlier in the morning for a doctor's appointment then come back for 15~ pages of fun. Pretty much my conclusion about Krystal:
A player who hasn't actually done any endgame activities and doesn't know how to cope when tons of people have much easier access to it. Probably was also going for Maat's cap too until it became lolz. I bet she doesn't gear swap either.
As someone who has played since the NA release and has spent a lot of time doing sky, Dynamis, kings, sea, and Salvage I have to tell you that I do not feel my time has been wasted. I enjoyed those things when I did them and I enjoyed working on and receiving the gear that I did. It was time, however, for something new, especially with the level cap increase. I will happily work on all the new gear that has made my old, hard earned gear obsolete and be happy that I have the opprotunity to work on new things.
No one is stopping you from leveling the old way if you want. Find people who are of a like mind and go for it. Just don't try to stop other people leveling a different way if they so choose.
You never earnt a spot in an endgame shell because you had a level 75, at least not a good one. You generally had to prove that you could play your job, or at least were willing to learn how to play your job.
Most people I talk to hate doing quests and missions. Personally, I do as many as possible. I keep a list of the ones I've done and the ones I've yet to do. Leveling to cap slow or fast really has no bearing on whether or not you do these things.
Everyone still has the same opprotunity to do them.
The changes to things like CoP don't really have anything to do with the topic of the level minimum in Abyssea.
I like that the game keeps evolving and changing. If it stayed stale and never changed I would probably stop playing because it would be boring. I like the curve balls SE throws at us. It's either adapt or die basically.
As I mentioned above, I have a lot of pre-Abyssea gear. I like being able to go for new stuff. I still even go for old stuff just cause it's there to be gotten.
Abyssea is not stopping you from doing quests.
I have found that most old timer players welcome the Abyssea changes to the game because they freshen up the game. There are a few people who dislike it, but in my experience they are few and far between. Most of the protest seems to come from casual post-PS2 release players who don't seem to realise that Abyssea was designed to help casuals be able to participate in more events and get more things done.
Inflammatory insights into someone's character's...erm... character aside, that was something I forgot to comment on.
A lot of the game's population, at least as far as I know, didn't do much "endgame" outside of the entry-level stuff, like Dynamis and Sea/Sky. When experience and current-endgame crashed into the same zones together with Abyssea, I think a lot of people didn't know how to handle that. On one hand, experience! On the other, competition with the allegedly-elitist endgamers!
There's nothing wrong or bad about high-end play, and suddenly having to share playgrounds made a lot of ruckus between the different crowds.
i dont think the old way is bad. plus they double exp in the old places so people would start to lvl up there again. i wouldnt put it pass SE to change abyssea enter to 75. i would totally lol if they did