Please no more levels.

While yes, levels have always been a thing for both jrpg and mmos, the repeated action of raising the level floor each expansion however does nothing but invalidate past content and efforts put into the game.

The argument for levels is always that we get stronger, but looking at the reality of things.
When expansions drops we will suddenly find trivial mobs that rivals the mightiest of gods.
Our classes/jobs becomes cluttered with random things because the devs HAVE to find something new for them.
And past content becomes trivialized and broken forcing devs to possibly have to put extra effort into fixing it, especially when it's dug up and repurposed like the Ultimate and Unreal fights.

If that 10 level grind have to exist for every job each expansion, then find out something that can work as a substitute for it.

I haven't played GW2 in over half a decade, but I do remember it having a system they use(d) in lieu of ever rising max level, that being their Masteries. However, GW2 is a bit far removed from the style of game that FFXIV is, so I don't think implementing something like it would be the best idea.

I wouldn't be surprised if a level squish happens with 8.0.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

While yes, levels have always been a thing for both jrpg and mmos, the repeated action of raising the level floor each expansion however does nothing but invalidate past content and efforts put into the game.

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Power progression is normal in MMOs and a, if not the main thing that keeps people playing.
If it isn't done via levels, it is done via gear. Old content would get trivialized just the same.

Trivializing old content is good, actually.

And leveling is fun.

I mean 100 is a nice number to settle and they can't keep repeating the vertical progression formula over and over without being stale. Horizontal progression, skill trees, item sets effects, or paragon points that we can set and reset anytime, prestige level, and there are lots to choose from except the one that we are currently doing right now.


People keep bishing about, "But we will just ended up with one meta, the best meta, the mathematically correct meta. And that breeds toxicity!"

Look, I know you know and we all know that we can't just keep doing this for the next expacs again and again. There's two options
- Either try something new that has the potential to make it fun, and or breed toxicity
- Or doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

If you pick the second option, you are the definition of insanity themselves.

I think a change would be good. Level 100 is a great number to stop at, but for a mmo like ffxiv it's hard to imagine how they could shake up the formula. One thought that comes to mind is maybe skill trees/spellbooks sort of like a blue mages where you can pick x number of skills from the pool at a time, these can be a mix of new skills and buffs to old skills, this approach is also flawed however as its very difficult to the create a 'meta' where only certain skills are worth picking while the rest are left by the wayside as 'sub-optimal'.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Power progression is normal in MMOs and a, if not the main thing that keeps people playing.
If it isn't done via levels, it is done via gear. Old content would get trivialized just the same.

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And it could have been done in a way that wasn't a detriment to the past content.

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Originally Posted by Kukajoo

I think a change would be good. Level 100 is a great number to stop at, but for a mmo like ffxiv it's hard to imagine how they could shake up the formula. One thought that comes to mind is maybe skill trees/spellbooks sort of like a blue mages where you can pick x number of skills from the pool at a time, these can be a mix of new skills and buffs to old skills, this approach is also flawed however as its very difficult to the create a 'meta' where only certain skills are worth picking while the rest are left by the wayside as 'sub-optimal'.

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Least, in WoW's case after the level squish they had a perfect opportunity to add a persistent system. Such as making max level 60 and once a new expansion drop anyone above lvl 50 got reset to 50 and all gear got down levelled.

The level grind would still be there, the gear grind would still be there and the devs would only have to think about the balance for two level brackets 50 and 60.

A persistent level floor also lets the devs fine-tune how gear/stats scales with jobs much better. Since something that works fine at lvl 100 might be broken at 50 due to non-linear gains and vice versa.

Some sort of levelling system is required because the game needs to sell you the fantasy that your character is becoming more experienced and a better warrior, and honestly it's not hard to just give every job one or two new abilities or passives every 2 years. WoW specializations are orders of magnitude more complicated than any FF14 job, and yet Blizzard continues to manage add several new abilities and talents for all 36 of them every 2 years, and that's on top of new trinkets. There is no reason why FF14 can't do the same for its jobs every 2 years. I do not find getting gear with higher arbitrary numbers on it to be more immersive than my character simply becoming better and learning new techniques.