Character Growth: Leveling is part of RPGs

[Soukyuu]

Again, this thread is the vocal minority screaming louder because their position is threatened

The majority says leveling pace is good as it is, with only 20,7% saying it's too fast. On the other hand, the statement from one of the interviews about 2.0 leveling pace being faster seems to cater to the minority (14%) of players. So no, it's not the vocal minority. If anything, it's the 75,3% majority wanting the same leveling speed or slower.

made by the same thirty people

...with the same thirty people trying to beat them into the ground.

[Hyrist]

...with the same thirty people trying to beat them into the ground.

Except that latter 30 beating them into the ground actually represent the current majority. Sorry, you still lose out in that argument.

The Poll represents all players who participated in the poll, regardless of whether or not they use the community site.

To be completely honest, the community site in general has a bad reputation to begin with. Case in point - the fact that there are several threads discussing one topic right now, something that should be locked down upon, but the people who want to raise a stink about being outvoted didn't seem to get the hint in the last round of thread-locking.


As far as the 'interview' stating that leveling is going to be faster. I'll beleive it when I see it. But more importantly, we don't know how the curve extends past level 50, and let's remember that, since Yoshi-p is encouraging leveling multiple classes, any increase in the curve grows exponentially across all jobs.

[Soukyuu]

Except that latter 30 beating them into the ground actually represent the current majority.

On these forums, maybe. Ingame? Who knows.

Case in point - the fact that there are several threads discussing one topic right now, something that should be locked down upon, but the people who want to raise a stink about being outvoted didn't seem to get the hint in the last round of thread-locking.

The thread-locking didn't have much to do with the topic but with the attitude of several people unable to handle others expressing a different opinion in a calm and objective way.

As far as the 'interview' stating that leveling is going to be faster. I'll beleive it when I see it. But more importantly, we don't know how the curve extends past level 50, and let's remember that, since Yoshi-p is encouraging leveling multiple classes, any increase in the curve grows exponentially across all jobs.

I agree. It still is a point worth keeping in mind though.

[Hyrist]

On these forums, maybe. Ingame? Who knows.

Other way around. Majority of poll voters were not forum members. So it may very well be the majority in both cases. Difficult to tell as SE did not release total game population numbers nor total poll numbers.

The thread-locking didn't have much to do with the topic but with the attitude of several people unable to handle others expressing a different opinion in a calm and objective way.

I'd like to agree, but experience has lead me to believe that this is more a mannism of a minority who cannot bear having their opinions regulated to a single thread. They want attention on the issue even though their point of view could be seen as damaging to the majority.

I agree. It still is a point worth keeping in mind though.

To keep in mind yes. But the root problem, as I stated before, isn't leveling. Leveling itself is merely a transition, and the slower it is without substantial content to support it, the worse of an experience it is. Thus a grind.

But what people who are pro-slower leveling are neglecting one major problem, development wise, with their argument.

There is a catch-22 problem involved with creating low-level content. I'll help analyze this now so people can understand that's going on.

There are two major types of of low level content. Repeatable and Non-repeatable.

Repeatable low-level content, suffers two primary problems that cannot easily be addressed without worsening one the other. The first is the feeling of grind. Any repeated action will eventually be boring, so the longer you use the content, the less it feels worth.

Secondary and contary to this is dead content. Once you outlevel the range, that content loses play use. Compare to creating an endgame dungeon which can be designed for long term goals, repatable leveling quest end up having no long-term use or goals for them. Only way to counter that is to make difficulty scaling for levels, which in turn makes it more of a grind.

Idealy, scaling content that has different goals, monster placement, and loot could counter both of these issues, and SE has stated that this will actually happen in their dungeons ('Normal' vs 'Hardmode' runs.)

The other type of Quest, Non-Repeatable, have to have worthwhile goals to be attractive in the immediate term, such as good gear yeild, decent story, exp rewards, etc. You really can't do that without speeding up the process of leveling we already have - and the same thing with doing worthwhile repeatables.

Leveling is going to speed up not because of a lack of content, but rather because content, and therefore rewards, are going to be more plentiful. You will be doing more, and therefore be getting more back for it. The only way to counteract this is to increase the curve, which would be pointless when the level cap goes up anyways, as that will already extend the curve exponentially.

They want players to level multiple jobs and classes. In order to do this, they're expediting the process of leveling by meeting our other requests for more content.

