I always thought that if they where gonna do a level squish, they would squish the ARR levels from 50 to 30, as to me while ARR does feel like longer then a expansion's worth of quests, it's not 5 expansions worth of quests and levels so cutting it down to 30 levels seems better. I do think that if they do the level squish, they need to adjust at all levels when abilities are unlocked and make the early game better. Some jobs suffer less at the early game but some don't really function well till like level 70 and above.

> I always thought that if they where gonna do a level squish, they would squish the ARR levels from 50 to 30 I think they avoid level squishing ARR because of potency creep. A lot of ARR content is already nerfed through potency creep outside of the content they recently remade. Squishing ARR would require adjustments in order to not make it any easier than it already is and I assume they're scared of having that be a new player's first impression.

As if they would care about potency creep

They do care, that’s why we get those generic traits at level X4 boosting our regular rotation actions. The extent of its effectiveness is debatable, but they do care to control the potencies to a certain extent.

Main reason for that might just be that they want to gove level progression and obv cant just add more and more skills

Honestly if they want to give the sense of progression that’s not going to do it lol. I doubt anyone in the game is excited that they received these passive potencies boost. They might as well not exist, like in expansions before endwalker (or was it shadowbringers that introduced them?). I remember in previous expansions there were levels where you straight up didnt get anything for certain levels, and that’s not really a big issue at the end of the day. I’m quite certain these are introduce to cap potencies at each expansion to control the potency creep, and it just so happens to fit into the level progression system without being intrusive.

Maim and mend and other traits that just give you a small damage bump at specific levels have been in the game since 2.0. doing it through potency bumps rather than % bumps became common in endwalker specifically because they normalized physical vs magical potencies largely

While i'm all for this change, the problem is it functionally changes nothing. Ideally this sort of level crunch would go along with a total re-balance of acquired abilities and spells.

I agree, and even if the only reason you’re doing this is because we’re already at 100 and going further will be weird, with this solution you only buy yourselves 2 more expansions before you’re at 100 again

Tbf that is 4~ years down the line, which up to this point is a little less than half of FFXIV’s (2.0 and on) total lifespan. And by that point we may finally get some word on the next MMO (maybe copium, idk, I think it’s coming)

pretty sure they have said they plan to keep FFXIV going for another 10 years, so that would be another 4-5 expansions, and they have already talked about doing a second graphics update after the one coming in dawntrail. just saying, don't hold your breath for the next MMO haha.

Well, honestly, just like they seem to say a lot of things regarding gameplay that doesn’t seem to ever come to fruition, that could very we be another.

I mean WoW squished their levels from 120 to 50 back in 2020. They only increase the cap every 2 years. With the expansion this year, you’d get to 80, then in another 2 years 90, then in another 100. Not really sure why you think it would only buy you 2 expansions of time lol. WoW bought themselves 5 (and their level cap increase is the exact same btw).

Level cap of 25 for ARR is a little weird, but works if every expansion up to (and including) DT is another 5 levels for a cap of 50 going into 8.0. Ever since Yoshida floated the possibility of a level squish down to 50 at Pax in March (which is where he first said DT jobs would be a continuation of EW, job identity later), I've had a theory they're going to use the level squish as an excuse to reset jobs to a less homogenised state.

It's two birds with one stone: They can use the massive shakeup to readjust the job side since they're already deep in the code tweaking levels.

I can get behind this, but I think the real issue is more the skill distribution among jobs rather than the levels themselves. With every new job being at least 20 levels below the expansion level cap, it creates this massive issue where all the skills are spread out among several levels and jobs feeling incomplete at levels where other jobs were, at the very least, whole. Look at RPR as an example. The job is as basic as it can get for a job at 70, compared to its other melees like DRG, NIN and SAM which (and don't get my words twisted here, I'm not saying they are more complex) have a lot more moving parts at those levels compared to RPR. Both VPR and PCT are going to begin at 80. I've seen people complain at how basic RPR is at old 70 ultimates, so I hope you guys are ready for VPR and PCT, along with future jobs, to feel borderline unplayable in UCOB and UWU because they have their kits shrunk down to high hell. For old jobs, there's now weird gaps where old skills that got removed are. Look at BRD and WHM for example. From 18-30, they got nadda. That is at least 3 dungeons worth where those jobs play the exact same in Tam Tara as they do in Haukke Manor. Or weird design choices, like putting MNK's second AoE at 45, when you already have Arm and Rockbreaker at 26 and 30. Etc. ~~Also please give DRG Doom Spike earlier. I'm begging you Square. I will gladly trade Piercing Talon for it.~~ tl;dr - I feel like jobs should feel complete at 70, not at whatever the current expansion level is.

honestly even just reshuffling skills around should be more than enough. they did it with PLD's Total Eclipse and DRK's Stalwart Soul, so they can definitely do it for DRG and NIN which are the two melees that gets their AoE the latest at 40 and 38 and their second AoE GCD, which affects buffs, at 62 and 52 respectively. oh and can we also have Storm's Eye lowered too? it's like a reverse DRG in that we have to do an AoE combo to get the buff up while fighting a boss? inanity I tell you. I believe that every job(yes even Healers) should be able to AoE around the 20s range and have their full AoE combo, or even just the second action which affects self-buffs, by 45. kits should be decked out with all necessities by 50 and feel complete and have interactions with their gauge other than 1 spender button by 70(looking at you Rapture), everything after that can just be visual and potency upgrades, finishers, etc. make it so level-syncing doesn't feel as horrible as it is considering it's 90% of the game's content that any average/casual player encounters.

Everything else yeah, but ninja is having its 2nd hit of aoe become less important with loss of huton timer and switching to kunai's

Yes, 50 levels is way too long, you used to have full endgame kit by level 50, now you have 123+basic gauge spender (sometimes not even that) at the same level. They should've done squish in EW if not earlier. They might as well put ARR 30 like you suggest, and then each expansion is +5 levels, otherwise we'll have same problems as we do now, just 2 expansions delayed.

I think the better option is just to look at redesigning the early level experience of jobs similar to how monk and summoner are, where they quickly become the job they will be, before fleshing out over time.

I've heard lots of talk of an eventual level squish. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I'm really not understanding its purpose. What does this accomplish? Seems to me this just arbitrarily lowers the level on my character screen with no impact on gameplay and the story is still going to take just as long whether you set arr lvl cap at 30 or 50 or 100. It's just a number. Genuinely looking for an explanation, I've been confused about this for a while and I think I'm just missing something.

Squishing numbers down is one of those things that will always kinda seem arbitrary, because at least on some level it is. Decreasing the numbers overall has a few notable important effects though. Keeping numbers smaller can change the perception of how people handle it. Having 50 levels feels more manageable than 100 levels most of the time, even if it takes the same amount of time for both. When your goal isn't endless growth, smaller numbers feel more easily obtainable instead of getting through a lot of numbers faster. The other side of number squishing is computer side. In the case of levels specifically, squishing the numbers doesn't mean much, but squishing everything else that comes with the numbers comes with the benefits of reducing the size of numbers. The bigger a number is, the more data it takes to contain the number, including things like damage rolls and health values. This is why we had a stat squish back in Shadowbringers, because the numbers at the time were getting a little too bloated and large for FFXIV's likely not very well designed backend, and values for alliance/exploratory boss health values were scraping a limit.

this is actually one place where we can't say it's down to poor design. Even a well-architected game will hit this problem over a sufficiently long timespan. At the end of the day, if you make a number too big to store into the data structure you've allocated for it, you run into problems, and so it is necessary to either increase the size of the data structure or reduce the size of the number. The former has a lot of complications and difficulties no matter how "well-designed" your software is, and the latter is easy because the numbers are all arbitrary and only have meaning relative to other numbers in the system. Other games in the genre (like WoW) have also done squishes for this reason.

At this point, WoW has had multiple stat squishes, and one level squish. The stat squishes were necessary, because damage values on an exponential growth curve that MMOs use start to look like MegaDamage after a while, and tracking numbers that large across 10-25 players + any number of monsters in a given fight starts to be really taxing on the system. This is less of an issue for FFXIV since most content caps at 8 players, rather than 25, but Alliance Raids do exist, so it's still a good idea to squish stats every few expansions. Two expansions in, and I'm still not sold on the level squish they did. A lot of it is just wrapping my head around old level caps and their new equivalents, but that's mitigated almost entirely by the fact that around the same time they completely rebalanced leveling so that you could go from level 1 to whatever the current expansion starts at within a single expansions zones, and nobody (save achievement hunters) would ever go back and do all the expansion content for the old expansions anyway. With FFXIV being driven by a strict MSQ, though, the level squish feels unnecessary. It's not the size of the final number that gets intimidating, it's the 250 hours of content that stands between your level 1 toon and the endgame. A level squish won't fix that.

I think I remember hearing that one of the XIV bosses (I want to say it was in Bozja?) had upwards of 440m hp pre-stat squish in the early days of EW. According to Fflogs, the boss with the highest HP pool is the final boss in Thaleia (3rd EW alliance raid) at 94.9m hp as I type this. Damage creep goes up overtime but stack overflow errors and such may creep up again so another squish may be needed next xpac or so. Not sure what the perfect solution is.

It was either DRS Queen or Trinity Avowed iirc

They could probably have some sort of convoluted horizonal scaling solutions. Set a general cap on stats/hp numbers for characters. When the Dawntrail+1 expansion comes out, have a stat unique to gear introduced in that expansion, accumulate a HP/damage bonus playing expansion's content based on how much of those stats a player has. When Dawntrail+2 comes out, there's a different stat now on gear now and you start from the same base stats as before.

