Power-leveling is absolutely BROKEN

[Issac]

You know, one reason why people get so up in arms over Christianity and people who follow it is because of the popular depiction of Christians as people who get ridiculously involved and concerned with things that don't really effect them.

Off-Topic? Not really. That's exactly what you're doing.

Now let the first thing I say be that your well-thought post is appreciated. It's refreshing to see something more than the usual mundane bullsh** that people post.

Aside from that, I will argue your points. Quoted above because this is something that does affect me. I play MMOs for a sense of accomplishment, that's my fun in the game. And a quick note, I just rerolled on a new server less than a week ago. Now, I cannot speak for everyone, but I would imagine most feel the same. I got level X, woohoo, person B just got 20 levels in the same time it took me to get this one level because I like that sense of accomplishment. Whelp, they just stole it away from me.

Powerleveling is only a pandemic because people seem to think that everyone HAS to do everything the slowest way possible or suddenly it has no value to anyone. Fun fact, 70% of the current FFXIV players have level 50 jobs. The game has been out for over a year, and a good half of the people playing it have been at it for at least that long. People getting to 40+ in a month isn't something that's going to ruin the game. Especially if they are being powerleveled by a friend who's been playing for super long already -- that actually could help them stick to the game (since they have have people to play with and a reason to log on.)

No, you don't have to do it in the slowest way possible. But you also shouldn't be able to breeze through 35 levels in less than a day. I mean, not to sound offensive, but you really see no problem with this? This isn't a single-player game. This isn't a action platformer. It's an MMO, and a game that makes it that effin' easy is a game I will not play.

Thus is why I made this thread in dear hopes that it will not remain this way. Big fan of the Final Fantasy series, especially XI, and the above point really destroys the game for me, and I would think most others who invest their time in this game.

What does it mean for you when people get power leveled? Not a damn thing. You see, there are few tenets of common-sense MMO'ing that will make it so that you need not be concerned with what everyone else is doing:

1. Don't run with randoms. That's what linkshells are for. Build a trustworthy group of friends ingame and play with them. There are people who will be power leveled in your group, but most of them (if your shell is good at all) will still have invested in learning to do their job properly.

Half the fun of party play is meeting new people and working with them. Random pickups are fun and I look forward to that coming back. Party with your LS all the time and things stagnate. Variety is important.

2. Don't be a hypocrit. Don't complain about something you're ultimately going to do yourself. You're complaining because you got power leveled by a friend? Why were you doing it, then? The point of a game is experiencing it however you want to, and if you're going to choose to breeze through the early levels to get to quests and epic battles quicker, that's your choice -- but don't complain about it. Some of us enjoy leveling slowly, some don't.

You obviously didn't read my next post. Or was it the third? Doesn't matter. Someone else had already said this, and I already responded. For your benefit, I'll say it again. Don't assume I'm a hypocrite.

An LSmate and I simply tested it because we noticed ridiculous XP gains without even trying. So we put it to the test and tried to see just how ridiculous powerleveling was. Do I plan on doing this regularly? No. Do I plan to be complacent with it? Hell no. I mean, come on, chains when a member in your party is 25-30 levels above the mob? This is silly.

3. Don't sweat the small stuff. In the grand scheme of things, people being power leveled is a non-issue. Its already been declared that jobs will work on a quest-by-quest basis, and for all we know they may not even use EXP to level up. That said, Classes are likely going to just be introductory components to much more focused, much more intense combative elements of the game. People who power level and have no idea what they are doing aren't going to get very far -- people who learn how to play their class/job (regardless of how they level up) ARE. That's the only balance or fix this problem needs, and its already built into the system.

This issue being "small" is your opinion, and it seems to be a strong one. However, mine is just as strong. It should, at the very least, take a week to get to 35 if you're playing at least 4-6 hours a day. And that is being generous compared to most MMOs in the past. But in a couple hours, let alone days? How is this a small issue? Is this seriously where MMOs are going to evolve?

If so, I hope a company keeps true to the genre. And I hope that company is SquareEnix. If it's not SE, my money will go elsewhere when the time comes.

Look, I can understand the idea of not wanting people to get things you worked hard for easily, but grinding is not a gold medal sport. It never has been and it should never be treated like it should be -- its an unfortunate part of MMO's that is necessary but shouldn't be haphazardly imposed on people. Talk to me about people powerleveling through Ifrit and I'll be right there with you. Talk to me about people getting to level 35+ in less than a month, and I'm going to look at you like you're a crazy.

Trust me, to 90% of the players it is certainly not a "gold medal" sport. To those whom it was, they were generally egotistic and disliked. It's not about the "gold medal," it's about the fun you have along the way and the sense of accomplishment you feel.

TL;DR? No one cares. Or at least they shouldn't. Let the people power level if they want to, you do the slow way if you want to (I will be.) At the end of the day, quests, missions, bosses, dungeons, and epic rewards will be won by SKILL not by getting to level 50 quickly. So who gives a frightful f*ck.

As I have said, I am fairly confident the majority does care. But I could be wrong, and if I am, I have outgrown the genre because if that were the case, the majority would want something for nothing and those are not the kind of people I want to spend time with.

