Power-leveling is absolutely BROKEN

[Xatsh]

Pwrlvl is not the cause of people leaving but it is compounding the issue. About 50% of the content the devs are adding is low level content. There is enough content for low level players to keep busy for months if they play without a pwrlvler.

Now the game has a lack of new players, no one will doubt that... and this game is designed for group play, no one can deny that. New players get the game and cannot get a group and quit soon after. I seen it happen several dozen time. People I know keep telling me they will come back when people start playing together. Everyone being at cap is making the game alot harder to join as a new player, this is primarily caused by pwrlvling most people only had 2-4 50 fighting classes before it was introduced, now most full time players have majority capped levels.

Old players are taking breaks between patches because they finish everything. When in XI it would take literally years to fully cap out a character here it takes only weeks to months. So there is nothing to fill the void in, and spamming the same thing over and over will get boring. They cannot level anymore because everything is capped, and Leveling alts is simply not an option in this game. So less people online, compounds the low server population, which makes people quit because the server populations are too low and it snowballs.

1.18 and 1.19 added all this low level stuff. Tons of quest, low rank dungeons, and various other things. In my linkshell myself and 3 other out of a linkshell of 40 people who are actually still playing the game been to the limsa dungeon. Alot had no clue it existed. Most the ls done none of the quest, many people do not do leves, most have not done the main storyline past a the required level to get class quest. And this is not uncommon. People are not playing the content the game has... because rank < 20 content is pointless when that is literally 15-20mins of pwrlving.

Pwrlvling benefits no one at all. It turns away the majority of new ppl who cannot get pwrleved, and it makes the old players run out of things to do. The low level content is negated... who wants to farm nms or do dungeons for gear that is litteraly outdated in 20mins of pwrlvling.

So pwrlvling has removed the ability to party for the majority of new players, it has caused dedicated players to take breaks (temp quit), and it is making over 50% of what the devs are working and adding obsolete within hours.

There is literally no positives to pwrlvling, I disagree with it is high lvl ppl and low level ppl playing together... it is low level ppl afking or clicking an invite macro every 30secs while a 50 does all the work. That is not playing together. It does remove the grind though, but sitting there for 3-4hrs at a time doing nothing is less fun then grinding.

So none to very very little positives, with potential game breaking negatives with the current pwrlvl system.

The fix is easy... SE needs to enforce the 10lvl gap. Make it where no exploits will get around it. IF it was trully kept to the 10 lvl spread like I believe SE planned for it to be... no one would have an issue with pwrlvling since normal partying would be better in the end.

This is game breaking whether some like it or not is not a valid argument because no one can deny the negatives as we are seeing it now... It is feeding the lack of content which is the bigger problem. If this is not corrected soon or if the devs do not start churning out endgame 5-10fold faster then they are... the existing dedicated playerbase will start to dwindle. Square is helping dig thier own grave with errors like this, I know they have a lot on their plate. But they should not be so blind as to not notice what is happening in-game. This is an oversite, honestly an exploit. I am baffled why it was not emergency patched as soon as it became known. And no one better argue getting kicked from the party to get around the 10 lvl gap limit was intended.

[Rowyne]

Pwrlvl is not the cause of people leaving but it is compounding the issue. About 50% of the content the devs are adding is low level content. There is enough content for low level players to keep busy for months if they play without a pwrlvler.

Now the game has a lack of new players, no one will doubt that... and this game is designed for group play, no one can deny that. New players get the game and cannot get a group and quit soon after. I seen it happen several dozen time. People I know keep telling me they will come back when people start playing together. Everyone being at cap is making the game alot harder to join as a new player, this is primarily caused by pwrlvling most people only had 2-4 50 fighting classes before it was introduced, now most full time players have majority capped levels.

Old players are taking breaks between patches because they finish everything. When in XI it would take literally years to fully cap out a character here it takes only weeks to months. So there is nothing to fill the void in, and spamming the same thing over and over will get boring. They cannot level anymore because everything is capped, and Leveling alts is simply not an option in this game. So less people online, compounds the low server population, which makes people quit because the server populations are too low and it snowballs.

1.18 and 1.19 added all this low level stuff. Tons of quest, low rank dungeons, and various other things. In my linkshell myself and 3 other out of a linkshell of 40 people who are actually still playing the game been to the limsa dungeon. Alot had no clue it existed. Most the ls done none of the quest, many people do not do leves, most have not done the main storyline past a the required level to get class quest. And this is not uncommon. People are not playing the content the game has... because rank < 20 content is pointless when that is literally 15-20mins of pwrlving.

Pwrlvling benefits no one at all. It turns away the majority of new ppl who cannot get pwrleved, and it makes the old players run out of things to do. The low level content is negated... who wants to farm nms or do dungeons for gear that is litteraly outdated in 20mins of pwrlvling.

