Level Cap Increase

[Takfloyd]

I've been wondering... once the game has a few expansions, there's no way players will be forced to play through hundreds of hours of main quest to get to current content.

What will happen then? I really don't want the story to be "missable" if you don't start playing before a certain expansion comes along, they already did that once and that's enough.

Best way would be to overhaul the story and cut out all the fluff quests I guess. How did FFXI do it?

[HeavensSword]

It would be nice if there was more depth to the quests and your character like going adventuring for tough to find or reach items to increase your level. One of the reasons people liked XI so much is because it felt like a real journey, like an actual adventure. You weren't like "I'll just teleport to that zone and walk 45 seconds and *boop* done".

I agree, after writing my initial joke reply, I was getting a bit nostalgic the more I remembered doing my level cap quests in XI. I would love if they actually added Maat to XIV lol.

[kyuven]

You will not be able to level to 60 unless you buy the expansion.
Instead of a quest, you will merely have to buy the expansion.
There's no practical reason to include the raised level cap for free, as it's a major incentive to buy the expansion and there's nothing in the base game designed to carry you from 51-60.

[Makado]

I agree, after writing my initial joke reply, I was getting a bit nostalgic the more I remembered doing my level cap quests in XI. I would love if they actually added Maat to XIV lol.

Yeah I mean it was awesome discovering new areas, going in somewhere and being like "wow how will I tackle this and what will I find?" Having to actually plan your day iut, what your gonna take on your long journey to stay alive. I know 14 isn't that kind of game but I do hope they add some extremely large "adventure" areas in the game at some point similar to sky / sea in 11. It was cool having missions and quests that were actually tough instead of "talk to NPC A then NPC B" or "kill these monsters with 10 HP". They could do with some more puzzles to make you think or remember past events or actually make quest fights hard so you have to think about it.

[Dgsoil]

Best way would be to overhaul the story and cut out all the fluff quests I guess. How did FFXI do it?

By making you do hundreds of hours of quests to get to current content. At least till Abyssea came out, I dunno about after that lol

You didn't get to bypass anything in 11, if you wanted to do Sky content, you had to unlock Sky the old fashioned way. Sea? Same thing. Do those quests, catch up. It wasn't a very new player friendly game to begin with

[Niwashi]

I sure hope there's a quest or something to unlock the level cap increase. It would sort of suck to have to do nearly all the level 50 content at 60 followed by starting the new expansion content already being at 60 rather than getting to advance as you do the expansion content.

EDIT:
(It would be nice if it's a per-class unlock, so as we bring each class up, we can spend a while with it at 50 doing 50 content before moving on. That's probably too much to hope for though. More likely, unlocking the level cap increase will unlock it for all classes at once.)

[Niwashi]

I've been wondering... once the game has a few expansions, there's no way players will be forced to play through hundreds of hours of main quest to get to current content.

What will happen then? I really don't want the story to be "missable" if you don't start playing before a certain expansion comes along, they already did that once and that's enough.

Best way would be to overhaul the story and cut out all the fluff quests I guess. How did FFXI do it?

Not unless they refund the money we paid for the game. Those "fluff" quests you want to cut out are what many of us are here for.

Anyway, I'm not sure about XI, but I think the most usual pattern is that the content from different expansions isn't dependent on each other (even if each is dependent on the base game). After all, someone may purchase the 4.0 expansion without having purchased the 3.0 expansion. They can't be required to have completed content they don't have access to. On the other hand, since expansions require players to also have the base game, they can require having done the base game's content. (The story is likely to work best if you do all the expansions in the order they were released, and may have some odd gaps or inconsistencies if you don't, but they can't feasibly be required to be done in a specific order if each is a separate purchase that players may or may not have.)

[Lemuria]

DoW jobs will have to visit their respective trainers and imbue their job stones with ancient power. DoM jobs will have to access forbidden magic with their respective trainers to imbue their stones with additional mana.

DoH jobs will have to craft the most exquisite gear in all of Eorzea, only to be told their work is amateur at best by a much-better crafter who then gives you 'advanced training' to become even better. DoL jobs will have to mine/fish/harvest the rarest items in all of Eorzea only to be told there's millions of them if they know where to look. Cue rare item hunter extraordinaire and new training.

DoH jobs still wearing artisans because SE hates us and all the level 60 gear now costs more than the combined wealth of the Ul'dah monetarists.

#predictionsforffxiv3pointoh

[Gralna]

I've never been a fan of lvl cap increases, it's basically a way for devs to reset the entire game instead of building on what's already there.

Played DAoC for 12 years and they never once raised the level cap, this resulted in literally hundreds of items for max lvl characters to sift through to try and create gear templates around one or two items they really liked. Every expansion I looked forward to trying to reoptimize my templates.

This oversimplification of stats, gear slots, and most of all item levels makes BiS pretty much cut in stone with no room for any kind of flexibility, you either have the gear or you don't and aren't optimal. Where as when you have hundreds of items all at the same lvl there is no true BiS, especially if you add skills or spells to those items.

Maybe I'm just too oldschool in my tastes for MMOs, but I'm actually dreading having to level up all my classes again, only to having two sets of highest tier gear to choose from.

[aerialrave]

While I don't see there being a quest to actually unlock a level cap increase, I actually wouldn't be surprised if they locked non-expansion accounts out from leveling past 50 and made them keep their cap there. I would assume it's just an automatic account-wide unlock once the game key is registered to your Square Enix account.