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#1 Aug 01 2014 at 9:44 AM Rating: Default
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Now that we are all a bunch of level 50 players running around in level ONE HUNDRED gear..... is it time? In my opinion, the game has backed itself into a hole where leveling up yourself is no longer plausible, only leveling your gear. And if it IS time, how will SE deal with item levels? I can't fathom how an increased level cap would work, and would be a nightmare to balance. Will we be level fifty forever? Eventually equipped with level 200 gear? Patch after Patch..... where is this headed?
#2 Aug 01 2014 at 10:01 AM Rating: Good
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WoW did increasing level caps AND increasing Item Level both just fine.

At the end of Cataclysm (Lv85 max), 378 was what you had if you did the basic 5-man dungeons at the end of the expansion. I don't recall off the back of my hand, but I believe LFR gear was 397 and Normal Raid was a touch higher (403 or thereabouts?).

When the level-cap increased, you were Lv85 in 378 gear. You went to Jade Forest which was 85-86 and quests gave you a mix of 372 and 384.

Then you got to Four Winds/Krasarang at 86 and quests gave you 399 gear.

At the end of MoP, 496 gear is the "basic Lv90 gear" you get off the Timeless Isle.

From what I've seen of WoD (the next expansion)'s Beta, it looks like the first few quests will give you 500 gear and it will go up from there.

You might have better gear than the introductory quests have (a couple of my characters are 540 avg), but the quests WILL catch up and you'll find yourself in another 'gear up' phase, as you replace all of your old stuff.

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 12:05pm by Lyrailis
#3 Aug 01 2014 at 10:03 AM Rating: Decent
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What would be the point, honestly.

We could have had level cap increases back when we simply had gear with better stats.

Now that they have given our gear an item level, there's no point in having a job at level 50 or at level 55 If your gear is level 100, you're apparently level 100. It just means more hassle to level something up if they were to change it now again.

Monster damage is dependant on you being lv.50, there's a whole level penalty involved in damage that's taken and done. If you were to go beyond level 50 now, all the dungeons in the game would become instantly void.

More abilities? Sure, why not just add more Lv.50 quests that need a prerequisite of finishing the quests before that, or a prerequisit of a certain storymode quest cleared.

No point in level cap increases anymore, SE shot themselves in their own foot.

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 6:08pm by KojiroSoma
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#4 Aug 01 2014 at 10:08 AM Rating: Excellent
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KojiroSoma wrote:
What would be the point, honestly.

We could have had level cap increases back when we simply had gear with better stats.

Now that they have given our gear an item level, there's no point in having a job at level 50 or at level 55 If your gear is level 100, you're apparently level 100. It just means more hassle to level something up if they were to change it now again.

More abilities? Sure, why not just add more Lv.50 quests that need a prerequisite of finishing the quests before that, or a prerequisit of a certain storymode quest cleared.

No point in level cap increases anymore, SE shot themselves in their own foot.


Increasing the level cap, along with new areas to explore (and quest in!) allows SE to give "Catch-up" methods to late-comers and more casual players so that they don't face an ever-growing mountainous wall in front of them that they'll never have any chance of climbing up.

In FFXI, they gave all fresh 99 players Sparks of Eminence gear. You could walk to an NPC and buy most of a suit of armor for Sparks. This gear was 117 and allowed you to bypass pretty much all Lv75 content, and allowed you to jump right into Seekers content right off the bat.

Catch-up Methods are awesome for an aging game.

Increasing the level cap similar to the WoW example I provided above will allow newer players and more casual players to feel like they have a chance of participating in meaningful content.
#5 Aug 01 2014 at 10:14 AM Rating: Default
Yes but with the game set up the way it is, the same thing is just going to happen again.
#6 Aug 01 2014 at 10:46 AM Rating: Excellent
They could increase the level cap only in new areas added, say in an expansion.

That is, you can get up to level 60 in Ishgard dungeons and the open world areas, but outside of them you're level synced back down to 50 and gear is capped at iLvl 120. I can see how they've anticipated this, actually, as some quests already tell you they are level capped to 50, and they have the mechanism in place to cap gear at iLvl80 in Frontlines.

