I’ve seen tons of people in game complain about this, but no ones making any forums posts about it, so I will.
The game starts to fall apart after level 100, due to a mixture of things.
First is maps. There simply is not enough. There is about 1 new zone every 3 levels. This is nowhere near enough. There needs to be more zones simple as that. Second is your progress through these maps. It’s linear. Doesn’t matter what class you play, how you play or who you play with, progress is 100% linear and never changes. Third is how viable these maps are to level on. Most of them are not viable. You will visit the map, do the quests, then never return.
This creates an incredibly small, very limited world to play in. Everyone is flocking to the same few areas and it’s just not fun at all. Creating a new character doesn’t change anything, you have the exact same experience every single time.
The other major problem is mob balance. As you increase in level you notice it more and more. But there is basically 2-3 problem mobs that further limit how you will explore the world.
First you get the big, tough mobs. They hit hard, and never die. They give a bit more exp for killing them, but the extra effort is simply not worth it.
The second (and possibly third) is mages and archers. You cannot pull these for AOE (the only viable grinding method) because they’re ranged, and you would not want to anyway. They hit like trucks and will kill you in a second flat.
So now there is this small world, further limited by both bad spawns and poorly balanced mobs.
And then it gets worse, because exp needed to level up increases much faster than exp earned from both quests and grinding. At low levels a map full of quests will give you a few levels, at higher levels it’s like half a level tops. And mobs are just as bad, 0.06% exp a kill or something.
All of these three things combined essentially create an environment that makes levelling up much harder than it needs to be. Infact, at about level 145 you can permanently ruin your character if you do not follow a highly specific guide. The reason being, at level 160+ there is nowhere good to grind, and quests aren’t giving you enough exp. The instance dungeon also gives nothing. You’re essentially stuck in a levelling zone where you cannot level up anymore, so you’re forced to save all of your exp cards from about level 140 to 170, and grind it out then use them all to skip over this very bad section of the game. If you do not do this, you will get stuck between levels 167 and 174 with nowhere to grind and no quests, you’re stuck getting 0 exp and will probably need to delete your character and remake.
The levelling experience after level 100+ is poorly designed, and just gets worse as you level up. These issues need seriously addressing and people need to start bringing this to IMCs attention before it gets completely neglected.