Level Cap IncreaseFollow

CoP was pretty much the definition of casual unfriendly even if "doing it as you level up" was an attempt to spin it as such. Job bias was strong, with that the sheepish nature of PUG attempts. Not a job listed in a particular strategy? Good luck. Or level one. I knew a number of people who took SMN to 30 just to get past the Promys for this very reason. The steep price for failure in EXP, meds, and time was also a considerable deterrent in deviating from the norm.

It probably wouldn't have been so bad if XI had better party and an actual cross-server matching system, but it didn't. So, despite the love some seem to have for CoP's story, the gameplay mechanics probably did their fair share of driving folks off to WoW at that time.

Actually Mr. Filth, no I haven't played any other MMO significantly other than FF11 (pre level sync gear update), good point. That being said, I actually prided myself in keeping some low level gear for capped instances back in the day. But what I'm seeing now, is the sad sad disposal of lvl 49 gear that I worked and melded very well being replaced by .....first ilvl 70 gear that I melded so good, then 80 CT gear, then 90 AF myth gear, and now 100 soldiery gear. I still hold onto the old crap as if fooling myself into thinking it's still good.... but it's not, it's obsolete, should just convert or (gasp) npc it.

I wouldn't go so far as to make high level gear unusable for capped fights, but at least make the level appropriate gear a bit better than level synced high level ****.

Though I've never played WoW, I've heard of a disturbing trend of my friends logging in after an update on WoW, getting the latest gear, and logging out until next update/expansion.......and that's it......I believe (hope) Final Fantasy can do better than this.

After reading some more post, I have to say, i think the level cap would be ok, aslong as it was slight. However, i do not think that one is needed at this time. There is plenty to do in ffxiv.
If you are one of those people that has everything done that can be done, then i think you need to find another game to play along w/ ffxiv because clearly you have ALOT of free time on your hands.

This is entirely true. Everything that a level cap increase could bring could be implemented through other means. If there are aspects of a class/job that SE decides to tie to levels, it's only because that is the way that they choose to implement them. The same result could be achieved whether the cap is raised or not.

That said, raising the cap seems like the conventional way to go about major progress patches, and they've already mentioned raising the cap before, so I'm sure that's the way they'll go about it. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just one method among many they could use to further the model they're going with which is already rooted in vertical progression.

I was mainly just reinforcing the point that you don't necessarily need a cap raise in order to get some of the things people have mentioned that are typically associated with cap raises. Anything that could be obtained through cap raises could be obtained some other way, from new abilities to stat increases to unlocking all sorts of other different upgrades for your character.

But I agree, in that the main reason to increase the cap is to give players something to do, and a lot of players do seem really comfortable with the idea of growing their character level as the game progresses. And while it may not be required to raise the cap to add things like new abilities, catch up periods, etc. if they're going to be raising the cap anyway, they may as well choose to tie these aspects in along with it.

Edited, Aug 3rd 2014 12:29am by Susanoh

..So basically I came into XI shortly after 75 was implemented..

The real issue isn't lack of content, it's lack of relevant content. The game is only a year old but they are already pushing content into the obsolete category. For where I am in the game right now the only thing to do is second coil farming and hunts (I hate hunts). Now I know what people will be thinking. What about Ramuh, Leviathan, Moogle, novus, other jobs, etc. Well all my other jobs that aren't my main are full 90 meaning the only way to progress is to spend soldiery or get coil gear (Lockout Problems). For novus I finished my Paladin set, and doing a second one would make my brain melt (Access Problems). Ramuh, Leviathan, Moogle were implemented already obsolete since better gear already existed, and is more readily available because of hunts. And then there's everything else that came before this, now very much obsolete, with no reason to run any of that content again unless it comes up randomly in the roulette (of which I run only expert for additional alexandrites, and trials because it's quick).

So that leaves me with second coil. I have to wait 1 week, every week to continue to do the only thing there is for me to do in this game (and the only thing challenging enough for me to have fun with). When 2.4 hits it is going to be the exact same thing again. Coil 3 will be the only content to do after I have finished what will be the next relic upgrade. The new primal I will beat once and never touch again since I will obtain either coil/token pieces instead. My other jobs will get geared up by simply collecting the mountain the soldiery we will be getting (if myth now is any indication). So I will be back to doing coil 3 once per week and having to wait a whole week to get anything done.

This vertical progression we have is the root cause of the problem, and is the direction Yoshi-p decided to take the game in when they revamped everything. They way, way oversimplified gear causing me to only go after one piece of gear, per slot, which can be accomplished in one single 4 part dungeon, that I can only do once every week. Couple this with the fact that already, before even the games one year mark, new players are already able to jump straight to i100 gear causing all the content at 50 to be easily and quickly completed. Somehow we already need a method to "catch up" when there isn't that much content to go through to begin with. Just as an example, my alt character was turn 6 ready 1 week after hitting 50. I was under the impression that the catch up method was the roulettes so lower leveled players had people to play with, but I guess that wasn't enough. At some point horizontal progress needs to be implemented or we will always have very few options for things to do outside of an initial first time clear.