FFXI did that with Chains of Promathia, only in reverse. All the 75s found themselves level capped down to 30, 40, 50, and 60 for entire swathes of the expansion. Smiley: lol
#7 Aug 01 2014 at 11:03 AM Rating: Excellent
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In the expansion is my guess when they will increase it. We already know they are adding leviathan as a summon but said they weren't doing it until the level cap increase. I think we'll see level 60, the only advantage with they way they do gear is to equip higher level gear and also for spells. I'd hate to have a million spells on my bars though.
#8 Aug 01 2014 at 11:16 AM Rating: Good
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I feel like there'll just be an ilvl crunch, myself. Stuff like dungeon greens might get relabeled to like 52, darklight to 55, relic to 58ish, and so on. So, those with top end stuff now could probably level to 60 and even start that endgame without needing upgrades, but eventually they'll have to.
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#9 Aug 01 2014 at 11:34 AM Rating: Excellent
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Increasing the level cap, along with new areas to explore (and quest in!) allows SE to give "Catch-up" methods to late-comers and more casual players so that they don't face an ever-growing mountainous wall in front of them that they'll never have any chance of climbing up.


This is a good point.

In addition, a level cap increase is about more than adding basic stats... it's also THE time to add new job abilities that could dramatically impact how we play the game.

My gut feeling is most stat increases will always come from iLevels, while job balance/functionality will be handled through level cap increases. The two can easily exist side-by-side, just as they are now.

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 10:34am by Thayos
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#10 Aug 01 2014 at 12:18 PM Rating: Excellent
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KojiroSoma wrote:
What would be the point, honestly.

We could have had level cap increases back when we simply had gear with better stats.

Now that they have given our gear an item level, there's no point in having a job at level 50 or at level 55 If your gear is level 100, you're apparently level 100. It just means more hassle to level something up if they were to change it now again.


Your character's level ties in to the following:
- Class and Job Abilities (Can't use a level 52 ability if you're level 50)
- Cross-class abilities (More slots for cross-class, and new cross-class abilities available from leveling your supporting classes over 50)
- More ability points for allotment
- Level lock-outs on content (e.g. Can't do a level 52 quest, dungeon, story, etc. if you're level 50)
- Level lock-outs on gear (e.g. Can't use a level 52 weapon if you're level 50)

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 2:21pm by Xoie
#11 Aug 01 2014 at 12:43 PM Rating: Good
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I actually agree with one of the people up top.

Levels in this game dont mean anything. They dont ever have to raise the level cap at all if they want to. You dont need to increase the level cap to "catch up" and you dont need it to gain new abilities. All of that can be done with quests or other methods. Its exactly like our job/class system. Classess dont need to exist, but they do. Same with levels. Item level increases are what matters in the end. Theres a huge difference between a level 50 i70 player and a 50 i110 player. Same level but what really changes it is ilvl. Sure they can raise the cap to 60. The only thing does is increase the time sink (which this game needs some of). Catch up could easily be "go buy i200 gear from npc". There doesnt need to be a cap increase for the game to do any of the things mentioned above.

Now that thats out of the way, i would prefer a cap increase just for the sake of having somehing to do.
#12 Aug 01 2014 at 12:49 PM Rating: Excellent
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Your character's level ties in to the following:
- Class and Job Abilities (Can't use a level 52 ability if you're level 50)
- Cross-class abilities (More slots for cross-class, and new cross-class abilities available from leveling your supporting classes over 50)
- More ability points for allotment
- Level lock-outs on content (e.g. Can't do a level 52 quest, dungeon, story, etc. if you're level 50)
- Level lock-outs on gear (e.g. Can't use a level 52 weapon if you're level 50)


Exactly.

Item Levels are ONLY good for stats, DPS checks, etc.

Actual levels are good for all of the above, and those class/job abilities are the anchors for how much of the game's content is designed. So, regardless of how high item levels get, actual levels will always be immensely important, just for entirely different reasons.
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#13 Aug 01 2014 at 1:26 PM Rating: Excellent
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KojiroSoma wrote:
What would be the point, honestly.

We could have had level cap increases back when we simply had gear with better stats.

Now that they have given our gear an item level, there's no point in having a job at level 50 or at level 55 If your gear is level 100, you're apparently level 100. It just means more hassle to level something up if they were to change it now again.

Monster damage is dependant on you being lv.50, there's a whole level penalty involved in damage that's taken and done. If you were to go beyond level 50 now, all the dungeons in the game would become instantly void.


Yeah............except entirely, completely wrong. FFXIV 1.0 is THAT way.

Alpha corrections and delta level checks flat out don't exist in ARR. The *only* penalty you find when fighting higher level monsters is the accuracy check of yours versus theirs (which is all your "evasion/miss" stat is currently). A higher monster has higher attack, naturally, but there's no "buff" they get due to you being a lower level. They have a higher crit chance simply due to the fact that they have a higher rating then you do due to being a higher level.

