Is there even a point to raising level caps?

[gifthorse]

Wouldn't it be better if SE just kept us at R50 indefinitely and made all new content horizontal, instead of stratifying it vertically and making us grind even more?

Just look at FFXI. They keep raising the cap and at some point it just got out of hand.

I think a lot of games run into the issue of how to add content at end game without making it pointless. Eventually a gear grind seems a bit superfluous and pointless for players when they have upwards of 30 different level-appropriate gears to choose from (or at least it will seem so to players who don't appreciate stylistic options).

Developers inevitably realise that gear-grind isnt the answer, and end up just making players grind grind instead.

But this is 2011, shouldn't we be above all this by now?

[Xatsh]

50 is a low cap, that and the fact the game has mobs up to level 90ish.

I say they raise it to 75 like in ffxi and leve it there for 8yrs or so. The not making old content worthless I agree with. Content should never be scrapped one of the biggest issues I had in other mainstream mmos, and what I loved in XI had people in sky 8yrs after it was out.

[gifthorse]

50 is a low cap, that and the fact the game has mobs up to level 90ish.

I say they raise it to 75 like in ffxi and leve it there for 8yrs or so. The not making old content worthless I agree with. Content should never be scrapped one of the biggest issues I had in other mainstream mmos, and what I loved in XI had people in sky 8yrs after it was out.

Well obviously I see them raising us to 75 shortly, and that's why I'm asking why they're doing it.

"What's the point?"

If we can only kill the R90 mobs with a 15-man party full of punishing barbs combatants (impossible now anyways), then maybe they should just decrease the lvl of the mobs so we can kill them at R50 with an 8-man party?

I don't see what makes someone say "Rank 50 is a low cap anyway". Low compared to what? An arbitrary assigned value? (Which is all R50 is by the way).

It takes people one month to get to R50 and I think that is long enough. One month is long enough to serve as a trial period before players can finally start participating in what developers like to call endgame.

[TheVedis]

There is 1 reason and 1 reason only games raise caps

1) To make people buy new content and/or expansions by making all old content obsolete


that about says it all

[Volsung]

Well FFXI started at 50 then was raised to 75 gradually through quests with the addition of the american/ps2 handling (or something close to that, it was back in 2002ish so even my memory is hazy) but then 75 lasted for a good 8 years of horizontal addition.

If they're going to raise it I'd assume they've probably thought most of that through. I think XIs level cap raise from 75-99 was a last hurrah of excitement hoping for it to stay alive, and with people disliking XIV, XI did survive and we're only seeing part of what their plans are.

Personally I'm hoping for more classes in the armory system for more customization, but they've been talking about "job" revamps so /shrug, no idea where that is going.

EDIT: Looked too much like block text so I spaced the paragraphs.

[Tezz_Xivectro]

They should leave cap 50 until shortly after PS3 release. Then just, gradually, raise cap to 99(classic FF style) and focus/balance the game with that in mind.

When they were thinking of a level cap for FF11 they had some crazy # of like Lv200+ or something in mind. They eventually settled on Lv.75. After all these years they decided to do 99, but the game was built around Lv.75.

Basically, I'm hoping that they have some kind of concrete level cap to base the game on. That way they don't have to do radical adjustments that shake the foundation that the game was built around.

As with FF11, as the level cap increases, they will likely make it faster/easier to EXP at lower/mid levels by adjusting the curve.

[gifthorse]

But why even increase at all? What's the point?

[Kafeen]

To keep people playing longer.

Most people who play MMOs want to continually improve their character. If their character can no longer be improved then people stop playing.

It can also space out the content through the game. Rather than adding all new content at level 50, addition content can be added higher giving people new reasons to reach new goals and just skipping everything except that that gives the best level 50 gear.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

because if you keep such low cap, at a certain point you'll be filled by endgame events, more than you can handle ? Pretty much like FFXi, after years of 75 we had in a row sky,sea,dynamis,salvage,einherjar,hnm,walk of the echoes, and minor events like campaign and assault. An hardcore linkshell was really filled by things to do, obliusly at a certain point they need to slow on a certain event to do more space fon new content.
and also because after years you have the same abilities, you feel the urge to power up your character even more pretty much like the merit sistem

[gifthorse]

To keep people playing longer.

Most people who play MMOs want to continually improve their character. If their character can no longer be improved then people stop playing.

It can also space out the content through the game. Rather than adding all new content at level 50, addition content can be added higher giving people new reasons to reach new goals and just skipping everything except that that gives the best level 50 gear.

Well it's a cheap tactic.

If people want to improve their character, fine, let us improve our characters through quests that teach us new abilities but don't let us improve by making us grind to a new endgame just because the developers decided they were too useless to make enough content to bide people over until the next batch of updates.

It's just lazy. You can separate new content into tiers if that's what needs to happen but you don't need to separate them by vast expanses of pure grind. The psychology of the gamers is obviously beyond my understanding if it's true that they need the reassurance of a new rank to give them a sense of progression.

Am I the only one disgusted?

And who says that endgame needs to revolve around gear/bosses and such? There are other ways to gauge one's progress in the game. If SE implemented more "sandbox" elements, for example, I'm sure endgame would sort itself out without their intervention.