Level cap increase every 1-2 years.

[Shipp]

I will agree that ToAU was when the biggest shifts in FFXI started occurring. With the ease of exp gain those areas afforded the general skill level of the population decreased. As to whether it killed sky is up in the air. New players would still need gear from sky, though.

Sea had problems all it's own, I don't think many of them were based on anything beyond it's own poor design. But the gear from limbus was still sought after.

I'm not trying to pretend that in it's entirety FFXI was nothing but sunshine and lemonade. No MMO is.

I think the biggest issue I have with most of your arguments is that you are trying to represent a section of the population you really can't account for.

All of my arguments are based on my personal experience in the game. Things I personally enjoyed doing and aspects of the game that effected me personally.

It's hard to quantify a statement someone makes when they try to speak for other people.

I'm speaking from my own experience, the numerous LSes I had been in over the years, and the general state of the zones when I would walk down memory lane years later.

Most sky gear was replaced by the time ToAU introduced instances. When that happened, they weren't so much side-grades or situational gear anymore. Most of it was a straight up up-grade. This, in itself, even without a level increase, kills off old content.

People can talk about how it would always be relevant because a new person might need something from there, but there are a few problems with that. When there is better gear already out there, that person doesn't -need- to go there. Even if there isn't better gear, the vast majority of people had finished sky and sea by that time and didn't -want- to go back there, especially just for one person. Getting a group together to help one person in XI was like pulling teeth. This doesn't happen in WoW and other MMOs that increase level cap because people are not forced to go through 5 year old content just to catch up to the current gear curve.

I'm not saying one system is necessarily better (I do believe level increases are better) but that is not what I'm arguing here, and I think that's what is being overlooked.

The whole premise of this argument is that level increases make old content outdated. My argument is old content was already outdated years before the level cap increase. If old content is going to be outdated either way, then why not increase the cap gradually instead of potentially ending up in the mud pit of FFXI where you're static 75 for years, being told it will never change, investing months of /played over the years gearing up, then one day the carpet is pulled from beneath you, causing you to rage and quit soon after? Increasing the level cap seems like a much better solution since you don't have 6 years to get attached to gear, nor 6 years trying to obtain everything you need.

[Murugan]

I'm speaking from my own experience, the numerous LSes I had been in over the years, and the general state of the zones when I would walk down memory lane years later.

Most sky gear was replaced by the time ToAU introduced instances. When that happened, they weren't so much side-grades or situational gear anymore. Most of it was a straight up up-grade. This, in itself, even without a level increase, kills off old content.

People can talk about how it would always be relevant because a new person might need something from there, but there are a few problems with that. When there is better gear already out there, that person doesn't -need- to go there. Even if there isn't better gear, the vast majority of people had finished sky and sea by that time and didn't -want- to go back there, especially just for one person. Getting a group together to help one person in XI was like pulling teeth. This doesn't happen in WoW and other MMOs that increase level cap because people are not forced to go through 5 year old content just to catch up to the current gear curve.

I'm not saying one system is necessarily better (I do believe level increases are better) but that is not what I'm arguing here, and I think that's what is being overlooked.

The whole premise of this argument is that level increases make old content outdated. My argument is old content was already outdated years before the level cap increase. If old content is going to be outdated either way, then why not increase the cap gradually instead of potentially ending up in the mud pit of FFXI where you're static 75 for years, being told it will never change, investing months of /played over the years gearing up, then one day the carpet is pulled from beneath you, causing you to rage and quit soon after? Increasing the level cap seems like a much better solution since you don't have 6 years to get attached to gear, nor 6 years trying to obtain everything you need.

You argument is that a lot of content was old and tired, and easy due to another terrible expansion before Abyssea. Abyssea was the nail in the coffin, but I'll agree that it was downhill long before then in terms of that old content.

