Thoughts on Level Squishes

[Morningstar1337]

Hello I make this to express my opinions on Level squishing for this game, as well as open a discussion on it.

Level Squishing refers to a practice where MMO developers reduce the total amount of levels players have and scale the content back to match. This seems to be done as a way to give more room for additional “levels”. The reason I am making this thread is because I think it is highly likely that one will happen in the future, mostly because the developers isnitence on sticking to a set amount of skills on average would mean that the longer the game lasts the more thinly spread out the skills are. There are a couple of things a LS will entail.

1. Obviously this means that the Level cap will be lowered and the content will be scaled, how much so would depend on what the content is. The key thing to note is that experience points would likely be scaled back, the other key thing to note is that ideally you should still access the same amount of content you did before the squish.
2. Gear would also be adjusted. OOH the likely change is likely sust what level you can equip the gear at. OTOH, the game also feature item levels, and due to them progressing in patch content as power creep when the level is capped at some multiple of 10, they had greatly outstripped the regular level by 50, so there's a chance that they might want to try reducing the ilevels as well.
3. The Skillset is the reason I’m making this post, a Level squash would allow them to become denser per level but here’s the rub. Whereas you might have 30 skills by the time you reach Level 50 again as in ARR, you would still not have 30 skills by the time you reach ARR’s patch content, not without some reorganisation. ALS might still provide the devs with an opportunity for reorganization.

I think there are a few ways the Devs can go about it.

• -40 Levels, 10levels from X.0-X.55. ARR is unusual compared to the expansions in that it has a total of 50 levels, Therefore bringing them to parity with the expansion would be a decent start, from there is the other half of the suggestion, speaking out all 10 levels thought the entirely of the repstive patch content’s MSQ, leaving five for for X.0 and one for each of the patches. The cons of this approach is that 1. It's only applicable to past expansions unless the devs want to do level cap upgrades every patch and 2, a fair number of (ARR) leveling dungeons will share the same entry level but the level capped dungeons would hold the reverse as it would depend on what patch is in, however this is mainly true for Stormblood and Shadowbringers. Using MSQ required dungeons as an example, Praeteorium would be Level 5, Snowcloak would be Level 9, Keeper 10, Sohm Al 12, etc etc all the way to Heroes' Gauntlet at 48 and Matoya’s Relicit at 49. The primary issue would be compressing 49 Levels worth of content into 5, as well as experience scaling and where the Raids fit into this, as we’re using ilvl requirements and order of release to determine its new level of entry, it is a matter of whether or not they should be all at X5 all at X0 or be like the dungeon with one at X5, then X7 and then X9-X0.The current raids shouldn't have this issue bar the devs,again decided to start players off with 5 levels this time and then add one more per patch. Of course the option to have all patch content remain level capped is still available, in which case ARR is just scaled to the pacing of the expansions with a lot more dungeons.
• The WoW method: From what I gather Shadowlands bassiclay halved its current level cap from 120 to 60 however its closer to 120 to 50 since the last 10 levels are obviously for the new expansion. I can see a similar scheme here. Halve the Level Cap to say 40 (from Shadowbringers’ 80 as an example) compress all the content into 30 levels, and then have 10 for Shadowbringers. Now obviously this won’t exactly be the case as we’d likely ebaina later expansion by the time levels get squished, but this is likely how it would play out. Alternatively they could just go for a 2:1 ratio including the new levels in which case to use the Shadowbringers example again would bring it up to 45 total.

Now regarding the skillsets, Again a LS alone would not help making pre-endgame content more engaging, if anything it might realize the fear of being stuck going to Halatali HM with only 2 buttons a reality if done poorly. As such I think if SE decided to do a squish they they should take the opportunity to frontload about 5 abilities in the first level (a basic attack, a role dependent utility skill, an AoE attack, a role skill like Raise or Provoke and a Cooldown) and then add a skill per level up to a certain point, then 1 every two levels from that point. That day we can maybe recapture the magic that made ARR so fun but that is maybe kicking the can down the road a little. Another opportunity would be to change the Class and Job quests with some retcons as some of them are about skills that players currently can’t use (Topaz Carbuncle’s tanking, Royal Road, etc).

