Will 8.0 Expansion Cap @ L55 ?

[hynaku]

All they need to do is add level system like GW2 once reach max level. There is no reason a level cap can't go past 100. I played a game once where the level cap was 300.

[Veritas-Ancora]

All they need to do is add level system like GW2 once reach max level. There is no reason a level cap can't go past 100. I played a game once where the level cap was 300.

Yes but when is too far?

Starting this game at L1 and hearing you have to go to L110 sounds painful as sin. It doesn't attract new players if the mountain is too big to see over.

What we need is fresh blood. That's the only way this game stays alive.

[GomJabbar]

Yes but when is too far?

Starting this game at L1 and hearing you have to go to L110 sounds painful as sin. It doesn't attract new players if the mountain is too big to see over.

What we need is fresh blood. That's the only way this game stays alive.

Maybe some players, but probably not the type to stick with an MMO long-term anyway. I for one would see it as something to look forward to, and something which is guaranteed to occupy my off time for a good long while. Daunting, perhaps, from some perspectives, but certainly not painful.

[Asari5]

whats the point in doing this?

if the max lvl changes to 50 every quest and dungeon lvl would be halfed as well. the lvl we learn skills too. it would change nothing except the number we see. sure dragoon will get their aoe at 20 and not 40 anymore... but thats still gonna be after the 10th jobquest, right before you get access to stone vigil. and you would still get your jobstone at the same time you do that annoying food / titan quest.

well, we would need twice as long for one lvl. but the time to reach max lvl would be the same as now

[Iscah]

Level squish is unnecessary and would mess up so much existing information about the game. The same effect can be gained by adjusting how much EXP we earn per activity relative to how much we need to level up.

A stat squish would be more beneficial and less noticable, and possibly reducing the ilevel of gear - still a bit messy, but less conspicuous than level.

[Deejudanne]

Yes but when is too far?

Starting this game at L1 and hearing you have to go to L110 sounds painful as sin. It doesn't attract new players if the mountain is too big to see over.

What we need is fresh blood. That's the only way this game stays alive.

I enjoyed WoWs 1-120 in bfa like damn i even had 11 alts in that expansion

[CaptainLagbeard]

It would make sense to cut down ARR levels... Since there's enough levels where you don't get any new skills, traits or unlock new duties or anything. Taking ARR down to like 30 and rebalancing it would allow for some more max level growth giving them a few extra years to figure out where they want to go aside from just an ever increasing level cap.

The expansions should stay at 10 levels each though.

[AlliciaCapulet]

I don’t mind a level squish in principle. Numbers are just numbers.

Right now, I do have concerns about the current leveling experience. I know several people who started the game and were facing the issue of being around level 30 in the ARR MSQ and with plenty of yellow and blue quests left to do, but their character level was already above 50. Leveling before Dawntrail is simply too fast. In my opinion, players who haven’t unlocked the next expansion yet shouldn’t be able to outlevel the expansion they are currently playing. If someone is still in ARR, their level progression should stay within ARR’s intended range.

Another issue with the current leveling is related to job design and skill progression. We’ve always had roughly 20–25 core active skills at endgame, whether in ARR, HW, SB, or now. The thing is that with each expansion, older skills are removed, merged, or reworked to make room for new ones earned while leveling. So even though the level cap increases every expansion, we don’t actually accumulate something like 5-6 active skills on every expansion to end up with a ridiculous amount of skills. We stay at roughly the same number — just with different buttons.

The side effect is that lower level brackets (50, 60, 70) often feel more stripped down than they used to. Because skills are constantly shifted upward or redesigned, players leveling through older content aren’t really experiencing a complete version of their job at those levels. They’re playing simplified versions that only fully come together at the current level cap.

On top of that, dungeon design has been simplified significantly over time. Whether players are casual or future raiders, they don’t really learn how to play their jobs properly when both their toolkit and the dungeon difficulty are heavily reduced. It should be acceptable — and even healthy — for players to wipe a few times in a new dungeon, and especially entering with an ilevel close to minimum item level when they do it for the first time. That’s part of learning and progression.

Right now, most dungeons follow the same predictable pattern: two trash packs, one simple boss, repeated three times, finished in 15–20 minutes. Mechanics are often minimal, and the experience feels very on-rails. In ARR and Heavensward, dungeons felt more engaging and occasionally challenging. Now they rarely do.

If implemented thoughtfully, a level and item level squish could be an opportunity to rebalance the early game and those issues, to make it more engaging again. It’s okay if it takes a couple of weeks to reach the latest expansion. There is a lot of older content that is genuinely fun, and it’s unfortunate that much of its original challenge has effectively disappeared — especially early expansion 24-man raids, where players now enter massively overgeared and breeze through mechanics that once mattered.

[VictorSpoils]

Level squish doesn't sound too farfetched, or merit points, or prestiges, or whatever inevitably occurs. It only took two expansions to skyrocket past the previous job HP values, and item levels are closing in on four digits which the spaghetti engine probably cannot handle. I do know 110 is an awkward number and agree that it may look daunting to grind to since people feel compelled to level every job. And since the leveling became almost entirely percentage-based, continuously adding them (or doubling the amount of EXP needed) doesn't have as much of an impact.

But the core gameplay issues (antiquated ARR classes, jobs with useless MP and auto-attacks, power creep in old content, etc.) are deeper than that.

[Aidorouge]

A level squish feels like "kicking the can down the road" for when we inevitably hit level 100 again, to say nothing of how much they would need to overhaul every job and encounter to match the changes. ARR alone would be a mess trying to cram everything from 1-50 into 1-30. I mean, if we're getting our job crystals at level 10-15 at that point, they may as well remove the classes we start as before then, because people would barely even get to experience them before they're promoting out of them and a condensed story probably couldn't account for us wasting time with the old guilds anyway.

A secondary leveling track seems pointless though because "prestige level 10" is just "level 110" anyway with some fancier words, and giving it any kind of talent point system would be a waste because this community is too parser-brained to ever pick anything but the BiS build, where anything less will get you kicked and blacklisted when everyone and their dog already gets accused of being prog liars who only exist to ruin everyone else's runs.

I'm not really sure what else they can do, because either the game will fight against them trying to do it (I imagine messing around with any part of ARR could be troublesome with the spaghetti code), or the playerbase will optimize the fun out of it in less than 24 hours.