Just remove leveling altogether if it's such a hindrance.

[Anonymoose]

You're the one that claimed people must like the leveling process because of cognitive dissonance. It's a good thing though the moderator deleted your post, isn't it?

I don't understand - you just repeated the same thing again without addressing any of my questions.

It also doesn't seem like it makes any difference if the moderate nuked the post - I just repeated the same exact thing he deleted.

Here, lemme do it again:

some people, in response to doing a task that they do not like, develop an artificial liking for that task. "I must like doing this if I spent all day doing it!" It happens ... [snip] ... such is the case in many types of MMO grind, in my humble opinion.

Do you have any response to anything I've said other than to attack me personally on the basis of your disagreement with my opinions and associations? I thought you were here to debate the direction of the game.

Let's do that.

EDIT: Also, that post is still there.

[Dragon]

I don't understand - you just repeated the same thing again without addressing any of my questions.

It also doesn't seem like it makes any difference if the moderate nuked the post - I just repeated the same exact thing he deleted.

Here, lemme do it again:



Do you have any response to anything I've said other than to attack me personally on the basis of your disagreement with my opinions and associations? I thought you were here to debate the direction of the game.

Let's do that.

I've not attacked you. So how about answering my question instead.

[Anonymoose]

So how about answering my question instead.

If the game cannot stop pre-cap,
making everything pre-cap useless,
then anything up until the cap is useless,
meaning having a leveling process is useless,
which begs the question as to why we don't ask it to be taken out.

That doesn't make much sense grammatically, so I'll do the best I can.

I think you're asking why we have a leveling process at all if it leads to a cap that invalidates all content lower than said cap once it has been reached.

Is that question not itself a fallacy due to the fact that you're hyperbolizing the criticisms of your original viewpoint that leveling should take a long time?

I never saw any claims that reaching cap invalidates all content lower than itself.

I think the level system gives you a hierarchy of learning. You start with your basic skills, and once you learn to use them, are given more complex skills on which to learn your routines and combinations.

It doesn't take you one thousand instances of a simple battle against a single mob to get that down, and putting in enough "repeat" coins to make the level-up jackpot spit out fanfare doesn't really amount to any real achievement other than the fact you stuck with it and put in the time, imho.

If "putting in the time" is all that matters, than I must really be playing the wrong game. I prefer skill, engagement, immerson, and ... well, not killing the same damn mob 1,000 times before it recognizes that I'm ready to move onto something more.

[Dragon]

That doesn't make much sense grammatically, so I'll do the best I can.

I think you're asking why we have a leveling process at all if it leads to a cap that invalidates all content lower than said cap once it has been reached.

Is that question not itself a fallacy due to the fact that you're hyperbolizing the criticisms of your original viewpoint that leveling should take a long time?

I never saw any claims that reaching cap invalidates all content lower than itself.

I think the level system gives you a hierarchy of learning. You start with your basic skills, and once you learn to use them, are given more complex skills on which to learn your routines and combinations.

It doesn't take you one thousand instances of a simple battle against a single mob to get that down, and putting in enough "repeat" coins to make the level-up jackpot spit out fanfare doesn't really amount to any real achievement other than the fact you stuck with it and put in the time, imho.

If "putting in the time" is all that matters, than I must really be playing the wrong game. I prefer skill, engagement, immerson, and ... well, not killing the same damn mob 1,000 times before it recognizes that I'm ready to move onto something more.

So you don't think that people complaining that "the game doesn't start until cap" think the cap doesn't invalidate anything? If you really believe there is no game until you reach cap, how is that not invalidating anything prior to cap?

[Anonymoose]

So you don't think that people complaining that "the game doesn't start until cap" think the cap doesn't invalidate anything? If you really believe there is no game until you reach cap, how is that not invalidating anything prior to cap?

There is game before cap, but not much content. I think that's a very important distinction to make. Until you get to cap, the game is mostly running between areas in small groups to kill the same mob repeatedly. I remember my first step into Dynamis in FFXI - was it a whole different world, a threshold crossing, compared to the trip up? Absolutely. It felt like an achievement getting in - but not because I killed 5,000 mandragora and some ants - it was because I had earned the right to play there by learning to play my JOB.

Honestly, I think the first trip up should take you a good investment of time - but what about the rest? Why should it take the same amount of time it took you to learn to play Final Fantasy XIV just to learn how to rotate a second set of skills?

The only reason I resist the crowd who basically seem to want the time investment required to level a balanced character at all to require you be one of the ~50% of MMO players who are males between the ages of 22 and 32 who work less than four hours a day is because after that first trip, it's so unnecessary.

The only thing that becomes "irrelevant" is the gear market, whose wares are outlevelled too fast to be worth their original cost at the will of a player determined to finish that job.

To me this has nothing to do with game development; much like the arguments that gear should have required levels, it's a cultural argument. People who wore LV50 gear to a LV10 party weren't kicked from the party and told to learn to play effectively, they just inspired people to come here and whine until SE played nanny.

Do I stand by my assessment that some people spend so much time leveling that they start to think they liked it because otherwise why do it? Yes.