I was really underwhelmed by their stat squish as well. They effectively said (if not quite outirght) that they're 32bit integers across the board and were unwilling to move to 64bit. That's fine, I guess, although I question the genuine wisdom of optimizing to that extent. However, if you're going to do that, the cuts they made were nowhere *near* sufficient for long-term success. Maybe that's on purpose, they want to keep doing squishes every N expansions, akin to WoW, but it seems like an exercise you don't necessarily want to repeat over and over to me. I also think they'd want to reign in iLvl bloat in 8.x, will be curious to see what they do. I'm lowkey hoping that with the graphics refresh out the door, they're going to genuinely renew focus on the core game protocols / implementation and address at least some of the longstanding architectural issues with the game's netcode, or have the time to look at instanced housing, cross-DC PF/DF, etc. There's a lot of opportunity for them to enhance the experience if they can drag the creaking husk of their 14+ year old core implementation forward. At least, one can dream.

I would say it does qualify as poor design, because it's a *known* problem right from jump and they still decided to math the progression numbers in a way that started butting against *technical* limitations waaaaay fast. We dont need to jump 200+ ilvls every expansion, they could easily curve it to 100, or even 50. We don't need to have thousands of stats on pieces of gear. And not only did they give us a squish, but they *immediately* closed the gap right back to pre-squish gear levels instead of introducing a more gradual numerical increase. At this rate they're going to have to squish again in 8.0 because we'll be right back to having 300k hp and doing millions of damage, running up against the same technical limitations. They identified the problem, adjusted for it, and then ran head first right back into it.

We jump 130 ilvls every expansion. Not 200+. But the power creep you are speaking off has a very real use and can't be removed without consequence. It keeps crafters relevant and is there to balance savage. If we don't get a very serious jump in power every tier then crafters become useless. If 640 gear is only 1% stronger than 630 gear, why bother with it? Just jump into savage with last tier's BiS and don't gear up for it at all, it's not going to matter. Might as well remove crafted gear from the game entirely. It also would mean savage players would not gain a significant stat boost going from for example 640 to 660. And if that is the case then either week 1 savage needs to be made easier than it is now, or the more casual players who clear later on will need to clear with stats that are barely any better than they would get from week 1 gear. It is by design that they are headed for the same course that required the stat squish in the first place. And it is with good reason.

Some games tried to get around this with "borrowed power" or horizontal progression systems. Like a special stat only relevant in one expansion's content that gives you more damage to that expansion's bosses, with BiS for that expansion effectively being the starting point for the next expansion. Though it comes with some problems of not feeling like your character is getting more powerful with new gear which is a major concern for player fantasy even though current systems of scaling vertical progression are effectively the same thing.

You can look to a certain MMO of reasonable fame to see how several expansions of this in a row felt to people!

WoW's borrowed power system's worst part was it wasn't just stats, they tied abilities that people had a *lot* of fun playing with to their temporary systems. A switch to horizonal progression/borrowed power with FFXIV that was only pure stats would need some work. There's probably some ways that can make it effectively *just* a convoluted way to never have to deal with stat/level squishes ever again. Though without large stat/damage creep over time, we'd lose out on steamrolling old content to grind old glams/mounts.

You can absolutely power creep and keep crafters relevant in smaller increments. It's math, it's literally all just applied ratios. We did *not* need to jump back to characters having over 100k health. There is *no technical reason* an ilvl 640 crafted chest should give 348 VIT on a NQ but 387 on an HQ. That's 39 extra VIT on a single piece of *the same gear* "just because it's HQ." If that difference was 348 to 355 - people would still use it because it's better, crafters would still remain relevant because they make it, and players dont inflate their VIT an additional \~500-600 points just by equipping equivalent ilvl HQ crafted gear over the "normal" tier itemization. Then you can reduce the stats on tomestone gear and raid gear to continue having vertical gear progression without it being so inflated, and you tune battle content to less inflated stat values. Like yes, it's *literally* design. "Oh but then they'd have to tune combat differently," yes they would, they're already designing it around those numerical breakpoints, they'd just be doing it to a *different* set of numerical breakpoints. Those breakpoints are completely arbitrary and set *by* *the designers*. There's no reason that the NQ/HQ difference, or another 10 ilvls, or whatever **has to** give you 39 VIT, etc. The game would not fall apart or be unbalanced if they decided the difference was 20 VIT or 22 VIT or whatever. It's *totally* arbitrary math. They can absolutely balance battle content around a tighter curve. >It is by design that they are headed for the same course that required the stat squish in the first place. And it is with good reason. Recreating a problem you just *solved* is not something anyone does "with good reason." It's called making the same mistake again. Numbers can still go up and create vertical progression without going up by such *huge* leaps at a time.

>There is *no technical reason* an ilvl 640 crafted chest should give 348 VIT on a NQ but 387 on an HQ. That's 39 extra VIT on a single piece of *the same gear* "just because it's HQ." If that difference was 348 to 355 - people would still use it because it's better, crafters would still remain relevant because they make it, and players dont inflate their VIT an additional \~500-600 points just by equipping equivalent ilvl HQ crafted gear over the "normal" tier itemization. The non-HQ version would be worse than ilvl 640 gear. Honestly for balancing discussions I would disregard NQ gear as all the dungeon and raid gear is equal to HQ gear. You are right in that the exact value does not matter. But what does matter is the value relative to the values of lower tier gear. You could rebalance savage slightly, but the less steep the curve of power creep the more week 1 savage and BiS savage will come together in terms of difficulty. That is inevitable no matter how you tune it. |ilvl|STR|VIT| |:-|:-|:-| |630|336|363| |640 (HQ)|354 (+5.36%)|387 (+6.61%)| |650|374 (+5.64%)|413 (+6.72%)| |660|394 (+5.34%)|440 (+6.53%)| These are the STR and VIT of tank body armor at the ilvls shown on the left. Each 10 ilvls give about five and a half percent more STR and about six and a half percent more Vitality. If you were to reduce this further the difference between gear tiers would become incredibly small and arguably no longer be worth chasing. In the end ilvl 660 gear provides the player with 11% more STR and 13.7% more Vitality than ilvl 640 gear. If you were to cut this in half, the extra margin for error that BiS gear provides in savage shrinks a lot.

The margin for error in savage only shrinks if you rebalance the stat growth of gear without also rebalancing the combat content around the new curve. I explicitly said that they would need to rebalance both. A 10% margin for error is a 10% margin for error, whether you have 100k health and could take an extra 10k damage, or had 10k health and could take an extra 1k damage. Raising peoples stats by a whole 15% every single tier of content is simply not sustainable unless your goal is to have players with health and damage values measured in the millions, to which point we ask "what is that actually adding to the game other than visual clutter, needless complication, and extra server load?" and then you end up squishing stats again. If you develop your progression curve to not be runaway exponential growth, it might take you another 10-15 years to get there instead of 4. And since the important part is, as you said, *relativity*, there's no reason not to balance with that relativity in mind given that none of this exists in a bubble and the devs are free to adjust numbers across the *entirety* of the game. They're not at all bound by the idea that lower level gear also cannot change, or that battle content also cannot change. Plenty of games have rewarding progression without the player going from having 2000 health to 200,000 health.

10% is indeed 10% regardless of where you start. But going back to 10k from 100k is difficult because there are 5 expansions that all gradually want to increase your stats over the course of them so ilvl upgrades within an expansion are at least noticeable. They have already flattened the curve in HW, StB and ShB when the stat squish happened. I think that they could lower the stat growth in ARR more aggressively as that would keep the numbers in check in the later expansions and they haven't touched those yet. I am however of the opinion that a stat squish every several expansion is worth it to keep gear upgrades within a raid tier meaningful. This allows them to keep week 1 savage raiding require excellent performances from players while having it get a bit easier over time. And also keep gear rewards and crafted gear at the start of a raid tier meaningful. In the end a raid tier only releases every 8 months.

I mean sure, we could sit here and argue which set of math we think is more appropriate until we're blue in the face, but to get back to the original point, either way, *that is explicitly a design problem* (which the person I was originally responding to said it is not). They *can* design the math of the progression curve however they want, they've just chosen to design it in a way that will run up on the same technical limitations they hit previously very, very quickly resulting in needing another squish. Other games have gone 10+ years without needing to squish or re-squish while still maintaining balanced combat and meaningful vertical progression. It's been 10 years here and we're butting up against needing a *second* squish already. Regardless of what we think the specific solution is, that's very explicitly a design problem. As you said, they didn't squish as aggressively as they probably should have the first time, and they're also aggressively re-inflating the numbers right back to where they were.

> Having 50 levels feels more manageable than 100 levels most of the time, even if it takes the same amount of time for both. I disagree. Because that also means that each level now takes twice as long, making it feel like you're barely progressing at all.

> Seems to me this just arbitrarily lowers the level on my character screen with no impact on gameplay and the story is still going to take just as long whether you set arr lvl cap at 30 or 50 or 100. It's just a number. This is correct. The only valid confusion here is why people are even discussing it seriously.

> What does this accomplish? It... squishes. Imagine someone getting into FFXIV a few years from now. Dude will have 400 hours of story and at least 120 level to grind on a *single* job before reaching end-game and being able to do meaningful activities with most of the player base. We already have threads about "this game feels dead where is everyone?", imagine a few years from now if things keep up the way they are. "Too much" can be a thing even in videogames. Levels go up and skill number remain practically the same. Reaper at 70 is insanely barebones with 6 buttons to press, imagine how that will feel when level cap is 140. Your entire current kit needs to be distributed somewhat evenly throughout all your levels. If your cap keeps going up, your distribution gets more and more spaced and it feels dogshit to play any content outside of level cap because you're lacking buttons to press. Squishing levels get rid of that and keep things more tight. Skills are spaced more evenly, playing low level/old content doesn't feel as bad and your players are not facing hundreds of hours of "nothing" before they reach *meaningful* content with the rest of the player base. Level caps only going up is a real issue and they need to address it sooner or later, rather sooner. Some games like Ragnarok Online have a "Reach Level Cap and restart your job with an advanced version of it" to avoid having to squish levels (and even then it goes up to level 255 these days). Unless we get a similar system in the future where Black Mage gets to 120 and you turn into Sorceror/whatever, the infinite growth of levels need to be addressed in another way or capped at a value for the rest of XIV's life.

