Bring Leve Quests back (and remove or drastically increase the daily quota)

[Gula]

I honestly think Levequests would be a great template to put on content like Eureka and Hunts.

I think Eureka specific leves would have made it suck a whole lot less. Back when I was first getting used to the game in ARR, I did the Costa leves to level and get used to the combat since I'd never played anything like XIV before. The lore snippets were nice, and it made me appreciate the zone a lot more.

[Nalien]

I'd forgo the items, unless it's a key item. But yea, I can see the path to acquiring future relic weapon stuff being tied to leves. The goal is always grinding, but I can see like: every 5th leve is a Soloable Notorious Monster fight. You need X count of SNM fight key items to boost/enhance/whatever your weapon/armor/whatever.

OR... you need a key item from a NM from each zone... stuff like that. I always felt that the relic/anima weapon paths should be the "casual but slow questing" path, even if grindy.

I was thinking Key Items, yes. Ideally with some form of progression system; Kill Leve A, get item for Leve B. Kill Leve C, get item for Leve D. Do Leve B and D, get item for Leve E. That sort of thing, with the NMs higher up that system naturally being more challenging.

I think Eureka specific leves would have made it suck a whole lot less. Back when I was first getting used to the game in ARR, I did the Costa leves to level and get used to the combat since I'd never played anything like XIV before. The lore snippets were nice, and it made me appreciate the zone a lot more.

Leves would have future proofed Eureka, IMO. Right now, once 5.0 hits, I can't imagine what getting those Relics done will be like... Sure the FATEs scale, but popping them doesn't... I'd have much rather had a system where a group of mobs drops an item, you take it to the Leve NPC and exchange it for a Leve that spawns a scaled version of the current FATEs.

Slap on a tier system, so you get an item off two NMs, that gets you a Leve for the third... Suddenly all the NMs in the zone have a purpose; You build your way towards spawning the "Zuzu" of the area.

Would have been a far better system IMO. You could log on solo, just go farm some items to get Leves ready for your next time. Then go in, maybe find some people doing the same NMs as you. Technically you can solo them, but by grouping up you get more out of it (doing 1 Zuzu alone rewards less doing 8 with a group). Works far better with the Light system as well, I absolutely hate how they just shoehorned that in... It did not mix well with the FATE train system... Would work fine with the Levequest system though; Farming items to get Leves doubles up as Light farming. There'd be no more "Oh a FATE spawned, time to abandon this EXP Chain", since you'd decide when the NM spawns because it's your Levequest.

I'd also have worked Baldesion Arsenal completely differently, but well... That's irrelevant content that'll soon have the most exclusive rewards, simply because SE was shortsighted in its development... Effectively though, I'd have said; Each zones Zuzu drops a key item, bring all 4 of them together and you can enter BA. Instead we got a generic gather crystals from each zone? So unimaginative...

Devs would also have to look into providing more interesting rewards for those than the current hunts get and update them with each patch to keep the content relevant.

Sadly, "Rewards" is probably going to be the biggest issue with any "new" content added to XIV. Hyper-linear gear progression doesn't lend itself well to various different types of content... Still, if we're just updating Hunts, then Hunt Marks for upgrading tomestone gear still works I guess...

Ideally I'd like either multiple Relic type quest chains, or to go back to ARR/HWs Relic design and just have them involve all sorts of content. HW particularly eventually just boiled down to "Do Roulettes", which I really loathed, I'd much rather have a Relic chain that says "Get this from Eureka, this from Heaven-on-High, this from a SB dungeon" and so on. No reason not to slap reworked Leves onto that list. They sorta did some of that with ARR Relics, but for the most part it turned into "Wait for this FATE to spawn", which I'm not OK with. I want to be able to actively work towards something, not sit there waiting... Lets say all existing Hunts are reworked into Levequests in a manner that I've described, and lets say my Red Mage Relic requires a Key Item from some specific Hunt, lets say Salt and Light; I can sit down, start doing Levequests to work my way up the tiers, and spawn Salt and Light. There'd be no pointless waiting on my part, instead I'd actually be playing the game.

[Colino]

I'm all for it as long as they delete every single one that involves /beckon to an NPC and slowly waiting for them to make their way to you.

[Ogulbuk]

Colino, agreed whole heartedly.

