Please change Road to 70. Forcing new characters 90 days bonus exp is a punishment.

[coolskill]

First = how to take road to 70 off of my new character in preferred server?


Second = road to 70 should be changed so it isn't forced onto users.

The road to 70 forces bonus experience onto new characters created on preferred servers. And as far as I understand, it's double exp. And the minimum restriction to be stuck with double exp is 90 days. For anybody who isn't a speedrunner, this is in no way shape or form a reward. It's a punishment. Because to put it simple - it is extremely game breaking, and ruins the game. No amount of level synching mitigates how bad it is. Any sort of workarounds users have to do in order to prevent themselves from getting too much exp is a burden on the user no matter what.

The silver chocobo feathers and the 15 day incentive for level 30 is nice.

But too much experience points during progression towards max is already a problem in standard servers. You should not be getting that much exp. The game becomes too easy. And users leave the game not wanting to play anymore. This is not how RPG progression is supposed to be designed. When it comes to standard servers in this game, exp is already waaaay too much as it is to really enjoy a balanced playthrough of the main content. Even to the point you will end up getting leveled down in dungeons you're supposed to be doing as part of your progression. Despite doing pretty much nothing additional from normal gameplay. And this is on a standard server.

And now preferred servers are forcing additional exp onto new characters. With no option to prevent this for users who do not want the pointless additional exp. Yes the bonus exp is a benefit for power levelers and speedrunners. Typically, these are users who make an alternate character that they just want to level up high because they already played through the actual game normally. But for new users who have never played the game or even anybody else who simply wants to play a main character through the game normally, they cannot do so on a preferred server. Unreasonable amount of exp you get on a standard server is already a major problem inherent in this game. This bonus exp just makes that problem much much worse.

Rather than being forced for all new characters on a preferred server, it should be a consumable item that the user receives when creating a new character on a preferred server. To be used as a choice to the user if they want the road to 70 bonus exp reward or not. If they intend to speedrun the game, then that choice to consume the item for that bonus exp is available for them. If they don't want to speedrun, and just want to play a normal game, then they are not forced into it and stuck with it for 90 days. Because they simply don't have to consume the item. Or they will have it in case they might decide they want to use it sometime later.

This is important because many users might want to start playing the game on a server their friend is on. But what if their friend just happens to be on a preferred server? I myself was supposed to start my main character on my friend's server prior to the latest patch. This was fine because it was a normal standard server. But I wanted to hold it off to start out in the new patch. Because I wasn't aware of the possibility it could change status after a patch. Suddenly, the new patch turned it into a preferred server. Now if I want to start a character on there, I'm forced into that road to 70 bonus exp. And it will be stuck on every class/job I do that is below level 70 for 90 days straight. With currently no ability I know of to get rid of it so that I can simply play the game legitimately on my the same server as my friend.

Furthermore, the most important thing to consider is the entire point of being a preferred server to increase user population. So new users should have incentive to join a preferred server when starting to play the game for the first time and choosing a server. Well when I started the game for the first time not knowing what server to play, I made sure to NOT pick the preferred server in order to avoid the bonus exp. If trying to grow server population, implementing something into that server that will deter new users from choosing it defeats the entire purpose. For new users who are not speed-runners due to wanting to play the game for the first time normally, forcing bonus exp to deter them from choosing a preferred server is a contradiction to the purpose of trying to get users to join a preferred server. Yet only incentivizes users to join servers that are already overpopulated in order avoid the exp bonus. As was the case with my choice on the first character I made on the trial.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

You realize that most instanced content level syncs you? And while the extra exp is nice for most other players, I assume the game still level locks you behind story a bit--even with the new story progression changes. You can still do the game at your own pace. You are still free to wear whatever gear you like (which directly effects your level of play). The faster leveling will honestly only affect open world content and again, depending on your item level, probably not enough for you to even notice. The real bread and butter of this game is Item level, not so much Character level. Killing on the world map is made to be the easiest content. It's the instanced content that is designed to be harder. So I'm not sure why the prospect of leveling slightly faster than normal would matter beyond open world duties (and again, gear is more the factor there) when you can still do the content at your own pace.

Duty Finder has a minimum ilevel setting if you want to do the content at the original setting. As for the world map--just wear gear appropriate for the area. You'll likely not even notice the difference. Just saying

[coolskill]

You realize that most instanced content level syncs you? And while the extra exp is nice for most other players, I assume the game still level locks you behind story a bit--even with the new story progression changes. You can still do the game at your own pace. You are still free to wear whatever gear you like (which directly effects your level of play). The faster leveling will honestly only affect open world content and again, depending on your item level, probably not enough for you to even notice. The real bread and butter of this game is Item level, not so much Character level. Killing on the world map is made to be the easiest content. It's the instanced content that is designed to be harder. So I'm not sure why the prospect of leveling slightly faster than normal would matter beyond open world duties (and again, gear is more the factor there) when you can still do the content at your own pace.