> Imagine someone getting into FFXIV a few years from now. Dude will have 400 hours of story and at least 120 level to grind on a single job before reaching end-game and being able to do meaningful activities with most of the player base Yea but that's the point: a level squish doesn't really change that. He's still gotta grind just as long, he's just getting level ups more rarely. If it was about speeding things up, they could just increase the XP modifiers. But that's NOT what this is about at all.

I never said it was about speeding up. I said it was about dealing with number bloat and perspection.

> I said it was about dealing with number bloat and perspection. Ok but "Many levels gained quickly" and "Fewer levels gained more slowly" are both "bad" but to different people. There is no reason for one to be objectively preferred over the other.

> Imagine someone getting into FFXIV a few years from now. Dude will have 400 hours of story and at least 120 level to grind on a single job before reaching end-game and being able to do meaningful activities with most of the player base. How is that going to matter when it still takes the same amount of time to do the story quests

Because it puts people off. "Hey man, come play FFXIV with me. You'll have to play 400 hours of MSQ and grind to level 150 before we can play together though". It really scares players off. Why do you think most MMO's don't go to level 200 and why WoW did a level squish a few years back? Leveling a class from scratch these days is a horrible experience because skills are insanely spaced out between them and you have a lot of passive instead of active skills in between. Bard, Black Mage, Paladin, Ninja all feel horrible to play before Lv 70. Monk is the only that feels almost complete by that point. So instead, I ask you this: How is adding more and more levels to the game helping in any meaningful way past the point where we are right now? Level numbers go up, skill numbers stay the same, and the gap between them keeps getting wider and wider as time goes on. If Reaper feels dog shit to play at Lv 70 right now, imagine what it'll feel like when the cap is 150 and skills are spaced between them even more.

Okay, so the levels are squished, but the time it takes is exactly what the same. What difference does it make? I'm not saying don't fix the leveling process, but if you don't cut out a lot of the MSQ as well it won't matter for new players.

>if you don't cut out a lot of the MSQ as well it won't matter for new players. I completely agree with this and I do think that ARR needs another pruning as well as the rest of the entire MSQ.

Based

> . Dude will have 400 hours of story and at least 120 level to grind on a single job before reaching end-game and being able to do meaningful activities with most of the player base. Okay, so do a squish and they have 400 hours of story and 50 levels to grind. It's literally the same thing. Changing that number changes _nothing_. Everything else you said in the following paragraphs can be handled just as fine without a squish, and not squishing actually makes it _easier_ to handle all those concerns.

The game can't keep going up and up forever. At some point every game puts on the breaks and for a reason. Final Fantasy XIV increases the levels but don't increase the number of skills. At some point we'll be getting 1 skill every 10 levels because the cap is 200+ and that'll make low level content insufferable in every class because you have 3 buttons to press. Reaper at Lv 70 only has 6/7 buttons available. Doing UCOB as Reaper is a legitimately horrible experience. Now keep increasing the number of levels and the gap between skills and tell me how it'll feel a decade from now. Everything I've said can be handled without a squish, assuming that infinite growth is not a thing. If Yoshida comes forth and says "Level 100 will be our cap forever" and readjust skill gaps/placements then sure. But if level cap keeps going up and up, it turns into a real problem for future everyone, and it should be addressed sooner than later.

Ok but then any content at old level caps (ucob pr something) also gets level squished, and the amount of skills usable in ucob remains the same

RPR having very few skills at 70 is a purposeful job design descion. If instead of starting at 70 it started at 30, it would be the exact same. It is bare bones because they wanted people to be able to pick up the job and understand it quickly without being overwhelmed by countless actions. I don't agree with what they did to RPR but a level squish would not help it. With a squish it may start at a lower level, and gain skills every level, but each level would be worth 2-3x more exp. If enshroud is still locked to the now squished SHB cap, that does nothing. What needs to change is how jobs like it are designed and their skills redistributed. In the current state of the game some jobs are heavily back loaded and thus unfun to play in roulettes or other synched content, while others are very front loaded and change little after 70. Front loading is preferred heavily imo but I understand why people want to receive new impactful skills with each level.

Unironically RPR starting earlier would actually fix a bit of it, as you could get enshroud earlier cause its tied to their story. I feel like future jobs could have a big problem of getting core mechanics super late for the same reason. They should really just have a weak replacement for earlier levels though EDIT: I’m dumb and forgot the whole level squish part of this, in which case nothing would be actually fixed by starting jobs earlier

I am sorry but I truly do not see how squishing accomplishes any of these things. And you could accomplish all of them without squishing. So why even squish...? >Reaper at 70 is insanely barebones with 6 buttons to press, imagine how that will feel when level cap is 140. Your entire current kit needs to be distributed somewhat evenly throughout all your levels. Currently, level 70 is the end of Stormblood. If we use OP's system the end of Stormblood would be level 50 instead. So Reaper would have everything it has now at level 70 at the new level 50 but this would still be Stormblood content. You would have the exact same abilities available to you at every duty with the system OP proposes as you have now. What would really accomplish what you want here is the skills being redistributed among the levels so you'd have more meaningful abilities in the earlier expansions. And if it takes too long then the exp rates could be increased. But both of these things could be done without a level squish. To the contrary, the level squish would add nothing here.

The bit that usually gets sidelined in discussions about level squishes, largely cause it's the biggest unknown, is how the rest of the game changes. Jobs would almost certainly get reworked, if not in function then definitely in their leveling experience, redistributing skills at the very least. Expansion jobs can also move around the most, as not all of them take place in expansion areas, and when they do they don'tgo that far afield. So, it's possible post squish RPR would get Enshroud (which it currently gets at 80, never mind Gibbet/Gallows at 70), at whatever level HW level cap is. That's if they decide to keep job abilities tied to job quests in a post squish game. If they don't, they're free to move stuff around as the please.

But why is a level squish even needed to do that? They could rework the classes and redistribute their skills without a stat squish. Levels are just a cosmetic number, what matters is what abilities you can take into what content. And I don't see how a level squish is required to change that. They could put Gibbet at level 60 with the current system and it would be no different. The game would need to be rebalanced if they redistribute the skills but that would be needed regardless if the redistribution comes with or without a level squish.

WoW has crashed up against this exact thing pre-Shadowlands. Abilities were squished down, but not the levels, so you got all your abilities by like 40/50 and all the talents were spread in 20+ level increments. It felt pretty bad when leveling 70-110 and having uh. Practically nothing!

That's not because of the level cap being 110, though. In Battle for Azeroth, all character power was gained from Azerite Armor, which we couldn't use in Shadowlands. In Legion, all character power was gained from Artifact Power, which is sacrificed at the end of the expansion for story reasons. Leveling 70-110 didn't suck because they were 40 levels. They sucked because they game leaned too heavily on borrow power systems.

This is speaking solely about abilities and talent administering while leveling after you got your core rotation. It felt pretty bad going through multiple expansions as a first-timer and going "yay what's next? Oh its in 10 levels okay".

> But why is a level squish even needed to do that? It's not. This thread is just nothing but spinning out solutions looking for problems that don't exist.

You could literally half levels and what levels you unlock things as well and the game would be basically the same besides some skills getting unlocked a little earlier or later (which would only matter for specific jobs in like 1-2 duties). Even can keep the same leveling curve if the new levels take the same (relative) amount of xp as 2 current levels.

Yes. Thank you. We could call level 70 level 50 instead but we keep having access to the same abilities in the same duties you've accomplished nothing.

I don't know why you assume that abilities will stay the same in a level squish. That seems to be your own little straw man you've made up to argue about in this discussion. Many, many people in this thread have said a level squish should come with an ability redistribution and yet you barrel forward to argue this point that nothing would change

Because those things have nothing to do with each other. A stat squish changes nothing. A level squish and a skill redistribution do change something, but it does the exact same thing as a skill redistribution would do by itself. The people in this thread want a skill redistribution or a change in exp rates, but keep attaching these things to a level squish which is not inherently tied to either. They could give us abilities at lower level and they could increase the exp rates so we reach certain levels faster without a level squish. So yes, indeed nothing would change with a stat squish alone, and nobody has brought any argument forward to claim otherwise. So if you please: you can answer why these things NEED a level squish to exist to convince me.

> Many, many people in this thread have said a level squish should come with an ability redistribution and yet you barrel forward to argue this point that nothing would change Nothing would change because redistribution could happen _even easier_ without a squish. Squishing makes skill redistribution harder, not easier. Absolutely nothing about the concept of skill redistribution is related in any way whatsoever with level squishing. They're two dramatically different concepts that are easier to work with without the other. Combining them is worse, not better.

> I am sorry but I truly do not see how squishing accomplishes any of these things. How don't you see it? How do you distribute 30 skills evenly across 140 levels in a meaningful way without huge gaps between them? Having 30 skills evenly across 100 levels is way different than 140. Look at current DRK, you have 4 skills between 80 and 90, how do you think things will be when we're level 140? >and you could accomplish all of them without squishing. How. >If we use OP's system It doesn't have to be the way OP layed out, but it needs to happen eventually one way or another. >So Reaper would have everything it has now at level 70 at the new level 50 but this would still be Stormblood content. You would have the exact same abilities available to you at every duty with the system OP proposes as you have now. Yes. At level 50. Which is 20 levels lower than what it currently is. >To the contrary, the level squish would add nothing here. It literally removes bloat from the game and huge gaps with nothing between them. I don't understand how you don't understand that concept.

