Character Growth: Leveling is part of RPGs

[FallenRaine]

I never accomplished anything in XI, it was too hard for me.

9yrs of playing ffxi and i never got gear either lmao. my first 75 and main was Pld and when I'd get into a Ls they would have a main tank that gets all the gear. even being backup tank i wouldn't get gear because someone who never came to events on Pld would be nxt in line or some bs.

And this happened to me in several linkshells over the years til i gave up on pld about a year b4 abyssea came out and got Blu to 75(when ppl didnt wanna pt with them still Refresh problem) and couldnt use it in endgame hardly either.the job lock on that game was ridiculous. if you didn't have a certain job lvled you were getting the short end of the stick.

Yea my pld was in demand,of course... but to be made to main tank dynamis week after week after week.and to kite in sky..only to watch a friggin MONK get first dibs on pld gloves just so he can complete a gear set on a job he never used for the LS and no one knew he had. something i could have used to keep main tanking for them lol so lame...maybe thats why everything is RNG in this game because the point system LS would set up for gear drops in ffxi was unfair at times.

[Ingolf]

Abyssea completely changed XI for the better in regards to casual players. It isn't instant gratification, but you can log on for 30 minutes and work on something and actually make progress.

[FallenRaine]

Abyssea completely changed XI for the better in regards to casual players. It isn't instant gratification, but you can log on for 30 minutes and work on something and actually make progress.

yea pretty much i quit like 3 months after it came out but i might go back for my Blu just to much fun.only got 1 piece of af3+1 lmao

I don't see the problem with slow lvling it took me like a year to get my first 75(pld) between school and work. And i didn't feel to far behind maybe just gear wise.

[Duelle]

I don't see the problem with slow lvling it took me like a year to get my first 75(pld) between school and work. And i didn't feel to far behind maybe just gear wise.

Gear was one of several problems FFXI had. Itemization was pretty terrible between rare drops with stats, and a ton of gear with either worthless stats (elemental resisatances come to mind) or no stats at all. The CoP crafter sets pretty much shows how stupid their approach was; stuff like Luisant and Trader's sets having no stats NQ and good stats HQ are pretty much the epitome of alpha/omega itemization.

[Jeronlmo]

This "actual" progression of which you speak, is what made 11 beatable. Abyssea is a joke, i solo'ed my ninja empy in like... 10 days or something, literally solo'ed nin/dnc. Then shortly after did about 60% of my whm empy before I asked myself "why and I playing this if I can solo the best weapon in the game".

People like/love to say its not asking for things being handed to you, and I guess you will never understand, that it is.

[FallenRaine]

Gear was one of several problems FFXI had. Itemization was pretty terrible between rare drops with stats, and a ton of gear with either worthless stats (elemental resisatances come to mind) or no stats at all. The CoP crafter sets pretty much shows how stupid their approach was; stuff like Luisant and Trader's sets having no stats NQ and good stats HQ are pretty much the epitome of alpha/omega itemization.

i would be in pld af in endgame and one Ls leader told me that i was wearing exp gear... i was like yea... why do you think i joined your Ls?

[Judge_Xero]

I always liked exping my characters, in all RPGs I've played. Here in FFXIV after the balance of EXP that sort of satisfaction has been removed. I'm happy for you if you think that it's perfect as it is, I wanted just to say that maybe it sould be balanced a little better... This is my opinion.
I simply don't look at leveling as a mean to do endgame contents, but as a content itself. As in any other Final Fantasy......

Balancing is pretty good IMO.

1) Casuals can actually get 1 lvl 50 in a decent amount of time
2) Hardcore can get all 50's in a reasonable amount of time.

For casuals: grabbing all Sidequests in each of the cities and then completing them while you do leves is a great and fun way to level a class. The sidequests are both funny and compelling IMO.

i have every class capped and have since november or somewhere around there and i say leveling is wayyyyyyy too fast. i guess you were wrong.

Lots of hardcore players have for a while. Botters were even faster.

[Soukyuu]

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.

I feel like we're talking at cross-purposes here (is that how you say it in English? lol).

The majority from the poll wants the speed to stay the same as in 1.x, the minority wants it to be faster than in 1.x. YoshiP making it sound like the leveling will be faster in 2.0 means the majority wants it to be slower in 2.0 (=same as it is now) and the minority wanting it to be faster than now.

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.

<snip>

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.

I agree with what you are saying, and with the recent clarification that "reaching lvl50 in short time" doesn't mean it's going to be as fast as people might think (see Rein's translation thread), I think we can rest assured it won't really be much faster than it is now, if at all. Or maybe it will just seem faster with less grinding on mobs and more questing.

If that's the case, I hope they won't go the way Tera and some other recent MMOs are doing it, by making you move to the next area once all quests are completed, leaving half the world deserted as time goes by, with quest largerly consisting of "kill x mobs" or "go to y, kill x, bring back z"