What are Guildleves?

[Serio]

What are Guildleves? I mean, I've done hundreds of them but what exactly are they?

As near as I can tell, Guildleves are basically another iteration of Assaults (FFXI: ToAU) or Campaign Ops (FFXI: WotG), but without the obvious narrative or structural framework of their predecessors. I know that mentioning FFXI on these boards is a bannable offense, but please just bear with me as I try to understand this.
Assault - assignments provided by the Empire to registered mercenaries. As mercenaries rose in rank, they were trusted with more dangerous and more sensitive missions. Mercenaries are only eligible to rank up by completing these assignments. Assaults were non-random.
Campaign Ops - assignments provided by the allied nations to volunteer soldiers. As soldiers rose in rank, they were trusted with higher level assignments. Soldiers ranked up by time spent doing campaign battle (an unrelated activity). Campaign Ops were non-random.

You forgot one very important comparison: Fields of Valor. This is basically what Guildleves are. FoV was plain and simple, raw killing spree with a exp bonus. Guildleves are basically just the same thing except with some weird little fragment of random lore text and, very importantly, they are instanced. They are the backbone of leveling simply because they provide the only bonus to exp/sp (which totally undermines regular grinding since there is no type of bonus for that).

As far as lore is concerned, yeah it sucks, but the idea is that you belong to the Adventurer's Guild and Guildleves are your little side jobs. I don't really think that Guildleves should have much more lore to them though, just that they should add new content with richer lore ties.

In terms of rewards, they are comparable to obtaining Beastmen Seals, which of course would be Faction Points (Not to mention Guild Marks). And Faction Leves are basically BCNMs. Now I don't remember any BCNMs having much lore to them either. The important distinction is that obtaining seals in FFXI was totally random, whereas in this game, they are guaranteed upon completion.

Now I'm not really disagreeing with the OP, but I'm trying to look at it in a more practical way. Guildleves are always going to be pretty static, and I think this is one situation in which less is more. People just want to use them to level up, and it would be a pain to have to go through cutscenes and other quests to unlock higher level Leves and whatever else.

You can't really fluff up leveling content that much is all I'm sayin.

[_C-a-e-r-i-t-h_]

Ah yes, FoV.

BCNMs were a lot more focused in design than Faction Leves. Despite their similarity, BCNMs were completely different from the method you acquired seals (boss fight vs random drop off exp mobs) and were pretty much just treasure runs. Faction Leves are functionally the same as their means of entry (leves = leves) and are otherwise identical: same type of encounter, same difficulty, same type of reward.

I'm not expecting Steinbeckian lore behind all FFXIV's level content. Just for a little significance.