Duty Finder has a minimum ilevel setting if you want to do the content at the original setting. As for the world map--just wear gear appropriate for the area. You'll likely not even notice the difference. Just saying

Claiming that additional exp has zero impact is simply false. As it does have an affect. And extremely noticeable affect even on standard servers.

Level sync is not a valid solution for two main reasons. If you were on level, there would be no need to sync. The very fact you're level syncing implies you're leveling past the content. The second reason is that it is also currently a poor design. It should never sync past the level of the base level requirement. But it indeed goes multiple levels past. Thereby, not even legitimately syncing. Not as bad as Guild Wars 2 level down system which is horrendous. But bad enough.

Bonus exp does indeed make progression way more screwy than it already is at default. Which is already very noticeably screwy due to exorbitant amount of exp being given at default. You can name every workaround under the sun. If there was no problem, then there would never need to be some workaround to go out of your way to make yourself weaker. That's simply senseless. The idea is wanting to make yourself more powerful. But that whole concept of RPG gameplay is out the window in a game that makes you way too powerful.

For any well designed RPG/MMORPG, the user has to be concerned about gear as well as ways to gain more exp to be able to access next level quests. This does not exist in this game because you end up with so much exp that you never ever have to worry about leveling up to access your next quest. When your next quests can even often end up multiple levels below where you already are because of the design of giving way too much exp. Nothing regarding any sort of gear can change this fact. Character level is extremely important and no less important than item level.

[MistakeNot]

It is possible to avoid outleveling content even with the Road to 70 buff, namely by spreading earned XP over several classes/jobs.
Of course, new players won't know to do this until they already have way too many levels compared to where in the story they are and start asking around about this.

[coolskill]

It is possible to avoid outleveling content even with the Road to 70 buff, namely by spreading earned XP over several classes/jobs.
Of course, new players won't know to do this until they already have way too many levels compared to where in the story they are and start asking around about this.

Yes it won't be something immediately understood by new users. But even still it is a workaround. Much better to offer this buff as an option of a way to disable it.

[Lumivyory]

The road to 70 forces bonus experience onto new characters created on preferred servers. And as far as I understand, it's double exp. And the minimum restriction to be stuck with double exp is 90 days. For anybody who isn't a speedrunner, this is in no way shape or form a reward. It's a punishment. Because to put it simple - it is extremely game breaking, and ruins the game. No amount of level synching mitigates how bad it is. Any sort of workarounds users have to do in order to prevent themselves from getting too much exp is a burden on the user no matter what.

Man, I wish we had this buff when I started the game.
I literally don't understand how someone can complain about extra experience. Getting higher level than the quest doesn't make you "speedrun" the game since you will be forced to go through all of the quests anyway. Unless you skip all the cutscenes (the most heinous of crimes) you can't "speedrun" it.

First of all, you can spread exp between classes. Once you reach a certain point (somewhere around lvl 15 quests) the game literally tells you that you can take up other classes and how to do it. All you need to do is read the guides the game kindly provides for you.
Second - do you have any idea how frustrating it is to be stuck 1-2 levels below your next story quest? How frustrating it is to spend a day trying to level yourself just to do a couple of quests and then get stuck behind leveling again.

Honestly, be grateful this buff exists because you know what is worse than having too much exp? Having too little. And having to literally ditch the main quest because you're too low level. And in many cases it can be quite immersion breaking. I love being in a middle of some emergency situation in the main story just for the game to make me ditch the NPCs and go kill some mushrooms in a nearby FATE.
You have no idea how good you have it.

[Anhra]

I would prefer having too little exp over too much exp gained any time of the day, MMO's are grindstones by default and by having a slow leveling experience, being max level actually means something. In our current situation, by the time you reach shadowbringers content, you can easily have 1 max level job for every role (tank,healer,ranged dps, melee dps and a caster) when you consider the additional EXP boosts from free companies and food.

[DPZ2]

Second - do you have any idea how frustrating it is to be stuck 1-2 levels below your next story quest? How frustrating it is to spend a day trying to level yourself just to do a couple of quests and then get stuck behind leveling again.

Unpleasant flashbacks: leveling 39-44 during ARR, before HW came out. It seemed like months to get to the last pre-50 ARR trial.

