[dev1134] Combine all instead of spliting?!
I can see that with the new guildleve system coming in 1.19, a person can actually take a break from the game and not lose on the amount of guildleves they can do, which is a very good thing. Granted it may take them froever to do all their leves, especially after taking a long break.
However, I remember the general peoples wanting fieldcraft leves split off from the regional leves section like local leves currently are. But instead, local leves will be combined into the leve total. I for one am totally against this combination. Fieldcraft (Gathering), Battle, and Local(Crafting) leves should have all had their own categories a long time ago. It was brought up time and time again that Fieldcraft shouldn't be in the same category as battlecraft. What is with this change?
Also, the total number of leves doable in a 36 hour period from the adventurers guild will be reduced from 16 to 12. What about the people that dont take a break from the game ever. Those people will have less to do per day than the people that take breaks. People wanted more to do per day, not less. One could say this would be good for those who only do one type of guildleve per reset, but where do you find 12 gathering leve of the same type? there are only 6 of each rank for each class. And unless there are plans to add a ton of new gather and local leves for each rank, this isn't going to do any good.
I also know there are plans to add companies guildleves as well, but is there any need to reduce the amount of adventure leves doable, and/or to combine locals into the total count? I don't think so.
[dev1134] Revisions to Leves
Having only 4 leves combined every 12 hours is pretty silly. The accrual aspect of this new system is fine for players that take long breaks, but for those of us with multiple jobs, we need better accessibility and organization. Also, are the "allowances" being accrued, or are the leves themselves being accrued? In other words, when a new allowance is issued after twelve hours, would I need to log in and accept new leves to add to my journal? Or if I am out of the game long enough for three resets, would I then be entitled to pick-up 12 leves upon entering the game?
The simplistic leves currently available would not take 12 hours to complete. Therefore, even the most dedicated players are spending time doing nothing! This is one of the biggest complaints of the game currently--lack of action and engaging options.
I completely agree with some of the other posters that we need to split-out regional, factional, local, and now even Grand Companies or Guildleves. Combining everything is a horrible idea and a definite step backwards for this game. The current system would even be better than this. "Local" leves should also be renamed to "Crafting" or "Disciple of Hand" Leves. Please do more to reduce the vague categories. Just stick to something basic, but strong like: Storyline, Battlecraft, Fieldcraft, Factional, Crafting, etc.
As an aside, my personal opinion is that the current mode of display for leves is a bit lacking in terms of information and usefulness. In the journal, I would like to see additional columns of data such as: location (Limsa Lominsa, Gridania, etc), job type (MIN,ARM,etc for Disciple of Hand/Land jobs), and even a quick link for the related map location. I don't think this would add too much clutter, and surely this information can be pulled rather easily upon demand. It is a nuisance to be required to open each leve to see where the leve is, and get other basic data. Streamlining this data would help a lot and reduce the need to dig around in menus or even use a piece of scrap paper.
All in all, this change is not progressive for the game overall. Please spend more time creating engaging leve quests that will actually make the player feel as if he or she is a part of something--as if the game and leves are building up to something bigger. Everything seems so flat nowadays: go here, kill/make this, get gil/XP. Repeat 4,000,000 times to gain a rank of 40. This new development for patch 1.19 exposes the assumption that Square Enix has not spent time developing more leves or content. I see this as a means to further slow-down each player.
Engage! Entertain! Bring us into the game, and make us reluctant to leave! We want to be a part of FFXIV, but there's very little meat in this soup at the moment. Gaining ranks through performance of interesting quests would be so much more enjoyable than GRINDING! This game is all about grinding, and then, oh yeah!, I'll do a few quests...and then back to grinding. The players in this game are experienced RPG'ers and we are still playing this game because we love what it could become and have such high hopes for this evolving online world. Wouldn't you guys actually like to start charging for this game? And be able to rework a marketing campaign to increase sales based on solid gameplay, storyline, user interface, and other key ingredients? I can't recommend this game to many friends because when I'm asked what I do in the game, my response is usually, "Well, I grinded for experience points over a 5 hour period. Since I'm past rank 25 I may not even increase rank in that period either. I guess I will need to start grinding for 7 hours every time I play." Not very cool.