Rank cap increase every 1-2 years discussion thread

[Chezen]

This sorta reminds me of anime.

"My super-awesome weapon of last year doesn't work anymore. I must power-up!"
"Really? I thought last year's weapon was the ultimate weapon."
"Well it's not anymore. I need new! New will sell more toys!"
"...Where was this new super bad guy last year? What would you have done then?"
"Uhhhh...."

[Reika]

If they do the same thing WoW does with it's expansions, raising the level cap every 3-4 years would work. Meaning, even tho they raise the level cap and release new content with new gear at end-game stage, they don't release all of the content. Instead, they make tiers of equipment, raids, and dungeons released every 10 months-1 year. so within the same level cap, you still change equipment.

At least I liked how they did it that way.

[kukurumei]

If they do the same thing WoW does with it's expansions, raising the level cap every 3-4 years would work. Meaning, even tho they raise the level cap and release new content with new gear at end-game stage, they don't release all of the content. Instead, they make tiers of equipment, raids, and dungeons released every 10 months-1 year. so within the same level cap, you still change equipment.

At least I liked how they did it that way.

Not on FF14's budget. WoW has vasty...VASTY more man power working on their game.

WoW's throw away content formula only works for wow...it would never work for FF14. WoW is only known for 2 things. Leveling up to cap, and do endgame with everyone else at cap. When you're bored make a new toon to power level up to endgame, repeat.

WoW has practically zero use for old non endgame content. That's not very good on a tight waist belt like FF14. It needs reusable content. Things that players don't mind repeating, because frankly, we already know at this point FF14 isn't even popular enough to get a dungeon out much less a expansion.

[Reika]

Not on FF14's budget. WoW has vasty...VASTY more man power working on their game.

WoW's throw away content formula only works for wow...it would never work for FF14. WoW is only known for 2 things. Leveling up to cap, and do endgame with everyone else at cap. When you're bored make a new toon to power level up to endgame, repeat.

WoW has practically zero use for old non endgame content. That's not very good on a tight waist belt like FF14. It needs reusable content. Things that players don't mind repeating, because frankly, we already know at this point FF14 isn't even popular enough to get a dungeon out much less a expansion.

Are you saying there should be a very low variety of endgame content in FFXIV, And that they shouldn't strive to give players tons to do because no game can EVER have as much content as WoW?

[kukurumei]

Are you saying there should be a very low variety of endgame content in FFXIV, And that they shouldn't strive to give players tons to do because no game can EVER have as much content as WoW?

Are you saying everyone should have 3 meals a day, 10 minutes to work, and 10hrs of sleep?

[Reika]

Are you saying everyone should have 3 meals a day, 10 minutes to work, and 10hrs of sleep?

I'm saying they should strive for extreme greatness, and not quit.

why do you want them to give up on being the best?

[tachikoma]

The 1.19 materia system has the potential to easily handle lvl cap raises, being able to materialize the epic gear you spent lots of work getting and putting that into your next lvl caps top drops sounds really cool to me. Also seems that everyone agrees the lvl cap raises are fine as long as they have the necessary content to match.

SE has always been the best with making sure not to break gear along your progression, many items are BIS(best in slot) at a variety of ranks. Some even lasted you start to cap. My only concern atm is that with everything being crafted and bosses dropping crafting mats it compounds the difficulty in obtaining a "true" BIS item. Take for example what we have now for head as a mele most would agree the silver tricorn is the best right now. But for the true BIS you need a crafter to +3 it which can take upwards of a few hundred synths. Not like everyone needs +3'd gear but if your goal is BIS then as content gets more end-gamey its gonna get harder and harder.

[Evenstar]

Nice thread, with a great first post. I wish people would do this more often. I normally quit reading after just 2 sentences since most of the time someone is trying to present his/her opinion as a fact. So, great first post this time, which made me read the whole post.