You are too focused on FFXI, the lesson from XI is simply that you don't need to do level increase to make new content that people will want to do. They proved that, just because they messed it up on multiple occasions doesn't change that. If they had raised level cap with CoP the game would have started down hill years earlier, instead that was some of the best times many of who played XI remember, playing both new and much old original content and it didn't need a level increase. People could still come into FFXI at CoP's release and enjoy most of what made the game great and enjoyable before CoP while still getting to experience CoP's content. It was a real expansion of the content in game for everyone.

[Shipp]

You'll have to excuse me if I don't understand your WoW references... as I said the game didn't hold my attention past level 30.

When I initially lost interest in what FFXIV was, while still waiting for news on what it would turn into, I picked up LoTRO again. The level cap since I had left changed from 50 to 65.

Every class had several items needed to finish a quest that were obtainable from a level 50 instance or from grinding a newer instance for barter items. Since I was well versed in the 50 instance, I opted to just crank that out for the items I'd need on a new character I had created. During what used to be one of the hardest fights in the game my friend died. The nature of the fight is if you aren't in the arena when the fight starts you can't join the fight midway. Up until that point we were the only two people in the instances, we had duo'd our way as far as we had, and when he died, he was unable to continue the fight. I was able to solo the remaining 3/4s of the fight. I was level 62 at the time.

That's pretty much the same way WoW is on boss fights. You're either in the area when someone pulls, and you have about 2 seconds to get in before the doors/gates/magicspikes close or you're left out. It was the same way for many fights in XI, sky gods included. You couldn't teleport to their platform if a fight was already in progress. BCs were the same way.

Yeah, Kirin could be killed in under a minute after ToAU, but it required 18+ people to do it. And yes Byakko could be killed by a skilled well set-up group of 6 people, but to say that it wasn't a challenge is by no means correct. If we had brought 18 people, no it probably wouldn't have been much of a challenge.

But you're missing the point. When something no longer requires the full amount of people to perform it, it is then outdated. 10 man Ice Crown Citadel in WoW requires pretty much 10 people to complete, and that is from last expansion. Even with 5x the health, 5x the mana, 5x the damage, 5x the defense, you can still easily die in that raid if you don't pay attention. Is there any loot worth it anymore? No. Is it still fun and run a lot for the achievement and title? You betcha.

I was 6-manning Byakko back before I even got access to Sea, btw. I was also the healer. I wouldn't exactly call it easy, but it wasn't substantially hard either. You treat the boss like a boss and not just another mob.

The point I am making isn't that with a static level cap old content remains just as relevant as the day it releases. My point is that with a static level cap, content retains relevance purely on a player by player case.

You might not be making that point, however Jericho was, and that is who I originally was responding to. Comparing XI to WoW again, relevant content is still relevant for those at that level. Sky for a new player was just as relevant pre-Abyssea as my level 60 running level 60 raids on the way to 85. It simply isn't -needed- so people opt to skip it and go back later to see the content. Sky was not still -needed- during ToAU. There might have been one or two items from Sky that people could actually use as an upgrade to their current gear, but it wasn't so much better than stuff from sea or the instances in ToAU that it was actually worth going back to do.

This doesn't mean people didn't still do it. This means they didn't need to and were already doing outdated content just for shiggles.

You go back and play raids you enjoyed doing. But how many people who never experienced them are going to bother?

Many. There are achievements that some people love chasing. There are titles that others love chasing. There are even guild achievements which unlock certain guild items. I never did the Vanilla raids until I was 70 during the Burning Crusade. Level 60 raids still went on for the heck of it, before there were even achievements and titles, before guilds even leveled. People still do them.

I have memories of FFXI where it was absolutely brutal... Sometimes I hated the game. Other times I loved it. And yeah alot of that is from nostalgia... but when a new player in my ls needed an item that I knew how to get, I was always up for helping...

