Please Remove Leve Allowances

I do not like being gated on leveling my stuff. This is not fun or meaningful in an obvious way... It does not create more interesting gameplay through limitations and is incredibly frustrating.

Leves are fun to do with DPS while I wait for dungeon queues!
Leves are the most fun way to level crafting for me!

It feel REALLY bad to have my play experience cut short because of the allowance system. Please just let me do the quests as many times as I want!

To remove the limits, they'd have to decrease the XP for them. Right now, they're balanced so that you have slow unlimited XP methods, and several types of faster but limited methods.

Since I've used leves for crafting more than anything else, I'll use that for my example: You can gain crafting experience by crafting stuff all you want. There's no limits on that. But you can gain more XP by crafting leve items and turning them in, so long as you have the leve allowances for it. You can get more yet by doing Ixal/Moogle quests, but there's an even stricter daily limit on those (which can't be saved up like leve allowances can). And you can get even more XP by turning in items to your GC, but that's the most restricted, at only one item per day per class.

If leve allowances were removed, and you could do leves all you want, then to maintain the balance, the XP for doing crafting leves would have to be dropped down to no more than you get by just crafting. And that would leave people (no pun intended) with little or no reason to do them.

The same goes for combat leves. Would you still find them as worthwhile to spend your queue times on if you got the same XP for killing leve mobs as for killing any other random overworld mobs? I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't.

That would be pretty bad to people who have grinded up achievements with them already. *looks above head*

Maybe just return Behests as another, lesser, means of experience gains? Or make leves purchasable like Ventures? Probably not even that, honestly. Leves seems decently well balanced as is.

If you're actually doing all your dailies and weeklies, you shouldn't feel particularly time-gated. It's just one of many modes of experience growth, after all, and its power and ease really should be balanced against frequency as not to push out all those other means of leveling.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

To remove the limits, they'd have to decrease the XP for them. Right now, they're balanced so that you have slow unlimited XP methods, and several types of faster but limited methods.

Since I've used leves for crafting more than anything else, I'll use that for my example: You can gain crafting experience by crafting stuff all you want. There's no limits on that. But you can gain more XP by crafting leve items and turning them in, so long as you have the leve allowances for it. You can get more yet by doing Ixal/Moogle quests, but there's an even stricter daily limit on those (which can't be saved up like leve allowances can). And you can get even more XP by turning in items to your GC, but that's the most restricted, at only one item per day per class.

If leve allowances were removed, and you could do leves all you want, then to maintain the balance, the XP for doing crafting leves would have to be dropped down to no more than you get by just crafting. And that would leave people (no pun intended) with little or no reason to do them.

The same goes for combat leves. Would you still find them as worthwhile to spend your queue times on if you got the same XP for killing leve mobs as for killing any other random overworld mobs? I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't.

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I mean this in the best possible way. I don't understand or appreciate a gate on older/outdated content. This is the sort of content I would like to do! It's something I can do by myself when I don't have enough time to wait for a dungeon or if I want to craft/gather something quickly to get exp. If the allowances were JUST for level 70 stuff I could maybe understand?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Maybe just return Behests as another, lesser, means of experience gains? Or make leves purchasable like Ventures? Probably not even that, honestly. Leves seems decently well balanced as is.

If you're actually doing all your dailies and weeklies, you shouldn't feel particularly time-gated. It's just one of many modes of experience growth, after all, and its power and ease really should be balanced against frequency as not to push out all those other means of leveling.

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I like leves for Crafting/Gathering and DPS. Especially gathering, those tend to be really fun. I tend to use up all of my leves and then not do much with those jobs until I've got a bunch of leves stockpiled.
DPS queues are not quick and after so many levels of PotD/HoH it's more fun to go play anything else; which I end up doing.

I don't appreciate: "If you're actually doing all your dailies and weeklies, you shouldn't feel particularly time-gated."
-----Most dailies and weeklies go to things that don't have long queue times and the quick and easy stuff I can do before work or while I wait on something, is limited.

I appreciate: "It's just one of many modes of experience growth, after all, and its power and ease really should be balanced against frequency as not to push out all those other means of leveling."
-----This is an angle I didn't think of and I think it's worth noting. I'm under the impression that there are already best ways of leveling anything. I can't see this change making people do things differently.

I get why they have allowance restrictions on Leves so the system isn't abused. Especially for crafting and gathering since you can turn in A LOT in one go. I guess it is still there to prevent power leveling on those classes by just buying your way through classes on alternate toons and stuff. I think they might remove the allowances down the road at some point as leves are simply phased out but until then, it will be there as a bottleneck for the power levelers so you can do multiplayer content and the like.