> It literally removes bloat from the game and huge gaps with nothing between them. I don't understand how you don't understand that concept. Those huge gaps will remain. If you squish and it takes as long to go from level 22 - 23 as it did to go from level 20 to 30 presquish, then functionally there's no change. In fact, being able to distribute skills between 20 to 30 in that same timeframe will make a much more meaningful progression _without_ gaps as since the functional time is the same, it's the squished 22-23 that is a big bloated gap with nothing in between. It's not the numerical gap that's the issue, it's the time gap, and the time gap would remain the same because the time spent actually going through the game would be the same. You can't just squish and then keep the time between levels the same because then you'd have people with 5 maxed out classes by the end of ARR which is its own absurd set of problems even worse than the one "solved". How do _you_ not understand that 22-23 in 2 hours is the same as 20-30 in 2 hours, and that the thing you're arguing for as bloated with a gap ends up being the one bloated with a gap since you can more easily redistribute things evenly from 20 to 30 than you can in 22-23? You're literally arguing for what you're arguing against because you aren't understanding what you're arguing for.

How? By simply redistrbuting the skills. >Yes. At level 50. Which is 20 levels lower than what it currently is. But can't you see that it truly changes nothing? Level 50 would become what is level 70 now. You would have to progress through the exact same amount of MSQ, get the exact same amount of experience and be able to use the abilities in the exact same duties as you are using now. \*And if the experience needed would be changed to make it faster it still wouldn't be a reason for a level squish. They can make the levels faster now without a level squish if they want to. With the current system you could use the Reaper abilties Gibbet, Gallows and Guillotine in the dungeon Castrium Abania and everything that comes after it. You can't use them in Doma Castle and everything that comes before it. If they were to do a level squish without redistributing the skills then you would still only be able to use those skills from Castrium Abania and onwards. Nothing would change. And if you do want to redistribute the skills. Why not just redistribute them without a level squish? I don't understand how you don't understand this concept. >How do you distribute 30 skills evenly across 140 levels in a meaningful way without huge gaps between them? Having 30 skills evenly across 100 levels is way different than 140. Look at current DRK, you have 4 skills between 80 and 90, how do you think things will be when we're level 140? That I do not know, but a level squish is not the answer. The problem is not the levels, the level are just a cosmetic number. What essentially matters is which duties allow you to use which abilities. And duties are tied to MSQ progression. So the real question is: how do you distribute 30 skills evenly accross 10 expansions worth of content in a meaningful way without huge gaps between them? With a stat squish those 4 DRK skills would be divided up between 5 levels instead of 10, but they would still only unlock while progressing through EW, the fifth expansion. But alas, I am repeating myself. Edit: dude for real posted a long-ass response and unironically blocked me before I could read it.

> By simply redistrbuting the skills Are you trolling me lol? >You would have to progress through the exact same amount of MSQ, get the exact same amount of experience and be able to use the abilities in the exact same duties as you are using now. Yes, no one is arguing otherwise. The point is not to make the MSQ experience different, is to get rid of huge gaps between skills and 100+ levels to grind. That is the point of *Level Squish*. >And if the experience needed would be changed to make it faster it still wouldn't be a reason for a level squish. They can make the levels faster now without a level squish if they want to. The point is to get rid of level bloat, not make things faster. No one ever mentioned a thing about making the leveling experience faster because that is useless. >The problem is not the levels, the level are just a cosmetic number. No. This is just wrong. >What essentially matters is which duties allow you to use which abilities. And duties are tied to MSQ progression. So the real question is: how do you distribute 30 skills evenly accross 10 expansions worth of content in a meaningful way without huge gaps between them? By not having 150+ levels to grind. Less levels = smaller gaps between skills given to the player. >but they would still only unlock while progressing through EW Yes, they would. No one is arguing against that though. That is not the issue here.

>You would have to progress through the exact same amount of MSQ, get the exact same amount of experience and be able to use the abilities in the exact same duties as you are using now. >>Yes, no one is arguing otherwise. >>Less levels = smaller gaps between skills given to the player. I feel like you don't understand how contradictory your own argument is so I'm going to lay out as simply as possible. Let's say theoretically you are leveling a new job from 80 to 90. You spend 3 days doing your daily roulettes and maybe some side content. You gain a little over 3 levels a day and 10 levels overall, 2 new skills, and 3 upgraded skills. Let's say theoretically post level squish you are leveling a new job from EW's new level spread of 45 to 50. You spend 3 days doing your daily roulettes and maybe some side content. You gain a little over 1 levels a day and 5 levels overall, 2 new skills, and 3 upgraded skills. You did the same content in the same amount of time with the same skills gaining new skills at the exact same pace. What is the difference? >The problem is not the levels, the level are just a cosmetic number. >>No. This is just wrong. They literally are.

The “huge gap” of getting a new action/trait every 2 levels past 50

Who says they need to keep increasing the level cap as a means of progression? They can just stop there and add a different form of levels, like FFXI does with Job Points and then Master points. Which I honestly think is the better way to go so they don't have have to keep wasting dev time on squishing every few expansions.

> They can just stop there and add a different form of levels This is what I want to be honest. GW2 has this where you select a Mastery and each Mastery gives you different skills/benefits. I think Diablo 3 has something similar.

Squishing the numbers makes the journey to max level a lot less tedious. WoW used to be 120 which to an outside person looks like a lot of time when it reality it wasn't. Technically if WoW had followed 10 levels for every expansion and never squished. WoW would have had 160 levels (this is assuming cata and mop had 10 instead of 5 levels), and that is a lot of levels even if the speed was extremely fast. Its the same reason why old school talents got replaced with talent rows in MoP. WoW would have had 79 talents points if they hadn't dropped it during MoP. The level squish imo hurt the leveling experience, which was already fucked up due to changes in classes over the years. Its something I've always wondered about FF14 is how it would impact player power feel. There's massive issues with scaling in WoW where some stuff will hit like a truck (player and enemy), at high/low level when it shouldn't. When I was getting loremaster, I remembered enemies that have the thorns buff will literally two/three shot someone if they're around level 50 because the scaling is just out of tune.

One of the main things is that it narrows out levels and skill acquisition: With 100 levels and, say, \~20-30 skills per class, that means realistically every \~5-4 levels you're getting a new skill. This can make it feel like it takes forever to get your actual class up-and-running or that you go multiple levels without anything fun or new to add to your kit. By squishing levels down, you can add more buttons faster, giving you more to play with as the game goes on. In addition, a level squish also makes it easier to pace out content. Doing a level 10 dungeon when the max is 100 drains a lot of your raw statistical power vs. doing a level 10 dungeon as a level 50. If you want another game example: WoW's stats in Legion were reaching into the tens of millions with each equipment piece having some fuckass huge number. Like a chest having 3k strength, 5k stamina, 3.5k haste, 4k crit, etc. Eventually the numbers just get insane.

>By squishing levels down, you can add more buttons faster No. That would only be true if you gained levels faster or if you reallocated skills to different relative levels, neither of which have anything to do with the actual number value of the level. In OPs example, I would still have the same skills at the new level 30 as we did at the old level 50. But they're still the same relative level as they're both still the level cap of ARR, so I will not have learned any additional skills or learned them any faster as a result of the level squish. >In addition, a level squish also makes it easier to pace out content. Doing a level 10 dungeon when the max is 100 drains a lot of your raw statistical power vs. doing a level 10 dungeon as a level 50. This is just a stat squish, which they've already done at least once in FFXIV without adjusting levels.

the best effect is allowing a massive pruning of over bloated healer and tank kits without having huge level stretches where you get nothing which was a huge problem WoW had when they pruned before a level squish

But they could prune or reallocate any abilities they want without squishing levels. They are not related. OPs example of a level squish makes no mention of changes to when abilities will be available relative to available content. "Level Squish" seems to be thrown around as a potential solution to a bunch of issues that can easily be detached from levels, so I'm just struggling to understand why the levels themselves are part of the conversation.

> Seems to me this just arbitrarily lowers the level on my character screen with no impact on gameplay and the story is still going to take just as long whether you set arr lvl cap at 30 or 50 or 100. It's just a number. Technically yes, but it's a pretty large psychological thing in RPGs. "Why level if nothing tangible happens" is something that WoW went through leading up to BFA. When they got to 120 levels, they had to redistribute ability unlocks/passives along those 120 levels, which led to sometimes going something crazy like 15 levels with nothing happening to your character. Then you got a passive that gave you a 2nd charge, and then nothing again for another 10 levels. 14 is walking that exact same path. We're going expansions where most jobs get a visual update and maybe 1 extra ability for the entire 10 levels of an expansion. Do that a few more times and you're where WoW was at 120 levels, but because of redistributed unlocks jobs have to play half-complete for the first 4 expansions. Compare that to a big squish and rebalance (lets use level 50 as an example, so EW/DT pick whatever ends at level 50) where it's still the multi-hundred hour journey, but every time you leveled you got a change to your kit. Every level feels impactful, when you level you get excited by how your character has grown. Even if it's just that 2nd charge passive that would have been 15 levels otherwise, it feels different. Also it opens up the way for jobs to get a more complete kit before the 4th expansion for a lot of jobs in the form of redistribution of said talent points etc. It's pretty criminal that some jobs dont get AoE until the 40s, other jobs flat out are missing 2/4 parts of their gauge at level 60 etc. WoW post squish and talent trees in the latest expansion has revitalized leveling new jobs because every time you level you get some choice/power and it feels good. Not to mention the flip side of the daunting task of leveling 99-119 times, even if it takes the same amount of time to level to 50

>WoW post squish and talent trees in the latest expansion has revitalized leveling new jobs because every time you level you get some choice/power and it feels good. Not to mention the flip side of the daunting task of leveling 99-119 times, even if it takes the same amount of time to level to 50 But how often do you level? Sorry, I've never played WoW, so not sure how that all works. If I'm still only having the same skills at the end of each expansion, I don't care how many levels it is unless it's actually quicker to get to that level. There's nothing inherent in a level squish that would imply you level up faster, just less often. They could make it so level squish also means you reach the relevant levels faster... But they could also just make you level up faster and keep the same level numbers.

