Woah ... Slow down a bit ...

[LaylaTsarra]

The idea is to get people through story faster given ARR + 3 xpacs are a lot for new players. Took many of us 6 years to do that content and new players don't want to invest tons of time into a game to catch up. That's not to say they should skip story and so on but allowing for faster progression is exactly what the developers had in mind and overall I think that is a good thing.

Relative to fast progression the one drawback I see is keeping up with gear that might be required for some dungeons depending upon your role (healer/tank in particular). I prefer to use dungeon gear or tome gear for my alts and not spend gil given there are other things I'd like to buy with it - housing for example.

I have an alt for example where I simply skipped the 60 rdm level gear I would have wanted and got 70 level gear instead with my poetics so she'd be ready when she hit 70 which didn't take all that long with the road to 70 buff. 70 level ungraded gear is fine for clearing SHB along with coffer gear and doing beast tribes like pixies. Now leveling for me with the buff centered around running alliance roulette (for which I had only ARR raids unlocked) and main story. I'm only just getting around to running the 70 level raids and that's pretty much because I want to be ready for relic when she hits 80 and clears the main Shadowbringers story.

[Jojoya]

Other than potentially "losing" exp on a capped out class, there's no real downside to being overleveled. Stats are tied to gear, and you won't be using most of your skills before they are needed because A:Most of the important fights are instanced and get level synced and B:Many of your most important job skills are tied to quests, which you won't be able to access early generally speaking.

It's annoying, but it's better than being exp starved IMO. I think they set the exp knowing that a lot of players will want to push through MSQ to the end without needing to stop and grind. When you are at "current", the exp gain is more "normal" when you enter an expansion at launch.

No technical downside but it does create a sense of imbalance in the game, which could make a new player wary of the overall quality.

Even as a veteran player, knowing what the game has to offer, I get a strong sense of "something is wrong with this game" when playing on my new alt. Anyone who's played games where the gear you use is based on the character's level is going to wonder why the game is giving them level 20 gear when their character is level 50.

But as I said this is on a Preferred world. It could feel very differently leveling on a Standard or Congested world without the Road to 70 buff.

The idea is to get people through story faster given ARR + 3 xpacs are a lot for new players.

Giving me 3 times the XP needed to keep pace with the MSQ doesn't get me through MSQ faster. Only a tiny percentage of time spent on the MSQ is for unsynced combat where being overleveled becomes an advantage. Most of the time spent on MSQ is watching cutscenes, reading NPC dialog, traveling between points or doing synced combat in the required dungeons, trials and solo duties.

Technically someone who severely outlevels a trial or dungeon can complete it unsynced - if they have the gear, which they likely won't. A new player won't have the poetic or gil to buy gear their level if they're still working on MSQ that's 20+ levels below their character level.

So back to the problem - leveling faster doesn't speed up MSQ completion, and not completing MSQ will block access to most of the content appropriate to the character's job level. I can't even unlock Beast Tribes yet on my new character because they require MSQ completion through Stone Vigil, which I haven't done yet.

I generally like the design of the game where story is the focus so MSQ is mandatory but I would like it a lot better if the speed at which my character levels matched the pace of the MSQ level. Right now, it doesn't and it feels bad.