Thread: 8.0 Max Level?

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

We have a full kit every expansion... until we have to level again. We have Logos, Lost, and Phantom Actions... only while in Eureka/Bozja/OC. And our additions at endgame commonly come with degradations to the leveling experience. So while I can understand the dislike, I have to wonder why this would seem a new issue...

FFXIV's zone-locked bonus actions are subsystems, not part of the core leveling

Yes. Which is, honestly, fine. We had an experiemental stage over which to player-test a bunch of different ideas, many of which might be too "out-there" for baseline kits, from which we could then pull into the game not just the ideas the devs thought players would like best but which the players actually did most enjoy according to surveys and other forms of feedback.

Uh. If they want me to playtest for them, they can pay me instead of the other way around? Or they could set up a public test realm like every other MMO? Expansions should not be glorified playtests... Now I'm certainly not going to argue we haven't had class reworks, some of them very massive, but I think Astrologians in particular would probably tell you they're a little tired of their card mechanics being in a nearly constant state of playtesting. I always tell people when they pick up the class that if they don't like the card system, don't worry, just wait till next xpac.

To call that "theft", though, seems odd.

If you played WoW during the Legion expansion, you understand why people would call it theft.

Moreover, if we're talking about zone-specific abilities in this case (rather than per some seasonal or expansion system), they're likely to be thematically insulated

The way I read that post, in the context of this being a thread about the 8.0 level cap, is that they were VERY much talking about this being 'the expansion's leveling system' The proposal was we don't gain any levels and have an 'independent leveling system for that zone.' I'll concede that either the post I responded to could be confusing in the use of the term 'zone' and they were, for some reason, referencing one zone within an expansion... or you might be perhaps reading too much into the word 'zone' and thinking of it from the perspective of per each area, etc. Given kind of the context of the rest of what you're suggesting as you go on, I think you took it this way.

I interpreted their statement to mean we get an alternate leveling system that is only applicable to areas specifically within the 8.0 expansion, to which I am going to give a very, very hard 'no thank you.' I've seen that. And I never want to see it again.

Originally Posted by Atma

If you played WoW during the Legion expansion, you understand why people would call it theft.

I've played every WoW expansion at launch, a couple tiers in mid, and end. Please don't assume that disagreement can only come from ignorance.

Yes, more of the Legion effects should have been baselined, but far, far impactful to in feeling like my kit had been "gutted"... was simply the core changes (say, to SV, MM, Arms, Enhance, etc.), while many of the random Artifact Weapon powers frankly seemed unnecessary bloat to me and carried no expectation that they'd be continued outside of being integrated as a talent choice replacing the least attractive in some tier.

And by a tier into BfA, I already had playflows I enjoyed more than across the final months of Legion. Heck, by the last tier, it'd frankly degenerated from the shits-n-giggles of Corruption, which I still enjoyed at the time but definitely would not have wanted in Shadowlands.

The fundamentals were fine, imo; the implementation just probably needed to carry over a bit more each expansion, just like secondary stats (dropping from some 38% crit chance to 12% with the same stat ratio from old cap to min ilvl for the new one) in XIV needed to.

FFXIV's zone-locked bonus actions are subsystems, not part of the core leveling.

And the explicitly "zone-locked" additions suggested here wouldn't be separate?

Ilvl is the only decently continuous progression this game offers, as most will spend the vast majority of their time each expansion capped on job levels even while still progressing ilvl. Why would losing levels remove that factor, let alone MSQ gates?

Uh. If they want me to playtest for them, they can pay me instead of the other way around?

Then, shouldn't you be paid for any and all play of the MMO? The play-testing is incidental.

Expansions should not be glorified playtests...

But they are, unless feedback is ignored.

Again, we're not talking about the core experience here; that's already decently solid. It's precisely to avoid shit like AST's Card system being reworked nearly every expansion that those additions are, well, merely additions... except where loved enough from among their far more harmless means of inclusion to then be baselined into said core kits.

The way I read that post, in the context of this being a thread about the 8.0 level cap, is that they were VERY much talking about this being 'the expansion's leveling system' The proposal was we don't gain any levels and have an 'independent leveling system for that zone.'

Ahhh, I see.

Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

Five levels is perfectly fine for an expansion. We don't need 10 levels.

I would also be happy with an independent leveling system just for that zone

It could mean either, I suppose, since "zone" is very odd way to refer to an expansion's set of zones, but --thinking more on it-- so is the use of "that" before it if that wasn't the intended meaning.

Personally, though, I wouldn't mind either one if it followed the same pattern as WoW's, minus the wholly admitted fails (which we've seen plenty of analogs to even without the "borrowed powers", through our job reworks and general degradation of design diversity). In that, you might add 5 abilities in a given an expansion, be allowed to slot 3 at any given time, and the top 1 or 2 might then end up baselined into the next expansion. Because that's generally how that kind of thing has worked in every implementation I've seen of "temporary" kit, be that from a western, chinese, korean, or other MMO.

I'd rather have a longer leveling process on the main job, unlocking an increasingly large number of options to play around with (each with less and less importance of acquisition once having filled available slots) and take just the best of that into the next expansion so there's room for new and increasingly refined ideas without the stricture of those ideas needing to reorient a huge portion of prior skills and thereby cheapen earlier levels.

If that weren't the norm, and there was only ever a bunch of development time and kit-learning that goes entirely to waste with each new expansion, I'd agree. But while WoW definitely used to take those resets too far from time to time (and rely too much on bloated systems for build-up), that "back to zero" has almost never been a thing in MMOs with temporary kit. Instead, it primarily turns into a way to skip post-level-cap grind for episodic MSQ even while still offering palpable progression within each expansion.

Here, MSQ always being required in full makes that far harder to leverage and Poetic-based BiS gear makes it far less rewarding, but the fundamental goal and approach don't seem bad to me. You get a margin of bonus creative kit-design space that can be especially tailored to the themes of the expansion and further progression players can feel without excess impact on core kits and the with expansion's levelcap content being optional (get those bonus skills for use in just that expansion's content if you want, for the clear bonuses, old-content roulettes, and so forth) instead of wholly bypassed (buy poetics gear) or half-assed (run each MSQ dungeon once).

Originally Posted by Atma

I wouldn't mind the return of job-specific quests to get abilities again but tacking an ilvl requirement on it just feels weird. It also would kind of incentivize people just blowing past the levels since levelling is not 'hard', creating a patchwork set of gear, and going back and getting the abilities later.

This. Agreed. It seems a weirdly snare-prone bit of slack to give players.