So the Search for Loot

Okay, not sure where to post this so I'll post this here.

When's enough, enough, as far as leveling?

Let's say in 6.0 instead of having an increase in Physical Level, they keep the cap at 80, and just have our search be for that "Loot." Meaning, have a hybrid Vertical / Horizontal Progression.

Refine jobs, Add more New jobs, add new abilities / Spells / but don't increase Level cap.

*Using this as an example, I don't want FFXIV to BE FFXI. In FFXI there were what? 4 Expansions without a Level increase. But they kept it interesting by not only story (Which FFXIV does so well *LOVE the story, its why I play it) but adding new and fun endgame activities and sprinkling new NMs, Loot, battle arenas, etc.

So, my question is, would you want a continued in increased leveling through expansions?

Or maybe have an expansion where the DEVs focus on New Jobs / Job Balance / Refinement / Adding unique content that's in that level range with more unique loot?

Thanks ahead of time for the replies.

in a vertical progression game to suddenly go horizontal would be jarring at the very least. i could see them going in 5 level increments instead of 10 if they reaaaaaaaaaaaaallly want to space it out.

None of the things mentioned seem to be mutually exclusive with levels.

Also, adding levels isn't particularly difficult or time consuming. The only issue is if you get to very high levels and thus data capacities start to become an issue (Due to the way that numbers work there will be a hard cap on numbers, often 32 bit integers are used so the maximum possible number that can be used is 2,147,483,647)

But that's a LONG way off being relevant.

As far as leveling actually goes...

To be honest, outside of "Tutorial Mode" early game stuff, where levels gate you off in a way where it eases you into the game when you're new. Levels are pretty much redundant.

Even more so in XIV where zones are gated by MSQ progression anyway, so even if you didn't have to level up to withstand the enemies in the end game zones... You'd still have to work your way through all the previous zones via MSQ anyway.

You could literally just add some sort of "Prestige" system that would allow players to keep ticking up numbers as they play without actually having any affect on their level... Just being a system that allows them to show off to others how much they've played as well as having that self satisfaction from grinding out additional "Levels"

I wouldn't be surprised if the game eventually went for something like this either, after reaching a max level of 99 as an ode to other games in the franchise where 99 was the max level for jobs. But then having "Prestige" so that players still felt like they were progressing.

Interestingly enough, such a system would also bypass one of the issues that MMO's face when they don't limit levels and keep expanding. Which is stat inflation and then often a need to stat squish to bring numbers down to a more readable level. I.e. Scaling happening where people start having 316,532,646 max HP and are hitting for 1,984,357,756 damage and it just ends up being a mess of unreadable numbers floating about covering the screen... Then being squished down to like 10,000 HP and hitting for 20,000 damage but then having scaling up to that point being completely whack with stuff like gear having +1 Vitality on for 70 levels and starting off with like 5 HP at level 1...

Of course, you're always going to run into issues with stat bloats in games, so long as you keep adding new content. Since, new items need to be better than old items in order for people to care about them (Outside of Glamour, the true end-game) so stats on gear thus would always be climbing and thus would eventually start reaching ridiculous levels, even if base stats remained constant due to no level increasing... It's one of the inevitabilities with constantly evolving games that revolve around gear treadmills.