Is there even a point to raising level caps?

[Nipa]

You forgot than increasing level cap add the gigantic constraint of having to develop new content each raise, or rebalance the whole existing, as the previous will become trivial due to over-level.

[gifthorse]

Need the SP man ....... just one more fix, huh? For me? Come on, I'll give you my Guild Leves tomorrow I just need a little something to tide me over. I'll give you this half eaten Cheeseburger, can't say fairer that that now, can you? C'MON MAN, I JUST NEED MAH FIX!

A half-eaten cheeseburger, for me? You shouldn't have!

The grind is by far the most boring aspect of any RPG. Are people really that eager to get more of it? Grinding is the only thing to do in XIV at the moment. Grind DoH, grind DoM, grind Dol and then grind quests that are just like leves designed for grinding. Then come back on these forums and ask for more grinding on all of the above.

I'm speechless.

I was somewhat dumbfounded also.

[viion]

Getting 50 is to easy and so is getting 75 in XI, but due to the way XI is now and lack of peeps playing (hence all merges required), getting content done prior to caps was sometimes tough, but at least when you're 90 you can do them with a few people, Hell ya can do all the SKY stuff with like 3-4 people once it hits 99 lol. Dont need the 18 you used to need at 75.

Sadly a lot of that gear is now redundant unless they come out with some system to improve them. This is one of the major issues with level caps, thats why everyone is raging their relics are lol now (and so is anything prior abyssea gear wise), and that isn't even abyssea's fault, its just the level cap. You cant be expected to be 90 or 99 and still be wearing 75 gear so they had to do something to provide new gears.

My opinion is dont increase it without a bucket load of content and if you have current gear/items that are so god damn hard to get, allow them to be improved up to the cap.

I would prefer it not being 50 though. Or impliment the idea of Quest gets you Abilities, (rather than levels)

[gifthorse]

Getting 50 is to easy and so is getting 75 in XI, but due to the way XI is now and lack of peeps playing (hence all merges required), getting content done prior to caps was sometimes tough, but at least when you're 90 you can do them with a few people, Hell ya can do all the SKY stuff with like 3-4 people once it hits 99 lol. Dont need the 18 you used to need at 75.

Sadly a lot of that gear is now redundant unless they come out with some system to improve them. This is one of the major issues with level caps, thats why everyone is raging their relics are lol now (and so is anything prior abyssea gear wise), and that isn't even abyssea's fault, its just the level cap. You cant be expected to be 90 or 99 and still be wearing 75 gear so they had to do something to provide new gears.

My opinion is dont increase it without a bucket load of content and if you have current gear/items that are so god damn hard to get, allow them to be improved up to the cap.

I would prefer it not being 50 though. Or impliment the idea of Quest gets you Abilities, (rather than levels)

Personally, I don't believe getting to cap should be too difficult or time-consuming. Getting to R50 in FFXIV is even more tedious than it should be, in my opinion. Anyways, cap shouldnt be the goal, it should be the launching point for the fun, now that you got the tedious stuff out of the way.

Anyways, as you said yourself, there are other methods of progression than just ranking up.

Quests that give abilities, merit systems, titles, gear grind, not to mention the communal progression systems SE intends to implement like Company Housing and Ships.

[gifthorse]

Furthermore, SE has made no secret of the fact that they want to attract casuals. A raise in level cap essentially places an even greater and more untenable disparity between hardcore and casual (softcore) players.

[Physic]

you just hate leveling, thats fine, but most people dont hate leveling. I agree that 1-50 feels grindy, but thats probably because there is nothing else to do. Addition of dungeons and quests will make it feel less so. Also most likely they will rebalance the high level exp, or flatten the exp curve, or give way more exp for higher stuff.

The problem with having a fixed cap, is the difference between one level 50 and another starts to become night and day. compare a full merit, best gear FFXI chr with a new 75, what they can achieve is totally disparate, and yet they are supposed to be doing the same content.
They could create some system where you gain levels in another way after a certain point, but i think they still need a lot more varied gear, and skills, and monsters 50 just seems like the tip of the iceberg. If they can achieve that while make you feel like you progressed and differentiating you from another level 50 so yall arent seen as the same though your 10x as strong, then thats fine, if not, bring on the levels.

[Razzle]

Lets face it. SOME of the enjoyment you (or most gamers have) as players is to show off. At least thats what i think in my opinion. And it is not a bad thing, its natural.

