General concerns, some of which need to be addressed:

As people start to hit higher levels, they are beginning to point out some issues with the game that could become a big concern as new players start to get higher into the game. Some of which are going to need to be addressed to keep people subbed to the game(and I hope that they do stay subbed).

Also, since the forums are intent on restricting how much you can post, I'll post most of the issues that I can think of, some minor, some major.

For those of you who seem to think this is a "I WANT TO HIT 50 AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!" or "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GRIND", then I direct you to this link here for clarification: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...09#post1269709

1. The higher you get, the less quests become available. This is very strange to me, and yet a lot of people are starting to recognize this issue. People have talked about how atrocious it is to level from 45-50. They say there are a severe lack of quests, and that it becomes most apparent starting in the mid 30s that there aren't as many quests as there was before, considering you now need MORE experience to level than you did previously.

Some people respond to this and say "well you can just grind Fates, or mobs, or dungeons, or leves". Please continue reading, we will get to that. Note, this issue of lack of quests or effective ways to level, become worse and worse with each class you go to level. That's one of the big issues here. Your main may not struggle so much in leveling, but your alts will tremendously.

2. The cap on leves and the award for them is too small. Okay, you can earn 6 allowances every 24 hours is it? That's not too bad imo, and 100 is the cap. Sounds reasonable. Until you realize you need almost 200k experience to level at level 31, and level 30 leves are giving you LESS than 5k experience. So if I do 6 leves (a days worth of accumulating allowances), I don't even earn a quarter of my level. So that's it for the leves that day. I can't do anymore until I accumulate more. That's a severe issue, leves need to grant you much more experience, or remove the cap on how many you can do(or keep the cap in place for GC leves, or have a seperate allowance for GC leves)

3. FATE grinding works now, but what about later? FATE grinding is a decent way to level right now, while the game is new and fresh. But how will it be later down the road when more people are playing their mains at max level? There will be WAY less people to do FATES with, making FATES take longer to complete(or not complete if its too hard). But let's not forget another issue about FATEs, they are boring. There is nothing exciting to them. It is a zergfest. Rush into the enemies, spam your attacks, you gain experience. Personally, I don't MIND that they are kinda boring, but if I have to resort to GRINDING them to level my character effectively? Suddenly it's not fun anymore. It's a nice break from whatever it was that I was doing before it popped. It's a nice break because its worth my time to do it because of the experience gain. But it BEING the main source of EXP? And having a party dedicated to just zerging and farming FATEs? Not much fun.

4. Guildhests are really only worth your time ONCE. I find guildhests to be very strange. On one hand, they are great experience the FIRST time you complete them, and they are good at introducing new players into MMO mechanics. On the other hand, once you complete them, what's the point of doing them again? If you put a group together to do them, you might as well do a dungeon. But at the same time, spamming the same guildhests isn't fun either, so doing that for experience isn't a great idea. Personally, I think a simple solution to guildhests is to allow them to grant you the bonus reward once daily, OR, once per class. They feel like wasted content at their current place in the game. Content I'd like to see get used more often.

5. Dungeons are great fun, but is the reward enough? Also, queues. I find the dungeons to be great fun, but unfortunately, the reward isn't enough when you outlevel the dungeon even by 1 or 2 levels. I was earning a huge chunk of experience per mob in a dungeon when I was at level, then I gained 2 levels and I run it again and my experience was drastically chopped down. That's unfortunate, as there is roughly a new dungeon every 4 levels. I'd like incentive to re-run the dungeons. Also, dungeons can't always be an effective way to level depending on your class. I play a tank and a healer. My queues are instant, so dungeons are decent experience. What about the DPS classes? Their queues are horrible. Let's not forget dungeon loot. Most treasure coffers from random locations in the dungeons offer you junk for loot. Yeah, you'll occasionally get an item that can be useful. But why am I getting a POTION(heals 80 hit points) at level 31, or an ETHER at level 31, or hell, 200 gil? That's horrible, and feels like a huge waste of time. Increase the amount of gil you earn from these coffers, or make the base items better. AT LEAST give me a hi potion or something?

6. Some of the quest rewards blow my mind, but this is minor. Why is a level 30 quest giving me a level 31 item? Why is a level 15 quest giving me a level 17 item? Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea? :confused: This is a majorly MINOR issue(if that makes sense), but I still felt like it needed to be said.

7. 1000 character limit for the post? But then I am allowed to post it when I shorten it to 1000, then edit it and copy in the rest of what I want to say. Square, plz :(

Sorry for the huge post. I love this game, I really want it to succeed. I just feel there are a few things that need to be addressed. These ARE important issues(well, most of them). I'm not even going to get into or list the issues with the economy at end game, because its already been said before.

