(10-18-2014, 09:09 PM)Coatleque Wrote: Can an MMO once, just ONCE drop an expansion without raising a level cap? I am sure they can fill it with enough content and trinkets to keep things going without requiring us to grind out another ten useless levels and two - three more skill on an already full hotbar.
I liked how things were done with the gear iLevels. That would have been an acceptable system in and of itself.
I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. We don't know WHAT we're going to get in the comings levels, and I find that pretty exciting. Right now there's a fairly defined "skill every X levels, trait every Y" pattern that allows for growth all the way up to 50, plus job quests, plus class quests. I don't know if we can be sure those projections will continue.
I could totally see new traits added for class quests, for example. There could be some retooling without requiring a whole rebuild: Paladin trait so shield blocks restore TP, Monk trait to scale TP regen with GL stacks, etc.
I think regarding levels, though, there's just an innate expectation to get more when buying an expansion pack. Only game I can think of that really didn't do much with them was FFXI, since the "original" game already let you hit 75 when it landed stateside. There wouldn't be a level increase for seven or eight years, then there were three of them in rapid succession, following by one more to cap at 99 a year or two later. To my understanding the game is all iLvl now.
iLvl provides a degree of growth without needing new experience levels, but at some point I think they ("they" being the developers) need to equalize things for potential new/catching up players. Imagine someone returning to the game in 2.4 and wanting to gear up. There's a wealth of content they just burn through (namely any dungeon prior to Current Expert dungeons, and two tiers of old coil potentially) on top of things that just get skipped entirely (EX primals) on top of dead content that's extremely difficult to queue for (Westwind outside of poor Light times, CT1 and soon CT2). Once everyone's back to only having a handful of dungeons and trials it forces everyone back to working together.