Ranking serves partly for showing off. If everyone were 50 that wouldnt be all that exciting. If you were to max 3 classes at the moment, a lot of people would "wow" at you, and most players would be proud of it! (except those that will always call you a nolife LOL)
If you were in an LS or guild full of rank 90's that take an year to get, you'd be proud of it and show it off...

Leveling makes me feel im having progress even if i actually improove very little between every level. Just seeing my number change is enough to give me that feeling and I'd like as much levels possible as i can get.
Which is also why I'm against removing Physical levels. Even if they change stast to automatic, they should keep physicial lvls. If I played one hour and rank once i'd feel like i did less progress than if i ranked AND leveled.

What I'm saying is, the more stuff we can lvl and rank, the more we feel progress, if they add a lvling curve to everything and we could also level up skills, instead of one hour grinding to get 1 rank. we would grind for 1 hour even if after all these lvls it will be equal to what we have now, it'd still feel like we did much more progress since now we can only lvl and rank on 2 aspects only at a time (3 with shield).

My English is bad so ill give example of a game i played. Phantasy Star Online, and Phantasy Star Universe.
In PSO you could buy skills which meant lvling only applied to character's base lvl. In PSU you could level skills which meant lvling could happen WITH character and WITH skills, so if in one day on PSO i'd do 1 lvl. In 1 day on PSU i'd do 1 lvl, 1 fire lvl, 1 water lvl, 1 heal lvl, 1 revive lvl... It'd feel like i lvled MUCH more even though im in the same state i was on PSO.

I have a "grinding" party we form DAILY, we been grinding for like a month, and it actually feels like a permanent party and like i knew them for YEARS, since they were little kids.

I cant explain this good but it has some kind of magic to some players.

Anyway I dont understand what is being asked here... an RPG without lvling or ranking?
I think that if you hate grinding you should really move on to a different genre... Not an Online RPG
And well, with all the aim for casual SE is doing, i wouldnt worry about being much above rank 50 to access most of the stuff.

[Grimm]

Wouldn't it be better if SE just kept us at R50 indefinitely and made all new content horizontal, instead of stratifying it vertically and making us grind even more?

Just look at FFXI. They keep raising the cap and at some point it just got out of hand.

I think a lot of games run into the issue of how to add content at end game without making it pointless. Eventually a gear grind seems a bit superfluous and pointless for players when they have upwards of 30 different level-appropriate gears to choose from (or at least it will seem so to players who don't appreciate stylistic options).

Developers inevitably realise that gear-grind isnt the answer, and end up just making players grind grind instead.

But this is 2011, shouldn't we be above all this by now?

They could go the Tibia route and have no lvl caps =)

[Vackashken]

Are you seriously asking if they should raise the level cap... lol

[gifthorse]

you just hate leveling, thats fine, but most people dont hate leveling. I agree that 1-50 feels grindy, but thats probably because there is nothing else to do. Addition of dungeons and quests will make it feel less so. Also most likely they will rebalance the high level exp, or flatten the exp curve, or give way more exp for higher stuff.

The problem with having a fixed cap, is the difference between one level 50 and another starts to become night and day. compare a full merit, best gear FFXI chr with a new 75, what they can achieve is totally disparate, and yet they are supposed to be doing the same content.
They could create some system where you gain levels in another way after a certain point, but i think they still need a lot more varied gear, and skills, and monsters 50 just seems like the tip of the iceberg. If they can achieve that while make you feel like you progressed and differentiating you from another level 50 so yall arent seen as the same though your 10x as strong, then thats fine, if not, bring on the levels.

I just don't see why 50 isn't enough. They barely have enough content for 20 ranks, I can but wonder when they will ever have enough for more than 50.

It's not that I don't hate levelling. I just think that the amount of lvls we have at present, and the time it takes to attain them, are sufficient in and of themselves for many many years to come regardless of the wealth of content implemented. And they needn't add more ranks in a game with limitless grinding already (18 classes to grind if you're that way inclined).

And if people want to show off, they should be able to do so without saying "look at me, I fell for SE's pathetic trap of making us waste many months of our lives grinding". There are just many more novel ways of impressing people.

I already mentioned that Company Housing and Ships are being looked into (or they were when Tanaka was in charge), so a nice house and a nice ship could go a long way to appealing people's inner show-off.

Levelling is for OCD people. Everyone else wants to have fun.