"New game plus - quests will have no rewards..."

[Melichoir]

So the poster child for New Game+ for me has always been Chrono Trigger. It's the first game I can remember having it and it was a game changer (pun not intended). I got to go back through the game with my fully leveled and equipped characters and absolutely obliterate things I'd had to fight for real the first time. And y'know what? I still got another Rainbow Shell.. I still got more Gold Hairpins.. my characters kept going up in level. It was exactly the same game except I was an overpowered killing machine.

The problem with using CT as an example of NG+ is that exp didnt scale. So yeah, killing those goblins right after you tele to 600 AD when you were already level 50+ is by all intensive purposes pointless. You wouldnt spend time there 'leveling' and it would be a long while til you hit something that did give you worthwhile exp. Pretty much in practice EXP gains would be so negligible that you wouldnt notice till much much later into NG+

Now I know some are gonna chime in immediately with "Yes, but you still got exp, so NG+ should give EXP so we can use are level 5s and 10s and get exp from the low level content, just like NG+ is supposed to be." Except this isnt quite the same for two reasons. First, this point of view relies on the idea that if you did NG+ in CT, you would start back at lvl 1 again so said exp would be relevant. That isnt the case however. The second point is that exp gains in CT are strictly encounter based, not quest based. So if a kill quest in NG+ has you go kill 5 Goobues in the world, I would actually assume the act of killing those monsters that are nat spawned would actually give you exp, but quest rewards would not. This creates a different dynamic compared to old CT.

This is why relying on previous iterations of how NG+ operated isnt very useful. Everyone talks about the specifics of how NG+ was in this game or that game, but immediately throw out those differences when you begin actually comparing FFXIV to those games side by side.

Heck the rainbowshell concept you put forward actually illustrates this difference. Yeah in CT you could get another rainbowshell for either the sword, dress, or specs, but the equivalent of that kind of item in FFXIV would be a current Tier Savage 4 drop. The rainbow items were top tier - pretty much BIS in the game. Particularly Rainbow for Crono. And NG+ in FFXIV would not award you with said items through MSQ. So saying NG+ should be like CT, as an example, gets kinda messy because how NG+ operated in CT would not work in FFXIV as a direct translation. Itd have to be adjusted and changed. And look at that, it was, becoming its own iteration of NG+.

Beyond that, most of the people posting about being fine with NG+ not having exp arent here to make those who are bummed it doesnt have exp feel bad. The pushback, as I personally keep saying, is coming from people who flipped the switch and decided that the feature is trash and terrible simply because it doesnt offer exp. As I said in a previous post, the issue then isnt even about NG+ but about finding another method to level.

Beyond that, you never want extreme leveling methods in MMOs. There is a point where it is to fast, and can hurt the game (unless its designed into it overall). Pretty much if you can get to max with extreme ease, it cuts down on game time, changes the perception on investment, and adjusts player expectations on difficulty in a direction that isnt good for the game as a whole. If I could power level ALL the classes from 1-80 in the course of a day or two, Thats gonna mean I have less investment in sticking around to play, as well as create expectations everything should come as fast and easy. I can bet youll see way more toxicity towards hard content with that kind of model. My example is extreme, but you get the point hopefully.