My ideas for levelling, job progression and gear after level 100.

[Underscore]

There's been lots of talk around what they'll do with jobs after level 100. And so from my boundless font of good and objectively correct ideas comes the solution.

The key points:

- Levelling stops at 100. The EXP bar is replaced with a Mastery Bar. When the Mastery Bar is full, it grants you a Mastery Point and resets back to zero. You can spend these points to unlock...

- Optional Actions; these are added each expansion and can replace certain existing actions, allowing you to customize your job. Some optional actions could affect the job's playstyle, while others are just cosmetic changes. The damage wouldn't vary too much.

For example, DRG could swap Rise of the Dragon for two charges of Spineshatter Dive which deal an equal combined potency. Same damage, but now it's two jumps instead. DRK could swap Souleater's animation with that of Power Slash.

This idea also allows the devs to add more actions and mastery points to unlock them between expansions if they want. The number of available points for each job would be fixed per patch, and once maxed out you'd stop gaining Mastery until more are added.

- Horizontal gear progression. Current gear stats stop increasing, and we begin a new iLvl system which goes from 1-100 before resetting next expansion. This ilevel increases a special stat which only affects current expansion content. When next expac comes out, its gear will also have a "Legacy Stat" which offers no benefit in current content, but gives it close to max-ilevel stats (around new ilvl 90) in all previous expansions.

- Stop increasing potencies, and don't be afraid to nerf them in the name of balance. Do a big re-balancing patch on old content so bosses don't die too fast, and keep the jobs around this established baseline.

- Materia grades stop increasing after 8.0, with the maximum level being Materia XIV (haha get it).

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This system addresses the following issues:

- Levelling base-game jobs to max becoming untenable due to increasingly high level caps

- Newly added actions making jobs bloated.

- Old actions being removed, making players unhappy (rip kaiten)

- Old bosses dying too fast due to power creep.

- Stat numbers and levels becoming absurdly high and warranting stat squishes.

- Old content becoming totally obsolete because you can one-shot it unsynced. This way you'd only ever be one expansion ahead in damage when unsynced, so at least a little effort remains when farming old rewards.

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(Maybe) If we expand upon the Optional Actions system such that jobs deal a bit more damage when higher difficulty actions are equipped, we could also create a rewarding system of job difficulty scaling that accommodates players of all skill levels, assuming content could be balanced around this.

If there are any holes or embarrassing oversights in my ideas, I'm open to hearing them.

[Underscore]

Okay, I've already noticed one oversight - there would no longer be content that's good for "levelling" (farming mastery) in specific expansions, like how Bozja is good for level 71-80 for example.
This would mean players looking to level their mastery would likely consolidate in whatever content is most popular leaving the rest comparatively empty.

We can solve this by having a separate Mastery Bar and selection of Optional Actions for each expansion. This way, you'd want to do 8.0 levelling content to unlock the Optional Actions from 8.0, and so on.
These separate progress bars could be displayed in the Optional Actions UI, and perhaps have colours and name prefixes to differentiate them. The one on your HUD could change depending on the zone you're in.

One more thing I'd like to clarify is that Optional Actions would have the same level requirement as the actions they replace, so you'd still be able to use them when level-synced in old content.

[VeyaAkemi]

A lot of this feels like it is trying to turn XIV into something it has never been and what has been designed towards, it has always been a game of vertical progression and so it has garnered an audience that enjoys and wants vertical progression, so your suggestions is to completely kill vertical progression in favor of a new system, which... would also require killing off the concept of unsync'ing old content, which I see as a huge negative, if anything I believe more things should be unsync'able.

I also don't care for Job customization in any capacity, in fact the lack of customization, as someone who started later than most, was one of the selling points of XIV to me, I played far too many MMOs with elaborate skill trees systems and those always give me severe decision paralysis, and it always boiled down to either looking up a guide and erasing that "choice", leaving skill points unspent, or not playing that particular game at all.

Simply put, I abhor most of the suggestions made here, and at least a couple of them would get me to quit the game, because I would never have gotten into the game if it was like that to begin with.

[HammAndCheese]

Simply put, I abhor most of the suggestions made here, and at least a couple of them would get me to quit the game, because I would never have gotten into the game if it was like that to begin with.

Heavy agree.

[LanceSummers]

A lot of this feels like it is trying to turn XIV into something it has never been and what has been designed towards, it has always been a game of vertical progression and so it has garnered an audience that enjoys and wants vertical progression, so your suggestions is to completely kill vertical progression in favor of a new system, which... would also require killing off the concept of unsync'ing old content, which I see as a huge negative, if anything I believe more things should be unsync'able.

I also don't care for Job customization in any capacity, in fact the lack of customization, as someone who started later than most, was one of the selling points of XIV to me, I played far too many MMOs with elaborate skill trees systems and those always give me severe decision paralysis, and it always boiled down to either looking up a guide and erasing that "choice", leaving skill points unspent, or not playing that particular game at all.

Simply put, I abhor most of the suggestions made here, and at least a couple of them would get me to quit the game, because I would never have gotten into the game if it was like that to begin with.

I disagree. The game doesn't need to be more simplified than it already is.

Maybe it shouldn't be done exactly the way this thread suggests but the current state of job design is that everything is terribly homogenized. Everything feels almost all the same, and it has gotten to a point where the jobs just feel like you are pressing buttons in different orders instead of allowing for new mechanics.

Homogenization and simplification have been a blight on this game and they need to be fixed.

[VeyaAkemi]

I disagree. The game doesn't need to be more simplified than it already is.

I never said anything about further simplifying or homogenizing anything, and I have no idea where you got from that I want more simplification, all I said is that more (instanced) content should be unsync'able, and that I have a distaste for talent/skill trees where all it boils down to is gaining points on arbitrary XP thresholds and distributing them around.

[Valence]

Personally without even talking about customization and job builds, if SE were to ever implement sub job specializations — like make your MCH a tank with shield turrets and whatnot or turn your DNC into a healer — then it would mean that some of those subjob specs would be released with the new expansions, and that the brand new things you could level up. They would not replace the originals that would still be there, and with potentially new tweaks and changes and actions all across their level progression. Could even ask you to do some quests or things to unlock those too as you progress in the new content.

That's how I'd tentatively approach it anyway. Just a gut feeling.