Character Growth: Leveling is part of RPGs

[Ksenia]

If you form a bell curve with those numbers, it hints more towards leveling being too fast than it being too slow. I think if leveling for war/magic was evened out (No PLing, higher levels shouldn't be easier than low levels), than that part would be just be fine. Gathering classes are fine, as well.

I don't support crafting classes being any quicker, period. It should be way slower. People who love grinding need some place to go, and that should be it.

That's the trouble with this game. You start with a bunch of quests, you have a launch number of leve points. When that is done, you go in to a 20 level drought where you are forced to grind your guts out.
It isn't a matter of 'is too fast' or 'takes too long' it's a lack of consistency. Most people who play MMO's know the regiment and 45 is half way to 50. They see these huge grinds at 25 and they assume it's 1000 times worse at 45 and say screw that.

Crafting is a whole other bag of bolts. It's by design a mash enter grind because they tied quality to exper so if you are a true crafter and it's in your nature to strive for quality the exper gains will be higher. To combat that, they built in fail. I can't count the number of times I would synth for quality not for the exper but for the quality and end up with botched synth or back to back to back to back fails to drive down the quality by eating the Dura. It really very much forces you to either mash enter or deal with 80% fail/ botch. It's very easy to see the algorithm's and know that you are beating your head on a wall. You just give up, mash enter and grind out the levels.