Rate of Leveling and the New Player Experience

[Demonjustin]

While I want to continue this discussion Olor I must ask you talk to me on a site such as FFXIAH about this subject through private messages. Speaking about such things here is the entire reason why I had to make this account, my support of such things is the exact reason my previous forum account was banned. While I don't blame GMs, and have had some even tell me they fully understand my point of view on the matter and would forward my thoughts to the higher ups, I understand they've a job to do and it is in it's description that they are to remove posts talking about it. While I'd like to continue to talk to you here, it's not the right place. If you message me on my Demonjustin(or Demon6324236) accounts on FFXIAH I'll be more than happy to continue it there.

[Lithera]

Ugh. You are ignoring the other huge reason he burnt out in those two months. He started the game with friends who just wanted to be at the finish line. So his friends put even more pressure on him to keep up with them and their goal. He did say that if he could of had the time he would have done things slower.

You might expect new people to have those things, but I don't specially if they say they're still a little new to the game or are just returning.

[Pixela]

Ugh. You are ignoring the other huge reason he burnt out in those two months. He started the game with friends who just wanted to be at the finish line. So his friends put even more pressure on him to keep up with them and their goal. He did say that if he could of had the time he would have done things slower.

You might expect new people to have those things, but I don't specially if they say they're still a little new to the game or are just returning.

When I played originally taking my time was perfectly fine, I met people during leveling parties that I became friends with. I was offered pearls, I was part of the world from level 12+. I didn't matter if I wanted to do crafting for weeks, or if I took 2 years to reach level cap, I was already part of the big mmo world of FFXI.

Fast forward to todays ffxi, if you aren't doing endgame you never meet anyone.

For new players FFXI is a lonely and almost pointless experience filled with boring tedium and road blocks, it's not even really an mmo at all until you get to cap. The game having 4 times as many servers as the population needs isn't helping either.

Leveling speed for me is fine, all the other things are not. Building fame for stupid amounts of time doing the same basic quests over and over to get things like avatar fights, huge amounts of running from one zone to another for basic cuts to do missions that.

I'd like to get sky but the running around for obscene amounts of time to do the few fun fights is off putting. Same for sea.

I want to play around in Abyssea but I'll never get atmas these days, things like that are what ruin the new player experience.

I recently finished promivions, it took me about 10 mins to climb and kill the boss each time. About 3 hours running on a chocobo between the crags.

[bungiefanNA]

The thing is, it doens't have to be such a large amount of running between the fights in CoP and Zilart. Geomagnetic Founts and homepoint warps will get you to nearly all of the zones. I did the tuns for those missions in January, and it was never much more than 10 minutes to run anywhere I needed to go from the new teleportation points. Voidwatch warps help a bit if you have done the starting cities. Running on chocobos between the crags was the slow way to reach Promyvion. There's a teleportation landing point in nearly every zone nowadays. It's a little work to unlock them, but once you do, you can go nearly everywhere from Jeuno/Adoulin in a matter of minutes.

[detlef]

How much of the game would you miss if you were stuck having only one or two "main" jobs? It's glossed over far too often, but it's a lot easier to get things done when people have many jobs leveled. If you have 6 people with a good spread of jobs, you can do almost anything. If you have 6 people and 3 of them only have PLD leveled, you're probably going to have issues.

I'm glad SE made leveling easier because it let me play many more jobs than I would have been able to otherwise. I would've been stuck with just BRD and RDM, and jobs like SCH and DRG would be things I could only read about.

A guy like Crevox kind of went against everything FFXI is. Level one job and try to use it for everything. Rather than level multiple jobs and use the best tool available for whatever needed to get done.

[Lordkyron]

I just wish we could use trust in abbysea so. We can experience that story. All you find there is worm partyes

[Damane]

How much of the game would you miss if you were stuck having only one or two "main" jobs? It's glossed over far too often, but it's a lot easier to get things done when people have many jobs leveled. If you have 6 people with a good spread of jobs, you can do almost anything. If you have 6 people and 3 of them only have PLD leveled, you're probably going to have issues.

I'm glad SE made leveling easier because it let me play many more jobs than I would have been able to otherwise. I would've been stuck with just BRD and RDM, and jobs like SCH and DRG would be things I could only read about.

A guy like Crevox kind of went against everything FFXI is. Level one job and try to use it for everything. Rather than level multiple jobs and use the best tool available for whatever needed to get done.

haveing lvld and haveing it geared are 2 total different things. it doesnt help if my sch that nukes tier 1 spells for 2k+ gets replaced by a blm that is barely scratching 400 on his t1 nukes.

[detlef]

haveing lvld and haveing it geared are 2 total different things. it doesnt help if my sch that nukes tier 1 spells for 2k+ gets replaced by a blm that is barely scratching 400 on his t1 nukes.

Of course that's true but you can't gear it if you don't level it.

Obviously in a situation I described, you'd try to get people on their best jobs and the trash BLM person would hopefully have other geared jobs like BRD, COR, or something depending on what is needed. Trying to shoehorn a person into the group with one poorly geared job isn't what I was recommending.

[Camiie]

A guy like Crevox kind of went against everything FFXI is. Level one job and try to use it for everything. Rather than level multiple jobs and use the best tool available for whatever needed to get done.

I have problems with the view that jobs themselves should be situational. I understand it with gear. I understand it with abilities. I think a job should have far more value than that. Barring something like a Mythic, a job played well requires more time effort than any single piece of gear. Someone who puts forth that effort deserves better than to have their job shelved in the vast majority of relevant content.

[Calatilla]

Who do you think makes these strategies? When a new event comes out people go out and try it using current strategy, if that fails they try something new until they figure it out. Also there is more than one way to beat content.

End game isn't for everyone I agree, back at 75 cap I didn't do endgame at all because standing around for hours waiting for an NM that may or may not spawn, wasn't my idea of fun. But you're making it sound like getting to 99 is a chore, if you think it's a chore now, then you obviously didn't play at 75 cap. It took me a year to get my first lv75 job back then, now you can do it in less than a week, even with the level caps to slow you down. SE even made the level caps easier to do. Leveling isn't hard, SE don't need to make it any easier.