How am I meant to level with a friend now?

[SuzakuCMX]

Leves are ruined, behests give less than 2,000 sp total and don't stack up to grinding for me atleast. Guild tasks are only for crafters aren't they? Grinding is okay, but it feels mindless. There's no dungeons for me to do at 37 -- the loot is already outdated and I don't really get SP from the low one, and the high one is a bit too high for me still. Sidequests are alright, but I've exhausted most of them before the update came out.

Basically, I guess my point rests more in the idea that FFXIV has no game for the 33-43 crowd. There's no mid-game currently. I know leves were mindless grinding, but atleast I got cool little rewards and things to do as an aside. It felt better than just smacking mobs.

To me, and alot of other gamers (discredit us if you will) -- it feels nice to have our grinding covered up by quests, or other reasons to kill the mobs other than just for the sake of it. Most succesful MMOs have followed this business model at this point, and there's a reason why: it's fun! Hell, even Aion, which was VERY grind heavy moved over to a quest based system and the player happiness over there is at an all time high.

Guild tasks give SP to whichever class you are when you turn them in. You can do one for each DoH guild and it will give you 1000 SP to that class. Sucks that you did all the sidequests, they also give a good amount of SP (1500-2000 SP for R15-R20 Quests).

Also you can't really say FFXIV doesn't disguise the grind when you're not willing to do actual grinding and you did most of the quests already.

EDIT: Guild tasks are an extra 8000 SP every reset. I don't do them personally because I don't have any high level crafting classes and I don't feel like dropping Gil to buy the mats off the wards.

[Dubont]

Leves are ruined, behests give less than 2,000 sp total and don't stack up to grinding for me atleast. Guild tasks are only for crafters aren't they? Grinding is okay, but it feels mindless. There's no dungeons for me to do at 37 -- the loot is already outdated and I don't really get SP from the low one, and the high one is a bit too high for me still. Sidequests are alright, but I've exhausted most of them before the update came out.

Basically, I guess my point rests more in the idea that FFXIV has no game for the 33-43 crowd. There's no mid-game currently. I know leves were mindless grinding, but atleast I got cool little rewards and things to do as an aside. It felt better than just smacking mobs.

To me, and alot of other gamers (discredit us if you will) -- it feels nice to have our grinding covered up by quests, or other reasons to kill the mobs other than just for the sake of it. Most succesful MMOs have followed this business model at this point, and there's a reason why: it's fun! Hell, even Aion, which was VERY grind heavy moved over to a quest based system and the player happiness over there is at an all time high.

I, personally, am a strong hater of quests. I can't stand them lol. But anyway, leves aren't entirely ruined. I still get about 4k per quest. Behest is meh. You can do the lower level dungeon for a little sp. The game is going towards being more party oriented and with partying comes grinding. It just has to happen.

[LuxLex]

Leves are ruined, behests give less than 2,000 sp total and don't stack up to grinding for me atleast. Guild tasks are only for crafters aren't they? Grinding is okay, but it feels mindless. There's no dungeons for me to do at 37 -- the loot is already outdated and I don't really get SP from the low one, and the high one is a bit too high for me still. Sidequests are alright, but I've exhausted most of them before the update came out.

Basically, I guess my point rests more in the idea that FFXIV has no game for the 33-43 crowd. There's no mid-game currently. I know leves were mindless grinding, but atleast I got cool little rewards and things to do as an aside. It felt better than just smacking mobs.

To me, and alot of other gamers (discredit us if you will) -- it feels nice to have our grinding covered up by quests, or other reasons to kill the mobs other than just for the sake of it. Most succesful MMOs have followed this business model at this point, and there's a reason why: it's fun! Hell, even Aion, which was VERY grind heavy moved over to a quest based system and the player happiness over there is at an all time high.

Yeah, grind only does not make a good game... and one-time quests??!? when you have tons of jobs to level? That's nuts.