So, I want to play with my friend who I've duo'd from 10 to 35+ with, but I want to start a new class and they don't (say they've been at the game longer and already have all of the other classes they want at level 30+) You're telling me I shouldn't be able to just run with them to get up to their level quickly so we can do other, more interesting things than grinding.

Give me a real reason for that. See, I'm very open-minded about the subject, I used to be an ant-power level person.

In this hypothetical situation, if your friend didn't want to level up with you with a level 1 class or simply he didn't have one to switch to, you do it with another person or just solo, whichever you please. No, you should not be able to get to his level within a couple hours. It goes against what MMOs, in essence, are.

But I realized something about that mentality -- it has no real foundation.

Its built around the pretense that levels are something you earn... They aren't. Running around in circles for hours bashing monsters in rapid succession requires no skill or no how -- it teaches you nothing and gains you no real benefit. Leveling is the unwanted child of Progress, and if Progress had any choice it would leave him at home rather than taking him everywhere.

That really depends on how you go about grinding. Sure, you could run in circles bashing low-rank enemies, or how we were doing it pre-1.19. But guess what? Things have changed a bit, right?

You can test your skill with friends on higher rank mobs where it takes some strategy to grind with higher rewards. And, once you have figured it out, you can teach it to random pickups when your friends aren't around.

Or yeah, you could run in circles and kill low-rank mobs. If you were to do that, I would understand your point. But it's no longer mandatory.

But yeah, give me a real reason power leveling is bad outside of:

1. It removes your sense of commitment -- that's personal, and if you feel being PL'd will make you not appreciate the game, you don't have to do it.

I already explained the fallacy of this above.

2. It will create bad players. Don't run with randoms. There will be slow-level players who suck just as bad.

Again, touched on this, but I will respond further.

Don't run with randoms? Yes, let's just isolate ourselves from people outside our linkshell. Because everyone outside our linkshell must suck and aren't worth partying with because they're not in our shell. Yes, let's have that tunnel-vision. Great idea.

If someone is powerleveled and doesn't bother to learn his job, he will require a crash-course that could be devastating in a high-difficulty strategy-required endgame event. Sure the player may do just fine, but this isn't always the case. When you learn to use each skill as it comes because you take time in leveling, you know when to use it and its pros/cons in a given situation.

Slow-leveling players sucking, as in your example, probably have failed time and time again and generally shouldn't be playing. Either that or they have a mental disability that most are reasonable enough to understand and work with.

3. "I don't want to compete with people who leveled up to 50 in a week." Again, personal, and if someone's good enough to compete with you after power leveling to cap as quickly as possible, that's a mark against you, not them.

4. You miss a lot of the game's content. Again, personal.

3. The issue in question is being able to skip the entire game, not the whole "competition" point you're making. I don't know about anyone else, but once upon a time it was considered a game-breaking issue to be able to do that. What was the point of devs even tossing in content in-between?

Hey, I have an idea. Let's just make a new MMO in which it takes a day to cap and there's no content other than endgame and pvp. Oh wait, that exists. Which game was that again? Oh yeah, go play that if that's the kind of gameplay that gets you going.

4. See above. Content is something important, believe it or not. People tend to complain when there's none of it.

Frankly, for sake of example, the most fun I had with World of Warcraft was when I started playing via special invitation from a friend and had a +100% boost to EXP. When you can get past the mundane nonsense and start to see more interesting and exciting things, that's when you start to really enjoy MMO's. FFXIV's "freedom" point is in around level 25-30, there's no reason why it should take people months to get there.

100% boost? Okay, that's fine! Well, as long as it wears off after a certain level. XI did something similar, remember those signet rings?

But I can't even put a percentage of extra EXP on this because the receiving end isn't even trying as someone AoE's a group of 20 mobs and the guy gets 1-15 just like that. An exaggeration, I haven't tested if that's possible yet, but do you see where I'm going with this? It's too much.

Powerleveling is part of MMOs, but it should never blatantly break a game.

Sure limits and rules around who can level with who can easily be imposed -- I just feel they are unnecessary and counter-intuitive to the social focus of the MMO experience. If I convince my girlfriend to play, I want her to be able to run around WITH me and see me take down big baddies and help her get to higher levels so we can do things together. I don't want to have to spontaneously start leveling a class I have no interest in just because there's this misguided belief that people with no friends/allies to help them level faster (or people who, respectfully choose to do things the old fashioned way) should take precedence over the presence of choice.

I touched on this above as well. But in addition, you should seriously consider picking up another job when you have the opportunity and time to do so with your girlfriend. The game would get boring if you played the same role every time. Use it as an excuse to experience something new.

The job system has been a hallmark of Final Fantasy since the first title way back on Nintendo.

Anyway, I hope I didn't offend. However as I said, my opinion is just as strong as yours in this matter. Also, I don't harp on Christians, at least not to their faces. To each their own. However, this is a game that's democratic to a degree right now. If it were the same in a real-life situation where Christian decisions were making a huge negative impact on my life, you best bet I would try to change it.