Beyond Level 100

[LanceSummers]

I think it has been obvious since Dawntrail that something new must be done instead of raising the level cap. Job rotations have become bloated as is, and there's not much room to insert much new.
That being said, level 100 is a great stopping place for max level, but what should the next form of progression beyond levelling be?

[HammAndCheese]

Level to 110 and fix the bloat. We don't need another type of leveling system because whatever the alternative will be it will feel the exact same as "level 10 more levels."

[LanceSummers]

Level to 110 and fix the bloat. We don't need another type of leveling system because whatever the alternative will be it will feel the exact same as "level 10 more levels."

No one said it had to be the same. It can be different than the current levelling system

[Alicie]

We don't need another levelling system, we need current levelling system to be fixed and onboarding for new players to become easier

[VeyaAkemi]

So long as the button bloat doesn't become worse, I don't actually care what happens, I'd be plenty satisfied with no leveling at all, just iLvl increases.

[PyurBlue]

So long as the button bloat doesn't become worse, I don't actually care what happens, I'd be plenty satisfied with no leveling at all, just iLvl increases.

I can't even think of a downside to throwing away leveling. A more free form world that doesn't have to adhere to a very strict and repetitive level increase honestly sounds amazing.

[LanceSummers]

I can't even think of a downside to throwing away leveling. A more free form world that doesn't have to adhere to a very strict and repetitive level increase honestly sounds amazing.

I feel like throwing away traditional levelling is the only option here. A level squish is just not it, a level squish would be too much work for so little return. Look at it this way:
Early levelling is becoming increasingly more boring with each new expansion they add as abilities are moved to the later levels.
If you do a level squish, what do you do? Do you make earlier levels faster? That doesn't fix the amount of time a player needs to do the MSQ and affects too much for it to be a viable option.
Ideally job design and levelling issues could be fixed in one fell swoop with 8.0, both by addressing old aspects and introducing new systems to fix everything.

[Aidorouge]

Probably going to end up with a level squish. Any new system would just feel like "level 110 but with fancier words" where starting back over at level 1 on a new track is meaningless when you still had to reach level 100 to get there and the game still treats you as level 110 for gearing and content access.

[LanceSummers]

Probably going to end up with a level squish. Any new system would just feel like "level 110 but with fancier words" where starting back over at level 1 on a new track is meaningless when you still had to reach level 100 to get there and the game still treats you as level 110 for gearing and content access.

A level squish is not it, it comes with too many issues. Things are already being gutted from earlier levels in order to be put in later ones. If you squish levels, that would mean the entire levelling process would become extremely boring at earlier levels. A first-timer would feel like the MSQ is a slog due to barely levelling throughout it, and they have to go through every expansion just for a few abilities.

[Aidorouge]

A level squish is not it, it comes with too many issues. Things are already being gutted from earlier levels in order to be put in later ones. If you squish levels, that would mean the entire levelling process would become extremely boring at earlier levels. A first-timer would feel like the MSQ is a slog due to barely levelling throughout it, and they have to go through every expansion just for a few abilities.

As opposed to the current system where you gain 10s of levels of "dead air" where literally nothing changes on the job? Where you have to wait until 80-90 to get your actually full and proper kit? MCH only has 45 skills + 22 traits for example, and that's being generous and including the Rook/Queen attacks separately, the generally useless role actions that aren't exclusive to the job anyway, and traits that literally just say "makes thing do more damage" without actually changing anything on the job.

You could have the job gain one skill per level and it would be done by the time it hit 70, leaving 30 levels of nothing right now. Getting Full Metal Field at 70 as the new DT cap would not be fundamentally different than getting it at level 100 for the current DT cap, and you might even gain access to certain parts of the kit way earlier than before because by cutting the fat in-between, previous capstone abilities become part of the new leveling process instead.

Giving us some other leveling track where we gain another 10 levels of "prestige" or "merit" or whatever would just be 7 or so levels of more useless fat, with a whopping one new skill (that's probably just an old skill with a flashier animation) and 1-2 traits of meaningless potency boosts along the way to "level nu-10 that's totally not level 110".