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.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

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

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I fully expect this to happen eventually and was mildly surprised we even went to triple digits instead of stopping at 99.

Implementing it looks like a mixed bag.
Just looking at what levels do for a combat Job it's not even going to be too hard on them to cut levels by half as every uneven level past the Job Quest range is mostly empty anyway, with traits and skills coming in at the even levels. The obvious rebalancing of encounters aside the meat of going from a level cap of 100 to a cap of 50 would be rebalancing at what levels you get new toys and Job Quests so things until Shadowbringers flow correctly, from there on out we'd just go to one skill/trait per level as far as combat goes (with all the level sync implications that entails).

The real challenge then becomes fitting content unlocks of an expansion into the new level range, do we go from 10 levels per expansion to 5 with a new duty unlocking every level?
How are they going to preserve the speed of progression without making things feel like they drag (levels taking twice as long to increment is going to see pushback even if the overall time to cap an expansion stays the same)? Is one level per duty enough to keep them populated outside of roulettes?

Would a level squish be accompanied by another stat squish while we're rebalancing things already? What about ilevels, are we fine with letting those approach the ilevel 1.000 range in the not too distant future or should those get squished too?

I've created numerous alts just to level, I wish I didn't need to. I wish there was some mechanic to reset levels, my personal dream would be that resetting your level to 1 would turn your equipped gear to All Classes so others could wear them. That would give me even more motivation to level.

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

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.

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And look what happened with that design choice, an unbalanced mess of a game with flaming toxic meta builds, where DPS variance is not +/- 1% but +/-200% and specs or whole classes are unplayable for years. No thanks.

"Our classes/jobs becomes cluttered with random things because the devs HAVE to find something new for them."

I agree with this. But look where we are now, with people complaining jobs did not change enough in DT.

Also personally I am just exhausted of leveling with so many jobs available now, I think they should implement a role based leveling system. Make all future jobs start at 90 so that you still have to play them a bit on your way to 100 to get a feel for them but after that just take your role XP.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

"Our classes/jobs becomes cluttered with random things because the devs HAVE to find something new for them."

I agree with this. But look where we are now, with people complaining jobs did not change enough in DT.

Also personally I am just exhausted of leveling with so many jobs available now, I think they should implement a role based leveling system. Make all future jobs start at 90 so that you still have to play them a bit on your way to 100 to get a feel for them but after that just take your role XP.

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I don't think it is reasonable to expect to have every job at max level. You can try out every job for a bit, but eventually you're going to focus on your favorites and that is what your character is going to be known as and what sets you apart from other players.

You can always untrivialise old content with MINE

Adding levels at least lets more casual people experience that once top teir content solo unsynched in many cases (outside the 5 people must click this ball type of trial) and get the stories.

If they don't add levels, they will add something else that is levelling in all but name.

They need some way to restrict the MSQ and access to dungeons, so whether it is a straight level, or something like 'Job Mastery', the end result is the same.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

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

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Why? It's not as if actual raid groups go back to progressing old content.

Is this about your E-Peen? (since you mentioned invalidating accomplishments)
Feats are temporary in any videogame.

The real treasures are the fun we had and the memories we make on the way.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

Also personally I am just exhausted of leveling with so many jobs available now

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I'll be blunt: That's a "you" issue.
Neither the DEVs nor the community expects any player to level and master all jobs.
It is an OPTION for people like me that do not care about making alts, not a requirement.

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Originally Posted by Astrus

Would a level squish be accompanied by another stat squish while we're rebalancing things already?

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I expect the combination to happen in the next expansion, to be honest.
At some point a gazillion levels becomes detrimental to the new player experience, making them feel that they can never catch up to current content.

Though XIV would need to address the mandatory length of the MSQ first.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

You can always untrivialise old content with MINE

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You could theoretically make content impervious to levels (and gear) fairly easily:
Outgoing DPS, Incoming DPS and mechanics act %age based.

While new tools would still make some scenarios easier to deal with, the bulk of the mechanics would be just as deadly on a Lv 100 vs a Lv 50 character.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Is this about your E-Peen? (since you mentioned invalidating accomplishments)
Feats are temporary in any videogame.

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Mature...

No I'm on the other end of the spectrum of that conversation. Rather, least over on the WoW forums have advocated for better ways to get the more casual players into higher end content, as well as not infantilizing them or threatening them with removing any tangible rewards.

