Rank cap increase every 1-2 years discussion thread

[Wolfie]

And then gobble you up in a big tasty stew?

Yeah, so... WATCH OUT!

Upping the level cap generally goes hand in hand with making everything that came before it obsolete. Who likes having all their time and effort wasted? Besides like 13 million people playing WoW.

But is that effort really wasted if people had fun doing it? I mean, it's not like I can take items and money with me when I leave a game.

[_C-a-e-r-i-t-h_]

But is that effort really wasted if people had fun doing it? I mean, it's not like I can take items and money with me when I leave a game.

That's a very good question. Some of the things that separate an MMORPG from, say, Unreal Tournament, are a sense of persistence, progress, and the central motif of developing a player character. In Unreal Tournament, you have your fun and that's that, and the next time you log in there's nothing held over from the last time you logged in. Would you play an MMORPG that reset your character every time you logged out? Would you play if all of your progress was lost every day? What if only some of your progress was lost? What if it was just every week, or every six months, or every time a new expansion comes out?

/devilsadvocate

[Wolfie]

That's a very good question. Some of the things that separate an MMORPG from, say, Unreal Tournament, are a sense of persistence, progress, and the central motif of developing a player character. In Unreal Tournament, you have your fun and that's that, and the next time you log in there's nothing held over from the last time you logged in. Would you play an MMORPG that reset your character every time you logged out? Would you play if all of your progress was lost every day? What if only some of your progress was lost? What if it was just every week, or every six months, or every time a new expansion comes out?

/devilsadvocate

But is resetting my character if I'm going UP in levels and I'm getting BETTER gear? Is that regression or progression?

[Sol_Aureus]

They have to raise the cap every so often to keep the game from getting stale. It's why pretty much all modern day mmos do it. It gives people new abilities, new gear to get, new bosses/NMs to fight, and new goals to achieve.
You can beat around the bush all you want and claim that ff11 was so awesome because the cap stayed at 75 for so long, but really you are just lying to yourself. So basically all you did was Dynamis, Sky/Sea, Assault, campaign, or level other jobs to 75. Wowsers, that is great. After you spent 6 months in Dynamis and Sky and got your gear, you had nothing left to help your character development, unless you had the desire to get relic weapon, which took more gil than most could ever muster. They added bits and pieces more as the years went on (mini expansions, etc.), but realistically you continued to run dynamis and assualt for gear for other jobs. I loved FF11, I did, but I can honestly admit that at 75 I spent time doing the same handful of things, over and over and over, until I completely lost interest in the game. I think Yoshida realises that that is not a good system for a game to have, and wants to use these periodic rank increases to shake up that monotunous cycle people get into.

I never knew lying to myself could be so fun then

I played FFXI because I thought it was fun. When I stopped having fun playing FFXI, I quit. That process took 7 years. If that fun that I had was me lying to myself about having fun...then, well, I'd like another MMO that has content that apparently isn't fun so I can lie to myself and have as much fun as I did with FFXI

[Punxsutawney]

Or you're a glutton for pain? Haha. I played 11 for years as well, had full AF2 on warrior and most of it for Samurai and Dark Knight as well. But I also had 5 75s and most of the others at 60+, and this wasn't because I am also a glutton and loved grinding out the levels, it because I got bored running the same stuff every week.
And I am not saying that I didn't have any fun in 11, because I wouldn't have made it a year if that was the case. I am just saying, Yoshida realizes that increasing the rank every so often, gives players new direction, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[Vackashken]

If they raise the rank to 75+ they'll need like 5 power bars to select from :O

[Volsung]

Honestly, I'd prefer SE picked a level cap they want to end with, be it 75, 80, 90, 99, or 100. And go towards it gradually. Once there start making end game. As new content/expansions come out, try to make comparable gear that competes with old gear and may be better in some ways, but not put old content out of business with each expansion. By doing it this way you can make things to do while leveling up, and a ton of events to take part in while near and at the cap.

[Kel]

Everyone knows finally we will grow to Rank 100 as a lot of mobs out there are already R95+.

I'm not against cap raising itself, but I don't want the cap to be raised too often, like every 1-2 year.

And most importantly, before that, SE really need to first think of someway to
1)make certain gear (especially those from faction leves) upgradable/usable in the future,
2)let higher rank mob give more skill points in correspondence with the higher and higher rank gap, and
3)inject new elements such as dungeons, missions, special items, even areas on a somewhat regular base.

Until then, I think it's appropriate to raise the cap, but 4-5 years once, though they can raise the cap a lot each time, like first to R75, then R90, R100.

[Sorel]

The crafting system (in it's current form) already allows you take existing equipment and make it into better forms. The mechanics are already there and they already work. All the Development Team has to do is add recipes, in addition to content every time they raise the level cap.

[Sephr]

I think, ultimately, it should be the journey to get the gear that matters as opposed to the gear itself. With that in mind, as long as it's fun I don't mind the level cap changing. At the end of the day, if you see gear acquisition as some kind of investment in a future like people did with FFXI (resulting in people spending obsene hours working on it), you'll only end up regretting it in the end.

Aside from that, the fact that gear swaps are out (thank god) means there are less avenues for accumulating loads of different gear sets for different occassions. This means we're more likely to advance vertically as much as horizontally, purely because I expect people will end up with a gear set per job for their class in the end, or maybe a couple of them to tackle differnet things once stats have been sorted out.

That said, the option to persue the stats you want in your gearset would be great, but I digress.

Yes for rank cap boosts, I'd say one every expansion (1.5 years-ish assuming they don't take the god damn awful model FFXI had of dragging out expansion content over the course of 2-3 years) of maybe 10 ranks. As others have said, some kind of merit system would be nice to persue, too.