[Dev #TBD] Fixing the Level Spread of Local Leves

[Wynn]

Dear Final Fantasy XIV Devs:

I am a main class crafter. This means I craft more than anything else in XIV. It is my preferred activity and will choose to do it first above all other things in the game. I am the kind of person you were hoping to draw in by making crafters an actual class in XIV.

However, there is one thing that severely impedes my enjoyment of Final Fantasy XIV: the disparity between how many local leves there are from 1-25 and 30-50.

By the time a player reaches level 35 they have only completed roughly 25% of their character's experience progression to reach level 50. Yet about 86% of all available local leves are within the 1-35 range.

I will use Alchemist local leves as an example here to show how sparse leves get in the 26-100% experience range of a character's class. This list accounts for all possible iterations of leves, in all cities, including leves which have multiple versions of the same level.

Level 1 leves: 17
Level 5 leves: 11
Level 10 leves: 8
Level 15 leves: 14
Level 20 leves: 6
Level 25 leves: 8
Level 30 leves: 3
Level 35 leves: 2
Level 40 leves: 1
Level 45 leves: 5
Level 50 leves: 1

You can see just by looking at this list that the beginning levels are severely top heavy with leves while the later leves are starving for attention.

In addition, these leves are not guaranteed to appear each reset like battle or harvesting classes, further compounding the problem a higher level crafter faces when trying to find worthwhile leves to do.

Crafters immediately begin to experience the drying up of local leves at around level 25 and it only gets worse as time goes on. There have been many many resets that I have literally had no leves to choose from in my preferred crafting class, which happens to be alchemist. I also have a character which is a level 45 goldsmith and can attest that one is lucky if a single leve can be taken which will provide any measure of worthwhile experience. This can be pretty discouraging when you see other archetypes having plenty to do and you have wasted anima traveling to each city only to come back empty-handed.

I am suggesting that the spread between the levels of local leves be evened out, or that more leves be added to fill in the gaps. Please SE, address this.

[Mortikhan]

As a fellow crafter first, beat it to death with a giant pointy object second, I would truly like to agree with you. However, there are far too many other ways to level your crafts other than leves that I can not. After looking at your levels I would have to recommend leveling your gathering classes. Those classes can and will level virtually every craft with the exception of leatherworking (primarily due to the necessity of animal hides).

The local leve system, from what I have seen of it so far, was only put into play to really get you started and supply you with Guildmarks. Once you get started you have to use other classes to feed your crafting needs. I see it like this: The gathering classes feed the crafting classes and the crafting classes feed the battle classes. Again as I said earlier the exception is leatherworking because of your obvious necessity to kill mobs that drop skins that you will need. The crafts also feed each other with the different crafted components that are needed for other synths in one specific class.

As you get more guildmarks you will be able to get all of the treatises and scrolls from that guild and be able to craft things far higher in level which will net you more and more SP. When that happens your main concern will be fatigue. Every 5 levels you will open a new set of leves within 5 levels of your current level (ie. at 20 you will see 25 leves and at 25 you will see 30 leves etc.).

Gathering classes start to pay off at +10 levels starting at 15 (ie. at 25 and 35 new areas open up to do leves at and you will get better materials to work with). Right now you can only access level 3 areas for gathering. How often you can gather at each location will also increase with level and better tools and gear which leads to far less running around to find points and more gathering. With your crafts being 2-15 levels higher you are not going to see much help from those gathering classes. Get your gathering classes to 25+ and you will see a huge difference in what you find in each area and how much it will help with your crafting. Also be sure to pay attention to secondary gathering points since they will offer a lot of things for your crafting (ie. bushes yielding Cotton Bolls which will allow you to go to 35 in Weaving easily). I would recommend getting your Botany to 25 as your first gathering class since it will give you an ability called Sweat of Brow. While gathering if this ability kicks in it will double your SP gained per attempt at that particular gathering point (it works a little different with fishing however). Also, I can not stress this enough...DO YOUR BATTLE LEVES AS GATHERING LEVES and do not be afraid to use your GA on them. Between GA and Sweat of Brow the levels will fly by in gathering till you hit roughly 38-40.

Your classes will ebb and flow according to what you have for materials. This might all sound a bit strange but once you level those gathering classes you will be more concerned about where you are going to put all of those materials and where you are going to find the time to craft them all out (Spoiler: Grade 4 mining points = lots and lots and lots of Iron and Silver so you can kiss level 20-25 leves for Armorer, Blacksmithing and Goldsmithing goodbye and say hello to level 40 leves ).

These are all suggestions and I hope they help. My LS very rarely ever listens to me about gathering...as a matter of fact they usually change vent channels when I start preaching about it lol. It might be boring and tedious to do gathering leves and and gathering grinding, but your advantage will be that you will very rarely ever have to wait for any materials to pop up in the market wards...if you want them, just go get them. They will also allow you to farm things at your optimal crafting ability for 500-900 SP consistently until you get into the 40's.

[Wynn]

I apologize Mortikhan, but I do not understand how your post has anything to do with the subject I posted about. I know how to gather materials for crafting. That is hardly the point.

In fact, on my goldsmith character is am a level 37 miner. However, I feel compelled to respond that a crafter shouldn't have to level any other job anyway, just like other archetypes don't have to. But that is really another discussion and doesn't pertain to my original post.