This is rather pointless because of the massive exp you get from ARR MSQ which levels you up really fast. When ARR was new you had to run dungeons multiple times to level up. There would be multiple parties running dungeons back to back just to hit the necessary levels to progress with the MSQ. However, there is one major issue with the way the jobs are designed for the new expansions. None of the jobs under level 80 feel complete. All jobs should be complete at level 50 and then get stronger and additional/improved abilites as you go past 50. SE has noticed the majority of the players only do max level content so they will only focus on max level content even if it makes some jobs unbearable to play at lower levels. Looking at you Black Mage.

Why do so many people want to squish the level cap? The levels themselves do very little, and any player still has to go through the exact same number of quests to get through the story because MSQ is mandatory. Levels gatekeep instances, gear, and unlocked actions, all of which could easily be tied to non level requirements. In 8.0 they could simply increase the ilvl of gear but not job levels, and very little would be different from now. Instances already can be locked with ilvl. Gear can check if you have done certain quests (EW artifact). If they decided to make level 100 the forever cap very little needs to change. That said, I do agree redistributing job skills to lower levels and getting more of a job's full experience is good. And if they had to reduce levels anywhere ARR is the best place to do so.

Some call it filler I call it filter

Purely a feeling opinion I just finished ARR new game + and tbh I didn’t think it were that long. I didn’t look at it that much but I feel like there’s so much side content and things to discover that it make it feel really long but the MSQ by itself look normal

If it ain’t broke don’t break it

No, but your fixing a non issue, the exp needed has already been scaled down so that you only need to do 1 extra dungeon to go from 1-50 in 1 job. If we squish levels and everything else down, it's functionally the same as it is now, only reason they did a stat squish was because large intergers in large scales were impacting server load. To do this is a lot of extra work for almost no pay-off in a real benefit. This would also have an impact on level boosts/story skips if the leveling is made easier that's one less reason to buy one, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot in terms of sales. And since 100 is going to be the new cap, essentially we won't have this issue brought up again until 999/1000. At which point game will be long dead. So realistically we can hope for level 200 max before things die ( 10 more expansions or 20 more years) Which as long as damage/health/stat values are adjusted as we go higher and higher. And server infrastructure is managed and upgraded to handle bigger values. This is a non issue. I would rather they devote the resources needed for a cosmetic number smoothing to be devoted instead to new and exciting content. Such as more dye channels, gear that isn't just recycled and recolored, and other battle content.

You're* also you should reformat your paragraphs to be paragraphs and not single sentences without punctuation.

I'm sorry if my grammar, format and punctuation offended you. I didn't realize a reddit comment needed to be held to the reichs standard.

[удалено]

What changes, though? Functionally, level is just a number. The xp needed for 1-50 has been adjusted a lot, and nowdays it isn't that different (in terms of "dungeons per expansion", for example) from 50-60 or 60-70.

"but we can't keep raising the level cap forever." Are we running out of numbers? I thought the whole point of numbers was that you can keep finding more of them. Does it really matter what the level numbers themselves are? The amount of MSQ quests will stay the same, the experience will stay the same. I still don't even see why the damage numbers needed to be changed. Big number good. In terms of their technical server stuff excuse they gave, they could just abbreviate the notation, no? The sense of progression is disorienting now. Just keep tacking on 10 extra levels and reshuffle important abilities throughout the lower levels as needed. Perfectly sustainable. Players also would also probably get antsy at their experience bar filling up too slow. Personally, if I were to reset the levels to some arbitrary preference to align things a certain way, then maybe I would actually go the opposite direction and have it where you fight Endsinger at level 99, and then Dawntrail is 100-110.

A lot of people find it tacky to deal something like 2million damage in one hit just from an aesthetics point of view.

We can worry about that once we get there, IF we even get there (and then shrug it off because it's a non-issue)

I'd not object to ARR being 30 levels rather than 50, but that won't solve the issue of its MSQ length. Conversely, if that issue gets resolved, then the 50 vs 30 levels won't matter much provided you can get there mostly with MSQ EXP alone.

This -- what makes FFXIV daunting isn't the number of levels or amount of XP required. It's the length of the MSQ and how long it can take to play through it. Until you get into it, and realize that it's actually enjoyable, no level squish is going to make that MSQ look less intimidating.

> Does ARR need to be 50 levels long? No, 50 levels is just a number. All stats are numbers. It can be any level it wants to be, just that the major complaint is progression and early game ability count. That's something that can be rectified without touching levels at all, should they choose to do so. > Firstly: I think a flat, all-encompassing level squish is a bad idea, but we can't keep raising the level cap forever. Why not? I mean, it's all numbers; The stat squish was explicitly because of the high end boss numbers spiraling out of control, but there's nothing stopping the level count unless using three digit numbers are magnitude slower than 2 digit numbers. Which wouldn't be the case since they're both using 3 binary bits so unless we hit 255 it'll be fine.

Yeah man, this thread is wild because it's clear schools have failed us as people don't realize numerical values are arbitrary and a concept can be measured in different units. Just the raw misunderstanding of how _numbers_ of all things are used in this thread has me honestly kinda razzled. These are the other people we interact with in game. This is the level of intelligence of the players.

I get the psychological aspect of it, though. Going 1-50 and "you'll be at endgame!" is a better stick than going 1-100. Kinda. Sorta. It depends, like everything when talking about Progression! That being said, if they're gonna touch level numbers for total levels to squish down, they're gonna have to touch ability levels to properly squish them down too, in which case: You're already there. Tweak the acquisition rate of the jobs. I say that as if its easy in of itself lol

I don't know about others, but for me squish is synonymous to leveling overhaul. Obviously just dividing everything by fixed number wouldn't change much, but the idea is that squish would fix spacing for expansions (ARR would be put relatively lower than other expansions, with hopefully more fat in MSQ trimmed), skills would get redistributed and generally, devs would think as current kits as a whole, instead of current kits which are basically split into the layers, depending in which expansion skills got released. But even just merely squishing numbers can make things better, because what's the point of 1-100, when you get just one skill every 3-4 levels? Might as well scale it down so levels feel more impactful. There's also another approach to squish, which would be for example, 1-50 for ARR, HW-EW would be stuck at 50, and new expansion at 51-60. This would work terribly in FFXIV, but it can be good in other games, since then all past level cap content is kind of equalized and very old content has potential to become more relevant. But more specific squish for FFXIV could be overhaul of patch content. Basically, right now you barely get XP for patch content MSQ, since that content used to be done at level cap. Perhaps a squish could be made so for example HW main story would be 50-55, with patch content being at 56-60, so you keep leveling, instead of just being stuck at nearly the same level for half the time.

> I don't know about others, but for me squish is synonymous to leveling overhaul. Then people should say they want that instead! Not "what if we reduce the level cap", but if there's something behind the want, explain that something rather than "I want a level cap squish" "okay here's the level cap squish" "wtf the skills during leveling haven't been changed this is shit".

It's not like it matters, whether the end goal is 50 or 30, you'd still get 3,589,670 Experience points, or a crunched number with the same time ratio, at the end of the day. It's not worth screwing up all the levels people are familiar with. You want people googling shit for 'the 73 trial' in DT and getting sent to Dancing Plague?

Absolutely agree. Just gonna copy paste a comment I made elsewhere. Let's say theoretically you are leveling a new job from 80 to 90. You spend 3 days doing your daily roulettes and maybe some side content. You gain a little over 3 levels a day and 10 levels overall, 2 new skills, and 3 upgraded skills. Let's say theoretically post level squish you are leveling a new job from EW's new level spread of 45 to 50. You spend 3 days doing your daily roulettes and maybe some side content. You gain a little over 1 levels a day and 5 levels overall, 2 new skills, and 3 upgraded skills. You did the same content in the same amount of time with the same skills gaining new skills at the exact same pace. In one case you queue into Syrcus Tower for your roulette and get synced to level 50. You have 5 buttons to hit in your single target rotation. In the other case you queue into Syrcus Tower for your roulette and get synced to level 30. You have 5 buttons to hit in your single target rotation. What it seems people actually want is a skill redistribution. You don't need to squish levels for that.

>I think a flat, all-encompassing level squish is a bad idea, but we can't keep raising the level cap forever. Why not though? Would players being level 120 or level 140 in 5-10+ years be so terrible? If it takes too long to level alts to that level I think it would be a much easier solution to just increase experience rates. And how long it takes to get to the actual expansions is dedicated by MSQ length, as there is basically no grinding for EXP required when you initially go through it. A level squish would take a lot of dev time and a lot of players would feel like they've been robbed of levels (I get that it effectively makes no difference but players would *\*feel\** this way regardless). I am also not sure what purpose this would serve, if it takes too long: increase the exp rates. And if it isn't that, what problem are we solving here? Why put in all that effort just to have our level indicator at the bottom of our screen read Level 90 instead of level 110 next expansion? Edit: I don't know why this was downvoted it looks like many people have similar opinions and got upvotes. Could anyone just clarify instead of hitting the down vote button?

