Will 8.0 Expansion Cap @ L55 ?

[Veritas-Ancora]

I disagree that we need to stat squish. I think starting at level 100 in 8.0 is fine.

What they need to do is make the 8.0 story something that can be jumped into without playing levels 1-100, include the option to start over in ARR as a level 1 OR to start at level 100 in the new content of 8.0 with a unique speed run tutorial on the chosen job.

Level 100 job skip and story skip edition costs an extra $10 over the base 8.0 expansion, for people who just want to jump into the action.

Maybe the level 100 newbies wake up in 8.0 with amnesia, don't remember anyone or anything, get a montage echo flashback of everything that happened in those levels, but have full access to The Unending Journey if they want to ARR. And they can go back to Eorzea and start over on a job quest at any time, or New Game Plus if they are lost in the plot.

Regardless, whatever the 8.0 story is should be severed enough from 7.0 that you don't need to have played it to be invested.

I'm fine with this if it were FREE to a subscription. Allow one character to boost to L100.

It should not cost money for one boost. Other MMOs give you the free boost as soon as you subscribe, that's how it should work.

[Psycha]

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.

Don't turn the game into WoW with talent trees please.. Then we'll see toxic BiS builds for jobs come out day 1.

[Psycha]

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.

The mountain that has caused new sprouts to quit or flat out not be interested is the MSQ requirement bloat.. Doing 300 or sometimes with some people 600 hours+ of MSQ from ARR to DT currently is a mountain of a task..

They need to stop locking content behind MSQ and make story optional at this point, some people prefer to stick to gathering and crafting and THAT with some systems are locked heavily behind MSQ grind.

Every single person I got into the game so far has bought the MSQ skip which I think is what SQE wants anyway cause ye more money.. Create the problem, sell the solution. Most of them as well bought a job skip too so they could play their intended job they wanted to play when looking into the game. 8 out of 12 are still playing but the rest quit once they saw the MSQ grinds after DT story and the blue quest chain grinds for further systems to be unlocked. Boo hoo I know grind is grind but alot of FF14 quests are tedious messes now after they passed on being old content.

ARR 2.0 wont fix anything if it is done.. All it will do is cause HW/SB 2.0's to be asked for next.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Don't turn the game into WoW with talent trees please.. Then we'll see toxic BiS builds for jobs come out day 1.

I would ragequit if we got talent trees.

They're nothing but toxic BiS nonsense and I quit WoW over it. When I was forced to switch from DPS to Tank in Death Knight many moons ago, I stopped playing.

But honestly I don't think Yoshi P wants them, otherwise we'd have shared classes for our jobs (beyond Arcanist) and so far Yoshi P has never seemed to be interested in that.

I think we're honestly safe from talent trees.

[KisaiTenshi]

Yoshi P said that something drastic must happen to not endure level bloat.

So will we see all of our levels halved, and the cap reduce from 100 down to L50, giving 5 levels per expansion?

I think this is the most logical and easiest way to reduce the hefty load of 110 levels. Unless they're coming up with a whole new leveling system, which a lot of people seem to be against (Eureka leveling, for example).

Are we crunching our levels into halves at this point?

I don't think they will change anything as is. You have to realize the only reason to do anything (like MP being capped at 10000) is because underlying netcode requires more bytes. That's why the TP meter disappeared, that's why the number of buffs and debuffs are limited, that's why skills and spells disappear in every expansion, that's why we don't see monsters with 9999999999999999hp. Because to update that x many people in the raid/zone is expensive.

If they are only using one byte for level, and it's signed, then the maximum number is 128. Hence they have to do something. The sooner the better

What I feel they might do is leave the main game level at 100, and instead press down on the job levels alone so they can all be acquired at character creation, and leave the class quests as they are to keep the storylines intact. Equipping the job stones just treats it independently like it does now.

Like the problem with getting new players into the game presently, is that players want to play with their friends and not have to play the entire game and job quest just to catch up to their friend, especially if they just want to play raids and don't care about MSQ.