If anyone has heard or read anything that a dev has said regarding anything being added in the future patches that might address some of these issues, please point it out to me so that I know.

Please let's have a good discussion about this and not a typical fanboy "well you're stupid the game is perfect" response. Thanks all.

UPDATE: Math for folks who need numbers to understand:
Content from 40-50 feels very dry, but the most noticeable difference is DEFINITELY 45-50. If you check here, http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Ca...idequest/26-50

You'll see that there are hardly any quests from 45-50. 45-50 roughly takes 2,250,000 experience to level. From the 45-50 range, there are only enough side quests(18) to give you roughly 225,000 experience. You're still left with 2 million experience. Well now lets add the story quests from 45-50: 13 quests, roughly 175,000(being generous here) of experience. So now if you do ALL main story quests and ALL side quests from 45-50, you gain 400,000 experience and still need roughly, 1,850,000 experience. Now you're stuck grinding. If you're rested? Dungeons aren't BAD experience, but they aren't great either. When I was level 46, and I did Dzemael Darkhold, I was rested and got about 1200-1500 a kill. Let's say there were 40 enemies in there(roughly), and lets include 5-6k experience per boss kill. I gained about 70k experience, while rested, in that dungeon. The only other dungeon I have available closest to me is Aurum Vale. We're looking at 26 runs, roughly to get the last of my experience IF I am rested. If I'm not? Add a dozen or so more runs. Does it seem terribly long to have to do 26(MINIMUM) dungeons or so to get the last 5 levels? Probably not, but the issue is that not everyone can spam run dungeons(I can, but not everyone I can). So add in a long arse wait time for those who can't get an instant queue. You could do leves, but leves are LAUGHABLE experience unless you're doing them for DoL or DoH.

Conclusion: Fastest way to level just so happens to be the most boring(and all the other options are generally boring too except dungeons). It's VERY clear that Square hardly did anything in the 45-50 content range. 40-45 is pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as 45-50. If people weren't content with FATE grinding(since its fast leveling, so many people don't care if something is boring so long as its fast xp), then more and more people would see the issue here. Hell, people who DO FATE grind understand that its a huge issue.

Bump, as I feel this is an important topic that should be discussed.

I disagree with every point you made.
Except maybe dungeons needing to be more rewarding.

The problem is... if they make everything so easily accessible to you, you'd max all classes at 50 in no time.
MMOs are supposed to be played for years. There is grinding involved intentionally.

Get your first class to 50 any way you want. Then when you go to level your second class, take your time and just enjoy a slow casual build up with it.

*edit* - Also, bumping your own post is like giving yourself a high 5 :cool:

I saw your post on reddit so thought I'd jump in with my opinion. Agree with you on pretty much all of your points, but I'd like to give my 2 cents on dungeons.

The fact that you can go through one while only getting small rewards from chests is one of the things that really irk me, especially since the dungeons are really well designed. I realize that they don't want to just toss gear at me left and right, but the fact that you can spend an hour (or more) and only have 3 or 4 small pick ups (and for other classes most of the time!) needs some adjustment. I'd replay dungeons a lot more if I knew for certain that'd I'd get at least one piece of gear I can use. I don't know if my view on that is kind of off or what, but that's just how I feel.

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Originally Posted by Ephany

I disagree with every point you made.
Except maybe dungeons needing to be more rewarding.

The problem is... if they make everything so easily accessible to you, you'd max all classes at 50 in no time.
MMOs are supposed to be played for years. There is grinding involved intentionally.

Get your first class to 50 any way you want. Then when you go to level your second class, take your time and just enjoy a slow casual build up with it.

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MMO's are supposed to be played for years because of interesting and enjoyable content. They are not supposed to be played for years because leveling your 2+ class takes a month of grinding leves or fates.

What about fixing the PS3 Render Monster issue? I'm a PC user and my wife is on PS3 She can never see anything in fates. EVER!

Numbered list go!
1. Can't speak on point 1 actually, only lv 44...

2. I agree for battle leves, the amount of exp from one leve at higher levels seems.... pitiful. I think a mix of things (leves, fates, dungeons, hunt log) should be done once you've completed sidequests for a given level, but the amount leves offer seems rather limited since they are limited in the number of times you can do them per day. Especially considering that the hunt log for a given difficulty rank can be completed in the time of a few of those leves for some classes.

3. I have mixed feelings on fate grinding. I play Disgaea. I normally like grinding (ironic though it may seem). But the randomness of fates while at the same time being consistent enough to grind, kinda takes away the beauty of them for me. I feel like they should be events that people run into during travel or nearby while doing other things, that people gather to complete, not get into groups to hunt them down, faceroll, repeat. This is just how I see them though. I think people will still grind them even after they've max leveled a class for the consistent gil and GC seals though.

