What you thought guildleves would be

By the opening movie, and hype before release about being able to travel to the past, I thought guildleves would be these quests that would whisk you away to another place for an adventure. I certainly didn't expect them to be "touch the crystal, kill 10 enemies, randomly gain guild points".

One of the main functions of a "quest" in an RPG in my eyes, is the dispensation of story/lore. The stories for all the levequests in their current state are engineered to be meaningless and make the player for insignificant. It seems that SE's logic is, because these quests must be repeated many times (and the rewards are tiny for economy balance reasons), then do not make the story/content important or epic or whatever, just keep having the player do banal tasks like control the pest population.

I wish guildleves made me feel like I was doing something important for the story or city or something like that. Have us go into instanced areas of the past (just rehash environments with new npcs, maybe add trees to Limsa before they were cut down for boating, etc.). Have us solve a puzzle/dilemma/dispute where we must make a choice or take sides (ROLE in role playing game?), then make us trudge through a dungeon and fight our way to some sort of boss to end it all. Then after this puzzle/lore bit gets stale after the first time, allow people to skip to the boss on subsequent repeats.

I hate levequests, I always log on and feel compelled to do them because I need guild points, then log off after 30 minutes because they are so incredibly boring.

They were exactly what I expected them to be.

I have to admit, I watched the intro sequence again recently and went "OHHHH I KNOW WHAT THEY ARE NOW!!!". I did expect something a little more exciting, as they feel a little flat right now. Like the fight in the intro with Malboro, he is teleported from his chair, into the middle of the wilds, and on completion, back to his chair.

Also he gets to talk with that annoying Mi'qote that I just wanted to smack and snobby Elezen, why don't I get to do this when I choose my leves :(

Find some snarky party members :P

But seriously, i'm not sure why they would even show off a spell like...enfire (?) and not include it in the game from the start. The game doesnt have to be as action packed as the intro, but at least make some of the elements fit. Personally I think guildleves were supposed to be like mini-adventures, where they would send you to a certain area to complete a combination of objectives, like assault in FFXI. Escort npcs, take down monsters while escorting said NPC, or save some instanced crashed chocobo cart or airship wreckage from beast tribes or garlean soldiers.

I know some sidequests try to do that now, but those are lacking the visual elements of said wreckage or overturned chocobo cart.