FFXIV 7.0 Vs WoW 11.0 How To Manage an Ageing MMORPG

4 thoughts on “FFXIV 7.0 Vs WoW 11.0 How To Manage an Ageing MMORPG”

1. For me, the most important thing is to reduce the length of the midgame since people are going to be gathered at the early game and the endgame in most cases. The last thing you want is players to be stuck at a section of the game due to the lack of players. Both FF14 and WoW have used scaling rewards to encourage some interest in the middle content, but it relies on the players at the endgame still wanting to run that content.

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2. I dont think leaving that linear system is an easy thing to achieve, specially for ffxiv

   What i would recommend, and this will help with balance issues, is to cap the game at level 99 as brian said. Include new quest lines, these can come with great story lines and new exploration zones, its inevitable that people will get bored of their jobs and classes, a counter that can be added is a small reqard at the end of each quest line that will unlock a skill modifier, this modifier can change the looks of the skill, say for example instead of white mage having all of skills look lik water and light, it would look like blood or trees and life essence, this will not effect the balance and will allow the player some sort of level of customisation to their job class.

   These quests, although are not giving exp anymore, they can be designed to unlock different zones for the player, and they dont have to be required to finish the story as its somewhat of an endgame sort of content

   The same system can be applied to glam summons, carbuncle looks, change the machinist queen, the reapers avatar and the players look after transformation

   These are small things thats the devs can add, that will not change the game balance or the damage for raiders, will allow players to explore more and give better options to explore more lore
   They can introduce aire type of combat, underwater combat.

   The limited hob concept is yet to be explored

   Even other jobs, under newer jobs that maybe start from level 1, they can work as extra options to newer players and as a refresher point to older players to level up in the game again, these new jobs will allow the dev team to explore more lore through them as they are empty canvas for more story based content

   They can can also further the story and zones of specific areas like anemos and pyos.

   Allowing players to have 1v1 duals in the open world is another option.

   There is also the option of having a parallel time line where the players get to explore another msq, the 1.0 story, it can have its own maps work as a side msq that maybe caps at level 50, a lot of people would actually like to experience that content as a remasted one

   They can consider different pvp modes, dungeons that gets effected by elemental skills, similar to what they did with blue mage

   They can try to recreat the housing system

   There is also this small misconception, that all the new content needs to be time gated by the latest expansion, they could consider allowing the player a different path at the story, and this path takes a turn from level 60, and once the player is done with content, they can go back to the original path that takes them to endwalker content

   Another approach they can take, which is based completely on rpg, is to allow the player a small insight into the life of the scions of the seventh down

   Raha had his time in the future before going to the first, this is one apprach that will allow the player to experience what raha went through

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3. In wow I enjoyed having my character at lvl 120. It made me feel like my character was powerful then the lvl squish happen and now my character just feels weak

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4. I want to shed a bit of personal insight on the leveling issue and why GW2 is the model moving forward. At least IMO.

   At the end of BfA I had more than 22 characters at cap (120) some were DK and DH which start at higher levels but I also had earned those missing levels on other characters. So for ease of understanding I'm going to say 22 characters flat. As SL hit all of my characters went from 120 to 50. Per character, I lost 70 levels that I had previously and rightfully earned. No multi boxing or boosting, just me grinding away. Which means, as soon as the prepatch for SL went live I lost 1,540 levels across my account. Then, as the actual expansion went live Blizzard turned around and asked me to earn 220 levels again that I had already earned on my account.

   Now, Blizzard is turning around and asking me to earn another 220 levels that I've already earned in the past. That means, in total, between two expansions Blizzard took away 440 levels from me and then made me earn them a second time. That is such an insult to a long time player. Mind you, this is after all of the borrowed power problems of the last three expansions.

   I get the top down view and I agree with the conclusion of having the level squish. However, the answer after the squish should've been horizontal progression, not just bolting on more levels. This is just one more area where I feel like Blizzard has burned me for investing in their game.

   Now, I get everyone isn't as invested as I was, and that functionally, my progression wasn't lost because I still ended up in the same level of progression after the squish. Still though, it makes me think now that even levels are a form of borrowed power which makes me think "why level?" That's such a dangerous place to have your players, just as bad as having new players feeling like they can't catch up to the current expansion where everyone is.

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