[coolskill]

Man, I wish we had this buff when I started the game.
I literally don't understand how someone can complain about extra experience. Getting higher level than the quest doesn't make you "speedrun" the game since you will be forced to go through all of the quests anyway. Unless you skip all the cutscenes (the most heinous of crimes) you can't "speedrun" it.

First of all, you can spread exp between classes. Once you reach a certain point (somewhere around lvl 15 quests) the game literally tells you that you can take up other classes and how to do it. All you need to do is read the guides the game kindly provides for you.
Second - do you have any idea how frustrating it is to be stuck 1-2 levels below your next story quest? How frustrating it is to spend a day trying to level yourself just to do a couple of quests and then get stuck behind leveling again.

Honestly, be grateful this buff exists because you know what is worse than having too much exp? Having too little. And having to literally ditch the main quest because you're too low level. And in many cases it can be quite immersion breaking. I love being in a middle of some emergency situation in the main story just for the game to make me ditch the NPCs and go kill some mushrooms in a nearby FATE.
You have no idea how good you have it.

100% as false as can be. It's definitely not a good thing to need to go way beyond out of your way to level up in order to continue to the next quest. However, having to do a bit of catching up is indicative of a well designed game. Oh not high enough, OK there's a FATE nearby that I can jump in. Or something to do here and there. This is because in any standard game, the idea is to gain exp. Not to avoid it. This game by default, you never have to do a FATE or anything else to get the exp. Because you already get so absurdly much by default. So much in fact, you level up past the qualification levels of your main campaign quests. It's a really screwed up design when you already end up having to go out of your way to avoid getting too much exp in order to not level up too fast for the sake of some semblance of balance. Double exp makes the matter much worse due to breaking the game, ruining it in a much bigger way.

If this game was well balanced by default, it won't be too easy to go over the level of the quests you need to do next. Maybe do a side quest or FATE to catch up. And doing the quests at the same level the quest was designed for makes for a more balanced experience and enjoyability of the quests. Being too high level for necessary quests is not in any way enjoyable. This includes having to be level synched for reasons that are not what level synching was ever meant for. Considering it was meant for those who are already higher level to play lower level content with users who are on the level of that lower level content. Not to compensate for a flaw in the design that dishes out so much exp that you end up out leveling the content you're playing. Getting too much exp is a balance killer that totally kills the enjoyability of the game. It's already bad enough at default. All the far worse with road to 70 buff. When you just can't play the game do to being completely pointless due to never feeling like you're actually taking something on. The amount of exp given out to water down this game is already an enormous problem without the road to 70 making the problem double worse.

The only ones who like more exp are late gamers who are only interested in speed running and power leveling to get to late game content. They don't give a crap about the game itself which is namely the base ARR game that applies to everybody no matter what. And the most important content of the game. Which is the most relevant in regards to being an enjoyable experience. As in an actual game. The amount of exp you get all throughout progression is not an actual game. As in something with some semblance of challenge. Even for anybody not looking for something hard core. It's pretty much a joke right now how easy it is.

You should always have too little exp so that you're actually trying to level up. As in trying to gain exp to get to the next level. That does not exist in this game. And the double exp is just super annoying and makes it pretty much unplayable as an actual game that should be about trying to level up.

I would prefer having too little exp over too much exp gained any time of the day, MMO's are grindstones by default and by having a slow leveling experience, being max level actually means something.

While I wouldn't say an MMO necessarily needs to be any sort of grindstone. This is an extremely valid point that you should have to go out of your way to an extent for exp. Definitely not going overboard, but you most definitely should always have too little exp all throughout the game. Therefore, there's some semblance of being an actual game to get to the next level. And 100% getting to high level actually means something when looking back on your journey that was worth it because it was enjoyable. Definitely not how it is now - which is just each and every level handed to you for free. Which makes it a total joke of a game. Getting so much exp that you're outpacing your quests in terms of level is evident of poor design. FF14 isn't alone in this problem. Too much exp is a common problem of quite a few MMORPGs.

Until devs do something about this problem, and balance the actual game better, at the very least this road to 70 thing is something that needs to be addressed. It's no doubt a great thing for those who want it. Such power levelers/speedrunners. For example, you already played through the game, and just want to get an alt to max. Nothing wrong at all with that or nothing wrong at all with users who aren't interested in the actual game, and just want to play late game. But being forced on users who just want to play the actual game on certain preferred servers for whatever other reason, or being forced onto new users unknowingly, is a huge problem. Hopefully, they at least address this so it can be disabled or something optional.

[Payadopa]

With level syncing it's still way too easy so I get where the OP is coming from.