[Colino]

Colino, agreed whole heartedly.

There's only so much time I can spend watch Qiqirin Whatshisface slowly making his way up the hill. Ugh.

[Nalien]

I never understood why /beckon didn't function as a toggle for those Levequests... Heck why even have the need for it at all, just have the NPC follow you automatically from the start, and stop when enemies spawn...

Guess that was back when they liked to shoehorn emotes into a lot of things... Almost makes me glad they don't do Levequests anymore, they'd probably have similar ones now that they worked /say phrases into quests... Imagine having to say "Follow Me" as you slowly climb a hill lmao... I really shouldn't be planting that idea in the developers heads, should I...

That reminds me though, Beast Tribe Dailies (and their token "Use /say" quests) are technically open world content. Could make doing them a tad more worthwhile by rewarding Levequests/Treasure Maps/etc. while we're on that topic. Beast Tribe specific Levequests could be really interesting, it really is a shame how underused their "strongholds" often go... There's also plenty of concept art for "high ranking" beastmen that basically only got used in one FATE? Could make for a good Levequest boss as well. I'd love to actually fight some huge Gnath in their stronghold, for example. Heck the Levequests could build up to a mini-open world Primal fight, sort of like how we saw Ravana in their stronghold during a 3.x cutscene...

[Kalise]

Those /beckon and /soothe leves really are awkward...

Also, outdated since they now do quests that involve escorting and interacting with low health enemies (That are specifically require for a quest) differently these days. Utilizing automatic following (With a max distance where they will be ported back to their starting location) and state change (To being an incapacitated 1hp target) which are much better ways of addressing these things.

Even better is the spawning of the enemies while you're doing such escort quests... Where they spawn right in front of you rather than 4 malms back so you often don't even need to fight half the leve because you reach the end before they even get to you >.>

But yeah, I stand by that they kind of need to polish Battlecraft level when (If) they reintroduce them.

[Ogulbuk]

That reminds me though, Beast Tribe Dailies (and their token "Use /say" quests) are technically open world content. Could make doing them a tad more worthwhile by rewarding Levequests/Treasure Maps/etc. while we're on that topic. Beast Tribe specific Levequests could be really interesting, it really is a shame how underused their "strongholds" often go... There's also plenty of concept art for "high ranking" beastmen that basically only got used in one FATE? Could make for a good Levequest boss as well. I'd love to actually fight some huge Gnath in their stronghold, for example. Heck the Levequests could build up to a mini-open world Primal fight, sort of like how we saw Ravana in their stronghold during a 3.x cutscene...

Beast Tribes are kinda like a replacement to Levequests, but they are also rationed (12 per day, only 3 quest per beast tribe per day) and that ration seems to work as a gate keeping device for beast tribe progression (that eventually ends in exclusive mounts, so I figured increasing access to them is not going to be in the table.)

I also got to add, Beast Tribe quests are full of non-combat stuff, and you get a pre-determined list of 3. Kinda takes the battle out of Battlecraft. I think a lot of people do Beast tribe quests, but once they do their daily ones, that's that for the day. It can take about 15 minutes in average to get the 2 Stormblood daily quests (just 6 quests unless you rank up.)

[Physic]

levequests in 1.0 were more varied and interesting. Solo/open world Monster fights were also balanced differently, and classes had a better mix of offense and defense. I have done tons of levequests for relics, and they are extremely repetetive, easy, and pretty lame content.

now, if they make solo fighting more entertaining somehow, and make new levequests that are not as basic as the ones they have now, and reward it accordingly, it might be cool

[Physic]

This so much. The hunts are clearly not working out how Yoshi intended - if you allow for open tagging then obviously people will try to zerg it, trivializing the content and causing early-pull dramas.
It would be so much better to focus on improving the leves - and more importantly open world guild hests - and replace current hunts with them. This could not only make open world more active after initial leveling, but also provide good content for FCs to do together. You could even make some workshop upgrades come from doing these.
Devs would also have to look into providing more interesting rewards for those than the current hunts get and update them with each patch to keep the content relevant.

early pull is an extremely tiny problem in hunts. And the whole concept of fates is open world content where players can interact with each other without being in a party or penalty. Leves can never replace them because leves are for the opposite, solo/low man instanced content.