The expansion on the horizon

[Alleluia]

This upcoming expansion seems like the perfect time to introduce a secondary starter experience. The first grand arc of FF14 is over and, while it will play into this second one I'm sure, I really can't see them continuing to require new people to go through the storyline of 5 expansions to get current.

And I think there's signs that they won't be. We have the Neverending Codex, which is currently only particularly useful for people who cutscene or story skipped. I mean, yeah, its nice to explicitly see how the devs want to frame the events I remember, but am I really the target audience for a recap of Alphinaud's character arc through Heavensward? Or is the person who missed it the target? I'd say it must be the person who missed it. Right now, that's just people who skip cutscenes or bought story boosts, the latter of which is not the majority of players cus extra money. Also, they might not care about the codex anyway, cus story skipping.

I think the real target audience for the codex hasn't manifested yet: new 7.0 players. I am willing to bet that you will be able to start from level 1 (in current or only new jobs, idk) in 7.0 and have the option to begin the game in story arc 2 and level through that. And the codex (all entries in it as of 6.5) is gonna be unlocked for you immediately so that, when you come across characters, you can look them up if you care enough.

And, per what Cleretic and Ryu are saying:

If it helps what people are speculating on, Yoshi-P did confirm early this year that 7.0 will end at level 100; there was an idea of ending it at 99, but apparently decided not to.

For what happens after that, they don't seem 100% sure yet; Yoshi-P thinks continuing to just add more and more levels sounds a bit half-assed (I'm not sure I agree, I'm a proponent of 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', but I get it), but it also didn't sound like they had a better idea yet. ...which, incidentally, means that there's not exactly existing clues as to what they're going to do for us to speculate on, lore or not.

I'm hoping for the new leveling system, they look towards what they introduced in Eureka and Bozja. Essentially levels that aren't levels, but DO effect how much damage you take and do to the enemies (at least in the case of Eureka). Basically make ilvl the actual indicator of power.

I think we're gonna end up with some kind of a level masking system for older players in these new zones that will attempt to put us all on equal footing. Either that or they just sync us down depending on what level new msq quest we are on when in those zones or something. Everyone hates having their kit taken away, though, so I think the easier thing might be level-syncing our ilvl down, keeping the kit, and then just allowing new players to start with only new jobs in the new expac. Kind of like how I understand Death Knight worked in WoW? Minus the requirement to already have a max level class to unlock it.