Yeah and as said, it depends on how you look at it because the speed you reach end-game (if you actually play more than 2 hours a day) is a bit too fast then you realize there's only 1 current end-game event - Second Coil of Bahamut, which requires the First Coil to be completed.

So there's a lot of content...but so does any other MMO depending on how you look at it, just not everything is relevant to progression. So if you look at it from a progressive standpoint, there ain't **** in this game after a year, but if you look at it as 'things to do regardless of being useful or not' there's quite a lot to do. That's partially the problem since yoshida himself even admits he's designing the game with the idea that people will drop it after completing x update content while waiting for the next update, which is partially why it's being designed with players who don't even play in mind rather than people who keep playing. Sadly, the main counter agrument people seem to throw out: "Why does everything have to be about progression?"

Well, why do you play a video game if all you do is repeat the tutorial level endlessly for the rest of your life because you find it "fun" and choose not to move on? (Progress.) Progression is a part of RPGs...especially MMORPGs, so it is always a good idea to have a lot of progression base content. Some of it may seem like it..but largely, if you've done Coil 2 and got geared out..Syrcus Tower is worthless to you from a progression stand point. Same with Crystal Tower, it is ABSOLUTELY worthless to everyone as you can get Myth gear without ever so much as unlocking those raid. You can also get Sol gear and with hunts now...boom, you obsoleted even optional progression paths.

Honestly, the whole CT/Coil **** up at the start is what really skewed the content base of this game because initially, coil was supposed to be the hardcore 24 man raid alliance where 3 separate parties went 3 separate paths to complete it, as they originally described it.

It's painfully obvious they're banking on the expansion/level cap raise to really start pushing the game forward.


Edited, Aug 13th 2014 8:01am by Theonehio

2 since I only play 2 jobs end-game wise. Though that is more of a grind for the sake of it. So I wouldn't really consider that in the end-game realm of things since novus doesn't really have you collecting items from T9 for example ;p

Really? I have the opposite opinion on that one. I found it much easier and fun to help people in 11. This game you have to teach everyone everything (and sometimes the fight is just near impossible to help people with such as titan ex). Dont get me wrong though i like helping when i can, but when it comes to hard content i dont help unless its a 7 man carry. The time it takes for some people to learn a fight is really long. In 11 if a few people died it didnt mean a wipe. All these dps checks just make me not want to help anyone.

Perhaps he mentioned Titan EX specifically because of factors like lag. You can't teach people how not to lag. No amount of learning or practice will overcome it.

That is very true. I blame game design and programming for that, though. I know nobody here likes it when I say so, but... I've gotten hit so dang many times when I was outside of the AoE area, it is just simply ridiculous.

I suppose, the best thing to do is try to help and then see what exactly is going on, if it looks hopeless, then abandon it.



I quit the game near the end (or near the middle? my memory of it is kinda foggy...) of WoTG, because of LFG for hours and hours and hours and getting no groups at all and attempts to make groups failed horribly. Campaign, couldn't get any XP whatsoever, Besieged, same, because whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff and they nerfed buff/curing XP in Campaign about that time. And Campaign was starting to die down, hardly anybody did it, and the mobs were just too stinking hard at the time (I swear SE balanced them around having Lv75 Endgame sh*t equipped).

Started playing again during Mid-Abyssea, then quit again because I was so far out of the loop that I didn't understand hardly any of the new stuff that was added and everybody was diving into Abyssea and I was like "uh, wtf is this stuff?" when I tried to read information on Abyssea, it sounded so confusing and I didn't know anybody since apparently during my absence, there was a server merge, peoples' names were changed, nobody on my old LS was on, etc.

Started playing AGAIN around March of this year, a little wee bit on-and-off, until family member also started playing again about a month ago. We've been playing somewhat heavily. Went from ~82 to 94 in that time.

Edited, Aug 13th 2014 10:47pm by Lyrailis

Edited, Aug 13th 2014 10:49pm by Lyrailis

It probably didn't help that back then, you had to skill up on Tough mobs and I gained a lot of XP from just family member and I wailing away at Easy Prey mobs (until Level Sync came), even if it did take ages to get anywhere (which is why I quit the first time).

Even Match could skill you to cap, but it did so very d*mn slowly. My Main's a WAR. Great Axes are one of THE worst weapons to skill (or at least they were back then). Finding a Skillup Group that wanted to do things in my range was nearly impossible (I remember at one point, I was in the mid200s and everybody wanted to do the 275+ range). I had a hard time getting groups as I mentioned, and my skill was so far behind, that I could never hit anything in Campaign or Besieged because of the skills being so severely underleveled.

Well, thanks to the freaking awesome changes during this past year, I am now Lv95 with a Great Axe skill of ~368 or thereabouts, so not too far from cap. lol. Family Member and I whupped the taru's little behind, and we're ready to go to 99, and I should easily be able to cap on anything that rates DC to a 99.

Love, love love what they did in XI.

Then maybe family member and I can go back and do AAAAAAALLLLLLLL that stuff we never could before. I've never touched a single WotG mission, hardly any of ToAU, we only have Rank7 Windy and nothing else, family member does not have CoP done, etc etc etc.

Edited, Aug 15th 2014 11:30pm by Lyrailis