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Originally Posted by Merceus

I like leves for Crafting/Gathering and DPS. Especially gathering, those tend to be really fun. I tend to use up all of my leves and then not do much with those jobs until I've got a bunch of leves stockpiled.
DPS queues are not quick and after so many levels of PotD/HoH it's more fun to go play anything else; which I end up doing.

I don't appreciate: "If you're actually doing all your dailies and weeklies, you shouldn't feel particularly time-gated."
-----Most dailies and weeklies go to things that don't have long queue times and the quick and easy stuff I can do before work or while I wait on something, is limited.

I appreciate: "It's just one of many modes of experience growth, after all, and its power and ease really should be balanced against frequency as not to push out all those other means of leveling."
-----This is an angle I didn't think of and I think it's worth noting. I'm under the impression that there are already best ways of leveling anything. I can't see this change making people do things differently.

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My meaning there was simply that you have to keep something of an available variety between leves and other experience acquisition methods. That available variety can come from pure balance or through limited access. I respect, therefore, that they may need to limit access to some things to make them seem more attractive in the amounts one can use them. However, if leveling has been made to feel restrictive just because of the leve restrictions then something needs to change. It's just that this is the first time I've heard that particular opinion, so I held some doubt that you'd played with everything available in the daily discount leveling pile, so to speak.

If even after trying out everything leveling still feels overly limited or everything else is truly unattractive, then there's a problem that needs addressing. For me, what made gathering most interesting is when, after doing leves for experience, I gathered what I'd need for crafting, spreading the leveling across everything with only small specialized pushes for crafting abilities. It made everything feel real and fulfilling and cohesive where leves were the opposite -- they didn't let me keep anything, and if I needed more mats I'd even skip them. (Granted, all that's pretty much just on my mancat alt, who in turn has almost no 70 combat jobs -- I now wish I'd consolidated the two, but back then was pre glamour dresser and I didn't want to pay for retainers...)

I wonder if maybe they could do something with leve overlaps or bonus rewards? Like, let's say you do the bonus part on a combat leve, and thus a new gathering leve pops up that consumes no leve allowances, related in some way to the combat leve? I feel like that could be entertaining and a bit more opening without creating too great of imbalance or accelerating leveling rates beyond whatever was intended. But then again, you might have to have similarish levels between some DoW/M and some DoL... /sigh

I like the idea of overlapping leves! That sounds epic and like great gameplay!

"Start X combat leve, get 1. Start Y gathering leve, get 2. Start Z crafting leve and use 1+2 to get EXP/item" and that could be done without having to bottleneck it behind leves.

One of the things I've learned is, while I wanted to level everything together, I didn't have the levels for that. So I started working on one specific job at a time and it seems to be more the way it was intended to be done.

If there weren't restrictions on leve quests, it's almost a guarantee that the RMT bots would be farming those for gil instead of spamming dungeons and the last thing I'd want to see is those guys hanging out in field areas until they get banned.

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Originally Posted by Merceus

I like the idea of overlapping leves! That sounds epic and like great gameplay!

"Start X combat leve, get 1. Start Y gathering leve, get 2. Start Z crafting leve and use 1+2 to get EXP/item" and that could be done without having to bottleneck it behind leves.

One of the things I've learned is, while I wanted to level everything together, I didn't have the levels for that. So I started working on one specific job at a time and it seems to be more the way it was intended to be done.

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I think you'll find that slight paradox across most of the game. Crafting requires omnicrafting to be self-sufficient, but the leve count is insufficient to feel like you're progressing as a whole off them (it most just keeps the lagging profession kept up). Having all jobs on one character is a chief selling point of the game, one of its few true unique standings, yet... progression requires you to pick one gear class and stick with it to compete.

I wish that wasn't the case. I wish we actually got to retain that initial freedom.

Perhaps they should remove the allowances in irrelivant content. You don't have allowances in arr and heavensward, but you do in stormblood and shadowbringers. However as a consiquence xp is halved? Even at the half rate it beats digging up cobalt for fifty hours at 300 xp a hit. Or building 4k saws at 3k each. Leves also give a pretty severe gear hit, at least on gathering. With current gear I have never gotten above 70% chance to get something. It was this way all the way til the end of stormblood. So you are sucking down cordials like a whino chugs whisky. Something I would like to see is gather points work like crafting points. They recharge at each plant/vein.