The issue i have is that with unsynced and overgearing we pretty much hit a situation where a painting or portrait to say, have it's very centrepiece removed. The encounters aren't just the environments and the rewards, but the mechanics as well. And with the mechanics gone, why was it even designed?

And this is a problem that's exclusive to these service games.

If you play a zelda game, it will always be the same, even when another zelda game have released.

They could do talent trees or sto specializations but who knows. My old mmorpg anarchy online let you choose from multiple talent lines at once for some customization.

They going to do what 11 did have mastery lvls

No thanks, I want to level more every expansion. Gaming different leveling systems to get a chunk of experience on a job at launch is fun. It's meaningful to achieve the level cap, since the strongest gear is gated behind it. There are also meta achievements for leveling with cool rewards.

Invalidating old content and stomping it for rewards is part of the fun. The fact that I can go do Shiva Extreme or another old fight for a glowy weapon anytime without waiting for a party to fill up means I can remove some of those old glamours from my dresser and easily get them back if I feel like it someday.

Leveling also resets power so jobs only get a small amount of % increases from stats despite having more stats in their gear. Constantly increasing stats without resetting them is unsustainable. You can't just keep adding stats like skill/spell speed, tenacity, crit chance and piety because it leads to massive balancing issues. For example, you need more skill speed at level 100 than you did at level 50 to get the same GCD reduction. If stats had not been reset since level 50, rotations would now be so fast you couldn't double weave anymore.

If you add a secondary system that also lets people stomp old content and gates progression and resets stats, then why even remove leveling at all if the new system will just do the same thing?

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

The issue i have is that with unsynced and overgearing we pretty much hit a situation where a painting or portrait to say, have it's very centrepiece removed. The encounters aren't just the environments and the rewards, but the mechanics as well. And with the mechanics gone, why was it even designed?

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I completely agree that an unsync run does not convey the encounter at all. That's okay. Unsync runs are basically only done to grab mounts or glams. If people wanted to see the bosses, they'd either go in synched (at least we have that option in XIV!) or raid them while they are current content.

The encounters were designed to entertain the raid community for 6-8 months.
After that, they have served their purpose, as far as the DEV's are concerned.

Getting the more casual playerbase into the encounters is not necessary in XIV, since this game has difficulty levels (early wow did not have them it was either deal with it or go home).

Savage/Ultimate are not designed with the casual playerbase in mind, neither are the rewards, since tome gear is pretty much equal in player power.

Just for the record: I am saying this as a raid retiree, that doesn't get to see savage/ex any longer. It's okay, not every content needs to be catered to everyone.

Removing leveling from a CRPG is a bad idea. Gamers need the illusion that their character is improving through their actions, whether it be through xp, gear, or a combination of both.

If you removed this process you are doubling down on everything that people have been complaining about with DT and turning the game into an interactive novel with even LESS player input/control.

Let the devs worry about stats/balance issues. If they do a squish, so be it, everyone will move on, but progression is a must in an RPG. The player must feel like they are gaining power.

It's not like leveling in this game is difficult anyway.

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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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I can only speak for myself, but the leveling does nothing for me. I got a few of my preferred classes to 100 and already forgot about levels. I was much more interested in seeing new fights, which I could have done with no leveling at all. I'm also not a fan of level sync, nor having to relearn classes every expansion because we have to delete some skills for new skills for the sake of having new skills, which are sometimes just rebranded old skills anyway.

It would seem absolutely part of the popular opinion that leveling is a part of the this genre, but I'd prefer if MMO's didn't have levels at all, didn't have content with a limited shelf life, and instead offered deeper gameplay where progression was achieved through the player improving instead of stats. My level is 100 now, but nothing meaningful has changed. The enemies are also level 100, their stats raised with mine and the number is ultimately meaningless. I'm also so much stronger than a low level player that I can't really do anything with them because any attack I'd use would trivialize their content.

A levelless world would also be nice as far as exploration goes. In ARR when you started the game you had the freedom to go almost anywhere. Subsequent expansions have carefully close off the world and sectioned it by level. I find it so boring and predictable. I have no doubts that a more free flowing story could be created and along with it and less linear path through the world where we have more meaning exploration. This would also allow for more meaningful cooperation between players at different points in the game. With a massive powergap from level 1 to max, cooperate play becomes a lot easier and more balanced.

idk, can you honestly see SE doing something as dramatic as a level squish? I love FFXIV but they've shown over and over again that they like playing it very safe for the most part in all aspects of the game. If something is sort of working, they don't bother changing it.