So pwrlvling has removed the ability to party for the majority of new players, it has caused dedicated players to take breaks (temp quit), and it is making over 50% of what the devs are working and adding obsolete within hours.

There is literally no positives to pwrlvling, I disagree with it is high lvl ppl and low level ppl playing together... it is low level ppl afking or clicking an invite macro every 30secs while a 50 does all the work. That is not playing together. It does remove the grind though, but sitting there for 3-4hrs at a time doing nothing is less fun then grinding.

So none to very very little positives, with potential game breaking negatives with the current pwrlvl system.

The fix is easy... SE needs to enforce the 10lvl gap. Make it where no exploits will get around it. IF it was trully kept to the 10 lvl spread like I believe SE planned for it to be... no one would have an issue with pwrlvling since normal partying would be better in the end.

This is game breaking whether some like it or not is not a valid argument because no one can deny the negatives as we are seeing it now... It is feeding the lack of content which is the bigger problem. If this is not corrected soon or if the devs do not start churning out endgame 5-10fold faster then they are... the existing dedicated playerbase will start to dwindle. Square is helping dig thier own grave with errors like this, I know they have a lot on their plate. But they should not be so blind as to not notice what is happening in-game. This is an oversite, honestly an exploit. I am baffled why it was not emergency patched as soon as it became known. And no one better argue getting kicked from the party to get around the 10 lvl gap limit was intended.

^ This is an amazing post. I agree 100%. I highlighted the parts I felt were most insightful.

Personally, I believe that Level Syncing is a better implementation of all the concepts and benefits in powerleveling (i.e. helping lowbies, earning better XP than soloing, etc) without the negative baggage ... but that's just my opinion.

^ Absolutely agree.

[Firon]

I'm just gonna take my leave cause you guys don't even know why you hate pling cause all of your points was/could happen w/o pling in place.

[Belial]

Patch 1.20 will usher in: Lower TP Generation, loss of attack abilities to earn TP, longer recast timers on weaponskills, the loss of major cross-class abilities, etc.

Honestly, with new patch this thread can probably be closed now.

[darkstarpoet1]

Patch 1.20 will usher in: Lower TP Generation, loss of attack abilities to earn TP, longer recast timers on weaponskills, the loss of major cross-class abilities, etc.

Honestly, with new patch this thread can probably be closed now.

actually it will just increase the difference in sp gained between grind parties and power level parties. it's not going to matter how much tp gains and weaponskills are changed when a r50 can pull together 20 mobs and 1 shot them while a party actually have to deal with the changes and do things legit. sure the overall sp will decrease, but when the power level parties go from 10x the sp to 15x the sp of grind parties it just makes the issue even more glaring.

I've never insulted you ever DP. In/Out of game or in any other way. I'm saying that:

actually, yes, you have.

[Smashington]

Let's say you want to start a party in FFXIV.

You already have low population. Now subtract from that the players who have all their jobs to 50 already (Some due to PL, some were all 50's before PL was implemented.) Now subtract from that pool those players who are not at all interested in regular parties because PL is so much faster.

There are not 8 players remaining on your server to form a party.

Even if you hit rare fluke and did get a party together, it won't be long before one of the members says "I got a PL coming!" About half the party is ecstatic. What do you do in this situation? Leave the party? Go ahead and let them PL? Do you offer to take you turn doing the killing, or the invite/ousting?

In this way, the availability of PL'ing dilutes the pool of available players wanting to enjoy regular EXP parties below the minimum acceptable threshold.

AFK PL'ing is completely unacceptable in any game. Your watching netflix as you level-up? Reading a book? Why even bother playing?

Are you trying to get abilities you need from other classes? For what? So you can fight Ifrit? Are you preparing for the Dark Moogle? How long can you enjoy these fights (if you enjoy them at all)? A week? A month? Until you get all the gear you want? Gear for what? For new Eng-Game fights that will eek out of SE at the apprent rate of one every 3-6 months?

There is a giant wealth of content that I personally enjoy in simply leveling up classes. I am the kind of guy that gets to the End-Game then starts a new character because I prefer leveling up. SE's answer to mediocre party battles is not to improve them but simply to skip them.

For me, and others of the same mind, SE is sending a loud and clear message that my favorite part of the game is not worthy of attention. If SE doesn't want me to enjoy regular EXP parties, and specifically prevents it from being feasible, then they will get exactly what they want. I won't even try to form a regular EXP party (at least not after a dozen failures.)

It's really too bad that regular party play was so mediocre that at least half of the remaining game population does not mind at all that it has become obsolete.

[Soukyuu]

An official reply would be appreciated.
[SIZE="6"]
Is AFK leveling intended, SE?[/SIZE]

[Sorel]

An official reply would be appreciated.

The last official reply was in post #870 on October 11th. The link is below if you would like to read it again.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...454#post385454

[Soukyuu]

That reply was before the kick/invite method was necessary. I guess they are not aware that we found another way to afk-level.