I really hope they don't just raise the level cap to 110...

[Shistar]

Well, I like to have a seperate levelsystem, which doesnt correspond to our Level 100.
Additional it should be tied together our new adventure, which is also a second start for new players.

We wouldnt take our scions with us. We travel alone to a new place or dimension, where we loose our power. New players can decide which Saga they gonna start. The whole experience with ARR or the new Saga, where you can reach endgame faster.

This could be interesting, actually. I'd be a good way to gauge if you're dealing with someone who has done previous MSQ (to avoid spoiling it for them) simply by checking out their level. It also looks like it could be scalable in the future if the game manages to complete another full arc and they have to figure out what to do about the levels again. Just start another tier of levels and let people choose which arc they wanna start with. Seems intuitive enough!


I like this one!

[Mikey_R]

Well, I like to have a seperate levelsystem, which doesnt correspond to our Level 100.
Additional it should be tied together our new adventure, which is also a second start for new players.

We wouldnt take our scions with us. We travel alone to a new place or dimension, where we loose our power. New players can decide which Saga they gonna start. The whole experience with ARR or the new Saga, where you can reach endgame faster.

But how would it work from a player point of view? If I have already done everything through DT and want to go into the new content, I can reasonably expect to keep everything I already have. If, however, you were a new player and instead decided ou wanted to start this new story, what is their character going to look like? You can either keep them as a level 1 going into the new content, where they will be far weaker than the ones already at level 100, the alternative is automatically levelling them to 100, and dumping all those actions and traits on them at once, which doesn't seem ideal either.

Except that a LV101-110 comes with very expected results. Reconfiguring our substat formulas, an increase of 30 item levels over the leveling dungeons, an increase of 130 item levels over the course of the expansion, and a mix of 4-5 traits and skills in those 10 levels.

With Ascension/Prestige or whatever have you levels they could experiment with a new approach. To begin with, they wouldn't need to reconfigure formulas if the level increase isn't calculated as putting us over LV100. That'd also mean our stats wouldn't necessarily increase with those levels. Without those increases they could experiment with horizontal gear progression and have those side levels merely offer traits or new skills.

This game has its roots in FFXI which has various forms of side-levels with a level cap of 99 and even has a subjob system, which if they wanted, could take inspiration from. Side levels doesn't have to just be 101-110 by another name.

One of the problems is that players expect to get noticeably stronger during the levelling process, so not increasing stats as they progress might not go down well. There is also the fact that secondary stats aren't that varied, there are only so many combinations that you can make, so at some point you will have 2 pieces of gear with the same stats. You could keep incrementally increasing ilevel, but since the formulas for how the stats affect your power isn't going to change, you will get very strong very quickly just from the insane amount of critical hits being done. This is another reason why levelling up is helpful as it creates easy divides for the formula changes.

As for sub jobs, we have to remember the cross class system existed in ARR and HW, with mixed reception. Even if we were allowed to take things from other jobs, most actions are so tied into the jobs they are part of, they wouldn't really work properly on a different job. This would mean it would be restricted to more utility stuff or buffs. The utility is mainly being covered by the role actions now and do you really want to just stack damage buffs to all jobs, for example Samurai getting access to Riddle of Fire and Lance Charge?

This isn't to say anything from the above 2 posts couldn't happen, just that it isn't as simple as might first be thought.

[Garruss]

Honestly, I don't want some "Prestige" system where we level down to 50. Just keep it simple and go to 110. Having a level-down Prestige system just feels like the work we did to get to 100 is meaningless if we are just going to go back down in level

[NegativeS]

When considering potential post-Stormblood updates, first ask yourself the following questions:

"Is this the easiest path for the devs to take that won't actively cause players to leave the game?"
"Will this allow the devs to piggyback off of an existing system, current or legacy?"
"Does doing this allow them to get away with not changing the horribly busted status quo?"

If the answer is YES to any of the above, then you can expect it to happen.

