Is leveling broken in this game?

[SniperDaria]

I have been playing for about 6 weeks and I am level 70. I have been doing only MSQ and unlock quests for the most part. No side quests, roulettes, leves or fates. I am still constantly so over-leveled for the content I am doing that everything is trivial.

In addition, I keep hitting dead zones like at 50 and 60 where I can't get job quests or gear upgrades until I slog through 40-50 MSQs at which point I enter the new expansion even more over-leveled.

I just hit Stormblood and I am 70. I asked in the Novice Network and was told I should be in ilvl 400 gear at 70. I was told I could get the tomestone gear at Rhalgr's to get to 400. I looked it up and I won't be able to get tomestone gear at Rhalgr's until I complete the Stormblood MSQ. I have literally 90 MSQs to go through to get to that point. By then I will be almost 80. So I will be level 80 before I am able to get the gear I need at level 70.

It just kind of feels really broken to me. I do enjoy the story, but let's face it, most of the quests I will have to slog through will be fetch quests and busy-work and it's really hard to find the motivation to slog through all that just so I can get gear which will be trash to me at level 80..

[Niwashi]

If you're only playing one job, then yes, the leveling pace is pretty broken. You can try adjusting for that by alternating between a couple different jobs (maybe more if you wanted to add in some of the optional content as well) rather than trying to do all the MSQ quests with the same one.

It's not perfect: you can end up with times when you're still over-leveling and other times when the job you want to switch to next isn't high enough and you have to grind for a bit. But at least it's closer. If you're around level 60 in your quest progress, you could try running them as dancer or gunbreaker. (At least those would start near where your quest progress is. To use one of the others as an alternate job, you'd need to level it up to 60ish first.) Once your quest progress catches up to your Bard level, you can bring bard back into the rotation, doing at least a portion of the MSQ with it.

Oh, and even doing the quests on-level, most of the open world fetch quests are still going to be really easy. At least not completely trivialized, though, and the rewards will be more useful.

[Hasrat]

You don't really "need" gear that's any better than the content you're running. If you're not running 70 content until you've reached the point to unlock it, you don't really need 70 i400 gear. You just hit Stormblood, so at best, you should be somewhere around i270.

More to the point, you're playing through the story at a point where experience has been buffed a time or two, in addition to those 50 and 60 quests now giving exp where, previously being level cap, there was no exp to grant for those quests.

But, what difference does it make? Even if you were at-level, those quests would still feel like fetch quests to slog through, because, really, that's what most of them are. Busy work. Most of MSQ, most quests in general, are rather trivial, whether you're overleveled or not. Anywhere that it actually matters, primarily instanced content, will force a level sync on you, so that, again, being overleveled doesn't really matter, you're brought down to be equal to everyone else running those instances.

In conclusion, don't be so concerned with "gearing up" for the level you are. It only really matters to be geared for the content you run.

[Avenger]

They have talked about streamlining some of the pre-expansion msq lines, especially the lv50 quests which filled out the end of 2.x.

Leveling is definitely much faster now; the advantage (and probable purpose) of this is to make it easier to reach the current expansion and level cap in the same amount of time, without having to resort to things like level jump items or starting all jobs at lv60.

Also: do you have a leveling buff on your server, or free company xp bonus, or an xp item equipped? If so then it will be even faster. You are probably getting the rested bonus as well, and in the future you will get the armoury bonus.

The good news is that you can try out multiple jobs and also not worry about leveling until you hit Shadowbringers. If you feel instances are too easy you can possibly try min ilvl sync.

[Avenger]

Regarding gear, dungeon, NPC shop, and/or crafted is fine for leveling until you unlock poetics gear, though there may be a bit of a discontinuity immediately at 50, 60 and 70. The artifact sets you get from job quests can help a bit until you hit the next level or unlock tomestone gear for that level.

After you unlock poetics gear, it is great for leveling other jobs.

[Niwashi]

But, what difference does it make? Even if you were at-level, those quests would still feel like fetch quests to slog through, because, really, that's what most of them are. Busy work. Most of MSQ, most quests in general, are rather trivial, whether you're overleveled or not.

