Old Zones and New Jobs

[Ticks]

Just thinking - wouldn't it make the old zones relevant again if they started the new jobs at level one? And also to level sync dungeons down to the lowest level player?

It could help the brand new players sense of community a lot sooner

[Dragon_punch]

The only place that would have life would be Quarrymill for Palace of the Dead. They would need to have a new activity for older zones to bring people back to those areas.

[Vidu]

To answer your first question: No, it wouldnt. The first 30 (or even 50) levels are nothing but a (fast) slug. It wouldnt serve for anything but to generate (a little) playtime if you had to get up those jobs from 1-30/50. Do you even remember getting your jobs from 1-15 until you were able to go into your first dungeon? I do. It didnt took long, but it also was extremly unfun, to only have 3 buttons, not even all being useful, not having actual rotations and trying to do level 3 FATEs with your chocobo - or just jumping straight into PotD.
How would having to grind 15 levels make the old zones relevant again? Not even the new zones actually are, besides beast tribes and hunts. The open world is pretty to look at, but most of the actual PvE-stuff happens in instances - personally I'd say thats for the best, seeing how well open-world bosses like S-ranks and special FATEs work...

To your second suggestion also: No. Dungeons will always be a 3 level range from the minimum level you need to enter, to the level you'll be synched to if you're above that. That seems more than enough to me. Please explain how it would make a difference to a new player or create a better sense of community if everyone in their party gets synched to their level, instead of being up to 3 higher? Honestly, I doubt it matters much - being level synched is painful enough at it is already and all you'll accomplish is taking away more stats and skills from players who have outleveled the content long, long ago.
Quite frankly I believe this would do more harm than good - I cant see any good, but I could see the potential harm of not only being upset that you got a low-level dungeon at a high level, but furthermore being rob off a skill you'd get with the next level because that sprout happen to be just at the entry level.

[kikix12]

Palace of the Dead is not, actually, all that great. You don't get experience from mobs there, only the fixed experience from finishing the dungeon. But you know what?! That experience doesn't get a bonus from having a high level character.

If a person have maxed character they will level faster through regular dungeons at lower levels. They get such a massive bonus (I think about 200% at ~lvl 30) that it will significantly outdo the palace of the dead experience. You can actually get two levels from a single standard run of a dungeon easily. I have never gotten two levels from palace of the dead as far as I remember.

Now...I may actually remember it wrong, but it's a food for though for those that do still use the palace heavily. It may prove a good idea to go and do the highest level dungeon available to check whether you're really using your time efficiently. Unless you're DPS without a healer/tank friend...Then yeah...


As for the job from lvl 1, there is a lot of good to it. It will be available as a starting class for new players/characters, for one. It will not require going through tons of quests to unlock either, making newer players have a lot of time to familiarize themselves with their preferred class rather than having to "slog" through 50/60 levels of a class they do not even want playing (which makes the slog that much worse).

[Vivi_Bushido]

Sadly, everyone would just do PotD and even if they didn't it wouldn't revive fates when dungeons are still better exp, and they have to be for the sake of queue times.

Also, it's not related but maybe it is in an indirect sort of way, but I actually hate having new job quests in old zones. Why am I doing level 60-70 quests in La Noscea when I should be in Doma or Ala Mheigo.

[InkstainedGwyn]

As long as side quests give jack for xp and there's no non-dungeon-crawler way to level, nope. PotD takes maybe 20m to go from 51-60, and the xp at the end of that is far more than you'd get grinding mobs. And trying to encourage nothing but grinding mobs as a way to level sounds like Pagos all over again, tysvm no.

They'd have to put some sort of alternative questline with msq-equivalent xp to even come close to being as efficient as PotD. FATEs are already everybody's bane; they could drop candy, mounts, and housing deeds and people still wouldn't want to do them.

[Bonbori]

Ugh, nooooo thank you. I remember levelling Machinist and Astrologian because I wanted to try them out since the moment I started playing and didn't want to progress the HW storyline until they were both caught up.

I didn't know about POTD at the time (well I did but didn't realise I could use it for levelling) so the process of catching up on both of them was the worst, most mind-numbing, repetitive log and dungeon grind. By the end of it (reaching 50-something, where my scholar was), all my excitement for those jobs had vaporised and I was this close to never playing them again.

Eventually I returned to Machinist and forced myself to keep levelling because I love playing gun classes and I didn't want to give up on it without giving it a real chance. It was ONLY after like... level 62? 64? That the Heat gauge mechanics were functional and the whole job actually started to make sense. And I decided I liked end-game MCH after all.
Even so, I never ever do 50/60 or levelling roulette on MCH anymore. I simply refuse to play it at any level below 70, it's a horrible jumbled mess that only, only works at the level cap. I still love it... but its design is a travesty and you can't truly appreciate just how bad unless you've levelled it up the hard way. I really could have done without that experience.

I tried to do the same for Astrologian but even after getting it to 70, it just failed to click with me, completely not my kind of healer, absolutely subjective playstyle incompatibility, and what's worse, I didn't enjoy the story. In the end I decided that the time I'd invested into levelling it was a total waste and I wished I could get days of my life back. I think once my goldsmith desynth is high enough I'm going to put my star globe through the blender and pretend it was just an embarrassing phase my character was going through, which we should both put behind us and never speak of again.

On the other hand, I never had the same problem with Red Mage and Samurai. They both start at a level where their kits are basically complete, containing all the tools you need to learn the basic rotations their gameplay revolves around from that point on, and then further levels just add more intricacies on top of that. Also, I appreciate the trust. Both jobs immediately plunge you into deep water, but by that point (lvl 50) you are already expected to know how to swim.

Anyways, done ranting now, back to the point: new jobs should start at a level that best demonstrates their core gameplay. There is no reason for a job unlocked at level 50 and gated behind an expansion and a lengthy MSQ prelude to start you off at level 1, 30 or really anything below 50. If you're far along in the game to be playing an expansion, you shouldn't need to be introduced to every individual ability one level at a time, you can get that from reading tooltips and doing job quests. At that point, the game revolves around complete rotations and that's what the introductory level of a new job should already be able to emphasise, allowing you to decide whether you like it or not without asking for an upfront time commitment.

[Bubble_Oseven]

Maybe give an option when picking up the new Jobs to start at either level 30/50 or level 1. I would have loved the option to have started my machinist and red mage etc at level 1 rather than being forced to start them at 30 and 50. I was completely overwhelmed by getting all the abilities at once rather than getting them one at a time by leveling up from 1.

But i also know that's not for everyone, which is why an option would be nice.

[InkstainedGwyn]

Maybe give an option when picking up the new Jobs to start at either level 30/50 or level 1. I would have loved the option to have started my machinist and red mage etc at level 1 rather than being forced to start them at 30 and 50. I was completely overwhelmed by getting all the abilities at once rather than getting them one at a time by leveling up from 1.

But i also know that's not for everyone, which is why an option would be nice.

PotD is actually a good way to do that. Go in at floor 1 and you start at level 1, and you get your skills gradually. It's how I learned to play RDM. I don't advocate learning "base gameplay" in PotD because aggro is usually nonexistent and the mobs are glass cannons, but for actually learning what skills do, it can be quite useful. Just go in by yourself or with 1-2 other people just so that you're not lawnmowering everything.

[ArumatKelewae]

New jobs starting at level 1 means SE needs to implement new weapons from level 1 to 29/49. I do not see that happening.