Interim Report – Sorry to keep you all waiting!

[FrankReynolds]

Then, I would say this: Why not? Compare what your first artifact armor was like compared to your Dynamis gear. One was traveling across the entire span of the FFXI map, battling NMs and finding your way deep into dungeons to gain your signature "job gear" in a story related to your specific job. The other was slapping mobs around endlessly hoping your Duelist's Chapeau (or insert PITA AF2 drop) would fall into the treasure pool. Which was more fun and felt more rewarding?

Dynamis used to last way too long and require too much scheduling. Other than that and the shitty drop rates, I found it to be a fun and rewarding event. The AF quests had some cool story lines and stuff, but I didn't enjoy the excessive amount of running around to places that were intentionally made annoying to travel to / through. I'd say I felt pretty well rewarded when I finished my first set of af. When I went to start on a set for my next job, it didn't feel nearly as rewarding. I feel like they could have made the finding of chests portion into a one time thing that didn't have to be repeated for subsequent jobs. I'd say it's sort of a wash honestly.

And here's another flaw. The idea that one needed to level 10-20 different jobs? For serious? How high?

That only sounds crazy because of how long it used to take to level jobs. In reality it's stupid for them to keep adding jobs if no one has time to level them. Which also means that they can't really build content around those jobs unless they find a way to get more people to use them (faster leveling process). Besides, who want to pay a company to design stuff that is too inaccessible for them to ever use? If there are going to be 22 jobs, then I want to use them all at some point.

And here's something that exists even at 99: Gear coming from sources that X job requires to progress, but isn't useful for getting said gear. Even now, you see that with jobs who aren't generating the staggers needed for optimal drops = sorry, {No thanks}. If it's a process that results in gear that is ideal for X job, that job should be able to perform in some manner that makes it easier to come by. For example, if it's RNG/COR gear, give it weaknesses to a RNG WS or a specific Quick Draw.

They did that to force people to level more jobs.

Need gear from X event? Level X job ==>
Now you need gear from Y event to gear Y job ==>
That event requires Z job ==>
Now you must level Z job to gear job Y ==>
During the course of all this you acquire extra gear for R job so you decide to level that too

This all leads to job diversity and longer play time. It's a vicious cycle, but it's pretty brilliant if you think about it.

Of course, HNMLS as we knew it no longer exist, and we have a world now where even soloing EP's, you actually make a respectable chunk of exp per kill- especially when combined with training regimens that tack on an effective xp bonus with each cycle of dead beasties, and killing piles of bad guys also results in treasure chests dropping hither and yon. The old bad days of being unable to make appreciable progress without a PT are dead and gone. The problem lies in that the replacement has become sitting in place while someone spams AoEs with a greataxe. There isn't even that 10-20 levels of party play to learn your job anymore. I don't want to see the days where a character took a year to hit cap. I'd be happy with seeing people go 1-99 in 30-60 days played- where 30 is someone who pushed hard and partied constantly for maximum exp gain, and 60 for people who played casual and soloed much of the way instead. FoV could even be easily retuned to this- by offering training regimens that worked for parties and ones that worked for soloists.

I actually agree for the most part. I think it would be cool if they made it so that some zones had books and people could burn like they do now, while other zones had no books, but offered far higher exp per kill, so that a traditional group of 6 could exp outside just as fast as an abbysea burn group does inside (or at least close to that). I doubt that many people would choose it over abbysea, but it might make a few nostalgic cats happy. I think 2 weeks per job should be tops though. Even at that speed, we're still talking about almost 6+ months of just straight leveling for people that want to take all the jobs to cap.

the system by which this is easily done is an error in FFXI that needs to be removed.

I would agree with you, except that I think they would make something far worse if they did. I just don't like the idea of changing things in a way that will make people feel like they missed the boat.

Heck, make characters gain exp bonuses from having leveled other jobs that level out as you get nearer your "top jobs". I've got a jobs I've already leveled? Awesome, give me a exp bonus of (50- current job level + number of jobs with a level higher than current job) x .(highest job level)%.

Not a terrible idea. I'm not gonna lie though. I'm fine with how abyssea leveling works. I don't mind having lot's of people with lot's of jobs leveled. I don't miss the days of playing red mage at every event because we already had a mandau thief in the shell and I didn't want to spend 9 months leveling Samurai. Or spending hours shouting for a bard so that I could merit for 30 minutes before he D/Cs. I was especially thankful for it when SE decided to block me from paying the bill on my 8 year old JP account because I live in NA thus forcing me to turn my mule into my main and reroll another mule.

Funny story. When I was attempting to finish CoP, I actually joined a group with a guy that was shouting at about 7:00pm one night. I sat and watched Netflix and drank beer while he shouted for the next several hours. I passed out in my chair and woke up about 2:00am. I looked and we still only had 3 people. I went to bed and woke up about 9:00am the next day. The guy had just gotten the sixth member. I hopped on and did the mission. I can't remember what job it was that we so desperately needed for that specific mission, but I can tell you that I'm glad that that sort of thing is such a rare occurrence these days.

The problem with slowing down exp, is that most people find collecting gear on high level jobs through various different types of events more fun / rewarding than just leveling a job (not all people, but most) and by limiting the speed with which people can level jobs, you limit the amount of gear collecting they can / will do.