Will 8.0 Expansion Cap @ L55 ?

[Reginald_Cain]

Make ARR cap level 30 instead of 50 and give 5 levels per expansion.

It'll go great with the job reworks that they promised/unpromised us so jobs have more of their kit earlier too! Nothing is more silly than waiting until level 40 until your first AoE.

Personally I would stop the levelling at 100, and replace it with farming skill points that you can exchange to unlock new optional actions which replace existing ones, allowing you to customize your job's aesthetics and playstyle. Giving players options like this would also help to alleviate the problem of divisive job changes.

I think ability glamour is a feature that's long overdue! Let us use wide volley at higher levels!

[Veritas-Ancora]

Maybe a little controversial, but I would eliminate levels 1-30 and just start with jobs. Rework those quests a little and jobs at level 1 start with level 30 skill set. If they cleaned up the skill/button bloat, I might as go as far as giving the whole level 50 skill set at level 1.

Interesting. I just got my alt up to L30. There was a few basic dungeons and Ifrit before L30, but nothing that can't be reworked.

I wouldn't mind cutting the fat like that.

[Underscore]

That's not a bad idea in itself, but there will be one meta build for every job, and people will be excluded from endgame raid content, or maybe even other content when they don't play that one meta build, which then makes the whole thing irrelevant and a waste of resources.
That maybe works in other games, but I don't trust the FFXIV devs to design it in such a way that there won't be that one proper meta build.

edit:
Look at bluemage, a lot of different skills which let you customize your build how you want, but good luck in finding groups for bluemage endgame content when you don't play with a certain build.

I'd probably design it such that the damage output of the job doesn't change much, or at least no more than the difference between different jobs within a role. For example; give Dragoon the option to replace Rise of the Dragon with two charges of Spineshatter dive with a combined potency equal to RoTD. Stuff like that.

[Alicie]

What's the point? Why does it matter if it's 110 or 55 or 220 or 440?

You should be asking the question of will 8.0 simplify onboarding process for a new player. Because you know, it doesn't matter which level you will have by the end of the game if most of the players will simply never even get anywhere close to it.

[Alicie]

I'd probably design it such that the damage output of the job doesn't change much, or at least no more than the difference between different jobs within a role. For example; give Dragoon the option to replace Rise of the Dragon with two charges of Spineshatter dive with a combined potency equal to RoTD. Stuff like that.

It could be interesting system to give buff dependent jobs a selfish build. For example, for a static you could choose to be a buff dancer, buff a beefy melee that has been fed all the gear and increase damage output to speed up your kill. Heading into PF and know everyone will be dying all day every day, swap to selfish dancer that will deal damage on par with other dps jobs.

[Garruss]

Please, no level sqiush I don't see the point in doing this at all. Does it really matter if we go past 100? I see no reason to half the levels back down. It just feels awful to have all your work to get your character to 100 halved like that

[NightHour]

I think they should go to 110 in 8.0 then do a level and stats squish in 9.0 down to 55 or even 60.

A lot of people don't understand how a squish actually functions and think "Number smaller OMG why did you nerf me?!"


Either way Stat and Level squishes need to happen eventually - MMO's are a genre where power creep is a huge problem which can cause overflows within code integers which can cause unexpected bugs and problems in game.

I'd personally love to see a lvl and stat squish down to lvl 50. It would make lvl 50 content more enjoyable, it would breathe new life into legacy ultimates, extremes, and savage, it would honestly put the game in a whole new light for me. With that being said I still think 10 lvl per expansion is a good option to stick with, 5 seems a bit low.

Current level 50 content wouldn't be level 50 content post squish.

It'd be like level 15-20 content post squish.

[Stormfur]

I've never played WoW, so what does level squish actually do?

[Sunhwapark]

I would assume it means the level cap is reduced, but our relative strength & access to content remains the same, it's just being scaled down to a smaller numerical value.
Sort of like the "stat squish" that happened before in one of the earlier expansions.
It would be easier to just increase the cap to Lv.110, and would result in less headache with mismatched/outdated information that still lingers within the game when existing things get changed.

Don't really mind whatever happens, but I strongly believe they will cut corners wherever possible.

[Daralii]

I've never played WoW, so what does level squish actually do?

Reduced the number by your character's portrait, but because things related to mob levels or stats got missed (because attempting to change every number in an MMO is a large undertaking), entire expansions got bricked because some mobs that were the objectives of unskippable quests became unkillably strong.