Please make the new level cap 99 instead of 100

[VentVanitas]

I too would like the cap to stay at 99 or 100 for every expansion going forward. They're already having a hard time trying to fill in the spaces between levels (which is especially bad for jobs like SMN, or the healers) whilst trying to stay under a limit of too many buttons. We can see this with how many useless fluff traits the game has like Melee Mastery or Maim and Mend that are there only to fill in the gap between levels and nothing else. Increasing the level cap even further is only going to make this problem worse.

[Vyrerus]

I'd rather have this game be its own thing instead of stifled by having to be like every other franchise title.

Out of curiosity, in the other FF games was 99 the max level because the game ended at that point (or at least was going into the final battle), or was there more content added that didn't contribute to character growth?

The original Final Fantasy had a level cap of 50, but usually you ended the game between level 28~35 depending on how lost you go/how much you ran from battles etc.

The second Final Fantasy did not have levels, but attributes capped at 99, though due to how multipliers were multiples of 4, increasing a stat to 99 didn't yield any benefit versus having it at 96.

Final Fantasy III was the first game in the series to have a level cap of 99, and due to its sheer length, you were likely to be over level 50 by the end. And needed to be to withstand the damage of the bosses.

Final Fantasy IV had a level cap of 99, but you'd be mid 50s by the end of the game, and more than strong enough to beat it. Also, levels after 70 could cause negative growth for all party members except Cecil based on RNG.

Final Fantasy V had a level cap of 99 but also ability ranks for every job. Ability points were actually far more powerful than raw levels, but raw levels exist to help out the weaker jobs.

Final Fantasy VI had a level cap of 99, another far away goal that serves no purpose in merely completing the game.

Final Fantasy VII had a level cap of 99, same deal as 6, but you might want it to take on Ruby/Emerald weapons.

Final Fantasy VIII had a level cap of 100, but it also had enemies that scaled with your exp level, and so leveling up was actually a disadvantage for the player. Especially compared to making use of the Draw and Junction system.

Final Fantasy IX had a level of 99, but again, you'd finish the game without it rather easily, and could beat its super boss without it, too.

Final Fantasy X had a level cap of 99

Final Fantasy XI had a level cap of 99 once it reached Seekers of Adoulin, but added in item level gear that actually adjusts your level to be higher when you wear it, capping at level 119 (this is not like XIV's item level ). It also introduced Master Levels, basically another 51 levels that more or less cause your physical level to be i119 without gear, though you still wear i119 gear for insane stat boosts.

Final Fantasy XII also has a cap of 99.

Final Fantasy XIII had weird story gate level caps. Not sure what it let you cap at by the end. XIII-2 had a cap of 99 though.

FFXIV's initial cap was 50 (yay FF1 reference). 99 would not be unwelcome

FFXV's cap is 120, but I think it was originally 99. I think they raised the cap due to having those DLC stories and people having to wait for them or something? It's weird.

FFXVI's cap is 50 on playthrough 1, 100 on NG+. You hit these through playing the game organically if you do the sidequests. No grinding is required, as far as I know, and it more or less helps little in fighting things as player input is far more important since it's an action RPG.

So more or less, outside of the MMOs, level caps were just things you could aspire to do to pat yourself on the back/have an achievement. They usually cap it at 99 but not always. Nothing as ridiculous as level 812 in Dark Souls though. Or max overall level in Runescape.

[Moonlite]

I have a feeling they will keep level cap at 100 for the rest of the games life and find alternative progression/leveling in future expansions. They could do job points/master levels like ff11 or some prestige type thing.

11 level was capped because of technical. Now they have gear level that lets you get past what should be 100.

[Nebelheim]

11 level was capped because of technical. Now they have gear level that lets you get past what should be 100.

Yeah i know that ilvl gear being job mastered and the new master levels essentially is like the equivalent of being level 150 roughly. but since its confirmed that level 100 is going to be the cap and there thinking of adding alternate progression they could add systems similar to 11.

[BRVV]

Final Fantasy X had a level cap of 99

For sphere levels... this hardly matters

Final Fantasy XIII had weird story gate level caps. Not sure what it let you cap at by the end.

Also hardly matters. The roles have 5 levels but that is only accounted for for their passive effect if i recall correctly. The parts of the skill tree are locked by story progression.

That's why strategies for FFX and FFXIII usually say how high certain stats should be

[CaptainLagbeard]

I would rather have 99 be the max as a homage to the most of the FF games.


As for what comes after 7.x... There is always the option of going back to ARR and doing a little bit of trimming on the levels, ARR does not really need 50 levels anymore.

[Sotaris]

And what after Dawntrail? I rather have SE stay consistent with it.

Also how you think that goes for the established gear progression? Also the levels would have to scale differently in power gain cause one less level.

Rather have them focus on actual meaningful content for the next expansion than throwing away dev time for a random homage.

FF11 stopped at 99 with iLvl and job point progression for endgame. I don’t think we will see that here but offering an example.

Sooner or later we will likely see a level squish like WoW did.

[Mikey_R]

I personally have no issues with going to 100 or above, it is just an arbitrary number representing power after all.

As for using different ways to increase power, this is essentially just levelling with a new skin, all so that the level number stays at 99/100. Seems silly to make a new system just for that.

[Themarvin]

well in this game 99 is not the cap.

The older FF games used to count 0 as level 1... hence why you got it those ways.... so caps would not be like 10.000 damage but 9.999 damage etc.

[Iscah]

They should really stop the level-creep and add more meaningful horizontal progression to the game because it has quite literally zero. I can't imagine unironically trying to level a job from 1 to 100 manually without losing my mind in the process.

There's no horizontal progression because the vertical progression would render it worthless once the power level was increased.

And the process of levelling 1 to 100 is going to be no different to the current process of 1 to 90, which players work on daily without suffering mass mental distress.

If anything, what they need to do is shorten the early half of the process by boosting the armoury bonus EXP for secondary jobs at lower levels – say, raise it from a 100% boost to 200% below level 50 or even 60 – so people spend less time at low levels dragging everyone down into low-level dungeons because it's all they have access to.