The recent “All battle classes at level 50” trend – Plans to adjust the EXP received?

[Darkvalkyr]

I'll let you know that your story about getting almost a whole/more than a whole level farming crafting mats was exactly what I expect out of levelling in the game. It sounds like fun! I can do something and get EXP for it. Better that than grinding for hours with a party, IMHO. There's nothing 'adventurous' about a grind, there's something adventurous for doing content and levelling up for it. Why else did I enjoy Shposhae so much? I got lots of loot, I explored a new place, but to top things off mobs weren't hard, and I got EXP!

[Hanemakikaze]

Talk to me after you've played PSO, OP. Max level was 200, you want long grinds that's your game...although that was actually the one fun grind in any game. The rate at which we gain levels on this seems just fine and well paced. Especially for the fact that you make very decent progress when even doing small things like farming, leves, soloing etc. I dunno why you have a problem with well paced progress but let's not lower exp.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

Reading most of the posts here, it appears that many people have misinterpreted the OP's post, which was even anticipated.

@Cloudio, I wholeheartedly agree on the adventure side of things. The all 50 war & magic had almost been an acceptable trend to me before 1.20. Before 1.20, it could grant significant effects such as being able to cross over many end skills, allowing you to further boost your preferred class. Now with all these class exclusive traits and abilities, the cross over factor has lost it's flare and only leveling up beyond a certain point only grants the option of versatility for "endgame".

But it *seems* like folks are leveling up for the sake of leveling up... which as you said, wouldn't make sense to those that don't see it from your standpoint.

Shortly after I did story missions, I felt like, "Whew, I really got to see more parts of the world!" Granted, enemies usually were the same type in some places and if they weren't, were too high to even engage.

And though it's uncharacteristic of me to explore for the sake of exploring, I did so, using aetherial gates and finding different monsters as my objective. Took some screens, took note of areas that could vary it up from "raptors and amal'jaa stronghold" from 40~50. Later that week, some shellmates were looking at doing the aetherial gate run achievements, joined them, had a great and memorable time in La Noscea.

I came to your conclusion though as a 27 Gladiator tanking in Toto'rak. Attempts to succeed at the dungeon slowly advanced my rank. I enjoyed Gladiator in this type of content and did not want to jump to 45 just to participate in the next form of the content as this preferred class. I held onto it for a while... cracked for a moment and continued playing it until level 32. And stopped again, wanting to wait for 1.20 (and now Paladin) to come out before I advanced any further.

When it comes to spending time in the game, it's making the most of the time in the game. And to most, that means the highest XP ratio they can think of it, rather than a memorable journey that happened to level you to the "end".

[Zdenka]

The problem with making it a grind is there is no mid-range content worth doing.

FFXI was fine if the grind took a while because you had:

18: Subjob quest
(level subjob)
25: Nation Rank 3
30: Advanced Job quests
40: AF1 Quest
40: BCNM40s
50: Limitbreaker
51: Limitbreaker 2
52-54: AF Coffers/Key Farm Parties
56: Limitbreaker 3
58-60: AF3 Quest
60: Rank 6 mission Shadow Lord
60: BCNM60s
61: Limitbreaker 4
65: Level is high enough to farm gil off many L50 mobs (Okotes, Pcharm, Amemet-in party)
66: Limitbreaker 5
71: Limitbreaker 6
75: About 4 different time limited end-game activities (Yes sky was time limited with 3-6 hour pops)

And that was all in release (NA release)


FFXIV has:

25: Toto-Rak
20-30: Story Missions
30-36: 3 short JSQ's
35: Mid-Range NM (which no one does)
50: 3 endgame contents (Darkhold, Ifrit, Moogle) and arguably only 1 is worth doing.



Theres your reason right there why having a slower staggered leveling tree won't work with FFXIV in its current form, since it is a pure grind with no stops to 50.

[RemVye]

List of poop

You made quite the one sided list, very nice.

You're calling limit breaks something to do? They were just roadblocks with poodoo drop rates that caused frustration.

You're calling L50 "farm gil" something to do? Why didn't you include that into FFXIV's list? Hmmm bias

You gave "leveling subjob" it's own line? Why didn't you include leveling alternate classes in FFXIV's list? Cross class abilities are pretty essential.

You put the 'Nation Rank' quests in FFXI's list? Why didn't you include the Grand Company missions in FFXIV?





Anyway, we all know this game lacks content... why even debate that? The thing is SE knows it too and they aren't putting in low / mid level content because they are not really looking for new customers right now...they actually said that...

They are catering to the current players for now, which are for the most part at end-game.




See you again space cowboy.

[UmJammerSully]

Grinding monsters is neither a challenge, nor good content, so no, I don't want reduced exp. If leveling a job was actually fun? Sure, reduce it if you want, but sadly, after grinding for several hours, it is no longer fun.

This.

I agree with your overall attitude but Slower EXP does not equal ADVENTURE like you're suggesting, and I'm not sure how you even came to that conclusion.

Currently most of the game's worthwhile content is at endgame. Leves are basically just short bursts of grinding and story/GC quests are pretty subpar. We get one decent dungeon at level 25 but that's pretty much over in flash.

