Some musing after fiddling with 1.18 (first time I've had to sit down and play it, work being what it is); I'm not making any grand gestures or postulating anything more than what I've noticed in the hour or so I clocked in. Also, as you can see, I'm not exactly high level, so take that as you will.

- Leve finish bonuses are nice, but that alone doesn't make them worth doing. If you need the gil, or you want the marks, that's why, but the exp gained from them doesn't seem that much better than solo grinding.
- What happened to SP gain from mobs? Level ~32 crabs before the patch gave, I believe, about 450 SP to my level 22 THM. After patch, they're giving under 300. To cite -- mobs 3-4 levels above my rank give me about 200-250. I take it there's no longer any incentive to try soloing mobs much higher level than you?
- I like the newer interface. Buttons look nice, but the blinking light is gonna get really old, really fast. Wouldn't it have been a bit simpler to just make it a glowing red?
- No stamina to worry about = combat feels about 1000x smoother, even with the inherent latency that I always get.
- I knew you'd upped MP costs for the heals, but tripling their costs seems a little excessive. I hope to not see the days of FFXI again, where you're saving your current rank heals for emergencies only (though, to be fair, that was more out of hate generation than MP cost, but that did contribute).
- Holy shitballs, did you ever buff Scourge. o.O Thank you for making the spell not useless.
- Dark Matter makes repairing a lot less of a pain in the ass.

All in all, it's a good start, but I'm discouraged that SP gains seems to have been incredibly borked. However, I also recognize that this is only the barest foundation, so hopefully in 1.19 and beyond, we'll see more organized efforts to getting everything on the right track.

But seriously. Let me kill higher level mobs again; 200 SP a kill from mobs that don't even begin to pose a challenge makes me want to fall asleep.