As far as defense? Monsters in ARR don't have defense nor magical defense. At all. A Fast Blade/Heavy Swing/Heavy Thrust/etc. that hits a level 1 Marmot for 100 +/-5%, will hit Ifrit of any variety for 100 +/- 5%, and will hit Twintania or Nael Deus Darnus for 100 +/- 5%. A Fire spell that hits level 3 Eft for 500 +/-5% will hit Isgebind for +/-5%, and slams Avatar for +/-5%. If you pull 1337 deeps against one boss you're equally capable of pulling the exact same 1337 deeps on another. Higher health is the "more defense" you get when progressing through dungeons.

No, SE only handles defense changes on bosses with buffs they gain (or debuffs) -- Toto-Rak's Banemite (debuff when tail explodes), Ultima story mode (99.99% buff applied at the start), any boss with a stacking debuff mechanic, or Avatar (two buffs to damage taken/dealt if you ***** up towers).

Hell, *YOU* don't even have innate defense of any type because it's not tied to a stat anymore.

~~~

The main thing that will change with higher levels is the Accuracy check system. Extremes can miss but their accuracy is high enough that they don't do it too often and even Ruin II/traited Flash doesn't lower it all that much (seeing the occassional Dodged on Mountain Buster is nice though). Coil bosses flat out won't miss at all due to the devs setting their accuracy so high.

Plus, the power growth will more than likely be lowered some via the rating system. They don't really seemed to have a scaluar model in play so when the cap's raised to 55/60/65/70/whatever the amount granted by a single stat/rating will be lowered to compensate for getting more and more of it on gear. If they go like they are already (all stats are pretty much based off of a level 50 model) then the previous bosses' accuracy will get slammed due to their internal rating not changing, but the game's new model is.

Catwho wrote:
They could increase the level cap only in new areas added, say in an expansion.

That is, you can get up to level 60 in Ishgard dungeons and the open world areas, but outside of them you're level synced back down to 50 and gear is capped at iLvl 120. I can see how they've anticipated this, actually, as some quests already tell you they are level capped to 50, and they have the mechanism in place to cap gear at iLvl80 in Frontlines.

FFXI did that with Chains of Promathia, only in reverse. All the 75s found themselves level capped down to 30, 40, 50, and 60 for entire swathes of the expansion. Smiley: lol


That sounds stupid and pointless. Yoshi-P has already talked about eventually removing the level cap requirements on dungeons to just let people run it at their level (when people people in the future post expansions I'd imagine).

Chains of Promathia may have had one of the better storylines (I preferred WotG), but the forced weakening with all the level cap areas bullsh*t is the reason it was the least popular storyline even with the rings as a reward at the end. Even post Abyssea surveys it had the lowest completion rate of the player base, and why they just went ahead and abolished the level caps (and haven't put them back in anything since).

Seriha wrote:
I feel like there'll just be an ilvl crunch, myself. Stuff like dungeon greens might get relabeled to like 52, darklight to 55, relic to 58ish, and so on. So, those with top end stuff now could probably level to 60 and even start that endgame without needing upgrades, but eventually they'll have to.


If they were going to do an ilvl crunch they wouldn't had planned ahead and enabled the ilvl to show up to four digits on your character sheet now would they?

Besides, I don't think we'll have to worry about the power growth too much in this game versus say WoW. We are getting stronger, yes, but everything, down to the calculations of damage are all linear. X of this will give you a rough power increase of Y. There's currently no diminishing returns on anything (outside of the usual more accuracy past 100% is pointless, haste mechanics always give exponential increases in power, and crit gives natural diminishing returns the higher you go, etc.) because it's all linear.

WoW's issue was the exponential increase of stats per tier, whereas here it's linear. I don't foresee it becoming an issue at all to be honest.

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 3:32pm by Viertel
#14 Aug 01 2014 at 3:00 PM Rating: Excellent
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Chains of Promathia may have had one of the better storylines (I preferred WotG), but the forced weakening with all the level cap areas bullsh*t is the reason it was the least popular storyline even with the rings as a reward at the end. Even post Abyssea surveys it had the lowest completion rate of the player base, and why they just went ahead and abolished the level caps (and haven't put them back in anything since).


Huh, I always hear CoP held up as the bastion of FF Storytelling At Its Finest. The complaints with the expansion had little to do with the story: no new jobs, the aforementioned level caps, the ridiculously long slog for some missions (5-3), the difficulty of certain fights (Ouryu, Airship, Shikaree, Tenzen, etc), and the horrible spawn conditions of the endgame bosses in {sea}. (Looking at you, Ix'DRG.)

I felt ToAU had the best balance of good story, good variety of events, and good rewards.
#15 Aug 01 2014 at 3:43 PM Rating: Excellent