I was too. I was in the first NA/EU (JP shells had done it, but only 3 or 4 I believe) shell to kill Dynamis Lord back in either 2004 or 2005. That is probably my most nostalgic memory of XI, feeling like we were making history in the game, proving that NA's and EU's were just as good as JP's who always looked down on us. I still ran old content just to help out, or out of boredom. That still doesn't mean it was any less out-dated though. Those people could have still gotten upgrades elsewhere. One piece of gear for a person doesn't mean it's not outdated. Me going there long after I needed to and getting my Zenith set wasn't needed, yet I did it so I could have 1 HP on my raised SMN and freak people out.

Alot of what endeared FFXI to me near the end was content that was originally designed to be experienced with a massive group, could now be experienced with a smaller more intimate group.

But you could be doing that same content at level 90 with that same small group. If it truly boils down to nostalgia, then you can still go there at any time. However most people claim it's nostalgia while it's really a case of, "I had to go through all this to get to where I am now, and new players don't have to." Call the Whaaaaaaaambulance please. Not saying you're doing this, but I see this a lot on FF sites, and even on WoW.

And I'm sure that remains true in WoW and in lotro. But in FFXI it wasn't JUST my nostalgia that gave relevance to the content. People still needed it. It may have been far less people than when the content was introduced, but the rewards were still valuable. And the content was still enjoyable.

Enjoyable is an opinion. I -never- really enjoyed sky. I liked the zone, I didn't care for the hoops I had to jump through for endgame. I didn't care for the teleporter to Kirin where you had to click yes at either an even or odd second to get ported to his room, otherwise you end up in a room full of pots and have to go traverse the shrine again. I didn't care for farming Enki or whatever the golem's name was that took 4+ hours to drop a freaking stone. I didn't care for being the first person to check on Faust and teleport into a room within his sight range and get beaten down because I couldn't pan around to see if he was there, I had to get aggro and die to tell. I didn't care for the lag because it was such a small little room where 40+ people were waiting to steal our pull, not counting the other 10-15 people in my alliance. I don't know anyone who liked sky by the time ToAU came out. I'm sure there were people that liked it, but I personally did not know anyone, nor was there much competition by that point. I'd rather them introduce new content at a higher level that is definitely an upgrade instead of forcing players to run out-dated content for maybe 1 piece of gear in a place that they hated. At least if you hate a place and the cap increases, you don't have to be stuck there for years.

From your perspective I'm sure you could make the same arguments for WoW. From my perspective, I can't.

As Rjain said, both systems have pros and cons... My only goal is to make sure that the dev team recognizes that for 6 years ffxi worked for me. If enough people agree with me, fantastic. But your arguments for your preference hold just about as much weight as my arguments for my preference, and that weight is entirely dependent on our own experiences and opinions.

And your opinion is perfectly valid. However the point was that side-grades eventually reach a point where they become upgrades, otherwise players won't feel like chasing the non-existent carrot anymore and they'll quit. If you don't agree with this, then that's your opinion. However it only takes one look around the MMO world to see it's nothing but chasing a carrot on a stick. When the carrot no longer is there, or there's only a half carrot left, or you swap a carrot for a squash, people are going to leave. Sure, that half carrot might be a great storyline, but once that's done, you have no reason to log on anymore. Once you halt progression of a character and just offer similar pieces to what is already obtainable, people are going to leave after the storyline.

[Ichi]

And your opinion is perfectly valid. However the point was that side-grades eventually reach a point where they become upgrades, otherwise players won't feel like chasing the non-existent carrot anymore and they'll quit. If you don't agree with this, then that's your opinion. However it only takes one look around the MMO world to see it's nothing but chasing a carrot on a stick. When the carrot no longer is there, or there's only a half carrot left, or you swap a carrot for a squash, people are going to leave. Sure, that half carrot might be a great storyline, but once that's done, you have no reason to log on anymore. Once you halt progression of a character and just offer similar pieces to what is already obtainable, people are going to leave after the storyline.