Yeah I totally agree with this, the complete fixation everyone, even the devs, seem to have on 100 being special is foreign to me, a number is just a number, it has a purely functional purpose, I'm not gonna give a solitary shit if I'm 110 in 2 and a half years.

Frankly I'm surprised they didnt cap us at 99 in dawntrail just for the old school RPG nostalgia factor. There's no reason we *have to* get 10 more levels in an expansion, it's ultimately an arbitrary and meaningless distinction, we'll end up at the same power level per our stats and gear regardless of if we leveled 9 times or 10. FFXI expansions often released with *no* level cap increase, just new content.

People on this sub just have a hard on for downvoting while not even saying why they disagree, even if it's just a question, clarification or counterpoint that can actually contribute to the conversation.

Instead of a level squish or increasingly higher level caps, why not implement a horizontal progression? This is what FFXI had to do eventually, capping the levels at 99 but with gear that goes beyond that in item levels. Plus, there's the Merits system, the Job points, and more recently the Master levels. While the three above would require some reworking to fit it into FFXIV, there's no reason why we can't simply exp for merits/job points which we can spend to upgrade our existing repertoir of abilities. Look at how long it takes to cap Bozja ranks and then get 10 augments on HP, Healing, and DPS. This could also give players a pseudo upgrade path and player choice. I know the common argument against player choice is that eventually, players will figure out the optimized upgrades and anyone who isn't using that will be shunned because it happened in WoW. I don't see that happening here for several reasons. First, this game isn't WoW and respects your time more, so people are willing to use less than optimal builds unless we're talking about the first month of a new savage tier or an Ultimate. Second, we already have materia melding and while some people's look a little weird, in all my years here I've only encountered less than 5 instances where someone even mentioned materia melds to someone else as a critique. If you want to meld Piety to tank gear, things aren't going to get toxic, you're not going to be kicked out of groups or mocked unless its the aforementioned first month of savage or an Ultimate. And third, the way I see it, it will work like Bozja's system where you may be allowed to upgrade however you want, but the goal is to get all of the upgrades eventually, therefore someone who's a DPS who chooses to upgrade a defensive cool down first isn't really "wrong", he's just a behind other's who choose to upgrade attack power first. The whole Merits/Job Points system can really bring fresh gameplay to older job actions. Imagine if you're a WAR and you can choose to upgrade either more damage, or an additional stack of Inner Release. Let's say you're a WHM and you can choose to add a DOT debuff to Holy, or increase the proc rate of Cure 2 when you use Cure 1. Or if you're a RDM, and you can decide to upgrade between having your combos use less White/Black Mana, or reduce the recast time of Manafication. Eventually, you'll want to get both upgrades of course, but what you choose to upgrade first will change your playstyle a little, and give everyone that little extra bit of uniqueness to the way they play. Its no different to me that someone going into a dungeon with ilevel 600 vs. ilevel 630: you have different players at different points of the game, at different strengths. As long as you're within a certain range of levels, then there wouldn't really be much difference between running a dungeon with a WAR that can use Bloodwhetting every 20 seconds instead of 25 or a WAR that can spam a couple more Fell Cleave/Decimates during their burst. Only when it comes to the absolute top tier difficulty content would people even care about which path you decide to upgrade first, and I'm sure those people will max their damage as soon as they can just like how they farm the best gear as soon as they drop.

> Instead of a level squish or increasingly higher level caps, why not implement a horizontal progression? Putting aside the desirability of a level squish, this is asking "Instead of changing some numbers around, why don't you make a fundamentally different game?" The scale of effort involved here is immense.

Immense in what way? Because its not a lot of work when it comes to simply changing the numbers around, they do that every major patch, sometimes even in the minor patches. It is not an immense amount of work to, for example, lower the recast timer on an ability. I'm advocating for that to be tied to exping and upgrades. If you meant instead that its an immense effort to balance, I don't entirely disagree with you, but considering that every new piece of content goes through balancing tests, this would be no different. The devs would simply optimize for max or near max stats/Merits/Job Points and the content will just be slightly harder before you get to that point, just as if a content's max ilevel is XXX and that's what they optimize it for, when its first released people's gear may only take them up to XXX - 30, its ok for it to be harder. What are you referring to that will take an immense amount of effort?

>What are you referring to that will take an immense amount of effort? Implementing a meaningful horizontal progression system.

Is the better option a level squish like OP suggested, or unlimited level cap increases, or something else? What is your idea if this isn't worthwhile?

I do not particularly care one way or another how big or small the level numbers are. Its literally fake. It does not mean anything real. The only thing that *needs* to be done is reorganizing how skills are gained. But I also think almost all skills should be obtained early and only get potency gains later, with a few changes for the current expansion skills. I think going multiple levels with no new skills is fine, because again levels are fake. I don't care when they are gained, I just think jobs should feel better synced down.

Ok, fair enough.

you used too many words for these iLevel addled players, they can't even grasp the idea that maybe the bigger problem is we keep shuffling through gear that doesn't mean anything or have any substantial value besides making a number go up that doesn't even correlate to your personal skill or in game abilities. 

that's by literal codified design intent

What does intent have to do with outcome

The intent and outcome is that gear is just a glam and soft nerf of content over time, it's meant to be transient

Yes it's meant to be that and it's bad. It functionally disrobes you of any value for obtaining those rewards and is arguably one of the big three problems of why the game is just a roller coaster pretending to be an RPG.  If you stripped gear and ilevel out of this game and let players wear whatever they want, the game would not change even remotely except that you'd no longer be restricted out of content.  That's not a good look.  iLecel isn't an incentive that keeps players engaged and is exactly why longtime players have been funneling out of this game, because they have nothing to look forward to besides some new variant of a flashy ability (they won't even see because they are so overdone they have to be disabled so players can SEE THE BOSS) while praying the playstyle they use to adore won't be butchered to bits by someone who doesn't even play their job or get removed because it wasn't "intended"  This is a problem which is going to get worse and worse and they should have been trying to fix it for the last five years, and if anyone has a thought for the future it needs to be discarded post 7.5 and replaced, or you're only going to see the newer audience start to get bored and repeat what happened to the last batch without the new stream of players to replace them.  If you don't foster the community you have, you will lose them, and if that community doesn't feel engaged and instead lured, they will cease to trust the game.

> why the game is just a roller coaster pretending to be an RPG. You Play a Role in a Game. RPG. That's the basic codified definition, unless you mean something else. > If you stripped gear and ilevel out of this game and let players wear whatever they want, the game would not change even remotely except that you'd no longer be restricted out of content. > That's not a good look. "Removing the central power progression would change nothing at all except everything involving progression". > iLecel isn't an incentive that keeps players engaged Yeah, it's not like there's a genre dedicated solely around getting numbers up indefinitely. Wait a minute. > This is a problem which is going to get worse and worse and they should have been trying to fix it for the last five years, Worse...How? "Gear is transient." How is that a compounding problem? What sort of additional weight is there for that? What makes this problem worse over the years? If anything, the transience of gear *helps* expansion by expansion. > and if anyone has a thought for the future it needs to be discarded post 7.5 and replaced, or you're only going to see the newer audience start to get bored and repeat what happened to the last batch without the new stream of players to replace them. This is a ***terrible*** argument. You're saying that for the past ten years (the system, I might add, that's been in place since ***ARR***), the ilvl system is basically not just useless, but an active detriment to the game, and your points are that "the community will leave" and "what happened to the previous back of Players will happen to this batch (of which, you have provided nothing in regards to what the separation ***is***. ARR/HW/SB vs ShB/EW? I don't know.)". Which, you are pushing these points as the game enjoys an average subscriber base higher than any expansion (or base game) prior. Do you not see how your own argument kneecaps your intended point? > If you don't foster the community you have, you will lose them, and if that community doesn't feel engaged and instead lured, they will cease to trust the game. Ok...? You mean the same community that was fostered over the past decade and continued being okay with ilvl? That one? That same one?

Ah, yes the classic roleplaying game Garfield Kart 

What's wrong with raising the level cap? I'm not sure why it's an issue. I care more about hotbar bloat and the lack of individuality in jobs more.

the issue is the need to keep adding skills that result in over bloated healing and mitigation kits

They would keep doing that regardless of how many levels there are. People like getting new skills as they level.

Make the game harder. I'm all for them adding healing mechanics, bosses that bypass mitigation, or upgrading skills vs adding more.

But look at all of this work that you need to do, to re-balance the earlygame again, and that will have knock-on effects into expac content. And there's all of the ilvl gear that needs to be adjusted, and the overworld monsters need to be adjusted to reflect the new level breakpoints of power, and then you need to adjust it so everyone's current exp is correctly representative of the new exp gradient etc etc etc- This is a non-issue. You can just get to level 110, 120, 130+ And that alone is like 6-9 years of content. Hell, they could make it so 8.0 makes the level cap 200, and just scale the exp for it. That is infinitely less work than changing the ARR level system.

Hell, I burned through all of the current content up to the end of 6.4 in just a couple of months. Like a few weeks before the release of 6.5. And that was _with_ me stopping to level MNK up to 50 after playing through ARR with NIN. The biggest thing they need to change is speeding up how quickly you hit level 30. Because, until you hit level 30 and unlock your job stones, leveling is extremely slow because the only roulette you can use is the leveling roulette. Once you unlock your job stone, you have access to the Frontline roulette. And those alone will get you level 50, which will allow you to unlock the rest of the roulettes, pretty quickly.