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Originally Posted by AmorfaVex

Removing leveling from a CRPG is a bad idea. Gamers need the illusion that their character is improving through their actions, whether it be through xp, gear, or a combination of both.

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And that illusion goes right out the window when we kill a god one moment and get murdered by a crab the other.

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Originally Posted by AmorfaVex

If you removed this process you are doubling down on everything that people have been complaining about with DT and turning the game into an interactive novel with even LESS player input/control.

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The issue with DT isn't levels or absence of levels, it's the lack of combat interruptions and plenty more. There were multiple places where a personal instance would have been fitting, but we didn't get them.

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Originally Posted by AmorfaVex

It's not like leveling in this game is difficult anyway.

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It's not about the difficulty of leveling, but how the pattern they keep slapping on more and more levels only serve to be a self destructive feature to the game as a whole the longer it goes on.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I can only speak for myself, but the leveling does nothing for me. I got a few of my preferred classes to 100 and already forgot about levels. I was much more interested in seeing new fights, which I could have done with no leveling at all. I'm also not a fan of level sync, nor having to relearn classes every expansion because we have to delete some skills for new skills for the sake of having new skills, which are sometimes just rebranded old skills anyway.

It would seem absolutely part of the popular opinion that leveling is a part of the this genre, but I'd prefer if MMO's didn't have levels at all, didn't have content with a limited shelf life, and instead offered deeper gameplay where progression was achieved through the player improving instead of stats. My level is 100 now, but nothing meaningful has changed. The enemies are also level 100, their stats raised with mine and the number is ultimately meaningless. I'm also so much stronger than a low level player that I can't really do anything with them because any attack I'd use would trivialize their content.

A levelless world would also be nice as far as exploration goes. In ARR when you started the game you had the freedom to go almost anywhere. Subsequent expansions have carefully close off the world and sectioned it by level. I find it so boring and predictable. I have no doubts that a more free flowing story could be created and along with it and less linear path through the world where we have more meaning exploration. This would also allow for more meaningful cooperation between players at different points in the game. With a massive powergap from level 1 to max, cooperate play becomes a lot easier and more balanced.

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I'd touch on your last paragraph real quick.

Back in the old days (yep, im one of those) They didnt need to seal off zones like that. If you strolled into a zone you shouldnt be in, you would get smeared and have to find people to help get your corpse back (talking Everquest here) It would and DID support community, where you'd need a necro to summon your corpse if you didnt know where it was, and a cleric to rez you, unless you were ok with massive xp loss/deleveling. If you didnt do a corpse retrieval, you lost everything on the corpse (after a few real life days.)

I actually liked it, as masochistic as it sounds. You felt the danger.

Now, games are entranced with the mob/player level scaling and or restricting access to zones.

So while I agree with you, you should be able to go where you want, there need to be consequences if you get turned into paste by a mob in a zone you shouldnt be in yet.

Quite the quandary. They can't just keep adding skills, but this game lacks the statistical complexity to allow for horizontal progression. It's also boring as hell. Nothing like getting excited that a piece of armor you found had 2 points shifted out of an unfavorable stat into a favorable one.

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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.

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.

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actually.. no, levels have not always been a thing. used to be skill grinding. I am likely wrong, but levels were a thing mainstreamed by WoW to increase the rush by the whole level effect and sound. 100 levels isnt really that much either, Anarchy Online the level cap was 220, years ago.

power creep is what you are finding a problem with I think. regardless.. things from the games past will always become trivialized. would you prefer they take the Destiny route and whole parts of the game are "vaulted"? while there is no good answer for the issue, you have proposed no alternative, no real fix except.. "no more levels". even if they did away with that, a new expansion, because people scream for it, would likely include new jobs, and new content. those two things will cause exactly the same issue you are complaining about here. new content will trivialize old content, new regular mobs will appear to be gods compared to old npcs and the devs would have to put in extra effort to fixing old content.

see? even without levels the issue would remain.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

And that illusion goes right out the window when we kill a god one moment and get murdered by a crab the other.



The issue with DT isn't levels or absence of levels, it's the lack of combat interruptions and plenty more. There were multiple places where a personal instance would have been fitting, but we didn't get them.