I have to say that this sounds like an argument against vertical progression to me if you increase the level by whatever the new gear is not going to be better because it more closely fits what i want to build in my char but because it has higher stats. To me this just seems like the same carrot. A high str hat is a high str hat regardless of how much str it has relative to other str hats. I think if I'm not offered variety in gear options then the game becomes more repetitive to me because it's not just the repeating of content but repeating new content in order to repeat the same model char i already had 5 levels ago. Id rather do old content for what is effectively varied, different, and new gear (it's new to me because i have nothing like it) than do new content for what is essentially the same gear i had scaled up.

[Shipp]

You argument is that a lot of content was old and tired, and easy due to another terrible expansion before Abyssea. Abyssea was the nail in the coffin, but I'll agree that it was downhill long before then in terms of that old content.

You are too focused on FFXI, the lesson from XI is simply that you don't need to do level increase to make new content that people will want to do. They proved that, just because they messed it up on multiple occasions doesn't change that. If they had raised level cap with CoP the game would have started down hill years earlier, instead that was some of the best times many of who played XI remember, playing both new and much old original content and it didn't need a level increase. People could still come into FFXI at CoP's release and enjoy most of what made the game great and enjoyable before CoP while still getting to experience CoP's content. It was a real expansion of the content in game for everyone.

The mess-up kinda does matter when the mess-up is the key part of the argument. The reason why people participated in ToAU and later expansions was because of upgrades. People wouldn't be doing that instanced crap over and over for years for simple side-grades. These new upgrades are what led to old content being outdated. That was my original argument since I entered the thread. People stopped doing Sky and Sea outside of the typical farming out of boredom or for that 1 person who might need something, LOOOONNNGGG before Abyssea came about. That was my response to, "Abyssea killed the need to go back to Sky/Sea/<insert any previous expansion>."

This is why I said, "The only people who think this either didn't play before ToAU, or they're looking through rose-tinted glasses." Sky became irrelevant long before Abyssea. Whether there was one piece of gear there or not, it was still out-dated and the vast majority of players had moved on. It's like how kings stopped being spawn camped by every major LS on the server once you could get that same stuff elsewhere. Does that mean nobody does the content? No. But people still do level 60, 70, and 80 content in WoW too, which is why this isn't really an argument about level caps as much as it is an argument about upgrades ruining old content.

[Ichi]

The mess-up kinda does matter when the mess-up is the key part of the argument. The reason why people participated in ToAU and later expansions was because of upgrades. People wouldn't be doing that instanced crap over and over for years for simple side-grades. These new upgrades are what led to old content being outdated. That was my original argument since I entered the thread. People stopped doing Sky and Sea outside of the typical farming out of boredom or for that 1 person who might need something, LOOOONNNGGG before Abyssea came about. That was my response to, "Abyssea killed the need to go back to Sky/Sea/<insert any previous expansion>."

This is why I said, "The only people who think this either didn't play before ToAU, or they're looking through rose-tinted glasses." Sky became irrelevant long before Abyssea. Whether there was one piece of gear there or not, it was still out-dated and the vast majority of players had moved on. It's like how kings stopped being spawn camped by every major LS on the server once you could get that same stuff elsewhere. Does that mean nobody does the content? No. But people still do level 60, 70, and 80 content in WoW too, which is why this isn't really an argument about level caps as much as it is an argument about upgrades ruining old content.

I think you are looking through shit tinted glasses. The so called upgrades, are circumstantial that is a fact you can't say that people still played ffxi for upgrades when marduk jubbah, kirin osode, and sha'ir manteel all had circumstantial advantages over each other and all came from different eras of the game. Those are just a couple examples of multiple pieces of gear being ideal for the same class. It comes down to preference where as in a game that vertically progresses at too fast a rate would only hold the newest of these items as the best.

You can say whatever you want about those examples but the fact is that each one served better than the other in it's own conditional situation and you can't say which conditional situation is more important because you're not playing for me I know what I need not you.

People may still do the low level stuff in WoW but they sure as hell aren't doing it for gear, and if there's no gear in it then i sure as hell wouldn't do it either. I'm not voicing my opinion in the assumption that i speak for the welfare of the game (and your stupid if you think your opinion is different), i voice my opinion for me and my enjoyment.