4. I actually spammed the first guildhest for my THM from lv10-15 until I could do sastasha, but that's because THM isn't my main class, and with the number of enemies, I was getting I think about 3300 exp every 10 min. or so? That doesn't count time spent waiting in the Duty Finder, but I worked on the hunt log and class quests for the time between. Then I did kinda the same thing with one of the lv15 guildhests just to speed up time in the DF and mix it up with other dungeons up to lv20. The actual completion bonus is pretty small relatively speaking though, I like the idea of first time completion per class. Though with how big it is the first time, maybe half of the initial completion bonus? It would still be something like a 100% bonus for each class, and give people a reason to do the guildhests again.

5. I don't know, I feel dungeons are pretty rewarding. Some amount of the gear distribution is random, but I've seen a pretty good amount of gear. One issue is every time I see gear I don't need, I pass. I really should greed more often, so I already have some gear when I go to level a tank or melee DPS. I don't know if this will continue post lv20, but I've leveled up on my THM on pretty much every dungeon run, though I'm sure that has something to do with the 50+% exp bonus from mobs (and I'm not even in a FC!). The one thing I miss out on in dungeons is GC seals. Fates drop them, why not dungeons? I know there are tombstones later, but I can't say I know if they balance with GC seals.

6. I think they give out higher level gear for certain quests because you can do the quests at higher levels, but not lower ones. It's still pretty annoying completing any quest right at the level, then having to wait for a level or two to use it.

7. I know right?

3. This is the point I want to add my opinion to. Honestly, I think FATEs are, at the very least... okay. They do, in a way, replace quests. But only if you party. Unless you're a DoW DPS, or a THM with Swiftcast, you might as well give up trying to hit monsters and focus on healing instead. And I should mention, unless your party is pretty much the ONLY part at the FATE, you're not going to have much to heal. FATEs pretty much suck for casters, because the monsters are dead before our cast times finish. At least give each casting class an instant cast spell with short cooldown or SOMETHING.

5. No, the reward isn't enough. And I'm sure it's random, but dungeons almost NEVER drop DoM gear. And the exp reward does seem to drop dramatically after leveling once.

6. This goes with five. A lot of quests don't even bother with DoM gear. I'm starting to think the game is classist against casters.

I agree with you completely on all points.

I'm coming from a year spent on Guild Wars 2 (which I'm still playing, but not as hard as I used to). I loved leveling in GW2. I have SIX max level fully geared alts. I had all the crafting disciplines maxed before the most recent patch that bumped them up a bit. I did full map complete TWICE.

This game world feels small. I don't feel adequately rewarded for anything I do. The dungeon loot system is atrocious. The only way I'm guaranteed armor is if it drops? And then if I'm over-leveled it doesn't scale? LAME. The only thing keeping my interest is the story and crafting (and even now its waning due to the ridiculous amount of grinding necessary).

In GW2, leveling was an adventure. I wandered around and did what I pleased when I pleased and somehow gained plenty of exp. It didn't feel like a grind even though it took weeks and I loved that... and its F2P! At this rate, I won't be subscribing to FFXIV after the free period.

8. chocobos can't dance

I like that you touched on Guildhests. I almost forgot what they were when I was reading your post, OP. I like the idea of having the guildhests give double exp or something once per day. Kind of like a variation of dailies. Would make guildhests more relevant.

Now... off to do guildhests...

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Originally Posted by CannedToast

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GW2 has it's own plethora of problems. If you can somehow tolerate GW2's gameplay but not FF14's you should just go back to GW2.

I would prefer, instead of more short kill this group quests, for longer, heavier quests with more variety in how they're accomplished and more experience bonuses based on the length of such quests. Make it engaging.

Planning on it... after I at least hit 50 and finish the story. After that I'm done.

As far as leveling goes, path of least resistance says it all... a lot of things wrong with how they setup these things but what can you say, they're not used to balancing these kinds of systems and dungeons (also quests) are definitely not giving a large enough reward for completion to make them worthwhile to do more of.

I agree wholeheartedly with all of the points made in this well written critique. I just REALLY hope Square Enix listen to the fans feedback, and take swift action towards improvements. I really am enjoying the game, but there are many frustrations.

A BIG one for me personally is the targeting for the controller scheme. I really have enjoyed playing with a controller more than i thought I would, but it NEVER targets the enemy that is directly in front of me. I have to shift through almost every time. This NEEDS to be fixed. Especially for the PS3 players out there to ever be close to as efficient as PC players.

