Level Cap Increase

[Zumi]

Must have Kirin mount to level up past 50

If that were the case I could already level up past 50

[Alberel]

Nobody's talking about a quest that would let you skip those levels. It's a question of whether there would be a quest to unlock the level cap before we can start earning the XP for those levels (maintaining the current level 50 level cap until that quest is done). Having such a quest unlock would allow players who still have all the current level 50 content to do to have some time where they can do it while staying at the appropriate level for it. Then once you're finished with the 2.x content and ready to move on into Ishgard, you could do the quest to unlock the level cap increase and start leveling again as you head into the new regions.

Without such an unlock, people are going to end up already being level 60 before they complete even a tenth of the 2.x content that was designed for 50, and then all the Ishgard content intended for leveling up 50 to 60 is wasted because you're already 60 before even reaching the beginning of it.

This is actually a very good point. All of the quests from 2.1 to 2.5 require you to be level 50 and are required in order to access Ishgard... Even if the quests reward no xp, the content itself will cause you to be well on your way to 60 before you even have access to the expansion. With this in mind it suddenly does seem likely to me that there will be a quest within Ishgard to unlock the ability to make the 50-60 level progression. I didn't think it likely before but I see no other way to handle this now...

[Purrfectstorm]

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?

There was a great reward at the end of the CoP quests at least. SE should've done that with FFXIV story quests too. Then even though you don't have to do the quests, you for sure would want to.

[kyuven]

This is actually a very good point. All of the quests from 2.1 to 2.5 require you to be level 50 and are required in order to access Ishgard... Even if the quests reward no xp, the content itself will cause you to be well on your way to 60 before you even have access to the expansion. With this in mind it suddenly does seem likely to me that there will be a quest within Ishgard to unlock the ability to make the 50-60 level progression. I didn't think it likely before but I see no other way to handle this now...

Other than, y'know, having the quests themselves continue to not offer EXP.
They also said the road from 50-60 is going to be as long as the road from 1-50, so make of that what you will.

[Purrfectstorm]

Other than, y'know, having the quests themselves continue to not offer EXP.
They also said the road from 50-60 is going to be as long as the road from 1-50, so make of that what you will.

As a player who actually loves leveling, I think this would be great and I really hope it's the case.

[Alberel]

Other than, y'know, having the quests themselves continue to not offer EXP.
They also said the road from 50-60 is going to be as long as the road from 1-50, so make of that what you will.

Did you even bother to read my post? I already pointed out that even if the quests themselves offer no xp the content itself (killing stuff, dungeons, trials) will reward enough xp to have you well on your way to 60.

As for the leveling curve I wasn't aware that they'd made any statements at all yet. I find it very hard to believe they'd make it so steep after 50 given the more casual audience of this game. Care to give a source for that? I recall them saying the story content covering 50-60 would be as long as the 1-50 story stuff but that is not the same thing as the leveling speed.

[StouterTaru]

As for the leveling curve I wasn't aware that they'd made any statements at all yet. I find it very hard to believe they'd make it so steep after 50 given the more casual audience of this game. Care to give a source for that? I recall them saying the story content covering 50-60 would be as long as the 1-50 story stuff but that is not the same thing as the leveling speed.

It takes about 7.7 million exp to go 1-50, and the current exp trend puts level 51-60 at roughly 8-9 million total.

[Felis]

My main thought on the issue comes after working to finish the MSQ on my alts after hearing access to the bulk of the expansion would be gated behind it. It's not so bad in piecemeal over a year, but trying to cram the whole thing out at once is brutal, even with skipping cutscenes. If DoL/DoH cap increase is also stuck behind the MSQ, I imagine there will be a lot of angry crafters.

I doubt that we need to finish the MSQ to earn exp after level 50. It would be just not optimal exp with no access to lv51+ zones.
But to unlock the new lv51+ leves for crafters (if there are some in the expansion) you would need access to the new zones.

[seekified]

The quickest way of doing 50-60 will naturally be to do the new dungeons, so without having finished the 2.55 questline so you can access all that, levelling would be pretty slow. I doubt we'll see a repeat of what the Northern Thanalan FATE situation was in 2.0 - I got my DRG from 41 to 50 in about nine hours of fating thanks to that, which is hardly the way you're meant to experience the game.

[StouterTaru]

I doubt that we need to finish the MSQ to earn exp after level 50. It would be just not optimal exp with no access to lv51+ zones.
But to unlock the new lv51+ leves for crafters (if there are some in the expansion) you would need access to the new zones.

There will probably be some leves in Ishgard, but there are leves all the way up to 45 at the main cities for DoH that don't require any unlocking (except the ones to deliver to the leve camps) so I would expect level 50 and 55 available right away with 3.0, but I could see them requiring recipes you need Ishgard access in order to craft.