[BokoToloko]

Level Squish is a good way to keep the game fresh for newcomers as expansions pile up, but the heavy focus on the linear narrative of FFXIV makes things complicated, as far as leveling progression goes for newcomers.

[Deceptus]

If not a level squish, a stat squish definitely needs to happen.

We're going to be hitting 200K hp soon and 20K+ DPS

[Berkilak]

Doesn't make sense for FFXIV.

WoW's expansions are temporally confusing and completely disjointed. Speeding leveling only made this more problematic as you never actually finished any stories before moving on.

FFXIV is very strictly linear. It flows. You are required to take this singular path and see it through to completion. There are no problems generated by this process that would be "solved" by a level squish. Any "fix" would be entirely cosmetic as the same amount of content will be waiting for you regardless.

[Recon1o6]

I'm fairly certain yoshi-p or some other dev mentioned in an interview they are looking at a stat crunch for 6.0 or 7.0 to combat the rampant hp tanks are getting
I expect a level cut would come with it and its needed. Assuming the devs don't try to fix what we already have for jobs

Personally, a stat and level cut would be good, on the condition that the devs go back and overhaul the jobs. Include nonessential cross class again for added fun, and restore some of the old actions we've lost overtime with no replacement

Went into Squadron yesterday because I wanted to get into a dungeon as a monk. I felt like a weakling compared to my class using ai teammates! ACN using 3 dots, bane, shadowflare (a swiftcast shadowflare at one point!), my conjurer used aero 1 and 2, and fluid aura with damage of all things. My tank had tempered will, convalesence, bulwark and flash!
It was a lot of fun, more fun than I had in dungeons for ages and I hate dungeons a lot.


Edit: I haven't really explained why I think it might be a good idea- it would force the devs into not having as many empty levels in progression. Assuming the devs don't fix the levelling kits which is likely given shb's jobs, cutting out as little as 20 levels would make the empty gaps in levelling much smoother

Sadly it won't do anything for the myriad of other problems in the job gameplay we have in Shadowbringers unless the devs buckle up (homogenisation, poor levelling kit placement, useless buffs, buffs unseeable without 3rd party tools, playstyle destruction, gap between dps and tanks/healers, monotonous rotations in tanks/healers, lack of weaving on some jobs, skill redundancies etc)

[Eshura]

I think level squishes should happen any time after 50 and before they get to 100...

[Theodric]

I'm not really a fan of the idea. I like seeing the stat numbers rise alongside character levels. FFXIV also follows a strict path of progression since you need to advance through the various expansions in order. Furthermore, adjusting every bit of content both past and present in order to scale properly is a massive undertaking and will only serve to distract the development team even more than they are already.

[MsQi]

Stat and level squishes serve no purpose in this age other than to disrespect personal progression and to placate people who are scared of big numbers. They should not be doing things just because Blizzard does them.

That said there are ways to avoid an ever increasing level. 99 or 100 is a good place to stop leveling and then move on to alternate forms of character progression. They can have lateral expansions with parallel storylines. Adding a manual level sync feature would help a lot here.

[Dyvid]

I don't think we need a level squish like WoW, maybe a stat reduction. But you can't just keep adding levels either. I would say the games level cap should be 99 (Final Fantasy level cap). Then have a merit system or something to add new abilities and stuff.

Level Squish is a good way to keep the game fresh for newcomers as expansions pile up, but the heavy focus on the linear narrative of FFXIV makes things complicated, as far as leveling progression goes for newcomers.

This is true though and Bliz did a good job for newcomers to chose which xpac they want to tackle rather then one huge hike to the top. Not sure if FFXIV could do the same though with it's linear storytelling.

[Berkilak]

Asininely large numbers are a bit of a Final Fantasy tradition. I don't mind them at all. WoW only needed to do it because their engine was limited (and the last boss of the expansion before the first squish had 3-4 health resets because player power was so high). If we run into the same issue, fine - squish. If not? Keep them getting bigger. FFXIV's stat improvements are also nowhere near the exponential rate of WoW.