[Shistar]

But how would it work from a player point of view? If I have already done everything through DT and want to go into the new content, I can reasonably expect to keep everything I already have. If, however, you were a new player and instead decided ou wanted to start this new story, what is their character going to look like? You can either keep them as a level 1 going into the new content, where they will be far weaker than the ones already at level 100, the alternative is automatically levelling them to 100, and dumping all those actions and traits on them at once, which doesn't seem ideal either.

I wrote my take on how they could do the start of the new arc in another thread, but TL;DR: A plot point can forcibly take/destroy certain OP things from you such as Azem's stone, your contacts, etc. and force you to use your experience as a veteran adventurer to figure your way out of that one without all the plot armor we've enjoyed so far. Enter new cast of allies, recover some of your old things or even better, get new tools that can grow with us in the new arc. Maybe you can recover the stone of Azem, but its power is spent. Or maybe we spend a good bit of the new arc fighting someone who uses the stone against us.
A new player would be introduced as "you are a veteran adventurer going out on a journey" without much of the context from before but the basic tools to get going in the new arc. A veteran would have the context on how they ended up losing what would otherwise make this a cakewalk. If they want, the newbies can go back and experience what would be their origin story (or alternatively make up their own if they don't like the canon, which is also acceptable)

From a gameplay standpoint, we can consider stuff like Eureka, but make it open world. When you are in the areas affected by the relevant MSQ, your level is that of the arc you're in. (ARR through DT -> standard lvl1-100, let's call it "legacy" arc. New expac/arc -> new levels, separated into another arc). This would also prevent newbies who want to go back from completely steamrolling the original story. Part of the fun is that not everything should die in a single hit.

Newbies choosing the new arc would likely be briefed through a basic tutorial of their chosen job and mask it as training before your journey in lore, ala Lara Croft practicing parkour in her mansion (?) before getting into the actual gameplay in Tomb Raider II. They could even use the Scions as helpers in the tutorial if they want the newbies to know who they are without giving you aaaaaall the context. They're your buddies and you're training/sparring together before you go on a solo trip. You really don't need to know much else. Estinien and Alisaie are good for this, since they're always up for this kind of thing.


I can't speak about stats, subjobs, etc. But I just wanted to say it's not impossible to make a new beginning make some sort of sense if they work on it a bit! This is just my idea, but there are many others and much more elegant solutions as well.

[Myotis]

just make the XP bar blue and let us lvl till 30.
reasonable number blue color means its "diffrent" skills could be squished towards that and makes sense since previous arc-tome is done.
Otherwise what new player will face leveling up soon to lvl 120?++ thats nonsense.
they already face 400h+ of visual emote based novel without VA mostly.

[Veritas-Ancora]

I'm also tired of the 10 level system they have. There's just too many levels.

Elemental Affinity levels would be worthwhile. Give us 5 levels of each elemental gear each expansion. Make us want to level all the elements for different bosses.

Change up the game. Give us Fire affinity to take down Ice bosses. Give us a wheel to change our affinity for different bosses/attacks.

[Myotis]

sounds fun but it's a chore after first couple of attempts.
Very annoying one most disliked in Eureka already

[Kewitt]

110 is the easiest thing for them to do.
Only other real good option is a level squeeze.
But that isnt nearly as rewarding.
Goto bed level 100 wake up level 50 new level cap 55 arr is now 25 level content.

[Supersnow845]

I think they have long gone past the point where they can reasonably pivot to the WOL not being canonically the strongest human on earth and I don’t think that’s particularly a bad thing because it doesn’t preclude story direction, if anything it creates different story elements where for example a conflict arises because two different groups are both attempting to weaponise the “authority” of the WOL unilaterally. Or some groups rebel because they don’t believe things are being run effectively but rather things are being forced through under threat of the power of the WOL

The WOL being made a side character in DT shows that people don’t like the WOL being messed with on a level of perceived power, the time to do this was like way back in SB