It's not about the difficulty of leveling, but how the pattern they keep slapping on more and more levels only serve to be a self destructive feature to the game as a whole the longer it goes on.

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1) you're mixing story with progression. SE shouldnt have pulled the worst threat in a universe card out if it wasnt. Unfortunately, you cant retcon the story now. Or can you?

2) remove leveling from DT and see what fans would say. Sure, there are people that view it as a social club and focus on glams and roleplay. But the meat and bones of this fanbase are gamers that enjoy RPG/MMO style play. When someone caps a job at 100 what do they do? Most move on and level the next job. When there are no more jobs to level, they play another game.

3) There are games that dont have leveling. Maybe the sims would be more your speed? Not trying to be a jerk here, but this is the nature of a CRPG.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

I agree with this. But look where we are now, with people complaining jobs did not change enough in DT.

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This is because the current job design sucks. People wanted them to fix the issue that constant homogenization and pruning has caused. Instead they just did more pruning and gave people a new ability they don't need. Almost ever class is the same as it was the entire last expansion.

There has been no sense of progression in this game for a long, long time.

In the streamlined state, nothing matters except your minimum item level requirement (treadmill) and doing your little dance correctly. Our jobs have mostly been the same for the past five or six years, and there's really nowhere for them to go. When the entire game is "press ALL of your buttons in burst and then just 1-2-3", there's really nowhere else you can grow.

Levelling has always been, and still is, a joke in this game. It's easy, it's fast, you learn nothing doing it. On your first job in Dawntrail, you literally (l i t e r a l l y) just watch a movie to level fully. It's there as a relic from the RPGs that FFXIV claims to share a bed with.

Either make levelling a major part of the game or remove it. It's vestigial at this point.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

actually.. no, levels have not always been a thing. used to be skill grinding. I am likely wrong, but levels were a thing mainstreamed by WoW to increase the rush by the whole level effect and sound. 100 levels isnt really that much either, Anarchy Online the level cap was 220, years ago.

power creep is what you are finding a problem with I think. regardless.. things from the games past will always become trivialized. would you prefer they take the Destiny route and whole parts of the game are "vaulted"? while there is no good answer for the issue, you have proposed no alternative, no real fix except.. "no more levels". even if they did away with that, a new expansion, because people scream for it, would likely include new jobs, and new content. those two things will cause exactly the same issue you are complaining about here. new content will trivialize old content, new regular mobs will appear to be gods compared to old npcs and the devs would have to put in extra effort to fixing old content.

see? even without levels the issue would remain.

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Just to elaborate on your first paragraph. Leveling has been around since the dawn of CRPG/MMOs. There have been some variants that focus more on skill building, such as Ultima Online (I believe the first graphical MMO, I happened to beta test and play a bit.)

But these games all grew from Dungeons and Dragons, in which leveling was an integral part of the game.

If you reach back to the days before UO, you are looking at the MUDs (Multi User Dungeons), which were text based games where you did level (Gemstone III comes to mind as an example, but it was far from the first MUD.) (Excellent game btw, for people who dont mind reading instead of graphics.)

But leveing is a core part of this genre and the Final Fantasy franchise itself.

capping levels at 100 is fine, but staggering skill evolution is not, fights are going to get harder and more challenging that's the nature of video games in general, so skills have to be raised and developed over time, and I don't think that has anything to do with leveling that can be a simple matter of devs seeing what works and what doesn't and altering that that doesn't, in game wise we could go back to job quest where the point of it is to gain a deeper understanding of the job and obtain a new ability either self taught or learned from a master or legendary member of the job.

As far as making old content trivialized I have to disagree, the level caps on instances prevents that from happening as well as equipment caps, even at lv 90s being brought back to some level 50 content can make things challenging as you have less of your kit to use or unevolved abilities that don't offer the comfortable bonuses you were once used to. Was in Vigil Hard the other day as a healer and I swear the tank needed me to babysit him through the whole thing, I almost never got a chance to dps cause I had to keep my eyes on the party HP because they were getting spanked so hard, I wanted to say they were under armed but I took a look at the tanks equipment and it was indeed level 50 gear so he wasn't underprepared, and was a warrior. It was quite eye-opening.

I do like the idea of level capping us at lv 100, and just designing newer expansions to evolve our current skills into newer stronger ones, majorly reworking jobs that haven't been performing within the original design of the job. creating new jobs that start at lv 1 and just give us something to work toward which would have us revisiting older content or doing deep dungeons longer who knows.

