Square needs to be careful with removing the main leveling focus in the game atm they are removing 3-4hrs of leveling content a reset from the game and adding in 60mins worth... so we are losing 3hrs of party based content.

Then again we have to see how Leves are, if Party is still > Solo or not. If leves are not worth doing as groups or Solo > Groups SE has in tern removed alot of content for many of the players in the game atm.

The majority of people I see in game prefere group content and group leveling focus throughout the game not just endgame/dungeons. In fact it is one of the main reason I hear for them choosing FFXIV over Rift and WoW atm.

I have a feeling this is going to a grass is always greener on the other side scenario. Just like the aboloshing of the orriginal SP system was cheered on... but in the end it all but destroyed party gameplay and stopped people from using the party search and making outside partys on normal mobs.... YES hard to believe but even NAs where using the party feature at one time.

In short forcing players to solo will in the end kill this game. And not being able to party easily and have people prefer to do it is as good as removing party content all together.

Atm each major Grind Camp outside leves can hold 1-2 partys max... anymore the that and you are looking at sp gains around 12-14/hr which I can get solo. SE needs to increase respawn rates massively or rebalanced the whole SP equation before changing leves as a primary leveling source....

I sure hope SE realizes this and are doing what they know will work... not what they "think" will. SE has a bad habit of not playing their own games before making changes. Sorta like how Nin was treated like a main DD for over a year and SE ended up being shocked when they learned people where using it as a tank for the past year.