Please no more levels.

[Slayer25c]

They going to do what 11 did have mastery lvls

[Reinha]

No thanks, I want to level more every expansion. Gaming different leveling systems to get a chunk of experience on a job at launch is fun. It's meaningful to achieve the level cap, since the strongest gear is gated behind it. There are also meta achievements for leveling with cool rewards.

Invalidating old content and stomping it for rewards is part of the fun. The fact that I can go do Shiva Extreme or another old fight for a glowy weapon anytime without waiting for a party to fill up means I can remove some of those old glamours from my dresser and easily get them back if I feel like it someday.

Leveling also resets power so jobs only get a small amount of % increases from stats despite having more stats in their gear. Constantly increasing stats without resetting them is unsustainable. You can't just keep adding stats like skill/spell speed, tenacity, crit chance and piety because it leads to massive balancing issues. For example, you need more skill speed at level 100 than you did at level 50 to get the same GCD reduction. If stats had not been reset since level 50, rotations would now be so fast you couldn't double weave anymore.

If you add a secondary system that also lets people stomp old content and gates progression and resets stats, then why even remove leveling at all if the new system will just do the same thing?

[Granyala]

The issue i have is that with unsynced and overgearing we pretty much hit a situation where a painting or portrait to say, have it's very centrepiece removed. The encounters aren't just the environments and the rewards, but the mechanics as well. And with the mechanics gone, why was it even designed?

I completely agree that an unsync run does not convey the encounter at all. That's okay. Unsync runs are basically only done to grab mounts or glams. If people wanted to see the bosses, they'd either go in synched (at least we have that option in XIV!) or raid them while they are current content.

The encounters were designed to entertain the raid community for 6-8 months.
After that, they have served their purpose, as far as the DEV's are concerned.

Getting the more casual playerbase into the encounters is not necessary in XIV, since this game has difficulty levels (early wow did not have them it was either deal with it or go home).

Savage/Ultimate are not designed with the casual playerbase in mind, neither are the rewards, since tome gear is pretty much equal in player power.

Just for the record: I am saying this as a raid retiree, that doesn't get to see savage/ex any longer. It's okay, not every content needs to be catered to everyone.

[AmorfaVex]

Removing leveling from a CRPG is a bad idea. Gamers need the illusion that their character is improving through their actions, whether it be through xp, gear, or a combination of both.

If you removed this process you are doubling down on everything that people have been complaining about with DT and turning the game into an interactive novel with even LESS player input/control.

Let the devs worry about stats/balance issues. If they do a squish, so be it, everyone will move on, but progression is a must in an RPG. The player must feel like they are gaining power.

It's not like leveling in this game is difficult anyway.

[PyurBlue]

Power progression is normal in MMOs and a, if not the main thing that keeps people playing.
If it isn't done via levels, it is done via gear. Old content would get trivialized just the same.

I can only speak for myself, but the leveling does nothing for me. I got a few of my preferred classes to 100 and already forgot about levels. I was much more interested in seeing new fights, which I could have done with no leveling at all. I'm also not a fan of level sync, nor having to relearn classes every expansion because we have to delete some skills for new skills for the sake of having new skills, which are sometimes just rebranded old skills anyway.

It would seem absolutely part of the popular opinion that leveling is a part of the this genre, but I'd prefer if MMO's didn't have levels at all, didn't have content with a limited shelf life, and instead offered deeper gameplay where progression was achieved through the player improving instead of stats. My level is 100 now, but nothing meaningful has changed. The enemies are also level 100, their stats raised with mine and the number is ultimately meaningless. I'm also so much stronger than a low level player that I can't really do anything with them because any attack I'd use would trivialize their content.

A levelless world would also be nice as far as exploration goes. In ARR when you started the game you had the freedom to go almost anywhere. Subsequent expansions have carefully close off the world and sectioned it by level. I find it so boring and predictable. I have no doubts that a more free flowing story could be created and along with it and less linear path through the world where we have more meaning exploration. This would also allow for more meaningful cooperation between players at different points in the game. With a massive powergap from level 1 to max, cooperate play becomes a lot easier and more balanced.

[Boblawblah]

idk, can you honestly see SE doing something as dramatic as a level squish? I love FFXIV but they've shown over and over again that they like playing it very safe for the most part in all aspects of the game. If something is sort of working, they don't bother changing it.

[GrizzlyTank]

Removing leveling from a CRPG is a bad idea. Gamers need the illusion that their character is improving through their actions, whether it be through xp, gear, or a combination of both.

