Is there even a point to raising level caps?

Right, it's not even a huge reason it just ends in us having a bunch of crap bunched up at R50.

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Originally Posted by Arcell

Right, it's not even a huge reason it just ends in us having a bunch of crap bunched up at R50.

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I'm sure SE could still implement the gear in such a way that it still had a use, without the gear being overpowered. For example, a silk gown cowl could be useful for debuffing, a vintage robe could be useful for healing, etc., with neither really being better than the other.

Level cap 50 is a ridiculous cap to be the max lv.

Right now, with Surplus and since the "only way" to level up is doing levequest, you can grind to lv. 50 in ummm.... 1 month?? Taking the good leves.

The day we can go and do party, like in all other MMO's, you will be able to lv. up to 50 in 2 weeks. That's not fine. Anyone would have all the jobs max leveled in 2 or 3 months. and then what??

It's ok to let us grind till lv. 50, and when the implement some endgame (like that dungeon) we may have some more to do, but I think that one of the things that represents the MMO's, is the time you have to spend grinding to reach the level cap, with 1, or many jobs.

Then you will spend more time doing endgame.

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

I suppose because

A) people aren't free to become superheroes if we train hard enough. We are limited by flesh and blood.


B) it would be impractical from a development standpoint, providing content suitable for the players. Godly players could one-shot NMs and then everyone would feel inadequate and be like 'screw this'.

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A) Game is not flesh and blood or real life.

B) A game called Tibia does this fine and the company running it is very small and the game has been around for over 10 years.

They just need to do it like FFXI, raise the level cap before the first expansion, then keep it there forever. FFXI did it perfectly, I do NOT want WOW style of level cap increases. Having to level 10-5 levels every expansion and all old content becoming useless/waste of time is horrible.

I also want merits! Merits were a great idea, and gave me things to do with my gear other than "get more gear". Meriting was fun, one of the things I enjoyed most @ 75 ^-^

I'm okay with raising the level cap, if only because 50 was never intended to be the final cap. Gifthorse makes a good point though, there are many ways you can progress outside of a simple rank increase. Knowing that, level cap increases do seem a bit arbitrary and honestly sometimes on the lazy side when a dev can't create unique and challenging content without discarding the old content.

people who ask this question really shouldn't play games. No offence.
here is why:

pretty much, there will never be a "correct" answer to this question. So why ask it. If you have to think about this question, why even bother with leveling at all? why bothering playing at all?

In my opinion, I feel those who ask this question maybe take games a bit to seriously on a logical level. How about, this:
there is no point in doing anything in a video game. We play for entertainment.

I wonder why people even think they're going to raise caps shortly. There has been absolutely no signal of that. It's quite obvious that they will be raised sooner or later, but it's not even on the radar at the moment.

Content, Duh Winning.

Here's what I would like to see:

Instead of having the difficulty jump up in increments the way most games do, I'd instead like to see the level increase by in every patch. In other words, if we were starting at this moment, patch 1.18 would raise the cap to R51, patch 1.19 would raise it to R52, and so on.

What this would do is make the current content slightly easier, while at the same time letting the slightly more hardcore part of our population tackle the new incoming content below. New content is slowly phased in like this, while old content is slowly outleveled (like it is when you're leveling), instead of becoming obsolete all at once. Using this type of system, we would see R99 in probably 6 years or so, which I feel is a good pace (about 8 rank increases per year).

To comment on people hating leveling, that is what a mmo is and what an rpg is... if you hate leveling you simply dislike the genre as a whole.

A mmo should be an unbeatable game, something you can play for near a decade and not completely finish. If a player hardcore or not can actully beat a mmo (get everything possible) something is really wrong. This alone is why people raise level and such.. it add that much more life to the game.

But I think constant level increases is detrimental to the game as it does negate all the previous work the devs have done... wow is a great example of this with its say burning crusade raids, FFXI is as well with abysea and the increase to level 90 or what ever it is now destroyed 9 years of content. I want FFXIV to avoid this situation for as long as they possibly can.

I am all for horizontal growth of your classes. Meaning keep the level cap at 70-75 (what ever they want to raise it to), and allow people to get better gear with expansions which specialize their classes for certain things. Sorta of an elitest view I guess, but with this system the endgame at the first expansion in FFXIV will still have people doing it when expansion 4 is released. While expansion 4 is giving you the best nuking gear in the game for conj, expansion 1s curing body and headpiece are still the best.

FFXI had the most endgame out of any mmo, not because of the amount of content at expansions, but the fact all the endgame they released never got replaced.

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

But why even increase at all? What's the point?

