Proposal for changes to Guildleves.

This thread will be long. I've highlighted the main points for those who want to skim.

To fix the exploit people were doing before update 1.18 they removed the bonus to sp from each individual mob, instead providing a bonus upon completion of a leve.

That's a step in the right direction but they need to have that bonus dependent on the difficulty of the leves themselves.

First: leve mobs need to no longer have weaker stats than non-leve mobs of similar ranks.

Fighting a mob in a leve should be just like fighting a mob of the same rank outside of a leve.

Second: Make the increases in difficulty correlate with party size again.

One star: Most mobs will not be in a party with other mobs and will be of a rank close to the suggested rank of the leve.

Two stars: Leve mobs will be a distribution of solo mobs and duo parties, and leve rank will be 3-5 ranks higher than the suggest leve rank.

3 stars: Leve mobs will be mostly duo parties with a few solo mobs and a few mob parties of 3, mob rank will be 6-9 ranks higher than the suggest leve rank.

4 stars: leve mobs will be mostly small parties of 3-4 with a few duo parties and a few parties small parties of 5-7. Mob ranks will be 10-12 ranks higher than the suggested leve rank.

5 stars: leve mobs will be small parties or large parties. Mob rank will be 13-15 ranks higher than the suggested leve rank.


Third: Repeal the set amount of mobs per leve, allowing mobs to keep spawning as long as there is time left AND have the Bonus sp upon completion be dependent on the amount of mobs killed AND the amount of sp gained from each mob.

Instead of giving a set amount of instanced mobs to kill in a set amount of time keep the time limit but have mobs continue to spawn as long as there is still time left in the leve.

And instead of having a base SP reward for the leve upon completion have that sp reward be dependent on the amount of mobs killed AND the amount of sp gained from killing them. Say 10-15% of all sp gained from all the mobs killed during the time limit.

For leves where you are hunting items that drop from leve mobs, give a lower bonus percentage from mob kills but then also provide a static bonus per item recovered.

For necrologos page hunts, have a certain number of pages still equate to a book that spawns harder mobs that provide more sp and also give a bigger percentage to the bonus at the end. But allow pages to still be gathered after each book mob is beaten.

This change alone will make each leve much more worthwhile, the 30 minute time limit will still allow it to be accessible for casual players. And the system will reward efficient, skillful playing. While also encouraging players to complete rank appropriate leves.

Fourth: Expand leves to include dungeon content, settlement defense, maybe even escort quests.

Now instead of just doing Thousand Maw for the boss drops, you can do thousand maw for SP, giving you goals beyond just getting to this chest and that boss... you now have to get this chest, get to that boss, and you need to kill so many pterocs, and for each pteroc you get a bonus upon completion. The bonus could even be awarded whether you successfully complete the dungeon or not. Making failures less severe.

Fifth: Change leves to a ticket system. 2 leve tickets a day up to a cap of 8.

It will be less leves overall but it will allow for people with different availability to have some flexibility. Not to mention that each leve will actually account for atleast half an hour of content, so each leve will take more time to complete and have more substantial rewards.

If you can only play on the weekends you have 6-8 leves at your disposal. If get a group for a dungeon instance this weekend you can do the instance and the appropriate leve for it.
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This would allow leves to be more centric to the game again, and would allow for more content centered around leves...

Leves would still be a casually accessible, while also allow for the more hardcore to enjoy them.

I have a further idea on changing how the sp cap works that would correlate well with my proposed change to leves... I'll write it up soon.

I don't like the idea of mobs constantly spawning in leves. It makes no sense to stick around and grind stuff when you have specific objectives that have already been met.

I do think leve mobs should be standardized with normal mobs so they have similar characteristic and SP values. Right now leve mobs have the same abilities as their non-leve counterparts but their attributes are completely different and they tend to have much lower HP. Leve mobs also all have the exact same, and very low, base SP values regardless of monster family. Leve Basilisks with 10 or more ranks above you give 225 SP with Aspect, yet outside a leve you'd receive 460 SP (IIRC), and that's without Aspect.

I do like the idea of stars actually being there for larger parties. Now I can 5-star L40 leves at R45 even though according to the description it is intended for full groups. More varied leve types would be nice, as well, though I don't think the guildleve format is suitable for dungeon runs because of the logistics involved.

One of my major gripes with leves right now is how wildly they vary in difficulty. Not only are monster levels and numbers very different in different leves but some monsters have much more devastating abilities than others. Despite being able to 5-star some leves, a leve involving Ahriman mobs can be too much even at just two stars due to their devastating nukes and a ridiculously powerful ranged attack. Additionally, some leves dump huge groups of enemies at you at once. The area defense leves where you move from point to point spawn the "boss group" immediately after you've engaged the group of the final location, so you have to fight two separate groups at once, which I think is excessive.

These wild difficulty swings also undermine the speed and difficulty based reward system. Even if the leve is equally difficult, you may have to settle for a smaller reward if the number of stars is lower or the leve takes an especially long time to beat.

The respawning leve mobs might not be ideal for every leve, basically it would turn leves into a personal grind session. Which may appeal to some people and not at all to others.

Perhaps that could be a specific type of leve.

I certainly don't want leves in their current form added to dungeons. But maybe after an overhaul something that brings you to the dungeon beyond just the chance for gear drops would be nice, Either through grand company repeatable quests... the grand company leves they hinted at in the latest producer's letter, or maybe even something like a task board at the instance entrance, providing repeatable tasks for dungeons as well.

Mostly, though I just want to get some dialogue about leves in general going. Since they are in a pretty poor place in almost every aspect right now.

