Create an item that decrease the xp recieved

I recently started an alt, and I'm redoing ARR, and kinda and I have a lot of fun with re-experiencing the early game (more than I had in DT, actually), but there is one thing that annoys me : you get so much xp from the msq, that it makes every content irrelevant, despite not using the rings/earrings to get more xp, and creating the character on a server without the xp bonus. I get so much xp, that at msq lvl 21, I was 9 lvl over the msq lvl, while I only did the msq, the job classes, the hunting log for the job, 1 FATES, and maybe a dozen lvl 1 to 7 side quests (quest that give like 120 xp and some shard for craft). It's ridiculous.

Part of the pleasure of early game is trying everything, unlocking the side activities, doing a some fates to get GC seal to buy retainer money, etc. This fast leveling also makes the vast number of gear irrelevant, since you get lvl up so fast, it's not worth anymore.

I get it, to make it easier for the players that are there only for the story, something like that had to be done, but honestly, there are people like those kind of side activities and a slower pace (I began at a time when I could do unlock side dungeons, do fates, and still not getting overleveled) , especially on a reroll. Without needing to lvl up several job without largely overlvling by far the msq (I'm currently at 3 jobs on parallels that all overlvl the msq, and I'm pondering.

That's why I suggest an item (a ring maybe?) that reduce the xp given by quests (by half, maybe by 2/3?), so those who want it can enjoy the game in a way that is closer to what it was designed to be at the beginning, while leaving the people that want to rush the early game continue as it is now.

(Overall, I think the Msq giving enough xp kinda helped to make the overworld more shallow, but that's a question for another time).

This! As someone who takes her sweet, SWEET time with the game and does an ungodly amount of side questing, being overleveled is a constant struggle. I'm very slow with doing MSQ, but I still want to feel like there's a challenge when exploring new places on my preferred jobs. It also makes me have to hold back on playing certain jobs so I don't accidentally max out my level and lose the ability to do Khloe journals, because then it'll require me to do duties that I haven't yet unlocked...

Would especially love the option to do PvP without gaining exp.

You don't overlevel the MSQ that much unless you joined a server with the "Road to 90" buff which doubles quest experience, or did all side quests or did roulettes. If you do just MSQ and no sidequests, you can find yourself short of exp for the last 2.0 MSQ quest.

It does confuse new players at the patches, because they do not understand that 2.0 to 2.5 was once endgame content. So they can't understand why their progress came to a halt and they get 100 exp per quest.

In Endwalker, they changed it to not expect some FATEs and Sidequests to be done, so that if you do just MSQ you more or less have all the exp (they slightly undercalculated it, so do need to get a bit of extra experience). Due to this, you can level an alt job alongside it in Endwalker. But as far as I know, older expansions still need some extra exp than MSQ like they originally did.

An item to reduce exp gain wouldn't make sense. I've seen it suggested before by new players, but I just tell them that being overleveled does not matter, because their real level is the level of the MSQ quest. They cannot do any content that is higher than the level of their MSQ, nor access areas and duties higher than the level of the MSQ, except maybe Unreal. And they sync down to near the level of their MSQ.

I support this idea.

My thoughts on overleveling as a problem are that I think some of it can be mitigated by undergearing yourself, since that's really where the stats come from -- but the issue we can't really work around now is that for a large chunk of HW though EW, your level is going to be at least ten over the zones your quests send you to, so there is no thrill to first-time exploring new zones when you've only just gotten to them in the story but you already know nothing is going to try to attack you unless you attack first.

I had that level issue on an alt to the point where I was being followed but I was also doing every side quest for the deeper story. It was also a server joining exp boost thing my point being I was like 20-25 levels higher than Msq before the following got to me and deleted the alt.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You don't overlevel the MSQ that much unless you joined a server with the "Road to 90" buff which doubles quest experience, or did all side quests or did roulettes. If you do just MSQ and no sidequests, you can find yourself short of exp for the last 2.0 MSQ quest.

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Yet I did. Over the past 2 week, And I clearly said exactly what I did with that job. It's fairly well calculated for later extension but not so much in ARR (because ho surprise, quest mob is a hunting log mob, here is 7k more xp at lvl 15). And even then, I'm part of the people that liked the old slower progression system.

