sorry its a really bad idea to balance the game around the desires of the hardcore audience. While yes, you can get to level cap in 3 days, and get 100k exp parties in the perfect set up, exp is a lot lower for smaller groups, links are more challenging, and playtime in terms of how much they can play in one day is less.

If you really want to be hardcore, that option is available, when you add materia grind to the game, the amount of hours you can spend exping increases exponentially.

As far as linking giving more exp, well that makes perfect sense, it is actually much harder to survive multiple monsters at once than it is to kill one at a time, it is also more fun.

Keep in mind that doing leves, you can get about 8-9k in 7 minutes at cap. which means 8.57 leves per hour, which means 77k an hour. Since everyone said you should be able to get more exp grinding than doing leves, or at least similar, so it didnt encourage people to log off, sounds like 90k for the perfect party in the perfect place is about right.

Understand that you are not the norm, there are people who can only play a few hours a day, and cant form the perfect group everytime they play, everyday. They cant imediately hop on linkshell and make a magic power super party, also keep in mind, even a person just seeking to do one role, usually needs at least 2 50s, or 1 50 and 2 or 3 30+ jobs to be effecient at endgame activities.

The hardcore aspect is in the bonus things, leveling is something every one has to do, balancing it for the best case scenario is bad, they could curve the effects, but i dont think hardcores like having their progress be different for playing harder, see fatigue. Just accept that it shouldnt take the average gamer an insane time to get to cap, just because you can do it in 19 hours straight, your 19 hours is a casuals 80 hours. I have seen people shouting for parties for up to 20-40 minutes, and i doubt these were 100k exp parties, they also have quests to do, marks to get, places to go, etc.


The biggest problem i would say is that crafting currently requires way more resources, and time than any other discipline, this is a problem because a crafter probably has to make a lot more items than there is players who need them, until cap.