In my opinion, the only way lowering EXP speed would be justified is if there were way more interesting dungeons, fun quests that require a party or cool new enviroments to explore on the journey to level 50. I look at newer MMO's like The Old Republic that have meaningful content all the way up to level cap and I question whether or not I'm playing the right game.

EDIT: Just read the post above mine which makes a valid point. It's probably going to be all about engame for now, at least until 2.0 anyways.

[Felis]

And that was all in release (NA release)

inclusive first expansion pack

FFXIV has:
25: Toto-Rak
20-30: Story Missions
30-36: 3 short JSQ's
35: Mid-Range NM (which no one does)
50: 3 endgame contents (Darkhold, Ifrit, Moogle) and arguably only 1 is worth doing.

Story missions are 1-46
you forgot the lv15 dungeon and grand company missions
And what is JSQ?

[Cthulhu]

So imagine if in Oct. we read in the 2.0 notes "Link bonus has been abolished." How do you feel about the amount of time it would take to get to 50 now?


/em waves goodbye to 10k wolf camp pulls.

[Macha]

And what is JSQ?

They probably mean "Job Side Quests", e.g. 36 Culinarian quest.












I remember doing leve link parties back in July, and getting a higher XP rate, assuming I didn't have fatigue. In the groups I've been doing the past two weeks, we averaged about 40-50k an hour, which was in the ballpark with the "Big Four" groups I did.

Nothing has changed as far as how much XP per hour we get is, it's just the way we *GET* XP that is different. With leves, what was keeping people from leveling at the rate we are currently observing was that you didn't have leve allowances -- if you weren't fortunate enough to get doubles, you had one of each leve per reset (assuming that you didn't finish your leves so that you could keep them in your queue).

The game is designed in a way it is highly encouraged to not specialize in one class-- so for those who need to get something like... sentinel, quickly, so that they could do Ifrit, the ability to level a class easily so that they can do endgame content is ideal.
If it were the case that a class could stand by itself in a fight, relying on ONLY its class-specific abilities, then I may agree with you. Most MMOs only let you play one class per character. This one does not.

I don't have all R50s because I don't have the time to rank all of my classes, nor do I desire to because I don't see an immediate payoff to rush it all. Leveling itself lacks any need for strategy and it's repetitive, which makes it so boring. I never found much adventure in it. I know the outcome of most of my battles when I am grinding, there is no surprise. I see no reward in leveling unless I need to do it for endgame content--which is the only time we get something new... and even then, the novelty factor wears off after a while.

I will side with the "all R50s group", but for a slightly different reason. I think they have a right to complain about the lack of content. What's the point in playing a game where you can predict what's going to happen? R50s log into this game and AFK in town because there is nothing to do. With each new patch, there is new content, but when the next patch comes around, the old content is useless. (Remember how the Darkhold Gear, which was the best in the game at the time, became absolutely crappy as soon as Ifrit came around?) There's no point in going back to the endgame content from previous patches if we already did it, there's nothing useful there anymore!

The old, useless endgame content -- the dungeons, were supposedly for experience (I forget the exact terminology used when they were describing them before release), but even when they were released they were only good for one thing: Items. It's a shame. I liked Totorak, with its multiple bosses, too bad the XP was no good.

This game shouldn't be a grindfest, it should be enjoyable--it should have variety.

Monotony sucks.

TL;DR There is no adventure in leveling up, there was no adventure in leveling up. There probably will never be an adventure in leveling up, unless they make the low level dungeons useful. The only adventure we have in this game is short-lived, and that's the endgame content.

*gets off of soapbox*

[AdvancedWind]

BS

Nice bias, bro. Let me play your game:

FFXI:

1 - Grind
18 - grind grinding license for a sub job
18a - grind subjob to grind your main job
25 - grind nation quests
30 - unlock the job you actually wanted to play
1 (again) - regrind the new job
(don't forget to grind another subjob for your new job that is the only one you want to play for now)
40 - start grinding gear
50 - grind grinding license 1
51 - grind grinding license 2
52-54 - grind keys
56 - grind yet another grinding license
60 - grind more gear
60 - beat the final boss, save Vana'diel! -not
61 - wanna grind more? Grind another license first!
65 - Farm gil to grind more
66 / 71 - unlock your grinding-fu once again
75 - Grind your bots @ 3AM, in four different ways!

(all levels) - Grind your /shout in town for hours so you can start grinding

FFXIV -

1 - grind cnj to 2, pug to 6. You can now start grinding the job you really want;
10 - Main quests and sidequests
15 - farm keys in shopshae
20 - start path of the twelve questline
20 - first job quest
25 - start grand company quests
25 - Toto-Rak
25 - Start doing faction leves
30 - Caravan escort, company leves
30 - second job quest
36 - third job quest
40 - tier two company leves
45 - tier two caravan security
45 - endgame factions!
45 - key farming
45 - Karakul fleece farming, farming is content after all
50 - 3 endgame content you can do whenever you want

didn't even list crafting and gathering content, are you even trying FFXI? lolol



Disclaimer: The above post is a joke. Don't take it seriously