I liked the level capping of Chains of Promathia. Having level-capped battlefields really made the expansion more accessible to lower-level players. Also, having a cap at level 30 allowed more people to participate in different battles as different jobs.... and at a time when leveling was a much tougher endeavor in MMOs, when people couldn't just spam-level all of their jobs to max in a couple months.

Don't think today's average MMO player would be able to process that kind of system, though.
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#16 Aug 01 2014 at 4:23 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thayos wrote:
I liked the level capping of Chains of Promathia. Having level-capped battlefields really made the expansion more accessible to lower-level players. Also, having a cap at level 30 allowed more people to participate in different battles as different jobs.... and at a time when leveling was a much tougher endeavor in MMOs, when people couldn't just spam-level all of their jobs to max in a couple months.

Don't think today's average MMO player would be able to process that kind of system, though.


I agree. I'm pretty sure when CoP came out, a significant portion of the playerbase hadn't even made it to level 75 yet. So having the content capped at lower levels gave people who hadn't reached endgame a chance to participate in the expansion. For what it's worth, "pre-nerf" CoP had battles that rivaled endgame difficulty, too Smiley: lol.
#17 Aug 01 2014 at 4:59 PM Rating: Good
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I do not want a lvl increase, granted, WoW did if just fine but I feel that once they increased the level cap in ffxi, the game went to crap, they would have to rebalance EVERYTHING. If they increase the level, we will be at the same point we are now.

Granted, it was extremely easy to get my PLD to 50, but honestly, i have a ton of stuff to do, I really do not want to be bothered with leveling my PLD an additional BLA levels.

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 7:00pm by RyanSquires
#18 Aug 01 2014 at 5:02 PM Rating: Excellent
Keep in mind that the first level cap increase in XI was from 50 to 75 when the game was about a year old.
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#19 Aug 01 2014 at 5:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thayos wrote:
Keep in mind that the first level cap increase in XI was from 50 to 75 when the game was about a year old.


According to the historical archives, the first level cap raise was to 55 in Sept. 2002 and the next was to 60 in Nov. 2002.
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Category:News/FFXI

Then it was raised to 65 when RoZ came out in May 2003. They raised it again in July 2003 to 70 for the NA beta and it remained so for the NA release in Sept. 2003. Then the raise to 75 happened in Dec 2003 where it stayed for years.
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Category:News/RoZ

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 7:29pm by Xoie
#20 Aug 01 2014 at 5:22 PM Rating: Good
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Thayos wrote:
Keep in mind that the first level cap increase in XI was from 50 to 75 when the game was about a year old.


If by first, you mean fifth, sure.

Thayos wrote:
I liked the level capping of Chains of Promathia. Having level-capped battlefields really made the expansion more accessible to lower-level players. Also, having a cap at level 30 allowed more people to participate in different battles as different jobs.... and at a time when leveling was a much tougher endeavor in MMOs, when people couldn't just spam-level all of their jobs to max in a couple months.

Don't think today's average MMO player would be able to process that kind of system, though.


Your logic's really flawed on this one. Having battlefields being level capped doesn't mean they're more accessible: it just means they're level capped. The areas were all gated behind missions and is one of the major complaints about the expansion in that if you didn't/couldn't get a group for the mission fights you didn't get to see *anything* of the expansion outside of Promyvion areas. Sea I could have understood being gated behind missions; Sky did the same thing but opened up every other area for you right out of the gate (same with ToAu and WotG, and now SoA).

CoP was *ANYTHING* but more accessible to the populace.

Plus, I don't know what FFXI you played, but unless you were in a linkshell and partied with them (and could go as whatever you wanted) the populace had *extremely* strict requirements about what they wanted on fights during the CoP era. Needed the fights in Promyvion? You better be NIN or /NIN sub, no exceptions. Needed the 40 fight with the clones? You better be SMN so they can just Astral blow it up or don't bother. etc. CoP was full of perferred methods that left of a lot of people out in the cold if they weren't running with friends, and to try to pretend otherwise is blatantly false.

Leveling throughout Vanilla didn't really change at all until FoV were released and tweaked (first iteration was pretty terrible with the one Vana'diel lockout). The only thing that changed was learning game mechanics and realizing adopting the JP method at launch of magic bursting with BLM was a waste of time and to stop trying to take on IT++ all the time. One that caught on with the populace leveling was "easier" because they were actually tackling mobs more of their difficulty, and thus EXP soared.



Edited, Aug 1st 2014 7:28pm by Viertel
#21 Aug 01 2014 at 6:17 PM Rating: Excellent
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I remember a HUGE part of the "challenge" behind CoP in FFXI was trying to find low-level gear.

