Rate of Leveling and the New Player Experience

[Puck]

Nerf XP gain? Screw that. I wish "Double XP" would become the normal rate.

Agreed. Or they should at least make the Double Exp Campaign a monthly thing. That way new players can always look forward to a time when they'll get a huge boost in levels. But really, yeah, it should be the norm. And skill gain rate should be doubled all-around.

As for Genkai, yes, they should remove it or make it much easier. The last thing we want is for people who're interested in the game to hit a wall and quit along the way (thereby losing their subscription and inching us one step closer to "FFXI is dieing" for real). They can still force a visit to Maat to raise the cap, but let new players spend beastman seals or geodes or whatever other junk they got while leveling to unlock the level cap. Remove the testimony requirement for players who have to fight Maat for the first time, that way they can just stroll in and challenge the fight as often as they need to. Stuff like that.

Everyone should be seriously concerned by the lack of new blood in this game. Sticking to the same old draconic bullshit we had to suffer all these years isn't healthy.

[Arbalest]

Sorry mistype, they are asking SE to nerf the total xp needed to reach 99.



Uh, no it doesn't ? Did you even ready any of the posts?

No reason to read every bit of every post when it's pretty easy to catch the gist of it; people arguing, calling eachother out, talking crap. The works.

[Xantavia]

As for Genkai, yes, they should remove it or make it much easier.

How much easier does it have to be? Sure, I have the knowledge of what to do, but I did G1-G4 without problems a few weeks ago on a new character. There are three ??? you can hit for G1 if you don't want to kill mobs for the drops. NM's for G2 don't have to be killed, and they lost aggro on me as I got near the exit to the cave. G3 is learning how to snk/inv and fumbling for a warp scroll if you aggro the NM after clicking the right spot. G4 is even faster now with HP crystal warping. Only reason I haven't fought Maat yet is because breaking it as BLU requires the stupid soulflayer to finish the AF.

As a new character, I've hit Rank 5, won the Mammet fight for CoP, gotten all staging points, completed G1-4, and gotten 4/5 BLU AF pieces. This has all been done solo with the help of trusts (of which I have the 3 starter ones, Nanaa Mihgo, and some log-in point ones), with the single exception of asking a friend to open the 3 mage gate for me. Yes, I have years of game knowledge, but the wiki can tell you 99% of what you need to know. I'm not seeing any roadblocks for new players on the road of 1-70 so far.

[Zarchery]

See, if you keep making the game easier and easier and easier to attract new players, big deal. They're low value players. People who can't deal with the game as it is now are just gonna flame out and quit after like 3 months anyway once they hit the slightest road block, because they don't have any patience. I can't believe that, as quickly as you can get to 99, people want it to be even faster.

[Demonjustin]

While your argument is valid, if we did it and got new players but got no new players without doing it then it seems like the obvious better option. No one will really stop from coming back because of these things so why not do it?

[Olor]

While your argument is valid, if we did it and got new players but got no new players without doing it then it seems like the obvious better option. No one will really stop from coming back because of these things so why not do it?

This is my thought. I totally disagree with some of the suggestions here, because they go too far, but a lot can be done to streamline things. Job unlocking quests are fine. No, really, they are fine. You don't need any of them to get to 99 and start playing with everyone. At any rate there is zero chance that SE is going to remove them or just give you a CS unlocking dancer when you leave your mog house. We might as well just drop completely not-gonna-happen requests. I do think a line needs to be drawn between "making things accessible" and "deleting the game" - getting rid of quests altogether is not a good idea. Same with AF, you can level without it for the most part (other than jobs where the level cap fight is locked till you finish, like BLU)

The way they should look at it is streamlining it as much as possible so that getting your first 99 is not a horrible chore. So reducing the amount of exp between 50 and 80 (because those levels suck), making it easier to get atmas outside of the occasional "free abyssea" campaign, (I like the suggestion of letting people buy some of them with cruor, and I still think my suggestion of making them a 50% drop rate even without red is good) and ensuring new players don't miss out on trust and records of eminence.

They also need to ensure that missions don't block unrelated gear grinding content. I'll say it 1000 times if I have to, upgrading AF straight from NQ to reforged and from relic/+2 to reforged should NOT require COP progression. That is a totally unnecessary roadblock - there are plenty of reasons to do COP (for trusts etc alone) so there really is no reason to do this. They didn't do it with relic +2 upgrades, I don't understand why they do it for reforged.

Reforging AF etc should be an easy gateway to ilevel content...

[AN ASIDE: honestly it's a shame they made NQ reforged so much lower level than sparks etc gear. A better progression (IMO) would have been sparks gear (109) ---> bayld gear (112) ---> wildskeeper gear (115) ---> NQ reforged AF/relic (117) ---> HQ relic/AF (119)

I really don't understand why they made sparks gear such a high ilevel it sort of makes everything else below it mostly obsolete... it was kind of dumb]

[Demonjustin]

The reason sparks gear was so high was likely an attempt to mitigate the whole issue of people requiring players to have 119 weapons to participate in things like Delve. By giving us easy access to 117 weapons they'd hoped the gap would be made much smaller and thus we would be more accepting of people with these weapons. It's my best guess, but it was a failed attempt because that's just not how this playerbase works.

[Arbalest]

The reason sparks gear was so high was likely an attempt to mitigate the whole issue of people requiring players to have 119 weapons to participate in things like Delve. By giving us easy access to 117 weapons they'd hoped the gap would be made much smaller and thus we would be more accepting of people with these weapons. It's my best guess, but it was a failed attempt because that's just not how this playerbase works.

The eminent weapons aren't bad; in most cases, they're pretty darn good until you get something that's a little better, like an augmented WKR weapon, or a Delve weapon.

The last time I did Tojiil, (or attempted such), my SAM came in second for DPS above the 2-3 other mnks and the RNG in the party, and I had really crappy gear plus the eminent GKT.

[Demonjustin]

I personally don't have an issue with taking good players with Eminent weapons, but overall as an attempt to fix this issue it failed because the majority of leaders just don't invite people who don't match up to the expected levels of power.

[Xantavia]

I personally don't have an issue with taking good players with Eminent weapons, but overall as an attempt to fix this issue it failed because the majority of leaders just don't invite people who don't match up to the expected levels of power.

Yup, thats a playerbase problem. You said you'll take a good player with an eminent weapon, but sadly there are those who see a good player is one who already has a strong weapon instead of the guy who is able to sqeeze out a good showing despite what their wielding.