How to Fix Leveling in Final Fantasy XIV: The Squish Solution



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21 thoughts on “How to Fix Leveling in Final Fantasy XIV: The Squish Solution”

  1. I think if we are to lose levels it needs to be canonical. One way we could achieve this is using up our blessing of light. Meaning we have to rely solely on our own strength to carry us forward.

    It would need to be gamewide, something of an Dalamund 2.0 event that affects ALL players. And new players have a need starting experience?

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  2. Nah, a Level squish wouldn't do anything in this game. I already mentioned this in the podcast VOD but only fundamental changes like making the jobs actual classes instead of rotations would start to make it feel like leveling matters. The MSQ is also just not multiplayer, so let's make it Multiplayer for god's sake. How have people accepted a single-player game with so few RPG systems and crappy gameplay for so long? How is it that there have been no substantial improvements in gameplay after a decade of ARR? And people are just OK with that?

    Somehow when Square Enix copied WoW they took the worst parts of retail AND classic leveling and put them together, because again, they have never had any idea what to do with this game. You have both an MSQ that doesn't want you to feel stuck, so everything you do presents no challenge so you can move on, and at the same time, you have an MSQ that is so full of padding and makes you move from point A to point B very slowly with the same exact few tasks all the way to 90.

    Instead of a Level Squish, what they need to do is CHANGE the structure of the game, make actual classes that are different from one another and stop this horrible obsession with wanting players to always press buttons. Make elemental weaknesses and strengths a thing(like in FF games), return types of physical damage and class synergies but actually expand them so there are multiple combinations. Put players together to do things together, and make the MSQ OPT-IN. Also make ailments like sleep and snare actually useful and usable in dangerous places.

    Give players new spaces to play together, how cool would it be to have one Eureka-like zone for Ul'dah, Gridania and Limsa where Ifrit, Garuda and Titan are the massive open world raid bosses? Hell you hardly need to make new assets for that. Either remove or make gear actually useful as well.

    And with jobs designed exclusively for raid content it would mean you have to get all the way to 90 just to play properly, and then that gets taken away through the disgusting level sync system.
    FFXIV has too many problems, it's such a broken and shallow mess. If people played the MSQ today for the first time they'd realize why the game is not keeping players, it's just NOT fun to play.

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  3. A level squish won't work with the structure of the game. I've had a hard enough time getting friends to give it a try. If I tell them they will only be level 25 or 30 at the end of ARR and the massive quest marathon to Heavensward they won't give it a second thought. Any squish has to fit the structure of the game as it sits and condensing wouldn't work.

    If anything they could consider an alternate advancement system after level 100 but pre 100 it's baked into the entire game's DNA.

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  4. I don't see the level, the number, as an issue, it could go up to 1000.

    the main issue, for me at least, is that we have a finite number of skill slots.

    Sure, there's a really high number of hotbars/xbars, but what you would do? make people use all of the 128 or so actions of a xbar in a single dungeon/trial/raid?

    are we going to remove and combine early level skills? making the new player experience less rewarding? are we just going to give improvements to existing skills, it would work for a while, but that too has a limit.

    I think the question should be more on the lines: how can players be reward by progressing.

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  5. it sounded like the chilli guy threw out an idea and just refused to concede it was a bad one and kept trying to find ways to justify the point but couldn't do it, level squish doesn't make sense for what the game is and the extra work it'd take to rebalance every encounter/game system for it would never happen anyway

    they just need to work on better types of vertical progression systems since right now your progression is get max level equip gear – add 2 pieces of materia – see you in 8 months for the next savage

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  6. Ultimate is not a concern regarding levels; especially when it involves access to abilities. Class never had this problem because all skills capped at 50. If you MUST bring the levels down for abilities, stop at 70, with 75 becoming the Hard Cap for all abilities.

    That also means respecting roles, which we have disregarded.

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  7. I personally want to see overall experience required to level reduced. Keep the progress track as is. Another idea would be to add additional armory bonuses for each max job you have. This could make leveling additional jobs much easier.

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  8. Imagine playing for years and finally got all your jobs to 90, and you’re excited to get them to 100 to truly feel complete, then suddenly you lose 40 levels on all your jobs.

    It’s an MMO, but its also an FF game. Hitting 99 or 100 in an FF game always feels like an incredible endcap moment. I support spreading out some skills and tweaking damage, but a full on squish will break hearts.

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  9. The biggest thing is that there was no adventuring foray to prop up the relic weapon grind. I think this was the biggest reason for people leaving, hands down. Level squishing would ultimately destroy the game on the single premise that the expansion they do it on is going to be negatively affected.

    I discovered recently that old content definitely still feels just like it used to when unskilled players are in it. I haven't wiped in Sunken Temple of Qarn in like 8 years, and all it took was dps ignoring the adds on the first boss. Then, watching them try to get the face mobs on the plates was such an enriching experience.

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  10. A level squish isn't what's needed. Ultimately it would be a complete waste of time and resources for something likely to cause game-breaking bugs or issues. What's needed is quest syncing. Allow parties of friends to do msq quests and job quests together. Not only would it make leveling alt jobs easier, it would be more fun for new players, and for groups of new players. It would also incentivise the developers to make the quests more than "Talk to npc A, talk to npc B, talk to npc A again, maybe hand in an item. Quest complete."

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  11. I started playing like 2 weeks ago, I feel like as a casual gamer spending time to do 10 mcq for one level is a lot and spending around 53 hours just to be at level 49 without any interaction with other people is giving me a burnout. I started caring less about the story and started skipping through it, keeping in mind that I could just watch a video explaining the whole story.

    Reply

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