Letter from the Producer, XII (27/06/2011) Thoughts?

[BadJoeRed]

At the same time, the objectives of certain guildleves will be adjusted in order to accommodate a system in which difficulty and completion time influence your reward. For example, completing a high-difficulty levequest in a short amount of time will yield greater rewards. Through this we hope to encourage skillful adventuring.

lol
Skillful adventuring: Running away from all mobs you don't have to kill in order to complete fast enough to get the higher reward.


In light of guildleves’ repositioning as solo-oriented content, leve link bonuses will be reduced. To make up for this reduction, skill points will be added as a new reward for the benefit of solo adventurers.


This is a good change. This will stop the failing leves epidemic since most of the SP I'd guess is part of the reward for completing it. Although, of course I participate in the leve linking/failing currently, one would be silly not to. I could also paint my house with a toothbrush, but that's just stupid. Lol to everyone who attempted to ridicule others for getting too much SP at a time.

I forget who's sig it was... hmm maybe on ZAM? He/she was correct all along... "Get the SP before the nerf!"


Any other thoughts on the incoming changes?



Raze, have you seen the movie Zoolander? I challenge you to a tank off!

[Reinheart]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-Producer-XII

[Molly_Millions]

"Get the SP before the nerf!"

Hehe, that was mine. I changed it just a few days ago.

[BadJoeRed]

O, I thought that might have been yours, but I looked at both your sigs and didn't see it!

[Molly_Millions]

I'm actually kinda surprised it's taken this long to address leve SP.

[Raze]

Raze, have you seen the movie Zoolander? I challenge you to a tank off!

LOL I love that movie actually, "I just thank the Lord she didn't live to see her son as a mermaid." 'Mer-man, father! Mer-man!"

But if there were an actual "tank off" I'd love it! I'll bring my best 3 and you bring 7 along :P

[Raikki]

of course I participate in the leve linking/failing currently, one would be silly not to.

I actually grinded my way through >90% of the SP on my combat classes. I only got about 30-40K SP from each leve cycle on average (when I did them; I skipped leves entirely for the first 3 classes). It wasn't really slow or tedious (for me) or anything, and I got a ton of much-needed crafting mats and shards stockpiled from it in addition to getting all the faction gear I wanted. Personally, I wouldn't have done it any other way, but I might be silly, who knows!

P.S.: It was interesting to see how grind spots usually stayed empty outside of JP prime time. It was a relaxing change from the first couple times through when you had to fight to keep your spot multiple times per day.

[Scape]

I could also paint my house with a toothbrush, but that's just stupid.

Don't hate =P

As long as it all actually works good, I'm game. Would be nice to get rid of leve failing. It's good exp but its an odd concept, failing > completing!?

I guess we will just wait and see.

[Vackashken]

I actually grinded my way through >90% of the SP on my combat classes. I only got about 30-40K SP from each leve cycle on average (when I did them; I skipped leves entirely for the first 3 classes). It wasn't really slow or tedious (for me) or anything, and I got a ton of much-needed crafting mats and shards stockpiled from it in addition to getting all the faction gear I wanted. Personally, I wouldn't have done it any other way, but I might be silly, who knows!

P.S.: It was interesting to see how grind spots usually stayed empty outside of JP prime time. It was a relaxing change from the first couple times through when you had to fight to keep your spot multiple times per day.

I grinded out my first battle job to 50 (pug) back when it was random SP to low. I think when the first patch came out that super-boosted the sp you got from mobs I was pretty hateful of it lol. Getting 50 meant something and pretty much was the only thing in the game that actually gave a sense of accomplishment.

Albeit I typically don't care what other people do, making the game far easier flooded the market with level 50s (after IC started to do the leve-link leve-fail runs) with absolutely nothing to do. It was the formula I found threatening to the longevity of the game, not what people did or didn't do with it. Ah well

It's good exp but its an odd concept, failing > completing!?

That has always been my contention. Rewarding... failure? The very concept is ass-backwards. But, enough of beating that dead horse. Its changing and I am happy about it.



I've been thinking about why I miss grinding. Ultimately, people can say grinding and leve links are one in the same. You're gathering together to kill stuff. Thats true but what the big difference to me is (if you all have played 11) when you went out to grind you went to the dunes, quifim (however its spelled), the jungles, citadel, zitah, etc, etc, etc. You got a change of scenery. You got to see the world and - in a way - interact with it.

I don't know about you guys but I think thats something I've missed and been a very damaging mistake on their part. Every zone (Grid, Ul duuuuh and LL) you can, if you want, grind from 1-50 on it. They've got this beautiful, resource hogging game and compacted it down into a tiny box.

Anyway, I am babbling. Albeit it doesn't seem like they're going to make it like 11 (in a grindy sense) I do hope they give us a reason to go out in different parts of the world. I think making quest hubs will basically be the same as leves. Welcome to your camp! Prepare to spend all your time in the same place just like leves!

sadness

Hope I am wrong.

[Raikki]

Today's topics post makes it pretty clear that leve-failing to rank up is simply not going to be a practical technique after 1.18. Some people seemed to be holding out hope (if that's the right word) that the nerf wouldn't be significant enough to put a damper on the activity, but with it being nerfed on multiple fronts it certainly sounds like it's going to be completely ineffective.

That said, for those of you currently relying on the trick to advance, what are your plans moving forward? Will you try to squeeze in as much SP as you can before the patch? Simply rank up at a slower pace? Or are people going to start grinding again? I really hope SE has gotten the message about the +10 rank SP cap being too low so that grind parties can benefit from being able to kill +15s (and beyond).