While I am not in agreement with the potential consequence of loss of character and player identity by over-encouragement of multiple leveled jobs. I do see the purpose for it. It's just my hope that in the release of new jobs, players can settle into an individual character identity while still being variable in the types of roles they can fill - but that is another discussion entirely.


To summarize - players wanted more low level content. So they're more one-off quests and storylines to accompany that.

They also want to get people involved in dungeons early adn throughout, but not done at the waste of created content. So they created tiered difficulty instances and dungeons.

The consequence of this is more content to level with, and as a result, faster leveling all around as there are multiple sources to level from that are impossible to tone down without making one of these elements not worthwhile to do on their own.

Therefore, leveling will be faster, but we're likely not going to care as content will carry us up, rather than flat out grinding. What will matter instead is that there is enough endgame content to sustain the playerbase at the end of the level rise. Which, between Legatus, Dungeons, Primal Fights, Primal Hunts, Relic Weapons and PVP, I'd say they've got a good starting point for 2.0.

People are going to still argue, however, as they view portions of this game in isolation from each other, with little to no information to go on. The augments will change once everyone is in the beta.

[SuzakuCMX]

I would assume anyone who didn't take the poll felt dandy about the leveling speed, or else they would've felt strongly enough to come on the mainsite to complain about it.

[Ingolf]

If leveling is a grind fest then I'd rather them leave it out of the game.

If they can make leveling fun then they should make it fun long lasting content. As it stands, leveling is inbetween.

[Jeronlmo]

Going to repeat this same thing again, because people keep repeating the dumb poll.

Kinda late in this thread i guess, it was the first responce, but they linked this http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/46535 .

But if you would read down just a bit... like the next few lines of text.

"50% of you thought the pace of leveling was just about right, while 20% felt it was too fast. And then there was the 10% who had more to say on the matter.
For most MMOs, you might expect around 60-70% of players to respond with “too slow”, but as the current leveling speed for FFXIV is intentionally set at a higher pace, I’m fairly satisfied with these results."

If nothing else, he admits its set at a higher pace than normal.

[Felis]

The main problem are the levels 40-50. If SE can reduce the exp you can earn in this levels or increase the exp you need to level up, it would be ok. The last 10 levels should always be longer than the first 20 levels, not the other way.

[Seif]

People only complain the length when it's delivered in a boring way.

You don't hear people complaining about the length of Xenoblades Chronicles for example.

You can never have enough of a good thing and the only problem now is that the actions we're doing in the game just aren't that fun.

I for one want to be able to progress in this game for years to come but at the same time I understand why people are complaining about this. Cutting the game shorter doesn't make it better. I'd rather see them addressing the problem with a better battle system more story content actually a LOT more and better made story content in all areas of the game.

Long story short. Don't stop working on the game and don't think cutting it shorter will distract from the fact that these people just don't care for a massive portion of your current product.

[Aceofspades]

Agreed. Not too sure if XI was bareable because of content between LVLing or if it was the action of LVLing itself. Pretty sure it was the action of LVLing tbh. When it takes, on avg., a week for somone to get from 10-20 , hitting 20 was kinda a mile stone , not to mention the actual mile stones in the game, for instance, traveling to Jueno for the first time on your own with no choco, getting your choco in jueno, getting your airship pass to lvl past 35, ect , ect. Fact is there was more to celibrate in XI BECAUSE it was 10x more difficult. Maybe its a new generation of gamer, or just a layzier version of the same generation. honestly I dont know and dont care. Cant blame SE for accomidating these gamers as they bring in the money that keeps the game going , but certainly there is a way to balance out casual content and endgame content, Used to be that the LVLs were the great dividers and casual gamers accepted the fact that they would not see endgame content untill they achived such lvls. Just pray that Yoshi P realizes that his hard core gamers need ensentives to stay , making all the content easly atainable simply becuase of :: on the forums is not a good reason to do so. If you want endgame content and you are a casual gamer, would certainly be a hoo of you to understand that said content shouldnt just be handed to you with a weekends worth of work, or grind or questing. You should be forced to earn it as should anyone who decideds they want endgame content. This of course is my own opinion in wich I am sure somone dis agrees.

Look at the alternative, it either that or use "endgame content" in a recycled fasion that just eventually blands said content to the point of being unintersing alltogether.