That said ... I agree with the first post. I played and actually am still playing FFXI. I liked the approach of FFXI way more than the approach of WoW. WoW raised the level cap with every big expansion, which made the world before the expansion kinda useless. The gear you got was worth nothing, it was not worth to revisit some awesome dungeons it felt like everything you did was for nothing. You had to start from scratch every single expansion.

FFXI did it in a totally different way and in my opinion the better way and I think FFXIV should take the same approach. By raising the level cap slowly every few months you keep people on the edge. You also give the development team lots of time to fine tune everything in the game. I really do not like the idea of making everything you worked for completely uselles because the level cap was raised. I am not against raising the level cap, but I strongly believe it should be done step by step in a short period of time and then totally stop. We are now at level 50, make it +5 every 2 months and one year later we are at 80. Keep it at 80 for at least 5 years (and/or 3 expansions). After that do the same trick to get to 99 and keep it there forever.

If they do it like WoW it would be in my opinion a huge disaster and I might even reconsider playing the game. I am still playing FFXIV even with all this shit going on, so I am as dedicated as it can get, but if they do the same thing as Blizzard it would hurt the game a lot ....

[Roaran]

Was mentioned by someone that it is necessary to raise the level cap to prevent the game from becoming stale. Reason being, without a level raise, you would be stuck with the same skills and abilities forever.

I'd just point out there are other ways of obtaining these skills...

I would much rather see a system that offered challenging quests with REAL story involved, and at the end of said challenging quest you will have gained a skill and feel as though you have actually accomplished something; as opposed to, "Finally I have killed X monsters for Y Experience so now I feel a little stronger, but nothing is really different."

Another point against keeping a static level cap is how people will constantly be doing the same content forever. In reality, players who have played for 2+ years or people considered 'veterans' will always be on the newest content, regardless of level. However, the newer players would, in a simple progression system, still have to go through the beggining steps/stages before entering the new content. The biggest problem though is whether there is a sufficient number of new players to get them through this content and into the newer stages without any significant problems, in relation to the first veterans who engaged in these encounters. If you consider the 4 & 8 player party sizes, it is less likely there would ever be such a problem.

I think, if the world expands, it would be more necessary for a rise in the level caps. Other than that, I don't really see any good reasons.

[kukurumei]

Was mentioned by someone that it is necessary to raise the level cap to prevent the game from becoming stale. Reason being, without a level raise, you would be stuck with the same skills and abilities forever.

I'd just point out there are other ways of obtaining these skills...

I would much rather see a system that offered challenging quests with REAL story involved, and at the end of said challenging quest you will have gained a skill and feel as though you have actually accomplished something; as opposed to, "Finally I have killed X monsters for Y Experience so now I feel a little stronger, but nothing is really different."

Another point against keeping a static level cap is how people will constantly be doing the same content forever. In reality, players who have played for 2+ years or people considered 'veterans' will always be on the newest content, regardless of level. However, the newer players would, in a simple progression system, still have to go through the beggining steps/stages before entering the new content. The biggest problem though is whether there is a sufficient number of new players to get them through this content and into the newer stages without any significant problems, in relation to the first veterans who engaged in these encounters. If you consider the 4 & 8 player party sizes, it is less likely there would ever be such a problem.

I think, if the world expands, it would be more necessary for a rise in the level caps. Other than that, I don't really see any good reasons.

A creeping level/content cap isn't the problem, it's the distribution of each group.

A game needs to carefully decide the best percentage of each group. newbie(people in early levels), veteran(mid levels), elite(capped).

Because you have to create content and balance for each group. If you have a very high percentage of elites like WoW (90+ % almost always capped) then you have to exclusively create things for that cap, and leave the rest to rot. Thus all your content is always replacing endgame, and everything else is just left to rot.

Finding the right mix, in the right timeline, with the right budget, is important, and as some of us know, many resent MMOs suffered big big defeats when they tried to imitate WoW like this. They couldn't possibly satisfy the content consumption of a 90+% capped population.