So what really is the problem with leve quests?

Background story:

Yesterday i was talking with a friend and we were reminiscing of our time in Final Fantasy 11, and my buddy asked me how 14 was doing, I promptly responded "well short story its trash but we will see after the summer, things could really change". He then asked me "well have they at least introduced missions like they had in FF 11"? I said "well there is Story quests, side quests and the leves of course", and then my friend asked me something that was so simple a question but got me thinking; "Are the mission challenging and fun"? "are they worth doing"? I blankly stared and said "well no there all repetitive and a grind".

The Meat and Potato's:

And here is were i began to develop my brain child. What is more important to a game quest/mission quantity or quality?

I looked at games such as World of Warcraft, Rift, and Aion and established that these games definitely had quest quantity but did they have quality or subsistence. Then i looked at Final Fantasy 11's missions and remembered not just the quality in the story line of each mission, but the challenge vs. reward. I came to the conclusion that World of Warcraft, Rift, and Aion focus heavily on level grinds that consist of a quantity of quests but lack real quality, and then i looked at Final Fantasy 11 which had much lower quantity but a huge difference in quality.

Quantity of course in my opinion means 10,000 quests of kill x and y, with a dialogue that follows boring enough to even put buzzkillington asleep. Quality of course is a diminished amount of quests but are vary story driven with cut scenes, epic rewards, hard challenges, and of course switching things up from kill x and y (if you were killing x and y it would be more then stopping marmots from eating camp provisions but a more developed story).

Conclusion:

So you tell me guys should and can these leves be made less repeatable and more story and quality driven?

My thoughts are leves should be a hub for interesting quests and missions that are outside of the storyline with maybe a few cross overs. The problems is that leves are the main source of SP, so with that said would the introduction of group grinds save leves if the quality of the leves was improved?

Note:

Quantity: a particular or indefinite amount of anything.

Quality: a degree or standard of excellence, esp a high standard.

That pretty much sums up my main gripe with leves

My main gripe with leves is everyone has to be within 5 rankes of each other to get good SP. This game isnt exactly bubbling over with players, if you dont do leves within 12 hours of the reset you may not be able to find a level appropriate group.

What a remember about FFXI quests were all the goods ones had little cutscenes and were not just solid walls of text, they either had a quirky sense of humor or a dramatic flair and a soundtrack to add to the building tension. Sure there were bad quests, but I don't remember those. I can fondly recall all the S.O.B. quests and everything with Shantotto and Nanaa Mihgo in it to name but a few. FFXIV just doesn't yet have that same appeal.

Quests used to mean something. They not only earned you items and gil, but granted you certain privileges, like the Kazham airship pass, allowing you access to the Elshimo Lowlands and all those sweet camping spots. Even some of the monotony I can look back with a smile, like collecting and turning in all those damned Yagudo necklaces for Faction points that would open up more of the game to me. That's what this game needs.

It could be little things that they add to the game. Like institute a penalty if Behests aren't being completed. The Battlewardens bemoan the sudden increase in the monster population and beseech you to help cull some of their blooming numbers. If Behests aren't being finished, then more feral enemies get added to an area with increasingly higher levels (up to a reasonable cap). Something that would effect the world at large, even if just a little.

Even if, at the end of every week, statistics get tallied for every city. Enemies killed, quests completed, craft materials made, items harvested/fished/mined, etc. The city that comes out ahead grants the residences of that city something, some of nice food, a long lasting buff, whatever.

The devs' stated goals regarding the purpose of levesquests is that so a player can just hop online and do some quests without having the problem of FF11 where you are standing in town waiting to make a party.

However, that does not end up being the case for a variety of reasons.

Leves were created with that flexibility in mind, but because of the overwhelming benefits of SP gain due to leve linking, coupled with the lack of any other good alternatives, the leve system in practice still ends up being very inflexible.

People stand around Uldah waiting for a party because doing leves solo isn't really worth it. Also, people have to intentionally fail their leves for the purpose of being certain that they'll always have the leves they need at the next reset. If you don't find people who have the same leves as you to link, then it's not really worth it.

A lot of these issues could be alleviated if the selection of leves was a little more free, so that players could more easily coordinate their leves without having to resort to intentionally failing them.

The "3 random leves per reset" is an obstacle to that freedom, as well as the "only 8 leves per reset" restriction.

The lack of more viable open world grinding spots results in many players not knowing what else to do outside of leves.

