Fast leveling in Parties - hot spots

[Mirage]

Good gusgen mines page 1 is up to 25-30k exp if you bring in ghouls whenever you are out of skeleton soldiers. Limit is around level 25. Exp varies greatly based on how many characters in the alliance have native h2h skill .

Good crawlers nest page 1 is 60-70k if your group is efficient and not stupid. Lasts as long as you have at least one party member below 57 for each party. Highest efficiency is naturally when you have several characters capped to the early 50s instead of early 40s. It is especially nice if you have a soboro sam capped higher than 50. Characters below 40 have limited value as damage dealers, due to lack of gear availability(AH/NPC/CP).

Good Bostanieux Oubliette is about the same as CN if you do bat trios and big bats, but let you skill up your combat skills a lot more, as well as giving you more money and tabs. Additionally, you're no longer dependent on as low a level sync to keep the party going, characters below lv60 have limited value as damage dealers, especially if they suffer from lack of gear availability. Cleaving bloodsuckers in the lower levels of Bostanieux can get you over 100k/h with a half-full alliance where some of them are lv99. Page 1 (bats) ends at level 71, page idkwhat (bloodsuckers) grants exp all the way to lv99.

I haven't done kuftal tunnel a lot, but more than 50k/h shouldn't be hard to get there, if you pay attention and alternate crabs/lizards accurately and at high efficiency. It is probably possible to get 60-70k there too. These also don't have a upper level limit, so anyone at any high level can help out to increase the exp.

[Rustic]

Let's also think about it this way.

Exp alone is not by which FFXI can form a "grind" situation in which people form a party and go out and slap the tar out of the local monster population.

The classic example is relic weapons/currency or mythics, but it's applicable to any new content as well. Put in some new skills and spells that can only be acquired through "bring us X item + Gil". Let's call it Shiny.

Have Shiny most effectively acquired via parties and work like Signet/crystals- if the mob gives exp and you have the expansion buff, it can give Shiny, and the less pleasant it is to kill (relative to your party/you), the better it's odds of Shiny and perhaps even more of it. Ganking the equivalent of colibri? Low odds of Shiny. Chaining down monsters that require a party to be on the ball to deal with the constant stream of nasty debuffs and whatnot? Good odds of Shiny. Beating the heads in of some NM? Definitely Shiny and the usual NM item goodies as well. Heck, we can even make different kinds of Shiny that you'll need some of each for the REALLY good stuff.

Sound familiar? Of course it does, stuff like that is how FFXI's kept people playing in expansions even with capped jobs.

[Demon6324236]

With a cap it would be near impossible, you could never experience the old things they way the once were with caps or not, for a simple reason. No incentive to have players who have beaten it, go through it once again. There comes a time when people would be blocked by that limitation and would be unable to do it, and without removing the cap, there was little to no way to change that fact.

[Eyeballed]

With a cap it would be near impossible, you could never experience the old things they way the once were with caps or not, for a simple reason. No incentive to have players who have beaten it, go through it once again. There comes a time when people would be blocked by that limitation and would be unable to do it, and without removing the cap, there was little to no way to change that fact.

As much an incentive to help newbies as there ever was for players who had already completed it. Of course, the easy answer is "Get 99 and go solo it."

[Demon6324236]

As much an incentive to help newbies as there ever was

That is to say, next to none at all.

[Mirage]

The only incentive there was to helping newbies with COP before was if you were either good friends with them, or needed them to have sea access for endgame activities. I remember capped CoP well enough to say that I would never want to do some of those events again for anyone less than a good friend I've had for years.

Without the two of those, you'd be looking for help for a lot of days before you managed to get 5 people who could help you. Now, explain to me how exactly new players would get CoP done within a reasonable timeframe (1 month?) without having 5 good friends who ask nothing in return (unlikely when you are new to the game) or an endgame LS that needs you in sea.

It was hard enough to organize CoP events when you knew about 5 other person who actually needed to clear it. How easy do you think it would be to organize a CoP event now, when you know ~0 others who need it? Now add the fact that because people have a lot of jobs leveled, they are also pretty low on inventory. Almost no one carry around level cap gear anymore, and auto-scaled gear is in some cases significantly worse.

[Arcon]

People never wanted to help others with CoP particularly much. I'm not talking about help, I'm talking about finding like minded people to do it with in the form of a static. That is nearly impossible now. So the only thing remaining is to ask for help, and that is, now as then, difficult, unless you happen to have a particularly helpful and active friend. Now probably even more difficult, because the overall population has dwindled, and the remaining few have moved on themselves, so backtracking is not nearly as rewarding.