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Wow you must be new to MMO's to ask such a stupid question. MMO's is all about raising level to become stronger. Pretty much everyone who started playing (and didn't quit or took a huge break) since day 1 already have 1 class R50. Even really really casual players will have 3-4 class at max level eventually and not everyone like to play every jobs in a game.

You don't need to acquire the best gear to level up while always been cap level is just grinding for better gear. Urgh that last sentence is making me remember WoW gear grinding fest in raids and i dont like it. =/

I don't see in anyway a group of R50s killing a legendary boss like the Behemoth. It would make that mob look weak.
Go back to CoD and Halo troll...

I think every 6 months, we should see a rank cap increase of 5 ranks.. this gives SE 6 months to release new content for those 5 new ranks. This will keep the game fresh every 5 ranks, plus give people time to rank up all their classes every 5 ranks also.

The problem with XI, was that they STAYED at 75 for too long and made too much content for 75, which is why abyssea destroyed XI. If every 6 months they increased 5 levels, then there wouldn't have been 20 level 75 things to do, but 2 level 75, 2 level 80, 2 level 85, 2 level 90, 2 level 95, etc... this would keep the game more enjoyable through all the ranks. Also with the release of new classes, this gives everyone fun along the way.

MMO's are about growing as a character, and XI was good until 75, then its like you hit a brick wall, you either grind-ed merits and felt like you didn't grow much, or you started a new job until 75. How cool would a game be if you never HAD everything. That is what makes a good game, always something to strive for.

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

Well it's a cheap tactic.

If people want to improve their character, fine, let us improve our characters through quests that teach us new abilities but don't let us improve by making us grind to a new endgame just because the developers decided they were too useless to make enough content to bide people over until the next batch of updates.

It's just lazy. You can separate new content into tiers if that's what needs to happen but you don't need to separate them by vast expanses of pure grind. The psychology of the gamers is obviously beyond my understanding if it's true that they need the reassurance of a new rank to give them a sense of progression.

Am I the only one disgusted?

And who says that endgame needs to revolve around gear/bosses and such? There are other ways to gauge one's progress in the game. If SE implemented more "sandbox" elements, for example, I'm sure endgame would sort itself out without their intervention.

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I can't agree more. No one like the grind, it is purely a time-sink .. but there are far more enjoyable time-sinks!

Progression raids .. there can be easily three+. To reflect on my WoW experience:

Hyjal was entry level
Black Temple took months or even a year to master the encounters and pass the various "gear checks" along the way
Sunwell - gear-check and experience to the max!

All was done within one "level cap" and was not a grind but pure enjoyment ... hate to quote the game that sold out so badly ... but they had it right on so many levels (in the past)

Well theres moves in the dat files up to 99 people have looked up, and some of them have actual levels on it (fake/unknown ranks being rank 99 usually). This game seems like it was built to have a 75 cap, I mean XI's first cap was 50, and XIV looks so similar to XI's first year. No AH,boring jobs,level 50. Not excusing it though, if your first mmo's first year sucked, there is no excuse for the 2nd one, learn from your mistakes, which you guys obviously didn't.

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Originally Posted by AuctionGirl

I think every 6 months, we should see a rank cap increase of 5 ranks.. this gives SE 6 months to release new content for those 5 new ranks. This will keep the game fresh every 5 ranks, plus give people time to rank up all their classes every 5 ranks also.

The problem with XI, was that they STAYED at 75 for too long and made too much content for 75, which is why abyssea destroyed XI. If every 6 months they increased 5 levels, then there wouldn't have been 20 level 75 things to do, but 2 level 75, 2 level 80, 2 level 85, 2 level 90, 2 level 95, etc... this would keep the game more enjoyable through all the ranks. Also with the release of new classes, this gives everyone fun along the way.

MMO's are about growing as a character, and XI was good until 75, then its like you hit a brick wall, you either grind-ed merits and felt like you didn't grow much, or you started a new job until 75. How cool would a game be if you never HAD everything. That is what makes a good game, always something to strive for.

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This minus his every 6 months idea. Xi ruined itself, and now they realized XIV isn't making money yet, so they have to prolong XI's lifespan by 2-3 years, and for you who think that game is dead you're mistaken, I can't bring myself to play it, its perverse, but its not dead and new people are even starting O_o. The 80 cap didn't even kill FF at first, it was the 2nd abyssea expansion, but for some reason it just cleared out the last remnants of old players, and new ones swarm in. Jeuno is all nubby new people with level 90s due to abyssea :/ If scaled correctly a level cap increase will not ruin a game.

yes, they should raise it, as they've already planned content to take advantage of it. Come on gift, don't troll us with such silly ideas. you know better.