I also don't get why some people feel the need to go "no don't do that" when we propose something that wouldn't change anything for them. Are you so against people enjoying the game as they like.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

I support this idea.

My thoughts on overleveling as a problem are that I think some of it can be mitigated by undergearing yourself, since that's really where the stats come from -- but the issue we can't really work around now is that for a large chunk of HW though EW, your level is going to be at least ten over the zones your quests send you to, so there is no thrill to first-time exploring new zones when you've only just gotten to them in the story but you already know nothing is going to try to attack you unless you attack first.

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Yeah, but to me, gear progression is part of the fun.

I don't see anything wrong with some sort of buff you can obtain that reduces exp, allow the player to choose the amount too cause why not. Maybe some custom options too, like story mode exp which prevents exp leveling you past the MSQ you have (so like you can't level past 11 unless you finish the level 11 msq, it can store the exp you've earned so far too, just so it gates you, by your choice, at the MSQ level).

You can pick up multiple jobs and spread the EXP around.

ARR will even let you complete story quests as a crafter or gatherer so you can channel some extra EXP that way.

What content are you worried about gaining too much EXP for and outleveling?

Everything meaningful has level and ilvl sync.

I am inclined to agree, but honestly the side quests and FATEs generally speaking need to be more engaging or enjoyable.

I don't expressly put the dead open world down to situations like this... It doesn't help, but I mean they're in the open world anyway. Much of the issue with open world is just lent to how generally pointless and unengaging it is. Open world started to get put into a coffin when we had things like deep dungeon which you could do, and queues were super fast due to no restriction on role/class composition, then that steadily got put in a coffin when dungeons became absurdly efficient, and once squadrons and duty support took over. I do miss the days where you would always find swathes of people in Northern Thanalan, South Shroud, and Eastern La Noscea, all going around, trouncing FATE after FATE, even without things like Gemstones to incentivize. Seeing people routinely get trounced by Lupus, Gorgimera, all that good stuff, and they spawned really regularly too. You have new content added which makes older content redundant.

The biggest problem that this game will have as far as open world is concerned, is literally everything is an instanced duty.. Dungeons, trials, raids, etc., and it is something you can queue to, from wherever you like.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

What content are you worried about gaining too much EXP for and outleveling?

Everything meaningful has level and ilvl sync.

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That's the whole problem, it makes so many non "meaningfull" content useless. Fates, Mandates, gear progression, side quest (included side dungeons), anything Grand company related, gear progression... Everything is made useless by the unsane amount of xp you get. You may find them useless content, but I feel having to engage with them is part of what made the world works so well in ARR, despite the the msq and storytelling being a little harsh. They give the whole world some consistency, made the world feel alive. It's something we lost with time and that was severely lacking in DT. As much as people like to describe it as the new ARR, ARR did a far better job at fleshing its world, and those side activities played a big role in that. One of the current complaints about the game is how the world is shallow and just a setting for the msq. Of course it is, they made a point to make anything not msq related useless and inconsequencial. No wonder people tell ARR is the bad part of FFXIV if they experience it only through msq.

Once again, I don't want them to reduce the xp for everything, but to give us a tool like Menphina or Azeyma earrings, but that cut xp instead of giving more. You don't see the interest, fine. I see it though.

i don't think they should stop such way of LVL but they could add a option in the party setting that let you sync down to the map LV like cap 1-2 above the highest not mark enemy in the map

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

That's the whole problem, it makes so many non "meaningfull" content useless. Fates, Mandates, gear progression, side quest (included side dungeons), anything Grand company related, gear progression... Everything is made useless by the unsane amount of xp you get. You may find them useless content, but I feel having to engage with them is part of what made the world works so well in ARR, despite the the msq and storytelling being a little harsh. They give the whole world some consistency, made the world feel alive. It's something we lost with time and that was severely lacking in DT. As much as people like to describe it as the new ARR, ARR did a far better job at fleshing its world, and those side activities played a big role in that. One of the current complaints about the game is how the world is shallow and just a setting for the msq. Of course it is, they made a point to make anything not msq related useless and inconsequencial. No wonder people tell ARR is the bad part of FFXIV if they experience it only through msq.

