I am proposing an alternate method of obtaining the new abilities that we all really want without relying on leveling up further and hitting a new ability cap until the next time the level is raised. I believe the vicious circle of requiring level cap increases before adding new abilities is an artifact of an older generation of MMO, and it needs to be stopped.

The current level cap at 50 and the subsequent increase in iLevels without further raising the cap is evidence enough that we don’t need higher character levels, and I believe it would probably confuse matters both for the players and the programmers to increase the level cap to 60, 70, or 99. We also already have a system in place for obtaining new class abilities that aren’t on the class/job list with the level 15 and 30 class abilities that remain invisible until the quest is completed.

My actual proposal is to continue using the idea of gaining abilities from the class/job quests that we went through every five levels. This would give us a system where we continue receiving class and job quests whenever new abilities are to be added that wouldn’t require us to gain new levels to do so, so they could be added at any time it becomes convenient. It doesn’t even necessarily need to be evenly distributed.

Example #1 is, of course, Summoner. With Leviathan being fought now and soon to be Ramuh followed by Shiva, there’s a lot of primal energy that Summoners could be tapping into, but they’re stuck with just Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda right now. In a world where the level cap is increased, they’ll get those three right away, but what happens with future primals? Summoners again have to wait on a new level cap before they can access those energies. And then they have to wait again for the next set after that and again and again until new primals stop appearing. Instead, why not have the Summoner, still at level 50, complete a job quest and then simply add the new primal summon to their list of abilities?

I can understand the desire not to just have every new quest available right from the outset, but we’ve already been shown any number of ways that stuff can be limited: completing FATEs (please don’t make it random EVER AGAIN), obtaining myth/sol tomestones (of reasonable numbers that aren’t over 9000/900), completing dungeons/trials for key items (again, no random), having a certain iLevel when obtaining and turning in the quest (actually makes the most sense but is rather easy to front-load), turning in a number of rare/hidden gathering items or HQ crafting items, specific points during the storyline quests, etc. Other methods could be added as well, such as completing new hunting/crafting/gathering logs, higher-level Guildhests, special levequests, attaining higher GC ranks, achievements, or even as rewards from the Gold Saucer.

This works for every job, it allows abilities to be learned out of order or skipped entirely, and it can even be used for learning additional class traits or job-specific traits. On top of everything so far, you can even add ranks to these new abilities similar to PvP abilities, with limits on the number of rank points that can be assigned to each ability so each player can choose to improve what matters for their own personal playstyle.

In conclusion, I think that this method really has no limits on expanding character options, whereas the level caps can only limit the expansion of character options. So please give us abilities through methods that don’t involve raising the level cap.