See, back then, we didn't have gear scaling. If you were wearing Lv50 gear and you got level-restricted to Lv30, you were naked because you could not equip the gear at all. This means you had to actually have Lv30 gear to do the 3 Promyvion missions.

But yet, a LOT of players......I mean a LOT of players... could not be bothered to have halfway decent Lv30 gear. PUG groups for Promyvions, you'd see lots of Lv10-16 armor. You'd see people wearing Scale Armor wanting to "Tank" the boss at the end, you'd see people wearing Bone Armor, sometimes you'd see people going in with Lv1 racial armor.

The Level-Capped Battlefields were tuned very harshly at the time, allowing for very little mistakes. I remember trying to get CoP done with my Linkshell way back when, and even WITH all 6 people wearing good gear for the level, you had so little margin of error before it was a wipe. And if you had no Reraise, then you had to re-do the dungeon crawl all over again. If some idiot aggro'd the IT mobs on the last floor and couldn't make it to the zone, you were done. End of night. Died against the boss and your only person with the Raise spell had no Reraise on for whatever reason? You were all done. No way to recover. And who, at Lv30 had Raise again? WHMs and... did RDM get Raise at 30 back then? I forget. If so that just makes WHM and RDM, and that's it. If you died in the BCNM, then anybody with WHM sub could rez outside the battlefield, sure. But again, someone with Reraise had to make sure they kept Reraise up.

So... TL;DR: is basically... the challenge of CoP was finding people who actually had gear for those levels, and finding people who could actually play and not get killed to stupid crap, and passing the very small margin of error with the right group setups (a SMN was very highly sought after, for example).

Oh, and Woe unto the group that used the SMN 2hr but something went wrong... lol. Not able to try again until 2 hours later.

EDIT: Oh, and lots and lots of people refused to use consumables because they were "too expensive". Yag drinks, pies, etc. Or the later missions with boss enfeeble items that people didn't feel like bringing, then they'd complain when their attempt failed... well, derp, they didn't bring any enfeeble items. Of course they died horribly. That, and they were probably wearing crap gear too.

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 8:19pm by Lyrailis
#22 Aug 01 2014 at 7:18 PM Rating: Excellent
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If by first, you mean fifth, sure.


Yep! Smiley: smile
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#23 Aug 01 2014 at 8:20 PM Rating: Decent
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klooste8 wrote:
Now that we are all a bunch of level 50 players running around in level ONE HUNDRED gear..... is it time? In my opinion, the game has backed itself into a hole where leveling up yourself is no longer plausible, only leveling your gear. And if it IS time, how will SE deal with item levels? I can't fathom how an increased level cap would work, and would be a nightmare to balance. Will we be level fifty forever? Eventually equipped with level 200 gear? Patch after Patch..... where is this headed?

You haven't ever seen another MMO increase it's level cap before? XIV follows the usual vertical progression so it's likely to be very similar to what you'd see in any other game.
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#24 Aug 01 2014 at 9:49 PM Rating: Excellent
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And who, at Lv30 had Raise again? WHMs and... did RDM get Raise at 30 back then?

Back then, Raise was RDM38.
#25 Aug 01 2014 at 9:58 PM Rating: Good
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WHM raise was level 25...
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Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#26 Aug 01 2014 at 10:44 PM Rating: Good
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Lyrailis wrote:
So... TL;DR: is basically... the challenge of CoP was finding people who actually had gear for those levels, and finding people who could actually play and not get killed to stupid crap, and passing the very small margin of error with the right group setups (a SMN was very highly sought after, for example).

If I had to estimate, I'd say that a little less than half of the gear I used for lower level missions(and BCNMs) was stuff that was easily crafted, things that were quested or things I purchased directly from a vendor. That said, it doesn't matter if your defense is 50 or 500 when you're not taking hits. Your strategy and it's execution were far more important than your fashion sense.

I understand that a lot of people came here to ZAM and saw that so and so did the mission with whatever group composition and they expected it to be successful for them, but not everyone played the game that way. I personally loved trying to theory craft what might be successful based on what I had available. I was honestly shocked at the number of dry runs I attempted that resulted in victory or near victory without the use of 2 hour abilities. Do people even use the term 'dry run' these days? I was so hype for them back then because you'd get the chance to push your limits without the aid of the 2hour crutch. Now those were the days Smiley: nod
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HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
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