The leve system is the "meat and potatoes" of XIV. The primary means of leveling. Only problem is that the system is incomplete for crafters. Harvesters and battle classes do not have this problem.

If a community representative comes in here and says: "this is intended, we don't want crafters to be able to level via leves like other classes" I will drop the issue. But I sincerely don't believe that. This game was created with the idea that crafters were classes too and they should be treated equally.

[Mortikhan]

While I understand your want to use leves to gain the majority of your SP without leveling other classes, the crafting class SP needed to level is identical to that of battle classes. Until they put something into the games to leve-link or GA for crafting you will not gain the kind of SP that battle classes can gain. In order to make equipment for battle classes you will need to have crafting classes leveled. To level your crafting classes you will need materials. You can obtain those materials from the gathering classes and in some cases (Leatherworking) from battle classes.

Not wanting to level another class to complete your task is perfectly fine but you will no doubt take longer to accomplish your overall goal. Adding more leves only serves lop side things even further against your goal meaning that you will still level slower than others who have leveled their gathering classes anyway. I see you point that there should be more diversity, but my point is there are other ways to accomplish this already without those leves.

As I already said, not wanting to level another class is your choice so by its very nature a limitation you choose to place on yourself. Your personal choice to do something or not do something does not necessitate a change in the game. You do not HAVE to level the gathering classes...your penalty is that your crafting classes will level slower. Just like a battle class does not have to level their crafting classes...their penalty is having to wait for someone who can fix their gear to be around/willing to fix their gear or get a reduced repair from an NPC at a ridiculous cost and they will have to hunt down the gear they want through NM's and what happens to be in the market wards for them at any given time. It was the same way in FFXI. You never had to complete your SJ quest if you chose not to...your penalty for that decision was less party invites. Crafting was no different in FFXI either...you did not have to level a particular craft...your penalty was that anything you needed from that craft in order level your chosen craft you would need to buy on the AH. This system of dependency is just more apparent and frequent in this game.

Like I said before in my previous post, these are all just suggestions. You are already aware of how you CAN do it, you are just making the choice not to. Please realize though that these problems you are encountering are because the devs have to balance things out for those who are choosing to do it the way I am describing.

[Wynn]

Am I really the only person that cares about this? I see some likes on my post but no comments adding to the support. Ah well. C'est la vie.

[Shaily]

I will use Alchemist local leves as an example here to show how sparse leves get in the 26-100% experience range of a character's class. This list accounts for all possible iterations of leves, in all cities, including leves which have multiple versions of the same level.

Level 1 leves: 17
Level 5 leves: 11
Level 10 leves: 8
Level 15 leves: 14
Level 20 leves: 6
Level 25 leves: 8
Level 30 leves: 3
Level 35 leves: 2
Level 40 leves: 1
Level 45 leves: 5
Level 50 leves: 1

You can see just by looking at this list that the beginning levels are severely top heavy with leves while the later leves are starving for attention.

What bothers me most here is that there are 17 r1 local leves for alchemy. In all serious, why do they need that many? When I started alchemy, I only needed two r1 leves to get me to r5, and then another 3 or 4 r5 leves to get me to r10. There is absolutely no reason to have that many low-end leves and yet have so few at the high end, where the leves are more necessary to make significant progress. I'm just reaching the r25 slowdown with all my crafting classes, and already I'm noticing a massive drop in the number of leves I can get for them, even in the cities where the guilds are located. It feels like the game is being unnecessarily harsh in its local leve offers.

As for the comments about ranking up gathering classes to advance crafting: why?? Battle classes do not need to rank up crafting or gathering to go out and fight things. Gathering classes do not need crafting or battle classes to rank up (unless they're gathering in a particularly dangerous area). Following this logic, I should not need to be a gatherer in order to be a crafter.

[Rukkirii]

Hey everyone! We forwarded your concerns about this topic to the dev. team. They let us know that they too have been discussing the small selection of 35+ leves and will be addressing this after the adjustments to recipes are carried out. These changes should help with ranking up your crafting classes quicker. I know I’ll be looking forward to it!

[Dragonlord]

Hey everyone! We forwarded your concerns about this topic to the dev. team. They let us know that they too have been discussing the small selection of 35+ leves and will be addressing this after the adjustments to recipes are carried out. These changes should help with ranking up your crafting classes quicker. I know I’ll be looking forward to it!

Thank you Rukkirii for the input on crafting. Great post too, wrym!! I wish people would follow this trend in the forums so we can get these positive responses from the devolpement team! As always good job SE. The communication is getting better everyday.

[VydarrTyr]

They let us know that they too have been discussing the small selection of 35+ leves and will be addressing this after the adjustments to recipes are carried out.

Thanks for the update, Rukkiri. That's great news.

I realize you can't give firm dates on things -- especially at this point -- but can you give us a ballpark for when they're going to be adjusting recipes? 6 months? A year? Will they start doing that next after the battle system adjustments are complete? Will they be adjusting recipes while the battle system adjustments are being made?

Thanks for the info.

[JayvirDeforte]

I still think I have yet to see a R40 Culinarian leve where I could usually pull in an entire journal in two cities not even 10 ranks ago. I've actually stopped leveling it completely because of that. Not to mention grindable synths are nearly non-existent near the 40s. I know there is supposed to be a leveling curve but damn, its rough for crafters