Quote Originally Posted by Shipp View Post
So you'd rather have a small player-base who is lazy and wants to stagnate instead of a larger one that appreciates character progression? Most of us commenting on this DID play XI, and I played hardcore since I was in highschool when it came out.

This is really about as dumb as an argument against fatigue. You know, the arguments where people claimed it was helping casuals, when in actuality, it was creating a bigger gap between the hardcores who capped out every reset and the casuals who never capped out at reset.

I can respect people who say they want the cap to stay at 75 because they don't want to level a character anymore. I can respect that OPINION. I cannot respect someone acting as if Sky was still done hardcore up until Abyssea. It simply was not a hardcore endgame activity by that time. Was it done still? Yes. Nobody is debating that. It wasn't done as it was in its prime.

That is what most of us are having a problem with. People are using the level cap as an excuse as to why XI is dying when that's not it at all. It may have put the nail in the coffin, but the game was already on life support. These endgame activities became irrelevant in terms of time spent vs rewards long long ago. I, personally, am tired of seeing the level cap increase used as a scapegoat.
The level cap increase wasn't what ruined the game for me, I continued playing until just after the level 85 cap. I just don't agree with your aspersion that everyone in favor of a static increase is in favor of stagnant gameplay or that having a static level cap means the gameplay will stagnate.

We could argue in this circle forever because it boils down to our own personal preferences. From what I've gathered you quit playing some time after ToAU and sometime before wings of the goddess? I'm going to guess you never saw everything that ToAU introduced, let alone what was introduced in WoTG.

You were bored with Sky when you quit, I get it. You didn't like Sea. I agree, Sea was horrible. but CoP had alot more than just Sea content. ToAU had alot more than just cerberus. There was alot more to do than sky, but the gear and sky as an event were still relevant to the community, even if it wasn't personally relevant to you.

I was in a linkshell that ran events 5 days a week. Different events every day for 5 days and 2 days for people to do whatever. My linkshell as a whole never felt like we didn't have anything that wasn't worth doing. I'm not saying every individual was excited to do every event. As I mentioned, I hated Sea, to the point where I wouldn't go unless they couldn't do it without me.

The argument that the content stagnates just doesn't work, because the community as a whole still found reason to do them. Whether it was for money, for items, hell even for DP so they could lot stuff in different events... people were doing sky up until the end. Sometimes we were alone up there, sometimes we still had to compete for certain things. Whether it was "hardcore" or not doesn't change the fact that people still did the events.