[Demacia]

I got 30-32 pretty decently at tam tara deepcroft with a baller group. Didn't even have a DoM just working those efts down with BRs.

[mysterytaru]

Just a quick note on the whole "Abyssea brought players back to the game" argument: I was just perusing the news from the last 6months, since I stopped following it in nov last year, and Abyssea brought so many people back to the game that they had to merge another 8 servers. So, yeah. And...as for using FFXIAH as a metric for the game's health, even deactivated chars are still listed and searchable if they ever made an AH purchase in game. So good luck with that

[LuxLex]

So after reading all of this, the tl;dr style answer for my friend and I seems to be just to mindlessly grind? I take no joy in slaughtering monsters for no cause.

I wish linking all leves was an option. But sometimes my friend simply doesn't get the same ones I do, so we're stuck not helping each other...

Invoked, at 36, killing 44 mobs I was getting 111 sp a kill and 435 at the end of the quest. This is bad.

Take heart, friend, Yoshi's letter seems to be acknowledging that they broke leve SP somewhat. So, good on you for bringing up a genuine issue, and good job on ignoring folks who can't acknowledge that just cause they like mindlessly grinding open world mobs doesn't mean everyone else wants to do that.

[Synthesis]

Grinding is fast actually. We grinded 20-30k in an hour at R31 - in 3/8 PT. You can get a lot of SP in an hour. Just find a ppl who know where to go. its not so hard as you desrcibe.

[Rimmer]

There are a quite a few very popular MMOs that have a rewarding, lore-filled, exciting, content-rich leveling process.

Can i have it? Please!!!!!! It'd make the game soo great, and for those people who like to party grind all the time... you can do that too!

[Rowyne]

So after reading all of this, the tl;dr style answer for my friend and I seems to be just to mindlessly grind? I take no joy in slaughtering monsters for no cause.

I wish linking all leves was an option. But sometimes my friend simply doesn't get the same ones I do, so we're stuck not helping each other...

Invoked, at 36, killing 44 mobs I was getting 111 sp a kill and 435 at the end of the quest. This is bad.

Take heart, friend, Yoshi's letter seems to be acknowledging that they broke leve SP somewhat. So, good on you for bringing up a genuine issue, and good job on ignoring folks who can't acknowledge that just cause they like mindlessly grinding open world mobs doesn't mean everyone else wants to do that.

I haven't complained about one thing in 1.18. I'm even a CON who likes the mage changes. But I think I'm right there with you on this one.

My husband and I were doing the Grand Companies quests so we can do Toto-Rak. I hit R25, but he was only halfway through R24. To knock it out, we decided to go do some leves. I started mine up, popped Guardian Favor, and was getting about 1K SP total per leve while he got about 100 SP total per leve (and vice versa when he initiated his leves). I knew that those who shared leves were supposed to get a bonus, but, I didn't expect the gap to be that big! It certainly didn't feel fair to the person who got only 100 SP.

After completing our leves, we killed a few random monsters and found straight up grinding (when you take into account time and effort) yielded much more SP. I'll grind if I have to, but I'm like you, Tame. It's a last-resort method of leveling for me.

Trust me, I think leves and the way-too-easy level curve needed a nerf (I like progression to have a sense of accomplishment). But it did feel like the pendulum swung too far the other way. It feels backwards from Yoshi-P's new vision of leveling options. I did a few solo on my THM earlier, and the SP was great. But it seems that leve SP if you're duo is definitely a little broken.

I am glad that Yoshi-P mentioned it in this week's Letter From the Producer:

The topics we’ve gotten the most feedback on are class balance, UI visibility (which will be addressed in 1.18a), and skill points for levequests between ranks 20–30.

Hopefully they'll do some tweaking and realize there are more than just soloers and partiers out there, there is one more type - the duos.

[Keith_Dragoon]

I dunno if I'm doing somethin wrong but my group was getting 175 so a kill for mobs over 10 levels higher then us.

We are all 23-25 and so in general seems to cap lower then normal