There's a difference between easy and trivial. If you need to get past a bunch of mobs to reach your destination, but you can kill them without too much danger of dying, then it's easy. If you could one-shot them with an auto-attack, but don't even need to because they're ignoring your existence completely, then it's trivial. When on-level, fetch quests are easy. When you're significantly over-leveled, they're trivial.

It doesn't take too much imagination to see adventure in an easy quest that you still need to actually do all the combat for. So while easy quests may not have the excitement of difficult content, at least they don't break immersion and ruin the story the way that trivialized ones can.

Leveling is definitely much faster now; the advantage (and probable purpose) of this is to make it easier to reach the current expansion and level cap in the same amount of time, without having to resort to things like level jump items or starting all jobs at lv60.

That's the intended purpose, but they overdid it a bit. If you're leveling faster than you can get through the story (even when skipping all the extra stuff besides the story) then it's not getting you into new content any quicker. All it's doing is trivializing the content you're on in the meantime.

[Hasrat]

Eh. Disagree. the only fights you actually need to engage during MSQ are the "rescue NPC" type quests. Or, I guess more accurately "stand in this zone and enemies will spawn. Open world monsters are just as easy to simply run past or away from. Sure, you could stop and fight anything that aggros. But it just becomes a waste of time when all you want is to get through the quests. And, going back to the spawned mobs for quests, they're typically also significantly easier compared to other mobs in the region, again, somewhat trivializing the fights. Can't really think of any such quests where I put much effort into doing anything more than bare basics to get through.

"Imagination." "Immersion." These are things for players that want to be invested in the story. For the players that see quests as thinly-veiled busy-work directing you from A to B, trying to find yourself caring about the in-between fluff is just extra work.

I'm genuinely not saying your wrong. I enjoy taking time to explore new areas and get a feel for everything. I somewhat enjoy playing along with the story. Definitely find the enjoyment you can. Just, different players take different things from the experience.

Idk. Not trying to put you down or argue or anything. Just, for some, for me personally I guess, just takes a little more effort to care about fights I clear on autopilot half asleep. At-level or over, won't really change enough to make a difference, personally.

[MistakeNot]

I have been playing for about 6 weeks and I am level 70. I have been doing only MSQ and unlock quests for the most part. No side quests, roulettes, leves or fates. I am still constantly so over-leveled for the content I am doing that everything is trivial.

In addition, I keep hitting dead zones like at 50 and 60 where I can't get job quests or gear upgrades until I slog through 40-50 MSQs at which point I enter the new expansion even more over-leveled.

I just hit Stormblood and I am 70. I asked in the Novice Network and was told I should be in ilvl 400 gear at 70. I was told I could get the tomestone gear at Rhalgr's to get to 400. I looked it up and I won't be able to get tomestone gear at Rhalgr's until I complete the Stormblood MSQ. I have literally 90 MSQs to go through to get to that point. By then I will be almost 80. So I will be level 80 before I am able to get the gear I need at level 70.

It just kind of feels really broken to me. I do enjoy the story, but let's face it, most of the quests I will have to slog through will be fetch quests and busy-work and it's really hard to find the motivation to slog through all that just so I can get gear which will be trash to me at level 80..

If you are levling just one job, and have a bunch of XP bonuses - then the leveling pace can indeed be too quick. Best solution for that is to level two or perhaps even three jobs in parallell so the XP gets split between them.

As for ilvl.... ilvl 400 is the really good end-game gear for level 70. When you have just reached level 70 you are expected to have around ilvl 285-290. And that's for the early level 70 quests.
The gear you need is not dependent on your level, but on the level of the quests you do.

[SniperDaria]

You all make some very good points. I guess I don't really need L70 gear just because I'm L70 if I'm only doing L60 content and it's already too easy.

It is kind of confusing but I'm currently at ilvl 341 just using my L70 Bard gear and accessories I bought pretty cheaply on the MB so I guess I will just quit worrying about it and enjoy the story

Once I hit L80 none of this will matter anymore anyway.

[Stepjam]

Just so you know, your stats are basically gear dependent. Even if you are lvl 70, you'll do lvl 60 damage with lvl 60 gear.