Quote Originally Posted by Fuddy View Post
Yes I'm aware of how it works in wow. However, I think a possible solution to this would be to gate players from skipping over a lot of content by forcing them to gear up to complete a quest that allows them to move to the next level cap. It shouldn't need to be full raid gear, unless it's made much easier to get I suppose, but just require iLvL 80-ish or something or maybe iLvL 90 once myth is even quicker to get. A modest iLvL players have to work for to move to the next content. If you did this then new players leveling up in the future will have a reason to do the large amount of level 50 content we're all doing right now.
Here's how I think it will play out.

Whenever someone joins the game, their goal is to acquire awesome loot and join their Free Company buddies in tackling the toughest game content. Right now, the progression for this isn't unreasonable:

Level up -> AF -> do dungeons for level 60 through 80 gear while grinding myth for 90 gear -> do primals for level 75 to 90 weapons -> do coil and save soldiery for higher level gear

It's not a horrendously long progression right now. A casual player could get it done in a couple months, while a hardcore player could do it in a couple weeks.

But years down the road, when FFXIV has three or four expansions under its belt, endgame ilvl is in the thousands, and characters cap at level 99? Each step of the way, more content and higher ilvl gear is added. If it takes months now to get a casual from ilvl 1 to ilvl 100, it will take YEARS for a new player to get from ilvl 1 to ilvl 1000 if they're forced to take all the same steps along the way that the rest of us did. A lot of folks will be turned off by that.

So, SE will add shortcuts to allow new players to catch up to old players more quickly. It's already started; while not as easy as picking up Darklight gear used to be, getting Myth armor is tons easier than it used to be. Players can grind dungeons for Myth and more or less bypass the level 60-80 stuff. Retainers are walking home with Primal hard mode weapons.

It may seem kind of sad to imagine a future where players outright skip content that we see as mainstays now, but that's just how it goes. Getting from 1 to 1000 in ten-level increments will just be too much of a chore to attract new players.