Levelling in ARR

[Azzi]

In a previous letter or live letter (I can't remember which), Yoshi mentioned the main focus for levelling will be quest driven. So does this mean grinding mobs with a full party of fellow adventures to level will be redundant?

I'm not saying that I don't enjoy questing. I do. But it can get a bit tedious after a while. The same can be said for grinding mobs to level. But from what I've taken from the information available (and this is an assumption) questing will be a more efficient way to gain exp (as it's the main focus for levelling). It's also been confirmed that there will be enough quests to level all of your jobs to 50. So it would seem getting a party together to grind mobs for exp will be pretty pointless when you can gain 3 levels questing in the same time it takes to gain 1 from grinding.

I for one quite enjoyed the grind parties as I'm sure many others did too. Was a good way to learn your job in a party environment, make new friends, have a bit of fun beating on mobs much stronger than yourself and level your character all at the same time. For me, questing seems to be more for solo play. I know you can party up and do quests in a group. But you're not going to spend a load of time trying to get a full party together to do quests you can easily do solo. Well you might, but I find it unlikely. This isn't a bad thing though, I love the fact that you can level on you own or with a couple of friends.

I am not suggesting throwing away all the hard work and time the Devs have spent on creating all these wonderful new quests for us. That would be an awful waste and very silly. What I am suggesting is having both questing and grinding as an equally rewarding way to level your character (maybe in slightly different ways - just another thought).

So for those who don't particularly like questing can level via grinding parties. And those who don't like grinding parties can quest. And for those who enjoy both can level one way and when they get a little bored of that, they can have a go at the other keeping the game fresh.

Just a thought. And apologies in advanced if this has already been discussed. I couldn't find anything relevant to this in previous posts.

[Wolfie]

Personally I'd rather see leveling via dungeons as a viable option but I don't think ARR is going to have enough of them.

[Zantetsuken]

We don't know exactly how it will work but from the details we've been given, it seems as though progressing through the main storyline will get a single class from 1-50.

After that, I suppose you tackle Leves/Quests/Grinding to get your other classes maxed.

[Seraphe]

Hey there Azzi!

YouTube | FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn - Quests and Combat (Alpha)

Check out this Video. The Miqo'te is level 15 (as seen below the HP bar) and the Hoglets are level 8.
If you look closely at the chatlog you can see that she still gets 34 EXP out of this battle. I would assume that when she's the same level or the mob is higher than the Miqo'te there is a good chance that she'll get around 200~300 EXP per battle. Now if you have to run to get quests I'm pretty sure that EXP grind Parties would be a slightly more effective way to get EXP. Especially if there are any good chain camps around. I won't give up hope for parties, yet

[mikoto_qc]

We don't know exactly how it will work but from the details we've been given, it seems as though progressing through the main storyline will get a single class from 1-50.

After that, I suppose you tackle Leves/Quests/Grinding to get your other classes maxed.

we pretty much know how it will work. Exactly the same way as every other WoW like MMO. And in my mind this is a killer for Grinder type of players.I 100% agree with this post. Questing is something fun, but when its the only or best way to level its kinda kill the game immersion. Good for solo'er but after 300 quest in row its turn Totally boring :/

[Wilksha]

As mentioned by Zant, main quest are said to be enough to get a class from 1 to 50. Just one class, the other 7 class will need to be done elsewhere. So expect the normal exp parties and such to come into play shortly after release when good locations are found.

[Destinova]

Instead of making one preferred way they should balance so that all aspects of leveling is viable. From dungeons, to parties, and quests.

[Hulan]

In an ideal world, two things would fall into place: the LFP flag system (whatever it is) works as intended and is used by the general populus, and party based exp (dungeons or standard grinding) is worth just slightly more than quests (I'd personally balance it around 1.2:1 dungeon:solo). The convenience factor of questing will make it the prefered method of gaining levels solo while looking for a party, while dungeons and/or grinding (depending on your preferences) would trump solo exp when availible.

Reguardless of how fun or not fun you may find party grinding (dungeons or otherwise). It's an important step that has been lacking in a lot of MMOs. Very little of classical "end-game" is solo oriented. As such, if the entire leveling process is done solo, your training and initiation has to overlap what would otherwise be when you should be doing "end-game". By giving players incentive to party earlier, the game can introduce party mechanics at a more gradual pace.

As to the concern at hand, I believe it was stated that there would be serveral dungeons specifically for the purpose of leveling (and gaining some basic low-level gear presumably). If that is indeed the case, it seems extremely unlikely to me that they have dropped the concept of party exp entirely for quests.

[IronSoup]

The main storyline should (by Yoshii) take a single class from 1 to 50. That doesn't include the various side-quests, guild-quests and grand-company-quests. Questing will be an excellent way to level in ARR compared to FFXIV1.23 where PL (low levels), grinding parties (40+ parties that could include lvl.50s) and leve quests were the best ways. Also, you all seem to forget the lvl capped F.A.T.E events (including chocobo runs with an unlimited number of players now). I believe this will also be a good way to grind and gather whatever rewards it will give.

Questing will definitely be a good alternative to level in ARR (main story = 1 lvl.50 job is damn good) but there will be a lot of other ways... leves, FATE events, grinding, PL-ing, grinding, dungeons... Which one will be faster? Nobody knows but there will be plenty of different things to do to level which gives you more options to choose from than you had in FFXIV1.23.

More alternative ways to level...THAT is the main thing to remember here.

[strallaalaa]

i'ma not tip toe about this kindly and just say straight up that without the grinding parties this game and any mmo, especially a final fantasy mmo will be crap. i hate quest grinding, i hate solo grinding. i hate choices for both less they are scaled very differently. aka forced party with the option to do the quests while waiting is cool. other wise it becomes something that you do only by choice. like yeah i'ma try and waist hours to get people to do this for fun. no thanks.

they for sure should be options, not trying to kill that idea. but when they go from 16man grinds to 8man grinds to then wtf only quests and dungeons. that is a huge game killer. 360 of what the mmo was. and i don't' think anyone that signed the ok on changing the game was expecting that.

as for the F.A.T.E. system at the most that will be like gw2 events but in no way does this count. if your not grouping up with a party for long periods it's not partying. that is solo'ing with others. and dungeons might be the closest thing, but i did not like this for leveling at all in other mmo's too. if they could create a auto grouping system they could of made it for regular grinding groups too and it would of lessened the complaining about, i only have 30mins to play. i'd be very happy though if grinding parties still existed, then really we could use that auto grouping and just leave and go exp maybe, that is if the auto grouping system is good enough.

also would like to touch on spirit binding? i mean will we have this still? that was the funnest way to level, hopefully they remove all ways to power level this time around and still let us party grind and spirit bind. but if it really is questing and dungeons only does that mean everyone is wearing SB gears in questing and dungeons? the dungeon option would start pissing people off that are trying to speed run them and people are in sb gears. or maybe sb'ing is just that more easier now>< they did say that whole system has been made easier but i hope the materia and sb isn't that easy.

obviously we don't know a lot of this yet and we will need to wait and see, but i can tell you i'm not lying when i say this game can burn in hell if it thinks i'ma solo threw the main parts of the game. i expected party mode main story, party mode questing, party mode everything ...so whatever i'll leave this game just like the other mmo's i quit in a few months. oh well. but seriously i'd give every cent i have to see every company go under that has been following this formula.