Power-leveling is absolutely BROKEN

[AmyRae]

But don't you see? That's the entire point.

Powerleveling in its current form in this game completely removes the player from what kind of experience a MMO should provide. It's an insult to implement such a brash and hasty compensation. A f#%!ing insult.

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Alas, one would argue: What is the point of that? The "main goal" is to get to cap and grind that endgame as quickly as possible, after all. Stuff like that would just waste the dev's time and detract them from the important stuff: New endgame lootz that we will strive to get every couple months.

I'm sorry, what were MMOs again?

And I ask, what is a MMO to you?

I'm going to have to throw this back at you, I'm afraid, and ask you to reconsider the future of FFXIV.

We all know that 2.0 is coming, and it's going to have the sorts of things you are complaining don't exist in this game. New players of the PS3 version are going to have the sort of easing into the game that we never experienced.

But we (us PC players) don't need this. We've played the game for a year already, there aren't really any new players coming, especially now that subscriptions are returning.

So why not have powerleveling? What is the point in holding us back from sampling the never-will-be-seen-again end-of-the-world content that will exclusively provided over the course of 2012? So we can have the nuances of a world that's going to be completely tossed when 2.0 hits drilled into us? That's ridiculous.

50 isn't going to the be the be-all-and-end-all of the game. There will be more levels. There will be more jobs and classes. There will be more content. There will be more gear. And the whole world will look nothing like it used to and work differently than it used to.

What we have in 1.0 now is a once-in-a-lifetime window of play that will never be repeated, and I think it's working exactly as intended. To me, there's no point in complaining about powerleveling in a doomed world. Let people experience what they can before it's gone forever.

[Issac]

I'm going to have to throw this back at you, I'm afraid, and ask you to reconsider the future of FFXIV.

We all know that 2.0 is coming, and it's going to have the sorts of things you are complaining don't exist in this game. New players of the PS3 version are going to have the sort of easing into the game that we never experienced.

But we (us PC players) don't need this. We've played the game for a year already, there aren't really any new players coming, especially now that subscriptions are returning.

So why not have powerleveling? What is the point in holding us back from sampling the never-will-be-seen-again end-of-the-world content that will exclusively provided over the course of 2012? So we can have the nuances of a world that's going to be completely tossed when 2.0 hits drilled into us? That's ridiculous.

50 isn't going to the be the be-all-and-end-all of the game. There will be more levels. There will be more jobs and classes. There will be more content. There will be more gear. And the whole world will look nothing like it used to and work differently than it used to.

What we have in 1.0 now is a once-in-a-lifetime window of play that will never be repeated, and I think it's working exactly as intended. To me, there's no point in complaining about powerleveling in a doomed world. Let people experience what they can before it's gone forever.

2.0 is going to be phased in bit by bit over the next year. Towards the last quarter is when the changes will become more significant. But regardless of that:

Who's to say powerleveling is going to be temporary? And if this is a permanent change... Not to sound like a broken record, but what would the point of all the mid-rank stuff be when powerleveling by that time will be the accepted standard and mainstream? Once the level cap rises, the pioneering players will push back to cap. Don't you think that they would snowball the benefits to the rest of the population within the timeframe of a month? That's just silly.

That said, if powerleveling were to be removed tomorrow, all the new players would easily be able to experience all the exclusive content. It just takes a modicum of effort.

[AmyRae]

2.0 is going to be phased in bit by bit over the next year. Towards the last quarter is when the changes will become more significant.

No, it really isn't. The servers and client aren't going to be released until the PS3 release. We'll get a taste of some of the changes, but even then, we're experiencing them through 1.0 architecture that can't accommodate everything that needs to change.

I'm sure your efforts to complain about powerleveling are noted, and I will agree with you that it would be nice if leveling wasn't a snooze-fest in 2.0 (it has steep expectations, steep, so they'll be all over themselves not to screw it up). But I think your efforts are wasted by trying to stop powerleveling for 1.0. I think people should be able to fast track to the end if they so wish, because 1.0 is inconsequential and, as we all know, doomed. And if people really want the chance to try different battle classes and jobs before that time runs out to experience the end-of-the-world content that's only around for a limited time, just let them.

It will make almost no difference to how 2.0 turns out, I'm sure of it.