From what I know at the moment, leves are pretty dull (most anyway?).
My idea to give them meaning, would be to introduce normal questing, and use leves as a special quest (Eg. Mission/important story event/rare event, etc).
- Instead of the types of leves we have now, why not have..
- Leves dedicated to guild issues
- Leves dedicated to faction issues
- Leve(s) dedicated to the introduction of a dungeon
- Other sort of events, like Holiday leves, Opening of an Area/Dungeon leves (to say 'Look I participated in the opening of XXXXX).
- 'Group Leves' (although I think it might be better to encourage all leves to be done in a group).
Leves could be used in a way to say 'I played since XXX when there was this event'
or go around saying Heylook I finally did this [Link leve].
Maybe even a way your character could hold out each leve to show everyone around you? (E.g Character holds out the leve in front of them, people around can select/hold mouse over to see what it is).
When I first bought FF14, I thought leves were supposed to be special or something unique/different from just plain questing. I think (some, not all) quests should be there for progression and doing tasks like 'X wants you to kill off Y because [reason]' -- or something on the lines of that.
And this might sound crazy .. but perhaps even being able to TRADE/SELL certain leves.
E.G 'Having this leve allows you to do this/go here/etc' (I don't know if it would be too great if there were too many that were like this though).
The bigger focus should be on levesBut questing shouldn't be left out ~ I think having them both leaves more options for people to level up the way they want
Feel free to criticizeThere's bound to be problems in this somewhere ^^^ ~ I hope Bayohne reads this o3o
-- This idea is based around once completing a leve you keep it's little card. I have no idea if it's like this, as I haven't been able to play the game enough to get above level 5.