I also think some other people like it because they enjoy being able to invest time others can't into getting something other's can't have.

I think some enjoy it because without comparative basis, value is hard to gauge.

There's a lot of reasons, but in my humble opinion, none of them make it worth my time to do the same exact action over and over and over without learning anything new from it. That's not an MMO - that's FarmVille.

[Dragon]

There is game before cap, but not much content. I think that's a very important distinction to make. Until you get to cap, the game is mostly running between areas in small groups to kill the same mob repeatedly. I remember my first step into Dynamis in FFXI - was it a whole different world, a threshold crossing, compared to the trip up? Absolutely. It felt like an achievement getting in - but not because I killed 5,000 mandragora and some ants - it was because I had earned the right to play there by learning to play my JOB.

Honestly, I think the first trip up should take you a good investment of time - but what about the rest? Why should it take the same amount of time it took you to learn to play Final Fantasy XIV just to learn how to rotate a second set of skills?

The only reason I resist the crowd who basically seem to want the time investment required to level a balanced character at all to require you be one of the ~50% of MMO players who are males between the ages of 22 and 32 who work less than four hours a day is because after that first trip, it's so unnecessary.

The only thing that becomes "irrelevant" is the gear market, whose wares are outlevelled too fast to be worth their original cost at the will of a player determined to finish that job.

To me this has nothing to do with game development; much like the arguments that gear should have required levels, it's a cultural argument. People who wore LV50 gear to a LV10 party weren't kicked from the party and told to learn to play effectively, they just inspired people to come here and whine until SE played nanny.

Do I stand by my assessment that some people spend so much time leveling that they start to think they liked it because otherwise why do it? Yes.

I also think some other people like it because they enjoy being able to invest time others can't into getting something other's can't have.

I think some enjoy it because without comparative basis, value is hard to gauge.

There's a lot of reasons, but in my humble opinion, none of them make it worth my time to do the same exact action over and over and over without learning anything new from it. That's not an MMO - that's FarmVille.

Bravo, you once again failed to answer me and continued into obscurity. But hey, just forget it.

[Shurrikhan]

Bravo, you once again failed to answer me and continued into obscurity. But hey, just forget it.

I think he answered you as well as possible there.

But, let's just go ahead and assume that leveling is worthless. Putting aside it's use for gradually gaining (player, not just character) experience in the game, you could find enough fault in any section of the roles meant for leveling or in the usability of the leveling experience after reaching cap to approximate leveling as being useless.

What would you do about it?

No hyperbole. Seriously, what would you do?

[Anonymoose]

Bravo, you once again failed to answer me and continued into obscurity. But hey, just forget it.

The answers are in there; I think you're confusing "obscurity" with articulation. Let me try with bullet points.

If you really believe there is no game until you reach cap, how is that not invalidating anything prior to cap?

• I don't believe that (but, hey, let's pretend I do.)
• The game starts when you create a character.
• You play the game as you level
• However, the game does not have much content at this point.
• The distinction between "Game" and "Content" is important in this case.
• The little content it has is repeated for exponentially longer than it takes to learn your new skills
• At cap, you gain access to more content.
• This does not invalidate the GAME before it
• However, repetition of the same minute content a second time is a waste considering you do not need to learn to play the game again, you need only to polish your ability to use new skills in that capped content.

[Dragon]

The answers are in there; I think you're confusing "obscurity" with articulation. Let me try with bullet points.

You did not answer it.

• I don't believe that (but, hey, let's pretend I do.)
• The game starts when you create a character.
• You play the game as you level
• However, the game does not have much content at this point.
• The distinction between "Game" and "Content" is important in this case.
• The little content it has is repeated for exponentially longer than it takes to learn your new skills
• At cap, you gain access to more content.
• This does not invalidate the GAME before it
• However, repetition of the same minute content a second time is a waste considering you do not need to learn to play the game again, you need only to polish your ability to use new skills in that capped content.

Once again: if we're to view the leveling as an experience, that anything pre-cap is useless, the game doesn't start until cap, what the hell is the point of having leveling at all? Don't tell me it's for tutorials or "learning your job" since you can do the whole "tutorial"/"learning your job" thing without leveling to begin with.

[Shurrikhan]

You did not answer it.



Once again: if we're to view the leveling as an experience, that anything pre-cap is useless, the game doesn't start until cap, what the hell is the point of having leveling at all? Don't tell me it's for tutorials or "learning your job" since you can do the whole "tutorial"/"learning your job" thing without leveling to begin with.

I'm sure Anon could give a better answer than I can, but here's my two cents. Leveling as a function is always technically superfluous. However, the RPG aspect of any MMORPG demands it, and not just because it's traditional. The effects of leveling on stats and the like is a means. The main purpose is to have a 'feel' of character progression.

Do you know of any good RPG that hasn't had at least a good 'feel' to it? A sense of the world, a sense of some sort of story of both one's character and the world at large. In an MMO, we can't progress the entire world on a dime for every character, so we only get half that. *I am ignoring 'phasing' here, probably because I dislike how it's been implemented and believe there are better ways to serve that function.

This has become less apparent since the loss of Physical Levels.