This isn't endgame, this is midgame, and what we currently see as mid level NMs (the new ones we just got) will shortly become the Low level NMs.

They have to raise the level cap, or elso no one will ever be able to kill the headrip ogres or rainbow basilisks ; ;. When monsters get stronger, players have to have a way to get stronger too. They cant just add gear that give you 3000 more HP and call it a day. We need to work towards that by leveling up. And without a level cap increase, there will be no new skills or spells learned, and everyone will be the same for years.

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Originally Posted by Crowley

I can't agree more. No one like the grind, it is purely a time-sink .. but there are far more enjoyable time-sinks!

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and speak for yourself, I like a grind as long as the battle system is fun and I have some friends to talk to. FFXI was all about the grind, your whole first year was spent leveling, especially if pre-level sync. Not saying this is ideal, but you spoke in absolutes.

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Originally Posted by AuctionGirl

I think every 6 months, we should see a rank cap increase of 5 ranks.. this gives SE 6 months to release new content for those 5 new ranks. This will keep the game fresh every 5 ranks, plus give people time to rank up all their classes every 5 ranks also.

The problem with XI, was that they STAYED at 75 for too long and made too much content for 75, which is why abyssea destroyed XI. If every 6 months they increased 5 levels, then there wouldn't have been 20 level 75 things to do, but 2 level 75, 2 level 80, 2 level 85, 2 level 90, 2 level 95, etc... this would keep the game more enjoyable through all the ranks. Also with the release of new classes, this gives everyone fun along the way.

MMO's are about growing as a character, and XI was good until 75, then its like you hit a brick wall, you either grind-ed merits and felt like you didn't grow much, or you started a new job until 75. How cool would a game be if you never HAD everything. That is what makes a good game, always something to strive for.

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This makes no sense at all, so instead of having 20 things to do you'd rather have 2? Why? How is having 20 things to do bad again? I don't get your argument at all.

I agree with Xatsh, I want the cap to slowly go up, then stay there for like 10 years. Having 20 things to do at end game > having a few things, then deleting those few things for a few more things every expansion.

This makes perfect sense... You just aren't comprehending it well... There will always be things to go, just not all @ the cap... Once "Casuals" do all the content, they usually are gone. So the reason to always keeping new content every 6 months it to keep the game fresh. Once you are "75" or "max rank" for 1+ years you learn your job, you are just repeating the same thing constantly, rarely does battle change other than maybe required classes to make that battle easier. With new rank, new content etc.. you get new abilities, new enemies, everything changes, and possibly what was good @75 is no longer good @80, which makes you adjust your game play and grow with the game. They can "Cap" these places as they grow so you cant go in higher than the Content allows, which keeps there 20 places to do, but always having to learn and strive for the next goal is what keeps people playing.

Expansions are what should increase the rank caps.. every 6 months new expansion, new rank cap, new abilities and possibly new jobs/classes.

I say rais lvl cap, but slowly, add 10 more lvl's, add a lot of content for it, however make these 10 lvl's hard to achive it, so grinders will also be happy and lvl will mean something.

Like that, gear which we are getting now, will be still valuable for a while, new players will have time to catch up with ps3 release etc.

If they increase to 75, there will be to big gap between players, and probobly same issue will show up = lack of content. So again my vote is for lvl 60 in first expansion, and a lot of content for it first :cool:

Point is simple, new expansions and new content! Ability to raise your character to new strengths and heights! Who the heck wants to be stuck at roughly the same strength their whole class career? o.O Plus it's really nice beating old content with less numbers especially since less people will be on it or want to go through it again. The whole argument of raising caps is pointless, mostly just the whiners who want their uber gear to stay that way cause they think they are on top somehow cause of it lol I'd rather explore NEW faucets of my character I'm deeply invested into esp that of the same class/job :D

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Originally Posted by AuctionGirl

Once you are "75" or "max rank" for 1+ years you learn your job, you are just repeating the same thing constantly, rarely does battle change other than maybe required classes to make that battle easier.

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Under FFXI's levelling pace, players learned their jobs by the time they hit 75, or not at all.
That is, in my mind, the purpose of levelling from 1-75( or cap), is to learn to use all your abilities effectively, one ability at a time.

I'm someone who believes that levels themselves are a problem in gaming, particularly RPGs just because they've become so predominate, and that raising the level cap doesn't really do anything useful.

One problem lies in the false belief that levels = challenge (or content) and that adding levels are needed for challenge or content. Another problem lies in the fact that levels are similar to gambling and gaining a level is like hitting a small jackpot. So just as people get addicted to gambling so too do they get addicted to getting one more level and hitting level cap stops them from getting their fix on that character.