I wrote this in another thread about Leves and Allowances, so forgive me for reposting, but doing so for visibility and furthering the discussion.

I am a new player and the timegating on Levemete Allowances is killing me. It just reminds me of the timegated quests in WoW, which I hated with a vengeance. I would very much like to do the Achievements for Levemetes, but having to wait for new Allowances is extremely discouraging.
Might I suggest changing something like the Venture currency to where you can choose to purchase a Venture with your Retainers, or, purchase an additional Levemete Allowance on a 1-to-1 exchange.

EDIT: I understand that Levemetes can be quite rewarding, which is why I am suggesting a solution where you actually have to play and collect Venture coins instead of removing the timegating entirely.

Considering how easily one can acquire ventures there would have to be some serious nerfs to leves. I can cap out my gc seals in about 15 minutes which I can turn around and spend on ventures for 200 seals each. This suggestion is also a lot more restrictive to lower level players who can’t as easily grind out gc seals, considering you need a certain company rank to be able to turn in items. Low level players, the ones that need leves the most, would have the most difficult time acquiring them.

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Originally Posted by Eclipse12187

This suggestion is also a lot more restrictive to lower level players who can’t as easily grind out gc seals, considering you need a certain company rank to be able to turn in items.

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So this solution is not usable by freshly made bots and you will have had to make a serious ingame commitment before getting to exchange the currency? Ok why is that a problem?

Bots aren’t making gil from levequests that’s for sure, they make their gil by gathering and selling crystals and just outright doing msq that loads you up with gil and allagan pieces. It takes a little under 2 weeks to get max leve allowances currently and the only ones worth doing for gil are in shadowbringers, and even then that’s a little over 1mil for 100 allowances. There are much more lucrative ways to earn gil than doing levequests.

But the gil making is exactly why leve allowances can't be removed. Or they could remove the leve allowances but they would also need to remove the gil reward and probably would reduce the XP rewarded as well.

Also, RMT bots wouldn't bother with leves but "personal" bots for lazy players wanting a shortcut? Definitely can see that being done.

Removing the limit on leves might work as long as they only reward XP and nothing else. If I were able to spam an unlimited number of leves at 6000 Gil per (triple HQ Coffee Biscuit) turn in, I'd do that all day long.

I can't really speak to DoW/DoM leveling with leves, but with the exception of a rare few, you're better off spamming Collectibles to level your DoH. As a side benefit, you'll level your DoL at the same time from gathering all the materials for it. No joking, this is hands-down he best way I've found to level all DoH/DoL/omnicraft.

<edit> Having leves reward Venture Tokens would be pretty cool.

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Originally Posted by Illmaeran

Removing the limit on leves might work as long as they only reward XP and nothing else. If I were able to spam an unlimited number of leves at 6000 Gil per (triple HQ Coffee Biscuit) turn in, I'd do that all day long.

I can't really speak to DoW/DoM leveling with leves, but with the exception of a rare few, you're better off spamming Collectibles to level your DoH. As a side benefit, you'll level your DoL at the same time from gathering all the materials for it. No joking, this is hands-down he best way I've found to level all DoH/DoL/omnicraft.

<edit> Having leves reward Venture Tokens would be pretty cool.

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Leves in Stormblood and Shadowbringers offer significantly more XP if you're turning in HQ than collectables do. If your goal is to get to max level as fast as possible, using up your leve allowances before turning to collectables is the way to go. The gil rewards make them even better if you have a need for gil (and help to cover the costs if you don't gather materials yourself).

Collectables have the advantage of offering scrip you'll need for master books and folklore tomes so you can have a heads start on those. Or if you don't care about end game crafting/gathering but want the Skybuilder cosmetics, you can do the Restoration collectables instead. But if you're not gathering your own materials, you'll have to come up with the gil to pay for them from other sources.

There are trade-offs whichever route you choose but when the only concern is XP, do leves first.

That one would, in one fell swoop, completely anihilate the Gil market by flooding it with Coffee Cookie gil.

The allowance system seems like it's in place to discourage unhealthy practices, which would be my immediate guess, since potentially doing over a hundred in a day would become extremely time-consuming; I'm not saying whether that's necessarily the right action, but I'm trying to guess a developer's perspective. That, or they want more reasons for you to log in on different days, which is financially wanted for a subscription-based model... or it could likely be a combination those reasons.

Personally, I think there's some economic in-game market value in those allowances being limited, based on what some other reactions have mentioned; making them truly unlimited seems concerning to me, but that's just my subjective opinion, and I would need to think about this more as well.