indeed, but it's a fine line between giving players the correct tools leveling up to teach them how to properly play their class, and bogging things down unnecessarily with grindy treadmill content. i came from ffxi, so i see the value in giving players enough time to apply buffs and debuffs, and time to use skillchains and magic bursts (which honestly was a really fun mechanic)- but the problem is... even 75 levels of that didn't seem to be enough for bad players to stop being bad.
good players seemed to 'get it' by level 30-40 (if that), for the most part. everything thereafter was just itching for that new skill/spell/ability/equipment to test out before falling back into senseless grind until the next skill/spell/ability/equipment.
i think yoshi and team decided to get rid of dots and debuffs because nobody really used them. and i do think that was mistakenly attributed to the player base, rather than the game design. people didn't ever really use them because there was really no use for them. and that's a design problem.
i don't have a lot of hope for that stuff coming back anytime soon, but i do hope it makes it back in time for 2.0- because that kind of stuff tends to be clutch for endgame-type encounters. but i think the bottom line is that, for now, they're just trying to simplify things a bit, and then build on it from there. but i could be wrong.
as far as lengthening fights when leveling, though? i vote no. absolutely not. to my experience it just has very limited practicality in teaching players how to play their jobs. if anything, we need more instances/dungeons and non-leveling content *on the way* to level cap with stronger monsters, boss fights and other objectives which force us to play better as a team and better perform our designated roles to succeed.
i don't want every single little insignificant mob to be some kind of test or challenge. i'm not slow, i'm not stupid, i'm not bad. i don't need level after level of that kind of mindless repetition to know what i'm doing.
but if we could have some dungeons at, say... level 15, and every 5 levels or so after that- i feel that would work a lot better. the mobs in there can be stronger, the fights can be longer, and there can be boss (like in toto rak) encounters. that's the kind of environment i'd rather learn in.
leveling mobs should only be there for cursory testing of new abilities. if we want to really perfect our rotations and play styles, that's better saved for dungeon/instanced content. in my opinion, anyway.



Reply With Quote


