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

[Dragon]

lol this this thread wasn't really what I was thinking of when I opened it...

Was expecting to see some ideas for more non-traditional types of leveling like shurrikhan's ideas because...you know you don't need a physical level to show character advancement....

But 2.0 is here so it's a little late for ideas

Maybe not necessarily too late, we're still holding out for it to begin with.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

Please don't assume that the idea that starts a thread follows only one spectrum, let alone that any one interpretation is exactly accurate to whatever thinking may have been done around that idea.

Even if the xp curve is left alone, doesn't that leave a huge amount left to discuss.

Please leave the "thread over" closings for a moderator.
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Dragon, any ideas you'd like to see implemented concerning leveling? If you're willing, I'd like to see if there's anything this forum could put together that could be compiled and then re-released separately for feedback.

Actually, from OP i see only one spectrum, hence my attitude. Attitude made worst, from the way he responded to my post. Not mentioning this is a branch of a branch of a topic closed because have little feedback and mostly insults

[Catriona]

I think the main problem with any poll is that you can basically ask "does problem C apply to you" [leveling rate] and if all A through Z, except C, apply, you answer "everything's fine here, sir," and we pass on.

There aren't nearly that many problems with leveling, but it annoys me that people would use a poll as proof that the system is just fine. One part of it is more good than bad according to a majority of the player base. That doesn't make it immaculate.

Well, that's right. These are answer categories, not answers. There are going to be a spectrum of answers within those categories that are not captured by the poll.

More importantly, game players have two types of desire when playing a game: there is (to borrow Jesper Juul's terms) immediate desire (desire to succeed and so on - the drive to win) and aesthetic desire (desire for a well-formed experience, which, among other things, makes that win meaningful). There's no telling which is at play in those answers. (Although saying it's too fast directly contradicts immediate desire, so the people who answered that were probably motivated by aesthetic desire.)

[Elexia]

No point in "additional" or "alternative" progressions..when a new player joins an MMO they expect to do content and etc, however usually a good MMO will have low and mid level content, XIV will not have a reason for low and mid level content if the leveling will mean nothing other than just being there. This is why XI had the perfect setup in terms of content offered, it had numerous low and mid level content due to the moderate speed of leveling so it served a purpose as something to do to break up leveling.

A lot of that content died out when people only cared for...*drum roll* rushing to end-game so a lot of newer players post 2002-2004 never got to experience a lot of things like Eco-Warrior or Expendetions to try to claim lands/reclaim lands from beastmen or even Garrison. In XIV, all you have to do is make your character, find someone to pl you, sit on your ass and bam you can be end-game ready in no time in terms of progression. Hell, due to the fact you don't even have to "practice" or "train" your character in an area you can easily watch a tutorial video or tag along with some friends who will let you experience a battle win or lose to get your feet wet and you're good to do all end-game content.

Fast leveling is meaningless just like the ability to spam content is meaningless in the long run, look at Tera, a lot of people blew through all of that content within a week or two simply because you not only get skyrocketed to end-game levels, the content gets used up fairly quickly in that game since there's honestly no low or mid level content to speak of. A good MMO will have a moderate leveling (the only people fine with are those who already leveled everything or couldn't care less about the journey to end-game) sprinkled with low and mid level content to do while you progress. You can argue the open world low level dungeons and toto-rak serves that purpose..think about it, Shposhae is completely skippable and only doable (for it's purpose) if you don't get power leveled, and Toto-Rak is literally forced onto you otherwise that too is skippable.

That shouldn't be the case but that's how it is when leveling is pretty much an afterthought in the grand scheme of things, but we all know people won't complain about having nothing to do when they blow through everything the first week of 2.0 going live.

[Ruisu]

What made levelling in XI more tolerable is that you see different locations every 10 levels or so. There really wasn't a bunch of content for low-mid levels. Grinding was the content. There was story, but XIV has story as well. They also threw a bunch of tasks at you as well (You need your Khazam Airship Pass to progress levelling post-30, etc), and 2.0 is bringing that in as well, at least with teleports. To say that people didn't try to hit 75 asap to start doing endgame is a lie. And that grew to be far worse post-abyssea. Where people can literally go from 30-90 in a day. Only to do what we're doing in XIV. Low drop rates, and repeating the same content over and over.

Granted, levelling in XI was more rewarding, simply because you were waiting in Jueno for 8 hours for a party to fill up. XIV doesn't have that problem.

I don't think levelling should be an afterthought either, but this is being blown way out of proportion.

[Duelle]

This was an unescessary thread split, Dragon. Do please contain yourself, there is no need to go splitting threads like this with such a shallow argument.

Less of a shallow argument and more of a horrible application of slippery slope. "People don't like spending half a year leveling, so we might as well remove leveling altogether!"

Simple fix: add weapon skill levels into the game. It'll stop people from burning through levels, unless they want to be level 50 with the skills of a level 10.

As I hated skill up parties and skill levels because of how tedious and time-sink it was designed to be, I'll vote against this. If I can spend a couple of hours skilling a weapon I didn't use as often from 0 to capped skill, it'd be another story, but FFXI was a FAR cry from that.

Leveling is fine as is.

Seconded.

[Elexia]

As I hated skill up parties and skill levels because of how tedious and time-sink it was designed to be, I'll vote against this. If I can spend a couple of hours catching up on a weapon I didn't use as often, it'd be another story..

Funny, the only people who had this problem where those who burned a job to end-game and never engaged a mob post 30. Most people were caught up on their levels just fine. The only "additional" skill ups you had to do were certain weapons for situational purposes that not everyone even had to do...also only Warrior post Abyssea had it worse, because they could cover every single trigger and a lot of Warriors were lazy and only leveled Great Axe. Every level you only need to gain 2-4 skill points till 70+ so you didn't have much work to do.

The ironic thing is, people were in favor of bringing back the Physical/Class level system which was 100x worse than skilling up a weapon in XI.

[Dragon]

Less of a shallow argument and more of a horrible application of slippery slope. "People don't like spending half a year leveling, so we might as well remove leveling altogether!"

Cool straw-man, dude.

[Mudd]

Simple fix: add weapon skill levels into the game. It'll stop people from burning through levels, unless they want to be level 50 with the skills of a level 10.

I sure as hell would love to have skill-up parties like XI had...I felt like I was working toward something that wasn't a major thing!

You know. I do kind of miss that

[Duelle]

Funny, the only people who had this problem where those who burned a job to end-game and never engaged a mob post 30. Most people were caught up on their levels just fine.

This is false. Skill up rate started falling behind after the 30's. I levelled PLD well into the 50's and shield skill kept falling further and further behind. And this was in the idiotic IT++++ mindset era. DRK was pretty much stuck with underskilled weapons until I chose to stick to scythe, and even then I was still gaining levels faster than I could skill my weapon. And this was way before Abyssea was even a thought in the developers' minds.

It'd be another thing if it had been like WoW. I got the Master of Arms achievement on my warrior at my leisure, without needing a party. Before they removed skill levels, I had every weapon but crossbow leveled to cap. It wasn't a pain in the ass to do, did not have stupid rules that kept you from getting skill ups, required no people that would leave you because their LS called or they got bored or whatnot, and it didn't hold you back gameplay-wise (because you didn't have to set aside large periods of time to skill a weapon).

That made the difference between me dreading having to skill up a weapon (FFXI) and me skilling up every weapon I could use just for fun (WoW).