Level squish?

[Reinha]

Constantly elevating numbers eventually strains the game's ability to actually process it. WoW started running into the problem before their first stat squish.

I was talking about level squish, not stat squish.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I was talking about level squish, not stat squish.

Tell me how you gain stats again.

[Reinha]

Tell me how you gain stats again.

Tell me what difference it makes if your level is 50 in the UI but you have the stats you have now.

[Jeeqbit]

The reason a level squish could be needed is because new players look at the max level for the game they are playing and see that they need to climb over 100 levels and eventually it looks to steep so they just quit. This is already a problem because of the amount of story to get through and having the level cap give this impression of being too steep as well is not going to help.

I don't think they can just reduce it to, say, 50. You have to consider the problems with reducing it too low. When you start the game, you need to feel that gaining levels is easy, so the first 10 levels you can just kill enemies otherwise it gives the impression that gaining experience is too hard. ARR is extremely long with so many dungeons packed together, so 10 levels wouldn't cut it, but 20 probably would. The new jobs we got in Heavensward start at 30 and you unlock all your starter jobs at 30, so 30 would make the perfect level cap for ARR. Job quests could be rescaled to appear every 2 or 3 levels like in the expansions. This would put Heavensward's cap at 40, Stormblood's at 50, Shadowbringers' at 60 and Endwalker at 70.

The biggest problem would be gear, which would have to be squished to be the same level as other gear and stop being relevant, but we already have a lot of gear that isn't relevant (such as using item level 340 or 370 when 400 is the cap at level 70) and dungeon gear has never been relevant to people who get gear from anywhere else than dungeons, except from leveling dungeons.

Item level could be squished as well. Every piece of gear jumps by 5 when it could just jump by 1. Between level caps it jumps by 3. The result of such huge jumps is that we are on course to get over item level 1000.

The alternative could be to start the new expansion from a low level but players that aren't new would have to sync down and use ARR rotations and feel no level progression.

I remember Yoshi-P mentioning horizontal progression so I think he is thinking about this issue but it's not an easy thing to change because it could have consequences for the way the game currently works.

[Reinha]

The reason a level squish could be needed is because new players look at the max level for the game they are playing and see that they need to climb over 100 levels and eventually it looks to steep so they just quit. This is already a problem because of the amount of story to get through and having the level cap give this impression of being too steep as well is not going to help.

The length of the story doesn't change even if they squished levels. An enormous job to change every level based system in the game for the sake of perceptions? I don't think that's realistic. Without the story gating they could just introduce leveling buffs that let someone gain 3-5 levels per day. The number of levels doesn't matter.

[Zsolen]

10 levels from every expac and you are sooner back to the original problem

[AnnaUK]

10 levels from every expac and you are sooner back to the original problem

I'd love to see a system like ESO - champion points that are account wide.

[Shibi]

The levels are pretty meaningless. It's way too easy to reach level 90 before you leave HW now. So the dopamine hit of a ding and new spells has been trivialised into nothing (this one is a huge driver for me, I love to ding)

[bubblesbutternut]

Do you think this will ever happen, or will they keep sticking another 10 levels on every expac?

depends on the engine they use and because it is an online game with servers overlapping each other, to help fix some of the issues with the overwhelming amount of information that was being issue to the x player to the server and server to x player,
examples of fixes
reducing hp of x player
reducing hp of x mobs
reducing dps numbers of x player
reducing dps numbers of x mob
reducing items drop for x player
rudcing item drop by x mob
to make dungeons smoother for example they removed exp and items and i think items aswell, this is reduce the amount of information being passed from x player to the server and the server to the player making the instance smoother for the player and server
the entire game got this not just the player the reasons are are of course if you squish the player you must also squish the ai and they did so accordingly.
will they do this again in the future it honestly depends will they have to will they have enough servers to compensate for the amount of information being passed, will the game engine be able to handle it.
will the game run still be a mmo before they have to do another full squish who knows,will ffxiv still retain that amount of players for them to consider such a thing who knows

in all honestly to speculate now as a player would not matter to much other than to let the devs know we are concerned about server performance in the future
this would be more up to the dev team to speculate over because they have the resources the numbers the hardware and the software they are the ones that will have to decide in the future if it ever gets to the point again were they have to do such a thing

also after thought Reinha does have a fair point level squish would not matter to much in the grand scheme of things the item level will still continue to go up and up so the numbers of damage from x mob or x player will still continue to go higher and higher
the only thing i would say it would maybe cleaner in the coding and more easy to set x item level to x player level so they can get the job done faster and cleaner

[BaconBits]

I think more than a level squish they need to seriously reconsider when skills are given at what level

Why do 5 classes have no AOE at level 40, why does WHM not get its class gimmick until 74, why does SCH lose abilities upon changing to SCH, why does DRG’s rotation not fill itself out till about 76, why does RDM have no AOE gauge spender at level 50, why does DRK not get TBN till level 70 the list goes on and on

Fix when skills are actually obtained by classes and I think a level squish becomes kinda unneeded

WHM with a single ogcd heal at level 50 on a 3 minute cooldown looking like an absolute fool.

Like good lord, at least move Tetragrammaton down to level 30. You know, the same level as AST's Essential Dignity which not only increases in potency the lower the target's health is but also has a lower cooldown? Someone please make this make sense.