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

Wouldn't it be better if SE just kept us at R50 indefinitely and made all new content horizontal, instead of stratifying it vertically and making us grind even more?

Just look at FFXI. They keep raising the cap and at some point it just got out of hand.

I think a lot of games run into the issue of how to add content at end game without making it pointless. Eventually a gear grind seems a bit superfluous and pointless for players when they have upwards of 30 different level-appropriate gears to choose from (or at least it will seem so to players who don't appreciate stylistic options).

Developers inevitably realise that gear-grind isnt the answer, and end up just making players grind grind instead.

But this is 2011, shouldn't we be above all this by now?

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Horizontal progression was one of FF11's short comings, it made pieces of new armour and weapon have only slightly different stats and made many piece situational.

As someone else said above vertical progression is a good way to encourage players to buy expansions, it also lets the developer add new skills and abilities.

From the looks of the Dats SE have had lvl 99 in mind from the very beginning of this game.

Technically you can continue introducing new content as well as class abilities without requiring leveling, but it can restrict new player access to content severely in the long-run.

Say a fairly new player is looking in to an end-game linkshell 2 years down the road. Would that LS be more likely to take a player with mediocre gear from 1 or 2 tiers ago, or a new player that they have to drag through 8 tiers of content just to get up to speed?

Okay, so everyone who likes levelling indefinitely just likes to waste time, apparently. That's all I've gained from this discussion.

Give us meaningful things to do, let us progress with content, not through levels. This thread makes me sick, having to read your ideas of what "an MMO should be."

Another thing to realise is that we are the people who can put up with FFXIV in its current state. 30,000 of us out of the entire market share who will stand for this.

I just don't see why 50 ranks isn't enough grinding. An MMO shouldn't be just about levelling and progressing in stats or gear. It should be more than that, and quite frankly I'm appalled to hear ranking up is all the majority of people think an MMO is good for. You people need your OCD complexes checked, seriously.

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

This thread makes me sick, having to read your ideas of what "an MMO should be."

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Perhaps the other thing you should pick up from this thread is no one cares about what you think. On anything. Ever. In any way at all. Maybe if you choke that down you'll be less ill.

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Originally Posted by TheVedis

There is 1 reason and 1 reason only games raise caps

1) To make people buy new content and/or expansions by making all old content obsolete


that about says it all

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Yup, thats about it.


edit:

New gear concerns:

Well you can either make new gear progressively better which will make that into your progression

oooorrr

you can make new armor just look really awesome and it'll be mostly cosmetic (Guild wars did this, since the game has been at level 20, you can essentially get any armor with nearly any bonuses on it, and generally some is more difficult to obtain than others and is something neat to show off that you worked for)

@OP, the lv74 Gnat i ran into last night & wo0ped my butt made my answer easy...

God yes, id like to see level cap increase sometime after PS3 release thank you very much!
Besides, i want more / better spells to mess around with.

i surely hope they do increase the cap. i have revenge to take on some high level mobs as soon as i am high enough to do so. don't feel bad noomy......i ran into a lvl 99 goblin headman that showed yellow to my r50 pug so decided to take a swing at him. i hit him for 13 and he hit me for 2753......... i checked to see wth just happened by looking up the mob lol

Yes yes there is....character progression...

I hope you all realize they can add ways to progress a character without actually raising the cap, regardless of whether or not you think they should.

would be fail if i stayed at 50 forever no matter how it was implimented. i wanna see my character get higher ranks more moves and progress like any normal mmorpg

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Originally Posted by Laughlyn

@OP, the lv74 Gnat i ran into last night & wo0ped my butt made my answer easy...

God yes, id like to see level cap increase sometime after PS3 release thank you very much!
Besides, i want more / better spells to mess around with.

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None of the things you mentioned necessitate a level cap increase.

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Originally Posted by Nephera

I hope you all realize they can add ways to progress a character without actually raising the cap, regardless of whether or not you think they should.

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yes. we know they have ways to progress without a cap increase....such as nerfing mobs even more than they already have. in fact i hope the end cap winds up being 99+ per class that way the ones of us that do enjoy to explore/rank can do so.

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Originally Posted by PikachuLink

would be fail if i stayed at 50 forever no matter how it was implimented. i wanna see my character get higher ranks more moves and progress like any normal mmorpg

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Define normal, because set caps with systems tacked onto the end is becoming more popular

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Originally Posted by Grimm

A) Game is not flesh and blood or real life.

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But many seek to imitate life in some sense.

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B) A game called Tibia does this fine and the company running it is very small and the game has been around for over 10 years.

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I guess that's why no one has ever heard of it.