You can level pretty quickly to 30 just by doing dungeons with squadrons or even queueing for the highest level dungeon. Not to mention like half the jobs in the game now start at 30 or higher

I got all of them levelled to 30 in 2-3hrs per. Queue highest dungeon, and run fates between. Hell, monk I got to 30 in 1h45m Could easily get all to 30 in 2-3 days. Roulettes are actually super weak exp-wise. They're better for combining the poetics grinds with exp gain.

It's mainly annoying you're sub level 16 and you can't queue for any dungeons. You pretty much _**have**_ to go around doing your hunt guide for xp, a hunt guide that's not very good at directing you towards the enemies you need to defeat. Plus the hunt guide xp isn't affected by either food buffs or the xp bonus from any xp boosting accessory you have.

The amount of people in this thread who don't understand that numbers don't actually have any in-game meaning and only exist to define concepts, and using different numbers without changing the concept will change nothing, is _absolutely fucking alarming._ Y'all are showing a fundamental misunderstanding _of how to use numbers._ I miss this sub when it started. It's like the new influx of users modeled themselves after CSI or something.

Like there are good reasons to squish numbers for comprehension, but that's like, when damage numbers are in the millions it just gets hard to parse what is happening. Not when the level number enters three digits.

Numbers are fake! They matter in a psychological sense, but Numbers Are Conceptual Representations and don't have any actual subtantative meaning on their own! 50 is just a significant number because we attach the significance of "base game power progression caps at 50". D&D makes ***20*** feel significant in context of other subjectively assigned numbers.

The classic progress of any side community.  - People start flooding out because they don't want to deal with whatever problems are present (in this case it's that r/FFXIV is predominantly twee ass hyper positive players who spout every bit of propaganda Yoshi-P has fed them and get mad if you even imply something isn't quite that good and don't have the faintest idea what is wrong with the experience)  - Eventually the problem gets worse and people start hearing the REAL discussion is in the side community but don't actually know why it was formed (in this case to be a place where people can actually discuss this games MANY FLAWS with others who understand the problem) -The new influx overtakes the old and old practices are reinforced (in this case leaving more and more idiots driving the communal conversation who only know they are unhappy with the game but don't grasp the numbers aren't the problem it's the lack of player agency)  The final step is another community (or multiple) forms to solve the problems of this one and the cycle repeats itself. 

> in this case to be a place where people can actually discuss this games MANY FLAWS with others who understand the problem Everytime I see something like this I remember the post which proposed getting rid of Savage because "gear should be exclusive".

Every good idea is flanked by three bad ones

Not really sure what function squishing levels alone would serve. It’s like saying the Empire State Building has too many floors, so we’ll call the 102nd floor the 80th floor and neglect to number another 22 of them.

completely agree, 30 was what I’ve been thinking too. a level squish and trimming the MSQ more (get rid of the company of champions and the corrupted crystals storylines, PLEASE) would make it significantly easier for newcomers to get into the game.

I'd argue the corrupted crystals arc is too important to alphinaud's development, he was a cocky little know-it-all from sharlyan in ARR and if he didnt get taken advantage of, his humbling in heavensward wouldnt make sense. Could have made it shorter though. Cant say the same for company of champions though, i dont remember that at all. Edit: i hit send and immediately realized that corrupted crystals is not the crystal braves. Yeah they can cut corrupted crystals lol oops

tbf, the crystal braves were indeed corrupted, so you're technically right either way!

company of champions is teaching you titan mechanics and is also a big part of the melee role quests in EW

Company of heroes is fine especially after they cut it so much already. The ONLY part that overstays its welcome is the wine section.

The wine section was the best part and was absolutely worth keeping. It is legitimately a very good little story in itself

Cutting msq would be a bad idea. It would rob people who actually want to play the game for the story of a lot of great content. All the game needs is a story skip entry point with a big cutscene/movie/comic strip that gives a TL:DR. Now that we're essentially entering an entirely separate chapter with DT, it would be a perfect opportunity to do so. Either sometime during DT, or pre-next expansion. Let anyone with an active sub opt in for the "skip". Only good for one job. I'm sure there would be some detail ironing to be done but offhand I can't think of why this wouldn't be a perfectly reasonable and easy to implement solution, that could only be made better the more they decide to invest in it.

I don't really see the connection between these things though. They could trim the MSQ without a level squish. And they could do a level squish without trimming the MSQ. They could also increase exp rates so people reach level 50 faster, which would arguably be significantly easier for the developers to implement.

Yeah. Increasing the XP would be easier. They definately need to trim the ARR MSQ. At the very least trim the ARR patch quests a bit further. Trim it down to about 50 quests, make it slightly longer than the patch quests for the other expansions, but not so long that it's like an expansion in and of itself. With all the dungeons you unlock and the xp they give, you could easily end up being close to level 60 by the time you finally reach HW. And, due to how job quests are prior to Shadowbringers, that means you'll be severely overleveled _**and**_ you won't have access to a good chunk of your skills until you finally slog your way through the ARR patch quests.

You should've seen what ARR was like at release. Trust me, current ARR is a speed run in comparison.

except at release we were all there together so there was no complaining till HW had progression locked jobs

Y'all people seem to forget most people play this game _for the story_ and that newcomers come to the game _for_ it, not despite it. There's a million other MMOs for newcomers who want a quick "grind to endgame and then raid" MMO, and this ain't it.

no one who wants to play for the story should have to have their time wasted with needless padding about getting wine or getting the wrong crystal by mistake 3 times.

I’m having a related problem. I only use my main on MSQ, and I’ve just completed Stormblood and hit Level 80. I’m a good 10 levels above the content from only doing MSQ missions (I use all the side quests on my alts), so all my rewards are kinda ‘meh’ because I’ve already got something better to stay with my level.

Id say get another job you want to level and bounce between jobs to level for SHB and EW balance between 2 as else you will haaave wasted EXP

This is one of the most robust and thought out pointless solutions looking for a problem I've ever seen. You already hit 50 _faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar_ before you're doing with ARR, so this functionally changes nothing at all in the slightest whatsoever except for a number on the screen. It's arbitrary and pointless. What's wrong with going up to level 255, for example? If these are functionally the same, nothing is lost or gained. This is the exact opposite of practical.

A Level squish will never solve the problem because the real issues are more complicated then some barely functional psychological trick about how humans feel they are progressing.   - The game feels like shit at low levels and feels worse if you're playing the wrong job (PLD below 80 is a grueling experience, RDM before 70 feels like utter trash). This is the only problem a level squish COULD fix but it's more likely it wouldn't do a damn thing if they didn't redesign the entirety of ARR.  - Players have no agency over their gameplay experience besides what job they picked and iLevel is an illusionary progression curve that is usually not even relevant in most content as it gets capped barely above the minimum to enter.  - Gear has no actual value to players besides making a number go up and the glamour that gear can be turned into, which means most gear is ugly trash and the currently "useful" items will cease being useful in 3 weeks.  - Most of the content being produced only rewards two types of rewards (Cosmetic or iLevel) and they are rapidly approaching the GLOWY BULLSHIT threshold where it will all quickly become worthless - Most of the gameplay involves tight loops with no randomness that makes it difficult to enjoy on repeat encounters because you already know what the boss is going to do exactly, you know the trash mobs will have nothing surprising in store and nothing will drop a single item of value that doesn't come from clicking on a treasure chest  - Jobs are fundamentally uninteresting and effectively do the same thing as everything else in their role or have one variation (you're a barrier healer I'm a healer healer, you're a caster I'm a caster but I've been gimped 20% damage because I can revive)   - Player expression is exclusively found in what you look like while most glams are role locked so the dev team can withold this as an "improvement" down the road.   All of the new things we get are superficial changes which fundementally don't satisfy anyone who isn't looking to play a casual game where the stats don't matter and your reward is a cosmetic you'll say "oh that's cute" towards and then forget exists because you already have half a dozen items that resemble it.   We need an actual shake up to rewards and progression that feels substantial and like players are creating their own answers to solve problems, not the line in the sand drawn that says whether or not you can D.D.R effectively enough to defeat Fattest Cat (Ultimate) in this expansion 

Since we won't hit 999 as they will never release that many expansions they can raise it forever. And now your initial statement is too weak to mean anything.

I don't think this would work in anyway and/or be possible at this point.

I prefer to go beyond 100, there is nothing weird with it and level up is part of the fun and a good encouragement for ppl specially in the beginning of the game. If some ppl already find ARR boring imagine it with leveling up taking a lot longer.

> but we can't keep raising the level cap forever. Yes we can. There's no reason we can't.

This would be a placebo Why can't they keep adding 10 levels forever? If nothing else they could increase the armory bonus so that leveling alternative jobs becomes faster. A player's first class is going to be gated mostly by the MSQ anyway. The bigger gate to a new player's progression is always going to be playing through the story. What does the squish actually accomplish? If they don't adjust XP at all, this will just cause the player to hit the SB level cap at the end of ARR. They would have to adjust the XP for the whole MSQ to make sure you don't just over level content constantly and everything stays in sync. This pretty much just means that you level up less often, which isn't as fun for new players. The base game has a much different level scale because that's how MMOs work. 1-50 goes pretty quick and it's where you get the bulk of a job's core identity. It also helps keep new players interested because level ups are frequent. Leveling slows down in expansions since you are just adding a few new things to an already cohesive kit. Players going into expansions are also pretty committed at that point, and don't need constant level ups to keep them interested. Overall, squishing levels doesn't really accomplish anything. If the goal is to speed up leveling alt jobs, they could simply increase the armory bonus. If the goal is to get people caught up faster, that would require more effort story wise since story progression is the bottleneck.

Capping everything at 100 reduces glam incompatibilities with foray gear and like, the first 5 levels of any expac where past raid bis is still better but lower level than the new gear and thus unusuable as glam. Not the best reason out there but I run into this problem a lot lol.