My addition would be an ascension Tier, where all jobs that are lv 100 ascend returning to what could be described as level 1 but isn't. For content level 100+ a new job will ascend and begin leveling a new in a sub-tier called the ascended, where you will gain faux levels to a certain cap that will grant the evolved skills I mentioned before as you progress, your hp and mp and all that stuff stays the same prior to the new content but what skills you have change. This keeps you looking forward to new content, gives the devs time to develop each job toward this new far-flung goal of evolution, Maybe Paladin changes to Holy Knight with certain job actions becoming more flashier, Dark Knight could become Dark Lord, so on and so forth.

Even if the level doesn't "trivialize" the content, the player base will when they are tired of that content. Even in GW2 where there is a horizontal system there are empty zones and content nobody seems to be interested in. Horizontal leveling doesn't fix this aspect of how MMO players feel about certain content.

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Originally Posted by Gortys

Even in GW2 where there is a horizontal system there are empty zones and content nobody seems to be interested in. Horizontal leveling doesn't fix this aspect of how MMO players feel about certain content.

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This is just not true? I have friends who tell me "Oh, you'll never be able to run PoF metas, no one runs those anymore". Girl, people run them many times every day.

"No one runs dungeons anymore", LFG fills within five minutes.

There's a bias that if you don't do something anymore, you assume no one does. I have never once had an issue running any content in GW2, doubly so after engaging myself in my guilds and social circles.

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Originally Posted by koko-on-da-forumz

This is just not true? I have friends who tell me "Oh, you'll never be able to run PoF metas, no one runs those anymore". Girl, people run them many times every day.

"No one runs dungeons anymore", LFG fills within five minutes.

There's a bias that if you don't do something anymore, you assume no one does. I have never once had an issue running any content in GW2, doubly so after engaging myself in my guilds and social circles.

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It's almost like experiences in MMO's are subjective? And everyone may have a different experience based on where or even the time of day they play? Hmmm....
Also, you are naming very specific content.

So there's also a bias in games where people assume if they were able to find help with some old content, then everyone must be able to. This just isn't the case. But there is some content in GW2 that people seem to love to run over and over. I never stated that people in GW2 don't like to do any old content at all - that's how you took it.

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Originally Posted by AmorfaVex

Just to elaborate on your first paragraph. Leveling has been around since the dawn of CRPG/MMOs. There have been some variants that focus more on skill building, such as Ultima Online (I believe the first graphical MMO, I happened to beta test and play a bit.)

But these games all grew from Dungeons and Dragons, in which leveling was an integral part of the game.

If you reach back to the days before UO, you are looking at the MUDs (Multi User Dungeons), which were text based games where you did level (Gemstone III comes to mind as an example, but it was far from the first MUD.) (Excellent game btw, for people who dont mind reading instead of graphics.)

But leveing is a core part of this genre and the Final Fantasy franchise itself.

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far enough, the first mmos I played did not use 'leveling' and I was not aware of it until WoW released.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

far enough, the first mmos I played did not use 'leveling' and I was not aware of it until WoW released.

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Alternate leveling has been used in other games as well, in conjunction with standard leveling.

EQ implemented the Alternate Advancement system to avoid the issue of level bloat. In the AA system you accumulated XP after reaching the level cap and you could distribute points to make small adjustments to your character (Very similar to the Diablo 3 system, if you've played that, with paragon points, only much more complicated.)

The AA system, as it applied in EQ, encouraged people to keep playing, even for marginal gains (that did in fact add up after a while) some even rewarded unique mounts. It kept people invested in the game and the development of their character.

Quick Edit: Thinking back on it now, EQ also had a skill leveling system tied into the standard leveling as well. If you used a sword and nothing else for 10 levels, you'd only level your one-hand slash skill (or 2hs as the case may be) and if you found a mace you really wanted to use, you needed to level that up as well or it wouldnt be as effective as a 1hs. These skills were capped per level, so every level you might be able to train another 5 points in the skill. It applied to everything from offensive weapon use, parrying, riposte, swim speed, you name it.

I just dont think today's player base could handle that kind of complexity though, and it seems the devs would agree. They keep it simple, easy, and it all seems pointless.

If done correctly, the player shouldnt feel that way. They should feel that leveling means something. Devs just need to do a better job of implementing that.