What will FFXIV do beyond lvl100? | Reaction to @Mrhappy1227 | Gaming Kinda
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#ffxiv #levelcap #levelsquish #mrhappy1227 #gamingkinda
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this is a problem that absolutely fascinates me.
I really do find it hard to imagine CBU3 going with paragon levels/merits etc as a solution to level bloat– not after the first ten years have put such a tremendous focus on the leveling experience. It's just not much of a solution– when the garbage can is full, you might feel real smart w/ your solution of 'I'll just start a new garbage pile beside it!' but really, you just need to empty the trash can.
Not only that, such a parallel leveling system is definitely going to create a definitional issue with endgame. When does endgame begin? At the end of the current expac, or reaching the 'end' of the leveling process (like level 100?).
You're still going to have to go back and prune lower levels for actions and abilities so that you can add new without bloat. You're still going to have to do stat squishes and, one presumes, ilvl squishes when that gets out of control.
I'd be more interested in how they'd theoretically approach a level squish (which is, in most respects, the most simple and likely solution). Leaving ARR as 1-50 seems… crazy, tbh, as it's the most ripe for capturing back some of those levels in a squish. But now you have to readjust *everything*, quests, job/class quests, dungeon/trials, unlocks, the works. So do you leave ARR as 1-50, cut the previous expansions to five levels each instead of ten (more doable, tbh), and have ARR still account for more than 50% of the raw leveling experience (in numbers, not time) when it's all said and done?
Every potential solution brings its own problems, and it's gonna be instructive to see how they tackle it.
ARR becoming the old starting expansion, along with a new leveling experience going from 1-20, then dumping you into HW seems the most doable, and getting us 30 levels back, kicking the can down the road for another 6-7 years.
Another option would be to going forward, focusing on Meracydia and the New World, and like Chris said have us start at level 10, with a new player experience skipping straight to 7.0 or 8.0.
The far-reaching ambitious solution would be that there will be a new cataclysm or some other closure at the end of 7.0, and they announce FF17 instead of 8.0 at that year’s Fan Fest. And 14 turns into a horizontal progression game, capped at 100, with 17 being the new vertical progression game.
This would also lead way into the Final Fantasy Online Subscription covering all three games ( 11,14,17 )
My pipe dream is sub classes
The level squish worked great in wow. I can’t think of a single person that actually cared past the first hour. We were already used to numbers being irrelevant from a damage perspective so it made no difference. Once you get used to them everything’s much better after.
I don't think a "paragon points" system would work at all. Adding that sort of variable would make job balance a nightmare. Plus, content balance would be next to impossible if you were trying to create a boss fight that can accommodate various power levels of each individual job. It would also create a meta of the "best" point allocation in each job and people would start demanding specific specs for jobs to participate in raids. There is no way it could work without destroying what the game is at a fundamental level.
A level squish is probably the better option BUT the game has been built with story progression tied to level progression from the start. If you think it's a hurdle to get a new player to stick it out through ARR when it's 1 – 50 now, it would be much less enjoyable if ARR only included 20 levels of progression rather than 50 through a couple of hundred hours of content. Not to mention the nature of the content is designed around the abilities jobs unlock by the time they encounter the level appropriate content.
The other thing GW2 did was skill shards before mastery which meant xp never felt wasted. That said tomes kind of act as a replacement since at cap you get them for roul.
ESOs Champion Point system is, conceptually at least, a decent approach. Like FFXI, you have 3 trees in which you can invest points into passive and active "stars". The passives are relatively minor and take a really long time to max out, and the active ones are more powerful but you're limited to only 4, so once you have a certain amount you have horizontal progression in the form of adapting your stats to a specific situation and/or build for tippy top optimization.
I personally think they could just end it with 100. I've seen other games such as WoW and AO (Anarchy Online) go above 100 and it generally just makes it overly complicated.
For WoW, it just made new players and poor alts just spend a week or so grinding levels. It was painful going through 1/3 of a story to be ripped out and slammed into a new one, four or five different times.
For AO, they made new areas have new unique leveling systems that only further complicated one of the most complex mmos made. In the end it really wasn't too too different from their basic leveling system and added skills that new mobs were mostly just weak to them.
In mmo's what is leveling used for? A sense of progression usually. What is it used for in 14? To denote when the trials and dungeons line up and a new skill or two. Do we need levels to keep enjoying the story, dungeons, raids, trials, and alliance raids? No, item level can deal with that.
I can concure crafting in 14 is very easy to level. 1-80 is roughly an hour to an hour n a half. If you need help check The Firmament out. 🙂
I spend too much time in dungeons to not get atleast 10 levels in an hour or two…. but healer q's are awesome. WoW's new leveling experience is much much better but I'd be happy if they just dropped leveling after 70 and just worked on more unique talents.
CC group que when? I dislike soloing group content. I want a rated team que against other teams.
I think that a new onboarding experience like the one you described for PSO 2/Next might work. It would give the team a new jump off point where new players could start without the 800 hour baggage of amazing story. They could instead start the newer chapter and if it interests them, go back and see why people fell in love with the game. They could create npc's for open world parties like old gw and ff11 has/had.
Though, the only way I see that coming to pass is another calamity/time skip like 1.2-Aar
I'd like a system like Destiny 2 has with there New Light campaign. A short intro to the story for new characters that will make them seem relevant. Just finished 5.3 so not sure if they could do that narratively or not, but it's what I think could work.