Also... I could be wrong, but is the down arrow on the d-pad utilized for anything? B/c I feel it could be used for something like switching to a designated target (tank) for healing.... (boss) for dps to switch back to main target after switching to mobs.... any thoughts?

I seriously agree with all points. A friend of mine who's lvl 38 stopped playing these past few days because there aren't enough quests, and he doesn't like to FATE grind for the rest of the day because it's too boring.

I've been trying to join guild heists couple hours back with my GLAD class but the queue is way too long.

So i decided to do dungeons. i lvl'ed up once per run but received shitty loot. Only thing my GLA was able to get was a lvl 15 helmet that is weaker then the one i already have. i was trying to get body armor or at least a sword.

FATES shouldn't be the fastest way to lvl up.. they should add more quests or increase guild heists. Grinding for hours is boring, Leveling my character feels more like a chore.

I wont stick around to pay $15+ a month if these issues aren't addressed.

And here I was thinking that the wall after 45 was my fault.

SE encourages players to not only play one single class/job but also play other class/job as well (I'm only referring to the DoW & DoM).
I do agree that leveling your main class/job isn't that hard, but once you start to level your 2nd or 3rd class and so on, then the problem arises. You barely have any quests left, leves aren't that rewarding, and FATE grinding could be a problem if there are not many people at the same levels playing at the same map. Then at that point, there are barely any options, you have to burn the leves allowances or keep FATE grinding (provided there are many people doing them as well).

Well I hope there will be a solution to this, otherwise the idea of leveling other classes is really not appealing.

I Agree with everything!

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Originally Posted by CannedToast

Planning on it... after I at least hit 50 and finish the story. After that I'm done.

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and that s where the fun begin, is a shame but ok, your choice

Leves at 45 actually does something.. it took me 28 seconds for 8k exp and a ring that sells 3-4k in the market. Pretty happy with it.. If anything, there should be 20 allowances of leves everyday :(

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Originally Posted by Massacre

I seriously agree with all points. A friend of mine who's lvl 38 stopped playing these past few days because there aren't enough quests, and he doesn't like to FATE grind for the rest of the day because it's too boring.

''snip''

I wont stick around to pay $15+ a month if these issues aren't addressed.

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They give us a lot of leveling options, but all the systems seem so half-made. That's kind of the issue. There are ways to improve them to make more fun. Expand the hunting log. Make guildhests give the reward more than once.(once per day, one per character? I don't know.) Leves should either be fewer, longer, and with a MUCH bigger reward, OR, more reward for what they are currently at. Dungeons should have loot reworked and exp increased a bit.

My only major critique is that Guildleves should be more rewarding. Perhaps work in a system where they generate a significantly higher reward for classes lower than your highest.

Not expecting an easy grind, but when you've burned through all of your quests after 1 or 2 classes, spending an allowance to generate about 1/3 the exp of a normal quest just feels wasteful.

I think it was good that quests end at some point, or we risk just being a solo MMO like SWTOR.

I don't think the grind will be so noticeable when PvP is released. I thought we could level 30+ using PvP so that's an additional option. Granted you would have to be good at PvP lol.

Also, we don't have Dailies yet.

However, a big issue is the downplaying of open world traditional XP parties and the associated XP. If we at least had that option it would be great! Although I do notice mob respawns are so fast there are probably some good camps out there. FATE chasing is boring. It would be better if zones hosted numerous spots for traditional XPing and then a FATE spawns on/by your party to break up the monotony. This would mimic what I'm sure a lot of us feel, that it is more fun to just quest/solo kill mobs and chance upon a FATE rather than actively hunting for the FATEs.

Don't waste leves on battle leves. Seriously. And don't waste them on DoL either. Unless you don't craft and you don't gather, they should really only be used on DoH until the leves for DoL/Combat are buffed. Not saying this is a feature, but right now it's the truth.

Honestly, ToR kind wins as far as the leveling ssytem goes. No matter what level you were, the current area/Planet as it in that game would always take the same amount of time to complete and you would at least be one level below or above the next planet. But each planet (save for tatooine and hoth shudder) would get you leveled in the same pace as th elast one, even the level 45 to 50 ones. Too bad everything else (graphics, some glitchy issues, all characters looking the same except different skin color, The Cartel shop, the list goes on) was bad. I have 4 different maxed medium geared chars finished each at a deccent pace. I havea another whos a few levels away but this game stole my attention. ITS SOOO EFFING PRETTY. Anyway I think the system that TOR did have as far as leveling goes would be a good direction to look. Cause they had different types as well.