And that illusion goes right out the window when we kill a god one moment and get murdered by a crab the other.

If you removed this process you are doubling down on everything that people have been complaining about with DT and turning the game into an interactive novel with even LESS player input/control.

The issue with DT isn't levels or absence of levels, it's the lack of combat interruptions and plenty more. There were multiple places where a personal instance would have been fitting, but we didn't get them.

It's not like leveling in this game is difficult anyway.

It's not about the difficulty of leveling, but how the pattern they keep slapping on more and more levels only serve to be a self destructive feature to the game as a whole the longer it goes on.

[AmorfaVex]

I can only speak for myself, but the leveling does nothing for me. I got a few of my preferred classes to 100 and already forgot about levels. I was much more interested in seeing new fights, which I could have done with no leveling at all. I'm also not a fan of level sync, nor having to relearn classes every expansion because we have to delete some skills for new skills for the sake of having new skills, which are sometimes just rebranded old skills anyway.

It would seem absolutely part of the popular opinion that leveling is a part of the this genre, but I'd prefer if MMO's didn't have levels at all, didn't have content with a limited shelf life, and instead offered deeper gameplay where progression was achieved through the player improving instead of stats. My level is 100 now, but nothing meaningful has changed. The enemies are also level 100, their stats raised with mine and the number is ultimately meaningless. I'm also so much stronger than a low level player that I can't really do anything with them because any attack I'd use would trivialize their content.

A levelless world would also be nice as far as exploration goes. In ARR when you started the game you had the freedom to go almost anywhere. Subsequent expansions have carefully close off the world and sectioned it by level. I find it so boring and predictable. I have no doubts that a more free flowing story could be created and along with it and less linear path through the world where we have more meaning exploration. This would also allow for more meaningful cooperation between players at different points in the game. With a massive powergap from level 1 to max, cooperate play becomes a lot easier and more balanced.

I'd touch on your last paragraph real quick.

Back in the old days (yep, im one of those) They didnt need to seal off zones like that. If you strolled into a zone you shouldnt be in, you would get smeared and have to find people to help get your corpse back (talking Everquest here) It would and DID support community, where you'd need a necro to summon your corpse if you didnt know where it was, and a cleric to rez you, unless you were ok with massive xp loss/deleveling. If you didnt do a corpse retrieval, you lost everything on the corpse (after a few real life days.)

I actually liked it, as masochistic as it sounds. You felt the danger.

Now, games are entranced with the mob/player level scaling and or restricting access to zones.

So while I agree with you, you should be able to go where you want, there need to be consequences if you get turned into paste by a mob in a zone you shouldnt be in yet.

[RaideDuku]

Quite the quandary. They can't just keep adding skills, but this game lacks the statistical complexity to allow for horizontal progression. It's also boring as hell. Nothing like getting excited that a piece of armor you found had 2 points shifted out of an unfavorable stat into a favorable one.

[Kes13a]

While yes, levels have always been a thing for both jrpg and mmos, the repeated action of raising the level floor each expansion however does nothing but invalidate past content and efforts put into the game.

The argument for levels is always that we get stronger, but looking at the reality of things.
When expansions drops we will suddenly find trivial mobs that rivals the mightiest of gods.
Our classes/jobs becomes cluttered with random things because the devs HAVE to find something new for them.
And past content becomes trivialized and broken forcing devs to possibly have to put extra effort into fixing it, especially when it's dug up and repurposed like the Ultimate and Unreal fights.

If that 10 level grind have to exist for every job each expansion, then find out something that can work as a substitute for it.

actually.. no, levels have not always been a thing. used to be skill grinding. I am likely wrong, but levels were a thing mainstreamed by WoW to increase the rush by the whole level effect and sound. 100 levels isnt really that much either, Anarchy Online the level cap was 220, years ago.

power creep is what you are finding a problem with I think. regardless.. things from the games past will always become trivialized. would you prefer they take the Destiny route and whole parts of the game are "vaulted"? while there is no good answer for the issue, you have proposed no alternative, no real fix except.. "no more levels". even if they did away with that, a new expansion, because people scream for it, would likely include new jobs, and new content. those two things will cause exactly the same issue you are complaining about here. new content will trivialize old content, new regular mobs will appear to be gods compared to old npcs and the devs would have to put in extra effort to fixing old content.

see? even without levels the issue would remain.