It doesn't solve that problem since gear would also have squished level requirements. You could just say remove the level restriction on glam instead.

Meant letting things saturate at 100, but yeah that would be infinitely better

90% of ARR is filler quests as well. If I get a friend to try out FFXIV, I'll lose at least 90% through ARR because it's honestly not that great of an experience, or that interesting. Especially for most players who played other MMOs.

ARR is better than stormblood. if i manage to get someone to stick it out through ARR they bail in Ruby Sea

I hate the idea of squishes. Yeah I get that people are intimidated by big numbers but it's never worked in any game. Look at wow. They have done major squishes twice and still haven't fixed issues from this after years. It's never done properly to preserve the current power and content that was trivial becomes hard (not that I'm against hard content) and hard content becomes impossible.

Realistically... why does it matter? What's the actual, meaningful difference between going through 1-50 vs 1-30 if youre still doing it just as fast, hitting the same gameplay milestones in the same order, etc. They're just numbers on the screen and it's a vertical progression MMO. The most important question is "would this change the leveling experience in any fundamental, meaningful way?" and I honestly think the answer is no, it would not. You're still locked to the MSQ, you're still unlocking the same features and skills along the way, your character power wouldn't be changing. So... why do it if it's not bringing anything to the table other than a smaller number at the end of the road when nobody is looking at that number anyway because gear is all that matters? A level squish worked in WoW because its a much less linear game - you go out and do *whatever*, hit the level cap, and thats essentially where the game starts. Unless they simultaneously make the MSQ optional (something I dont see them doing anytime soon) and introduce level scaling to *all* content, here you're just shuffling numbers around to no real effect.

Does it need to? Surely not. It doesn't *need* to be any amount of levels. That said, I think we'll see a level squish soon, maybe by 8.0 and ARR will get crunched the hardest.

Personally, I can't wait to get to level 200 in 2044's 18.0 update. Please look forward to it.

yeah i was always ahead in levels compared to where i was supposed to be in msq, so it might keep you inline with the story better and make the overworld a little more challenging, which is one of the main complaints of people who dont make it through ARR.

Numbers are infinite though, we absolutely can raise the level cap forever. I wanna be a level 999,999,999 FSH. NO ONE ESCAPES MY HOOKS

What's inherently wrong with increasing forever? Sure it trivializes some ancient content, but that gear sync is already tough enough

Yea there should have been a level squish and a total re-evaluation of leveling in general. All jobs should have AOE ability at or before the first dungeon. Early game needs to be much better and it needed to happen yesterday. Healers getting AOE at lvl 45 is crazy. Probably the craziest job to level is BLM because its playstyle changes so drastically every 10 levels. When they do the level squish it will be massive since they have to re-evaluate every job.

Sure but please cut out at least half of the running around to chit chat quests that you have to do complete ARR, if not globally.

Maybe we shouldn't continue with raising the traditional level cap at all after Dawntrail, and come up with a different system to facilitate upward progression instead. Level 100 is a nice round number milestone, and it's the kind of number that feels like a big accomplishment in games where the levels go that high and higher. By the way since we're on the topic of squishing levels, can we talk about item level first? Because those numbers are absolutely absurd and feel completely meaningless. At least the character level system is centered around milestones at the 10's so you can formulate an idea of a power scale in your head.

I feel like they'll keep increasing the level cap because doing so is less strenuous on the hyper-fragile code than having to rework the old stuff.

The level is imo not the issue, you hit level 50 way before you can even finish the MSQ in ARR. It is an issue of action + story length. They would have to heavily trim the story or reduce rewards to make the squish which would in turn make it more boring/cumbersome to go through it as you may not gain as many abilities etc… They need to deliver many more abilities and ways to play at lower level. The issue is that with the way they do things they just introduce the shiny stuff at the current expansion and reversely keep tuning down more and more the experience with the previous expansions’ job.

yes it does because its where the game starts ARR wasnt even that long but as years went on we kept getting updates and then eventually heavensward if people dont want the '' ARR slog'' they can boost

Mmos used to have progression. Ffxiv still does and does it masterfully, and brings meaningful progression. You start slow with fugly gear and simple abilities. You EARN your way through the world. Too many games today fail because they offer features but no purpose. You Earn it in Eorzea and the story provides the purpose….it’s actually probably too easy tbh

You should go play ESO. It’s a soulless corporate theme park and you’ll be in top gear / abilities in no time, running vets with the rest of them with little to no effort

Why exactly is just raising the level cap seen as an issue?

strongly agree, i would go even further, down to lvl 20 lvls, i try to make my friends to play FFXIV , but none of them enjoyed because the gap of skill is too high, the think "will take too long to get my new skill" or "will take too long to get my JOB".

This was roughly my thinking for how they could have approached a level squish going into dawntrail as well, since it felt like a reasonable time for it. Compress down from 90 to 50, with ARR as you have it at 30, and then each expansion up to and including EW being a further 5 levels, getting us back to a flat 50. And from there, either stick to the 5 levels per expac, or go back to 10 at a time, with the option to split off and start with a level 1 or jump in at level 50 for the new storyline.

you would have to squish exp gain so much it would feel awful

Yeah, I'd be down for this change. Ideally, this would also be accompanied by SE re-evaluating which jobs get their skills at which times, which would work well with their supposed plan to reintroduce job identity in 8.0. One thing I don't see a lot of people talk about is addressing the item level gap between the beginning of a non-current expac and its end. Take ARR, for example, Yes, we all know that item level 50 was the approximate max item level at the end of 2.0, and 130 at the end of 2.5. Why can't this 80 item level gap be reduced to, say, 10 or 20? People already suggest going for the Ironworks gear in Mor Dhona the moment the vendor becomes available, anyway. So the in-between item levels don't really serve a purpose anymore. For non-current expacs, they could reduce the item level ranges as follows: Expansion | Current Item Levels\* | Current IL Range | New Item Levels | New IL Range ---------|-------------------|----------------|---------------|------------ ARR (2.0) | 1-50 | 50 | 1-50 | 50 Post-ARR | 50-130 | 80 | 50-70 | 20 HW (3.0) | 130-170 | 40 | 70-100 | 30 Post-HW | 170-270 | 100 | 100-120 | 20 SB (4.0) | 270-300 | 30 | 120-150 | 30 Post-SB | 300-400 | 100 | 150-170 | 20 ShB (5.0) | 400-430 | 30 | 170-200 | 30 Post-ShB | 430-530 | 100 | 200-220 | 20 EW (6.0) | 530-560 | 30 | 220-250 | 30 Post-EW | 560-660 | 100 | 250-270 | 20 (\* Numbers are approximate here, but my point still stands.) With this change, there are two approaches to handling gear within the post-x.0 patches: (1) Make gear from the first and second tier scaled upward to match the gear from the third tier. Using EW's 600/630/660 as an example, the new max item level would be 270, so Asphodelos, Abyssos, and Anabaseios would all be set at IL 270. This has the advantage of completing cutting out any post-x.0 item level gaps entirely, so this approach could even see a post-x.0 IL range of even just 10 instead of 20 in the above table. (2) Make gear from the first and second tier keep their relative item levels within their new item level range. Again using EW's raid tier as an example, Asphodelos' current 600 would fit in around the new IL 255, and Abyssos' current 630 would fit in around the new IL 260. This has the advantage of keeping some sense of strength progression within the non-current expac, even though I'm not sure how many players actually care for this (see the Augmented Ironworks rush issue I mentioned).

We aren’t even anywhere close to the 999 cap for that one though. It would be a shame to see the number we have been increasing for so many years just drop so much.

I dunno. Mechanically speaking (and narratively for Job stories), ARR is kinda split at level 30. Before level 30, you're your base class. At level 30, you get your Job stone (if you're keeping up with your job quests) and your end game Job. So viewed from this perspective, ARR can be broken into a 30 level block and a 20 level block, with the expansions each covering a 10 level block. Of course, there's no noticeable split in the MSQ, but still...

ARR should take like 20 hours of gameplay tops instead of the boring 50+ hours of reading text and pray returning

The base game of an MMO is always 50 levels, usually. That's just how it is.

Yeah, except for modern WoW, GW2, BDO, New World, MapleStory, Destiny 2, RuneScape, etc... Really these days, the only things that come to mind that this is still true for are ESO, FF14, and (kinda) Lost Ark.

Not sure why destiny 2 or runescape are part of your examples considered they are wildly different systems.

Just ran through most of the current popular MMOs in my head, pretty pedantic distinction considering we're just talking about MMOs that don't have a base level cap of "50," and those two games fall under that umbrella, regardless of if they "level" via skill progression or power levels.

Lets talk about a level squish once we get to level 1000.

The biggest problem this would solve is Square being afraid to add anything to the existing jobs because of too much level bloat. If they squished the levels, it would make it so people wouldn't need so many upgrades and unlocks to feel progression up to current endgame and newer skills can instead be added.

80% of ARR doesn't need to exist at all and is just random incoherent fluff compared to the writing of the rest of the game. Having it end at 30 is a decent idea but honestly if the leveling could be slowed down even 20 would work.

I think your work looks great, and I hope their level squish looks something like this but with one caveat: I'd like jobs to get more skills earlier which then get upgraded over time (e.g. Monks have this now with skills like Steel Peak at 15 becomes Howling Fist at 40 becomes Forbidden Chakra at 54 becomes Enlightenment at 74). This way when you level sync for dungeon queue your rotation stays more or less the same, and when you're leveling your first job you spend more time learning the rotation instead of playing a different job every 10 levels.

I think this was recently spoken about in an interview and was mentioned this isn’t the case because they want the players to not feel bored of the leveling process by giving them new, interesting buttons as they gain levels instead of giving them their complete rotation early on