Yoshida' stance on PL and why it is less than ideal.

[ViolentDjango]

Agreed.... I see many times where people say "you can learn your job just fine at level cap. Nothing is missed by PL'ing through the levels and learning at the end".

Just using one MMORPG - FFXI - as an example, I could give a novel's worth of evidence to the contrary.

Prior to PL'ing reaching the point where it became a complete crutch for people in FFXI, I very very seldom ever got into a party with people who didn't know at least the fundamentals of how to play their job. Most times - easily the majority - they knew the tools of their job, knew how to use them and when to use them. The best test being when the crap hit the fan and everyone had to think on their toes to pull out of it alive. Those people who played the game through every level, and didn't just powerlevel, time and again, showed that they understood the game, understood their jobs and knew how to play their part.

Fast-forward to when PL became really prominent and the difference was night and day. Players I grouped with made level 10 mistakes, at level 50+.. Why? 'cause they'd been PL'd up through many levels, or otherwise got themselves into "sweet" situations where they were basically riding others' coat-tails. They didn't learn their jobs because they never had to.

Oh, they knew the skills.. they could tell you a thing or two about it (usually taken straight from an online guide they read or what someone else told them)... If they were in a controlled and smoothly running group they were fine. But when it mattered, they fell apart... almost every time.

When the crap hit the fan, they couldn't think on their toes. They didn't pull out their best game and pull it together to help get the group through it alive. And I'm talking key roles here.. tanks... healers... CC'ers, etc. They just did not know how to play their job when it really counted.

I remember a party where the BLM could have easily helped control the situation by sleeping some adds.. They didn't. They stood there and kept DD'ing the wrong mob... and of course, they died. I've seen healers get the group killed 'cause they didn't know how to prioritize and manage their MP to keep the heals where they were really needed when things got a bit hectic.

You could tell when someone had played the game and learned through hours upon hours of fights, close-calls, near wipes and all around tough situations. They knew their shit and they didn't need to tell you they did. They demonstrated it through how they played.

Even on subsequent jobs, as some people say "oh once you've leveled your first job to cap, you can PL your next jobs since you've already learned all there is".

Uhh.. no you haven't. Yes, grouping with other jobs and learning what those jobs can do is very different than when you're in the hot-seat and have to fill that same role. There are nuances, subtleties, timings and such that you can only learn through lots of practice, through lots of fights against lots of different mobs in lots of different scenarios through lots of levels. You simply cannot replace hands-on experience by 'watching others do it'. It's never the same.

Sad thing is.. a lot of times, the people who really suck don't even realize they really suck.

I knew someone in FFXI who got BLM to 75 - primarily by letting others know she was female IRL and getting guys (forever the suckers) to carry her through the levels, get her gear, etc. She was useless. She had no freaking clue how to play her job. She just automatically used the most powerful of any spell she had, no matter the situation, no matter what she was told.

So... overall.. I know there are a number of people out there (likely the power-levelers) who will insist they can play their jobs just as well as people who didnt' PL... and in some cases that may be true. Some folks just always struggle with certain jobs 'cause it's not their cup of tea. Conversely, some people are very intuitive and pick up on things quickly.

However, by and large, I have never seen someone I know was PL'd ever come close to performing as well, in all situations, as someone who put in the time and got the hands-on experience. Never.

That's in 7+ years of FFXI, 5+ years of Lineage 2 and a variety of other MMOs.

I'm sorry, but no...

I started playing FFXI in back in December of 2003 and didn't stop going back to it until about 6 months ago. I have, at one point, played every job at level 75 and several at level 90 and I will say boldly that leveling taught me NOTHING about end game.

The things you learned for endgame were things they taught you IN endgame, and after Square started building abilities and game functionality around endgame, it just got worse.

I leveled up learning skill chains and mana conservation, but by the time you hit 75 (And eventually 90), none of that mattered. You were only casting at specific times, doing specific spells, and watching for specific things to stun. Things that were only barely practiced while leveling up. Maybe early on you had to learn to save your TP for stuns when goblins could level all of Yhoator with one bomb, but even that was phased out by 2004.

The argument isn't a blind claim that you don't learn how to play your job over the course of leveling up -- you definitely learn certain things. The argument is that you don't HAVE to spend months leveling up to appreciate how your class is supposed to work and what your abilities do.

Especially with how bare bones things are -- the game tells you exactly what an ability does and wikis tell you exactly the percentages the effects have. There's no need to investigate and develop a feel for how things work when you know the actual numbers behind it.

You can spout years of experience all you want, I'm sure a lot of us can -- 10 years of Ragnarok Online (across several custom servers), 8 years of Final Fantasy XI, several months of WoW, years and years of Diablo: but it doesn't matter.

End game is always significantly more complex and unwieldy than the leveling game, and unless the game makes a habit of hiding things from you (Which early FFXI did), then its very easy to research your abilities and learn what you're supposed to do.

Good players do that anyway, even if they took 2 years to level up to cap. Bad players don't, and that's why they are bad players. And that's why forcing them to level up slower isn't going to change anything.

Like I said before, none of us who actually aim to have any amount of success are going to be running solely with completely random players -- so the power leveling issue doesn't directly effect anyone other than the people who PL and don't take the time to learn what they are supposed to be doing. Its a non-issue that's being overhyped, especially considering Yoshida has already expressed interest in fixing the issue because it hinders part of his expected time frame for leveling up.

That aside, let's not muddle an already overhyped issue with more nonsense. People who want to learn to play a game properly do. You can't force that down their throats -- bad players will be bad players, whether you force them through a 3 months long, tutorial where "This is how you play your job" instructions pop up in bright red and yellow letters or not.

People who -want- to be good players will seek out the information they need to do so -- because that's just how it works. That's why we have the phrase "ignorance is bliss." Because some people are perfectly content with not knowing any better, and they're going to stay that way no matter how you try to spin it.