Character Growth: Leveling is part of RPGs

[Leira_Raine]

Only wanting to throw my two cents:

Here in my mind, I found that, "The journey is more important than the destination." I'm sure most of you have heard of this saying, and after getting to 50, it is actually quite true. I LOVED exping in 14. Endgame I feel like there is no more progression, and I feel lost. Not to mention not a lot of people seem to want DRG for their endgame events (people would then say level something else, but I wanted to play the game with my favorite classes of all time, even in endgame). The journey was the most fun I have had in this game. I was always competing with a close friend, or just giggling and laughing through deaths. But after all that, it feels like, what now? I did all the story quests I needed to do. I tried leveling other classes, but it just does not feel the same. Honestly, I like the leveling progression. I do not powerlevel or have anything to do with it, and I do not get into grinding parties. It wasn't fun before on other servers, and it won't be fun now now or in the future.

OP, I totally agree with you. I say do not make the leveling slower or faster, but throw in more challenges along the way (which they are planning to do anyway, so I'm happy).

I also do not care about overleveling for anything to the point that it makes a challenge too easy. I'm not in FFXIV for the endgame, I'm in it for the journey to that with my friends.

[Duelle]

Endgame I feel like there is no more progression, and I feel lost.

The game has nowhere near the amount of content needed for "progression". We don't have a 10-man Stratholme, a 20-man Dire Maul, 40-man Molten Core, AQ20 and AQ40, 40-man Naxxrammas and so on.

Not to mention not a lot of people seem to want DRG for their endgame events (people would then say level something else, but I wanted to play the game with my favorite classes of all time, even in endgame).

This is more due to encounter and class balancing still not being near ideal and old habits from this community not dying as quickly as they should.

[Churchill]

The more classes you guys want them to add (I want none), the harder it will be for them to balance their usefulness, in turn more of the available jobs will be left out of events. Dungeons aren't easy, and efficiency is always going to be king.

That said, having only one job available for end game hurts you even more. Most strategies rely on many people changing jobs mid raid, the inability to do that makes you far less useful than if you had DRG+THM/ARC or DRG+MRD.

You could add 15 more jobs like XI, and still 8 or so would be used.

[Duelle]

The more classes you guys want them to add (I want none), the harder it will be for them to balance their usefulness, in turn more of the available jobs will be left out of events. Dungeons aren't easy, and efficiency is always going to be king.

This depends on the approach to balancing. If you sacrifice functionality for "uniqueness" (the way FFXI does), then yes you're going to have the "ace jobs" that everyone wants to end game and the "lol jobs" that are nothing but fodder and just something for you to level.

I'm more in favor of creating rosters for the different roles in the group to give people at least a semblance of real choice. If the tanks are WAR-PLD-SAM-BST, healers are WHM-Green Mage-Geomancer, melee DPS are DRK-THF-RDM(!)-DRG-MNK, and ranged DPS are BRD-BLM-RNG-COR, and balance them to perform near equally, there's less of a chance of people neglecting jobs. As I've often mentioned, there's a joy derived from playing the class/spec/job that you like in the content that matters.

[Enma]

You want middle-level content?! It's easy! Put capped events (CoP). But I don't think it's a good argument say that because there is no interesting (Totorak?! LOL) mid-level content so you should hit 50 as soon as possible...

[darkstarpoet1]

You want middle-level content?! It's easy! Put capped events (CoP). But I don't think it's a good argument say that because there is no interesting (Totorak?! LOL) mid-level content so you should hit 50 as soon as possible...

toto-rak has more involved in it and is actually more interesting than any of the higher level dungeons

[Scotchio]

It's not just the levelling speed. (I would like it to be a bit slower).

But I would prefer to party on single mobs that take some time to kill. At the moment we have combo's and most mobs in these "group mob" xp parties aren't often alive long enough to pull off a full combo.

And they want to re-introduce Battle Regimens, like skillchains. The current xp mobs would never be alive long enough to do them.

I don't want to only use them on boss fights. I would prefer longer battles in xp parties. With a balanced party. With having different melees to skillchain (Battle Regimen) and mages to Magic Burst (or what ever the FFXIV equivalent might be).

Even in FFXI, it turned into a weapon skill spam. I just really enjoyed the times with a balanced party, Skillchaining and magic bursting, was so much FUN.

[Churchill]

That type of exp was only used because the combat, TP, and pDIF/Level correction system was designed so poorly and our gear was so bad and irrelevant.

[Soukyuu]

toto-rak has more involved in it and is actually more interesting than any of the higher level dungeons

That aside, the real reason we don't have low-to-mid level content is because the game faceplanted at launch, so the only people left were high level ones. low-to-mid level content was sacrificed to keep current players playing.

This is going to change with 2.0, hopefully, where they will aim the content at all levels - meaning it will be worth it to actually do some lower level content, so the current leveling pace (without the PL) is perfectly fine.

The problem is one of the recent interviews mentioning Yoshida-san saying something about FASTER leveling speed than we have now. We don't really need a faster pace, as the player poll confirms. Maybe he was talking about adjustments, we will see.

[Deltara]

It's not just the levelling speed. (I would like it to be a bit slower).

But I would prefer to party on single mobs that take some time to kill. At the moment we have combo's and most mobs in these "group mob" xp parties aren't often alive long enough to pull off a full combo.

And they want to re-introduce Battle Regimens, like skillchains. The current xp mobs would never be alive long enough to do them.

I don't want to only use them on boss fights. I would prefer longer battles in xp parties. With a balanced party. With having different melees to skillchain (Battle Regimen) and mages to Magic Burst (or what ever the FFXIV equivalent might be).

Even in FFXI, it turned into a weapon skill spam. I just really enjoyed the times with a balanced party, Skillchaining and magic bursting, was so much FUN.

You have summed up my feelings nicely.

We are given all sorts of cool abilities to use and the mobs are all dead before we can use them. The Twelve forbid we have an additional effect that is a debuff. What's the point in putting slow on a mob, (or pacification, or dispel, etc) when it dies in less than 10 seconds because that is the "intended" time for an encounter.

Mob difficulty (or at the very least, their hit points) should be increased, in turn increasing the capability of pty members to use their abilities while xping. Before you argue that xp would be shut down, it would be perfectly fine under this system to increase xp awards.

Instead of fighting 8 monsters in 30 seconds for an average 1000 xp each, i would rather fight 1 monster for 2 minutes for 15k xp. (or however they would choose to balance the real numbers.)