I doubt they will party-ize guildleves again. They want them to be for solo now. Also, mob rank at 5 stars is already up to 17 ranks above, Not all monsters have the same ranks tho. Mobs ranks are also no longer the point of guildleves, it is speed of completion and difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Reika

I doubt they will party-ize guildleves again. They want them to be for solo now. Also, mob rank at 5 stars is already up to 17 ranks above, Not all monsters have the same ranks tho. Mobs ranks are also no longer the point of guildleves, it is speed of completion and difficulty.

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It's not even so much the difficulty, since there is no difference in the sp bonus at the end when you do 3 stars 4 stars or 5 stars.

Only in the rank of the mobs you fight... and even in that case some leves have mobs that at 5 stars are still barely above the suggested rank for the leve and others get mobs that are, as you said, 17 ranks higher.

And it's that very notion of "what leve can I do the fastest to get my reward" mentality I want to combat.

Casual doesn't mean it has to be solo, and it doesn't mean it has to be ridiculously easy, it just means you don't need to invest hours to get a return. Leves can be solo friendly, but they should moreso be casual.

The main thing they need is consistency... and when you can accept two leves at a camp, and one mob from one leve gets you 70 sp and another mob from another leve at the same difficulty gets you 250 sp something is wrong.

The only reason they added the sp bonus for completion was to stop people from exploiting leves by not finishing the most lucrative ones so they'd always be available when leves reset.

I'm happy with the idea of leves as a means for casual progression... And I'm not asking them to repeal the sp bonus... but I still think leves in their current form are not content but rather filler, in most cases you spend more time getting to a specific atheryte camp than you do on the leves... and with some minor changes in how they are implemented leves could be an engaging facet of the game, and not some throw away gimmick for quick sp every couple of days.

I posted this in JP thread a while ago it's not about the system of leve but anyways...

Most people who plays this game and does the guildleve I bet don't even read the story/description on the top, most would only care about the reward, type of mob you have to kill/goal of the leve... some of the story/description on top is actually good but like I said no one really cares about it...

I wish the devs can add more story/quest like event to these leve's where say when you take the leve at the counter or when you procede the quest at aerthryte (that how u spell?) you get a mini cut scene where NPC comes and talks to you explaining the situation, or showing a mini clip of whats going on like Devilets (dunno English SP) took over forms of another monster. Kind of like how the Instance Raid starts. Pretty sure 'most' who played the instance raid watched the entire opening at least once, twice before they start skipping it. (I know if it's a cool quest I will watch it couple times, or at least couple times before I skip it)

At least that gives me and probably some others a reason to take the leve's for the ones I don't need to take any more (like R10/R20/R30 ones I haven't touched from other country).

It's not something of high priority so I don't care much about it right now; rather them fix all these other stuff they are working on right now.

Agreed, Reinhart. It would be nice if the guildleves had a bit more immersion as well.

Right now I get the feeling that leves are only in the game as a placeholder for real content. And because of that, so many aspects of leves are just... horrible. From the erratic mob ranks and difficulties to the repetitive aspects, and now the feeling of abundant rewards for inadequate challenge.

The current dev team could either slowly expunge leves from the game entirely or put some effort into making them into the immersive engaging system they were supposed to be.

I'm not in a huge hurry for implementation of changes to leves, but neither do I want this to fall by the wayside. I'd like to know what SE plans for the future of leves, and It would be nice if players had some feedback for what they'd like to see from the leve system down the road as well.

I wouldn't mind if leves played a smaller role in the game and were primarily something to do when you don't have enough time to commit for a more "hardcore activity". For that to work they'd have to give us something else, though, and I think an FFXI style party grind would work if they only got it right. Right now party formation is more difficult than in FFXI despite the much more relaxed composition requirements and the actual gameplay experience isn't as good because of the constant need to run around two-shotting mobs that are way too weak for party play.

Leves also provide a very substantial amount of SP right now, not to mention guild marks, so the leve refresh cycle very much influences your play time.

No.


The OP doesn't want a change to GL, what he really wants is some sort of dynamic events system like rift or GW2, which would be totally different.

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Originally Posted by Winterclaw

No.


The OP doesn't want a change to GL, what he really wants is some sort of dynamic events system like rift or GW2, which would be totally different.

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Can you go into more detail?

You don't give alot to go on but "Dynamic Event System" sounds like something that can change as the event progresses... And while that sounds pretty interesting that is nothing close to what I've recommended for basic changes to leves.

I want the rewards to be dynamic based on what is accomplished in the leve... but that's more in keeping with rewarding challenging play.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ferth

Can you go into more detail?

You don't give alot to go on but "Dynamic Event System" sounds like something that can change as the event progresses... And while that sounds pretty interesting that is nothing close to what I've recommended for basic changes to leves.

I want the rewards to be dynamic based on what is accomplished in the leve... but that's more in keeping with rewarding challenging play.

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In Rift, portals, or rifts, to other planes periodically open in the wilderness. When a rift fully forms, creatures from beyond come through it and the ground surrounding the rift is terraformed to resemble the plane on the other side. Rifts will periodically spawn invaders who plow through everything in their path (including invaders from planes other than their own) until they reach their target player faction settlement. These invasions may conquer settlements and disable all services and quests there until the invasion forces have been defeated.

Rifts can be closed by killing their guardians. The "event" at a rift is divided into scripted phases, which if beaten quickly enough allow for "bonus phases" with more enemies to kill. When the final phase (often a boss of some kind) is beaten, rewards are distributed based on contribution (this was never balanced in beta) and the amount of total points accumulated in all cleared phases.

Sometimes zone wide events happen, spawning dozens of Rifts and potentially an end boss invader after enough rifts have been closed.

It's not as awesome as it sounds, though it's more interesting than the Garlean raids we get in FFXIV.

Sounds alot like besieged from FFXI, only a bit more fluid. Not really what I was asking for at all.

Thanks for explaining it, Frein.