On Guildleve Design

While working on my leves today, something occurred to me, and I wanted to try to spark discussion about it.

The current regional guildleve system does correct the problem of people canceling their leves. That goal was accomplished neatly, and I thought it was a rather clever way to do so at first. But it has introduced a separate problem that I think needs attention now. While doing guildleves, I don't feel incentive to increase the difficulty.

One of my leves was "All Nine Ivies is a Stage." This leve is a point defense leve that involves waves of 1-2 Fachan opponents of Rank R, and ends with a flytrap of Rank R and "spark" enemy of Rank R+2. As you can guess from all of that magic being slung around, the damage taken can be challenging to keep up with. Not wanting to frustrate myself with many "cheap" deaths to start with, I took the leve at 1 star. My reward? 2,600 SP, or 4% of my necessary SP to rank up (65000.)

My next leve was Reforesting Nine Ivies, which puts you against 6 boars. They attack slowly, and with a little practice can be killed before they use their SP attacks, which hurt. Their SP move can also be dodged with fast enough reactions. This leve I took at my usual 2 stars, although I probably could have managed it at 3 stars. My reward? 2,925 SP, or 4.5%.

That's when a thought started to bother me. Why do I bother to do these above 1 star? The rewards are... significant, but the risk vs. rewards just doesn't feel substantial enough. .5% at the end of the leve, and perhaps 200-300 more SP from the monsters involved. In exchange, I raise the chance of death, which significantly damages my gear now.

I'm not certain what the solution would be. If you decrease the SP rewards, you hurt the players that don't have as much skill or luck, or who have a bad connection. If you increase the SP rewards, you make it even easier to rank up for everyone. Gil is a diminishing reward over time, and steps were taken recently to curb inflation. The only potential solution I can think of is a "recommended" difficulty based on player rank, with a reward for meeting or exceeding that difficulty. Gil? Faction credits? 5 points towards your Guardian's Favor? Unfortunately, the dev team is busy enough, and designing and balancing such a system would take away from time they're spending on other projects.

Maybe someone more learned than I in game design would have some ideas? All I can offer is that I don't feel any desire at all to challenge myself now. Before, I would have aimed 8-13 ranks above myself, while now I'm merely aiming 5-6 ranks above myself.

- - -

On an unrelated note, I'd also like to briefly touch on the point defense leves introduced at the R40 camps. It is immensely, immensely frustrating to constantly be avoiding aggressive monsters during these leves. Treespeak in particular fills me with dread, because even with the reduced number of Efts, I know that I'm going to get one's attention. It's really unavoidable.

Maybe I'm suffering withdrawl from my Pugilist. Before, the attacks were a mere annoyance that I could brush off until I had finished my foe, while they're a significant problem for my Lancer still. Maybe this is less of a problem in other cities, where the monsters have more space to roam? As it is, though, I get a rather sour taste whenever I see either of the "Is A Stage" pair in Gridania.

Removing the aggro fixes the problem, but might break the design that the dev team had in mind with the leve. But I feel like leaving the aggro detracts from the fun right now. Even tweaking the rank of the lurking monsters might fix this.