Skillups are easy to get.

People who don't have any idea how to play their jobs? This -always- happened. I've partied with a million idiots who hit 75 pre-abyssea and didn't know their way out of a paper bag with two hands and a map. Just be thankful it makes the game less of a mindless grind for those of us who -do- know what we're doing.

It is still pretty brutally difficult to get your first job to 90; I'm guiding a number of new players through the game at the moment and while removed level caps are a godsend (I'll admit I'm glad I did CoP while it was difficult, but by the same token I enjoy being able to blitz missions for friends) it's very difficult to make the first climb to 90 if you're new to the game. The levels in between around 45 and 70 are -completely brutal- unless you know people who'll let you leech in Abyssea or have a low-man XP group that meets consistently. I'm not sure what could be done to counteract this that hasn't already been done, to be honest, but if I -do- have a problem with the ease of Abyssea XP, it's that it has become incredibly difficult to put together "old school" XP parties. In a lot of ways I consider this an acceptable loss as there are alternatives and I hate XP grinding, however.