[dev1021] Skill Points and EXP values are way too low.

[Zumi]

Skill Points and EXP values are way too low.

Ok so I really want to give FFXIV a good play through and another chance, so I decided to log in today and level my character some. Here is my experience.

I pulled 4 guild leve quests. 3 in Nanawa Mines and 1 in Nophica's Wells. All 4 guild levels were done under guardians favor for increased skill.

My character is a rank 28 Gladiator I started out with 23815 / 33000 Gladiator skill points and Physical level 31, 72940 / 160000 exp.

Upon completion of these 4 guild leves I was then at
25510 / 33000 Gladiator Skill Points, net gain 1695 / 5% of my current rank gained
75879 / 160000 Experience points, net gain 2939 / 1.8% of my total level gained
Completion time 1 hour, 30 min.

1695 skill points and 2939 exp for 1.5 hours worth of work is way too low. Its disheartening for many players who make it past level 20 to get so little accomplished when they try to log in do some guild leves and are left with a sense of frustration about getting so little accomplished. 1.5 hours is a long time and to only get 5% of my level done it just makes me not want to log in.

The exp curve seemed fine up to 20 but past that it jumps a lot almost to the point where it requires so much time and grind that it becomes unfun and a chore to level.

One of the biggest problems with FFXIV is how high the leveling curve is, if players feel like they aren't accomplishing anything they won't want to log in or play the game.

Suggestions:
First off I would lower the EXP needed to level 1-20 felt about right with the time it took to get each level. Levels 21+ need to be lower exp needed to level. On top of that each time you complete a guild leve quest you should be rewarded with 5% of the total skill points and exp you need at your current level, along with some equipment and gil. It is very common for other MMOs to reward players with Exp when they finish a quest. It is very reasonable to do about 20 quests per level. The rate I am seeing ingame at the moment is about 80 guild leves to level at level 28.

[Reika]

Sounds like you soloed them on one star.... dont do that

[RobotRivers]

Sounds like you soloed them on one star.... dont do that

First of all, if you have to say that then it means this system isn't doing very well, one of the major topics i've read about FFXIV is how solo friendly it is, if you can't get very far with the one star then i'd say it has failed that focus.

[Judge_Xero]

Sounds like you should be posting this in the New Player Help forum. You should post it as a questions about, how can I improve my SP gain during leves. Which leaves me to the point that the Dev tag isnt' required. Looking for a good Linkshell would be a great option too. Don't forget, there are also Behest you can do in between you Leves which is some great party play.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

^ these 2. Don't do leves alone, try do it in party with some leve link.
Trust me, exp/rp are far from low

[Arcell]

In one night doing R40 leves I went from R37-R39. But the main difference here is that I did them in a group with leve links and guardian's aspect. Last night I only did 1 camp's worth with my group and gained about half the SP I need to get to 44.

[Zumi]

Sounds like you should be posting this in the New Player Help forum. You should post it as a questions about, how can I improve my SP gain during leves. Which leaves me to the point that the Dev tag isnt' required. Looking for a good Linkshell would be a great option too. Don't forget, there are also Behest you can do in between you Leves which is some great party play.

First off I am not a new player, I have played FFXIV since the alpha. I been playing FFXI for 8 years, my FFXI linkshell had many server first kills Tiamat, Jorm, and Vrtra to name a few. We started with a linkshell made up of mostly FFXI players and some friends 39 people in total. They all quit playing except for like me who occasionally logs in. Most of them went back to FFXI or WoW. So when virtually all the people from a server first linkshell quit, yes there's a problem with the game.

This does need a dev tag because it needs to be read by a dev because its a problem with the game. Using the features in the game progression is just way too slow by today's MMO standards.

^ these 2. Don't do leves alone, try do it in party with some leve link.
Trust me, exp/rp are far from low

Sounds like you soloed them on one star.... dont do that

Sure maybe being in a party would result in faster kills and more exp just like in FFXI, not arguing with that. However there wasn't any people on the game to do these with. I am not talking about people in a linkshell since mine is empty but random people. I saw 0 people by the Nophica's Wells crystal and about 3 AFK people who were in the Nanawa Mines camp. There wasn't any other way to do these but on 1 star and even then they are pretty hard because a gladiator doesn't pull the highest damage by any means, and I am rank 28 and it says they are for rank 30. 2 star or above would result in me getting killed very fast, I still died a couple times on 1 star. Even on 1 star the imps can hit me for 80% of my HP with their special attack.

I am using the resources and people available in the game at the time I was playing to the best of my ability and my experience was not good which is why I am hope a dev reads this. There needs to be adjustments because people will have times they log on and see nobody in their level range doing these quests and have no choice but to solo them. SE wanted this game to be easier and more friendly to people trying to start out but it really isn't and they really need to lower the sp and exp curve.

[ESAR]

Zumi,

I've came up with an idea to fix your problem (since I'm having the same).

Don't try to blame it on us not being good players, we were lied to. This game was supposed to be fair for everyone, we weren't intended to have to team up with others to gain proper SP. Remember this is not FFXI...

Anyway the only way to distribute SP in a way that is fair in all ways is action based SP. Not in the way it was at release though.

Sure they could rebalance this really bad SP system till the cows come home but it's not going to do anywhere near the job an action based SP system will.