[MistyMew]

i have nothing against raising level caps, a bit of grinding is a good thing every couple years and tbh i would enjoy that.

some would like it, some wont.

cant make everyone happy though, so keep the lv cap raising wide spread and add alot of other end game things for those that enjoy that part in between the lv jumps.

satisfy both = long lived game.

whether you agree or not, remember we all enjoy different aspects, we all have the potential to be long term customers if our "preferred" content is met.

i encourage raising lv caps 100% as much as making sure enough current lv end game content is there for those that prefer dungeons/large guild events/raidng/earning ranks/opening new zones etc..whatever it may be.

always always provide a bit for all playstyles never just 1.

[darkstarpoet1]

i encourage raising lv caps 100% as much as making sure enough current lv end game content is there for those that prefer dungeons/large guild events/raidng/earning ranks/opening new zones etc..whatever it may be.

you mean like the amount of content that is in game at this very moment? how big a percentage do you think are waiting on content now that have already left the game? 50? 60? 80?

the point is they do not have enough content in game now and people wants cap to be raised. what reasoning is there for a cap increase when the push to 50 is already boring? they have to add enough content for all ranges and play styles and that i agree with, but they shouldn't increase the cap until that is done. if that's a year from now that's fine, but if it takes them a few years to add content to make all playstyles then it should be years before the cap raise.

[Shipp]

I think you are looking through shit tinted glasses. The so called upgrades, are circumstantial that is a fact you can't say that people still played ffxi for upgrades when marduk jubbah, kirin osode, and sha'ir manteel all had circumstantial advantages over each other and all came from different eras of the game. Those are just a couple examples of multiple pieces of gear being ideal for the same class. It comes down to preference where as in a game that vertically progresses at too fast a rate would only hold the newest of these items as the best.

You can say whatever you want about those examples but the fact is that each one served better than the other in it's own conditional situation and you can't say which conditional situation is more important because you're not playing for me I know what I need not you.

People may still do the low level stuff in WoW but they sure as hell aren't doing it for gear, and if there's no gear in it then i sure as hell wouldn't do it either. I'm not voicing my opinion in the assumption that i speak for the welfare of the game (and your stupid if you think your opinion is different), i voice my opinion for me and my enjoyment.

Old WoW dungeons still drop things besides gear that is of value to this day. I've already given an example of that.

Whether you are about the same in terms of overall damage done vs boss' health doesn't matter. The fact is that you are progressing, even if it's only an illusion. It gives you a sense of character progression instead of stagnating on one level for eternity. What happens after you merit everything and level every job you want? Your character progression is halted outside of gear. That's not an opinion, that's simply the way it is. You don't gain more stats, you don't fight harder mobs. You fight different mobs with varying difficulty and eventually so many side-grades are added that things like 45 second Kirins are possible.

So again, your argument isn't that sky was great content, thus should always be relevant. Your argument is, "I only do sky because there is a piece or two of gear that is still situational, at best." There is min-maxing in every MMO, don't get me wrong. It's prevalent in WoW too. However the level of min-maxing in FFXI was ridiculous. When you are changing more gear per 1 spell class or ability than is available in 1 macro slot, that's just bad design. Granted, I did this too on my character. But this is why "situational" gear is largely a bad idea. When you level so many jobs, and each one has to have situational gear, you end up with inventory issues. You even say yourself that you wouldn't be doing sky if people didn't need gear from there. That doesn't mean the content should still be relevant, in fact, that's even more of an argument to increase the level cap, because people aren't doing the content for fun anymore, they're doing it to grind for a piece or two of gear.

Every argument here fails to think about the company itself, and how sustainable it would be to cater to those FEW hardcore FFXI people who think 1 hard cap and horizontal progression is the key to success.

I addressed this earlier in the thread when I stated that those wanting a static cap are in the MMO minority.

I do agree with your post though.