Once again, I don't want them to reduce the xp for everything, but to give us a tool like Menphina or Azeyma earrings, but that cut xp instead of giving more. You don't see the interest, fine. I see it though.

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What's preventing you from doing these things despite the amount of EXP that you've gained?

If you enjoy the content, can you not just do it despite not needing the additional EXP?

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

What's preventing you from doing these things despite the amount of EXP that you've gained?

If you enjoy the content, can you not just do it despite not needing the additional EXP?

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As I said, because I enjoy interacting with the world, without feeling like I'm doing something the game doesn't want me to do. Because that what basically this whole xp thing says "Not don't do that, we don't want to do that".

You don't see the problem, fine. But I do. You could just ignore the thread because it doesn't concern you and wouldn't change anything for you. Just ignore this thread if you don't see that as a problem, thank you.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

As I said, because I enjoy interacting with the world, without feeling like I'm doing something the game doesn't want me to do. Because that what basically this whole xp thing says "Not don't do that, we don't want to do that". You don't even have to agree with me, so why are you institing on how it's not good idea. Do you really feel the need to say to other how they have to enjoy the game?

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No, it's entirely up to you what content you want to play and how you want to engage with the game. I don't think this is a realistic suggestion nor would it be particularly useful though.

For one, how do they decide how much this item should reduce EXP by? The amount that you want your EXP to be reduced by will differ from how much someone else would want their EXP to be reduced by based on the variety of content that they want to engage with while leveling and how much of it they want to do.

It would also just require dev time that I think would be better spent on a lot of other things given the current state of the game.

There's nothing preventing you from doing any of this content already. Anything meaningful is level and item level synced and you have the option to jump between a few jobs if you want to split the EXP so you aren't overlevelled for talking to NPCs in the overworld. In short, I just don't think the game has content that justifies the necessity for such a system or the time it would take to implement.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You don't overlevel the MSQ that much unless you joined a server with the "Road to 90" buff which doubles quest experience, or did all side quests or did roulettes. If you do just MSQ and no sidequests, you can find yourself short of exp for the last 2.0 MSQ quest.

It does confuse new players at the patches, because they do not understand that 2.0 to 2.5 was once endgame content. So they can't understand why their progress came to a halt and they get 100 exp per quest.

In Endwalker, they changed it to not expect some FATEs and Sidequests to be done, so that if you do just MSQ you more or less have all the exp (they slightly undercalculated it, so do need to get a bit of extra experience). Due to this, you can level an alt job alongside it in Endwalker. But as far as I know, older expansions still need some extra exp than MSQ like they originally did.

An item to reduce exp gain wouldn't make sense. I've seen it suggested before by new players, but I just tell them that being overleveled does not matter, because their real level is the level of the MSQ quest. They cannot do any content that is higher than the level of their MSQ, nor access areas and duties higher than the level of the MSQ, except maybe Unreal. And they sync down to near the level of their MSQ.

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You overlevel them quit a bit, even without Road to 90, and Exp Earring, i leveld recently a new Char just for fun and hit 25-26 when i unlocked the first dungeon, with Road to 90 and Exp Earrings it would be already 30+

It's a good idea. Useful for those who want it, harmless to those who don't.

I think it would make more sense to put it as an option to select at the start of the game rather than a ring you can put on/take off. Something like no rested exp and a flat -40% from quests. Maybe add in a "convert to slow mode" as an option for already made characters. I don't like the idea of someone going "Oh I don't like this anymore" and removing the burden whenever they want.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

I think it would make more sense to put it as an option to select at the start of the game rather than a ring you can put on/take off. Something like no rested exp and a flat -40% from quests. Maybe add in a "convert to slow mode" as an option for already made characters. I don't like the idea of someone going "Oh I don't like this anymore" and removing the burden whenever they want.

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Why would that be a problem?

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Why would that be a problem?