If you want to hear about it check this link:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...bution-dev1021

[Speeral]

First off I am not a new player, I have played FFXIV since the alpha. I been playing FFXI for 8 years, my FFXI linkshell had many server first kills Tiamat, Jorm, and Vrtra to name a few. We started with a linkshell made up of mostly FFXI players and some friends 39 people in total. They all quit playing except for like me who occasionally logs in. Most of them went back to FFXI or WoW. So when virtually all the people from a server first linkshell quit, yes there's a problem with the game.

This does need a dev tag because it needs to be read by a dev because its a problem with the game. Using the features in the game progression is just way too slow by today's MMO standards.



Sure maybe being in a party would result in faster kills and more exp just like in FFXI, not arguing with that. However there wasn't any people on the game to do these with. I am not talking about people in a linkshell since mine is empty but random people. I saw 0 people by the Nophica's Wells crystal and about 3 AFK people who were in the Nanawa Mines camp. There wasn't any other way to do these but on 1 star and even then they are pretty hard because a gladiator doesn't pull the highest damage by any means, and I am rank 28 and it says they are for rank 30. 2 star or above would result in me getting killed very fast, I still died a couple times on 1 star. Even on 1 star the imps can hit me for 80% of my HP with their special attack.

I am using the resources and people available in the game at the time I was playing to the best of my ability and my experience was not good which is why I am hope a dev reads this. There needs to be adjustments because people will have times they log on and see nobody in their level range doing these quests and have no choice but to solo them. SE wanted this game to be easier and more friendly to people trying to start out but it really isn't and they really need to lower the sp and exp curve.

Zumi,

What you did in XI does not carry over to hear its a different game with different systems. For nanawa mines in 1 Leve solo I can do about 3k SP and that's not the good ones like adamantice and the other I forgot its name. As well At nophica the least rewarding leve i've seen solo with the appropriate difficulty and GA I never get less than 5k sp. levin shower solo you can get 8-12k sp in less than 30minutes.

With the new sp system and stats being changed on how its distributed there is now way you less then 1700 sp for 4 leve's. No offence but this seems very troll like . . . . . Most leve's I can do even solo and get at least a full level from with GA. Right now the amount of SP handed out is very much easy mode, and I'm sorry to say but you are playing the game wrong or on to easy of a difficulty level.

[Zumi]

Zumi,

What you did in XI does not carry over to hear its a different game with different systems. For nanawa mines in 1 Leve solo I can do about 3k SP and that's not the good ones like adamantice and the other I forgot its name. As well At nophica the least rewarding leve i've seen solo with the appropriate difficulty and GA I never get less than 5k sp. levin shower solo you can get 8-12k sp in less than 30minutes.

With the new sp system and stats being changed on how its distributed there is now way you less then 1700 sp for 4 leve's. No offence but this seems very troll like . . . . . Most leve's I can do even solo and get at least a full level from with GA. Right now the amount of SP handed out is very much easy mode, and I'm sorry to say but you are playing the game wrong or on to easy of a difficulty level.

First off my numbers are completely accurate, and the data was taken the same day as my post 3/29/2011.

my character
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...cicuid=1545022

When I saw how bad skill points and exp points I was getting i went to my characters lodestone page to see what I started at and compare it to what I was currently at. And started logging my experiences to make this post. So the devs can hear my story and maybe fix it. I got a lot of those find the white light leves which did not yield much SP and made me run all over the map trying to find them. Luck of the draw I suppose. If you say you never get less then 5k I can tell you now that is false seeing as I only got 1695 on 4 of them.

When you say appropriate level I thinking you are meaning higher then 1 star correct? That just isn't possible when imps which check as blue which should be easy prey hit you for 80% of your HP. 2 stars is pretty impossible solo, due to the incoming damage. I even took the advice of fellow in game players and got cure, sacrifice (regen), and second wind to help out as you can see I actually took time to level a few other classes. Even with the ability to heal myself its not really possible to do more then 1 star the amount of incoming damage is too much to heal and if i heal myself all the time the mob will not die since its not being damaged.

I have no reason to lie about what happened. I just want the game improved. It still is very lacking since I had the experience I had that day.

To get a sense of other mmos and leveling and progression rates rates take this for example:
In FFXI which I played today actually I can go from level 75 to 90 in about 4 hours when leveling various jobs. Killed several NMs in abyssea for Empyrean weapons only took a couple hours downed 10 nms got 15/50 items I needed to finish the sword I am working on.

When the FFXI and FFXIV servers were down I played my WoW account, had to play something right, my paladin on WoW is already capped and geared out so started a new character a hunter soloed took her from 1 to 85 the cap in a week all solo with quests, and geared her our for starter raids in 2 days, was doing end game raids after that.

The amount of exp you get solo in FFXIV is way worse then FFXI ever was. When FFXI came out I got to level 30 solo without a problem. Started grouping in the kazham area at that point but it was fairly easy to find groups. Was the 2nd NA player on my server to hit level 75. So I do no a thing or two about leveling fast. It is not easy find groups at all in FFXIV like it as in FFXI. Past accomplishments in games do relate to new games in that it shows a greater understanding of the MMO genre.

We even had videos for FFXI to show off the stuff we were killing before anyone else could http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NzoD6SdE9A