Thoughts on Level Squishes

[Wyakin]

Dps has virtually tripled every expansion. It’s getting over the top now.

[Absurdity]

My question would be, why exactly would that be considered "over the top" now, why not the numbers we had in HW or SB? What number you consider "over the top" basically boils down to subjective opinion. I don't consider the numbers anywhere near ridiculous until we get into the millions per hit range for example and someone else might consider anything above a thousand to already be over the top.

[Kaurhz]

I think we will hit an inevitable stat squish with 7.0 or somewhere therebefore, especially since they already had some 'minor' issues with numbers back in 2016 (HW), at least as far as crafting was concerned

[Wyakin]

My question would be, why exactly would that be considered "over the top" now, why not the numbers we had in HW or SB? What number you consider "over the top" basically boils down to subjective opinion. I don't consider the numbers anywhere near ridiculous until we get into the millions per hit range for example and someone else might consider anything above a thousand to already be over the top.

It’s over the top because of two reasons. FF is known for the 9999 damage limit. Yes there are some games which had break damage limit but generally speaking. Secondly, from a balance perspective it’s much easier to balance numbers around HW than current levels

[DPZ2]

When the numbers reach the ridiculous proportions they did in WoW, a 'squish' might be in order.

For some background, by the end of Mists of Pandaria, high-end raiders had over 500,000 health and were dealing over 200K damage per second. Raid boss health was starting to max out the roughly 2 billion Hit Point limit of the underlying variable.

I don't believe we're anywhere close to those kinds of limits at this point.

[SavishSalacious]

content

This will never happen.

If you played any other FF game, they stop at 99. This is not wow, we are not going to level 600.

[jamjeeshoul77]

Jesus no. Number progression is a quintessential part of RPGs... I do not understand why people are so afraid of big numbers. I never will. If they don’t want to get levels too high, stop introducing new levels at 100 or something. But again, numerical representation of player power increasing due is a huge part of RPGs and always has been. Please don’t put this idea on squenix’s head...

[Morningstar1337]

Jesus no. Number progression is a quintessential part of RPGs... I do not understand why people are so afraid of big numbers. I never will. If they don’t want to get levels too high, stop introducing new levels at 100 or something. But again, numerical representation of player power increasing due is a huge part of RPGs and always has been. Please don’t put this idea on squenix’s head...

For clairty's sake, I made this thread less because of a fear of big numbers (Disgaea is one my my favorite game series) and more to see if that could solve the issue of SE removing skills and spreading them out so many levels (because they seem hell bent on a maximum amount of skills). More button creep concerns than stat/power creep.

Plus I think they might leave the ilevel system alone as that is where the actual power lies.

[linayar]

For clairty's sake, I made this thread less because of a fear of big numbers (Disgaea is one my my favorite game series) and more to see if that could solve the issue of SE removing skills and spreading them out so many levels (because they seem hell bent on a maximum amount of skills). More button creep concerns than stat/power creep.

A level squish wouldn't really solve that "issue" because the skills will still be distributed over the length of the expansions.

[Jandroid]

The expansions in World of Warcraft are extremely disjointed which is why a level squish would benefit it a lot. When an expansion launches, much of the content is isolated on the new expansion and you wouldn't actually lose much by going back. The addition of Allied Races changed it a bit but not by much. WoW also has a heavy focus on end game content while FF14 focuses on the journey as a whole.

Although WoW is a genre defining MMORPG, it has lost a lot of what made it an RPG and has focused a lot more on the MMO aspects of the game. Unlike WoW, FF14 feels more like a JRPG-MMO/RPG-MMO than an MMO-RPG. FF14, to me at least, feels like it prioritizes being a Final Fantasy game than it does being an MMO game.

Another thing to look at is that WoW is the kind of game where you really don't miss much by purchasing a level boost. On the other hand, level boosting as a new player in FF14 is like starting an anime in the middle of the season instead of the beginning.