Im only level 30 and 13 for secondary for the soul crystal so i dont realy have an oponion yet, except for the quuesting.

Im not to far but already trying to make a second class for my dang soul crystal is becomming a hassle. theres too little to do, my GF already burned through her leves in two days on crafting alone. Leves need to give more reward for raising challenge above current level, and speedy completeion.

Fate grinding, have yet to partake but its starting to look that way. So im not sure how well that effects leveling yet.

As for SWTOR being a solo mmo yes it pretty much is that way untill max level this game seems to want you to party up more, but the general leveling idea is what i enjoyed the most abotu SWTOR

I saw this thread of Reddit and I have to admit that I agree with OP 100%.

Speaking of Guildhests - Lord of the Rings Online was one of the first MMOs to implement a feature like Guildhests; they were called scenarios. You could do them in 10 minutes and they gave you rewards that could be traded in for gear and you received experience on a number of factors, one of them being speed and efficiency. There was also a daily XP bonus. It worked out really well. It felt like it was worth my time to run them. If Guildhests had a 'first time completion' bonus and then a separate 'daily completion' bonus we would be in business.
If you have more incentive to run instanced content, and run them more than once, that means you have more tanks and healers wanting to run them, meaning you would have less queue times too.

Seriously, there's an achievement for doing Guildhests 10,000 times...you really think I'm gonna get close to that if it's not more rewarding? Sad.

Offer even a chest at the end of the battle to give us something.

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Originally Posted by ChanceFurystrike

Don't waste leves on battle leves. Seriously. And don't waste them on DoL either. Unless you don't craft and you don't gather, they should really only be used on DoH until the leves for DoL/Combat are buffed. Not saying this is a feature, but right now it's the truth.

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Yes, the DOW leves need a huge upgrade, or remove the allowance cap. I don't understand why you can only do 6 per day and the reward is so small. Friend of mine just had his internet go out during a leve, he logged back in 30 seconds later, he was dead. Waste of 4 hours(4 hours an allowance technically). He lost another leve from dying(he made a mistake, he admits it, but still frustrating to him), so that was technically another 4 hours gone. Kind of lame.

A good idea would be to seperate DoL/DoH and DoW leves with different allowances. They are a fast way to level as DoL/DoH but they suck tremendously for DoW.

I agree with OP 100%

I'm level 47 right now and I can't find any quests to do at all.

I stopped caring about doing leves because they feel like a waste of time.

I can honestly say that I was having a ton of fun with this game as a lowbie, now that I'm getting close to max level I'm finding it harder to continue liking the game.

If SE wants my 15$ a month they need to fix the issues with leveling or I'm going to be out of here after I hit 50.

Updated OP to further explain some of the issues.

1. The higher you get, the less quests become available.
Really? I haven't noticed, as I haven't really done quests besides my main story quest since around L28~30. I have tons of ! in every area I go to, thought it would be smart to save some for when I decide to level more classes/jobs. I have 2 right now in the 45~48 level range, I don't play all the time but a tad more than casually I guess, and I have had no issues leveling. This is one of the least grindy games I've played.

2. The cap on leves and the award for them is too small.
I use Leves for my crafting/gathering classes. Sometimes you get special ones to pop up on gatherers and you can earn basically double the base exp (if you get the +25% modifier from getting enough points) and when you turn in an HQ item on a crafter it gives you about double exp as well. The reason exp is so low for DoW/M classes is you have tons of options to level them, at least, I would assume as such. It would be nice to have a higher allowance of leves I guess, I haven't encountered any issues with the current allowance though.

3. FATE grinding works now, but what about later?
what about later? It works perfectly fine. Sometimes in Coerthas especially it's hard to get credit on some since there are SO MANY people zerging them. Yea, it's mindless and such, but considering mobs give you like...400 exp(?) or so at my level, it's not effective to grind regularly. Only time i've grinded on normal mobs is when I needed crafting mats.

4. Guildhests are really only worth your time ONCE.
Yea...I haven't even done the introduction guildhest. So I can't comment on them. I see your point where they're practically useless if someone can cruise through the game without ever having the need to do one.

5. Dungeons are great fun, but is the reward enough? Also, queues.
What. Dungeons are fine how they are, loot drops are PLENTIFUL. I remember running dungeons in other games HUNDREDS of times and not seeing a single drop. There is 0 issues with rewards in the dungeons, it feels like I am doing very little work and just being handed things. However, this is without having run L50 content so I cannot speak for that. The exp is on the low side, but again, I'm assuming it's because they want people to use the shiny fate system.

I agree with the OP, for a game that lets you level multiple classes on one character they really don't give you many viable options to level them other than boring fate grinding.