So maybe the right answer there is separating the MSQ and Raid levels entirely. MSQ only levels the character upon completion of the dungeons, and you're otherwise capped no matter what EXP you have.
Raids then use the POTD type of leveling mechanic where the player is explicitly set to a level with the stats you would have at the end of the content for when that content was released with that job. So all raids are at least somewhat of a challenge instead of a faceroll once it's not current content. Playing the raid multiple times eventually makes it easier as the base level is saved until a maximum level is achieved, but it never achieves a level of ease that phases can be skipped.

[MayuAmakura]

Don't turn the game into WoW with talent trees please.. Then we'll see toxic BiS builds for jobs come out day 1.

> We want better changes and more fun gameplay!

Meanwhile community strikes again with "please no change, let it be boring!". Yeah. Also let's remember that it was community's fault for wanting to have 2 minute meta and God forbids that any job is different and have opened window for rotation or similar. Putting talent trees or anything in between wouldn't do any harm to this game considered that every other aspect is already useless. Melding materias where only 5% of materia is worth and rest is thrash, everybody melding the same. Isn't it a bit ironic? You being fine with melding or everyone having SAME GEAR and no variations. But involving talents would be chaotic and bad? Lmao

"But people will be excluded from raids if not meta!" Not like they weren't already excluded if playing wrong jobs or "no picto = no entry" at the beginning of expansion. Please.

[MayuAmakura]

I would ragequit if we got talent trees.

They're nothing but toxic BiS nonsense and I quit WoW over it. When I was forced to switch from DPS to Tank in Death Knight many moons ago, I stopped playing.

But honestly I don't think Yoshi P wants them, otherwise we'd have shared classes for our jobs (beyond Arcanist) and so far Yoshi P has never seemed to be interested in that.

I think we're honestly safe from talent trees.

I doubt in this. Considering DK is always a solid dps in every expansion, I highly doubt it. What more happened is that your raid needed someone to tank and they had no one else but you since you already had proper gear kek. But yeah.

[Veritas-Ancora]

I doubt in this. Considering DK is always a solid dps in every expansion, I highly doubt it. What more happened is that your raid needed someone to tank and they had no one else but you since you already had proper gear kek. But yeah.

Weird bait but okay.

It was Cataclysm, they removed the DPS option and made it all tank. That's when I quit. Raid groups weren't even running when the expansion dropped, it was solid in WotLK.

You're probably just mad that XIV doesn't have talent trees. Calm down. You can still play WoW.

[TheDustyOne]

Ruling out talent trees because of balance concerns is not that different an argument from deciding we should only have 1 job per role because otherwise people will create metas where some jobs get excluded; we already have that despite how homogenized the current jobs have become. If done well, talent trees or whatever build system could provide players with ways to experience older job playstyles, or play a job in a completely different role (BRD as a healer or DRK as a DPS come to mind), or otherwise bring back older themes with twists. If I had the chance to play an "Elementalist" WHM that brought back Stone, Aero, and Water spells, I'd want to give that a go. Hell, I'd play SCH again in a heartbeat if I could have Miasma, Miasma II and Bane back as potential options. Even if the only thing you ended up allowing the player to change is the filler rotation and what kind of utility you could bring, that can still be a good amount of player expression that wouldn't be too difficult to balance.

That said, while I like the idea of the talent trees, it would only be in the context of a different job design ethos than what we have now. Rework the jobs to actually be engaging, make the stats that aren't Crit more worthwhile, and even just deciding you want to play a Speed / Piety WHM over a Crit WHM is enough player expression for me. I would only want talent trees if they could legitimately offer new playstyles and/or allow for jobs to change roles.

[Sunhwapark]

Honestly not too fussed, as long as it's not something obviously class locking like re-introducing job based striking/piercing/blunt/whatever debuffs we used to have. That specific aspect of Stormblood will always haunt me.