Beyond Level 100

[Derio]

Leveling system needs a complete overhaul. The new player experience is still bad because many jobs dont even get their AOE ability until they go from a class to a job or their level gets to mid 40s.

[ServerCollaps]

give us lvl 110 and some more cool passive buffs on our existing skills or additional charges

[Mikey_R]

They should use the merit point system of FF11 to give players merit points after LVL100 instead of experience points. You can then use merit points to "hone" your skills, for example raising potency of a dps skill, or range of a healing aoe etc. This way, it would create many ways to play your job, for example, if you want to play solo more as a healer, you could put merit points into your dps skills. Meanwhile if you're doing raids, it's more meaningful to upgrade your healing or buffs. I think it's gonna be fun to explore and build your character.

I'll make this quick:
DPS will always be picked over everything else unless the something else is mandatory for the fight, at which point it is no longer a free choice.

If you want to make changes, it needs to not affect DPS at all, otherwise it will overshadow everything.

[Diablo_Eichenwald]

I'll make this quick:
DPS will always be picked over everything else unless the something else is mandatory for the fight, at which point it is no longer a free choice.

If you want to make changes, it needs to not affect DPS at all, otherwise it will overshadow everything.

Obviously bosses will get stronger and have more HP so that you can't just zerg in a few minutes at the beginning of a new content update. Also there would be attacks that force the frequent use of Benediction, Invincible etc. so you still need a full blown party until you're deep into the expansion and can easily beat contents with unconventional setups. People would try out different job combo to see which one is the hardest to survive, similar to FF11. I remember back in the early days of FF11, there was this Red Mage that was soloing contents that full parties were struggle for months to beat. He became a legend in the game, posted a video doing it without explaining anything. It was awesome lol.

[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.

[Deejudanne]

which jobs feels bloated in rotations if you dont mind me asking? honestly feels like all the jobs plays the same since they all follow the same 2 min meta outlier being gnb with 1 min meta

[LanceSummers]

which jobs feels bloated in rotations if you dont mind me asking? honestly feels like all the jobs plays the same since they all follow the same 2 min meta outlier being gnb with 1 min meta

Look back at what new abilities we got in Dawntrail. Most of what all jobs got were oGCDs or upgrades to existing abilities. Room to add more is running out, something needs to be done.

[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.

[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.

[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