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If the purpose is to have people experience the game in the way it was originally and to take things slow then being able to turn it off whenever you want doesn't make sense. It cheapens the entire experience if you go, "Oh I'm soo close to leveling maybe I'll take my ring off for this one quest." which people will definitely do. No, take away the temptation entirely.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

your level is going to be at least ten over the zones your quests send you to, so there is no thrill to first-time exploring new zones when you've only just gotten to them in the story but you already know nothing is going to try to attack you unless you attack first

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That's already the case for every zone? If you want to engage a trash mob, you run towards it and attack it. If you want to avoid it, you... simply go around it. There's nothing magical or difficult about aggro mechanics.

On the other hand, side quests... those should sync to your current level, for sure.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

If the purpose is to have people experience the game in the way it was originally and to take things slow then being able to turn it off whenever you want doesn't make sense. It cheapens the entire experience if you go, "Oh I'm soo close to leveling maybe I'll take my ring off for this one quest." which people will definitely do. No, take away the temptation entirely.

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Or there's people who do a LOT of Fates, field content, PvP etc who simply don't want those things to cause imbalance in their exp??

It also makes leveling your chocobo difficult if your level is significantly higher than where you are in msq. Bumping this

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

but I just tell them that being overleveled does not matter, because their real level is the level of the MSQ quest.

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Yet that is only half of the story.

The reason overleveling is bad, is that other jobs at that point cant easily catch up to enable spreading the xp. And being lvl 100 in shadowbringers means you will lose a lot of xp from that point onward, unless you level another job far enough. This either means losing a lot of xp, or spending a lot of time leveling another job before the msq can take over.

Slowing the leveling and throwing away the xp is a bad idea to me though, as i think that this xp should at least be granted back through another route. Something as simple as just giving a static +20% xp on all other jobs means that eventualy the xp will be given out, while not being overleveled. Sure, it means the value has to be stored somewhere, but there are several other areas where this can help, as this then also means lvl 100 quests can now grant xp that help the lower level jobs. Lvl 90 quests now do give some xp, but at the end of EW you didnt get it. So technicaly everyone that completed the story then has lost quite some xp through it.

And overleveling has a serious negative effect on some fights. Especialy when you have those open world encounters, these dont scale up. So a lvl 83 enemy just gets 1 shotted, its a dull aspect of the msq because of that. Sure, these fights arent the most interesting, but its at least a fight. Even just traversing the zone towards the next area changes a lot when not overleveled, as random mobs can now be a hazard, and again force a few fights out of it.

Sure, its minimal things, but since we want to get a better msq experience, it does add up.

Also, in each expansion i was able to level 3 jobs at once easily, while just balancing the MSQ xp so jobs are at most 1 level overleveled. The msq xp is good for 2 jobs, while roulettes do allow a 3rd one to be leveled alongside it. Just using 1 job for the MSQ will result in a huge loss of xp gained (and if you use that same job for other activities, its even worse).

Does it really matter if you kill the noname enemy that spawns out of the purple circle with 3 or 10 random button presses?

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

This either means losing a lot of xp, or spending a lot of time leveling another job before the msq can take over.

Slowing the leveling and throwing away the xp is a bad idea to me though, as i think that this xp should at least be granted back through another route.

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This doesn't matter because experience is easy to get in this game. For example, you can go and do beast tribe quests and get a massive chunk of exp each day for 10 minutes of work (or less). Additionally, you are rewarded for this if you didn't fully rank the tribe yet.

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And overleveling has a serious negative effect on some fights. Especialy when you have those open world encounters, these dont scale up. So a lvl 83 enemy just gets 1 shotted

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Your level increases, but your gear does not. If you level without increasing your gear, you actually become weaker, because level dilutes stats. The only thing that makes up for this at all is new actions, abilities and potency increases, so it evens out enough.

Most fights take place in an instance, and due to this, the level gets synced anywhere. Therefore, it's not a problem in my opinion.

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Also, in each expansion i was able to level 3 jobs at once easily

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I can't relate to that because, for me personally, the exp is just enough. People who advise sprouts to level multiple jobs this way trap them when they have to find a way to level up the other job to the level of the MSQ and waste their time when they could be enjoying the story.