The horrible party search implementation ensures that players who want to find other players to party with have an unnecessarily difficult time doing so.

The overall low population count doesn't help, either.

In summary:

If I want to do leves, I only want to leve link the main 3 Broken Water leves due to the SP gains from that being so overwhelmingly good compared to other leves.

Things that get in the way:

• not everyone has those same leves
• those players that have those leves might have already done them, and thus cannot do them again until next reset
• no one uses the party search, so it's hard to get in contact with like-minded players

In conclusion, while the party makeup requirements might not be as strict as in FF11, you still are faced with similar issues with respect to getting a party started while at the same time being restricted even further by the aforementioned flaws inherent in the guildleve design.

My problem with leves is, most of them are complete trash and thats why we're kind of forced to fail, plus due to transport issues its not friendly to have to go travelling around in order to do leves. If you did 3-3-2 at different nations it can cost up to 21 anima, and in 36 hours you get 9 back, so it runs out fast (cuse you wont spend it on just pure leves).

So there is not much variety or reasoning to do others than the ones we continue to fail. Also not to mention many of them are stupidly easy, and due to them combined its very boring hacking away at the same thing over and over and over. And you're always stuck in that fugly Thanalan due to the issues.

They've also failed to do what they said "Leves is the foundation for a system we can improve on, each update we can easily just add more leves" I've yet to see 1 new leve for battleleves so that was a total failure.

Leves is the result of trying to fix a system that didnt need fixing due to comments/opinions that are years old. Stupid developers thinking they know what is best.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by viion

plus due to transport issues its not friendly to have to go travelling around in order to do leves. If you did 3-3-2 at different nations it can cost up to 21 anima, and in 36 hours you get 9 back, so it runs out fast (cuse you wont spend it on just pure leves).

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Well, if you party and have different people do teleports it's not so bad, but yes that is a very serious problem that would could easily be solved with a chocobo rental service or airship service: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Want-Your-Fix

Having leves be tethered to the adventurer guild in town means that players have to do a lot of back and forth movement, which can get very restrictive. It's not like you can just head out for an adventure far away from town for 5 hours. Because of the flaws in leve design, you have to go back to towns, or travel to different camps while enduring arduous and boring walks in between.

Leve quests were an attempt to fix or "revolutionize" a over used system; i think we all know that. However i feel that SE while trying to be original broke the all ready over used system with nothing but burden, repetition, and i cant even call its quest dialogues "walls of text" because there is nothing but crap to these quests. I want subsistence to my games, i want to be pulled in asking for more each quest i complete, instead i avoid the game like the plague.

I know SE is "fixing" the game but like someone all ready said the foundation of the game (leve quests) were supposed to be regularly updated and improved upon, instead we haven't even seen one other mundane bore fest leve implemented let alone a fix to the all ready broken mechanic.

Edit: Not counting hot fixes.

Pretty much everything.

They have a badly written story but what's worse completing the leve has NO IMPACT WHATSOEVER TO ANYTHING and the same request/plea of help will still remain. Is there anything less rewarding than that?

Why are they all the same? Honestly? what prevents them from taking out the timers and map markers from some leves and just throw in a story NPC that tells you the way or guides you to a place A while you protect him or fight alongside him?

Why don't they combine crafting and gathering classes skills as requirement to do some leves?

Why can't I view which leves I've completed and why is there no reward from completing all of them?

Why aren't there leves designed for big groups of people?

Why is the goal of each leve the same?

Why aren't there leve-strings you can complete one after another without returning to camp?

Why do so many of the leves contain the same mobs? There is some variety but it's hard to notice since most leves are kill 6of these 6 of those and 6 of something else.

Why are there no leves that require you to escort a lower rank player to a hard to reach place?

Why don't the NPCs in towns comment on the progress nor the completions in any way?

Why are the NPCs never involved in a mini storyline of leves?

why are there no FoV type buffs to be gained from running on this endless treadmill?

The possibilities are endless but there is no one at SE who can design content worth doing.
Many of the quests in XI had similar characteristics as leves do but it's the Fame, Signet, rewards, cutscenes, maps and skills and whatever that made them all worth doing.
Leves have none of that variety in them.

Resonance of Fate that was done with a MUCH smaller budget and has pretty sub-par quest in rpg standards still has a lot more variety and a better sense of place in them than what's glued on top of XIV. What's their excuse for botching the system?